{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_39367/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_39367","id":"gutenberg_39367","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/39367","summary":null,"tags":["Category: History - American","Category: History - Religious","Category: Journals","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Catholic Church -- Periodicals","The Catholic World"],"text":"Produced by Don Kostuch\n\n\n\n\n[Transcriber's notes]\n  This text is derived from\n  http://www.archive.org/details/catholicworld01pauluoft\n\n  Several scanned pages are obscured by being too closely glued at the\n  spine. I have interpolated the missing text where it seemed obvious\n  and left \"??\" where it was in doubt.\n\n  A few cases of inaccurate typesetting such as misplaced words or\n  lines have been corrected.\n\n  Although square brackets [] usually designate footnotes or\n  transcriber's notes, they do appear in the original text.\n\n  This text includes Volume I;\n    Number 1--April 1865\n    Number 2--May 1865\n    Number 3--June 1865\n    Number 4--July 1865\n    Number 5--August 1865\n    Number 6--September 1865\n[End Transcriber's notes]\n\n\n_Fine Binding_\nTHE CARSWELL COMPANY LIMITED\n\n\n\nTHE CATHOLIC WORLD.\n\n\n_A Monthly Eclectic Magazine_\n\nof\n\nGENERAL LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.\n\n\nVOL. I.\n\nAPRIL TO SEPTEMBER, 1865.\n\n\n\nNEW YORK:\n\nLAWRENCE KEHOE, PUBLISHER,\n\n7 BEEKMAN STREET.\n\n1865.\n\n\n\nCONTENTS.\n\n\n  Ancient Saints of God, The, 19.\n  Ars, A Pilgrimage to, 24.\n  Alexandria, The Christian Schools of, 33, 721.\n  Animal Kingdom, Unity of Type in the, 71.\n  Art, 136, 286, 420.\n  Art, Christian, 246.\n  Authors, Royal and Imperial, 323.\n  All-Hallow Eve, or the Test of Futurity, 500, 657, 785.\n  Arks, Noah's, 513.\n\n  Babou, Monsieur, 106.\n  Blind Deaf Mute, History of a, 826.\n\n  Church in the United States, Progress of the, 1.\n  Constance Sherwood, 78, 163, 349, 482, 600, 748.\n  Catholicism, The Two Sides of, 96, 669, 741.\n  Cardinal Wiseman in Rome, 117\n  Catacombs, Recent Discoveries in the, 129.\n  Chastellux, The Marquis de, 181.\n  Church of England, Workings of the Holy Spirit in the, 289.\n  Cochin China, French, 369.\n  Consalvi's Memoirs, 377.\n  Church History, A Lost Chapter Recovered, 414.\n  Canova, Antonio, 598.\n  Cathedral Library, The, 679.\n  Catholic Philosophy in the Thirteenth Century, 685.\n\n  De Guerin, Eugenie and Maurice, 214.\n  Divina Commedia, Dante's, 268.\n  Dinner by Mistake, A, 535.\n  Dramatic Mysteries of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, 577.\n  Dublin May Morning, A, 825.\n\n  Extinct Species, 526.\n  Experience, Wisdom by, 851.\n\n  Falconry, Modern, 493.\n  Fifth Century, Civilization in the, 775.\n\n  Guerin, Eugenie and Maurice de, 214.\n  Glacier, A Night in a, 345.\n  Grand Chartreuse, A Visit to the, 830.\n\n  Hedwige, Queen of Poland, 145.\n  Heart and the Brain, 623.\n\n  Irish Poetry, Recent, 466.\n\n  Jem McGowan's Wish, 56.\n\n  Legends and Fables, The Truth of, 433.\n  London, Catholic Progress in, 703.\n  London, 836.\n  Laborers Gone to their Reward, 855.\n\n  Mont Cenis Tunnel, The, 60.\n  Mongols, Monks among the, 158.\n  Mourne, The Building of, 225.\n  Memoirs, Consalvi's, 377.\n  Maintenon, Madame de, 799.\n  Miscellany, 134, 280, 420, 567, 712, 858.\n\n  Nick of Time, The, 124.\n\n  Perilous Journey, A, 198.\n  Poucette, 260.\n  Prayer, What came of a, 697.\n\n  Russian Religious, A, 306.\n\n  Saints of God, The Ancient, 19.\n  Science, 134, 280, 712.\n  Streams, The Modern Genius of, 233.\n  Stolen Sketch, The, 314.\n  Swetchine, Madame, and her Salon, 456.\n  Shakespeare, William, 548.\n  St. Sophia, The Church and Mosque of, 641.\n  Species, The Origin and Mutability of, 845.\n\n  Three Wishes, The, 31.\n  Terrene Phosphorescence, 770.\n\n  Upfield, Many Years Ago at, 393.\n\n  Vanishing Race, A, 708.\n\n  Wiseman, Cardinal in Rome, 117.\n  Winds, The, 207.\n  Women, A City of, 514.\n  Wisdom by Experience, 851.\n\n  Young's Narcissa, 797.\n\n\nPOETRY\n\n  A Lie, 245.\n  Avignon, The Bells of, 783.\n\n  Domine Quo Vadis? 76.\n  Dream of Gerontius, The, 517, 630.\n  Dorothea, Saint, 666.\n\n  Ex Humo, 33.\n\n  Gerontius, The Dream of, 517, 630.\n\n  Hans Euler, 237.\n\n  Limerick Bells, Legend of, 195.\n\n  Mary, Queen of Scots, Hymn by, 337.\n  Martin's Puzzle, 739.\n\n  Saint Dorothea, 666.\n  Speech, 829.\n\n  Twilight in the North, 344.\n\n  Unspiritual Civilization, 747.\n\n\n{iv}\n\n_Contents._\n\n\nNEW PUBLICATIONS.\n\n\n  Archbishop Spalding's Pastoral, 144.\n  At Anchor, 287.\n  American Annual Cyclopaedia, US.\n  A Man without a Country, 720.\n\n  Banim's Boyne Water, 286.\n  Beatrice, Miss Kavanagh's, 574.\n\n  Cardinal Wiseman's Sermons, 139.\n  Cummings' Spiritual Progress, 140.\n  Christian Examiner, Reply to the, 144.\n  Correlation and Conservation of Forces, The, 288, 425.\n  Confessors of Connaught, 574.\n  Cure of Ars, Life of the, 575.\n  Ceremonial of the Church, 720.\n\n  Darras' History of the Church, 141, 575, 860.\n\n  England, Froude's History of, 715.\n\n  Faith, the Victory, Bishop McGill's, 428.\n\n  Grace Morton, 574.\n\n  Heylen's Progress of the Age, etc., 142.\n  Household Poems, Longfellow's, 719.\n\n  Irvington Stories, 143.\n  Irish Street Ballads, 720.\n\n  John Mary Decalogne, Life of, 576.\n\n  Lamotte Fouque's Undine, etc 142.\n  La Mere de Dieu, 432.\n  Life of Cicero, 573.\n\n  Moral Subjects, Card. Wiseman's Sermons on 287.\n  Mystical Rose, The, 288.\n  Mater Admirabilis. 429.\n  Month of Mary, 720.\n  Martyr's Monument, The, 860.\n\n  New Path, The, 288, 576.\n\n  Our Farm of Four Acres, 143.\n\n  Protestant Reformation, Abp. Spalding's History of the, 719.\n\n  Real and Ideal, 427.\n  Religious Perfection, Bayma's, 431.\n  Russo-Greek Church, The, 576.\n  Retreat, Meditations and Considerations for a, 720.\n\n  Songs for all Seasons, Tennyson's, 719.\n  Sybil, A Tragedy, 860.\n\n  Translation of the Iliad, Lord Derby's, 570.\n  Truebner's American and Oriental Literature, 576.\n\n  William Shakespeare, 860.\n  Whittier's Poems; 860.\n\n  Young Catholic's Library, 432.\n  Year of Mary, 719.\n\n----\n\nTHE CATHOLIC WORLD.\n\nVOL. I., NO. 1.--APRIL, 1865.\n\n\nFrom Le Correspondant.\n\nTHE PROGRESS OF THE CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES.\n\nBY E. RAMEUR.\n\n\n[The following article will no doubt be interesting to our readers,\nnot only for its intrinsic merit and its store of valuable\ninformation, but also as a record of the impressions made upon an\nintelligent foreign Catholic, during a visit to this country. As might\nhave been expected, the author has not escaped some errors in his\nhistorical and statistical statements--most of which we have noted in\ntheir appropriate places. It will also be observed that while\nexaggerating the importance of the early French settlements in the\ndevelopment of Catholicism in the United States, he has not given the\nIrish immigrants as much credit as they deserve. But despite these\nfaults, which are such as a Frenchman might readily commit, the\narticle will amply repay reading.--ED. CATHOLIC WORLD.]\n\nAfter the Spaniards had discovered the New World, and while they were\nfighting against the Pagan civilization of the southern portions of\nthe continent, the French made the first [permanent] European\nsettlement on the shores of America. They founded Port Royal, in\nAcaclia, in 1604, and from that time their missionaries began to go\nforth among the savages of the North. It was not until 1620 that the\nfirst colony of English Puritans landed in Massachusetts, and it then\nseemed not improbable that Catholicism was destined to be the dominant\nreligion of the New World; but subsequent Anglo-Saxon immigration and\npolitical vicissitudes so changed matters, that by the end of the last\ncentury one might well have believed that Protestantism was finally\nand completely established throughout North America. God, however,\nprepares his ways according to his own good pleasure; and he knows how\nto bring about secret and unforeseen changes, which set at naught all\nthe calculations of man. The weakness and internal disorders of the\nCatholic nations, in the eighteenth century, retarded only for a\nmoment the progress of the Catholic Church; and Providence, combining\nthe despised efforts of those who seemed weak with the faults of those\nwho seemed strong, confounded the superficial judgments of\nphilosophers, and prepared the way for a speedy religious\ntransformation of America.\n\nThis transformation is going on in our own times with a vigor which\nseems to increase every year. The {2} causes which have led to it\nwere, at the outset, so trivial that no writer of the last century\nwould have dreamed of making account of them. Yet, already at that\ntime, Canada, where Catholicism is now more firmly established than in\nany other part of America, possessed that faithful and energetic\npopulation which has increased so wonderfully during the last half\ncentury; and even in the United States might have been found many an\nobscure, but a patient and stout-hearted little congregation--a relic\nof the old English Church, which after three centuries of oppression\nwas to arise and spread itself with a new life. But no one set store\nby the poor French colonists; England and Protestantism, together, it\nwas thought, would soon absorb them; and as for the _Papists_ of the\nUnited States, the wise heads did not even suspect their existence.\nThe writer who should have spoken of their future would only have been\nlaughed at.\n\nThe English Catholics, like the Puritans, early learned to look toward\nAmerica as a refuge from persecution, and in 1634, under the direction\nof Lord Baltimore, they founded the colony of Maryland. Despite\npersecution from Protestants whom they had freely admitted into their\ncommunity, they prospered, increased, and became the germ of the\nChurch of the United States, now so large and flourishing.\n\nIn the colonial archives of the Ministry of the Navy we have found a\ncurious manuscript memoir upon Acadia, by Lamothe Cadillac, in which\nit is stated that in 1686 there were Catholic inhabitants in New York,\nand especially in Maryland, where they had seven or eight priests.\nAnother paper preserved in the same archives mentions a Catholic\npriest residing in New York; and William Penn, who had established\nabsolute toleration in the colony adjoining that of Maryland, speaks\nof an old Catholic priest who exercised the ministry in Pennsylvania.\n\nThe Catholics at this time are said to have composed a thirtieth part\nof the whole population of Maryland. This estimate seems to us too\nlow. At all events, the increase of our unfortunate brethren in the\nfaith was retarded by persecution and difficulties of all kinds which\nsurrounded them. In the Puritan colonies of the North, they were\nabsolutely proscribed. In the Southern colonies, of Virginia, Georgia,\nand Carolina, their condition was but little better; in New York they\nenjoyed a precarious toleration in the teeth of penal laws. In\nMaryland and Pennsylvania alone they were granted freedom of worship,\nand a legal status; though even in those colonies they were exposed to\na thousand wrongs and vexations. Maryland persecuted them from time to\ntime and banished their priests; and William Penn, in his tolerant\nconduct toward them, was bitterly opposed by his own people.\n\nNevertheless, despite difficulties and violence, the Anglo-American\nCatholics increased by little and little, wherever they got a\nfoothold; the descendants of the old settlers multiplied; new ones\ncame from England and Ireland; and a German immigration set in,\nespecially in Pennsylvania, where several congregations of German\nCatholics were formed at a very early period. In the archives of this\nprovince we have found several valuable indications of the state of\nthe Church in 1760. There were then two priests, one a Frenchman or an\nEnglishman, named Robert Harding, the other a German of the name of\nSchneider. It seems probable that they were both Jesuits.  [Footnote\n1] In a letter to Governor Loudon, in 1757, Father Harding estimates\nthe number of Catholics in Philadelphia and its immediate neighborhood\nat two thousand--English, Irish, and German; but in the absence of\nFather Schneider he could not be positive as to these figures. A\nletter from Gouverneur Morris in 1756 {3} speaks of the Catholics of\nMaryland and Pennsylvania as being very numerous and enjoying freedom\nof worship, and adds, that in Philadelphia there is a Jesuit who is a\nvery able and talented man. The Abbe Robin, a chaplain in Rochambeau's\narmy in 1781, informs us in his narrative that there were several\nCatholic churches at Fredericksburg, Va., and even a Catholic\ncongregation at Charleston, S.C.\n\n\n  [Footnote 1: In De Courcy and Shea's \"Catholic Church in the United\n  States\" pp. 211,  212, an account will be found of both these\n  missionaries. The first mentioned was an Englishman. Both were--\n  Jesuits. ED. C. W.]\n\nThe toleration accorded to the Jesuits in the United States was\nprecarious, but it amounted in time to a pretty complete freedom; and\nas they were not disturbed when the order was suppressed in Europe,\nsome of their brethren from abroad took refuge with them; so that in\n1784, we find, according to Mr. C. Moreau, in his excellent work on\nthe French emigrant priests in America,  [Footnote 2] nineteen priests\nin Maryland, and five in Pennsylvania. To these we must add the\npriests of Detroit, Mich., Vincennes, Ind., and Kaskaskia and Cahokia,\nIll., all four originally French-Canadian settlements which were ceded\nto England along with Canada, and after the American Revolution became\nparts of the United States. Counting, moreover, the missionaries\nscattered among the Indian tribes, we may safely say that the American\nRepublic contained at the period of which we are speaking not fewer\nthan thirty or forty ecclesiastics. The number of the faithful may be\nset down as 16,000 in Maryland, 7,000 or 8,000 in Pennsylvania, 3,000\nat Detroit and Vincennes, and about 2,500 in southern Illinois; in all\nthe other states together they hardly amounted to 1,500. In a total\npopulation therefore of 3,000,000 they numbered about 30,000, and of\nthese 5,500 were of French origin. Such was the condition of the\nChurch in the United States when it was regularly established in 1789\nby the erection of an episcopal see at Baltimore, and the appointment,\nas bishop, of Mr. Carroll, an American priest, born of one of the\noldest Catholic families of Maryland. The dispersion of the clergy of\nFrance, in 1790, soon afterward supplied America with numerous\nevangelical laborers, who gave a new impulse to the development which\nwas just becoming apparent in the infant Church.\n\n  [Footnote 2: One vol. 12mo. Paris: Douniol.]\n\nA few years before the French Revolution, Mr. Emery, superior of Saint\nSulpice, guided by what we must term an extraordinary inspiration,\ncame to the assistance of the American Church, and with the help of\nhis brother Sulpitians and at the cost of the society, founded a\ntheological seminary at Baltimore. His plans were already well matured\nwhen Bishop Carroll, soon after his appointment, entering heartily\ninto the project, promised him a house and all the assistance he could\ngive. Four Sulpitians accordingly set out from Paris in 1790, taking\nwith them five Seminarians. They were supplied with 30,000 francs to\ndefray the cost of their establishment, and to this modest sum the\ncrisis which soon overtook the parent establishment allowed them to\nadd but little; but this mite, bestowed by the Church of France in the\nlast days of her wealth, was destined to become, like the widow's\nmite, the price of innumerable blessings.\n\nBetween 1791 and 1799 the storm of revolution drove twenty-three\nFrench priests to the United States. As the first apostles, when they\nset out from Rome, portioned out Germany and Gaul among themselves, so\nthey divided this country, and most of them organized new communities\nof Christians, or by their zeal awakened communities that slept. Six\nof them, Flaget, Cheverus, Dubourg, Marechal, Dubois, and David,\nbecame bishops.\n\nThe base of operations from which these peaceful but victorious\ninvaders went forth was Baltimore, the episcopal see around which were\ngathered the old American clergy and the greater part of the Catholic\npopulation. It was here that the Sulpitians {4} had their seminary,\nand this establishment became a centre of attraction for a great many\nof these exiled priests who belonged to the Society of Saint Sulpice.\nSome (as MM. Ciquard, Matignon, and Cheverus) bent their steps from\nBaltimore toward the laborious missions among the intolerant and often\nfanatical Puritans of the North, where the Catholics--a mere\nhandful--were found scattered far and wide; isolated in the midst of a\nProtestant population; deprived of priests and religious services, and\nin danger of totally forgetting the faith in which they had been\nbaptized. Nothing discouraged these apostolic men. Aided by divine\ngrace, they awakened the indifferent, converted heretics, gathered\nabout them the few Catholics who immigrated from Europe, attracted all\nmen by their affable and conciliating manners, their intelligence and\neducation, and the disinterestedness of their lives. Soon on this\napparently sterile soil Catholic parishes grew up and flourished in\nthe midst of people who had never before seen a priest. Thus were\nfounded the churches of Massachusetts, Maine, and Connecticut--so\nquickly that, in 1810 (that is to say, only eighteen years after the\nbeginning of the missions), it was deemed advisable to erect for them\nanother bishopric. Congregations had sprung up on every side as if by\nenchantment, and the venerable Abbe Cheverus was appointed their first\nbishop.\n\nOthers went westward. The Abbes Flaget, Badin, Barriere, Fournier, and\nSalmon carried the faith into Kentucky. There they found a few\nCatholic families who had emigrated from Maryland. With them they\norganized churches, which increased with prodigious rapidity, and were\nthe origin of the present dioceses of Louisville, Covington,\nNashville, and Alton.\n\nThe Abbes Richard, Levadour, Dilhiet, and several others, passed\nthrough the forest and the wilderness, and joined the old French\ncolonies which still survived around the ruins of the French military\nposts in the Northwest and in the valley of the Mississippi. They\nfound there a few missionaries, whom the Canadian Church still\nmaintained in those distant countries; but their ranks were thin, and\nthey were old and feeble. This precious reinforcement enabled them to\ngive a fresh impetus to the French Catholic congregations over whom\nthey kept watch in the forest. Detroit, Vincennes, Cahokia, Kaskaskia,\nand afterward St. Genevieve and St. Louis in Missouri, ceded to the\nUnited States in 1803, received the visits of these new apostles, and\nexperienced the benefits of their intelligence and zeal. Nearly all\nthe places where they fixed themselves have since given their names to\nlarge and flourishing bishoprics.\n\nSeveral of the emigrant priests remained in Maryland and Virginia, and\nenabled the Sulpitians to complete the organization of their seminary,\nwhile at the same time they assisted Bishop Carroll in providing more\nperfectly and regularly for the wants of those central provinces which\nmight be called the first home of American Catholicism. The number of\nthe faithful everywhere increased remarkably. We can hardly estimate\nthe extraordinary influence which these French missionaries exercised\nby their exemplary lives, their learning, their great qualities as\nmen, and their virtues as saints; and the Anglo-Saxon inhabitants (who\nare thoroughly Protestant if you will, but for all that religious at\nbottom) were struck by their character all the more forcibly because\nit was so totally different from what their prejudices had led them to\nexpect of the Catholic clergy.\n\nThere is something patriarchal and Homeric in the lives of these men,\nwhich read like the poetic legends in which nations have commemorated\nthe history of their first establishment. We have seen the journal of\none of these missionaries--the Abbe Bourg, {5} who labored further\nNorth, in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. His life was one long,\nperpetual Odyssey. In the spring he used to start from the Bay of\nChaleur, traverse the northern coasts of New Brunswick, pass down the\nBay of Fundy, make the entire circuit of the peninsula of Nova Scotia,\nand after a journey of five hundred leagues, performed in nine or ten\nmonths, visit the islands in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and so come\nback to his point of departure. From place to place, the news of his\napproach was sent forward by the settlers, so that whenever he stopped\nhe found the faithful waiting for him, and whole families came fifteen\nor twenty leagues to meet him. Hardly had he arrived before he began\nthe round of priestly labor, of confession and baptism, of burial and\nmarriage. He was the arbiter of private quarrels, and often of public\ndisputes. He found time withal to look after the education of the\nchildren--at least to make sure that they were well taught at home.\nThus he would stay fifteen days perhaps in one place, a month in\nanother, according to the number of the inhabitants. The first\ncommunion of the children crowned his visit. Then the man of God, with\na last blessing on his weeping flock, disappeared for a whole year;\nand when the apparition so long desired, but so transitory, had\npassed, it left behind a halo of superhuman glory, which seemed to\nthese pious people the glory rather of a prophet than of an ordinary\nman.\n\nIn such ways the marks of a messenger from God seemed more and more\nclearly and unmistakably stamped upon the Catholic missionary, and\nProtestants themselves began to yield to the subtle influence of so\nmuch real virtue and self-devotion. Conversions were frequent even\namong the descendants of the stern Puritans. Many of the most fervent\nCatholic families in the United States date from this period. A rich\nPresbyterian minister of Boston (Mr. John Thayer) was converted, and\nbecame a priest and an apostle. So God scattered the seed of grace\nbehind the footsteps of his poor, persecuted children, who, despite\ntheir apparent misery, bore continually with them the wealth of the\nsoul, the power of the Word, and the marvellous attraction of their\nsacrifices and virtues.\n\nProvidence, however, had not deployed so strong a force for no purpose\nbeyond the capture of these converts. A very few missionaries might\nhave sufficed for that; but it was now time to prepare the land for\nthe great European immigration which was to cause the astonishing\ngrowth of the United States. Spreading themselves over the vast area\nof the Union, the emigrants found everywhere these veteran soldiers\nwhom the French Revolution had sent forth into the New World as\npioneers, tried both by the pains of persecution and the labors of\napostleship. Before this great human tide the old emigrant priests\nwere like the primitive rocks which arrest and fix geological\ndeposits, The Catholic part of the tossing flood invariably settled\naround them and their disciples. All over the West the churches\nfounded by the old French settlers increased, and new ones sprang up\nwherever a Catholic priest established himself. From that moment the\ngrand progressive movement has never ceased. The blood of the martyrs\nof France, the spirit of her banished apostles, became fruitful of\nblessings, of which the American churches are daily sensible.\n\nThe first bishop in the United States had been appointed in 1789. Four\nyears afterward another see was erected at New Orleans, La., which,\nten years later, became a part of the United States; and in 1808, so\nrapid had been the Catholic development, that three new bishops were\nconsecrated--one for Louisville, Ky., another for New York, and the\nthird for Boston, Mass. Two of these sees were occupied by the French\nmissionaries who had founded them--Bishop {6} Flaget at Louisville,\nand Bishop Cheverus at Boston. That of New York was entrusted to a\nvenerable priest of English [Irish] origin--the Rev. Luke Concanen. In\nthe whole United States there were then sixty-eight priests and about\n100,000 Catholics. Lei us now glance at the rapid increase of the\nAmerican Church up to our own day.\n\n\nI.\n\nFrom the States of Maryland and Pennsylvania the Church was not long\nin spreading into Virginia, New York, Kentucky, and Ohio. The\nestablishment of sees at Louisville and New York was followed by the\nerection of others at Philadelphia in 1809, and Richmond and\nCincinnati in 1821. The two Carolinas, in which the Catholics had\nhitherto been an obscure and rigorously proscribed class, received a\nbishop at Charleston in 1820. New Orleans, a diocese of French\ncreation, was divided in 1824 by the erection of the bishopric of\nMobile. The old French colonies in the far West were the nucleus\naround which were formed other churches. The dioceses of St. Louis,\nMo. (organized in 1826), Detroit, Mich. (1832), and Vincennes, Ind.\n(1834), all took their names from ancient French settlements, and were\npeopled almost exclusively by descendants of the French Canadians who\nwere their first inhabitants.\n\nThus, in the course of twenty-six years, we see eight new sees\nerected, making the number of bishops in the United States thirteen.\nThe number of the clergy amounted in 1830 to 232, and in 1834 probably\nexceeded 300. At the date of the next official returns (1840) there\nwere 482 priests and three more bishoprics--those of Natchez, Miss.,\nand Nashville, Tenn., both established in 1837, and that of Monterey\nin California, a country of Spanish settlement which had recently been\nannexed to the United States.   [Footnote 3]\n\n  [Footnote 3: Monterey was not a part of the United States until\n  1848, nor a bishop's see until 1850. In place of it we should\n  substitute Dubuque, made a see in 1837.--ED. C. W.]\n\nBut this increase was not comparable to that which followed between\n1840 and 1850. In ten years the number of bishops was doubled by the\nerection of fifteen [seventeen] new sees. In 1840 there were sixteen;\nin 1850 thirty-one [thirty-three]. The growth during this period was\nmost perceptible in the North and West. Among the new sees were\nHartford, Conn., Albany and Buffalo, N. Y., Pittsburg, Penn.,\nCleveland, O., Chicago, Ill., Milwaukee, Wis., St. Paul, Minn., Oregon\nCity and Nesqualy, Oregon, and Wheeling in Northern Virginia. The\nothers were Little Rock, Ark., Savannah, Ga., Galveston, Texas, and\nSanta Fe, New Mexico.   [Footnote 4] The clergy in 1850 numbered\n1,800, having considerably more than doubled [nearly quadrupled] their\nnumber in ten years.\n\n  [Footnote 4: And San Francisco and Monterey--ED C. W.]\n\nThus we see that the Church was pressing hard and fast upon the old\nNew England Puritans. They soon began to feel uneasy, and to oppose\nsometimes a violent resistance to her progress. In some of the States,\nespecially Connecticut and New Hampshire, there were laws against the\nCatholics yet unrepealed; so that the dominant party had more ways of\nshowing their hatred of the Church than by mere petty vexations. In\nBoston things went so far that a nunnery was pillaged and burned by a\nmob. It is from this time that we must date the origin of the\nKnow-Nothing movement, directed ostensibly against foreigners, but\nundoubtedly animated in the main by hatred of Catholicism and alarm at\nits progress. The fretting and fuming of this political party was the\nlast effort of Puritan antipathy. The Church prospered in spite of it;\nso the Puritans resigned themselves to witness her gradual aggressions\nwith the best grace they could assume.\n\n{7}\n\nTen new sees were established between 1850 and 1860, and eight of\nthese were in the North or West--viz., Erie, Newark, Burlington,\nPortland, Fort Wayne, Sault St. Marie, Alton, and Brooklyn. Two were\nin the South--Covington and Natchitoches. There were thus in the\nUnited States, in 1860, forty-three bishoprics, with 2,235 priests.\nLet us now see how many Catholics were embraced in these dioceses, and\nwhat proportion they bore to the total population.\n\nThe number of the faithful it is not easy to determine accurately; for\na false delicacy prevents the Americans from including the statistics\nof religious belief in their census-tables. Estimates are very\nvariable. A work printed at Philadelphia in 1858 by a Protestant\nauthor sets down the number of Catholics as 3,177,140. Dr. Baird, a\nProtestant minister, published at Paris in 1857 an essay on religion\nin the United States--an essay, be it remarked, which showed the\nCatholics no favor--in which he estimated their number at 3,500,000.\nBut neither of these estimates rests upon trustworthy data. They were\ncertainly below the truth when they were made, and are therefore far\nfrom large enough now, for the yearly increase is very great.\n\nOur own calculations are drawn partly from our personal observation,\nand partly from official documents published by various ecclesiastical\nauthorities. The best criterion is undoubtedly the rate of increase of\nthe clergy.\n\nIt must be evident that in America, more than in any other country,\nthere is a logical relation between the number of the faithful and the\nnumber of the priests. As the clergy depend entirely upon the\nvoluntary contributions of their people, there must be a fixed ratio\nbetween the growth of the flocks and the multiplication of pastors. If\nthe clergy increase too fast, they endanger their means of support.\nNow, if priests cannot live in America without a certain number of\nparishioners to support them, we may take this number as a basis for\ncalculating the minimum of the Catholic population; and we may safely\nsay that the population will be in reality much greater than this\nminimum; because, as we can testify from experience, the churches\nnever lack congregations, and in most places the number of the clergy\nis insufficient to supply even the most pressing religious wants of\nthe people. One never sees a priest in the United States seeking for\nemployment. On the contrary, the cry of spiritual destitution daily\ngoes up from parishes and communities which have no pastors.\n\nCalculations founded upon the statistics of \"church accommodations\"\ngiven in the United States census--that is, of the number of persons\nthe churches are capable of holding--are not applicable to our case;\nbecause the Catholic churches, especially in the large cities, are\nthronged two or three times every Sunday by as many distinct\ncongregations, while the Protestant churches have only one service for\nall. The capacity of the churches therefore gives us neither the\nactual number of worshippers nor the proportion between our own people\nand those of other denominations. We have taken, then, as the basis of\nour estimate, the ratio between the number of priests and the number\nof the faithful, correcting the result according to the circumstances\nof particular places. The first point is to establish this ratio, and\nwe are led by the concurrent results of careful estimates made in some\nof the States, and special or general calculations which we have had\nopportunity of making in person, to fix it at the average of one\npriest for every 2,000 Catholics. But we have a very trustworthy\nmethod of verifying this estimate, and that is by comparison between\nthe United States and the contiguous British Provinces, in which the\nstatistics of religious belief are included in the general census.\nSetting aside Lower Canada, where the Catholic population is as\ncompact as it is in France, we find that in Upper {8} Canada, a\ncountry which resembles the Western United States, the ratio in 1860\nwas one priest for every 1,850 Catholics, and in New Brunswick, a\nterritory very like New England, one for every 2,400. Our average\nratio of one for every 2,000 cannot, therefore, be far from the truth.\nWe have made due account of all data by which this ratio could be\neither raised or lowered in particular times and places. We have\nourselves made investigations in certain districts, and persons well\nqualified to speak on the subject have given us information about\nothers. The result of our corrected calculation gives us 4,400,000 as\nthe Catholic population of the United States in 1860, the date of the\nlast general census. We shall give presently the distribution of this\ntotal among the several states; but we wish first to call attention to\nanother fact of great importance which appears from our figures. In\n1808 the Catholics were 100,000 in a total population of 6,500,000, or\n1/65th of the whole; in 1830 they were 450,000 in 13,000,000, or\n1/29th of the whole; in 1840, 960,000 in 17,070,000, or 1/18th; in\n1850, 2,150,000 in 23,191,000, or 1/11th; and finally, in 1860 they\nwere over 4,400,000 in 31,000,000, or 1/7th of the total population.\nIt thus appears that for fifty years the Catholics have increased much\nfaster than the rest of the inhabitants, and especially during the\nlast two decades. Between 1840 and 1850 their ratio of increase was\n125 per cent., while that of the whole population was only 36; and\nfrom 1850 to 1860 their ratio of increase was 109 per cent., while\nthat of the whole people was 35.59. These figures, to be sure, are not\nmathematically certain, for they are deduced partly from estimates;\nbut we are confident that, considering the imperfect materials at our\ndisposal, we have come as near the exact truth as possible, both in\nthe ratio of increase and in the total population. Official returns in\nthe British Provinces confirm our calculations in a most remarkable\nmanner; and we believe that, estimating the future growth on the most\nmoderate scale, the Catholics will number in 1870 one-fifth of the\nwhole population, and in 1900 not far from one-third.\n\n\nII.\n\nHaving traced the progress of the Church step by step in the United\nStates, it will now be equally interesting and instructive to see how\nthis progress has been made in different places. The Catholics are by\nno means uniformly dispersed over the country, and their increase has\nnot been equally rapid in all the states. It will be worth our while\nto see in which quarters they are settled with the most compactness\nand in which they are widely dispersed; and thus we may predict\nwithout great risk which regions are destined to be the Catholic\nstrongholds in the New World. We have already said that the proportion\nof the Catholics to the whole people in 1860 was as one to seven; but\nif we divide the country into two parts we shall find that in the\nSouthern states there are only 1,200,000 Catholics in a population of\n12,000,000--that is, they are 1/10th of the whole; while in the North\nthey number 3,200,000 in 19,000,000, or more than 1/6th. Even these\nfigures give but a very general idea of the distribution of the\nfaithful. If we take the whole country, state by state, we shall find\nthe proportions still more variable. In some places the Catholic\nelement is already so strong that its ultimate preponderance can\nhardly be doubted, while its slow development in other quarters\npromises little for the future. The following tables will enable our\nreaders to comprehend at once the distribution of the Catholics among\nthe various states:\n\n{9}\n\nNORTHERN STATES.\n\nSOUTHERN STATES.\n\n[Illustration]\n\n{10}\n\nThese tables show at a glance the disproportion between the Catholics\nof the North and those of the South. In only one Northern state (that\nof Maine) is the proportion of Catholics as small as 5.45 per cent, of\nthe whole population; while there are no fewer than five Southern\nstates in which it is less than three per cent. If we leave out New\nMexico, Texas, Louisiana, Missouri, and Maryland, where the\npreponderance of the faithful is due to special causes, we find that\nin the other Southern states the average proportion is not above four\nper cent. In other words, in these regions the Church has little\nbetter than a nominal existence. This is partly because the stream of\nEuropean immigration has always flowed in other directions, and partly\nbecause the negroes generally adhere to the Baptist or Methodist sects\nin preference to the Church.\n\nBut when we examine the tables more in detail, we see that in both\nsections the ratio of Catholics varies greatly in different states. It\nis easy to account for this difference in the South. Six states only\nhave any considerable number of Catholic inhabitants. Louisiana and\nMissouri owe them to the old French colonies around which the Catholic\nsettlers clustered. In New Mexico, more than three-fourths of the\npeople are of Spanish-Mexican origin. Texas derives a great number of\nher inhabitants from Mexico, and has received a large Catholic\nemigration both from Europe and from the United States. Maryland, the\ngerm of the American Church, owes her religious prosperity to the\nfirst English Catholic settlers; and the Church in Kentucky is an\noffshoot of that in Maryland. Such are the special causes of the great\ndifferences between the churches of the various Southern states. In\nthe North there is less disparity. European immigration has produced a\nmuch more decided effect in this section than in the preceding. From\nthis source come most of the faithful of New York, Oregon, California,\nOhio, and New Jersey. In Ohio the Germans have done the principal\npart, and they have done much also in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The\neffect of conversions is more perceptible in Connecticut, Rhode\nIsland, Massachusetts, and New York than elsewhere. In many of the\nstates, however, and especially in Pennsylvania, we find numerous\ndescendants of English Catholic settlers, while the old French\ncolonies of the West have had their influence upon the population of\nMichigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Illinois, and also of the northern\npart of New York, where the French Canadians are daily spreading their\nramifications across the frontier. If we look now at the localities in\nwhich the proportion of Catholics is greatest, we shall notice several\ninteresting points touching the laws which have determined the\ndirection of the principal development of the Church, and which will\nprobably promote it in the future. In the South there are what we may\ncall three groups of states in which the Catholic element is notably\nstronger than in the others. One belongs exclusively to the Southern\nsection, and consists of Louisiana, Texas, and New Mexico, having an\naggregate Catholic population of 380,000 in 1,363,800, or 28 per\ncent. The other groups (Missouri, that is to say, and Maryland and\nKentucky) form parts of much larger groups belonging to the Northern\nstates. The first of these latter, and that to which Maryland and\nKentucky are attached, consists of Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey,\nand Ohio. Its aggregate population is 11,647,477, of whom the\nCatholics are 2,240,000, or nineteen per cent. This group contains the\nancient establishments of Maryland and Pennsylvania--good old Catholic\ncommunities, in which the zeal and piety of the faithful possess that\nfirm and decided character which comes of long practice and\ntime-honored traditions. It contains, too, the magnificent seminary of\nBaltimore, founded and still directed by the Sulpitians. This is the\nlargest and most complete {11} establishment of the kind in the United\nStates, and derives from its connection with the Sulpitian house in\nParis special advantages for superintending the education of young\necclesiastics, and training accomplished ministers for the sanctuary.\nKentucky, likewise, has some important and noteworthy institutions,\nsuch as the seminary of St. Thomas and the college of St. Mary, both\nof which are in high repute at the West, and the magnificent Abbey of\nOur Lady of La Trappe at New Haven, with sixty-four religious,\neighteen of whom are choir-monks. The Kentucky Catholics deserve a few\nwords of special mention. The descendants, for the most part, of the\nfirst settlers of Maryland, who scattered, about a century ago, in\norder to people new countries, they partake in an eminent degree of\nthe peculiar characteristics which have given to Kentuckians a\nreputation as the flower of the American people. They are more\ndecidedly American than the Catholics of any other district, and they\nare remarkable for their homogeneousness, their education, and their\nattachment to the faith and traditions of the Church.\n\nThe most important and numerous Catholic population is found in the\nstate of New York, where the faithful amount to no fewer than 800,000.\nThey have here religious establishments of every kind. This condition\nof things is the result, in great measure, of the well-known ability\nof Archbishop Hughes, whose death has left a void which the American\nclergy will find it hard to fill. His reputation was not confined to\nthe Empire City. He was as well known all over the Union as at his own\nsee, and was everywhere regarded as one of the great men of the\ncountry. Although the progress of the faith in New York has been owing\nin a very great degree to immigration, it is in this city and in\nBoston that conversions have been most numerous; and in effecting\nthese, Archbishop Hughes had a most important share. It is not\nsurprising, then, that his death should have caused a profound\nsensation in the city, and that all religious denominations should\nhave united in testifying respect for his memory.\n\nIt is difficult to apply a statistical table to the study of the\nquestion of conversions. These are mental operations of infinite\nvariety, both in their origin and in their ways; for the methods of\nProvidence are as many and as diverse as the shades of human thought\nupon which they act. It may be remarked, however, that the different\nProtestant sects furnish very unequal contingents to the little army\nof souls daily returning to the true faith; and it is a curious fact\nthat the two sects which furnish the most are the Episcopalians, who,\nin their forms and traditions, approach nearest to the Catholic\nChurch, and the Unitarians, who go to the very opposite extreme, and\nappear to push their philosophical and rationalistic principles almost\nbeyond the pale of Christianity. These two sects generally comprise\nthe most enlightened and intellectual people of North America. On the\nother hand, the denominations which embrace the more ignorant portions\nof the population (such as the Baptists, the Wesleyan Methodists,\netc., etc.) furnish, in proportion to their numbers, but few converts.\nThe principal Catholic review in the United States (_Brownson's\nReview_, published in New York) is edited by a well-known convert,\nwhose name it bears, and who was formerly a Unitarian minister.\n\nFurther North--in New England--there is another Catholic group, of\nrecent origin, formed of the Puritan states of Connecticut,\nMassachusetts, and Rhode Island. The first see here was established by\nBishop Cheverus only sixty years ago. These bishoprics, however, have\nalready acquired importance; for in the diocese of Hartford the\nCatholics are now sixteen per cent, of the whole population, and the\nrapidity of their increase and the completeness of their church\norganization give us ground for bright hopes of their future progress.\nImmigration {12} here does much to promote conversions, and it will\nnot be extravagant to anticipate that in the course of a few years the\nnumber of the faithful will be doubled. _The Pilot_, the most\nimportant Catholic journal in the country, is published in Boston.\n\nThe far West, only a few years ago, was a great wilderness, with only\na few French posts scattered here and there in the Indian forest, like\nlittle islands in the midst of a great ocean. Now it is divided into\nseveral states, and counts millions of inhabitants. In this rapid\ntransformation, Catholicism has not remained behind. Many dioceses\nhave been established, and the quickness of their growth has already\nplaced this group in the second rank so far as regards numerical\nimportance, while all goes to show that Catholicism is destined here\nto preponderate greatly over all other denominations. The states of\nMissouri, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota contained, in\n1860, 4,575,000 souls, of whom 890,000, or 19 per cent., were\nCatholics. This is as large a proportion as we find in the central\ngroup. It is, moreover, rapidly rising, and only one thing is\nnecessary to make these states before long the principal seats of\nCatholicism in the Union--that is, an adequate supply of priests. It\nis of the utmost importance that the demand for missionaries in these\ndiocese be supplied at whatever cost.\n\nThe principal causes of this remarkable increase are, first, the\ncrowds of immigrants attracted by the great extent of fertile land\nthrown open to settlers; and, secondly, the fact that the Catholic\nimmigrants on their arrival clustered, so to speak, around the old\nFrench settlements, where the missionaries still maintained the\ndiscipline and worship of the Church. At first, therefore, it was easy\nto direct this great influx of people, since they naturally tended\ntoward the pre-existing centres of faith. The consequence was that the\nChurch lost by apostacies fewer members than one might have supposed,\nand fewer than were lost in other places. But now the daily augmenting\ncrowds of immigrants are dispersing themselves through less solitary\nregions. They are coming under more direct and various influences; and\nhence the necessity for increasing the number of churches and parish\npriests becomes daily more and more urgent. At the same time, the\nmeans at the disposal of the bishops become daily less and less\nadequate for supplying this want, especially since the people of the\ncountry, new and unsettled as they are, and absorbed in material\ncares, furnish but few candidates for the priesthood. Here we see a\nglorious field for the far-reaching benevolence of the Society for the\nPropagation of the Faith. Nowhere, we believe, will the sending forth\nof pious and devoted priests produce fruits comparable to those of\nwhich the past gives promise to the future in this part of the United\nStates. We spoke just now of the old French colonies, and our readers\nwill perhaps be surprised that we should have made so much account of\nthose poor little villages, which numbered hardly more than from 500\nto 1,500 souls each when the Yankees began to come into the country.\nNevertheless, we have not exaggerated their importance. It is not only\nthat they served as centres and rallying-points; but so rapid is the\nmultiplication of families in America that this French population\nwhich, if brought together in one mass in 1800, would have counted at\nmost 14,000 souls, now numbers, including both the original\nsettlements and the swarms of emigrants who have gone from them to the\nWest, not fewer than 80,000. Their descendants are always easily\nrecognized. Detroit, and its neighborhood in Michigan, Vincennes\n(Ind.), Cahokia and Kaskaskia (Ill.), St. Louis, St. Genevieve,\nCarondelet, etc. (Mo.), Green Bay and Prairie du Chien (Wis.), St.\nPaul (Minn.)--all these old settlements have preserved the deep imprint\nof our race. Even in the new colonies which were afterward drawn from\nthem, the French population have uniformly kept up the practice of\ntheir religion, {13} the use of their mother tongue, and a lively\nrecollection of their origin. Of this fact we have obtained proof in\nseveral instances from careful personal observation. Small and poor,\ntherefore, as these settlements were, they had a powerful moral\ninfluence upon the great immigration of the nineteenth century. The\nCatholic immigrants felt drawn toward them by the attraction of a\ncommunity of thought and customs; and God, whose Providence rules our\nlives, directed the movement by his own inscrutable methods.\n\nIII.\n\nWhile the Catholic element was increasing at the rate of 80, 125, and\n109 per cent, every ten years, other religious denominations showed an\nincrease of only twenty or twenty-five per cent. Some remained\nstationary, and a few even lost ground. Whence comes this continued\nand increasing disparity in the development of different portions of\nthe same people? The principal reason assigned for it is the immense\nemigration from Ireland to America. As the number of Catholics in the\nUnited States when the emigration began was very small, every swarm of\nfresh settlers added much more to their ratio of increase than to that\nof other denominations. Ten added to ten gives an increase of 100 per\ncent.; but the same number added to 100 gives only ten per cent. At\nfirst sight, this seems a sufficient explanation; but we shall find,\nwhen we come to examine it, that it does not really account for our\nincrease. If the growth of the American Catholic Church were the\nresult wholly of immigration, we should find that as the number of\nCatholic inhabitants increased, the apparent effect of this\nimmigration would be diminished. In other words, the _ratio_ of increase\nwould gradually fall to an equality with that of other denominations.\nBut, so far from this being the case, the difference between our ratio\nof increase and that of the Protestant sects is as great as ever--is\neven growing greater. The ratio which was ten per cent. a year between\n1830 and 1840, rose to 12.50 per cent, a year between 1840 and 1850,\nand was 10.09 per cent, between 1850 and 1860. There are other causes,\ntherefore, beside European emigration to which we must look for an\nexplanation of Catholic progress in America. If we study with a little\nattention the extent to which immigration has influenced the\ndevelopment of the whole population of the country, and the exact\nproportion of the Catholic part of this immigration, we shall find\nconfirmation of the conclusions to which we have been led by the\nsimple testimony of figures. Immigration has never furnished more than\nsix or seven per cent. of the decennial increase of the population of\nthe United States, the growth of which has been at the rate of\nthirty-five per cent, during the same period. Immigration, therefore,\ncontributed to it only one-fifth. Again, of these immigrants,\nincluding both Irish and Germans, not more than one-third have been\nCatholics. Moreover, we must take account of the considerable number\nof members that the Church has lost in the course of their dispersion\nall over the country.\n\nClearly, then, the influence of immigration is not enough to account\nfor the rapid progress of the faith. A careful analysis of the\nCatholic population at different tunes, and in different places,\nenables us to specify two other causes.\n\n1. The Catholics are principally distributed at the North among the\nfree states, where the population increases much faster than it does\nat the South; and the Catholic families, it has been observed,\nmultiply much faster than the others, in consequence, no doubt, of\ntheir more active and regular habits of life, sustained morality,\nrespect for the marriage tie, and regard for domestic obligations.\nThis difference in fecundity is quite perceptible wherever the\nCatholic element {14} is strong--as in Canada, and the states of New\nYork, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, etc., and,\namong the Southern states, in Louisiana, Maryland, and Missouri.\n\n2. Another cause of increase is the conversion of Protestants--a cause\nwhich operates slowly, quietly, and, at first, imperceptibly, but with\nthat constant and uniform power--reminding us of the great operations\nof nature--which is almost always the sign of a Providential agency.\nEloquent theorists and brilliant writers on statistics, preferring\nsalient facts and striking phenomena--what they call the great\nprinciples of science--too often overlook or despise those obscure\nmovements which act quietly upon the human conscience. Yet how much\nmore powerful is this mysterious action--like the continual dropping of\nwater--than the showy effects which captivate so many thinkers, whose\norgans of perception seem dazzled by the glow of their imagination!\nSuch was the nature of the invisible operation which was inaugurated\nby the preaching of the martyrs of the faith whom the French\nRevolution cast forth like seed all over the world. The rules of\npolitical economy had nothing to do with it. It acted in the secret\nchambers of men's hearts and the retirement of their meditative\nmoments, and it has gone on without interruption to the present\nmoment, increasing year by year. The Church seizes upon the\nconvictions of grown men; reaches the young by her admirable systems\nof education; impresses all by her living, persuasive propagandism,\nmade beautiful by the zeal and devotion and holiness of her\nmissionaries. Simple and dignified, without the affectation of dignity--\naustere, without fanaticism--their presence alone roots up old\nprejudices, while their preaching and example fill the soul with new\nlights and with anxieties which nothing but their instructions can set\nat rest. Thus, wherever they go, the thoughts and comparisons which\nthey suggest multiply conversions all around them. You have only to\nquestion a few Catholic families in the older states about their early\nreligious history, and you will see how important an element in the\nprosperity of the Church is this force of attraction--so important,\nthat the following statement may almost be taken as a general law:\nWherever a Catholic priest establishes himself, though there be not a\nCatholic family in the place, it is almost certain that by the end of\na time which varies from five to ten years, he will be surrounded by a\nCatholic community large enough to form a parish and support a\nclergyman. This rule seems to us to have no exception except in some\nof the southern states. We have no hesitation in stating it broadly of\neven those parts of New England in which the anti-Catholic feeling is\nnow strongest.\n\nWe shall presently have occasion to show that the only thing which\nprevents the American Church from increasing, perhaps doubling, the\nrapidity of its progress, is the scarcity of ecclesiastics and\nmissionaries, from which all the dioceses are suffering.\n\nWe have explained the important part which converts have played in\nthis progress. The inquiry naturally arises: Whence come so many\nconversions? What are the causes which generally lead to them? These\nare delicate and difficult questions. We have no wish to speak ill of\nthe Protestant clergy. Most of them are certainly honorable men,\nestimable husbands and good fathers; but we cannot help observing that\nthey lack the sacerdotal character so conspicuous in the Catholic\npriest. Their ministry and their teaching cannot fully satisfy the\nsoul; and whenever a calm and unprejudiced comparison is drawn between\nthem and the Catholic clergy, it is strange if the former do not\nsuffer by the contrast, and behold their flocks, little by little,\npassing over to the side of the Church. This comparison is one motive\nwhich often leads Protestants, not precisely into {15} the bosom of\nthe faith, but to the study of Catholic doctrine; and this is a step\nby no means easy to persuade them to take; for, of every ten\nProtestants who honestly study the faith, seven or eight end by\nbecoming Catholics. The Americans are a people of a strong religious\nbent. Nothing which concerns the great question of religion is\nindifferent to them. They study and reflect upon such matters much\nmore than we skeptical and critical Frenchmen. The conversions\nresulting from such frequent consideration of religious matters ought,\ntherefore, to be far more numerous in America, and even in England,\nthan in other countries.\n\nThere are doubtless many other causes which contribute to the same\nresult. Among them are mixed marriages, which generally turn out to\nthe advantage of the Church, especially in the case of educated people\nin the upper ranks in society. Not only are the children of these\nmarriages brought up Catholics, but almost always, as experience has\nshown us, the Protestant parent becomes a Catholic too.\n\nThe excellent houses of education directed by religious orders are\nanother active cause of conversions. If elementary education is almost\nuniversal in the United States, it is nevertheless true that the\nhigher institutions of learning are exceedingly defective. The\ncolleges and boarding-schools founded under the direction of the\nCatholic clergy, though inferior to those of France in the\nthoroughness of the education they impart and the amount of study\nrequired of their pupils, are yet vastly superior to all other\nAmerican establishments in their method, their discipline, and the\nattainments of their professors. The consequence is that they are\nresorted to by numbers of Protestant youth of both sexes. No\ncompulsion is used to make them Catholics; no undue influence is\nexerted; the press, free as it is, rarely finds excuse for complaint\non this score; but facts and doctrines speak for themselves. The good\nexamples and affectionate solicitude which surround these young\npeople, and the friendships they contract, leave a deep impression on\ntheir minds, and plant the seed of serious thought, which sooner or\nlater bears fruit. Various circumstances may lead to the final\ndevelopment of this seed. Now perhaps a first great sorrow wakens it\ninto life; now it is quickened by new ideas born of study and\nexperience; in one case the determining influence may be a marriage;\nin another, intercourse with Catholic society; and not a few may be\nmoved by the falsity of the notions of Catholicism which they find\ncurrent among Protestants, and which their own experience enables them\nto detect. This motive operates oftener than people suppose, and\ngenerally with those who at school or college seemed most bitterly\nhostile to the faith. In tine, those who have been educated at\nCatholic institutions are less prejudiced and better prepared for the\naction of divine grace, which Providence may send through any one of a\nthousand channels.\n\nAnd lastly, Catholicism acts upon the Americans through the medium of\nthe habits and customs to which it gradually attaches them, the result\nof which is that in the growth of the population the Church makes a\nconstant, an insensible, and what we might call a spontaneous\nincrease. It is a well-known fact that the Catholic families of North\nAmerica, as a general rule, are distinguished by a character of\nstability, good order, and moderation which is often wanting in the\nYankee race. Now this turns to the advantage of the Church; for it is\nevident that a people which fixes itself permanently where it has once\nsettled, which concentrates itself, so to speak, has a better chance\nof acquiring a predominance in the long run than one of migratory\nhabits, always in pursuit of some better state which always eludes it.\nThis truth is nowhere more apparent than in a county of Upper Canada\nwhere we spent nearly three years. The county of Glengarry was settled\n{16} in 1815 by Scotchmen, some of whom were Catholics. The colony\nincreased partly by the natural multiplication of the settlers, partly\nby immigration, until about 1840, when immigration almost totally\nceased, all the lands being occupied. The population was then left to\ngrow by natural increase alone. The Protestants at that time were\nconsiderably in the majority; but by 1850 the proportions began to\nchange, and out of 17,576 inhabitants 8,870 were Catholics. In 1860\nthe majority was completely reversed, and in a population of 21,187\nthere were 10,919 Catholics; in other words, the latter, by the\nregular operation of natural causes, had gained every year from one to\ntwo per cent, upon the whole. It would not be easy to give a detailed\nexplanation of this fact; we are only conscious that some mysterious\nand irresistible agency is gradually augmenting the proportion of the\nCatholic element in American society and weakening the Protestant.\n\nAmerican society might be compared to a troubled expanse of water\nholding various substances in solution. The solid bottom upon which\nthe waters rest is formed by the deposit of these substances, and day\nafter day, during the moments of rest which follow every agitation of\nthe waves, more and more of the Catholic element is precipitated which\nthe waters bring with them at each successive influx, but fail to\ncarry off again. It is by this human alluvium that our religion grows\nand extends itself; and if this growth is wonderful, it may be that\nthe effect of the infusion of so much sound doctrine into American\nsociety will prove equally astonishing and precious.\n\nGreat stress has often been laid upon the good qualities of the\nAmerican people, but comparatively few have spoken of their faults;\nnot because they had none, but because their faults were lost sight of\nin the brilliancy of their material prosperity. But recent events have\nled to more reflection upon this point; so it will not astonish our\nreaders if we point oat one or two, such as the decay of thoughtful,\nsystematic, methodical intelligence among them, in comparison with\nEuropeans; their narrowness of mind; their inaptitude for general\nideas; and their sensibly diminishing delicacy of mind. These defects\nshow an unsuspected but serious and rapid degeneracy of the\nAnglo-American race, and the decline has already perhaps gone further\nthan one would readily believe. If Catholicism, which tends eminently\nto develop a spirit of method and order, broadness of view and\ndelicacy of sentiment, should combat successfully these failings, it\nwould render a signal service to the United States in return for the\nliberty which they have granted it.\n\nBut Catholics, we should add, are indebted to the United States for\nsomething more than simple liberty. They have there learned to\nappreciate their real power. They have learned by experience how\nlittle they have to fear from pure universal liberty, how much\nstrength and influence they can acquire in such a state of society.\nThere is this good and this evil in liberty--that it always proves to\nthe advantage of the strong; so that when there is question of the\nrelations between man and man, it must be a well-regulated liberty, or\nit will result in the oppression of the weak. But the case is\ndifferent when it comes to a question of discordant doctrines: man has\neverything to gain by the triumph of sound, strong principles and the\ndestruction of false and specious theories. In such a contest, let but\neach side appear in its true colors, and we have nothing to fear for\nthe cause of truth. The United States will at least have had the merit\nof affording an opportunity for a powerful demonstration of the truth;\nand great as are the advantages which the Catholic Church can confer\nupon the country, she herself will reap still greater advantages by\nconferring them; for it will turn to her benefit in her action upon\nthe world at large.\n\nIn fact, the experience of the Church {17} in America has doubtless\ngone for something in the familiarity which religious minds are\ngradually acquiring with the principles of political liberty; and thus\nthe growth of American Catholicism is allied to the world-wide\nreaction which is now taking place after the religious eclipse of the\nlast century. This transformation of the United States, in truth, is\nonly one marked incident in the intellectual revolution which is\ndrawing the whole world toward the Catholic Church--England as well\nas America, Germany as well as England, even Bulgaria in the far East.\nThe foreign press brings us daily the signs of this progress; and\nnothing can be easier than to point them out in France under our own\neyes. But unfortunately we have been too much in the habit, for the\nlast century, of leading a life of continual mortification, too\nconscious that we were laughed at by the leaders of public opinion. We\ncrawled along in fear and trembling, creeping close to the walls,\ndreading at every step to give offence, or to cause scandal, or to\nlose some of our brethren. Accustomed to see our ranks thinned and\nwhole files carried off in the flower of their youth, we stood in too\ngreat fear of the deceitful power of doctrines which seemed to promise\neverything to man and ask nothing from him in return. And therefore\nmany of us still find it hard to understand the new state of things in\nwhich we are making progress without external help. This progress,\nhowever, inaugurated by the energy of a few, the perseverance of all,\nand the overruling hand of divine Providence, is unquestionably going\non, and may easily be proved. We have only to visit our churches,\nattend some of the special retreats for men, or look at the Easter\ncommunions, to see what long steps faith and religious practice have\ntaken within the last forty years. The change is most perceptible\namong the educated classes and in the learned professions. We have\nheard old professors express their astonishment in comparing the\nschools of the present time with those of their youth. It was then\nalmost impossible to find a young man at the _Ecole Polytechnique_, at\nSt. Cyr, or at the _Ecole Centrale_, with enough faith and enough\ncourage openly to profess his religion; now it may be said that a\nfifth or perhaps a fourth part of the students openly and\nunhesitatingly perform their Easter duty. We ourselves remember that\nno longer ago than 1830 it required a degree of courage of which few\nwere found capable to manifest any religious sentiment in the public\nlyceums. Voltairianism--or to speak better, an intolerant\nfanaticism--delighted to cover these faithful few with public\nridicule; while now, if we may believe the best authorized accounts,\nit is only a small minority who openly profess infidelity. We can\naffirm that in the School of Law the change is quite as great, and it\nhas begun to operate even in that time-honored stronghold of\nmaterialism, the School of Medicine.\n\nBut what must strike us most forcibly in the examination of these\nquestions is the fact, already pointed out by the Abbe Meignan, that\nthe progress of religion has kept even pace with the extension of free\ninstitutions. Wherever the liberal _regime_ has been established, the\nreaction in favor of religion has become stronger, no doubt because\nliberty places man face to face with the consequences of his own acts\nand the necessities of his feeble nature. Man is never so powerfully\nimpelled to draw near to God as when he becomes conscious of his own\nweakness; never so deeply impressed with the emptiness of false\ndoctrines as when he has experienced their nothingness in the\npractical affairs of life. The violence of external disorder soon\nleads him to, reflect upon the necessity of solid, methodical, moral\neducation, such as regulates one's life, and such as the Church alone\ncan impart. And therefore the great change of sentiment of which we\nhave spoken is perceptible chiefly among the educated and liberal\nclasses, while with the ignorant and {18} vulgar infidelity holds its\nown and is even gaining. The educated classes, more thoughtful,\nknowing the world and having experience of men, see further and\ncalculate more calmly the tendency of events; with the common people\nreason and plain sense are often overpowered by the violence of their\ntemperament and the impetuosity of their passions. Ignorance and\ninordinate desires do the rest, and they imagine that man will know\nhow to conduct without knowing how to govern himself.\n\nWhatever demagogues may say, history proves that the head always rules\nthe body. The period of discouragement and apprehension is past. We\nshall yet, no doubt, have to go through trials, and violent crises,\nand perhaps cruel persecutions; but we may hope everything from the\nfuture. And why not? If we study the history of the Jewish people, we\nshall see how God chastises his people in order to rouse them from\ntheir moral torpor, and raise them up from apparent ruin by unforeseen\nmeans. Weakness, in his hand, at once becomes strength; he asks of us\nnothing but faith and courage. We have traced his Providence in the\nmethods by which he has stimulated the growth of the American\nChurch--methods all the more effectual because, unlike our own vain\nenterprises, they worked for a long time in silence and obscurity.\nThese Western bishoprics remained almost unknown up to the day when,\nthe light bursting forth all at once, the world beheld a Church\nalready organized, already strong, where it had not suspected even her\nexistence.\n\nThere is a magnificent and instructive scene in _Athalie_, where the\nveil of the temple is rent, and discloses to the eyes of the terrified\nqueen, Joas, whom she had believed dead, standing in his glory\nsurrounded by an army. Even so, it seems to us, was the American\nChurch suddenly revealed in all her vigor to the astonished world,\nwhen her bishops came two years ago to take their place in the council\nat Rome. And the same progress is making all over the globe. Noiseless\nand unobtrusive, it attracts no attention from the world; it is\noverlooked by Utopian theorists; it goes on quietly in the domain of\nconscience; but the day will come when its light will break forth and\nastonish mankind by its brightness. Such are the ways of God!\n\n\nNOTE.--The greater part of the materials for the preceding article\nwere written or collected during the course of a journey which we made\nin the United States in 1860. Since then the progress of Catholicism\nhas necessarily been somewhat checked by the events of the lamentable\ncivil war which is desolating the country; but the check has been far\nless serious than might have reasonably been apprehended. Religion has\nbeen kept apart from political dissensions and public disorders; it\nhas only had to suffer the common evils which war, mortality, and\ngeneral impoverishment have inflicted upon the whole people. If all\nthese things are to have any bad effect upon the progress of the\nChurch, it will be in future years, not now. In fact, all the\ndocuments which we have been able to collect show that the numbers of\nboth the faithful and the clergy, instead of falling off, have gone on\nincreasing. In thirty-eight dioceses there are now 275 more priests\nthan there were in 1860; from the five other sees, namely, those of\nNew Orleans, Galveston, Mobile, Natchitoches, and Charleston, we have\nno returns. This increase is confined almost entirely to the regions\nin which the Church was already strongest; elsewhere matters have\nremained about stationary.\n\nOf this number of 275 priests added to the Church in the course of\nthree years, 251 belong to the following fourteen dioceses, namely:\nBaltimore, Pittsburg, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Brooklyn, Albany, Alton,\nChicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul, Detroit, Fort Wayne, Vincennes, and\nHartford. The last-named belongs to the {19} Northeastern or New\nEngland group, all the others to the Central and Western. Thus\nfourteen dioceses alone show nine-tenths of the total increase, and\nthe others divide the remaining tenth among them in very minute\nfractions. From some states, it is true, the returns are very meagre,\nand from others they are altogether wanting; but the disproportion is\nso strong as to leave no doubt that the future conquests of the Church\nin the United States will be gained, as we have already said,\nprincipally in the Middle and Western States.\n\nE. R.\n\n----\n\n_From The Month._\n\nTHE ANCIENT SAINTS OF GOD.\n\nA FRENCH OFFICER'S STORY.\n\n\nBY THE LATE CARDINAL WISEMAN.\n\n\nCHAPTER I.\n\nINTRODUCTION.\n\nWe often practically divide the saints into three classes. The ancient\nsaints, those of the primitive age of Christianity, we consider as the\npatrons of the universal Church, watching over its well-being and\nprogress, but, excepting Rome, having only a general connection with\nthe interests of particular countries, still less of individuals.\n\nThe great saints of the middle age, belonging to different races and\ncountries, have naturally become their patrons, being more especially\nreverenced and invoked in the places of their births, their lives, and\nstill more their deaths; whence, St. Willibrord, St. Boniface, and St.\nWalburga are more honored in Germany, where they died, than in\nEngland, where they were born.\n\nThe third class includes the more modern saints, who spoke our yet\nliving languages, printed their books, followed the same sort of life,\nwore the same dress as we do, lived in houses yet standing, founded\ninstitutions still flourishing, rode in carriages, and in another\ngeneration would have traveled by railway. Such are St. Charles, St.\nIgnatius, St. Philip, St. Teresa, St. Vincent, B. Benedict Joseph, and\nmany others. Toward these we feel a personal devotion independent of\ncountry; nearness of time compensating for distance of place. There is\nindeed one class of saints who belong to every age and every country;\ndevotion toward whom, far from diminishing, increases the further we\nrecede from their time and even their land. For we are convinced that\na Chinese convert has a more sensitive and glowing devotion toward our\nBlessed Lady, than a Jewish neophyte had in the first century. When I\nhear this growth of piety denounced or reproached by Protestants, I\nown I exult in it.\n\nFor the only question, and there is none in a Catholic mind, is\nwhether such a feeling is good in itself; if so, growth in it, age by\nage, is an immense blessing and proof of the divine presence. It is as\nif one told me that there is more humility now in the Church than\nthere was in the first century, more zeal than in the third, more\nfaith than in the eighth, more charity than in the twelfth. And so, if\nthere is more devotion now than there was 1,800 years ago toward the\nImmaculate Mother of God, toward {20} her saintly spouse, toward St.\nJohn, St. Peter, and the other Apostles, I rejoice; knowing that\ndevotion toward our divine Lord, his infancy, his passion, his sacred\nheart, his adorable eucharist, has not suffered loss or diminution,\nbut has much increased. It need not be, and it is not, as John the\nBaptist said, \"He must increase, and I diminish.\" Both here increase\ntogether; the Lord, and those who best loved him.\n\nBut this is more than a subject of joy: it is one of admiration and\nconsolation. For it is the natural course of things that sympathies\nand affections should grow less by time. We care and feel much less\nabout the conquests of William I., or the prowess of the Black Prince,\nthan we do about the victories of Nelson or Wellington; even Alfred is\na mythical person, and Boadicea fabulous; and so it is with all\nnations. A steadily increasing affection and intensifying devotion (as\nin this case we call it) for those remote from us, in proportion as we\nrecede from them, is as marvellous--nay, as miraculous--as would be the\nflowing of a stream from its source up a steep hill, deepening and\nwidening as it rose. And such I consider this growth, through\nsucceeding ages, of devout feeling toward those who were the root, and\nseem to become the crown, or flower, of the Church. It is as if a beam\nfrom the sun, or a ray from a lamp, grew brighter and warmer in\nproportion as it darted further from its source.\n\nI cannot but see in this supernatural disposition evidence of a power\nruling from a higher sphere than that of ordinary _providence_, the laws\nof which, uniform elsewhere, are modified or even reversed when the\ndispensations of the gospel require it; or rather, these have their\nown proper and ordinary providence, the laws of which are uniform\nwithin its system. And this is one illustration, that what by every\nordinary and natural course should go on diminishing, goes on\nincreasing. But I read in this fact an evidence also of the stability\nand perpetuity of our faith; for a line that is ever growing thinner\nand thinner tends, through its extenuation, to inanition and total\nevanescence; whereas one that widens and extends as it advances and\nbecomes more solid, thereby gives earnest and proof of increasing\nduration.\n\nWhen we are attacked about practices, devotions, or corollaries of\nfaith--\"developments,\" in other words--do we not sometimes labor\nneedlessly to prove that we go no further than the Fathers did, and\nthat what we do may be justified from ancient authorities? Should we\nnot confine ourselves to showing, even with the help of antiquity,\nthat what is attacked is good, is sound, and is holy; and then thank\nGod that we have so much more of it than others formerly possessed? If\nit was right to say \"Ora pro nobis\" once in the day, is it not better\nto say it seven times a day; and if so, why not seventy times seven?\nThe rule of forgiveness may well be the rule of seeking intercession\nfor it. But whither am I leading you, gentle reader? I promised you a\nstory, and I am giving you a lecture, and I fear a dry one. I must\nretrace my steps. I wished, therefore, merely to say that, while the\nsaints of the Church are very naturally divided by us into three\nclasses--holy patrons of the Church, of particular portions of it, and\nof its individual members--there is one raised above all others, which\npasses through all, composed of protectors, patrons, and nomenclators,\nof saints themselves. For how many Marys, how many Josephs, Peters,\nJohns, and Pauls, are there not in the calendar of the saints, called\nby those names without law of country or age!\n\nBut beyond this general recognition of the claims of our greatest\nsaints, one cannot but sometimes feel that the classification which I\nhave described is carried by us too far; that a certain human dross\nenters into the composition of our devotion; we perhaps nationalize,\nor even individualize, {21} the sympathies of those whose love is\nuniversal, like God's own, in which alone they love. We seem to fancy\nthat St. Edward and St. Frideswida are still English; and some persons\nappear to have as strong an objection to one of their children bearing\nany but a Saxon saint's name as they have to Italian architecture. We\nmay be quite sure that the power and interest in the whole Church have\nnot been curtailed by the admission of others like themselves, first\nChristians on earth, then saints in heaven, into their blessed\nsociety; but that the friends of God belong to us all, and can and\nwill help us, if we invoke them, with loving impartiality. The little\nhistory which I am going to relate serves to illustrate this view of\nsaintly intercession; it was told me by the learned and distinguished\nprelate whom I shall call Monsig. B. He has, I have heard, since\npublished the narrative; but I will give it as I heard it from his\nlips.\n\n\nCHAPTER II.\n\nTHE FRENCH OFFICER'S FIRST APPEARANCE.\n\n\nOn the 30th of last month--I am writing early in August--we all\ncommemorated the holy martyrs, Sts. Abdon and Sennen. This in itself\nis worthy of notice. Why should we in England, why should they in\nAmerica, be singing the praises of two Persians who lived more than\nfifteen hundred years ago? Plainly because we are Catholics, and as\nsuch in communion with the saints of Persia and the martyrs of Decius.\nYet it may be assumed that the particular devotion to these two\nEastern martyrs is owing to their having suffered in Rome, and so\nfound a place in the calendar of the catacombs, the basis of later\nmartyrologies. Probably after having been concealed in the house of\nQuirinus the deacon, their bodies were buried in the cemetery or\ncatacomb of Pontianus, outside the present Porta Portese, on the\nnorthern bank of the Tiber. In that catacomb, remarkable for\ncontaining the primitive baptistery of the Church, there yet remains a\nmonument of these saints, marking their place of sepulture.  [Footnote\n5] Painted on the wall is a \"floriated\" and jewelled cross; not a\nconventional one such as mediaeval art introduced, but a plain cross,\non the surface of which the painter imitated natural jewels, and from\nthe foot of which grow flowers of natural forms and hues; on each side\nstands a figure in Persian dress and Phrygian cap, with the names\nrespectively running down in letters one below the other:\n\nSANCTVS ABDON: SANCTVS SENNEN.\n\nThe bodies are no longer there. They were no doubt removed, as most\nwere, in the eighth century, to save them from Saracenic profanation,\nand translated to the basilica of St. Mark in Rome. There they repose,\nwith many other martyrs no longer distinguishable; since the ancient\nusage was literally to bury the bodies of martyrs in a spacious crypt\nor chamber under the altar, so as to verify the apocalyptic\ndescription, \"From under the altar of God all the saints cry aloud.\"\nThis practice has been admirably illustrated by the prelate to whom I\nhave referred, in a work on this very crypt, or, in ecclesiastical\nlanguage, _Confession_ of St. Mark's.\n\n  [Footnote 5:  See _Fabiola_, pp. 362, 363.]\n\nOne 30th of July, soon after the siege of Rome in 1848, the chapter of\nSt. Mark's were singing the office and mass of these Persian martyrs,\nas saints of their church. Most people on week-days content themselves\nwith hearing early a low mass, so that the longer offices of the\nbasilica, especially the secondary ones, are not much frequented. On\nthis occasion, however, a young French officer was noticed by {22} the\ncanons as assisting alone with great recollection.\n\nAt the close of the function, my informant went up to the young man,\nand entered into conversation with him.\n\n\"What feast are you celebrating today?\" asked the officer.\n\n\"That of Sts. Abdon and Sennen,\" answered Monsignor B.\n\n\"Indeed! how singular!\"\n\n\"Why? Have you any particular devotion to those saints?\"\n\n\"Oh, yes; they are my patron saints. The cathedral of my native town\nis dedicated to them, and possesses their bodies.\"\n\n\"You must be mistaken there: their holy relics repose beneath our\naltar; and we have to-day kept their feast solemnly on that account.\"\n\nOn this explanation of the prelate the young officer seemed a little\ndisconcerted, and remarked that at P-- everybody believed that the\nsaints' relics were in the cathedral.\n\nThe canon, as he then was, of St. Mark's, though now promoted to the\n\"patriarchal\" basilica of St. John, explained to him how this might\nbe, inasmuch as any church possessing considerable portions of larger\nrelics belonging to a saint was entitled to the privilege of one\nholding the entire body, and was familiarly spoken of as actually\nhaving it; and this no doubt was the case at P--.\n\n\"But, beside general grounds for devotion to these patrons of my\nnative city, I have a more particular and personal one; for to their\ninterposition I believe I owe my life.\"\n\nThe group of listeners who had gathered round the officer was deeply\ninterested in this statement, and requested him to relate the incident\nto which he alluded. He readily complied with their request, and with\nthe utmost simplicity made the following brief recital.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III.\n\nTHE OFFICER'S NARRATIVE.\n\n\"During the late siege of Rome I happened to be placed in an advanced\npost, with a small body of soldiers, among the hillocks between our\nheadquarters in the villa Pamphily-Doria and the gate of St.\nPancratius. The post was one of some danger, as it was exposed to the\nsudden and unsparing sallies made by the revolutionary garrison on\nthat side. The broken ground helped to conceal us from the marksmen\nand the artillery on the walls. However, that day proved to be one of\nparticular danger. Without warning, a _sortie_ was made in force, either\nmerely in defiance or to gain possession of some advantageous post;\nfor you know how the church and convent of St. Pancratius was assailed\nby the enemy, and taken and retaken by us several times in one day.\nThe same happened to the villas near the walls. There was no time\ngiven us for speculation or reflection. We found ourselves at once in\npresence of a very superior force, or rather in the middle of it; for\nwe were completely surrounded. We fought our best; but escape seemed\nimpossible. My poor little picket was soon cut to pieces, and I found\nmyself standing alone in the midst of our assailants, defending myself\nas well as I could against such fearful odds. At length I felt I was\ncome to the last extremity, and that in a few moments I should be\nlying with my brave companions. Earnestly desiring to have the\nsuffrages of my holy patrons in that my last hour, I instinctively\nexclaimed, 'Sts. Abdon and Sennen, pray for me!' What then happened I\ncannot tell. Whether a sudden panic struck my enemies, or something\nmore important called off their attention, or what else to me\ninexplicable--occurred, I cannot say; all that I know is, that somehow\nor other I found myself alone, unwounded {23} and unhurt, with my poor\nfellows lying about, and no enemy near.\n\n\"Do you not think that I have a right to attribute this most wonderful\nand otherwise unaccountable escape to the intercession and protection\nof Sts. Abdon and Sennen?\"\n\nI need scarcely say that this simple narrative touched and moved\ndeeply all its hearers. No one was disposed to dissent from the young\nChristian officer's conclusion.\n\n\nCHAPTER IV.\n\nTHE EXPLANATION.\n\nIt was natural that those good ecclesiastics who composed the chapter\nof St. Mark's should feel an interest in their youthful acquaintance.\nHis having accidentally, as it seemed, but really providentially,\nstrolled into their church at such a time, with so singular a bond of\nsympathy with its sacred offices that day, necessarily drew them in\nkindness toward him. His ingenuous piety and vivid faith gained their\nhearts.\n\nIn the conversation which followed, it was discovered that all his\ntastes and feelings led him to love and visit the religious monuments\nof Rome; but that he had no guide or companion to make his wanderings\namong them as useful and agreeable as they might be made. It was\ngood-naturedly and kindly suggested to him to come from time to time\nto the church, when some one of the canons would take him with him on\nhis _ventidue ore_ walk after vespers, and act the _cicerone_ to him,\nif they should visit some interesting religious object. This offer he\nreadily accepted, and the intelligent youth and his reverend guides\nenjoyed pleasant afternoons together. At last one pleasanter than all\noccurred, when in company with Monsignor B.\n\nTheir ramble that evening led them out of the Porta Portuensis, among\nthe hills of Monte Verde, between it and the gate of St. Pancratius--\nperhaps for the purpose of visiting that interesting basilica. Be it\nas it may, suddenly, while traversing a vineyard, the young man\nstopped.\n\n\"Here,\" he exclaimed, \"on this very spot, I was standing when my\nmiraculous deliverance took place.\"\n\n\"Are you sure?\"\n\n\"Quite. If I lived a hundred years, I could never forget it. It is the\nvery spot.\"\n\n\"Then stand still a moment,\" rejoined the prelate; \"we are very near\nthe entrance to the cemetery of Pontianus. I wish to measure the\ndistance.\"\n\nHe did so by pacing it.\n\n\"Now,\" he said, \"come down into the catacomb, and observe the\ndirection from where you stand to the door.\" The key was soon\nprocured.\n\nThey accordingly went down, proceeded as near as they could judge\ntoward the point marked over-head, measured the distance paced above,\nand found themselves standing before the memorial of Sts. Abdon and\nSennen.\n\n\"There,\" said the canon to his young friend; \"you did not know that,\nwhen you were invoking your holy patrons, you were standing\nimmediately over their tomb.\"\n\nThe young officer's emotion may be better conceived than described on\ndiscovering this new and unexpected coincidence in the history of his\nsuccessful application to the intercession of ancient saints.\n\n\n\nSANCTI ABDON ET SENNEN, ORATE PRO NOBIS.\n\n------\n\n{24}\n\nFrom The Lamp.\n\nA PILGRIMAGE TO ARS.\n\n\nI went to Lyons for the express purpose of visiting the tomb of the\nCure of Ars; for I knew the village of Ars was not very far from that\ncity, though I had but a vague idea as to where it was situated or how\nit was to be reached. I trusted, however, to obtaining all needful\ninformation from the people at the hotel where I was to pass the\nnight; and I was not mistaken in my expectations; but I must confess,\nto my sorrow, that I felt for a moment a very English sort of\nshamefacedness about making the inquiry. Put to the waiter of an\nEnglish hotel, such a question would simply have produced a stare of\nastonishment or a smile of pity. A visit to the tomb of the Duke of\nWellington at St. Paul's, or a descent into kingly vaults for the wise\npurpose of beholding Prince Albert's coffin, with its wreaths of\nflowers laid there by royal and loving hands these things he would\nhave sympathized with and understood. But a pilgrimage to the last\nresting-place of a man who, even admitting he were at that moment a\nsaint in heaven, had been but a simple parish-priest upon earth, would\nhave been a proceeding utterly beyond his capacity to comprehend, and\nhe would undoubtedly have pronounced it either an act of insanity or\none of superstition, or something partaking of the nature of the two.\nI forgot, for a moment, that I was in a Catholic country, and inquired\nmy way to Ars with an uncomfortable expectation of a sneering answer\nin return. Once, however, that the question was fairly put, there was\nnothing left for me but to be ashamed of my own misgivings.\n\n\"Madame wished to visit the tomb of the sainted Cure?--_mais oui_. It\nwas the easiest thing in the world. Only an hour's railway from Lyons\nto Villefranche; and an omnibus at the latter station, which had been\nestablished for the express purpose of accommodating the pilgrims, who\nstill flocked to Ars from every quarter of the Catholic world.\"\n\nI listened, and my way seemed suddenly to become smooth before me.\nLater on in the evening, I found that the housemaid of the hotel had\nbeen there often; and two or three times at least during the lifetime\nof the Cure. I asked her for what purpose she had gone there; whether\nto be cured of bodily ailments or to consult him on spiritual matters?\n\"For neither one nor the other,\" she answered, with great simplicity;\n\"but she had had a great grief, and her mother had taken her to him to\nbe comforted.\" There was something to me singularly lovely in this\nanswer, and in the insight which it gave me into the nature of that\nmission, so human, and yet so divine, which the Cure had accomplished\nin his lifetime. God had placed him there, like another John the\nBaptist, to announce penance to the world. He preached to thousands--he\nconverted thousands--he penetrated into the hidden consciences of\nthousands, and laid his finger, as if by intuition, upon the hidden\nsore that kept the soul from God. Men, great by wealth and station,\ncame to him and laid their burden of sin and misery at his feet. Men,\ngreater still by intellect, and prouder and more difficult of\nconversion (as sins of the intellect ever make men), left his presence\nsimple, loving, and believing as little children. For these he had\nlightning glances and words of fire; these by turns he reprimanded,\nexhorted, and encouraged; but when the weak and sorrowful of God's\nflock came to him, he paused in his apostolic task to weep over them\nand console them. And so it was with {25} Jesus. The great and wealthy\nof the earth came to him for relief, and he never refused their\nprayers; but how many instances do we find in the gospel of the gift\nof health bestowed, unasked and unexpected, upon some poor wanderer by\nthe wayside, or the yet greater boon of comfort given to some poor\nsuffering heart, for no other reason that we know of than that it\nsuffered and had need of comfort! The cripple by the pool of Bethsaida\nreceived his cure at the very moment when he was heartsick with hope\ndeferred at finding no man to carry him down to the waters; and the\nwidow of Nain found her son suddenly restored to life because, as the\ngospel expressly tells us, he was \"the only son of his mother, and she\nwas a widow.\"\n\nThe heart of the Cure of Ars seems to have been only less tender than\nthat of his divine Master; and in the midst of the sublime occupation\nof converting souls to God, he never disdained the humble task of\nhealing the stricken spirit, and leading it to peace and joy.\n\n\"My husband died suddenly,\" the young woman went on to say, in answer\nto my further questions; \"and from affluence I found myself at once\nreduced to poverty. I was stunned by the blow; but my mother took me\nto the cure; and almost before he had said a word, I felt not only\nconsoled, but satisfied with the lot which God had assigned me.\" And\nso indeed she must have been. When I saw her, she was still poor, and\nearning her bread by the worst of all servitude, the daily and nightly\nservitude of a crowded inn; but gentle, placid, and smiling, as became\none who had seen and been comforted by a saint. She evidently felt\nthat she had been permitted to approach very near to God in the person\nof God's servant, and every word she uttered was so full of love and\nconfidence in the sainted cure that it increased (if that were\npossible) my desire to kneel at his tomb, since the happiness of\napproaching his living person had been denied me.\n\nThe next morning I set off for Villefranche. It is on the direct line\nto Paris, and at about an hour's railroad journey from Lyons. When I\nreached it, I found three omnibuses waiting at the station, and I\nbelieve they were all there for the sole purpose of conveying pilgrims\nto Ars. One of the conductors tried every mode of persuasion--and there\nare not a few in the vocabulary of a Frenchman--to inveigle me into his\nomnibus. \"I should be at Ars in half an hour, and could return at two,\nthree, four o'clock--in short, at any hour of the night or day that\nmight please me best.\" It was with some difficulty I resisted the\ntorrent of eloquence he poured out upon me; but, in the first place, I\nfelt that he was promising what he himself would have called \"the\nimpossible,\" since a public conveyance must necessarily regulate its\nmovements by the wishes of the majority of its passengers; and in the\nnext, I had a very strong desire to be alone in body as well as in\nmind during the few hours that I was to spend at Ars.\n\nAt last I found an omnibus destined solely for visitors to\nVillefranche itself, and the conductor promised that he would provide\nme a private carriage to Ars if I would consent to drive first to his\nhotel. Cabaret he might have called it with perfect truth, for cabaret\nit was, and nothing more--a regular French specimen of the article,\nwith a great public kitchen, where half the workmen of the town\nassembled for their meals, and a small cupboard sort of closet opening\ninto it for the accommodation of more aristocratic guests. Into this,\n_bon gre, mal gre_, they wished to thrust me, but I violently repelled\nthe threatened honor, and with some difficulty carrying my point,\nsucceeded in being permitted to remain in the larger and cooler space\nof the open kitchen until my promised vehicle should appear. It came\nat last, a sort of half-cab, half-gig, without a hood, but with a\ncuriously contrived harness of loose ropes, and looking altogether\n{26} dangerously likely to come to pieces on the road. Luckily, I am\nnot naturally nervous in such matters, and, consoling myself with the\nthought that if we did get into grief the \"_bon cure_\" was bound to\ncome to my assistance, seeing I had incurred it solely for the sake of\nvisiting his tomb, I was soon settled as comfortably as circumstances\nwould permit, and we set off at a brisk pace.\n\nThe country around Villefranche is truly neither pretty nor\npicturesque; and though we were not really an hour on the road, the\ndrive seemed tedious. Our Jehu also, as it turned out, had never been\nat Ars before; so that he had not only to stop more than once to\ninquire the way, but actually contrived at the very last to miss it.\nHe soon discovered the mistake, however, and retracing his steps, a\nvery few minutes brought us to the spot where the saint had lived\nforty years, and where he now sleeps in death. His house stands beside\nthe church, but a little in the rear, so it does not immediately catch\nthe eye; and the church, where his real life was spent, is separated\nfrom the road by a small enclosure, railed off, and approached by a\nfew steps. We looked around for some person to conduct us, but there\nwas no one to be seen; so, after a moment's hesitation, we ascended\nthe steps and entered the church. If you wish to know what kind of\nchurch it is, I cannot tell you. I do not know, in fact, whether it is\nGreek or Gothic, or of no particular architecture at all; I do not\nknow even if it is in good taste or in bad taste. The soul was so\nfilled with a sense of the presence of the dead saint that it left no\nroom for the outer sense to take note of the accidents amid which he\nhad lived. There are two or three small chapels--a Lady chapel, one\ndedicated to the Sacred Heart, and another to St. John the Baptist.\nThere is also the chapel of St. Philomena, with a large lifelike image\nof the \"_bonne petite sainte_\" to whom he loved to attribute every\nmiracle charity compelled him to perform; and there is the\nconfessional, where for forty years he worked far greater wonders on\nthe soul than any of the more obvious ones he accomplished on the\nbody. All, or most of all, this I saw in a vague sort of way, as one\nwho saw not; but the whole church was filled with such an aroma of\nholiness, there was such a sense of the actual presence of the man who\nhad converted it into a very tabernacle in the wilderness--a true Holy\nof Holies, where, in the midst of infidel France, God had descended\nand conversed almost visibly with his people--that I had neither the\nwill nor the power to condescend to particulars, and examine it in\ndetail.\n\nMy one thought as I entered the church was, to go and pray upon his\ntomb; but in the first moment of doubt and confusion I could not\nremember, if indeed I had been told, the exact spot where he was\nburied. The chapel of St. Philomena was the first to attract my\nnotice, and feeling that I could not be far wrong while keeping close\nto his dear little patroness, I knelt down there to collect my ideas.\n\nThe stillness of the church made itself felt. There were indeed many\npersons praying in it, but they prayed in that profound silence which\nspoke to the heart, and penetrated it in a way no words could have\never done.\n\nI was thirsting, however, to approach the tomb of the saint, and at\nlast ventured to whisper the question to a person near me. She pointed\nto a large black slab nearly in the centre of the church, and told me\nthat he lay beneath it. Yes, he was there, in the very midst of his\npeople, not far from the chapel of St. Philomena, and opposite to the\naltar whence he had so many thousands of times distributed the bread\nof life to the famishing souls who, like the multitude of old, had\ncome into the desert, and needed to be fed ere they departed to their\nhomes. Yes, he was there; and with a strange mingling of joy and\nsorrow in the thought I went and knelt down beside him.\n\n{27}\n\nHad I gone to Ars but a few years before, I might have found him in\nhis living person; might have thrown myself at his feet, and poured\nout my whole soul before him. Now I knelt indeed beside him, but\nbeside his body only, and the soul that would have addressed itself to\nmine was far away in the bosom of its God. Humanly speaking, the\ndifference seemed against me, and yet, in a more spiritual point of\nview, it might perhaps be said to be in my favor.\n\nThe graces which he obtained for mortals here he obtained by more than\nmortal suffering and endurance--by tears, by fastings, and nightly\nand daily impetrations;--now, with his head resting, like another St.\nJohn, on the bosom of his divine Lord, surely he has but to wish in\norder to draw down whole fountains of love and tenderness on his\nweeping flock below. And certainly it would seem so; for however\nnumerous the miracles accomplished in his lifetime, they have been\nmultiplied beyond all power of calculation since his death.\n\nLater on in the day, when the present cure showed me a room nearly\nhalf full of crutches and other mementos of cures wrought--\"These are\nonly the ones left there during his lifetime,\" he observed, in a tone\nwhich told at once how much more numerous were those which cure had\nmade useless to their owners since his death.\n\nI had not been many minutes kneeling before his tomb, when the lady\nwho had pointed it out to me asked if I would like to see the house\nwhich he had inhabited in his lifetime. On my answering gladly in the\naffirmative, she made me follow her through a side-door and across a\nsort of court to the house inhabited by the present cure. This house\nhad never been the abode of M. Vianney, but had been allotted to the\npriests who assisted him in his missions. The one which he actually\ninhabited is now a sort of sanctuary, where every relic and\nrecollection of him is carefully preserved for the veneration of the\nfaithful. We were shown into a sort of _salle a manger_, sufficiently\npoor to make us feel we were in the habitation of men brought up in\nthe school of a saint, and almost immediately afterward the present\ncure entered. He had been for many years the zealous assistant of the\nlate cure; and, in trying to give me an idea of the influx of\nstrangers into Ars, he told me that, while M. Vianney spent habitually\nfrom fifteen to seventeen hours in the confessional, he and his\nbrother priest were usually occupied at least twelve hours out of the\ntwenty-four in a similar manner. Even this was probably barely\nsufficient for the wants of the mission, for the number of strangers\nwho came annually to Ars during the latter years of the cure's life\nwas reckoned at about 80,000, and few, if any, of these went away\nwithout having made a general confession, either to M. Vianney\nhimself, or, if that were not possible, to one or other of the\nassisting clergy.\n\nIt was pleasant to talk with one who had been living in constant\ncommunication with a saint; and I felt as if something of the spirit\nof M. Vianney himself had taken possession of the good and gentle man\nwith whom I was conversing. Among other things, he told me that the\ndevout wish of the saint had of late years been the erection of a new\nchurch to St. Philomena; and he gave me a fac-simile of his\nhandwriting in which he had promised to pray especially for any one\naiding him in the work. The surest way, therefore, I should imagine,\nto interest him in our necessities--now that he is in heaven--would be\nto aid in the undertaking which he had in mind and heart while yet\ndwelling on earth. Even in his lifetime there had been a lottery got\nup for raising funds; and as money is still coming in from all\nquarters, his wish will doubtless soon be accomplished. I saw a very\nhandsome altar which has been already presented, and which has been\nput aside in one of the rooms of the cure until the church, for which\nit is {28} intended, shall have been completed. M. le cure showed me\none or two small photographs, which had been taken without his\nknowledge during the lifetime of the saint; and also a little carved\nimage, which he said was a wonderful likeness, and far better than any\nof the portraits. Afterward he pointed out another photograph, as\nlarge as life, and suspended against the wall, which had been procured\nafter death. It was calm and holy, as the face of a saint in death\nshould be, and I liked it still better in its placid peace than the\nsmile of the living photograph. Even the smile seemed to tell of\ntears. You know that he who smiles is still doing battle--cheerfully\nand successfully indeed, but still doing battle with the enemies of\nhis soul; while the grave calmness of the dead face tells you at once\nthat all is over--the fight is fought, the crown is won; eternity has\nset its seal on the good works of time, and all is safe for ever.\n\nI could have looked at that photograph a long time, and said my\nprayers before it--it seemed to repose in such an atmosphere of\nsanctity and peace--but the hours were passing quickly, and there was\nstill much to see and hear concerning the dead saint. I took leave,\ntherefore, of the good priest who had been my cicerone so far, and\nsought the old housekeeper, who was in readiness to show me the house\nwhere M. Vianney had lived. We crossed a sort of court, which led us\nto a door opposite the church. When this was opened, I found myself in\na sort of half-garden, half-yard, in the centre of which the old house\nwas standing.\n\nIt is hard to put upon paper the feelings with which a spot the\nhabitation of a saint just dead is visited. The spirit of love and\ncharity and peace which animated the living man still seems brooding\nover the spot where his life was passed, and you feel intensely that\nthe true beauty of the Lord's house was here, and that this has been\nthe place where his glory hath delighted to dwell. The first room I\nentered was one in which the crutches left there by invalids had been\ndeposited. It was a sight to see. The crutches were piled as close as\nthey could be against the wall, and yet the room was almost half full.\nThe persons who used those crutches must have been carried hither,\nlame and suffering, and helpless as young children; and they walked\naway strong men and cured. Truly \"the lame walk and the blind see;\"\nand the Lord hath visited his people in the person of his servant.\n\nMy next visit was made to the _salle a manger_, where M. Vianney had\nalways taken the one scanty meal which was his sole support during his\ntwenty-four hours of almost unbroken labor. It was poverty in very\ndeed--poverty plain, unvarnished, and unadorned--such poverty as an\nIrish cabin might have rivalled, but could scarcely have surpassed.\nThe walls were bare and whitewashed; the roof was merely raftered; and\nthe floor, which had once been paved with large round stones, such as\nare used for the pavement of a street, was broken here and there into\ndeep holes by the removal of the stones. During his forty years'\nresidence at Ars, M. Vianney had probably never spent a single sou\nupon any article which could contribute to his own comfort or\nconvenience; and this room bore witness to the fact. How, indeed,\nshould he buy anything for himself, who gave even that which was given\nto him away, until his best friends grew well-nigh weary of bestowing\npresents, which they felt would pass almost at the same instant out of\nhis own possession into the hands of any one whom he fancied to be in\ngreater want of them than he was? I stood in that bare and desolate\napartment, and felt as if earth and heaven in their widest extremes,\ntheir most startling contrasts, were there in type and reality before\nme. All that earth has of poor and miserable and unsightly was present\nto the eyes of the body; all that heaven has of bright {29} and\nbeautiful and glorious was just as present, just as visible, to the\nvision of the soul. It was the very reverse of the fable of the fairy\ntreasures, which vanish into dust when tested by reality. All that you\nsaw was dust and ashes, but dust and ashes which, tried by the\ntouchstone of eternity, would, you knew, prove brighter than the\nbrightest gold, fairer than the fairest silver that earth ever yielded\nto set in the diadem of her kings! My reflections were cut short by\nthe entrance of one of the priests, who invited us to come up stairs\nand inspect the vestments which had belonged to the late cure, and\nwhich were kept, I think, apart from those in ordinary use in the\nchurch. There was a great quantity of them, and they were all in\ncurious contrast with everything else we had seen belonging to M.\nVianney. Nothing too good for God; nothing too mean and miserable for\nhimself--that had been the motto of his life; and the worm-eaten\nfurniture of the dining-room, the gold and velvet of the embroidered\nvestments, alike bore witness to the fidelity with which he had acted\non it. The vestments were more than handsome--some of them were\nmagnificent. One set I remember in particular which was very\nbeautiful. It had been given, with canopy for the blessed sacrament\nand banners for processions, by the present Marquis D'Ars, the chief\nof that beloved family, who, after the death of Mdlle. D'Ars, became\nM. Vianney's most efficient aid in all his works of charity. The\npriest who showed them to us, and who had also been one of the late\ncure's missionaries, told us that M. Vianney was absolutely enchanted\nwith joy when the vestments arrived, and that he instantly organized\nan expedition to Lyons in order to express his gratitude at the altar\nof Notre Dame de Fourriere. The whole parish attended on this\noccasion. They went down the river in boats provided for the purpose,\nand with banners flying and music playing, marched in solemn\nprocession through the streets of Lyons, and up the steep sides of\nFourriere, until they reached the church of Notre Dame. There the\nwhole multitude fell on their knees, and M. Vianney himself prayed, no\ndoubt long and earnestly, before the miraculous image of Our Lady,\nseeking through her intercession to obtain some especial favor for the\nman who, out of his own abundance, had brought gifts of gold and\nsilver to the altar of his God.\n\nI asked the priest for some information about the granary which was\nsaid to have been miraculously filled with corn. He told me he had\nbeen at Ars at the time, and that there could be no doubt that the\ngranary had been quite empty the night before. It was, I think, a time\nof scarcity, and the grain had been set aside for the use of the poor.\nM. Vianney went to bed miserable at the failure of his supplies; but\nwhen he visited the granary again early the next morning, he found it\nfull. It was at the top of his own house, I believe, and was kept, of\ncourse, carefully locked. Nobody knew how it had been filled, or by\nwhom. In fact, it seemed absolutely impossible that any one could have\ncarted the quantity of grain needed for the purpose and carried it up\nstairs without being detected in the act. The priest made no comment\non the matter; indeed, he seemed anything but inclined to enlarge upon\nit, though he made no secret of his own opinion as to the miraculous\nnature of the occurrence. As soon as he had answered my inquiries, he\nled us to the room which had been the holy cure's own personal\napartment. It was, as well as I can remember, the one over the\ndining-room. No apostle ever lived and died in an abode more entirely\ndestitute of all human riches. It was kept exactly in the same state\nin which it had been during his lifetime--a few poor-looking books\nstill on the small book-shelf, a wooden table and a chair, and the\nlittle bed in the corner, smoothed and laid down, as if only waiting\nhis return from the confessional for the {30} few short hours he gave\nto slumber--if, indeed, he did give them; for no one ever penetrated\ninto the mystery of those hours, or knew how much of the time set\napart apparently for his own repose was dedicated to God, or employed\nin supplicating God's mercies on his creatures.\n\nThe history of that room was the history of the saint. A book-shelf\nfilled with works of piety and devotion; a stove, left doubtless\nbecause it had been originally built into the room, but left without\nuse or purpose (for who ever heard of his indulging in a fire?); a\ntable and a chair--that was all; but it was enough, and more than\nenough, to fill the mind with thought, and to crowd all the memories\nof that holy life into the few short moments that I knelt there. How\noften had he come back to that poor apartment, his body exhausted by\nfasting, and cramped by long confinement in the confessional, and his\nheart steeped (nay, drowned, as he himself most eloquently expressed\nit) in bitterness and sorrow by the long histories of sins to which he\nhad been compelled to listen--sins committed against that God whom he\nloved far more tenderly than he loved himself! How often, in the\nsilence and darkness of the night, has he poured forth his soul, now\nin tender commiseration over Jesus crucified by shiners, now over the\nsinners by whom Jesus had been crucified! How often has he (perhaps)\ncalled on God to remove him from a world where God was so offended;\nand yet, moved by the charity of his tender human heart, has besought,\nalmost in the same breath, for the conversion of those sinners whose\ndeeds he was deploring--the cure of their diseases and the removal or\nconsolation of their sorrows! Like a mother who, finding her children\nat discord, now prays to one to pardon, now to another to submit and\nbe reconciled, so was that loving, pitying heart ever as it were in\ncontradiction with itself--weeping still with Jesus, and yet still\npleading for his foes.\n\nThe mere action of such thoughts upon the human frame would make\ncontinued life a marvel; but when to this long history of mental woe\nwe add the hardships of his material life--the fifteen or seventeen\nhours passed in the confessional, in heat and cold, in winter as in\nsummer; the one scanty meal taken at mid-day; the four hours of sleep,\nrobbed often and often of half their number for the sake of quiet\nprayer--when we think of these things, there is surely more of miracle\nin this life of forty years' duration than in the mere fact that it\nwon miracles at last from heaven, and that God, seeing how faithfully\nthis his servant did his will here on earth, complied in turn with\nhis, and granted his desires.\n\nNo one, I think, can visit that spot, or hear the history of that\nlife, as it is told by those who knew him as it were but yesterday,\nwithout an increase of love, an accession of faith, a more vivid sense\nof the presence of God in the midst of his creatures, and a more real\ncomprehension of the extent and meaning of those words, \"the communion\nof saints,\" which every one repeats in the creed, and yet which few\ntake sufficiently to their heart of hearts to make it really a portion\nof their spiritual being--a means of working out their own salvation\nby constant and loving communication with those who have attained to\nit already. Thousands will seek the living saint for the eloquence of\nhis words, the sublimity, of his counsels, the unction of his\nconsolations; but, once departed out of this life, who visits him in\nhis tomb? who turns to him for aid? who lift their eyes to heaven, to\nask for his assistance thence, with the same undoubting confidence\nwith which they would have sought it had he been still in the flesh\nbeside them? In one sense of the word, many; and yet few indeed\ncompared to the number of those to whom \"the communion of saints\" is\nan article of faith, or ought at least to be so, in something more\nthan the mere service of the lip. It was amid some such {31} thoughts\nas these that I left the town of Ars, grieved indeed that I had not\nseen the holy cure in his lifetime, and yet feeling that, if I had but\nfaith enough, I was in reality rather a gainer than a loser by his\ndeath. He who would have prayed for me on earth would now pray for me\nin heaven. He who would have dived into my conscience and brought its\nhidden sins to light, would obtain wisdom and grace for another to put\nhis finger on the sore spot and give it healing. He who would perhaps\nhave cured me of my bodily infirmities, could do so (if it were for\nthe good of my soul) not less efficiently now that he was resting on\nthe heart of his divine Lord. God had granted his prayers while he was\nyet upon earth--a saint indeed, and yet liable at any moment to fall\ninto sin--would he refuse to hear him now that he had received him\ninto his kingdom, and so rendered him for ever incapable of offending?\nI hoped not, I felt not; and in this certainty I went on my way\nrejoicing, feeling that it was well for this sinful world that it had\nyet one more advocate at the throne of its future Judge, and well\nespecially for France that, in this our nineteenth century, she had\ngiven a saint to God who would have been the glory of the first. For\ntruly the arm of the Lord is not shortened. What he has done before,\nhe can do again; and, therefore, we need not wonder if the miracles of\nthe Apostles are still renewed at the tomb of this simple and\nunlettered, priest, who taught their doctrines for forty years in the\nunknown and far-off village of which Providence had made him pastor.\n\n------\n\nFrom Once A Week.\n\nTHE THREE WISHES.\n\n\nThe Eastern origin of this tale seems evident; had it been originally\ncomposed in a Northern land, it is probable that the king would have\nbeen represented as dethroned by means of bribes obtained from his own\ntreasury. In an Eastern country the story-teller who invented such a\njust termination of his narrative would, most likely, have experienced\nthe fate intended for his hero, as a warning to others how they\nsuggested such treasonable ideas. Herr Simrock, however, says it is a\nGerman tale; but it may have had its origin in the East for all that.\nNothing is more difficult, indeed, than to trace a popular tale to its\nsource. Cinderella, for example, belongs to nearly all nations; even\namong the Chinese, a people so different to all European nations,\nthere is a popular story which reads almost exactly like it. Here is\nthe tale of the Three Wishes.\n\nThere was once a wise emperor who made a law that to every stranger\nwho came to his court a fried fish should be served. The servants were\ndirected to take notice if, when the stranger had eaten the fish to\nthe bone on one side, he turned it over and began on the other side.\nIf he did, he was to be immediately seized, and on the third day\nthereafter he was to be put to death. But, by a great stretch of\nimperial clemency, the culprit was permitted to utter one wish each\nday, which the emperor pledged himself to grant, provided it was not\nto spare his life. Many had already perished in consequence of this\nedict, when, one day, a count and his young son presented themselves\nat court. The fish was served as usual, and when the {32} count had\nremoved all the fish from one side, he turned it over, and was about\nto commence on the other, when he was suddenly seized and thrown into\nprison, and was told of his approaching doom. Sorrow-stricken, the\ncount's young son besought the emperor to allow him to die in the room\nof his father; a favor which the monarch was pleased to accord him.\nThe count was accordingly released from prison, and his son was thrown\ninto his cell in his stead. As soon as this had been done, the young\nman said to his gaolers--\"You know I have the right to make three\ndemands before I die; go and tell the emperor to send me his daughter,\nand a priest to marry us.\" This first demand was not much to the\nemperor's taste, nevertheless he felt bound to keep his word, and he\ntherefore complied with the request, to which the princess had no kind\nof objection. This occurred in the times when kings kept their\ntreasures in a cave, or in a tower set apart for the purpose, like the\nEmperor of Morocco in these days; and on the second day of his\nimprisonment the young man demanded the king's treasures. If his first\ndemand was a bold one, the second was not less so; still, an emperor's\nword is sacred, and having made the promise, he was forced to keep it;\nand the treasures of gold and silver and jewels were placed at the\nprisoner's disposal. On getting possession of them, he distributed\nthem profusely among the courtiers, and soon he had made a host of\nfriends by his liberality.\n\nThe emperor began now to feel exceedingly uncomfortable. Unable to\nsleep, he rose early on the third morning and went, with fear in his\nheart, to the prison to hear what the third wish was to be.\n\n\"Now,\" said he to his prisoner, \"tell me what your third demand is,\nthat it may be granted at once, and you may be hung out of hand, for I\nam tired of your demands.\"\n\n\"Sire,\" answered his prisoner, \"I have but one more favor to request\nof your majesty, which, when you have granted, I shall die content. It\nis merely that you will cause the eyes of those who saw my father turn\nthe fish over to be put out.\"\n\n\"Very good,\" replied the emperor, \"your demand is but natural, and\nsprings from a good heart. Let the chamberlain be seized,\" he\ncontinued, turning to his guards.\n\n\"I, sire!\" cried the chamberlain; \"I did not see anything--it was the\nsteward.\"\n\n\"Let the steward be seized, then,\" said the king.\n\nBut the steward protested with tears in his eyes that he had not\nwitnessed anything of what had been reported, and said it was the\nbutler. The butler declared that he had seen nothing of the matter,\nand that it must have been one of the valets. But they protested that\nthey were utterly ignorant of what had been charged against the count;\nin short, it turned out that nobody could be found who had seen the\ncount commit the offence, upon which the princess said:\n\n\"I appeal to you, my father, as to another Solomon. If nobody saw the\noffence committed, the count cannot be guilty, and my husband is\ninnocent.\"\n\nThe emperor frowned, and forthwith the courtiers began to murmur; then\nhe smiled, and immediately their visages became radiant.\n\n\"Let it be so,\" said his majesty; \"let him live, though I have put\nmany a man to death for a lighter offence than his. But if he is not\nhung, he is married. Justice has been done.\"\n\n\n\n{33}\n\n------\n\nFrom The Month.\n\nEX HUMO.\n\nBY BARRY CORNWALL.\n\n\n  Should you dream ever of the days departed--\n  Of youth and morning, no more to return--\n  Forget not me, so fond and passionate-hearted;\n      Quiet at last, reposing\n      Under the moss and fern.\n\n  There, where the fretful lake in stormy weather\n  Comes circling round the reddening churchyard pines,\n  Rest, and call back the hours we lost together,\n      Talking of hope, and soaring\n      Beyond poor earth's confines.\n\n  If, for those heavenly dreams too dimly sighted,\n  You became false--why, 'tis a story old:\n  _I_, overcome by pain, and unrequited,\n      Faded at last, and slumber\n      Under the autumn mould.\n\n  Farewell, farewell! No longer plighted lovers,\n  Doomed for a day to sigh for sweet return:\n  One lives, indeed; one heart the green earth covers--\n      Quiet at last, reposing\n      Under the moss and fern.\n\n\n------\n\nFrom The Dublin Review.\n\n\nTHE CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS OF ALEXANDRIA.\n\n\n_S. Clementis Alexandrini Opera Omnia_. Lutetiae. 1629.\n\n_Geschichte der Christlicher Philosophie, von_ Dr. Heinrich Ritter.\nHamburg: Perthes. 1841.\n\n\nIf any country under the sun bears the spell of fascination in its\nvery name, that country is Egypt. The land of the Nile and the\npyramids, of the Pharaohs and the Ptolemies--the land where art and\nscience had mysterious beginnings before the dawn of history, where\npowerful dynasties held sway for long generations over the fertile\nriver-valley, and built for themselves mighty cities--Thebes, the\nhundred-gated, Memphis, with its palaces, Heliopolis, with its temples--\nand left memorials of themselves that are attracting men at this very\nday to Luxor and Carnak, to the avenue of sphynxes and the pyramids--\nEgypt, where learning\n\n    Uttered its oracles sublime\n    Before the Olympiads, in the dew\n    And dusk of early time--\n\nthe land where,\n\n{34}\n\n  Northward from its Nubian springs,\n    The Nile, for ever new and old,\n  Among the living and the dead\n    Its mighty, mystic stream has rolled--\n\nEgypt seems destined to be associated with all the signal events of\nevery age of the world. Israel's going into and going out of Egypt is\none of the epic pages of Holy Scripture; Sesostris, King of Egypt,\nleft his name written over half of Asia; Alexander, the greatest of\nthe Greeks, laid in Egypt the foundation of a new empire; Cleopatra,\nthe captive and the captor of Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, killed\nherself as the old land passed away for ever from the race of Ptolemy;\nClement and Origen, Porphyry and Plotinus, have left Egypt the classic\nland of the Church's battle against the purest form of heathen\nphilosophy; St. Louis of France has made Egypt the scene of a glorious\ndrama of heroism and devotion; the pyramids have lent their name to\nswell the list of Napoleon's triumphs; and the Nile is linked for ever\nwith the deathless fame of Nelson.\n\nIn the last decade of the second century, about the time when the\npagan virtues of Marcus Aurelius had left the Roman empire to the\nworse than pagan vices of his son Commodus, Egypt, to the learned and\nwealthy, meant Alexandria. What Tyre had been in the time of Solomon,\nwhat Sidon was in the days of which Homer wrote, that was Alexandria\nfrom the reign of Ptolemy Soter to the days of Mahomet. In external\naspect it was in every way worthy to bear the name of him who drew its\nplans with his own hands. Its magnificent double harbor, of which the\nGreat Port had a quay-side six miles in length, was the common\nrendezvous for merchant ships from every part of Syria, Greece, Italy,\nand Spain; and its communications with the Red Sea and the Nile\nbrought to the warehouses that overlooked its quay the riches of\nArabia and India, and the corn and flax of the country of which it was\nthe capital. The modern traveller, who finds Alexandria a prosperous\ncommercial town, with an appearance half European, half Turkish,\nlearns with wonder that its 60,000 inhabitants find room on what was\nlittle more than the mole that divided the Great Port from the\nEunostos. But it should be borne in mind that old Alexandria numbered\n300,000 free citizens. The mosques, the warehouses, and the private\ndwellings of the present town are built of the fragments of the grand\ncity of Alexander. The great conqueror designed to make Alexandria the\ncapital of the world. He chose a situation the advantages of which a\nglance at the map will show; and if any other proof were needed, it\nmay be found in the fact that, since 1801, the population of the\nmodern town has increased at the rate of one thousand a year. He\nplanned his city on such vast proportions as might be looked for from\nthe conqueror of Darius. Parallel streets crossed other streets, and\ndivided the city into square blocks. Right through its whole length,\nfrom East to West--that is, parallel with the sea-front--one magnificent\nstreet, two hundred feet wide and four miles in length, ran from the\nCanopic gate to the Necropolis. A similar street, shorter, but of\nequal breadth, crossed this at right angles, and came out upon the\ngreat quay directly opposite the mole that joined the city with the\nisland of Pharos. This was the famous Heptastadion, or Street of the\nSeven Stadia, and at its South end was the Sun-gate; at its North,\nwhere it opened on the harbor, the gate of the Moon. To the right, as\nyou passed through the Moon-gate on to the broad quay, was the\nexchange, where merchants from all lands met each other, in sight of\nthe white Pharos and the crowded shipping of the Great Port. A little\nback from the gate, in the Heptastadion, was the Caesareum, or temple\nof the deified Caesars, afterward a Christian church. Near it was the\nMuseum, the university of Alexandria. Long marble colonnades connected\nthe {35} university with the palace and gardens of the Ptolemies. On\nthe opposite side of the great street was the Serapeion, the\nmagnificent temple of Serapis, with its four hundred columns, of which\nPompey's Pillar is, perhaps, all that is left. And then there was the\nmausoleum of Alexander, there were the courts of justice, the\ntheatres, the baths, the temples, the lines of shops and houses--all on\na scale of grandeur and completeness which has never been surpassed by\nany city of the world. Such a city necessarily attracted men.\nAlexandria was fitly called the \"many-peopled,\" whether the epithet\nreferred to the actual number of citizens or to the varieties of\ntongue, complexion, and costume that thronged its streets. The Greeks,\nthe Egyptians, and the Jews, each had their separate quarter; but\nthere were constant streams of foreigners from the remote India, from\nthe lands beyond the black rocks that bound the Nile-valley, and from\nthe Ethiopic races to which St. Matthew preached, where the Red Sea\nbecomes the Indian Ocean. At the time we speak of, these discordant\nelements were held in subjection by the Roman conquerors, whose\nlegionaries trod the streets of the voluptuous city with stern and\nresolute step, and were not without occasion, oftentimes, for a\ndisplay of all the sternness and resolution which their bearing\naugured.\n\nAlexandria, however, in addition to the busy life of commerce and\npleasure that went on among Greeks, Egyptians, Jews, and Africans, was\nthe home of another kind of life, still more interesting to us.\nPtolemy Soter, who carried out Alexander's plans, was a man of no\ncommon foresight and strength of character. He was not content with\nbuilding a city. He performed, in addition, two exploits, either of\nwhich, from modern experience, we should be inclined to consider a\ntitle to immortality. He invented a new god, and established a\nuniversity. The god was Serapis, whom he imported from Pergamus, and\nwho soon became popular. The university was the Museum, in which lived\nand taught Demetrius of Phalerus, Euclid, Stilpo of Megara, Philetas\nof Cos, Apelles the painter, Callimachus, Theocritus, Eratosthenes,\nApollonius Rhodius, and a host of others in philosophy, poetry,\ngeometry, astronomy, and the arts. Here, under successive Ptolemies,\nprofessors lectured in splendid halls, amid honored affluence. All\nthat we have of the Greek classics we owe to the learned men of the\nMuseum. Poetry bloomed sweetly and luxuriantly in the gardens of the\nPtolemies; though, it must be confessed, not vigorously, not as on\nIonic coast-lands, nor as in the earnest life of Athenian freedom--save\nwhen some Theocritus appeared, with his broad Doric, fresh from the\nsheep-covered downs of Sicily. The name of Euclid suggests that\ngeometry was cared for at the Museum; Eratosthenes, with his\nvoluminous writings, all of which have perished, and his one or two\ndiscoveries, which will never die, may stand for the type of\ngeography, the science for which he lived; and Hipparchus, astronomer\nand inventor of trigonometry, may remind us how they taught at the\nMuseum that the earth was the centre of the universe, and yet,\nnotwithstanding, could foretell an eclipse almost as well as the\nastronomer royal. In philosophy, the university of Alexandria has\nplayed a peculiar part. As long as the Ptolemies reigned in Egypt, the\nMuseum could boast of no philosophy save commentaries on Aristotle and\nPlato, consisting, in great measure, of subtle obscurities to which\nthe darkest quiddities of the deepest scholastic would appear to have\nbeen light reading. But when the Roman came in, there sprang up a\nschool of thought that has done more than any other thing to hand down\nthe fame of Ptolemy's university to succeeding ages. Alexandria was\nthe birthplace of Neo-Platonism, and, whatever we may think of the\nphilosophy itself, we must allow it has bestowed fame on its alma {36}\nmater. At the dawn of the Christian era, Philon the Jew was already\nransacking the great library to collect matter that should enable him\nto prove a common origin for the books of Plato and of Moses. Two\nhundred years afterward--that is, just at the time of which we speak--\nPlotinus was listening to Ammonius Saccas in the lecture-hall of the\nMuseum, and thinking out the system of emanations, abysms, and depths\nof which he is the first and most famous expounder. Porphyry, the\nbiographer and enthusiastic follower of Plotinus, was probably never\nat Alexandria in person; but his voluminous writings did much to make\nthe Neo-Platonist system known to Athens and to the cities of Italy.\nIn his youth he had listened to the lectures of Origen, and thus was\nin possession of the traditions both of the Christian and the heathen\nphilosophy of Alexandria. But his Christian studies did not prevent\nhim from being the author of that famous book, \"Against the\nChristians,\" which drew upon him the denunciations of thirty-five\nChristian apologists, including such champions as St. Jerome and St.\nAugustine. The Neo-Platonist school culminated and expired in Proclus,\nthe young prodigy of Alexandria, the ascetic teacher of Athens, the\n\"inspired dogmatizer,\" the \"heir of Plato.\" Proclus died in 485, and\nhis chair at Athens was filled by his foolish biographer Marinus,\nafter which Neo-Platonism never lifted up its head.\n\nBetween the time when Philon astonished the orthodox money-getting\nHebrews of the Jews' quarter by his daring adoption of Plato's Logos,\nand the day when poor old Proclus--his once handsome and strong frame\nwasted by fasting and Pythagorean austerities--died, a drivelling old\nman, in sight of the groves of the Academe and the tomb of Plato, not\nfar from whom he himself was to lie, many a busy generation had\ntrodden the halls of the Museum of Alexandria. All that time the\nstrife of words had never ceased, in the lecture-hall, in the gardens\nof the departed Ptolemies, round the banquet-table where the\nprofessors were feasted at the state's expense. All that time the fame\nof Alexandria had gathered to her Museum the young generations that\nsucceeded each other in the patrician homes and wealthy burghs of\nSyria, Greece, and Italy. They came in crowds, with their fathers'\nmoney in their purses, to be made learned by those of whose exploits\nreport had told so much. Some came with an earnest purpose. To the\nyoung medical student, the Alexandrian school of anatomy and the\nAlexandrian diploma (in whatever shape it was given)--not to mention\nthe opportunity of perusing the works of the immortal Hippocrates in\nforty substantial rolls of papyrus--were worth all the expense of a\njourney from Rome or Edessa. To the lawyer, the splendid collections\nof laws, from those of the Pentateuch to those of Zamolxis the\nScythian, were treasures only to be found in the library where the\nzeal of Demetrius Phalerius and the munificence of Ptolemy\nPhiladelphus had placed them. But the vast majority of the youth who\nflocked to the Museum came with no other purpose than the very general\none of finishing their education and fitting themselves for the world.\nWith these, the agreeable arts of poetry and polite literature were in\nfar greater request than law, medicine, astronomy, or geography. If\nthey could get a sight of the popular poet of the hour in his morning\nmeditation under the plane-trees of the gardens, or could crush into a\nplace in the theatre when he recited his new \"Ode to the Empress's\nHair;\" or if they attended the lecture of the most fashionable\nexponent of the myths of the Iliad, and clapped him whenever he\nintroduced an allusion to the divine Plato, it was considered a very\nfair morning's work, and might be fitly rewarded by a boating party to\nCanopus in the afternoon, or a revel far into the night in any of\nthose thousand palaces of vice {37} with which luxurious Alexandria\nwas so well provided. And yet there is no doubt that the young men\ncarried away from their university a certain education and a certain\nrefinement--an education which, though it taught them to relish the\npleasures of intellect, in no wise disposed them to forego the\nenjoyments of sense; and a refinement which, while imparting a\ngraceful polish to the mind, was quite compatible with the deepest\nmoral depravity. Pagans as they were, they were the fairest portion of\nthe whole world, for intellect, for manliness, for generosity, for\nwit, for beauty and strength of mind and body--natural gifts that, like\nthe sun and the rain, are bestowed upon just and unjust. Their own\nintercourse with each other taught them far more than the speculations\nof any of the myth-hunting professors of the Museum. They crowded in\nto hear them, they cheered them, they would dispute and even fight for\na favorite theory that no one understood, with the doubtful exception\nof its inventor. But it was not to be supposed that they really cared\nfor abysms or mystical mathematics, or that they were not a great deal\nmore zealous for suppers, and drinking bouts, and boating parties.\nThese latter employments, indeed, may be said to have formed their\nreal education. Greek intellect, Greek taste, wit, and beauty, in the\nsunniest hour of its bloom, mingled with its like in the grandest city\nthat, perhaps, the earth has ever seen. The very harbors, and temples,\nand palaces were an education. The first rounding of the Pharos--when\nthe six-mile semicircle of granite quay and marble emporia burst on\nthe view, with the Egyptian sun flashing from white wall and blue sea,\nand glancing and sparkling amidst the dense picturesque multitude that\nroared and surged on the esplanade--disclosed a sight to make the soul\ngrow larger. The wonderful city itself was a teaching: the assemblage\nof all that was best and rarest in old Egyptian art, and all that was\nfreshest and most lovely in the art of Greece, left no corner of a\nstreet without its lesson to the eye. Indoors, there was the Museum,\nwith its miles of corridors and galleries, filled with paintings and\nsculptures; outside, the Serapeion, the Caesareum, the exchange, the\npalace, the university itself, each a more effective instructor than a\nyear's course in the schools. And after all this came the library,\nwith its 700,000 volumes!\n\nIn the year of our Lord 181, ships filled the Great Port, merchants\ncongregated in the exchange, sailors and porters thronged the quays;\ncrowds of rich and poor, high and low, flocked through the streets;\nyouths poured in to listen to Ammonius Saccas, and poured out again to\nriot and sin; philosophers talked, Jews made money, fashionable men\ntook their pleasure, slaves toiled, citizens bought and sold and made\nmarriages; all the forms of busy life that had their existence within\nthe circuit of the many-peopled city were noisily working themselves\nout. In the same year, Pantaenus became the head of the catechetical\nschool of the patriarchal Church of Alexandria.\n\nIt was the time when those who had lived and walked with the Apostles\nhad passed away, and when the third generation of the Church's rulers\nwas already growing old. St. Irenaeus was near his glorious end; St.\nEleutherius, of memory dear to Britain, had just closed his\npontificate by martyrdom, and St. Victor sat in his place. The echoes\nof the voice of Peter had hardly died out in Rome and Antioch; the\ntraditions of Paul's bodily presence were yet living in Asia, in\nGreece, and the Islands; and the sweet odor of John's life still hung\nabout the places where his sojourning had been: many a church of\nGreece and Egypt and of the far East had the sepulchre of its founder,\nan Apostle or an apostolic man, round which to pray. It was the age of\nthe persecutions, and the age of the apologies. In every {38} city\nthat was coming about which from the first had been inevitable. The\nChurch was laying hold of human learning, and setting it to do her own\nwork. In fixing upon Alexandria as the spot where, at this period, the\ncontest between Christian science and Gentile learning, Gentile\nignorance and Gentile brute force, was most interesting and most\ndeveloped, we must pass by many other Churches, not in forgetfulness,\nthough in silence. We must pass by Rome, the capital of the world, not\nbecause there were not learned men there whom Jesus Christ had raised\nup to battle with heathen philosophy; for it was but a few years since\nJustin Martyr had shed his blood for the faith, and Apollonius from\nhis place in the senate had spoken his \"apology\" for his fellow\nChristians. But the enemies which the Gospel had to meet at Rome were\nnot so much the learning and science of the heathen as his evil\npassions and vicious life; and the sword of persecution, at Rome\nhardly ever sheathed, kept down all attempts at regularity or\norganization in public teaching. We must pass by Athens, still the\nintellectual capital of the world, not because there were not at\nAthens also worthy doctors of the wisdom of the cross--witness, to the\ncontrary, Athenagoras, the Christian philosopher, who presented his\napology to Marcus Aurelius. But Athens, though at the end of the\nsecond century and long afterward she was the mother of orators,\npoets, and philosophers, seems to have been too thoroughly steeped in\nthe sensuous idolatry of Greece to have harbored a school of\nChristianity by the side of the Porch and the Lyceum. If the same was\ntrue of Athens then as a century afterward, her smooth-tongued,\n\"babbling\" sophists, and her pagan charms, must have had to answer for\nthe soul of many a poor Christian youth that went to seek learning and\nfound perdition. We pass by Carthage, in spite of Tertullian's great\nname; Antioch, notwithstanding Theophilus, whose labors against the\nheathen still bore fruit; Sardis, in spite of Melito, then just dead,\nbut living still in men's mouths by the fame of his learning,\neloquence, and miracles; and Hierapolis, in spite of Apollinaris, who,\nlike so many others, approached the emperor himself with an apology.\nAll over the Church there were men raised up by God, and fitted with\nlearning to confront learning, patience to instruct ignorance, and\nunflinching fortitude to endure persecution--men in every way worthy\nto be the instruments of that great change which was being wrought out\nthrough the wide world of the Roman empire.\n\nBut at Alexandria, the school of Christianity existed under\ninteresting and peculiar conditions. St. Mark had landed on the\ngranite quay of the Great Port with Peter's commission; he had been\nmartyred, and his successors had been martyred after him; and for a\nlong time Christianity here, as everywhere else, had been\ncontemptuously ignored. It spread, however, as we know. In time, more\nthan one student, before he attended his lecture in the splendid halls\nof the Museum, had given ear to a far different lesson in a different\nschool. The Christian catechetical school of Alexandria is said to\nhave been founded by St. Mark himself. If so, it is only what we might\nnaturally expect; for wherever heathens were being converted, there a\nschool of teachers had to be provided for their instruction; and we\nread of similar institutions at Jerusalem, at Antioch, and at Rome.\nBut the catechetical school of Alexandria soon assumed an importance\nthat no other school of those times ever attained. Whether it was that\nthe influence of the university gave an impetus to regular and\nmethodical teaching, or that the converts in Alexandria were in great\nmeasure from a cultivated and intellectual class, it appears to have\nbeen found necessary from the earliest times to have an efficient\nschool, with a man of vigor and intellect at its head, capable of\nmaintaining his position even when compared {39} with the professors\nof the university. The first of the heads or doctors of the school of\nwhom history has left any account, is Pantaenus. Pantaenus is not so\nwell known as his place in Church history and his influence on his age\nwould seem to warrant. He was appointed to his important post at a\ntime when Christians all over the world must have been rejoicing. The\nfourth persecution was just dying out. For twenty years, with the\nexception of the short interval immediately after the miracle of the\nThundering Legion, had Marcus Aurelius, imperial philosopher of the\nStoic sort, continued to command or connive at the butchery of his\nChristian subjects. What were the motives that led this paragon of\nvirtuous pagans to lower himself to the commonplace practices of\nracking, scourging, and burning, is a question that depends for its\nanswer upon who the answerer is. Philosophers of a certain class, from\nGibbon to Mr. Mill, are disposed to take a lenient, if not a\nlaudatory, estimate of his conduct in this matter, and think that the\nemperor could not have acted otherwise consistently with his\nprinciples and convictions, as handed down to us in his \"Meditations.\"\nDoubtless he had strong convictions on the subject of Christianity,\nthough it might be questioned whether he came honestly by them. But\nhis convictions, whatever they were, would probably have ended in the\nharmless shape of philosophic contempt, had it not been for the men by\nwhom he was surrounded. They were Stoics, of course, like their\nmaster, but their stoicism was far from confining itself to\nconvictions and meditations. They were practical Stoics, of the\nseverest type which that old-world Puritanism admitted. As good\nStoics, they were of all philosophers the most conceited, and took it\nespecially ill that any sect should presume to rival them in their\nprivate virtues of obstinacy and endurance. It is extremely probable\nthat the fourth persecution, both in its commencement and its revival,\nwas owing to the good offices of Marcus Aurelius's solemn-faced\nfavorites. But, whatever be the blame that attaches to him, he has\nanswered for it at the same dread tribunal at which he has answered\nfor the deification of Faustina and the education of Commodus.\n\nHowever, about the year 180, persecution ceased at Alexandria, and the\nChristians held up their heads and revived again, after the bitter\nwinter through which they had just passed. Their first thoughts and\nefforts appear to have been directed to their school. The name of\nPantaenus was already celebrated. He was a convert from paganism, born\nprobably in Sicily, but certainly brought up in Alexandria. Curiously\nenough, he had been a zealous Stoic, and remained so, in the Christian\nsense, after his conversion. There is no doubt that he was well known\namong the Gentile philosophers of Alexandria. Perhaps he had lectured\nin the Museum and dined in the Hall. Probably he had spent many a day\nburied in the recesses of the great libraries, and could give a good\naccount of not a few of their thousands of volumes. He must have known\nJustin Martyr--perhaps had something to say to the conversion of that\nbrilliant genius, not as a teacher, but as a friend and\nfellow-student. He may have come across Galen, when that lively\nmedical man was pursuing his researches on the immortal Hippocrates,\nor entertaining a select circle, in the calm of the evening, under one\nof the porticos of the Heptastadion. No sooner was he placed at the\nhead of the Christian school than he inaugurated a great change, or\nrather a great development. Formerly the instruction had been intended\nsolely for converts, that is, catechumens, and the matter of the\nteaching had corresponded with this object. Pantaenus changed all\nthis. The cessation of the persecution had, perhaps, encouraged bolder\nmeasures; men would think there was no prospect of another, as men\ngenerally think when a long and difficult trial is over; so the\nChristian schools were to be opened {40} to all the world. If\nAristotle and Plato, Epicurus and Zeno, had their lecturers, should\nnot Jesus Christ have schools and teachers too? And what matter if the\nChristian doctrine were somewhat novel and hard--was not Ammonius the\nPorter, at that very time, turning the heads of half the students in\nthe city, and filling his lecture-room to suffocation, by expounding\ntranscendental theories about Plato's Logos, and actually teaching the\ndoctrine of a Trinity? Shame upon the Christian name, then, if they\nwho bear it do not open their doors, now that danger is past, and\nbreak the true bread to the hungry souls that eagerly snatch at the\nstones and dry sticks that others give! So thought Pantaenus. Of his\nteachings and writings hardly a trace or a record has reached us. We\nknow that he wrote valued commentaries on Holy Scripture, but no\nfragment of them remains. His teaching, however, as might have been\nexpected, was chiefly oral. He met the philosophers of Alexandria on\ntheir own ground. He showed that the fame of learning, the earnestness\nof character, the vivid personal influence that were so powerful in\nthe cause of heathen philosophy, could be as serviceable to the\nphilosophy of Christ. The plan was novel in the Christian world--at\nleast, in its systematic thoroughness. That Pantaenus had great\ninfluence and many worthy disciples is evident from the fact that St.\nClement of Alexandria, his successor, was formed in his school, and\nthat St. Alexander of Jerusalem, the celebrated founder of the library\nwhich Eusebius consulted at Jerusalem, writing half a century\nafterward to Alexandria, speaks with nothing less than enthusiasm of\nthe \"happy memory\" of his old master. If we could pierce the secrets\nof those long-past times, what a stirring scene of reverend wisdom and\nyouthful enthusiasm would the forgotten school of the Sicilian convert\nunfold to our sight! Doubtless, from amidst the confused jargon of all\nmanner of philosophies, the voice of the Christian teacher arose with\na clear and distinct utterance; and the fame of Pantaenus was carried\nto far countries by many a noble Roman and many an accomplished Greek,\nzealous, like all true academic sons, for the glory of their favorite\nmaster.\n\nAfter ten years of such work as this, Pantaenus vacated his chair, and\nwent forth as a missionary bishop to convert the Indians. Before\npassing on to his successor, a few words on this Indian mission,\napparently so inopportune for such a man at such a time, will be\ninteresting, and not unconnected with the history of the Christian\nschools.\n\nIn the \"many-peopled\" city there were men from all lands and of all\nshades of complexion. It was nothing strange, then, that an embassy of\nswarthy Indians should have one day waited on the patriarch and begged\nfor an apostle to take home with them to their countrymen. No wonder,\neither, that they specified the celebrated master of the catechisms as\ntheir _dignissimus_. The only wonder is that he was allowed to go. Yet\nhe went; he set out with them, sailed to Canopus, the Alexandrian\nRichmond, where the canal joined the Nile; sailed up the ancient\nstream to Koptos, where the overland route began; joined the caravan\nthat travelled thence, from well to well, to Berenice, Philadelphus's\nharbor on the Red Sea; embarked, and, after sailing before the monsoon\nfor seventy days, arrived at the first Indian port, probably that\nwhich is now Mangalore, in the presidency of Bombay. This, in all\nlikelihood, was the route and the destination of Pantaenus. Now those\namong whom his missionary labors appear to have lain were Brahmins,\nand Brahmins of great learning and extraordinary strictness of life.\nMoreover, there appears to be no reason to doubt that the Church\nfounded by St. Thomas still existed, and even flourished, in these\nvery parts, though its apostolic founder had been martyred a hundred\nyears before. It was not so unreasonable, then, that {41} a bishop\nlike Pantaenus should have been selected for such a Church and such a\npeople. Let the reader turn to the story of Robert de' Nobili, and of\nJohn de Britto, whose field of labor extended to within a hundred\nmiles of master in human learning when the the very spot where\nPantaenus probably landed. St. Francis Xavier had already found\nChristians in that region who bore distinct traces of a former\nconnection with Alexandria, in the very points in which they deviated\nfrom orthodoxy. De' Nobili's transformation of himself into a Brahmin\nof the strictest and most learned caste is well known. He dressed and\nlived as a Brahmin, roused the curiosity of his adopted brethren,\nopened school, and taught philosophy, inculcating such practical\nconclusions as it is unnecessary to specify. De Britto did the very\nsame things. If any one will compare the Brahmins of De Britto and De'\nNobili with those earlier Brahmins of Pantaenus, as described, for\ninstance, by Cave from Palladius, he will not fail to be struck with\nthe similarity of accounts; and if we might be permitted to fill up\nthe picture upon these conjectural hints, we should say that it seems\nto us very likely that Pantaenus, during the years that he was lost to\nAlexandria, was expounding and enforcing, in the flowing cotton robes\nof a venerable Saniastes, the same deep philosophy to Indian audiences\nas he had taught to admiring Greeks in the modest pallium of a Stoic.\nRecent missionary experience has uniformly gone to prove that deep\nlearning and asceticism are, humanly speaking, absolutely necessary in\norder to attempt the conversion of Brahmins with any prospect of\nsuccess: and the mission of Pantaenus seems at once to furnish an\nillustration of this fact, and to afford an interesting glimpse of\n\"Christian Missions\" in the second century. But we must return to\nAlexandria.\n\nThe name that succeeds Pantaenus on the rolls of the School of the\nCatechisms is Titus Flavius Clemens, immortalized in history as\nClement of Alexandria. He had sat under Pantaemus, but he was no\nordinary scholar. Like his instructor, he was a convert from paganism.\nHe was already master in human learning when the grace came. He had\nsought far and wide for the truth, and had found it in the Catholic\nChurch, and into the lap of his new mother he had poured all the\ntreasures of Egyptian wisdom which he had gathered in his quest.\nAthens, Southern Italy, Assyria, and Palestine had each been visited\nby the eager searcher; and, last of all, Egypt, and Alexandria, and\nPantaenus had been the term of his travels, and had given to his lofty\nsoul the \"admirable light\" of Jesus Christ. When Pantaenus went out as\na missioner to India, Clement, who had already assisted his beloved\nmaster in the work of the schools, succeeded him as their director and\nhead. It was to be Clement's task to carry on and to develop the work\nthat Pantaenus had inaugurated--to make Christianity not only\nunderstood by the catechumens and loved by the faithful, but\nrecognized and respected by the pagan philosophers. Unless we can\nclearly see the necessity, or, at least, the reality of the\nphilosophical side of his character, and the influences that were at\nwork to make him hold fast to Aristotle and Plato, even after he had\ngot far beyond them, we shall infallibly set him down, like his modern\nbiographers, as a half-converted heathen, with the shell of Platonism\nstill adhering to him.\n\nIt cannot be doubted that in a society like that of Alexandria in its\npalmy days there were many earnest seekers of the truth, even as\nClement himself had sought it. One might even lay it down as a normal\nfact, that it was the character of an Alexandrian, as distinguished\nfrom an Athenian, to speculate for the sake of practising, and not to\nspend his time in \"either telling or hearing some new thing.\" If an\nAlexandrian was a Stoic, never was Stoic more demure or more intent on\nwarring against his body, after Stoic {42} fashion; if a geometrican,\nno disciple of Bacon was ever more assiduous in experimentalizing,\nmeasuring, comparing, and deducing laws; if a Platonist, then\ngeometry, ethics, poetry, and everything else, were enthusiastically\npressed into the one great occupation of life--the realizing the ideal\nand the getting face to face with the unseen. That all this\nearnestness did not uniformly result in success was only too true.\nMuch speculation, great earnestness, and no grand objective truth at\nthe end of it--this was often the lot of the philosophic inquirer of\nAlexandria. The consequence was that not unfrequently, disgusted by\nfailure, he ended by rushing headlong into the most vicious excesses,\nor, becoming a victim to despair, perished by his own hand. So\nfamiliar, indeed, had this resource of disappointment become to the\nphilosophic mind, that Hegesias, a professor in the Museum, a little\nbefore the Christian era, wrote a book counselling self-murder; and so\nmany people actually followed his advice as to oblige the reigning\nPtolemy to turn Grand Inquisitor even in free-thinking Egypt, and\nforbid the circulation of the book. Yet all this, while it revealed a\ndepth of moral wretchedness which it is frightful to contemplate,\nshowed also a certain desperate earnestness; and doubtless there were,\neven among those who took refuge in one or other of these dreadful\nalternatives, men who, in their beginnings, had genuine aspirations\nafter truth, mingled with the pride of knowledge and a mere\nintellectual curiosity. Doubtless, too, there was many a sincere and\nguileless soul among the philosophic herd, to whom, humanly speaking,\nnothing more was wanting than the preaching of the faith. Their eyes\nwere open, as far as they could be without the light of revelation:\nlet the light shine, and, by the help of divine grace, they would\nadmit its beams into their souls.\n\nThere are many such, in every form of error. In Clement's days,\nespecially, there were many whom Neo-Platonism, the Puseyism of\npaganism, cast up from the ocean of unclean error upon the shores of\nthe Church. Take the case of Justin Martyr: he was a young Oriental of\nnoble birth and considerable wealth. In the early part of the second\ncentury, we find him trying first one school of philosophers and then\nanother, and abandoning each in disgust. The Stoics would talk to him\nof nothing but virtues and vices, of regulating the diet and curbing\nthe passions, and keeping the intellect as quiet as possible--a\nconvenient way, as experience taught them, of avoiding trouble;\nwhereas Justin wanted to hear something of the Absolute Being, and of\nthat Being's dealings with his own soul--a kind of inquiry which the\nStoics considered altogether useless and ridiculous, if not\nreprehensible. Leaving the Stoics, he devoted himself heart and soul\nto a sharp Peripatetic, but quarrelled with him shortly and left him\nin disgust; the cause of disagreement being, apparently, a practical\ntheory entertained by his preceptor on the subject of fees. He next\ntook to the disciples of Pythagoras. But with these he succeeded no\nbetter than with the others; for the Pythagoreans reminded him that no\none ignorant of mathematics could be admitted into their select\nsociety. Mathematics, in a Pythagorean point of view, included\ngeometry, astronomy, and music--all those sciences, in fact, in which\nthere was any scope for those extraordinary freaks of numbers which\ndelighted the followers of the old vegetarian. Justin, having no\ninclination to undergo a novitiate in mathematics, abandoned the\nPythagoreans and went elsewhere. The Platonists were the next who\nattracted him. He found no lack of employment for the highest\nqualities of his really noble soul in the lofty visions of Plato and\nthe sublimated theories of his disciples and commentators; though it\nappears a little singular that, with his propensities toward the ideal\nand abstract, he should have tried so many masters before he {43} sat\ndown under Plato. However, be that as it may, Plato seems to have\nsatisfied him for a while, and he began to think he was growing a very\nwise man, when these illusions were rudely dispelled. One day he had\nwalked down to a lonely spot by the sea-shore, meditating, probably,\nsome deep idea, and perhaps declaiming occasionally some passage of\nPlato's Olympian Greek. In his solitary walk he met an old man, and\nentered into conversation with him. The event of this conversation was\nthat Justin went home with a wonderfully reduced estimate of his own\nwisdom, and a determination to get to know a few things about which\nPlato, on the old man's showing, had been woefully in the dark. Justin\nbecame a convert to Christianity. Now, Justin had been at Alexandria,\nand, whether the conversation he relates ever really took place, or is\nmerely an oratorical fiction, the story is one that represents\nsubstantially what must have happened over and over again to those who\nthronged the university of Alexandria, wearing the black cloak of the\nphilosopher.\n\nJustin lived and was martyred some half a century before Clement sat\nin the chair of the catechisms. But it is quite plain that, in such a\nstate of society, there would not be wanting many of his class and\ntemperament who, in Clement's time, as well as fifty years before,\nwere in search of the true philosophy. And we must not forget that in\nAlexandria there were actually thousands of well-born, intellectual\nyoung men from every part of the Roman empire. To the earnest among\nthese Clement was, indeed, no ordinary master. In the first place, he\nwas their equal by birth and education, with all the intellectual\nkeenness of his native Athens, and all the ripeness and versatility of\none who had \"seen many cities of men and their manners.\" Next, he had\nhimself been a Gentile, and had gone through all those phases of the\nsoul that precede and accompany the process of conversion. If any one\nknew their difficulties and their sore places, it was he, the\nconverted philosopher. If any one was capable of satisfying a generous\nmind as to which was the true philosophy, it was he who had travelled\nthe world over in search of it. He could tell the swarthy Syrian that\nit was of no use to seek the classic regions of Ionia, for he had\ntried them, and the truth was not there; he could assure him it was\nwaste of time to go to Athens, for the Porch and the Garden were\nbabbling of vain questions--he had listened in them all. He could calm\nthe ardor of the young Athenian, his countryman, eager to try the\nbanks of the Orontes, and to interrogate the sages of Syria; for he\ncould tell him beforehand what they would say. He could shake his head\nwhen the young Egyptian, fresh from the provincial luxury of Antinoe,\nmentioned Magna Graecia as a mysterious land where the secret of\nknowledge was perhaps in the hands of the descendants of the Pelasgi.\n_He_ had tried Tarentum, he had tried Neapolis; they were worse than\nthe Serapeion in unnameable licentiousness--less in earnest than the\nvotaries that crowded the pleasure-barges of the Nile at a festival of\nthe Moon. He had asked, he had tried, he had tasted. The truth, he\ncould tell them, was at their doors. It was elsewhere, too. It was in\nNeapolis, in Antioch, in Athens, in Rome; but they would not find it\ntaught in the chairs of the schools, nor discussed by noble\nfrequenters of the baths and the theatres. He knew it, and he could\ntell it to them. And as he added many a tale of his wanderings and\nsearchings--many an instance of genius falling short, of good-will\nlaboring in the dark, of earnestness painfully at fault--many of those\nwho heard him would yield themselves up to the vigorous thinker whose\nbrow showed both the capacity and the unwearied activity of the soul\nwithin. He was the very man to be made a hero of. Whatever there was\nin the circle of Gentile philosophy he knew. St. Jerome calls {44} him\nthe \"most learned of the writers of the Church,\" and St. Jerome must\nhave spoken with the sons of those who had heard him lecture--noble\nChristian patricians, perchance, whose fathers had often told them\nhow, in fervent boyhood, they had been spell-bound by his words in the\nChristian school of Alexandria, or learned bishops of Palestine, who\nhad heard of him from Origen at Caesarea or St. Alexander at\nJerusalem. From the same St. Alexander, who had listened to Pantaenus\nby his side, we learn that he was as holy as he was learned; and\nTheodoret, whose school did not dispose him to admire what came from\nthe catechetical doctors of Alexandria, is our authority for saying\nthat his \"eloquence was unsurpassed.\" In the fourth edition of Cave's\n\"Apostolici,\" there is a portrait that we would fain vouch to be\ngenuine. The massive, earnest face, of the Aristotelian type, the\nnarrow, perpendicular Grecian brow, with its corrugations of thought\nand care, the venerable flowing beard, dignifying, but not concealing,\nthe homely and fatherly mouth, seem to suggest a man who had made all\nscience his own, yet who now valued a little one of Jesus Christ above\nall human wisdom and learning. But we have no record of those features\nthat were once the cynosure of many eyes in the \"many-peopled\" city;\nwe have no memorial of the figure that spoke the truths of the Gospel\nin the words of Plato. We know not how he looked, nor how he sat, when\nhe began with his favorite master, and showed, with inexhaustible\nlearning, where he had caught sight of the truth, and, again, where\nhis mighty but finite intellect had failed for want of a more\n\"admirable light;\" nor how he kindled when he had led his hearers\nthrough the vestibule of the old philosophy, and stood ready to lift\nthe curtain of that which was at once its consummation and its\nannihilation.\n\nBut the philosophers of Alexandria, so-called, were by no means,\nwithout exception, earnest, high-minded, and well-meaning. Leaving out\nof the question the mob of students who came ostensibly for wisdom,\nbut got only a very doubtful substitute, and were quite content with\nit, we know that the Museum was the headquarters of an anti-Christian\nphilosophy which, in Clement's time, was in the very spring of its\nvigorous development. Exactly contemporary with him was the celebrated\nAmmonius the Porter, the teacher of Plotinus, and therefore the parent\nof Neo-Platonism. Ammonius had a very great name and a very numerous\nschool. That he was a Christian by birth, there is no doubt; and he\nwas probably a Christian still when he landed at the Great Port and\nfound employment as a ship-porter. History is divided as to his\nbehavior after his wonderful elevation from the warehouses to the\nhalls of the Museum. St. Jerome and Eusebius deny that he apostatized,\nwhile the very questionable authority of the unscrupulous Porphyry is\nthe only testimony that can be adduced on the other side; but, even if\nhe continued to be a Christian, his orthodoxy is rather damaged when\nwe find him praised by such men as Plotinus, Longinus, and Hierocles.\nSome would cut the knot by asserting the existence of two Ammoniuses,\none a pagan apostate, the other a Christian bishop--a solution equally\ncontradicted by the witnesses on both sides. But, whatever Saccas was,\nthere is no doubt as to what was the effect of his teaching on, at\nleast, half of his hearers. If we might hazard a conjecture, we should\nsay that he appears to have been a man of great cleverness, and even\ngenius, but too much in love with his own brilliancy and his own\nspeculations not to come across the ecclesiastical authority in a more\nor less direct way. He supplied many imposing premises which Origen,\nrepresenting the sound half of his audience, used for Christian\npurposes, whilst Plotinus employed them for revivifying the dead body\nof paganism. The brilliant sack-bearer seems to have been, at the very\nleast, a liberal {45} Christian, who was too gentlemanly to mention so\nvery vulgar a thing as the Christian \"superstition\" in the classic\ngardens of the palace, or at the serene banquets of sages in the\nSymposium.\n\nThe question, then, is, How did Christianity, as a philosophy, stand\nin relation to the affluent professors of Ptolemy's university? That\nthey had been forced to see there was such a thing as Christianity,\nbefore the time of which we speak (A.D. 200), it is impossible to\ndoubt. It must have dawned upon the comprehension of the most\nimperturbable grammarian and the most materialist surgeon of the\nMuseum that a new teaching of some kind was slowly but surely striking\nroot in the many forms of life that surrounded them. Rumors must long\nbefore have been heard in the common hall that executions had taken\nplace of several members of a new sect or society, said to be impious\nin its tenets and disloyal in its practice. No doubt the assembled\nsages had expended at the time much intricate quibble and pun, after\nheavy Alexandrian fashion, on the subject of those wretched men; more\nespecially when it was put beyond doubt that no promises of reward or\nthreats of punishment had availed to make them compromise their\n\"opinions\" in the slightest tittle. Then the matter would die out, to\nbe revived several times in the same way; until at last some one would\nmake inquiries, and would find that the new sect was not only\nspreading, but, though composed apparently of the poor and the humble,\nwas clearly something very different from the fantastic religions or\nbrutal no-religions of the Alexandrian mob. It would be gradually\nfound out, moreover, that men of name and of parts were in its ranks;\nnay, some day of days, that learned company in the Hall would miss one\nof its own number, after the most reverend the curator had asked a\nblessing--if ever he did--and it would come out that Professor\nSo-and-so, learned and austere as he was, had become a Christian! And\nsome would merely wonder, but, that past, would ask their neighbor, in\nthe equivalent Attic, if there were to be no more cakes and ale,\nbecause _he_ had proved himself a fool; others would wonder, and feel\ndisturbed, and think about asking a question or two, though not to the\nextent of abandoning their seats at that comfortable board.\n\nThe majority, doubtless, at Alexandria as elsewhere, set down\nChristianity as some new superstition, freshly imported from the home\nof all superstitions, the East. There were some who hated it, and\npursued it with a vehemence of malignant lying that can suggest only\none source of inspiration, that is to say, the father of all lies\nhimself. Of this class were Crescens the Cynic, the prime favorite of\nMarcus Aurelius, and Celsus, called the Epicurean, but who, in his\ncelebrated book, written at this very time, appears as veritable a\nPlatonist as Plotinus himself. Then, again, there were others who\nfound no difficulty in recognizing Christianity as a sister\nphilosophy--who, in fact, rather welcomed it as affording fresh\nmaterial for dialectics--good, easy men of routine, blind enough to\nthe vital questions which the devil's advocates clearly saw to be at\nstake. Galen is pre-eminently a writer who has reflected the current\ngossip of the day. He was a hard student in his youth, and a learned\nand even high-minded man in his maturity, but he frequently shows\nhimself in his writings as the \"fashionable physician,\" with one or\ntwo of the weaknesses of that well-known character. He spent a long\ntime at Alexandria, just before Clement became famous, studying under\nHeraclian, consulting the immortal Hippocrates, and profiting by the\ncelebrated dissecting-rooms of the Museum, in which, unless they are\nbelied, the interests of science were so paramount that they used to\ndissect--not live horses; but living slaves. He could not, therefore,\nfail to have known how Christianity was regarded at the Museum.\nSpeaking of Christians, then, in his works, he of course retails a\ngood deal of {46} nonsense about them, such as we can imagine him to\nhave exchanged with the rich gluttons and swollen philosophers whom he\nhad to attend professionally in Roman society; but when he speaks\nseriously, and of what he had himself observed, he says, frankly and\nhonestly, that the Christians deserved very great praise for sobriety\nof life, and for their love of virtue, in which they equalled or\nsurpassed the greatest philosophers of the age. So thought, in all\nprobability, many of the learned men of Alexandria.\n\nThe Church, on her side, was not averse to appearing before the\nGentiles in the garb of philosophy, and it was very natural that the\nChristian teachers should encourage this idea, with the aim and hope\nof gaining admittance for themselves and their good tidings into the\nvery heart of pagan learning. And was not Christianity a philosophy?\nIn the truest sense of the word--and, what is more to the purpose, in\nthe sense of the philosophers of Alexandria--it was a philosophy. The\nnarrowed meaning that in our days is assigned to philosophy, as\ndistinguished from religion, had no existence in the days of Clement.\nWisdom was the wisdom by excellence, the highest, _the_ ultimate\nwisdom. What the Hebrew preacher meant when he said, \"Wisdom is better\nthan all the most precious things,\" the same was intended by the\nAlexandrian lecturer when he offered to show his hearers where wisdom\nwas to be found. It meant the fruit of the highest speculation, and at\nthe same time the necessary ground of all-important practice. In our\ndays the child learns at the altar-rails that its end is to love God,\nand serve him, and be happy with him; and after many years have\npassed, the child, now a man, studies and speculates on the reasons\nand the bearings of that short, momentous sentence. In the old Greek\nworld the intellectual search came first, and the practical sentence\nwas the wished-for result. A system of philosophy was, therefore, in\nClement's time, tantamount to a religion. It was the case especially\nwith the learned. Serapis and Isis were all very well for the \"old\nwomen and the sailors,\" but the laureate and the astronomer royal of\nthe Ptolemies, and the professors, many and diverse, of arts and\nethics, in the Museum, scarcely took pains to conceal their utter\ncontempt for the worship of the vulgar. Their idols were something\nmore spiritual, their incense was of a more ethereal kind. Could they\nnot dispute about the Absolute Being? and had they not glimpses of\nsomething indefinitely above and yet indefinably related to their own\nsouls, in the Logos of the divine Plato? So the Stoic mortified his\nflesh for the sake of some ulterior perfectibility of which he could\ngive no clear account to himself; the Epicurean contrived to take his\nfill of pleasure, on the maxim that enjoyment was the end of our\nbeing, \"and tomorrow we die;\" the Platonist speculated and pursued his\n\"air-travelling and cloud-questioning,\" like Socrates in the basket,\nin a vain but tempting endeavor to see what God was to man and man to\nGod; the Peripatetic, the Eclectic, and all the rest, disputed,\nscoffed, or dogmatized about many things, certainly, but, mainly and\nfinally, on those questions that will never lie still:--Who are we?\nand, Who placed us here? Philosophy included religion, and therefore\nChristianity was a philosophy.\n\nWhen Clement, then, told the philosophers of Alexandria that he could\nteach them the true philosophy, he was saying not only what was\nperfectly true, but what was perfectly understood by them. The\ncatechetical school was, and appeared to them, as truly a\nphilosophical lecture-room as the halls of the Museum. Clement himself\nhad been an ardent philosopher, and he reverently loved his masters,\nSocrates and Plato and Aristotle, whilst he had the feelings of a\nbrother toward the philosophers of his own day. He became a Christian,\nand his dearest object was to win his brethren to a participation in\nhis own good fortune. {47} He did not burn his philosophical books and\nanathematize his masters; like St. Paul, he availed himself of the\ngood that was in them and commended it, and then proclaimed that he\nhad the key of the treasure which they had labored to find and had not\nfound. This explains how it is that, in Clement of Alexandria, the\nphilosopher's mantle seems almost to hide the simple garb of the\nChristian. This also explains why he is called, and indeed calls\nhimself, an Eclectic in his system; and this marks out the drift and\nthe aim of the many allusions to philosophy that we find in his extant\nworks, and in the traditions of his teaching that have come down to\nus. If Christianity was truly called a philosophy, what should we\nexpect in its champion but that he should be a philosopher? Men in\nthese days read the _Stromata_, and find that it is, on the outside,\nmore like Plato than like Jesus Christ; and thus they make small\naccount of it, because they cannot understand its style, or the reason\nfor its adoption. The grounds of questions and the forms of thought\nhave shifted since the days of the catechetical school. But Clement's\nfellow-citizens understood him. The thrifty young Byzantine, for\ninstance, understood him, who had been half-inclined to join the\nStoics, but had come, in his threadbare pallium, to hear the Christian\nteacher, and who was told that asceticism was very good and\ncommendable, but that the end of it all was God and the love of God,\nand that this end could only be attained by a Christian. The languid\nbut intellectual man of fashion understood him, who had grown sick of\nthe jargon of his Platonist professors about the perfect man and the\narchetypal humanity, and who now felt his inmost nature stirred to its\ndepths by the announcement and description of the Word made flesh. The\nlearned stranger from Antioch or Athens, seeking for the truth,\nunderstood him, when he said that the Christian dogma alone could\ncreate and perfect the true Gnostic or Knower; he understood perfectly\nthe importance of the object, provided the assertion were true, as it\nmight turn out to be. Unless Clement had spoken of asceticism, of the\nperfect man, and of the true Gnostic, his teaching would not have come\nhome to the self-denying student, to the thoughtful sage, to the\nbrilliant youth, to all that was great and generous and amiable in the\nhuge heathen society of the crowded city. As it was, he gained a\nhearing, and, having done so, he said to the Alexandrians, \"Your\nmasters in philosophy are great and noble: I honor them, I admire and\naccept them; but they did not go far enough, as you all acknowledge.\nCome to us, then, and we will show what is wanting in them. Listen to\nthese old Hebrew writers whom I will quote to you. You see that they\ntreated of all your problems, and had solved the deepest of them,\nwhilst your forefathers were groping in darkness. All their light, and\nmuch more, is our inheritance. The truth, which you seek, we possess.\n'What you worship, without knowing it, that I preach to you.' God's\nWord has been made flesh--has lived on this earth, the model man, the\nabsolute man. Come to us, and we will show you how you may know God\nthrough him, and how through him God communicates himself to you.\" But\nhere he stopped. The \"discipline of the secret\" allowed him to go no\nfurther in public. The listening Christians knew well what he meant;\nhis pagan hearers only surmised that there was more behind. And was it\nnot much that Christianity should thus measure strength and challenge\na contest with the old Greek civilization on equal terms, and about\nthose very matters of intellect and high ethics in which it especially\nprided itself?\n\nBut the contest, never a friendly one, save with the dullest and\neasiest of the pagan philosophers, very soon grew to be war to the\nknife. We have said that the quiet lovers of literature among the\nheathen men of science were perfectly ready to admit the Christian\nphilosophy to a fair share {48} in the arena of disputation and\ndiscussion, looking upon it as being, at worst, only a foolish system\nof obtrusive novelties, which might safely be left to their own\ninsignificancy. But, quite unexpectedly and startlingly for easy-going\nphilosophers, Christianity was found, not merely to claim the\npossession of truth, but to claim it wholly and solely. And, what was\nstill more intolerable, its doctors maintained that its adoption or\nrejection was no open speculative question, but a tremendous practical\nmatter, involving nothing less than all morality here and all\nhappiness hereafter; and that the unfortunate philosopher, who, in his\nlofty serenity, approved it as right, and yet followed the wrong,\nwould have to undergo certain horrors after death, the bare suggestion\nof which seemed an outrage on the dignity of the philosophical\ncharacter. This was quite enough for hatred; and the philosophers, as\ntheir eyes began to open, saw that Crescens and Celsus were right, and\naccorded their hatred most freely and heartily.\n\nBut Christianity did not stop here. With the old original schools and\ntheir offshoots it was a recognized principle that philosophy was only\nfor philosophers; and this was especially true of Clement's most\ninfluential contemporaries, the Neo-Platonists. The vulgar had no part\nin it, in fact could not come within the sphere of its influence; how\ncould they? How could the sailors, who, after a voyage, went to pay\ntheir vows in the temple of Neptune on the quay, or the porters who\ndragged the grain sacks and the hemp bundles from the tall warehouses\nto the holds of Syrian and Greek merchantmen, or the negro slaves who\nfanned the brows of the foreign prince, or the armorers of the Jews'\nquarter, or the dark-skinned, bright-eyed Egyptian women of the\nRhacotis suspected of all evil from thieving to sorcery, or, more than\nall, the drunken revellers and poor harlots who made night hideous\nwhen the Egyptian moon looked down on the palaces of the\nBrucheion--how could any of these find access to the sublime secrets\nof Plato or the profound commentaries of his disciples? Even if they\nhad come in crowds to the lecture-halls--which no one wanted them to\ndo, or supposed they would do--they could not have been admitted nor\nentertained; for even the honest occupations of life, the daily labors\nnecessary in a city of 300,000 freemen, were incompatible with\nimbibing the divine spirit of philosophy. So the philosophers had\nnothing to say to all these. If they had been asked what would become\nof such poor workers and sinners, they would probably have avoided an\nanswer as best they could. There were the temples and Serapis and Isis\nand the priests--they might go to them. It was certain that\nphilosophy was not meant for the vulgar. In fact, philosophy would be\nunworthy of a habitation like the Museum--would deserve to have its\npensions stopped, its common hall abolished, and its lecture-rooms\nshut up--if ever it should condescend to step into the streets and\nspeak to the herd. It was, therefore, with a disgust unspeakable, and\na swiftly-ripening hatred, that the philosophers saw Christianity\nopenly proclaiming and practising the very opposite of all this. True,\nit had learned men and respected men in its ranks, but it loudly\ndeclared that its mission was to the lowly, and the mean, and the\ndegraded, quite as much as to the noble, and the rich, and the\nvirtuous. It maintained that the true divine philosophy, the source of\njoy for the present and hope for the future, was as much in the power\nof the despised bondsman, trembling under the lash, as of the\nprince-governor, or the Caesar himself, haughtily wielding the\ninsignia of sovereignty. _We_ know what its pretensions and tenets\nwere, but it is difficult to realize how they must have clashed with\nthe notions of intellectual paganism in the city of Plotinus--how the\nhands that would have been gladly held out in friendship, had it come\nin respectable {49} and conventional guise, were shut and clenched,\nwhen they saw in its train the rough mechanic, the poor maid-servant,\nthe negro, and the harlot. There could be no compromise between two\nsystems such as these. For a time it might have seemed as if they\ncould decide their quarrel in the schools, but the old Serpent and his\nchief agents knew better: and so did Clement and the Christian\ndoctors, at the very time that they were taking advantage of fair\nweather to occupy every really strong position which the enemy held.\nThe struggle soon grew into the deadly hand-to-hand grapple that ended\nin leaving the corpse of paganism on the ground, dead but not buried,\nto be gradually trodden out of sight by a new order of things.\n\n\nIt must not, however, be supposed that the Christian school of\nAlexandria was wholly, or even chiefly, employed in controversy with\nthe schools of the heathen. The first care of the Church was, as at\nall times, the household of the faith: a care, however, in the\nfulfilment of which there is less that strikes as novel or interesting\nat first sight than in that remarkable aggressive movement of which it\nhas been our object to give some idea. But even in the Church's\nhousehold working there is much that is both instructive and\ninteresting, as we get a glimpse of it in Clement of Alexandria. The\nChurch in Alexandria, as elsewhere, was made up of men from every lot\nand condition of life. There were officials, civil and military,\nmerchants, shop-keepers, work-people--plain, hard-striving men,\nhusbands, and fathers of families. In the wake of the upper thousands\nfollowed a long and wide train--the multitude who compose the middle\nclasses of a great city; and it was from their ranks that the Church\nwas mainly recruited. They might not feel much interest in the\nuniversity, beyond the fact that its numerous and wealthy students\nwere a welcome stimulus to trade; but still they had moral and\nintellectual natures. They must have craved for some kind of food for\ntheir minds and hearts, and cannot have been satisfied with the dry,\nunnourishing scraps that were flung to them by the supercilious\nphilosophers. They must have felt no small content--those among them\nwho had the grace to hearken to the teachings of Clement--when he told\nthem that the philosophy _he_ taught was as much for them as for their\nmasters and their betters. They listened to him, weighed his words,\nand accepted them; and then a great question arose. It was a question\nthat was being debated and settled at Antioch, at Rome, and at Athens,\nno less than at Alexandria; but at Alexandria it was Clement who\nanswered it. \"We believe your good tidings,\" they said; \"but tell us,\nmust we change our lives wholly and entirely? Is everything that we\nhave been doing so far, and our fathers have been doing before us,\nmiserably and radically wrong?\" They had bought and sold; they had\nmarried and given in marriage; they had filled their warehouses and\nfreighted their ships; they had planted and builded, and brought up\ntheir sons and daughters. They had loved money, and the praise of\ntheir fellow-men; they had their fashions and their customs, old and\ntime-honored, and so interwoven with their very life as to be almost\nidentified with it. Some of their notions and practices the bare\nannouncement of the Gospel sufficiently condemned; and these must go\nat once. But where was the line to be drawn? Did the Gospel aim at\nregenerating the world by forbidding marriage and laying a ban on\nhuman labor; by making life intolerable with asceticism; by emptying\nthe streets and the market-places, and driving men to Nitria and the\nfrightful rocks of the Upper Nile? And what made the question doubly\nexciting was the two-fold fact, first, that in those very days men and\nwomen were continually fleeing from home and family, and hiding, in\nthe desert; and secondly, that there were in that very city\ncongregations of {50} men calling themselves Christians, who\nproclaimed that it was wrong to marry, and that flesh-meat and wine\nwere sinful indulgences.\n\nThe answer that Clement gave to these questionings is found mainly in\nthat work of his which is called _Paedagogus_, or \"The Teacher.\" The\nanswer needed was a sharp, a short, and a decisive one. It needed to\nbe like a surgical operation--rapidly performed, completed, with\nnothing further to be done but to fasten the bandages, and leave the\npatient to the consequences, whatever they might be. Society had to be\n_reset_. We need not repeat for the thousandth time the fact of the\nunutterable corruptness and rottenness of the whole pagan world. It\nwas not that there were wanting certain true ideas of duty toward the\nstate, the family, the fellow-citizen: the evil lay far deeper. It was\nnot good sense that was wanting; it was the sense of the supernatural.\n\"Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die,\" was the formula that\nexpressed the code of popular morality; and because men could not \"eat\nand drink\" comfortably and luxuriously without some sort of law,\norder, and mutual compact, it followed as a necessary consequence that\nthere must be law, order, and compact. It was not, therefore, that\nClement had merely to hold up the Gospel and show them its meaning\nhere and its application there. He had to shift the very groundwork of\nmorality, to take up the very foundations of the moral acts that go to\nmake up life as viewed in the light of right and wrong. He had to\nsubstitute heaven for earth, hereafter for here, God for self. And he\ndid so--in a fashion not unknown in the Catholic Church since, as\nindeed it had been not unknown to St. Paul long before. He simply held\nup to them the crucifix. Let any one turn to the commencement of the\n_Paedagogus_, and he will find a description of what a teacher ought\nto be. At the beginning of the second chapter he will read these\nwords: \"My children, our teacher is like the Father, whose Son he is;\nin whom there is no sin, great or small, nor any temptation to sin;\nGod in the figure of a man, stainless, obedient to his Father's will;\nthe Word, true God, who is in the Father, who is at the Father's right\nhand, true God in the form of a man; to whom we must strive with all\nour might _to make ourselves like_.\" It sounds like the commencement\nof a children's retreat in one of our modern cities to hear Clement\nproclaim so anxiously that the teacher and model of men is no other\nthan Jesus, and that we must all become children, and go and listen to\nhim and study him; yet it is a sentence that must have spoken to the\nvery inmost hearts of all who had a thought or care for their souls in\nAlexandria; and one can perceive, in the terms used in the original\nGreek, a conscious adaptation of epithets to meet more than one\nPlatonic difficulty. It was the reconciliation of the true with the\nbeautiful. The Alexandrians, Greek and Egyptian, with their Greek\nlongings for the beautiful, and their Egyptian tendings to the\nsensible, were not put off by Clement with a cold abstraction. A\nmathematical deity, formed out of lines, relations, and analogies,\nsuch as Neo-Platonism offered, was well enough for the lecture-room,\nbut had small hold upon the heart. Christianity restored the thrilling\nsense of a personal God, which Neo-Platonism destroyed, but for which\nmen still sighed, though they knew not what they were sighing for; and\nChristianity, by Clement's mouth, taught that the living and lovely\nlife of Jesus was to be the end and the measure of the life of all.\nThey were to follow him: \"My angel shall walk before you,\" is\nClement's own quotation. And having thus laid down the regenerating\nprinciple--God through Jesus Christ--he descends safely and fearlessly\ninto details. Minutely and carefully he handles the problems of life,\nand sets them straight by the light of the life of Jesus.\n\nThese details and these directions, {51} as left to us by Clement in\nthe _Paedagogus_, are only what we might anticipate from a Christian\nteacher to his flock; and yet they are very interesting, and disclose\nmany facts that are full of suggestion to one who reads by the light\nof the Catholic faith. Who would not like to hear what Clement said to\nthe Church of Alexandria about dress, beauty, feasting, drinking,\nfurniture, conversation, money, theatres, sleep, labor, and\nhousekeeping? We know well that there must have been ample scope for\ndiscourse on all these topics. The rich Alexandrians, like the rich\nRomans, and the rich Corinthians, and the rich everywhere, were\nfearfully addicted to luxury, and their poorer neighbors followed\ntheir example as well as they could. But there were circumstances\npeculiar to Alexandria that enabled it to outdo the rest of the world\nin this matter; putting Rome, of course, out of the question. It was\nthe market for India; and seeing that almost everything in the way of\napparel came from India, Alexandria had the pick of the best that the\nworld could afford, and seems not to have been behindhand in taking\nadvantage of its privilege. Nobody enjoyed more than the Alexandrian--\nwhether he were a descendant of the Macedonian who came in with the\nConqueror, or a _parvenu_ of yesterday grown great by his wheat-ships\nor his silk-bales--to sweep the Heptastadion, or promenade the Great\nQuay, or lounge in the gardens of the Museum, in what ancient tailors\nand milliners would call a synthesis of garments, as ample, and stiff,\nand brilliant as Indian looms could make them. Then, again, Alexandria\nwas a university town. Two hundred years of effeminate Ptolemies and\nfour hundred of wealthy students had been more than enough to create a\ntradition of high, luxurious living. The conjunction of all that was\nto be got for money, with any amount of money to get it with, had made\nAlexandria a model city for carrying out the only maxim which the\ngreater number even of the philosophers themselves really understood\nand practically followed: \"Let us eat and drink!\" Again, a navigable\nriver, a rainless sky, and a climate perhaps the finest in the world,\noffered both inducements and facilities for parties of pleasure and\nconviviality in general. It is true the river was only a canal: one\nthing was wanting to the perfection of Alexandria as a site for an\nempire city, viz., the Nile; but that the canal was a moderate success\nin the eyes of the Alexandrians may be inferred from the fact that\nCanopus, where it finished its short course of thirteen or fourteen\nmiles, and joined the Nile, was a perfect city of river-side hotels,\nto which the boats brought every day crowds of pleasure-seekers. Very\ngay were the silken and gilded boats, with their pleasant canopies and\nsoothing music; and very gay and brilliant, but not very reputable,\nwere the groups that filled them, with their crowns of flowers, their\nGrecian attitudinizing, and their ingenious arrangements of\nfan-working slaves. This was the population which it was Clement's\nwork to convert to purity and moderation.\n\nIt is very common with Clement's modern critics, when making what our\nFrench allies would call \"an appreciation\" him, to set him down as a\nsolemn trifler. They complain that they cannot get any \"system of\ntheology\" out of his writings; indeed, they doubt whether he so much\nas had one. They find him use the term \"faith\" first in one sense and\nthen in another, and they are especially offended by his minute\ninstructions on certain matters pertaining to meat, drink, and dress.\nTo any one who considers what Clement intended to do in his writings,\nand especially in the _Paedagogus_, there is no difficulty in seeing an\nanswer to a difficulty like this. He did not _mean_ to construct a\n\"system of theology,\" and therefore it is no wonder if his critics\ncannot find one. He did not even mean to state the broad, general\nprinciples of the Gospel: his hearers knew these well enough. What he\ndid mean to do was, {52} to apply these general rules and principles\nto a variety of cases occurring in everyday life. And yet, as a matter\nof fact, it is to be observed that he always does lay down broad\nprinciples before entering into details. In the matter of eating, for\ninstance, regarding which he is very severe in his denunciations, and\nnot without reason, he takes care to state distinctly the great\nCatholic canon of mortification: \"Though all things were made for man,\nyet it is not good to use all, nor at all times.\" Again, in the midst\nof his contemptuous enumeration of ancient wines, he does not forget\nto say, \"You are not robbed of your drink: it is given to you, and\nawaits your hand;\" that which is blamed is excess. He sums up what he\nhas been saying against the voluptuous entertainments then so\nuniversal by the following sentence--a novelty, surely, to both\nextremes of pagan society in Alexandria--\"In one word, whatever is\nnatural to man must not be taken from him; but, instead thereof, must\nbe regulated according to fitting measure and time.\"\n\nIn deciding whether Clement was a \"solemn trifler,\" or not, there is\nanother consideration which must not be omitted, and that is his sense\nof the humorous. It may sound incongruous when speaking of a Father of\nthe Church, and much more of a reputed mystical Father like Clement,\nbut we think no one can deny that he often supplements a serious\nargument by a little stroke of pleasantry. As many of his sentences\nstand, a look or a smile would lighten them up and make them sparkle\ninto humor. Paper and ink cannot carry the tone of the voice or the\nglance of the eye, and Clement's voice has been silent and his eye\ndimmed for many a century; but may we not imagine that at times\nsomething of archness in the teacher's manner would impart to his\nweighty words a touch of quaintness, and the habitually thoughtful eye\ntwinkle with a gleam of pleasantry? He would be no true follower of\nPlato if it were not so. Who shall say he was not smiling when he gave\nout that formal list of wines, of eatables, and of scents most\naffected by the fashionables of those days? He concludes an invective\nagainst scandalous feats by condemning the universal crown of roses as\na \"nuisance:\" it was damp, it was cold; it hindered one from using\neither his eyes or his ears properly. He advises his audience to avoid\nmuch curious carving and ornamenting of bed-posts; for creeping\nthings, he says, have a habit of making themselves at home in the\nmouldings. He asks if one's hands cannot be as well washed in a clay\nbasin as in a silver one. He wonders how one can dare to put a plain\nlittle loaf on a grand \"wing-footed\" table. He cannot see why a lamp\nof earthenware will not give as good a light as one of silver. He\nalludes with disgust to \"hissing frying-pans,\" to \"spoon and pestle,\"\nand even to the \"packed stomachs\" of their proprietors; to Sicilian\nlampreys, and Attican eels; shell-fish from Capo di Faro, and Ascrean\nbeet from the foot of Helicon; mullet from the Gulf of Thermae, and\npheasants from the Crimea. We hear him contemptuously repeat the\nphrases of connoisseurs about their wines, the startling variety of\nwhich we know from other sources besides his writings: he speaks of\nthe \"scented Thasian,\" the aromatic \"Lesbian,\" the \"sweet wine of\nCrete,\" the \"pleasant Syracusan.\" The articles of plate which he\nenumerates to condemn would be more than sufficient to furnish out a\nmodern wedding breakfast. To scents he gives no quarter. We have heard\na distinguished professor of chemistry assert, in a lecture, that\nwherever there is scent on the surface there is sure to be dirt\nbeneath; and, from the well-known fact that in Capua there was one\nwhole street occupied by perfumers, he could draw no other inference\nthan that Capua must have been \"a very dirty city.\" It would appear\nthat Clement of Alexandria was much of this opinion. He gives a\npicture of a pompous {53} personage in a procession, \"going along\nmarvellously scented, for the purpose of producing a sensation, and\nyet underneath as foul as he could be.\" He enumerates the absurd\nvarieties of ointments in fashion, and orders them to be thrown away.\nHe is indignant at the saffron-colored scented robe that the gentlemen\nwore. He will have no flowing or trailing vestments; no \"Attic\nbuskins,\" no \"Persian sandals.\" He complains that the ladies go and\nspend the whole day at the perfumer's, the goldsmith's, and the\nmilliner's, just as if he were speaking of \"shopping\" in the\nnineteenth century, instead of A.D. 200. He blames the men for\nfrequenting the barbers' shops, the taverns, and the dicing-houses. It\nis amusing in these days to read of his denunciations of shaving. He\nhas no patience with \"hair-haters:\" a man without the hair that God\ngave him is a \"base sight.\" \"God attached such importance to hair,\" he\nsays, \"that he makes a man come to hair and sense at the same time.\"\nBut, in reality, this vehement attack on the \"smooth men,\" as he calls\nthem, points to one of the most flagrant of heathen immoralities, and\nreveals in the context a state of things to which we may not do more\nthan allude. He condemns luxury in furniture, from \"beds with silver\nfeet, made of ivory and adorned with gold and tortoise-shell,\" down to\n\"little table-daggers,\" that ancient ladies and gentlemen used\nindifferently to their food and to their slaves. All this is not very\ndeep, but it is just what Clement wanted to say, and a great deal more\nuseful in its place and connection than a \"system of theology.\" We may\nadd that it is a great deal more interesting to us, who know pretty\nwell what Clement's \"system of theology\" was, but not so well what\nwere the faults and failings of his Christian men and women in those\nfar-off Alexandrian times.\n\nThere is another epithet bestowed upon Clement, more widely and with\nbetter authority than that of \"trifler.\" He is called a mystic. He\ndeals in allegorical interpretations of Holy Scripture, in fanciful\nanalogies, and whimsical reasonings; he was carried away by the spirit\nof Neo-Platonism, and substituted a number of idle myths for the stern\nrealities of the Gospel. It is not our business at present to show, by\nreferences, that this accusation is untrue; but we may admit at once\nthat it is not unfounded, and we maintain that it points to an\nexcellence, rather than a defect, in his teaching. From the remarks\nmade just now, the reader will be prepared to expect that a teacher in\nAlexandria in Clement's days _must_ have been a mystic. It was simply\nthe fashion; and a fashion, in thought and speech, exacts a certain\namount of compliance from those who think or speak for the good of its\nfollowers. Neo-Platonism was not extant in his time as a definite\nsystem, but ever since the days of Philon its spirit had been the\nspirit of the Museum. Nature, in its beauty and variety, was an\nallegory of the soul so said the philosophers, and the crowd caught it\nup with eagerness. The natural philosopher could not lecture on\nAristotle _De Animalibus_ without deducing morals in the style of\nAEsop. The moralist, in his turn, could hardly keep up his class-list\nwithout embodying his Beautiful and his Good in the aesthetical garb\nof a myth--the more like Plato, the better. The mathematician\ndiscoursed of numbers, of lines, and of angles, but the interesting\npart of his lecture was when he drew the analogy from lines and\nnumbers to the soul and to God. Alexandria liked allegory, and\nbelieved, or thought she believed, that the Seen was always a type of\nthe Unseen. Such a belief was not unnatural, and by no means\nhopelessly erroneous; nay, was it not highly useful to a Christian\nteacher, with the Bible in his hand, in which he would really have to\nshow them so many things, _per allegoriam dicta?_ Clement took up the\naccustomed tone. Had he done otherwise, he would have been strange and\nold-fashioned, whereas he {54} wanted to get the ear of his\ncountrymen, and therefore thought it no harm to fall in with their\nhumor for the mythical; just as good Father Faber preached and wrote\nlike a modern Englishman, and not like an antique Douai\ncontroversialist, or a well-meaning translator of \"Sermons from the\nFrench.\" But, say the objectors, Clement's interpretation of Scripture\nis so very forced and unnatural. The whole subject of allegorical\ninterpretation of Sacred Scripture is too wide to be entered upon\nhere; but that the Bible, especially the Old Testament, _has_ an\nallegorical sense, no one denies, and the decision of what is the true\nallegorical sense depends more upon the authority of the teacher than\nupon the interpretation itself. In the time of Clement, when the\nGnostics were attributing the Old Testament to the Evil Principle,\nthere was a special necessity for a warm and loving acknowledgment\nthat it was the voice and the teaching of God to man; and it is no\nwonder, therefore, that he allows himself, with the brilliant fancy of\nan Athenian, even if sometimes with the fantasticalness of an\nAlexandrian, to extract meanings out of the sacred text which our\nsober eyes could never have discovered. As it is, we owe to his\nmysticism no small portion of the eloquence and beauty of his\nwritings; we may instance that charming passage in the _Paedagogus_\nwhere he alludes to the incident related in the twenty-sixth chapter\nof Genesis--\"Abimelech, King of the Palestines, looking out through a\nwindow, saw Isaac playing with Rebecca his wife.\" Isaac represents,\nthe little one of Christ, and is interpreted to be joy; Rebecca is\npatience; the royal Abimelech signifies heavenly wisdom. The child of\nJesus Christ, joyful with a joy that none but that blessed teacher can\ngive, lovingly sports with his \"helpmate,\" patience, and the wisdom\nthat is from above looks on and wonderingly admires. The beauty of\nconception and perfection of form that is inseparable from true Greek\nart, whether in a statue or a medal, an epic or an epigram, is by no\nmeans wanting to the first of the Greek Fathers. A reader who should\ntake up the _Paedagogus_ for no other than literary reasons would not\nbe disappointed; he would receive, from his reading, a very high idea\nof the wisdom, the eloquence, and, above all, the saintly unction of\nthe great Catholic doctor and philosopher who first made human science\nthe handmaid of Christian theology.\n\nThe witnessing to the truth before heathen philosophers and the\nteaching the children of the faith might have fully employed both the\nzeal and the eloquence of Clement. But there was another and a sadder\nuse for words, in the task of resisting the heresies that seemed to\ngrow like foul excrescences from the very growth of the Church\nherself. Alexandria, the city of Neo-Platonism, was also with nearly\nas good a title the city of Gnosticism. To examine the history of\nGnosticism is not a tempting undertaking. On the one side, it is like\nwalking into a fog, as dense and unpleasant as ever marked a London\nNovember; on the other, it is to disturb a moral cess-pool,\nproverbially better left alone. Of the five groups of the Gnostic\nfamily, which seem to agree in little beside worshipping the devil,\nholding to \"emanations,\" and owing their origin to Simon Magus, the\nparticular group that made Alexandria its headquarters acknowledged as\nits leading names Basilides, Valentine, and Mark, each of whom outdid\nthe other in the absurdity of his ravings about eons, generations, and\nthe like, and in the abominableness of his practical licentiousness.\nValentine and Mark were contemporaries of Clement, if not personally\n(Valentine is said to have died A.D. 150) at least in their immediate\ninfluence. No one can tell satisfactorily what made these precious\nfollowers of Simon Magus spend their days in patching up second-hand\nsystems out of the rags of cast-off Oriental mysticism. No doubt their\njargon appeared somewhat less {55} unnatural in their own days than it\ndoes in ours. They lived nearer the times when the wrecks of primeval\nrevelation and history had been wrought into a thousand fantastic\nshapes on the banks of the Indus, the Euphrates, and the Nile, and\nwhen, in the absence of the true light, men occupied themselves with\nthe theatrical illuminations of Bel, Isis, and Vishnu. But these\nGnostics, in the clear dawn of the Gospel, still stuck to the fulsome\nproperties of the devil's play-house. Unsavory and dishonest, they\ndeserve neither respect for sincerity nor allowance for originality;\nthey were mere spinners of \"endless genealogies,\" and, with such a\nfig-leaf apron, they tried to conceal for a while the rankness of the\nflesh that finally made the very pagans join in hounding them from the\nearth. The infamous Mark was holding his conventicles in Alexandria\nabout the very time that Pantaenus and Clement were teaching. To read\nof his high-flown theories about eons and emanations, his sham magic,\nhis familiarity with demons, his impositions on the weaker sex, and\nthe frightful licentiousness that was the sure end of it all, is like\nreading the history of the doings of the Egyptian priests in the\nSerapeion rather than of those who called themselves Christians. And\nyet these very men, these deluded Marcosians, gave out to learned and\nunlearned Alexandria that they alone were the true followers of\nChrist. We may conceive the heart-breaking work it would be for\nClement to repel the taunts that their doings brought upon his name\nand profession, and to refute and keep down false brethren, whose\narguments and strength consisted in an appeal to curiosity and brute\npassion. And yet how nobly he does it, in that picture of the true\nGnostic, or Knower, to which he so often returns in all his extant\nworks!\n\nBut philosophers, faithful, and heretics do not exhaust the story of\nClement's doings. It lends a solemn light to the memorable history we\nare noting, to bear in mind that the Church's intellectual war with\nNeo-Platonist and Gnostic was ever and again interrupted by the yells\nof the blood-thirsty populace, the dragging of confessors to prison,\nand all the hideous apparatus of persecution. Which of us would have\nhad heart to argue with men who might next day deliver us to the\nhangman? Who would have found leisure to write books on abstract\nphilosophy with such stern concrete realities as the scourge and the\nknife waiting for him in the street? Clement's master began to teach\njust as one persecution was ceasing; Clement himself had to flee from\nhis schools before the \"burden and heat\" of another; these were not\ntimes, one would suppose, for science and orderly teaching. Yet our\nown English Catholic annals can, in a manner, furnish parallel cases\nin more than one solid book of controversy and deep ascetical tract,\nthought out and composed when the pursuivants were almost at the\ndoors. So true it is that when the Church's work demands scientific\nand written teaching, science appears and books are written, though\nthe Gentiles are raging and the peoples imagining their vain things.\n\nHere, for the present, we draw to a close these desultory notes on the\nChristian Schools of Alexandria. They will have served their purpose\nif they have but supplied an outline of that busy intellectual life\nwhich is associated with the names of Pantaenus and Clement. There is\nanother name that ought to follow these two--the name of Origen,\nsuggesting another chapter on Church history that should yield to none\nin interest and usefulness. The mere fact that in old Alexandria, in\nthe face of hostile science, clogged and put to shame by pestilent\nheresies, ruthlessly chased out of sight ever and again by brute force--\nin spite of all this, Catholic science won respect from its enemies\nwithout for a moment neglecting the interests of its own children, is\na teaching that will never be out of date, and least of all at a time\nlike ours, and in a country where learning {56} sneers at revelation,\nwhere a thousand jarring sects invoke the sacred name of Christ, and\nwhere public opinion--the brute force of the modern world, as the\nrack and the fagot were of the ancient--never howls so loudly as when\nit catches sight of the one true Church of the living and eternal God.\n\n\n\n----\n\nFrom The Lamp.\n\nJEM M'GOWAN'S WISH.\n\n\n\n\"I wish I were a lord,\" said Pat M'Gowan, a lazy young fellow, as he\nstretched over his grandmother's turf-fire a pair of brawny fists that\nwere as red as the blaze that warmed them.\n\n\"_You_ wish to be a lord!\" answered Granny M'Gowan; \"oh, then, a\nmighty quare lord you would make; but, as long as you live, Pat, never\nwish again; for who knows but you might wish in the unlucky minute,\nand that it would be granted to you?\"\n\n\"Faix, then, granny, I just wish I could have my wish this minute.\"\n\n\"You're a fool, Pat, and have no more sense in your head than a\ncracked egg has a chance of a chicken inside of it. Maybe you'd never\ncease repenting of your wish if you got it.\"\n\n\"Maybe so, granny, but for all that I'd like to be a lord. Tell me,\ngranny, when does the unlucky minute come that a body may get their\nwish?\"\n\n\"Why, you see, Pat, there is one particular little bit of a minute of\ntime in every twenty-four hours that, if a mortal creature has the\nunlucky chance to wish on that instant, his wish, whether for good or\nfor bad, for life or death, fortune or misfortune, sickness or health,\nfor himself or for others, the wish is granted to him; but seldom does\nit turn out for good to the wisher, because it shows he is not\nsatisfied with his lot, and it is contrary to what God in his goodness\nhas laid down for us all to do and suffer for his sake. But, Pat, you\nblackguard, I see you are laughing at your old granny because you\nthink I am going to preach a sermon to you; but you're mistaken. I'll\ntell you what happened to an uncle of my own, Jem M'Gowan, who got his\nwish when he asked for it.\"\n\n\"Got his wish--oh, the lucky old fellow!\" cried Pat. \"Do, granny, tell\nme all about him. Got his wish! oh, how I wish I was a lord!\"\n\n\"Listen to me, Pat, and don't be getting on with any of your foolish\nnonsense. My uncle, Jem M'Gowan, was then something like yourself, Pat--\na strapping, able chap, but one that, like you too, would sooner be\nscorching his shins over the fire than cutting the turf to make it,\nand rather watching the potatoes boiling than digging them out of the\nridge. Instead of working for a new coat, he would be wishing some one\ngave it to him. When he got up in the morning, he wished for his\nbreakfast; and when he had swallowed it, he wished for his dinner; and\nwhen he had bolted down his dinner, he began to wish for his supper;\nand when he ate his supper, he wished to be in bed; and when he was in\nbed, he wished to be asleep--in fact, he did nothing from morning to\nnight but wish, and even in his dreams I am quite sure he wished to be\nawake. Unlucky for Jem, his cabin was convenient to the great big\nhouse of Squire Kavanagh; and when Jem went out in the morning,\nshivering with cold, and wishing for a glass of whisky to put _spirits_\nin him, and he saw the bedroom windows of Squire Kavanagh closed, and\nknew that the squire was lying warm and snug inside, he always wished\nto be Squire Kavanagh. Then, when he saw the {57} squire driving the\nhorse and the hounds before him, and he all the while working in the\nfield, he wished it still more; and when he saw him dancing with the\nbeautiful young ladies and illigant young gentlemen in the moonlight\nof a summer's evening, in front of his fine hall-door and under the\nshade of the old oak-trees, he wished it more than ever. The squire\nwas always coming before him; and so happy a man did he seem that Jem\nwas always saying to himself, 'I wish I was Squire Kavanagh,' from,\ncockcrow to sunset, until he at last hit upon the unfortunate minute\nin the twenty-four hours when his wish was to be granted. He was just\nafter eating his dinner of fine, mealy potatoes, fresh-churned\nbuttermilk, and plenty of salt and salt-butter to relish them, when he\nstretched out his two legs, threw up his arms, and yawned out, 'Oh,\ndear, I wish I was Squire Kavanagh!'\n\n\"The words were scarce uttered when he found himself, still yawning,\nin the grand parlor of Kavanagh House, sitting opposite to a table\nlaid out with china, and a table-cloth, silver forks, and no end of\nsilver spoons, and a roaring hot beefsteak before him. Jem rubbed his\neyes and then his hands with joy, and thought to himself, 'By dad, my\nwish is granted, and I'll lay in plenty of beefsteak first of all.' He\nbegan cutting away; but, before he had finished, he was interrupted by\nsome people coming in. It was Sir Harry M'Manus, Squire Brien, and two\nor three other grand gentlemen; and says they to him, 'Kavanagh, don't\nyou know this is the day you're to decide your bet for five hundred\npounds, that you will leap your horse over the widest part of the pond\noutside?'\n\n\"'Is it me? says Jem. 'Why, I never leaped a horse in my life!'\n\n\"'Bother!' says one; 'you're joking. You told us yourself that you did\nit twenty times, and there's the English colonel that made the bet\nwith you, and he'll be saying, if you don't do it, that the Irish are\nall braggers; so, my dear fellow, it just comes to this--you must\neither leap the pond or fight me; for, relying upon your word, I told\nthe colonel I saw you do it myself.'\n\n\"'I must fight you or leap the pond, is it?' answered Jem, trembling\nfrom head to foot.\n\n\"'Certainly, my dear fellow,' replied Sir Harry. 'Either I must shoot\nyou or see you make the leap; so take your choice.'\n\n\"'Oh! then, bring out the horse,' whimpered Jem, who was beginning to\nwish he wasn't Squire Kavanagh.\n\n\"In a minute afterward, Jem found himself out in the lawn, opposite a\npond that appeared to him sixty feet wide at the least. 'Why,' said\nhe, 'you might as well ask me to jump over the ocean, or give a\nhop-step-and-a-leap from Howth to Holyhead, as get any horse to cross\nthat lake of a pond.'\n\n\"'Come, Kavanagh,' said Sir Henry, 'no nonsense with us. We know you\ncan do it if you like; and now that you're in for it, you must finish\nit.'\n\n\"'Faix, you'll finish me, I'm afeerd,' said Jem, seeing they were in\nearnest with him; 'but what will you do if I'm drowned?'\n\n\"'Do?' says Sir Henry.' Oh, make yourself aisy on that account. You\nshall have the grandest wake that ever was seen in the country. We'll\nbury you dacently, and we'll all say that the bouldest horseman now in\nIreland is the late Squire Kavanagh. If that doesn't satisfy you,\nthere's no pleasing you; so bring out the horse immediately.'\n\n\"'Oh! murder, murder!\" says Jem to himself; 'isn't this a purty thing,\nthat I must be drowned to make a great character for a little spalpeen\nlike Squire Kavanagh? Oh, then, it's I that wish I was Jem M'Gowan\nagain! Going to be drowned like a rat, or smothered like a blind\nkitten! and all for a vagabond I don't care a straw about. I, that\nnever was on a horse's back before, to think of leaping over an ocean!\nBad cess to you, Squire Kavanagh, for your boastin' and your\nwagerin'!'\n\n{58}\n\n\"Well, a fine, dashing, jumping, rearing, great big gray horse was led\nup by two grooms to Jem's side. 'Oh, the darling!' said Sir Harry;\n'there he goes! there's the boy that will win our bets for us! Clap\nhim at once upon the horse's back,' says he to the grooms. The sight\nleft Jem's eyes the very instant he saw the terrible gray horse, well\nknown as one of the most vicious bastes in the entire country. If he\ncould, he'd have run away, but fright kept him standing stock-still;\nand, before he knew where he was, he was hoisted into the saddle.\n'Now, boys,' roared Sir Harry, 'give the horse plenty whip, and my\nlife for it he is over the pond.'\n\n\"Jem heard two desperate slashes made on the flanks of the horse. The\ncreature rose on his four legs off the ground, and came down with a\nsoss that sent Jem up straight from the saddle like a ball, and down\nagain with a crack fit to knock him into a hundred thousand pieces,\nnot one of them bigger than the buttons of his waistcoat. 'Murder!' he\nshrieked; 'I wish I was Jem M'Gowan back again!' But there was no use\nin saying this, for he had already got his wish. The horse galloped\naway like lightning. He felt rising one instant up as high as the\nclouds, and the next he came with a plop into the water, like a stone\nthat you would make take a 'dead man's dive.' He remembered no more\ntill he saw his two kind friends, Sir Harry M'Manus and Squire Brien,\nholding him by the two legs in the air, and the water pouring from his\nmouth, nose, and every stitch of his clothes, as heavy and as constant\nas if it was flowing through a sieve, or as if he was turned into a\nwatering-pot.\n\n\"'I'm a dead man,' says he, looking up in the face of his grand\nfriends as well as he could, and kicking at the same time to get loose\nfrom them. 'I'm a dead man; and, what's worse, I'm a murdered man by\nthe two of you.'\n\n\"'Bedad, you're anything but that,' said Sir Harry. 'You're now the\ngreatest man in the county, for, though you fell into the pond, the\nhorse leapt it; and I have won my bet, for which I am extremely\nobliged to you.'\n\n\"After shaking the water out of him, they laid him down on the grass,\ngot a bottle of whisky, and gave him as much as he chose of it. Jem's\nspirits began to rise a little, and he laughed heartily when they told\nhim he had won 500 from the English colonel. Jem got on his legs, and\nwas beginning to walk about, when who should he see coming into the\ndemesne but two gentlemen--one dressed like an officer, with under\nhis arm a square mahogany box, the other with a great big horsewhip.\nJem rubbed his hands with delight, for he made sure that the gentleman\nwho carried the box was going to make Squire Kavanagh--that is,\nhimself--some mighty fine present.\n\n\"'Kavanagh,' said Sir Harry, 'you will want some one to stand by you\nas a friend in this business; would you wish me to be your friend?'\n\n\"'In troth, I would,' says Jem. 'I would like you to act as a friend\nto me upon all occasions.'\n\n\"'Oh, that's elegant!' said Sir Harry. 'We'll now have rare sport.'\n\n\"'I'm mighty glad to hear it,' Jem replied, 'for I want a little sport\nafter all the troubles I had.'\n\n\"'Oh, you're a brave fellow,' said Sir Harry.\n\n\"'To be sure I am,' answered Jem. 'Didn't I leap the gray horse over\nthe big pond?'\n\n\"The gentleman with the box and whip here came up to Jem and his\nfriends; and the whip-gentleman took off his hat, and says he, 'Might\nI be after asking you, is there any one of the present company Squire\nKavanagh?'\n\n\"Jem did not like the looks of the gentleman, and Sir Harry M'Manus\nstepped before him, and said--'Yes; he is here to the fore. What is\nyour business with him? I am acting as his _friend_, and I have a right\nto ask the question.'\n\n\"'Then, I'll tell ye what it is,' said {59} the gentleman. 'He\ninsulted my sister at the Naas races yesterday.'\n\n\"'Faix,' says Jem, 'that's a lie! Sure, I wasn't near Naas races.'\n\n\"The word was hardly out of his mouth when he got a crack of a\nhorsewhip across the face, that cut, he thought, his head in two. He\ncaught hold of the gentleman, and tried to take the whip out of his\nhand; but, instead of the strength of Jem M'Gowan, he had only the\nweakness of Squire Kavanagh, and he was in an instant collared; and,\nin spite of all his kicking and roaring, lathered with the big whip\nfrom the top of his head to the sole of his foot. The gentleman got at\nlast a little tired of beating him, and, flinging him away from him,\nsaid 'You and I are now quits about the lie, but you must give me\nsatisfaction for insulting my sister.'\n\n\"'Satisfaction!' roared out Jem, as lie twisted and turned about with\nthe pain of the beating. 'Bedad, I'll never be satisfied till every\nbone in your ugly body is broken.'\n\n\"'Very well,' said the gentleman. 'My friend, Captain M'Ginnis, is\ncome prepared for this.'\n\n\"Upon that, Jem saw the square box opened that he thought was filled\nwith a beautiful present for him; and he saw four ugly-looking pistols\nlying beside each other, and in one corner about two dozen of shining\nbran-new bullets. Jem's knees knocked together with fright when he saw\nCaptain M'Ginnis and Sir Harry priming and loading the pistols.\n\n\"'Oh! murder, murder! this is worse than the gray horse,' he said.\n'Now I am quite sure of being killed entirely.' So he caught hold of\nSir Harry by the coat, and stuttered out, *Oh, then, what in the world\nare ye going to do with me?'\n\n\"'Do?' replied his friend; 'why, you're going to stand a shot, to be\nsure.'\n\n\"'The devil a shot I'll stand,' said Jem. 'I'll run away this minute.'\n\n\"'Then, by my honor and veracity, if you do,' replied Sir Harry, 'I'll\nstop you with a bullet. My honor is concerned in this business. You\nasked me to be your friend, and I'll see you go through it\nrespectably. You must either stand your ground like a gentleman, or be\nshot like a dog.'\n\n\"Jem heartily wished he was no longer Squire Kavanagh; and as they\ndragged him up in front of the gentleman, and placed them about eight\nyards asunder, he thought of the quiet, easy life he led before he\nbecame a grand gentleman. He never while a laboring boy was ducked in\na pond, or shot like a wild duck. But now he heard something said\nabout 'making ready;' he saw the gentleman raise his pistol on a level\nwith his head; he tried to lift his arm, but it stuck as fast by his\nside as if it was glued there. He saw the wide mouth of the wicked\ngentleman's pistol opened at his very eye, and looking as if it were\npasted up to his face. He could even see the leaden bullet that was\nsoon to go skelpin' through his brains! He saw the gentleman's finger\non the trigger! His head turned round and round, and in an agony he\ncried out--'Oh, I wish I was Jem M'Gowan back again!'\n\n\n\n\"'Jem, you'll lose half your day's work,' said Ned Maguire, who was\nlaboring in the same field with him. 'There you've been sleeping ever\nsince your dinner, while Squire Kavanagh, that you are always talking\nabout, was shot a few minutes ago in a duel that he fought with some\nstrange gentleman in his own demesne.'\n\n\"'Oh,\" said Jem, as soon as he found that he really wasn't shot, 'I\nwouldn't for the wealth of the world be a gentleman. Better to labor\nall day than spend half an hour in the grandest of company. Faix, I've\nhad enough and to spare of grand company and being a gentleman since I\nhave gone to sleep here in the potato-field; and Squire Kavanagh, if\nhe only knew it, had much more reason, poor man, to wish he was Jem\nM'Gowan than I had to wish I was Squire Kavanagh.'\n\n{60}\n\n\"And ever after that, Pat,\" concluded the old lady, \"Jem M'Gowan went\nabout his work like a man, instead of wasting his time in nonsensical\nwishings.\"\n\n\"Thankee, granny,\" yawned Pat M'Gowan, as he shuffled off to bed.\n\"After that long story, I don't think I'll ever wish to be a lord\nagain.\"\n\n\n\n------\n\nFrom Chambers's Journal.\n\nTHE MONT CENIS TUNNEL.\n\n\nThe tunnel through the Alps at present being pierced to connect the\nrailway system of France and Italy, has acquired the title of the\n\"Mont Cenis Tunnel;\" but its real position and direction have very\nlittle in common with that well-known Alpine pass. On examining a\nchart of the district which has been selected for this important\nundertaking, we shall observe that the main chain of the Cottian Alps\nextends in a direction very nearly East and West, and that this\nportion of it is bounded on either side by two roughly parallel\nvalleys. On the North we have the valley of the Arc, and on the South\nthe valley of the Dora Ripari, or, more strictly speaking, the valley\nof Rochemolles, a branch of the Dora. The Arc, flowing from East to\nWest, descends from Lanslebourg to Modane, and from thence, after\njoining the Isere, empties itself into the Rhone above Valence. The\ntorrent Rochemolles, on the other hand, flowing from West to East,\nunites itself with the Dora Ripari at Oulx, descends through a narrow\nand winding valley to Susa, and thence along the plain to Turin. The\npostal road, leaving St. Michel, mounts the valley of the Arc as far\nas Lanslebourg, then turns suddenly to the South, passes the heights\nof the Mont Cenis, and reaches Susa by a very steep descent. On\nmounting the valley of the Arc, and stopping about eighteen miles West\nof Mont Cenis, and a mile and a half below the Alpine village of\nModane, we arrive at a place called Fourneaux. Here, at about three\nhundred feet above the level of the main road, is the Northern\nentrance of the tunnel; the Southern entrance is at the picturesque\nvillage of Bardonneche, situated at about twenty miles West of Susa,\nin the valley of Rochemolles.\n\nThe considerations which decided the Italian engineers upon selecting\nthis position for the contemplated tunnel, were principally the\nfollowing: first, it was the shortest route that could be found;\nsecondly, the difference of level between the two extremities was not\ntoo great; and, thirdly, the construction of the connecting lines of\nrailway--on the North, from St. Michel to Fourneaux, and on the South,\nfrom Susa to Bardonneche were, as mountain railways go, practicable,\nif not easy. The idea of a tunnel through the Alps had long occupied\nthe minds of engineers and of statesmen both in France and Italy; but\nit is to the latter country that we must give the credit of having\nworked the idea into a practical shape, and of having inaugurated one\nof the most stupendous works ever undertaken by any people. To pierce\na tunnel seven and a half English miles long, by ordinary means,\nthrough a hard rock, in a position where vertical shafts were\nimpossible, would be an exceedingly difficult, if not, _in a practical\npoint of view, an impossible_ undertaking, not only on account of the\ndifficulties of ventilation, but also on account of the immense _time_\nand consequent expense which it would entail. It was evident, {61}\nthen, that if the project of a tunnel through the Alps was ever to be\nrealized, some extraordinary and completely new system of mining must\nbe adopted, by means of which not only a rapid and perfect system of\nventilation could be insured, enabling the miners to resume, without\ndanger, their labors immediately after an explosion, but which would\ntreble, or at least double, the amount of work usually performed in\nany given time by the system hitherto adopted in tunnelling through\nhard rock. To three Piedmontese engineers, Messrs. Grandis, Grattoni,\nand Sommeiller, is due the merit of having solved this most difficult\nproblem; for whether the opening of the Alpine tunnel take place in\nten or twenty years, its ultimate success is now completely assured.\n\nA short review of the history of this undertaking, and a summary of\nthe progress made, together with a description of the works as they\nare conducted at the present time, derived from personal observation,\ncannot fail to be interesting to English readers.\n\nEarly in 1857, at St. Pier d'Arena, near Genoa, a series of\nexperiments was undertaken before a select government commission, to\nexamine into the practicability of a project for a mechanical\nperforating-engine, proposed by Messrs. Grandis, Grattoni, and\nSommeiller, for the more rapid tunnelling through hard rock, and with\na view to its employment in driving the proposed shaft through the\nAlps. This machine was to be worked by means of air, highly compressed\nby hydraulic or other economical means; which compressed air, after\nperforming its work in the perforating or boring machines, would be an\navailable and powerful source of ventilation in the tunnel. These\nexperiments placed so completely beyond any doubt the practicability\nof the proposed system, that, so soon as August of the same year, the\nlaw permitting the construction of the tunnel was promulgated.\n\nAt this time, absolutely nothing had been prepared, with the exception\nof a very general project presented by the proposers, and the model of\nthe machinery with which the experiments had been made before the\ngovernment commission; we cannot, therefore, be much surprised on\nfinding that some considerable time elapsed before the new machinery\ncame into successful operation, the more particularly when we consider\nthe entire novelty of the system, and the unusual difficulties\nnaturally attending the first starting of such large works, in\ndistricts so wild and uncongenial as those of Fourneaux and\nBardonneche. Fourneaux was but a collection of mountain-huts,\ncontaining about four hundred inhabitants, entirely deprived of every\nmeans of supporting the wants of any increase of population, and where\noutside-work could not be carried on for more than six months in the\nyear, owing to its ungenial climate. Nor was the case very different\nat Bardonneche, a small Alpine village, situated at more than thirteen\nhundred metres (4,225 feet) above the level of the sea, and populated\nby about one thousand inhabitants, who lived upon the produce of their\nsmall patches of earth, and the rearing of sheep and goats, and with\ntheir only road of communication with the outer world in a most\nwretched and deplorable condition. Under these circumstances, we can\nimagine that the task of bringing together large numbers of workmen,\nand their competent directing staff, must have been by no means easy;\nand that the first work of the direction, although of a nature really\nmost arduous and tedious (requiring, above all, time and patience),\nwas also of a nature that could scarcely render its effects very\napparent to the world at large for some considerable time. Again, it\nwas necessary in this time to make the detailed studies not only of\nthe tunnel itself, but of the compressing and perforating machinery on\nthe large scale proposed to be used. This machinery had to be made and\ntransported through a country abounding in difficulties. Then, as\nmight be {62} expected, actual trials showed serious defects in the\nnew machines for the compression of air; and, in perfecting the\nmechanical perforators, unexpected difficulties were encountered,\nwhich often threatened to prove insurmountable. The total inexperience\nand unskilfulness of the workmen, and the necessity of giving to them\nthe most tedious instruction; accidents of most disheartening and\ndiscouraging kinds--all tended to delay the successful application of\nthe new system.\n\nThe first important work to be undertaken was the tracing or setting\nout of the centre line of the proposed tunnel. It was necessary first\nto fix on the summit of the mountain a number of points, in a direct\nline, which should pass through the two points chosen, or rather\nnecessitated by the conditions of the locality, for the two ends of\nthe tunnel in the respective valleys of the Arc and of Rochemolles;\nsecondly, to determine the exact distance between these two ends; and\nthirdly, to know the precise difference of level between the same\npoints. These operations commenced toward the end of August, 1857.\nStarting from the Northern entrance at Fourneaux, a line was set out\nroughly in the direction of Bardonneche, which line was found to cut\nthe valley of Rochemolles at a point considerably above the proposed\nSouthern entrance of the tunnel. On measuring this distance, however,\na second and corrected line could be traced, which was found to be\nvery nearly correct. Correcting this second line in the same manner,\nalways departing from the North end, a third line was found to pass\nexactly through the two proposed and given points. The highest point\nof this line was found to be very nearly at an equal distance from\neach end of the tunnel, and at but a short distance below the true\nsummit of the mountain-point, called the \"Grand Vallon.\" The line thus\napproximately determined, it was necessary to fix definitely and\nexactly three principal stations or observatories--one on the highest\nor culminating point of the mountain, perpendicularly over the axis of\nthe tunnel; and the other two in a line with each entrance, in such a\nmanner that, from the centre observatory, both the others could be\nobserved. At the Southern end, owing to the convenient conformation of\nthe mountain, the observatory could be established at a point not very\nfar from the mouth of the tunnel; but toward the North, several\nprojecting points or counterforts on the mountain necessitated the\ncarrying of the Northern observatory to a very considerable distance\nbeyond the entrance of the gallery--not, however, so far as not to be\ndiscerned clearly and distinctly, and without oscillation, by the very\npowerful and excellent instrument employed. These three points\npermanently established, remain as a check for those intervening, and\nserve as the base of the operations for the periodical testing of the\naccuracy of the line of excavation.\n\nThe first rough tracing out of the line was completed before the\nwinter of the year 1857, and it was considered sufficiently correct to\npermit the commencement of the tunnel at each end by the ordinary\nmeans--manual labor. In the autumn of 1858, the corrected line was\ntraced, and the observatories definitely fixed, and all other\nnecessary geodetic operations completed. Contemporaneously was\nundertaken a careful levelling between the two ends, taken along the\nnarrow path of the Colle di Frejus, and bench-marks were established\nat intervals along the whole line. All the data necessary for an exact\nprofile of the work were now obtained. The exact length of the future\ntunnel was found to be twelve thousand two hundred and twenty metres,\nor about seven and a half English miles; and the difference of level\nbetween the two mouths was ascertained to be two hundred and forty\nmetres, or seven hundred and eighty feet, the Southern or Bardonneche\nend being the highest. Under these circumstances, it would have been\neasy to have established a {63} single gradient from Bardonneche down\nto Fourneaux of about two centimetres per metre--that is, of about one\nin fifty. But a little reflection will show, that in working both ends\nof the gallery at once, in order to effect the proper drainage of the\ntunnel, it would be necessary to establish two gradients, each\ninclining toward the respective mouths, and meeting in some point in\nthe middle. This, in fact, has been done, and the two hundred and\nforty metres' difference of level has been distributed in the\nfollowing manner: From Bardonneche, the gradient mounts at the rate of\n0.50 per one thousand metres--that is, one in two thousand as far as\nthe middle of the gallery; here it descends toward Fourneaux with a\ngradient of 22.20 metres per one thousand, or about one in forty-five.\nThe highest point of the Grand Vallon perpendicularly over the axis of\nthe tunnel is 1615.8 metres, or 5251.31 feet.\n\nThe difficulties encountered in the carrying out of these various\ngeodetic operations can scarcely be exaggerated. It is true that\nnothing is more easy than to picket out a straight line on the ground,\nor to measure an angle correctly with a theodolite; but if we consider\nthe aspect of the locality in which these operations had to be\nconducted, repeated over and over again, and tested in every available\nmanner with the most minute accuracy, we shall be quite ready to\naccord our share of praise and admiration to the perseverance which\nsuccessfully carried out the undertaking. In these regions, the sun,\nfogs, snow, and terrific winds succeed each other with truly\nmarvellous rapidity, the distant points become obscured by clouds,\nperhaps at the very moment when an important sight is to be taken,\ncausing most vexatious delays, and often necessitating a\nrecommencement of the whole operation. These delays may in some cases\nextend for days, and even weeks. To these inconveniences add the\nnecessity of mounting and descending daily with delicate instruments\nfrom three thousand to four thousand feet over rocks and rugged\nmountain-paths, the time occupied in sending from one point to\nanother, and the difficulty of planting pickets on elevated positions\noften almost inaccessible. All these inconveniences considered, and we\nmust admit the unusual difficulties of a series of operations which,\nunder other circumstances, would have offered nothing peculiarly\nremarkable.\n\nAs has already been pointed out, the excavation of the gallery at both\nends had already been in operation, by ordinary means, since the\nlatter part of the year 1857; this work continued without interruption\nuntil the machinery was ready; and the progress made in that time\naffords a valuable standard by which to measure the effect of the new\nmachinery. In the interval between the end of 1857 and that to which\nwe have now arrived, namely, the end of 1858, many important works had\nbeen pushed forward. At Bardonneche, the communications had been\nopened, and bridges and roads constructed for facilitating the\ntransport of the heavy machinery. Houses for the accommodation of the\nworkmen had been rapidly springing up, together with the vast edifices\nfor the various magazines and offices. The canal, more than a mile and\na half in length, for conveying water to the air-compressing machines,\nwas constructed, and the little Alpine village had become the centre\nof life and activity. At Fourneaux, works of a similar character had\nbeen put in motion; only here the transport of the water for the\ncompressors was more costly and difficult, the water being at a low\nlevel. At first, a current derived from the Arc was used to raise\nwater to the required height, but afterward it was found necessary to\nestablish powerful forcing-pumps, new in their details, which are\nworked by huge water-wheels driven by the Arc itself. Early in the\nmonth of June, 1859, the first erection of the compressing machinery\nwas commenced at Bardonneche. The badness of the season, however, and\n{64} the Italian campaign of this year, delayed the rapid progress,\nand even caused a temporary suspension of this work. The results\nobtained by the experiments which had previously been made on a small\nscale at St. Pier d'Arena, failed completely in supplying the data\nnecessary to insure a practical success to the first applications of\nthe new system; numberless modifications, both in the\ncompressing-engines and in the perforating-machines, were found\nnecessary; and several months were consumed in experimenting with,\nmodifying, and improving the huge machinery; so that it was not before\nthe 10th of November, 1860, that five compressors were successfully\nand satisfactorily at work. On the 12th, however, two of the large\nconducting-pipes burst, and caused a considerable amount of damage,\nwithout causing, however, any loss of life. This accident revealed one\nor two very serious defects in the manner of working the valves of the\nengine; and in order to provide against the possibility of future\naccidents of the same nature, further most extensive modifications\nwere undertaken.\n\nBy the beginning of January, 1861, the five compressors were again at\nwork; and on the 12th of this month the boring-engine was introduced\nfor the first time into the tunnel. Very little useful result was,\nhowever, obtained for a long and anxious period, beyond continually\nexposing defects and imperfections in the perforators. The pipes\nconducting the compressed air from the compressing-machines to the\ngallery gave at first continued trouble and annoyance; soon, however,\na very perfect system of joints was established, and this source of\ndifficulty was completely removed. After much labor and patience, and\nlittle by little, the perforating-machines became improved and\nperfected, as is always the case in any perfectly new mechanical\ncontrivance having any great assemblage of parts. Actual practice\nforced into daylight those numberless little defects which theory only\ntoo easily overlooks; but there was no lack of perseverance and\ningenuity on the part of the directing engineers; one by one the\nobstacles were met, encountered, and eventually overcome, and the\nmachines at last arrived at the state of precision and perfection at\nwhich they may be seen to-day. About the month of May, 1861, the work\nwas suspended for about a month, in consequence of a derangement in\nthe canal supplying water to the compressors; and it was considered\nnecessary to construct a large reservoir on the flank of the mountain,\nto act as a deposit for the impurities contained in the water, and\nwhich often caused serious inconvenience in the compressors. In the\nwhole of the first year 1861, the number of working days was two\nhundred and nine, and the advance made was but one hundred and seventy\nmetres (five hundred and fifty feet), or about eighteen inches per day\nof twenty-four hours, an amount less than might have been done by\nmanual labor in the same time. In the year 1862, however, in the three\nhundred and twenty-five days of actual work, the advance made was\nraised to three hundred and eighty metres (one thousand two hundred\nand thirty-five feet), giving a mean advance of 1.17 metres, or about\nthree feet nine inches per day. In the year 1863, the length done\n(always referring to the South or Bardonneche side) was raised to\nabove four hundred metres; and no doubt this year a still greater\nprogress will have been made.\n\nAt the Fourneaux or Northern end of the tunnel--owing to increased\ndifficulties peculiar to the locality--the perforation of the gallery\nwas much delayed. A totally different system of mechanism for the\ncompression of air was necessitated; and it was not before the 25th of\nJanuary, 1863, that the boring-machine was in _successful_ operation on\nthis side, or two years later than at Bardonneche. The experience,\nhowever, gained at this latter place, and the transfer of a few\nskilful workmen, soon raised the advance {65} made per day to an\namount equivalent to that effected at the Southern entrance. Thus, on\nthe South side (omitting the first year, 1861) since the beginning of\n1862, and on the North side since the beginning of 1863, the new\nsystem of mechanical tunnelling may be said to have been in regular\nand _successful_ operation.\n\nIn the beginning of September of this year were completed in all three\nthousand five hundred and seventy metres of gallery. From this we\ndeduct sixteen hundred metres done by manual labor, leaving, for the\nwork done by the machines, a length of nineteen hundred and seventy\nmetres. From this we can make a further deduction of the one hundred\nand seventy metres executed in the first year of experiment and trial\nat Bardonneche, so that we have eighteen hundred metres in length\nexcavated by the machines in a time dating from the beginning of 1862\nat the South end, and from the beginning of 1863 at the North end of\nthe tunnel. Thus, up to the month of September, 1864, we have in all\nfour years and six months; and eighteen hundred metres divided by 4.5\ngives us four hundred metres as the rate of progress per year at each\nside, or in total, eight hundred metres per year. Basing our\ncalculation, then, on this rate, we find that the eight thousand six\nhundred and fifty metres yet to be excavated will require about ten\nand a half more years; so that we may look forward to the opening of\nthe Mont Cenis tunnel at about the year 1875. The directing engineers,\nwho have given good proof of competency and skill, are, however, of\nopinion that this period may be considerably reduced, unless some\ntotally unlooked-for obstacles are met with in the interior of the\nmountain. As has been indicated above, sixteen hundred metres in\nlength of the tunnel was completed by manual labor before the\nintroduction of the mechanical boring-engines, in a period of five\nyears at the North and three years at the South side, equal to four\nyears at each end; and eight hundred metres in four years gives us two\nhundred metres per year, or just one-half excavated by the machine in\nthe same period.\n\nIn using the machines, up to the present time, a perfect ventilation\nof the tunnel has been secured by the compressed air escaping from the\nexhaust of the boring-engines; or by jets of air expressly impinged\ninto the lower end of the gallery to clear out rapidly the smoke and\nvapor formed by the explosion of the mine. It should be remembered,\nmoreover, that in working a gallery of this kind, where vertical\nshafts are impossible, by manual labor, a powerful and costly\nair-compressing apparatus would have been necessary for the\nventilation of the tunnel alone, so that the economy of the system, as\napplied at the Mont Cenis over the general system of tunnelling in\nhard rock, is evident. I propose, in the second portion of this\narticle, to give a short description of the machinery employed and the\nsystem of working adopted, both at the South and North ends of the\nMont Cenis gallery.\n\n\n\nII.\n\nTravellers who are given to pedestrian exercises may easily visit the\nworks being carried on for the perforation of the tunnel through the\nAlps, both at Bardonneche and at Modane, passing from one mouth of the\ntunnel to the other by the Colle di Frejus; and in fine weather, the\ntourist would not repent the eight hours spent in walking from\nBardonneche to Susa--a distance of about twenty-five miles. The road\ndescends the valley of the Dora Ripari, and abounds in beautiful\nscenery. The railway to be constructed along this narrow defile will\nbe found to tax the skill of the engineer as much as any road yet\nattempted. Its total length, from the terminus at Susa to the mouth of\nthe Mont Cenis tunnel, will be forty kilometres, {66} or about\ntwenty-four miles; and the difference of level between these two\npoints is about two thousand five hundred feet, the line having a\nmaximum gradient of one in forty, and a minimum of one in eighty-four.\nThere will be three tunnels of importance, having a total length of\nabout ten thousand feet; three others of lesser dimensions, having a\ntotal length of five thousand five hundred feet; and twelve other\nsmall tunnels, of lengths varying from two hundred and twenty to eight\nhundred and fifty feet, their total length being five thousand four\nhundred feet. Thus, the total length of tunnel on these twenty-four\nmiles of railway will be nearly twenty-one thousand feet, or about\nfour miles--just one-sixth of the whole line. There will also be\nseveral examples of bridges and retaining walls of unusual dimensions.\n\nThe works being carried on at Bardonneche are on a larger scale than\nat Modane; so we will, with our readers' permission, suppose ourselves\narrived in company at the former place, and the first point which we\nwill visit together will be the large house containing the\nair-compressing machinery. Before entering, however, we will throw a\nglance at the exterior of the building. We find before us, as it were,\n_two_ houses, in a direct line one with the other--one situated at the\nfoot of a steep ascent; and the other at about seventy or eighty feet\nabove it, on the side of the mountain. These two houses are, however,\nbut _one_, being joined by ten rows of inclined arch-work. Along the\nsummit of each row of arches is a large iron pipe, more than a foot in\ndiameter. These ten pipes, inclined at an angle of about forty-five\ndegrees, come out of the side of the upper house, and enter the side\nof the lower house, and serve to conduct the water from the large\nreservoir above to the air-compressing machinery, which is arranged in\nthe house below, exerting in this machinery the pressure of a column\nof water eighty-four feet six inches in height. On entering the\ncompression-room, we have before us ten compressing-machines,\nprecisely the same in all their parts--five on the right hand, and five\non the left, forming, as it were, two groups of five each. In the\ncentre of these two groups are two machines, in every respect like a\ncouple of small steam-engines, only they are worked by compressed air\ninstead of steam, and which we will call _aereomotori_. Each of these\naereomotori imparts a rotary motion to a horizontal axis extending\nalong the whole length of the room, and on which are a series of cams,\nwhich regulate the movements of the valves of the great compressors.\nThis axis we will call the \"main shaft.\" One group of five compressors\nis totally independent of the other, and has its aereomotore with its\nmain shaft; but still, with one single aereomotore, by means of a\nsimple connecting apparatus, it is possible to work one or the other\ngroup separately, or both together; also, any number of the ten\ncompressors can be disconnected for repairs without affecting the\naction of the rest, or may be injured without conveying any injury to\nthe others. In front of each of the ten compressors are placed\ncylindrical recipients, in every respect like large steam-boilers,\nexcept that they have no fire-grate or flues, each having a capacity\nof seventeen cubic metres, or five hundred and eighty-three cubic\nfeet. These recipients are put into communication one with the other\nby means of a tube similar to a steam-pipe connecting a series of\nsteam-boilers; and each connection is furnished with a stop-valve, so\nthat any one recipient can be isolated from the rest.\n\nLet us now examine the end and action of this machinery. As the\naereomotori which work the valves of the machines for forcing air into\nthe recipients are themselves worked by compressed air coming from the\nrecipients, it is evident that before we can put the\ncompressing-machines in motion, we must have already some supply of\ncompressed air in the {67} cylindrical vessels. This supply of air,\ncompressed to a pressure of six atmospheres, is obtained in the\nfollowing manner: Each group of five recipients, filled with air at\nthe ordinary atmospheric pressure, is put in communication with a\nlarge pipe which enters into a cistern placed in the side of the\nmountain at about one hundred and sixty-two feet above the floor of\nthe compressing-room. The first operation, then, is to open the\nequilibrium valves placed at the bottom of the two pipes (one from\neach group of recipients); water then rushes into the vessels,\ncompressing the ordinary air therein contained to about a pressure of\nsix atmospheres. A communication is now opened between this compressed\nair and the cylinders of the aereomotori, which commence their action\nprecisely as a steam-engine would do on the admission of steam; a\nrotary motion is given to the main shaft; and the equilibrium valves,\nplaced in chambers at the bottom of each of the ten pipes coming from\nthe cistern of water placed in the house above, are opened. We will\nobserve the operation in one of the ten lines of action, as it were,\nconsisting of the pipe conducting the water from the cistern, the\ncompressing-machine, and the cylindrical recipient. The equilibrium\nvalve at the bottom of the pipe being opened in the manner above\nexplained, the water, with its head of eighty-four feet six inches,\nrushes past it, along a short length of horizontal pipe (in which is\nan exhaust valve, now closed), and begins to mount a vertical column\nor tube of cast-iron about ten feet high and two feet in diameter: the\nair in this column undergoes compression until it has reached a\npressure sufficient to force open a valve in a pipe issuing from the\nsummit of the tube, and connecting it with the recipient. This valve\nbeing already weighted with the pressure of the air compressed to six\natmospheres by the means previously explained, a certain quantity of\nair is thus forced into the vessel; at this moment, another revolution\nof the main shaft causes the equilibrium valve at the bottom of the\nconducting-pipe to be shut, and at the same time opens the exhaust\nvalve at the foot of the vertical column. The head of water being now\ncut off, and the exhaust open, the water in the vertical column begins\nto sink by its own gravity, leaving a vacuum behind it, if it were not\nfor a small clack-valve opening inward in the upper part of the\ncompressing column, which opens by the external pressure of the air,\nso that by the time all the water has passed out of the exhaust valve,\nthe compressor is again full of atmospheric air; the valve in\nconnection with the recipient being closed by the compressed air\nimprisoned in the vessel. The aereomotori continue their motion,\nanother revolution of the main shaft shuts the exhaust and opens the\nequilibrium or admission valve; the column of water is again permitted\nto act, and the same action is repeated, more air being forced into\nthe recipient at each round or _pulsation_ of the machine. Now,\nsupposing no consumption of the compressed air to take place beyond\nthat used for driving the aereomotori, it seems evident that the water\nin the vessels would be gradually forced out, owing to the growing\npressure of the air inside, above the pressure of the column of water\ncoming from the higher cistern; but the communication with this higher\ncistern is always kept open, the column of water acting, in fact, as a\nsort of moderator or governor to the compressing-machine, rising or\nfalling according to the consumption of the compressed air, and always\ninsuring that there shall be a pressure of six atmospheres acting\nagainst the valve at the summit of the vertical column. A water-tube\nplaced on the outside of each group of recipients, with a graduated\nscale marked on it, indicates at a glance the consumption of air. If\nthe perforating-machines in the tunnel cease working, the pressure\naugments in the recipients, and the water in them falls until an\nequilibrium is established, {68} between the pressure of the column of\nwater and the force of the compressors, until, in fact, these work\nwithout being able to lift the valve at the summit of the vertical\ncompressing column. On the other hand, if more air than usual be used\nfor ventilating the tunnel, or by an accidental leakage in the\nconducting-pipes, the water rises rapidly in the recipients, and\nconsequently in the water-gauge outside, and in thus creating an\nequilibrium, indicates the state of things. By this means a continual\ncompensation of pressure is kept up, which prevents any shock on the\nvalves, and causes the machine to work with the regularity and\nuniformity of a steam-engine provided with a governor. In every turn\nof the main shaft, a complete circle of effects take place in the\ncompressors; and experience has shown that three turns a minute of the\nshaft--that is, three _pulsations_ of the compressing-machine per\nminute--are sufficient. It will thus be seen that a column of water,\nhaving the great velocity due to a head of eighty-four feet six\ninches, acts upon a column of air contained in a vertical tube; the\neffect of this velocity being to inject, as it were, a certain\nquantity of air into a recipient at each upward stroke of the column,\nand at each downward stroke drawing in after it an equivalent quantity\nof atmospheric air as a fresh supply. The ten recipients charged with\nair compressed to six atmospheres (ninety pounds on the square inch)\nin the manner above explained, serve as a reservoir of the force\nrequired for working the boring-engines in the tunnel, and for\nventilating and purifying the gallery. The air is conducted in pipes\nabout eight inches in diameter, having a thickness of metal of about\nthree-eighths of an inch. Much doubt had previously been expressed as\nto the possibility of conveying compressed air to great distances\nwithout a very great and serious loss of power. The experience gained,\nhowever, at the Mont Cenis has shown that, conveyed to a distance of\nthirteen English miles, the loss would be but one-tenth of the\noriginal force; and that the actual measured loss of power in a\ndistance of six thousand five hundred feet, a little more than a mile\nand a quarter, was less than 1-127th of the original pressure in the\nrecipients.\n\nThe mouth of the tunnel is but a few hundred yards from the\nair-compressing house--we will now proceed thither. For nearly a mile\nin length the gallery is completed and lined with masonry. At the\nfirst view, we are struck with the bold outline of its section and its\nample dimensions. Excepting, perhaps, the passage of an occasional\nrailway-truck, laden with pieces of rock and rubbish, we find nothing\nto remind us of the numbers of busy workmen and of the powerful\nmachines which are laboring in the tunnel. All is perfectly quiet and\nsolitary. Looking around us as we traverse this first and completed\nportion, we observe nothing very different from an ordinary\nrailway-tunnel, with the exception of the great iron pipe which\nconveys the compressed air, and is attached to the side of the wall.\nAt the end of about a quarter of an hour we begin to hear sounds of\nactivity, and little lights flickering in the distance indicate that\nwe are approaching the scene of operations. In a few moments we reach\nthe second division of the tunnel, or that part which is being\nenlarged from the comparatively small section made by the\nperforating-machine to its full dimensions, previously to being lined\nwith masonry. In those portions where the workmen are engaged in the\nsomewhat dangerous operation of detaching large blocks of stone from\nthe roof, the tunnel is protected by a ceiling of massive beams, under\nwhich the visitor passes--not, however, without hurrying his pace and\nexperiencing a feeling of satisfaction when the distance is completed.\nGradually leaving behind us the bee-like crowd of busy miners, with\nthe eternal ring of their boring-bars against the hard rock, we find\nthe excavated gallery {69} getting smaller and smaller, and the\ndifficulties of picking our way increasing at every step; the sounds\nbehind us get fainter and fainter, and in a short time we are again in\nthe midst of a profound solitude.\n\nThe little gallery in which we are now stumbling our way over blocks\nof stone and rubbish, only varied by long tracts of thick slush and\npools of water, is the section excavated by the boring-machine--in\ndimension about twelve feet broad by eight feet high. The tramway\nwhich has accompanied us all the way is still continued along this\nsmall section. In the middle portion underneath the rails is the\ncanal, inclined toward the mouth of the tunnel, for carrying off the\nwater; and in this canal are now collected the pipes for conveying the\ncompressed air to the machines, and the gas for illuminating the\ngallery. At the end of a few minutes, a rattling, jingling sound\nindicates that we are near the end of our excursion, and that we are\napproaching the perforating-machines. On arriving, we find that nearly\nthe whole of the little gallery is taken up by the engine, the frame\nof which, mounted upon wheels, rests upon the main tramway, so that\nthe whole can be moved backward or forward as necessary. On examining\nthe arrangement a little closely, we find that in reality we have\nbefore us nine or ten perforators, completely independent of one\nanother, all mounted on one frame, and each capable of movement in any\ndirection. Attached to every one of them are two flexible tubes, one\nfor conveying the compressed air, and the other the water which is\ninjected at every blow or stroke of the tool into the hole, for the\npurpose of clearing out the debris and for cooling the point of the\n\"jumper.\" In front, directed against the rock, are nine or ten tubes\n(according to the number of perforators), very similar in appearance\nto large gun-barrels, out of which are discharged with great rapidity\nan equal number of boring-bars or jumpers. Motion is given to these\njumpers by the direct admission of a blast of compressed air behind\nthem, the return stroke being effected by a somewhat slighter pressure\nof air than was used to drive them forward. We will suppose the\nmachine brought up for the commencement of an attack. The points most\nconvenient for the boring of the holes having been selected, the nine\nor ten perforators, as the case may be, are carefully adjusted in\nfront of them. The compressed air is then admitted, and the boring of\nthe holes commences. On an average, at the end of about three-quarters\nof an hour, the nine or ten holes are pierced to a depth of two feet\nto two feet six inches. Another ten holes are then commenced, and so\non, until about eighty holes are pierced. The greater number of these\nholes are driven toward the centre of the point of attack, and the\nrest round the perimeter. The driving of these eighty holes to an\naverage depth of two feet three inches, is usually completed in about\nseven hours, and the second operation is then commenced.\n\nThe flexible tubes conveying the compressed air and the water are\ndetached from the machines, and placed in security in the covered\ncanal. The perforating-machine, mounted on its frame or truck, is\ndrawn back on the tramway behind two massive folding-doors of wood.\nMiners then advance and charge the holes in the centre with powder,\nand adjust the matches; fire is given, and the miners retire behind\nthe folding-doors, which are closed. The explosion opens a breach in\nthe centre part of the front of attack. Powerful jets of compressed\nair are now injected, to clear off the smoke formed by the powder. As\nsoon as the gallery is clear, the other holes in the perimeter are\ncharged and fired, and more air is injected. Then comes the third\noperation. Gangs of workmen advance and clear away the debris and\nblocks of stone detached by the explosion of the mine, in little\nwagons running on a pair of rails placed by the side of the main\ntramway. This done, the main line is {70} prolonged to the requisite\ndistance, and the perforating engine is again brought forward for a\nfresh attack. Thus, we have three distinct operations--first, the\nmechanical perforation of the holes; secondly, the charging and\nexplosion of the mine; and thirdly, the clearing away of the debris.\nBy careful registers kept since the commencement of the work, it is\nfound that the mean duration of each successive operation is as\nfollows: for the perforation of the holes, seven hours thirty-nine\nminutes; for the charging and explosion of the mine, three hours\ntwenty-nine minutes; for the clearing away of the debris, two hours\nthirty-three minutes; or, in all, nearly fourteen hours. Occasionally,\nhowever, the three operations may be completed in ten hours, all\ndepending upon the hardness of the rock. It has been found practically\nmore expeditious to make two series of operations in twenty-four\nhours.\n\nWhatever may be the nature of the rock, if it is very hard, the depth\nof the holes is reduced; that is, the perforation is only continued\nfor a certain given time--about six and a half hours--which, for the\neighty holes with ten perforaters, gives us about three-quarters of an\nhour for each hole. The rock is generally of calcareous schist,\ncrystallized, and exceedingly hard, traversed by thick veins of\nquartz, which often break the points of the boring-tools after a few\nblows. Each jumper gives about three blows per second, and makes\none-eighteenth of a revolution on its axis at each blow, or one\ncomplete revolution every six seconds. Thus, in the three-quarters of\nan hour necessary to drive a single hole to the depth of twenty-seven\ninches, we have four hundred and fifty revolutions of the bar, and\neighteen hundred violent blows given by the point against the hard\nrock, and that under an impulse of about one hundred and eighty\npounds. These figures will give us some idea of the wear and tear of\nthe perforating-machines. It is calculated that on an average one\nperforating-machine is worn out for every six metres of gallery, so\nthat more than two thousand will be consumed before the completion of\nthe tunnel. The total length completed at the Bardonneche side at the\npresent time is just two thousand three hundred metres, or nearly a\nmile and a half.\n\nAt the north or Modane end, the mechanical perforators are precisely\nthe same as at Bardonneche, as also is the system of working in the\ngallery. The machinery for the compression of air, however, is very\ndifferent, more simple, and in every way an improvement upon that at\nthe South end. Not finding any convenient means of obtaining a head of\neighty-four feet of water sufficient in quantity for working a series\nof compressors, as at Bardonneche, there has been established at\nModane a system of direct compression, the necessary force for which\nis derived from the current of the Arc. Six large water-wheels moved\nby this current give a reciprocating motion to a piston contained in a\nlarge horizontal cylinder of cast iron. This piston, having a column\nof water on each side of it, raises and lowers alternately these two\ncolumns, in two vertical tubes about ten feet high, compressing the\nair in each tube alternately, and forcing a certain quantity, at each\nupward stroke of the water, to enter into a cylindrical recipient.\nThere is very little loss of water in this machine, which in its\naction is very like a large double-barreled common air-pump. It is a\nquestion open to science whether the employment of compressed air for\ndriving the perforating engines in a work such as is in operation at\nthe Mont Cenis, could not be advantageously and economically exchanged\nfor the employment of a direct hydraulic motive force, the ventilation\nof the tunnel being provided for by other means. The system, however,\nemployed at Modane has many advantages, which it is impossible to\noverlook, and its complete success has given a marked and decided\nimpulse to the modern science of tunnelling through hard rock.\n\n------\n\n{71}\n\nTranslated from the Civilta Cattolica.\n\nON THE UNITY OF TYPE IN THE ANIMAL KINGDOM.\n\n\nI.\n\nThe generation of a human creature takes place neither by the\ndevelopment of a being which is found in the germ, sketched as it were\nlike a miniature, nor by a sudden formation or an instantaneous\ntransition from potential to actual existence. It is effected by the\ntrue production of a new being, which pre-exists only virtually in the\nactivity of the germ communicated by the conceiver, and the successive\ntransformation of the potential subject.\n\nThis truth, an _a priori_ postulate of philosophy, and demonstrated by\nphysiology _a posteriori_, was illustrated by us in a preceding\narticle. Here we must discard an error which has sprung from this\ntruth. For there have been materialists who maintained that there was\nbut one type in the whole animal kingdom, that is, _man_, as he unites\nin himself in the highest possible degree perfection of organism and\ndelicacy of feelings; and that all the species of inferior animals\nwere so many stages in the development of that most perfect type. This\nopinion is thus expressed by Milne-Edwards in his highly esteemed\nlectures on the Physiology and Comparative Anatomy of Man and Animals:\n\n  \"Every organized being undergoes in its development deep and various\nmodifications. The character of the anatomical structure, no less than\n  its vital faculties, changes as it passes from the state of embryo\n  to that of a perfect animal in its own species. Now all the animals\n  which are derived from the same type move during a certain time in\n  the same embryonic road, and resemble each other in that process of\n  organization during a certain period of time, the longer as their\n  zoological relationship is closer; afterward they deviate from the\n  common road and each acquires the properties belonging to it. Those\n  that are to have a more perfect structure proceed further than those\n  whose organization is completed at less cost. It results from this\n  that the transitory or embryonic state of a superior animal\n  resembles, in a more or less wonderful manner, the permanent state\n  of another animal lower in the same zoological series. Some authors\n  have thought right to conclude from this that the diversity of\n  species proceeds from a series of stages of this kind taking place\n  at different degrees of the embryonic development; and these\n  writers, falling into the exaggerations to which imitators are\n  especially liable, have held that every superior animal, in order to\n  reach its definitive form, must pass through the series of the\n  proper forms of animals which are its inferiors in the zoological\n  hierarchy; so that man, for instance, before he is born, is at first\n  a kind of worm, then a mollusk, then a fish, or something like it,\n  before he can assume the characters belonging to his species. An\n  eminent professor has recently expressed these views in a concise\n  form, saying that the embryology of the most perfect being is a\n  comparative transitory anatomy, and that the anatomic table of the\n  whole animal kingdom is a fixed and permanent representation of the\n  movable aspect of human organogeny.\"\n\nThus, according to this opinion, man is the only type of animal life;\nand every inferior species is but an imitation, more or less perfect,\nof the same; an inchoation stopped in its course at a greater or\nshorter distance from the term to which the work of nature tends in\nits organization of the human embryo. In short, an {72} _entoma in\ndifetto_, to use the language of Dante.\n\nThe doctrine is not new in the scientific world. It was proclaimed in\nthe last century by Robinet, who held that all inferior beings are but\nso many proofs or sketches upon which nature practises in order to\nlearn how to form man. In the beginning of the present century\nLamarck, in Germany, following Kielmayer, reproduced the same theory.\nAccording to him all the species of animals inferior to man are but so\nmany lower steps at which the human embryo stops in its gradual\ndevelopment. Man, on the contrary, is the last term reached by nature\nafter she has travelled all through the zoological scale, to fit\nherself for that work. About the same time the celebrated naturalist,\nStephen Geoffroy Saint Hilaire, began to disseminate in France\nanalogous ideas under the name of _stages of development_ (_arret de\ndeveloppement)_; and these ideas, exaggerated by some of his\ndisciples, amounted in their minds to the same doctrine of Lamarck,\njust alluded to. Among them Professor Serres holds the first rank, and\nit is to him that Milne-Edwards alludes in the passage just cited. He\nexpresses himself thus:\n\n  \"Human organogeny is a comparative transitory anatomy, as\n  comparative anatomy is the fixed and permanent state of the\n  organogeny of man; and, on the contrary, if we reverse the\n  proposition, or method of investigation, and study animal life from\n  the lowest to the highest, instead of considering it from the\n  highest to the lowest, we shall see that the organisms of the series\n  reproduce incessantly those of the embryos, and fix themselves in\n  that state which for animals becomes the term of their development.\n  The long series of changes of form presented by the same organism in\n  comparative anatomy is but the reproduction of the numerous series\n  of transformations to which this organism is subjected in the embryo\n  in the course of its development. In the embryo the passage is\n  rapid, in virtue of the power of the life which animates it; in the\n  animal the life of the organism is exhausted, and it stops there,\n  because it is not permitted to follow the course traced for the\n  human embryo. Distinct stages on the one hand, progressive advance\n  on the other, here is the secret of development, the fundamental\n  difference which the human mind can perceive between comparative\n  anatomy and organogeny. The animal series thus considered in its\n  organisms is but a long chain of embryos which succeed each other\n  gradually and at intervals, reaching at last man, who thus finds his\n  physical development in comparative organogeny.\"\n\nThus speaks Serres. And in another place:\n\n  \"The whole animal kingdom appears only like one animal in the course\n  of formation in the different organisms. It stops here sooner, there\n  later, and thus at the time of each interruption determines, by the\n  state in which it then is, the distinctive and organized characters\n  of classes, families, genera, and species.\"\n\n\nII.\n\n\nTHIS OPINION REFUTED BY PHILOSOPHICAL REASONS.\n\n\nThe futility of the above doctrine is manifest, in the first place,\nfrom the weakness of the foundation on which it rests. That foundation\nis no other than a kind of likeness which appears at first sight\nbetween the rudimental forms which, in the first steps of its\ndevelopment, are assumed by the human embryo, and the forms of some\ninferior animals. For the germ, by the very reason that it has not, as\nit was once believed, all the organism of the human body in\nmicroscopic proportions, but in order to acquire it must pass from\npotential to actual existence--by that very reason, is {73} subjected\nto continual metamorphoses, that is, to successive transformations,\nwhich give it different aspects, from that of a little disc to the\nperfect human figure. Now, it is clear that, in this gradual\ntransition from the mere power to the act of perfect organization, a\nkind of analogy or likeness to some of the numberless forms of\ninferior organizations of the animal kingdom may, and must, be found\nin its intermediate and incomplete state.\n\nBut, evidently, between analogy and identity there is an immense\ndifference; and the fact of there being an analogy with some of those\nforms, gives us no right to infer that there is one with all. Hence\nthis theory is justly despised by the most celebrated naturalists as\nthe whim of an extravagant fancy.\n\n\"According to Lamarck,\" says Fredault, in speaking of this, theory,\n\"all the animals are but inferior grades at which the human germ\nstopped in its development, and man is but the result of the last\nefforts of a nature which has passed successively through the grades\nof its novitiate, and has arrived at the last term of its perfection.\nPresented in this view, the doctrine of epigenesis raised against\nitself the most simple and scientific common sense, as being\nmanifestly erroneous. Numerous works on the development of the germ\nhave demonstrated that appearances were taken for realities, and that\nimagination had created a real romance. It has been proved that if, at\ncertain epochs of its development, the human germ has a distant\nresemblance either to a worm or a reptile, such resemblance is very\nremote, and that on this point we must believe as much as we would\nbelieve of the assertion of a man who, looking at the clouds, should\nsay that he could discover the palaces and gardens of Armida, with\nhorsemen and armies, and all that a heated imagination might fancy.\"\n\nHowever, laying aside all that, the opinion which we are now examining\noriginates, with those who uphold it, in a total absence of\nphilosophical conceptions. That strange idea of the unity of type and\nof its stages, in order to establish the forms of inferior animals,\nwould never have risen in the mind of any one who had duly considered\nthe immutability of essences and the reason of the formation of a\nthing. The act of making differs from the thing made only as the means\ndiffers from the end. Both belong to the same order--one implies\nmovement, the other rest. Their difference lies only in this: that\nwhat in the term is unfolded and complete, in its progress toward the\nterm is found to be only sketched out, and having a tendency to\nformation. Hence it follows that, whatever the point of view from\nwhich we consider the embryo of each animal, it is nothing else but\nthe total organism of the same in the course of formation; and,\ntherefore, it differs as substantially from every other organism as\nthe term itself toward which it proceeds. And what we affirm of the\nwhole organism must be said of each of its parts, which are\nessentially related to the whole and follow the nature of the whole.\nThe first rudiments, for instance, of the hands of man could not\nproperly be compared to the wings of a bird. As they are hands after\nbeing made, so they are hands in the process of formation; as their\nstructure is different, so is their being immutable.\n\nWhatever may be the likeness between the first appearances of the\nhuman embryo and the forms of lower animals, they are not the effect\nof a stable existence, but of a transitory and shifting existence,\nwhich does not constitute a species, but is merely and essentially a\nmovement toward the formation of the species. On the contrary, the\nforms presented by animals already constituted in their being belong\nto a stable and permanent existence, which diversifies one species\nfrom another. The difference, then, between the former and the latter\nis interior and substantial, and cannot be changed into exterior and\naccidental, as it would be if it consisted in {74} stopping or in\ntravelling further on. The movement or tendency which takes place in\nthe germ to become another thing until the said germ assumes a perfect\norganization relative to the being it must produce, is not a quality\nwhich can be discarded, since it is intimately combined with the\nsubject itself in which it is found. The essence itself must be\nchanged in it in order to obtain stability and consistency. But if the\nessence be changed, we are out of the question, since in that case we\nshould have, not the human embryo arrested at this or that stage on\nits road, but a different being substituted for it; of analogous\nexterior appearance, perhaps, but substantially different, which would\nconstitute an annual of inferior degree.\n\nIn short, each animal is circumscribed in its own species, like every\nother being in nature. If to reach to the perfection required by its\nindependent existence it needs development, every step in that journey\nis an inchoation of the next, and cannot exist but as such. To change\nits nature and to make it a permanent being, is as impossible as to\nchange one essence into another.\n\nAgain: From the opinion we are refuting it would follow that all\nanimals, man excepted, are so many monsters, since they are nothing\nelse but deviations, for want of ulterior development, from what\nnature really intends to do as a term of its action. Thus anomaly is\nconverted into law, disorder into order, an accidental case into a\nconstant fact.\n\nFinally, in that hypothesis we should have to affirm not only that the\ninferior and more imperfect species appeared on earth before the\nnobler and the more akin to the unique and perfect type, but also that\non the appearance of a more perfect species the preceding one had\ndisappeared; being inferior in the scale of perfection. For what other\nreason could be alleged for nature's stopping at a bird when it\nintends to make a man, but that the causes are not properly disposed,\nor that circumstances are not quite favorable to the production of\nthat perfect animal? Then when the causes are ready, and the\ncircumstances propitious, it is necessary that man be fashioned and\nthat the bird disappear. Now all that is contrary to experience. For\nall the species, together with the type, are of the same date, and we\nsee them born constantly in the same circumstances which are common to\nall, either of temperature or atmosphere or latitude, etc.\n\nThe theory, then, of the unity of type in the animal kingdom and of\nstages of development falls to the ground, if we only look at it from\na philosophical point of view.\n\n\n\nIII.\n\nIT IS REFUTED BY PHYSIOLOGICAL REASONS.\n\n\nHowever, physiological arguments have more force in this matter than\nthe philosophical; since they are more closely connected with the\nsubject, and have in their favor the tangible evidence of fact.\n\nWe shall take our arguments from three celebrated naturalists as the\nrepresentatives of an immense number, whom want of space forbids us to\nquote.\n\nFlourens shows the error of that opinion by referring to the diversity\nof the nervous system. The nervous system is the foundation of the\nanimal organism; it is the general instrument of vital functions, of\nsensation, and of motion. If then one archetypal idea presides over\nthe formation of the different organisms, only one nervous system\nought to appear in each, more or less developed or arrested. But\nexperience teaches us the contrary. It shows nervous systems differing\nin different animals ordained to different functions, each perfect in\nits kind. \"Is there a unity of type?\" asks this celebrated naturalist.\n\"To say that there is but one type is to say that there is but one\nform of {75} nervous system; because the form of the nervous system\ndetermines the type; that is, it determines the general form of the\nanimal. Now, can we affirm that there is but one form of nervous\nsystem? Can we hold that the nervous system of the zoophyte is the\nsame as that of the mollusk, and this latter the same as that of the\narticulata, or this again the same as that of the vertebrata? And if\nwe cannot say that there is only one nervous system, can we affirm\nthat there is only one type?\"\n\nHe speaks likewise of the unity of plan. Every creature is built\ndifferently, and the difference is especially striking between members\nof the several grand divisions of the animal kingdom. The plan then of\neach is different, and so is the typical idea which prescribes its\nformation. No animal can then be considered as the proof or outline of\nanother.\n\n\"Is there a unity of plan? The plan is the relative location of the\nparts. One can conceive very well the unity of plan without the unity\nof number; for it is sufficient that all the parts, whatever their\nnumber may be, keep always relatively to each other the same place.\nBut can one say that the vertebrate animal, whose nervous system is\nplaced above the digestive canal, is fashioned after the same plan as\nthe mollusk, whose digestive canal is placed above the nervous system?\nCan one say that the crustacean, whose heart is placed above the\nspinal marrow, is fashioned after the same pattern as the vertebrate,\nwhose spinal marrow is placed above the heart? Is the relative\nlocation of the parts maintained? On the contrary, is it not\noverthrown? And if there is a change in the location of parts, how is\nthere a unity of plan?\"\n\nMueller draws nearer to the consideration of the development of the\nhuman embryo, and forcibly illustrates the falsehood of the pretended\ntheory. \"It is not long since it was held with great seriousness that\nthe human foetus, before reaching its perfect state, travels\n_successively_ though the different degrees of development which are\npermanent during the whole life of animals of inferior classes. That\nhypothesis has not the least foundation, as Baer has shown. The human\nembryo never resembles a radiate, or an insect, or a mollusk, or a\nworm. The plan of formation of those animals is quite different from\nthat of the vertebrate. Man then might at most resemble these last,\nsince he himself is a vertebrate, and his organization is fashioned\nafter the common type of this great division of the animal kingdom.\nBut he does not even resemble at one time a fish, at another a\nreptile, a bird, etc. The analogy is no greater between him and a\nreptile or a bird, than it is between all vertebrate animals. During\nthe first stages of their formation, all the embryos of vertebrate\nanimals present merely the simplest and most general delineations of\nthe type of a vertebrate; hence it is that they resemble each other so\nmuch as to render it very difficult to distinguish them. The fish, the\nreptile, the bird, the mammal, and man are at first the simplest\nexpression of a type common to all; but in proportion as they grow,\nthe general resemblance becomes fainter and fainter, and their\nextremities, for instance, after being alike for a certain time,\nassume the characters of wings, of hands, of feet, etc.\"\n\nMr. Milne-Edwards takes the same view of embryonic generation:\n\n  \"I agree with Geoffrey Saint Hilaire, that often a great analogy is\n  observed between the final state of certain parts of the bodies of\n  some inferior animals, and the embryonic state of the same parts of\n  other animals belonging to the same type the organism of which is\n  further developed, and with the same philosopher, I call the cause\n  of the state of permanent inferiority arrests of development. But I\n  am far from thinking with some of his disciples that the embryo of\n  man or of mammals exhibits in its different degrees of formation the\n  species of the less perfect of animate creation. No! a {76} mollusk\n  or an anhelid is not the embryo of a mammal, arrested in its organic\n  development, any more than the mammal is a kind of fish perfected.\n  Each animal carries within itself, from the very origin, the\n  beginning of its specific individuality, and the development of its\n  organism, in conformity to the general outline of the plan of\n  structure proper to its species, is always a condition of its\n  existence. There is never a complete likeness between an adult\n  animal and the embryo of another, between one of its organs and the\n  transitory state of the same in the course of formation; and the\n  multiplicity of the products of creation could never be explained by\n  a similar transmutation of species. We shall see hereafter, that in\n  every zoological group composed of animals which seem to be derived\n  from a common fundamental type, the different species do not exhibit\n  at first any marked difference, but soon begin to be marked by\n  various particularities of constructure always growing and numerous.\n  Thus each species acquires a character of its own, which\n  distinguishes it from all others in the way of development, and each\n  of its organs becomes different from the analogous part of every\n  other embryo. But the changes which the organs and the whole being\n  undergo after they have deviated from the common genesiac form, are\n  generally speaking the less considerable in proportion as the animal\n  is destined to receive a less perfect organism, and consequently\n  they retain a kind of resemblance to those transitory forms.\"\n\nReason then and experience, theory and fact, philosophy and\nphysiology, agree in protesting against the arbitrary doctrine of the\nunity of type in the animal kingdom; a doctrine which has its origin\nin an absence of sound scientific notions and a superficial\nobservation of the phenomena of nature. Through the former defect men\nfailed to consider that if the end of each animal species is\ndifferent, different also must be its being, and therefore a different\ntype must preside as a rule and supreme law over the formation of the\nbeing. By the latter, some very slight and partial analogies have been\nmistaken for identity and universality, and mere appearances have been\nassumed as realities.\n\n----\n\nFrom Blackwood's Magazine.\n\nDOMINE, QUO VADIS?  [Footnote 6]\n\nBY P. S. WORSLEY.\n\n  [Footnote 6: See Mrs. Jameson's \"Sacred and Legendary Art,\" p. 180.]\n\n\n  There stands in the old Appian Way,\n     Two miles without the Roman wall,\n  A little ancient church, and grey:\n     Long may it moulder not nor fall!\n  There hangs a legend on the name\n  One reverential thought may claim.\n\n  'Tis written of that fiery time,\n     When all the angered evil powers\n  Leagued against Christ for wrath and crime,\n     How Peter left the accursed towers,\n  Passing from out the guilty street,\n  And shook the red dust from his feet.\n\n{77}\n\n  Sole pilgrim else in that lone road,\n      Suddenly he was 'ware of one\n  Who toiled beneath a weary load,\n      Bare-headed, in the heating sun,\n  Pale with long watches, and forespent\n  With harm and evil accident.\n\n  Under a cross his weak limbs bow,\n     Scarcely his sinking strength avails.\n  A crown of thorns is on his brow,\n     And in his hands the print of nails.\n  So friendless and alone in shame,\n  One like the Man of Sorrows came.\n\n  Read in her eyes who gave thee birth\n     That loving, tender, sad rebuke;\n  Then learn no mother on this earth,\n     How dear soever, shaped a look\n  So sweet, so sad, so pure as now\n  Came from beneath that holy brow.\n\n  And deeply Peter's heart it pierced;\n     Once had he seen that look before;\n  And even now, as at the first,\n     It touched, it smote him to the core.\n  Bowing his head, no word save three\n  He spoke--_\"Quo vadis, Domine?\"_\n\n  Then, as he looked up from the ground,\n     His Saviour made him answer due--\n  \"My son, to Rome I go, thorn-crowned,\n     There to be crucified anew;\n  Since he to whom I gave my sheep\n  Leaves them for other men to keep.\"\n\n  Then the saint's eyes grew dim with tears.\n     He knelt, his Master's feet to kiss--\n  \"I vexed my heart with faithless fears;\n     Pardon thy servant, Lord, for this.\"\n  Then rising up--but none was there--\n  No voice, no sound, in earth or air.\n\n  Straightway his footsteps he retraced,\n     As one who hath a work to do.\n  Back through the gates he passed with haste,\n     Silent, alone and full in view;\n  And lay forsaken, save of One,\n  In dungeon deep ere set of sun.\n\n{78}\n\n  Then he who once, apart from ill,\n     Nor taught the depth of human tears,\n  Girded himself and walked at will,\n     As one rejoicing in the years,\n  Girded of others, scorned and slain,\n  Passed heavenward through the gates of pain.\n\n  If any bear a heart within,\n     Well may these walls be more than stone,\n  And breathe of peace and pardoned sin\n     To him who grieveth all alone.\n  Return, faint heart, and strive thy strife;\n  Fight, conquer, grasp the crown of life.\n\n\n------\n\n\nFrom The Month.\n\nCONSTANCE SHERWOOD.\n\nAN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.\n\nBY LADY GEORGIANA FULLERTON.\n\n\nCHAPTER I.\n\nI had not thought to write the story of my life; but the wishes of\nthose who have at all times more right to command than occasion to\nentreat aught at my hands, have in a manner compelled me thereunto.\nThe divers trials and the unlooked-for comforts which have come to my\nlot during the years that I have been tossed to and fro on this uneasy\nsea--the world--have wrought in my soul an exceeding sense of the\ngoodness of God, and an insight into the meaning of the sentence in\nHoly Writ which saith, \"His ways are not as our ways, nor his thoughts\nlike unto our thoughts.\" And this puts me in mind that there are\nsayings which are in every one's mouth, and therefore not to be\nlightly gainsayed, which nevertheless do not approve themselves to my\nconscience as wholly just and true. Of these is the common adage,\n\"That misfortunes come not alone.\" For my own part, I have found that\nwhen a cross has been laid on me, it has mostly been a single one, and\nthat other sorrows were oftentimes removed, as if to make room for it.\nAnd it has been my wont, when one trial has been passing away, to look\nout for the next, even as on a stormy day, when the clouds have rolled\naway in one direction and sunshine is breaking overhead, we see others\nrising in the distance. There has been no portion of my life free from\nsome measure of grief or fear sufficient to recall the words that \"Man\nis born to trouble as the sparks fly upward;\" and none so reft of\nconsolation that, in the midst of suffering, I did not yet cry out,\n\"The Lord is my shepherd; his rod and his staff comfort me.\"\n\nI was born in the year 1557, in a very fair part of England, at\nSherwood Hall, in the county of Stafford. For its comely aspect,\ncommodious chambers, sunny gardens, and the sweet walks in its\nvicinity, it was as commendable a residence for persons of moderate\nfortune and contented minds as can well be thought of. Within and\nwithout this my paternal home nothing was wanting which might please\nthe eye, or minister to {79} tranquillity of mind and healthful\nrecreation. I reckon it amongst the many favors I have received from a\ngracious Providence, that the earlier years of my life were spent\namidst such fair scenes, and in the society of parents who ever took\noccasion from earthly things to lead my thoughts to such as are\nimperishable, and so to stir up in me a love of the Creator, who has\nstamped his image on this visible world in characters of so great\nbeauty; whilst in the tenderness of those dear parents unto myself I\nsaw, as it were, a type and representation of his paternal love and\ngoodness.\n\nMy father was of an ancient family, and allied to such as were of\ngreater note and more wealthy than his own. He had not, as is the\nmanner with many squires of our days, left off residing on his own\nestate in order to seek after the shows and diversions of London; but\nhad united to a great humility of mind and a singular affection for\nlearning a contentedness of spirit which inclined him to dwell in the\nplace assigned to him by Providence. He had married at an early age,\nand had ever conformed to the habits of his neighbors in all lawful\nand kindly ways, and sought no other labors but such as were\nincidental to the care of his estates, and no recreations but those of\nstudy, joined to a moderate pursuit of field-sports and such social\ndiversions as the neighborhood afforded. His outward appearance was\nrather simple than showy, and his manners grave and composed. When I\ncall to mind the singular modesty of his disposition, and the\nretiredness of his manners, I often marvel how the force of\ncircumstances and the urging of conscience should have forced one so\nlittle by nature inclined to an unsettled mode of life into one which,\nalbeit peaceful in its aims, proved so full of danger and disquiet.\n\nMy mother's love I enjoyed but for a brief season. Not that it waxed\ncold toward me, as happens with some parents, who look with fondness\non the child and less tenderly on the maiden; but it pleased Almighty\nGod to take her unto himself when I was but ten years of age. Her face\nis as present to me now as any time of my life. No limner's hand ever\ndrew a more faithful picture than the one I have of her even now\nengraved on the tablet of my heart. She had so fair and delicate a\ncomplexion that I can only liken it to the leaf of a white rose with\nthe lightest tinge of pink in it. Her hair was streaked with gray too\nearly for her years; but this matched well with the sweet melancholy\nof her eyes, which were of a deep violet color. Her eyelids were a\ntrifle thick, and so were her lips; but there was a pleasantness in\nher smile and the dimples about her mouth such as I have not noticed\nin any one else. She had a sweet womanly and loving heart, and the\nnoblest spirit imaginable; a great zeal in the service of God,\ntempered with so much sweetness and cordiality that she gave not\neasily offence to any one, of howsoever different a way of thinking\nfrom herself; and either won them over to her faith through the\nsuavity of her temper and the wisdom of her discourse, or else worked\nin them a personal liking which made them patient with her, albeit\nfierce with others. When I was about seven years of age I noticed that\nshe waxed thin and pale, and that we seldom went abroad, and walked\nonly in our own garden and orchard. She seemed glad to sit on a bench\non the sunny side of the house even in summer, and on days when by\nreason of the heat I liked to lie down in the shade. My parents\nforbade me from going into the village; and, through the perverseness\ncommon to too many young people, on account of that very prohibition I\nlonged for liberty to do so, and wearied oftentimes of the solitude we\nlived in. At a later period I learnt how kind had been their intent in\nkeeping me during the early years of childhood from a knowledge of the\nwoeful divisions which the late changes in religion had wrought in our\ncountry; which I might easily have heard from {80} young companions,\nand maybe in such sort as to awaken angry feelings, and shed a drop of\nbitter in the crystal cup of childhood's pure faith. If we did walk\nabroad, it was to visit some sick persons, and carry them food or\nclothing or medicines, which my mother prepared with her own hands.\nBut as she grew weaker, we went less often outside the gates, and the\npoor came themselves to fetch away what in her bounty she stored up\nfor them. I did not notice that our neighbors looked unkindly on us\nwhen we were seen in the village. Children would cry out sometimes,\nbut half in play, \"Down with the Papists!\" but I witnessed that their\nelders checked them, especially those of the poorer sort; and \"God\nbless you, Mrs. Sherwood!\" and \"God save you, madam!\" was often in\ntheir mouths, as she whom I loved with so great and reverent an\naffection passed alongside of them, or stopped to take breath, leaning\nagainst their cottage-palings.\n\nMany childish heartaches I can even now remember when I was not\nsuffered to join in the merry sports of the 1st of May; for then, as\nthe poet Chaucer sings, the youths and maidens go\n\n  \"To fetch the flowers fresh and branch and bloom,\n  And these, rejoicing in their great delight,\n  Eke each at other throw the blossoms bright.\"\n\nI watched the merry wights as they passed our door on their way to the\ngroves and meadows, singing mirthful carols, and bent on pleasant\npastimes; and tears stood in my eyes as the sound of their voices died\naway in the distance. My father found me thus weeping one May-day, and\ncarried me with him to a sweet spot in a wood, where wild-flowers grew\nlike living jewels out of the green carpet of moss on which we sat;\nand there, as the birds sang from every bough, and the insects hovered\nand hummed over every blossom, he entertained me with such quaint and\npleasant tales, and moved me to merry laughter by his witty devices;\nso that I set down that day in my book of memory as one of the\njoyfullest in all my childhood. At Easter, when the village children\nrolled pasch eggs down the smooth sides of the green hills, my mother\nwould paint me some herself, and adorned them with such bright colors\nand rare sentences that I feared to break them with rude handling, and\nkept them by me throughout the year, rather as pictures to be gazed on\nthan toys to be played with in a wanton fashion.\n\nOn the morning of the Resurrection, when others went to the top of\nCannock Chase to hail the rising sun, as is the custom of those parts,\nshe would sing so sweetly the psalm which speaketh of the heavens\nrejoicing and of the earth being glad, that it grieved me not to stay\nat home; albeit I sometimes marvelled that we saw so little company,\nand mixed not more freely with our neighbors.\n\nWhen I had reached my ninth birthday, whether it was that I took\nbetter heed of words spoken in my hearing, or else that my parents\nthought it was time that I should learn somewhat of the conditions of\nthe times, and so talked more freely in my presence, it so happened\nthat I heard of the jeopardy in which many who held the Catholic faith\nwere, and of the laws which were being made to prohibit in our country\nthe practice of the ancient religion. When Protestants came to our\nhouse--and it was sometimes hard in those days to tell who were such at\nheart, or only in outward semblance out of conformity to the queen's\npleasure--I was strictly charged not to speak in their hearing of aught\nthat had to do with Catholic faith and worship; and I could see at\nsuch times on my mother's face an uneasy expression, as if she was\never fearing the next words that any one might utter.\n\nIn the autumn of that year we had visitors whose company was so great\nan honor to my parents, and the occasion of so much delight to myself,\nthat I can call to mind every little circumstance of their brief\nsojourn under our roof, even as if it had taken place but {81}\nyesterday. This visit proved the first step toward an intimacy which\ngreatly affected the tenor of my life, and prepared the way for the\ndirection it was hereafter to take.\n\nThese truly honorable and well-beloved guests were my Lady Mounteagle\nand her son Mr. James Labourn, who were journeying at that time from\nLondon, where she had been residing at her son-in-law the Duke of\nNorfolk's house, to her seat in the country; whither she was carrying\nthe three children of her daughter, the Duchess of Norfolk, and of\nthat lady's first husband, the Lord Dacre of the North. The eldest of\nthese young ladies was of about my own age, and the others younger.\n\nThe day on which her ladyship was expected, I could not sit with\npatience at my tambour-frame, or con my lessons, or play on the\nvirginals; but watched the hours and the minutes in my great desire to\nsee these noble wenches. I had not hitherto consorted with young\ncompanions, save with Edmund and John Genings, of whom I shall have\noccasion to speak hereafter, who were then my playmates, as at a riper\nage friends. I thought, in the quaint way in which children couple one\nidea with another in their fantastic imaginations, that my Lady\nMounteagle's three daughters would be like the three angels, in my\nmother's missal, who visited Abraham in his tent.\n\nI had craved from my mother a holiday, which she granted on the score\nthat I should help her that forenoon in the making of the pasties and\njellies, which, as far as her strength allowed, she failed not to lend\na hand to; and also she charged me to set the bed-chambers in fair\norder, and to gather fresh flowers wherewith to adorn the parlor.\nThese tasks had in them a pleasantness which whiled away the time, and\nI alternated from the parlor to the store-room, and the kitchen to the\norchard, and the poultry-yard to the pleasure-ground, running as\nswiftly from one to the other, and as merrily, as if my feet were\nkeeping time with the glad beatings of my heart. As I passed along the\navenue, which was bordered on each side by tall trees, ever and anon,\nas the wind shook their branches, there fell on my head showers of red\nand gold-colored leaves, which made me laugh; so easy is it for the\nyoung to find occasion of mirth in the least trifle when their spirits\nare lightsome, as mine were that day. I sat down on a stone bench on\nwhich the western sun was shining, to bind together the posies I had\nmade; the robins twittered around me; and the air felt soft and fresh.\nIt was the eve of Martinmas-day--Hallowtide Summer, as our country\nfolk call it. As the sun was sinking behind the hills, the tread of\nhorses' feet was heard in the distance, and I sprang up on the bench,\nshading my eyes with my hand to see the approach of that goodly\ntravelling-party, which was soon to reach our gates. My parents came\nout of the front door, and beckoned me to their side. I held my posies\nin my apron, and forgot to set them down; for the first sight of my\nLady Mounteagle, as she rode up the avenue with her son at her side,\nand her three grand-daughters with their attendants, and many\nrichly-attired serving-men beside, filled me with awe. I wondered if\nher majesty had looked more grand on the day that she rode into London\nto be proclaimed queen. The good lady sat on her palfry in so erect\nand stately a manner, as if age had no dominion over her limbs and her\nspirits; and there was something so piercing and commanding in her\neye, that it at once compelled reverence and submission. Her son had\nsomewhat of the same nobility of mien, and was tall and graceful in\nhis movements; but behind her, on her pillion, sat a small counterpart\nof herself, inasmuch as childhood can resemble old age, and youthful\nloveliness matronly dignity. This was the eldest of her ladyship's\ngrand-daughters, my sweet Mistress Ann Dacre. This was my first sight\nof her who was hereafter to hold so great a place in my heart and {82}\nin my life. As she was lifted from the saddle, and stood in her\nriding-habit and plumed hat at our door, making a graceful and modest\nobeisance to my parents, one step retired behind her grandam, with a\nlovely color tinging her cheeks, and her long lashes veiling her sweet\neyes, I thought I had never seen so fair a creature as this high-born\nmaiden of my own age; and even now that time, as it has gone by, has\nshown me all that a court can display to charm the eyes and enrapture\nthe fancy, I do not gainsay that same childish thought of mine. Her\nsisters, pretty prattlers then, four and six years of age, were led\ninto the house by their governess. But ere our guests were seated, my\nmother bade me kiss my Lady Mounteagle's hand and commend myself to\nher goodness, praying her to be a good lady to me, and overlook, out\nof her great indulgence, my many defects. At which she patted me on\nthe cheek, and said, she doubted not but that I was as good a child as\nsuch good parents deserved to have; and indeed, if I was as like my\nmother in temper as in face, I must needs be such as her hopes and\nwishes would have me. And then she commanded Mistress Ann to salute\nme; and I felt my cheeks flush and my heart beat with joy as the sweet\nlittle lady put her arms round my neck, and pressed her lips on my\ncheek.\n\nPresently we all withdrew to our chambers until such time as supper\nwas served, at which meal the young ladies were present; and I\nmarvelled to see how becomingly even the youngest of them, who was but\na chit, knew how to behave herself, never asking for anything, or\nforgetting to give thanks in a pretty manner when she was helped. For\nthe which my mother greatly commended their good manners; and her\nladyship said, \"In truth, good Mistress Sherwood, I carry a strict\nhand over them, never suffering their faults to go unchastised, nor\npermitting such liberties as many do to the ruin of their children.\" I\nwas straightway seized with a great confusion and fear that this was\nmeant as a rebuke to me, who, not being much used to company, and\nsomething overindulged by my father, by whose side I was seated, had\nspoken to him more than once that day at table, and had also left on\nmy plate some victuals not to my liking; which, as I learnt at another\ntime from Mistress Ann, was an offence for which her grandmother would\nhave sharply reprehended her. I ventured not again to speak in her\npresence, and scarcely to raise my eyes toward her.\n\nThe young ladies withdrew early to bed that night, and I had but\nlittle speech with them. Before they left the parlor, Mistress Ann\ntook her sisters by the hand, and all of them, kneeling at their\ngrandmother's feet, craved her blessing. I could see a tear in her eye\nas she blessed them; and when she laid her hand on the head of the\neldest of her grand-daughters, it lingered there as if to call down\nupon her a special benison. The next day my Lady Mounteagle gave\npermission for Mistress Ann to go with me into the garden, where I\nshowed her my flowers and the young rabbits that Edmund Genings and\nhis brother, my only two playmates, were so fond of; and she told me\nhow well pleased she was to remove from London unto her grandmother's\nseat, where she would have a garden and such pleasant pastimes as are\nenjoyed in the country.\n\n\"Prithee, Mistress Ann,\" I said, with the unmannerly boldness with\nwhich children are wont to question one another, \"have you not a\nmother, that you live with your grandam?\"\n\n\"I thank God that I have,\" she answered; \"and a good mother she is to\nme; but by reason of her having lately married the Duke of Norfolk, my\ngrandmother has at the present time the charge of us.\"\n\n\"And do you greatly love my Lady Mounteagle?\" I asked, misdoubting in\nmy folly that a lady of so grave aspect and stately carriage should be\nloved by children.\n\n{83}\n\n\"As greatly as heart can love,\" was her pretty answer.\n\n\"And do you likewise love the Duke of Norfolk, Mistress Ann?\" I asked\nagain.\n\n\"He is my very good lord and father,\" she answered; \"but my knowledge\nof his grace has been so short, I have scarce had time to love him\nyet.\"\n\n\"But I have loved you in no time,\" I cried, and threw my arms round\nher neck. \"Directly I saw you, I loved you, Mistress Ann.\"\n\n\"Mayhap, Mistress Constance,\" she said, \"it is easier to love a little\ngirl than a great duke.\"\n\n\"And who do you affection beside her grace your mother, and my lady\nyour grandam, Mistress Ann?\" I said, again returning to the charge; to\nwhich she quickly replied:\n\n\"My brother Francis, my sweet Lord Dacre.\"\n\n\"Is he a child?\" I asked.\n\n\"In truth, Mistress Constance,\" she answered, \"he would not be well\npleased to be called so; and yet methinks he is but a child, being not\nolder, but rather one year younger than myself, and my dear playmate\nand gossip.\"\n\n\"I wish I had a brother or a sister to play with me,\" I said; at which\nMistress Ann kissed me and said she was sorry I should lack so great a\ncomfort, but that I must consider I had a good father of my own,\nwhereas her own was dead; and that a father was more than a brother.\n\nIn this manner we held discourse all the morning, and, like a rude\nimp, I questioned the gracious young lady as to her pastimes and her\nstudies and the tasks she was set to; and from her innocent\nconversation I discovered, as children do, without at the time taking\nmuch heed, but yet so as to remember it afterward, what especial care\nhad been taken by her grandmother--that religious and discreet\nlady--to instill into her virtue and piety, and in using her, beside\nsaying her prayers, to bestow alms with her own hands on prisoners and\npoor people; and in particular to apply herself to the cure of\ndiseases and wounds, wherein she herself had ever excelled. Mistress\nAnn, in her childish but withal thoughtful way, chide me that in my\nown garden were only seen flowers which pleased the senses by their\nbright colors and perfume, and none of the herbs which tend to the\nassuagement of pain and healing of wounds; and she made me promise to\ngrow some against the time of her next visit. As we went through the\nkitchen-garden, she plucked some rosemary and lavender and rue, and\nmany other odoriferous herbs; and sitting down on a bench, she invited\nme to her side, and discoursed on their several virtues and properties\nwith a pretty sort of learning which was marvellous in one of her\nyears. She showed me which were good for promoting sleep, and which\nfor cuts and bruises, and of a third she said it eased the heart.\n\n\"Nay, Mistress Ann,\" I cried, \"but that must be a heartsease;\" at\nwhich she smiled, and answered:\n\n\"My grandam says the best medicines for uneasy hearts are the bitter\nherb confession and the sweet flower absolution.\"\n\n\"Have you yet made your first communion, Mistress Ann?\" I asked in a\nlow voice, at which question a bright color came into her cheek, and\nshe replied:\n\n\"Not yet; but soon I may. I was confirmed not long ago by the good\nBishop of Durham; and at my grandmother's seat I am to be instructed\nby a Catholic priest who lives there.\"\n\n\"Then you do not go to Protestant service?\" I said.\n\n\"We did,\" she answered, \"for a short time, whilst we stayed at the\nCharterhouse; but my grandam has understood that it is not lawful for\nCatholics, and she will not be present at it herself, or suffer us any\nmore to attend it, neither in her own house nor at his grace's.\"\n\nWhile we were thus talking, the two little ladies, her sisters, came\nfrom the house, having craved leave from the governess to run out into\nthe {84} garden. Mistress Mary was a pale delicate child, with soft\nloving blue eyes; and Mistress Bess, the youngest, a merry imp, whose\nrosy cheeks and dimpling smiles were full of glee and merriment.\n\n\"What ugly sober flowers are these, Nan, that thou art playing with?\"\nshe cried, and snatched at the herbs in her sister's lap. \"When I\nmarry my Lord William Howard, I'll wear a posy of roses and\ncarnations.\"\n\n\"When I am married,\" said little Mistress Mary, \"I will wear nothing\nbut lilies.\"\n\n\"And what shall be thy posy, Nan?\" said the little saucy one again,\n\"when thou dost wed my Lord Surrey?\"\n\n\"Hush, hush, madcaps!\" cried Mistress Ann. \"If your grandam was to\nhear you, I doubt not but the rod would be called for.\"\n\nMistress Mary looked round affrighted, but little Mistress Bess said\nin a funny manner, \"Prithee, Nan, do rods then travel?\"\n\n\"Ay; by that same token, Bess, that I heard my lady bid thy nurse take\ncare to carry one with her.\"\n\n\"It was nurse told me I was to marry my Lord William, and Madge my\nLord Thomas, and thee, Nan, my Lord Surrey, and brother pretty Meg\nHoward,\" said the little lady, pouting; \"but I won't tell grandam of\nit an it would be like to make her angry.\"\n\n\"I would be a nun!\" Mistress Mary cried.\n\n\"Hush!\" her elder sister said; \"that is foolish talking, Madge; my\ngrandmother told me so when I said the same thing to her a year ago.\nChildren do not know what Almighty God intends them to do. And now\nmethinks I see Uncle Labourn making as if he would call us to the\nhouse, and there are the horses coming to the door. We must needs obey\nthe summons. Prithee, Mistress Constance, do not forget me.\"\n\nForget her! No. From that day to this years have passed over our heads\nand left deep scars on our hearts. Divers periods of our lives have\nbeen signalized by many a strange passage; we have rejoiced, and,\noftener still, wept together; we have met in trembling, and parted in\nanguish; but through sorrow and through joy, through evil report and\ngood report, in riches and in poverty, in youth and in age, I have\nblessed the day when first I met thee, sweet Ann Dacre, the fairest,\npurest flower which ever grew on a noble stem.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II.\n\nA year elapsed betwixt the period of the so brief, but to me so\nmemorable, visit of the welcomest guests our house ever received--to\nwit, my Lady Mounteagle and her grand-daughters--and that in which I\nmet with an accident, which compelled my parents to carry me to\nLichfield for chirurgical advice. Four times in the course of that\nyear I was honored with letters writ by the hand of Mistress Ann\nDacre; partly, as the gracious young lady said, by reason of her\ngrandmother's desire that the bud acquaintanceship which had sprouted\nin the short-lived season of the aforesaid visit should, by such\nintercourse as may be carried on by means of letters, blossom into a\nflower of true friendship; and also that that worthy lady and my good\nmother willed such a correspondence betwixt us as would serve to the\nsharpening of our wits, and the using our pens to be good servants to\nour thoughts. In the course of this history I will set down at\nintervals some of the letters I received at divers times from this\nnoble lady; so that those who read these innocent pictures of herself,\nportrayed by her own hand, may trace the beginnings of those virtuous\ninclinations which at an early age were already working in her soul,\nand ever after appeared in her.\n\nOn the 15th day of January of the next year to that in which my eyes\nhad feasted on this creature so embellished with rare endowments and\n{85} accomplished gracefulness, the first letter I had from her came\nto my hand; the first link of a chain which knit together her heart\nand mine through long seasons of absence and sore troubles, to the\ngreat comforting, as she was often pleased to say, of herself, who was\nso far above me in rank, whom she chose to call her friend, and of the\npoor friend and servant whom she thus honored beyond her deserts. In\nas pretty a handwriting as can well be thought of, she thus wrote:\n\n  \"MY SWEET MISTRESS CONSTANCE,\n  --Though I enjoyed your company but for the too brief time during\n  which we rested under your honored parents' roof, I retain so great\n  a sense of the contentment I received therefrom, and so lively a\n  remembrance of the converse we held in the grounds adjacent to\n  Sherwood Hall, that I am better pleased than I can well express that\n  my grandmother bids me sit down and write to one whom to see and to\n  converse with once more would be to me one of the chiefest pleasures\n  in life. And the more welcome is this command by reason of the hope\n  it raises in me to receive in return a letter from my well-beloved\n  Mistress Constance, which will do my heart more good than anything\n  else that can happen to me. 'Tis said that marriages are made in\n  heaven. When I asked my grandam if it were so, she said, 'I am of\n  opinion, Nan, they are made in many more places than one; and I\n  would to God none were made but such as are agreed upon in so good a\n  place.' But methinks some friendships are likewise made in heaven;\n  and if it be so, I doubt not but that when we met, and out of that\n  brief meeting there arose so great and sudden a liking in my heart\n  for you, Mistress Constance,--which, I thank God, you were not slow\n  to reciprocate,--that our angels had met where we hope one day to be,\n  and agreed together touching that matter.\n\n  \"It suits ill a bad pen like mine to describe the fair seat we\n  reside in at this present time--the house of Mr. James Labourn,\n  which he has lent unto my grandmother. 'Tis most commodious and\n  pleasant, and after long sojourn in London, even in winter, a\n  terrestrial paradise. But, like the garden of Eden, not without\n  dangers; for the too much delight I took in out-of-doors pastimes--\n  and most of all on the lake when it was frozen, and we had merry\n  sports upon it, to the neglect of my lessons, not heeding the lapse\n  of time in the pursuit of pleasure--brought me into trouble and sore\n  disgrace. My grandmother ordered me into confinement for three days\n  in my own chamber, and I saw her not nor received her blessing all\n  that time; at the end of which she sharply reproved me for my fault,\n  and bade me hold in mind that 'twas when loitering in a garden Eve\n  met the tempter, and threatened further and severe punishment if I\n  applied not diligently to my studies. When I had knelt down and\n  begged pardon, promising amendment, she drew me to her and kissed\n  me, which it was not her wont often to do. 'Nan,' she said, 'I would\n  have thee use thy natural parts, and improve thyself in virtue and\n  learning; for such is the extremity of the times, that ere long it\n  may be that many first shall be last and many last shall be first in\n  this realm of England. But virtue and learning are properties which\n  no man can steal from another; and I would fain see thee endowed\n  with a goodly store of both. That great man and true confessor, Sir\n  Thomas More, had nothing so much at heart as his daughter's\n  instruction; and Mistress Margaret Roper, once my sweet friend,\n  though some years older than my poor self, who still laments her\n  loss, had such fine things said of her by the greatest men of this\n  age, as would astonish thee to hear; but they were what she had a\n  right to and very well deserved. And the strengthening of her mind\n  through study and religious discipline served {86} her well at the\n  time of her great trouble; for where other women would have lacked\n  sense and courage how to act, she kept her wits about her, and\n  ministered such comfort to her father, remaining near him at the\n  last, and taking note of his wishes, and finding means to bury him\n  in a Christian manner, which none other durst attempt, that she had\n  occasion to thank God who gave her a head as well as a heart. And\n  who knows, Nan, what may befal thee, and what need thou mayst have\n  of the like advantages?'\n\n  \"My grandmother looked so kindly on me then, that, albeit abashed at\n  the remembrance of my fault, I sought to move her to further\n  discourse; and knowing what great pleasure she had in speaking of\n  Sir Thomas More, at whose house in Chelsea she had oftentimes been a\n  visitor in her youth, I enticed her to it by cunning questions\n  touching the customs he observed in his family.\n\n  \"'Ah, Nan!' she said, that house was a school and exercise of the\n  Christian religion. There was neither man nor woman in it who was\n  not employed in liberal discipline and fruitful reading, although\n  the principal study was religion. There was no quarrelling, not so\n  much as a peevish word to be heard; nor was any one seen idle; all\n  were in their several employs: nor was there wanting sober mirth.\n  And so well-managed a government Sir Thomas did not maintain by\n  severity and chiding, but by gentleness and kindness.'\n\n  \"Methought as she said this, that my dear grandam in that matter of\n  chiding had not taken a leaf out of Sir Thomas's book; and there was\n  no doubt a transparency in my face which revealed to her this\n  thought of mine; for she straightly looked at me and said, 'Nan, a\n  penny for thy thoughts!' at the which I felt myself blushing, but\n  knew nothing would serve her but the truth; so I said, in as humble\n  a manner as I could think of, 'An if you will excuse me, grandam, I\n  thought if Sir Thomas managed so well without chiding, that you\n  manage well with it.' At the which she gave me a light nip on the\n  forehead, and said, 'Go to, child; dost think that any but saints\n  can rule a household without chiding, or train children without\n  whipping? Go thy ways, and mend them too, if thou wouldst escape\n  chastisement; and take with thee, Nan, the words of one whom we\n  shall never again see the like of in this poor country, which he\n  used to his wife or any of his children if they were diseased or\n  troubled, \"We must not look at our pleasures to go to heaven in\n  feather-beds, or to be carried up thither even by the chins.\"' And\n  so she dismissed me; and I have here set down my fault, and the\n  singular goodness showed me by my grandmother when it was pardoned,\n  not thinking I can write anything better worth notice than the\n  virtuous talk with which she then favored me.\n\n  \"There is in this house a chapel very neat and rich, and an ancient\n  Catholic priest is here, who says mass most days; at the which we,\n  with my grandmother, assist, and such of her servants as have not\n  conformed to the times; and this good father instructs us in the\n  principles of Catholic religion. On the eve of the feast of the\n  Nativity of Christ, my lady stayed in the chapel from eight at night\n  till two in the morning; but sent us to bed at nine, after the\n  litanies were said, until eleven, when there was a sermon, and at\n  twelve o'clock three masses said, which being ended we broke our\n  fast with a mince-pie, and went again to bed. And all the\n  Christmas-time we were allowed two hours after each meal for\n  recreation, instead of one. At other times, we play not at any game\n  for money; but then we had a shilling a-piece to make us merry;\n  which my grandmother says is fitting in this time of mirth and joy\n  for his birth who is the sole origin and spring of true comfort. And\n  now, sweet Mistress Constance, I must bid you farewell; for the\n  greatest of {87} joys has befallen me, and a whole holiday to enjoy\n  it. My sweet Lord Dacre is come to pay his duty to my lady and tarry\n  some days here, on his way to Thetford, the Duke of Norfolk's seat,\n  where his grace and the duchess my good mother have removed. He is a\n  beauty, Mistress Constance; and nature has so profusely conferred on\n  him privileges, that when her majesty the queen saw him a short time\n  back on horseback, in the park at Richmond, she called him to her\n  carriage-door and honored him with a kiss, and the motto of the\n  finest boy she ever beheld. But I may not run on in this fashion,\n  letting my pen outstrip modesty, like a foolish creature, making my\n  brother a looking-glass and continual object for my eyes; but learn\n  to love him, as my grandam says, in God, of whom he is only\n  borrowed, and not so as to set my heart wholly on him. So beseeching\n  God bless you and yours, good Mistress Constance, I ever remain,\n  your loving friend and humble servant,\n\n  \"ANN DACRE.\"\n\nOh, how soon were my Lady Mounteagle's words exalted in the event! and\nwhat a sad brief note was penned by that affectionate sister not one\nmonth after she writ those lines, so full of hope and pleasure in the\nprospect of her brother's sweet company! For the fair boy that was the\ncontinual object of her eyes and the dear comfort of her heart was\naccidentally slain by the fall of a vaulting horse upon him at the\nduke's house at Thetford.\n\n  \"MY GOOD MISTRESS CONSTANCE\"\n  (she wrote, a few days after his lamentable death),--\"The lovingest\n  brother a sister ever had, and the most gracious creature ever born,\n  is dead; and if it pleased God I wish I were dead too, for my heart\n  is well-nigh broken. But I hope in God his soul is now in heaven,\n  for that he was so young and innocent; and when here, a short time\n  ago, my grandmother procured that he should for the first, and as it\n  has pleased God also for the only and the last, time, confess and be\n  absolved by a Catholic priest, in the which the hand of Providence\n  is visible to our great comfort, and reasonable hope of his\n  salvation. Commending him and your poor friend, who has great need\n  of them, to your good prayers, I remain your affectionate and humble\n  servant,\n\n  \"ANN DACRE.\"\n\n\nIn that year died also, in childbirth, her grace the Duchess of\nNorfolk, Mistress Ann's mother; and she then wrote in a less\npassionate, but withal less comfortable, grief than at her brother's\nloss, and, as I have heard since, my Lady Mounteagle had her\ndeath-blow at that time, and never lifted up her head again as\nheretofore. It was noticed that ever after she spent more time in\nprayer and gave greater alms. Her daughter, the duchess, who at the\ninstance of her husband had conformed to the times, desired to have\nbeen reconciled on her deathbed by a priest, who for that end was\nconducted into the garden, yet could not have access unto her by\nreason of the duke's vigilance to hinder it, or at least of his\ncontinual presence in her chamber at the time. And soon after, his\ngrace, whose wards they were, sent for his three step-daughters to the\nCharterhouse; the parting with which, and the fears she entertained\nthat he would have them carried to services and sermons in the public\nchurches, and hinder them in the exercise of Catholic faith and\nworship, drove the sword yet deeper through my Lady Mounteagle's\nheart, and brought down her gray hairs with sorrow to the grave,\nnotwithstanding that the duke greatly esteemed and respected her, and\nwas a very moral nobleman, of exceeding good temper and moderate\ndisposition. But of this more anon, as 'tis my own history I am\nwriting, and it is meet I should relate in the order of time what\nevents came under my notice whilst in {88} Lichfield, whither my\nmother carried me, as has been aforesaid, to be treated by a famous\nphysician for a severe hurt I had received. It was deemed convenient\nthat I should tarry some time under his care; and Mr. Genings, a\nkinsman of her own, who with his wife and children resided in that\ntown, one of the chiefest in the county, offered to keep me in their\nhouse as long as was convenient thereunto a kindness which my parents\nthe more readily accepted at his hands from their having often shown\nthe like unto his children when the air of the country was desired for\nthem.\n\nMr. and Mrs. Genings were of the religion by law established. He was\nthought to be Catholic at heart; albeit he was often heard to speak\nvery bitterly against all who obeyed not the queen in conforming to\nthe new mode of worship, with the exception, indeed, of my mother, for\nwhom he had always a truly great affection. This gentleman's house was\nin the close of the cathedral, and had a garden to it well stored with\nfair shrubs and flowers of various sorts. As I lay on a low settle\nnear the window, being forbid to walk for the space of three weeks, my\neyes were ever straying from my sampler to the shade and sunshine out\nof doors. Instead of plying at my needle, I watched the bees at their\nsweet labor midst the honeysuckles of the porch, or the swallows\ndarting in and out of the eaves of the cathedral, or the butterflies\nat their idle sports over the beds of mignonette and heliotrope under\nthe low wall, covered with ivy, betwixt the garden and the close. Mr.\nGenings had two sons, the eldest of which was some years older and the\nother younger than myself. The first, whose name was Edmund, had been\nweakly when a child, and by reason of this a frequent sojourner at\nSherwood Hall, where he was carried for change of air after the many\nillnesses incident to early age. My mother, who was some years married\nbefore she had a child of her own, conceived a truly maternal\naffection for this young kinsman, and took much pains with him both as\nto the care of his body and the training of his mind. He was an apt\npupil, and she had so happy a manner of imparting knowledge, that he\nlearnt more, as he has since said, in those brief sojourns in her\nhouse than at school from more austere masters. After I came into the\nworld, he took delight to rock me in my cradle, or play with me as I\nsat on my mother's knee; and when I first began to walk, he would lead\nme by the hand into the garden, and laugh to see me clutch marigolds\nor cry for a sunflower.\n\n\"I warrant thou hast an eye to gold, Con,\" he would say; \"for 'tis the\nyellow flowers that please thee best.\"\n\nThere is an old hollow tree on the lawn at Sherwood Hall where I often\nhid from him in sport, and he would make pretence to seek me\nelsewhere, till a laugh revealed me to him, and a chase ensued down\nthe approach or round the maze. He never tired of my petulance, or\nspoke rude words, as boys are wont to do; and had a more serious and\ncontemplative spirit than is often seen in young people, and likewise\na singular fancy for gazing at the sky when glowing with sunset hues\nor darkened by storms, and most of all when studded at night with\nstars. On a calm clear night I have noticed him for a length of time,\nforgetting all things else, fix his eyes on the heavens, as if reading\nthe glory of the Lord therein revealed.\n\nMy parents did not speak to him of Catholic faith and worship, because\nMr. Genings, before he suffered his sons to stay in their house, had\nmade them promise that no talk of religion should be ministered to\nthem in their childhood. It was a sore trial to my mother to refrain,\nas the Psalmist saith, from good words, which were ever rising from\nher heart to her lips, as pure water from a deep spring. But she\ninstructed him in many things which belong to gentle learning, and in\nFrench, which she knew well; and {89} taught him music, in which he\nmade great progress. And this wrought with his father to the\nfurtherance of these his visits to us. I doubt not but that, when she\ntold him the names of the heavenly luminaries, she inwardly prayed he\nmight one day shine as a star in the kingdom of God; or when she\ndiscoursed of flowers and their properties, that he should blossom as\na rose in the wilderness of this faithless world; or whilst guiding\nhis hands to play on the clavichord, that he might one day join in the\nglorious harmony of the celestial choirs. Her face itself was a\npreachment, and the tones of her voice, and the tremulous sighs she\nbreathed when she kissed him or gave him her blessing, had, I ween, a\nprivilege to reach his heart, the goodness of which was readable in\nhis countenance. Dear Edmund Genings, thou wert indeed a brother to me\nin kind care and companionship whilst I stayed in Lichfield that\nnever-to-be-forgotten year! How gently didst thou minister to the sick\nchild, for the first time tasting the cup of suffering; now easing her\nhead with a soft pillow, now strewing her couch with fresh-gathered\nflowers, or feeding her with fruit which had the bloom on it, or\ntaking her hand and holding it in thine own to cheer her to endurance!\nThou wert so patient and so loving, both with her who was a great\ntrouble to thee and oftentimes fretful with pain, and likewise with\nthine own little brother, an angel in beauty and wit, but withal of so\npetulant and froward a disposition that none in the house durst\ncontradict him, child as he was; for his parents were indeed weak in\ntheir fondness for him. In no place and at no time have I seen a boy\nso indulged and so caressed as this John Genings. He had a pretty\nwilfulness and such playful ways that his very faults found favor with\nthose who should have corrected them, and he got praise where others\nwould have met with chastisement. Edmund's love for this fair urchin\nwas such as is seldom seen in any save in a parent for a child. It was\nlaughable to see the lovely imp governing one who should have been his\nmaster, but through much love was his slave, and in a thousand cunning\nways, and by fanciful tricks, constraining him to do his bidding.\nNever was a more wayward spirit enclosed in a more winsome form than\nin John Genings. Never did childish gracefulness rule more absolutely\nover superior age, or love reverse the conditions of ordinary\nsupremacy, than in the persons of these two brothers.\n\nA strange thing occurred at that time, which I witnessed not myself,\nand on which I can give no opinion, but as a fact will here set it\ndown, and let such as read this story deem of it as they please. One\nnight that, by reason of the unwonted chilliness of the evening, such\nas sometimes occurs in our climate even in summer, a fire had been lit\nin the parlor, and the family were gathered round it, Edmund came of a\nsudden into the room, and every one took notice that his face was very\npale. He seemed in a great fear, and whispered to his mother, who said\n--\"Thou must have been asleep, and art still dreaming, child.\"\nUpon which he was very urgent for her to go into the garden, and used\nmany entreaties thereunto. Upon which, at last, she rose and followed\nhim. In another moment she called for her husband, who went out, and\nwith him three or four other persons that were in the room, and I\nremained alone for the space of ten or fifteen minutes. When they\nreturned, I heard them speaking with great fear and amazement of what\nthey had seen; and Edmund Genings has often since described to me what\nhe first, and afterward all the others, had beheld in the sky. He was\ngazing at the heavens, as was his wont, when a strange spectacle\nappeared to him in the air. As it were, a number of armed men with\nweapons, killing and murdering others that were disarmed, and great\nstore of blood running everywhere about them. His parents and those\nwith them witnessed the same thing, and a great {90} fear fell upon\nthem all. I noticed that all that evening they seemed scared, and\ncould not speak of this appearance in the sky without shuddering. But\none that was more bold than the rest took heart, and cried, \"God send\nit does not forbode that the Papists will murder us all in our beds!\"\nAnd Mistress Genings, whose mother was a French Huguenot, said,\n\"Amen!\" I marked that her husband and one or two more of the company\ngroaned, and one made, as if unwittingly, the sign of the cross. There\nwere some I know in that town, nay and in that house, that were at\nheart of the old religion, albeit, by reason of the times, they did\nnot give over attending Protestants' worship.\n\nA few days later I was sitting alone, and had a long fit of musing\nover the many new thoughts that were crowding into my mind, as yet too\nchildish to master them, when Edmund came in, and I saw he had been\nweeping. He said nothing at first, and made believe he was reading;\nbut I could see tears trickling down through his fingers as he covered\nhis face with his hands. Presently he looked up and cried out,\n\n\"Cousin Constance, Jack is going away from us.\"\n\n\"And if it please God, not for a long time,\" I answered; for it\ngrieved me to see him sad.\n\n\"Nay, but he is going for many years, I fear,\" Edmund said. \"My uncle,\nJean de Luc, has asked for him to be brought up in his house at La\nRochelle. He is his godfather, and has a great store of money, which\nhe says he will leave to Jack. Alack! cousin Constance, I would that\nthere was no such thing in the world as money, and no such country as\nFrance. I wish we were all dead.\" And then he fell to weeping again\nvery bitterly.\n\nI told him in a childish manner what my mother was wont to say to me\nwhen any little trouble fell to my lot--that we should be patient, and\noffer up our sufferings to God.\n\n\"But I can do nothing now for Jack,\" he cried. \"It was my first\nthought at waking and my last at night, how to please the dear urchin;\nbut now 'tis all over.\"\n\n\"Oh, but Edmund,\" I cried, \"an if you were to be as good as the\nblessed saints in heaven, you could do a great deal for Jack.\"\n\n\"How so, cousin Constance?\" he asked, not comprehending my meaning;\nand thereupon I answered:\n\n\"When once I said to my sweet mother, 'It grieves me, dear heart, that\nI can give thee nothing, who gives me so much,' she bade me take heed\nthat every prayer we say, every good work we do, howsoever imperfect,\nand every pain we suffer, may be offered up for those we love; and so\nout of poverty, and weakness, and sorrow, we have wherewith to make\nprecious and costly and cheerful gifts.\"\n\nI spoke as a child, repeating what I had heard; but he listened not as\na child. A sudden light came into his eyes, and methinks his good\nangel showed him in that hour more than my poor lips could utter.\n\n\"If it be as your sweet mother says,\" he joyfully cried, \"we are rich\nindeed; and, even though we be sinners and not saints, we have\nsomewhat to give, I ween, if it be only our heartaches, cousin\nConstance, so they be seasoned with prayers.\"\n\nThe thought which in my simplicity I had set before him took root, as\nit were, in his mind. His love for a little child had prepared the way\nfor it; and the great brotherly affection which had so long dwelt in\nhis heart proved a harbinger of the more perfect gift of charity; so\nthat a heavenly message was perchance conveyed to him that day by one\nwho likewise was a child, even as the word of the Lord came to the\nprophet through the lips of the infant Samuel. From that time forward\nhe bore up bravely against his grief; which was the sharper inasmuch\nthat he who was the cause of it showed none in return, but rather joy\nin the expectancy of the change which was to part them. He {91} would\nstill be a-prattling on it, and telling all who came in his way that\nhe was going to France to a good uncle; nor ever intended to return,\nfor his mother was to carry him to La Rochelle, and she should stay\nthere with him, he said, and not come back to ugly Lichfield.\n\n\"And art thou not sorry, Jack,\" I asked him one day, \"to leave poor\nEdmund, who loves thee so well?\"\n\nThe little madcap was coursing round the room, and cried, as he ran\npast me, for he had more wit and spirit than sense or manners:\n\n\"Edmund must seek after me, and take pains to find me, if so be he\nwould have me.\"\n\nThese words, which the boy said in his play, have often come back to\nmy mind since the two brothers have attained unto a happy though\ndissimilar end.\n\nWhen the time had arrived for Mistress Genings and her youngest son to\ngo beyond seas, as I was now improved in health and able to walk, my\nfather fetched me home, and prevailed on Mr. Genings to let Edmund go\nback with us, with the intent to divert his mind from his grief at his\nbrother's departure.\n\nI found my parents greatly disturbed at the news they had had touching\nthe imprisonment of thirteen priests on account of religion, and of\nMr. Orton being likewise arrested, who was a gentleman very dear to\nthem for his great virtues and the steadfast friendship he had ever\nshown to them.\n\nMy mother questioned Edmund as to the sign he had seen in the heavens\na short time back, of which the report had reached them; and he\nconfirming the truth thereof, she clasped her hands and cried:\n\n\"Then I fear me much this forebodes the death of these blessed\nconfessors, Father Weston and the rest.\"\n\nUpon which Edmund said, in a humble manner:\n\n\"Good Mistress Sherwood, my dear mother thought it signified that\nthose of your religion would murder in their beds such as are of the\nqueen's religion; so maybe in both cases there is naught to\napprehend.\"\n\n\"My good child,\" my mother answered, \"in regard of those now in\ndurance for their faith, the danger is so manifest, that if it please\nnot the Almighty to work a miracle for their deliverance, I see not\nhow they may escape.\"\n\nAfter that we sat awhile in silence; my father reading, my mother and\nI working, and Edmund at the window intent as usual upon the stars,\nwhich were shining one by one in the deep azure of the darkening sky.\nAs one of greater brightness than the rest shone through the branches\nof the old tree, where I used to hide some years before, he pointed to\nit, and said to me, who was sitting nearest to him at the window:\n\n\"Cousin Constance, think you the Star of Bethlehem showed fairer in\nthe skies than yon bright star that has just risen behind your\nfavorite oak? What and if that star had a message for us!\"\n\nMy father heard him, and smiled. \"I was even then,\" he said, \"reading\nthe words of one who was led to the true religion by the contemplation\nof the starry skies. In a Southern clime, where those fair luminaries\nshine with more splendor than in our Northern heavens, St. Augustine\nwrote thus;\" and then he read a few sentences in Latin from the book\nin his hand,--\"Raising ourselves up, we passed by degrees through all\nthings bodily, even the very heavens, whence sun and moon and stars\nshine upon the earth. Yea, we soared yet higher by inward musing and\ndiscourse and admiring of God's works, and we came to our own minds\nand went beyond them, so as to arrive at that region of never-failing\nplenty where thou feedest Israel for ever with the food of truth.\"\nThese words had a sweet and solemn force in them which struck on the\near like a strain of unearthly music, such as the wind-harp wakes in\nthe silence of the {92} night. In a low voice, so low that it was like\nthe breathing of a sigh, I heard Edmund say, \"What is truth?\" But when\nhe had uttered those words, straightway turning toward me as if to\ndivert his thoughts from that too pithy question, he cried: \"Prithee,\ncousin Constance, hast thou ended reading, I warrant for the hundredth\ntime, that letter in thine hand? and hast thou not a mind to impart to\nthy poor kinsman the sweet conceits I doubt not are therein\ncontained?\" I could not choose but smile at his speech; for I had\nindeed feasted my eyes on the handwriting of my dear friend, now no\nlonger Mistress Dacre, and learnt off, as it were by heart, its\ncontents. And albeit I refused at first to comply with his request,\nwhich I had secretly a mind to; no sooner did he give over the urging\nof it than I stole to his side, and, though I would by no means let it\nout of my hand, and folded down one side of the sheet to hide what was\nprivate in it, I offered to read such parts aloud as treated of\nmatters which might be spoken of without hindrance.\n\nWith a smiling countenance, then, he set himself to listen, and I to\nbe the mouthpiece of the dear writer, whose wit was so far in advance\nof her years, as I have since had reason to observe, never having met\nat any time with one in whom wisdom put forth such early shoots.\n\n  \"DEAR MISTRESS CONSTANCE\"\n  (thus the sweet lady wrote),--\"Wherefore this long silence and\n  neglect of your poor friend? An if it be true, which pains me much\n  to hear, that the good limb which, together with its fellow, like\n  two trusty footmen, carried you so well and nimbly along the alleys\n  of your garden this time last year, has, like an arrant knave,\n  played fast and loose, and failed in its good service,--wherein, I am\n  told, you have suffered much inconvenience,--is it just that that\n  other servant, your hand, should prove rebellious too, refuse to\n  perform its office, and write no more letters at your bidding? For\n  I'll warrant 'tis the hand is the culprit, not the will; which\n  nevertheless should be master, and compel it to obedience. So, an\n  you love me, chide roundly that contumacious hand, which fails in\n  its duty, which should not be troublesome, if you but had for me\n  one-half of the affection I have for you. And indeed, Mistress\n  Constance, a letter from you would be to me, at this time, the\n  welcomest thing I can think of; for since we left my grandmother's\n  seat, and came to the Charterhouse, I have new friends, and many\n  more and greater than I deserve or ever thought to have; but, by\n  reason of difference of age or of religion, they are not such as I\n  can well open my mind to, as I might to you, if it pleased God we\n  should meet again. The Duke of Norfolk is a very good lord and\n  father to me; but when there are more ways of thinking than one in a\n  house, 'tis no easy matter to please all which have a right to be\n  considered; and, in the matter of religion, 'tis very hard to avoid\n  giving offence. But no more of this at present; only I would to God\n  Mr. Fox were beyond seas, and my lady of Westmoreland at her home in\n  the North; and that we had no worse company in this house than Mr.\n  Martin, my Lord Surrey's tutor, who is a gentleman of great learning\n  and knowledge, as every one says, and of extraordinary modesty in\n  his behavior. My Lord Surrey has a truly great regard for him, and\n  profits much in his learning by his means. I notice he is Catholic\n  in his judgment and affections; and my lord says he will not stay\n  with him, if his grace his father procures ministers to preach to\n  his household and family, and obliges all therein to frequent\n  Protestant service. I wish my grandmother was in London; for I am\n  sometimes sore troubled in my mind touching Catholic religion and\n  conforming to the times, of which an abundance of talk is ministered\n  unto us, to my exceeding great discomfort, by my Lady Westmoreland,\n  his grace's {93} sister, and others also. An if I say aught thereon\n  to Mistress Fawcett (a grave and ancient gentlewoman, who had the\n  care of my Lord Surrey during his infancy, and is now set over us\n  his grace's wards), and of misliking the duke's ministers and that\n  pestilent Mr. Fox--(I fear me, Mistress Constance, I should not have\n  writ that unbeseeming word, and I will e'en draw a line across it,\n  but still as you may read it for indeed 'tis what he is; but 'tis\n  from himself I learnt it, who in his sermons calls Catholic religion\n  a pestilent idolatry, and Catholic priests pestilent teachers and\n  servants of Antichrist, and the holy Pope at Rome the man of sin)\n  she grows uneasy, and bids me be a good child to her, and not to\n  bring her into trouble with his grace, who is indeed a very good\n  lord to us in all matters but that one of compelling us to hear\n  sermons and the like. My Lord Surrey mislikes all kinds of sermons,\n  and loves Mr. Martin so well, that he stops his ears when Mr. Fox\n  preaches on the dark midnight of papacy and the dawn of the gospel's\n  restored light. And it angers him, as well it should, to hear him\n  call his majesty King Philip of Spain, who is his own godfather,\n  from whom he received his name, a wicked popish tyrant and a son of\n  Antichrist. My Lady Margaret, his sister, who is a year younger than\n  himself, and has a most admirable beauty and excellent good nature,\n  is vastly taken with what she hears from me of Catholic religion;\n  but methinks this is partly by reason of her misliking Mr. Fulk and\n  Mr. Clarke's long preachments, which we are compelled to hearken to;\n  and their fashion of spending Sunday, which they do call the\n  Sabbath-day, wherein we must needs keep silence, and when not in\n  church sit still at home, which to one of her lively disposition is\n  heavy penance. Methinks when Sunday comes we be all in disgrace;\n  'tis so like a day of correction. My Lord Surrey has more liberty;\n  for Mr. Martin carries him and his brothers after service into the\n  pleasant fields about Westminster Abbey and the village of Charing\n  Cross, and suffers them to play at ball under the trees, so they do\n  not quarrel amongst themselves. My Lord Henry Howard, his grace's\n  brother, always maintains and defends the Catholic religion against\n  his sister of Westmoreland; and he spoke to my uncles Leonard,\n  Edward, and Francis, and likewise to my aunt Lady Montague, that\n  they should write unto my grandmother touching his grace bringing us\n  up as Protestants. But the Duke of Norfolk, Mrs. Fawcett says, is\n  our guardian, and she apprehends he is resolved that we shall\n  conform to the times, and that no liberty be allowed us for the\n  exercise of Catholic religion.\"\n\nAt this part of the letter I stopped reading; and Edmund, turning to\nmy father, who, though he before had perused it, was also listening,\nsaid: \"And if this be liberty of conscience, which Protestants speak\nof, I see no great liberty and no great conscience in the matter.\"\n\nHis cheek flushed as he spoke, and there was a hoarseness in his voice\nwhich betokened the working of strong feelings within him. My father\nsmiled with a sort of pitiful sadness, and answered:\n\n\"My good boy, when thou art somewhat further advanced in years, thou\nwilt learn that the two words thou art speaking of are such as men\nhave abused the meaning of more than any others that can be thought\nof; and I pray to God they do not continue to do so as long as the\nworld lasts. It seems to me that they mostly mean by 'liberty' a\nfreedom to compel others to think and to act as they have themselves a\nmind to; and by 'conscience' the promptings of their own judgments\nmoved by their own passions.\"\n\n\"But 'tis hard,\" Edmund said, \"'tis at times very hard, Mr. Sherwood,\nto know whereunto conscience points, in the midst of so many inward\nclamors as are raised in the soul by conflicting passions of dutiful\naffection {94} and filial reverence struggling for the mastery. Ay,\nand no visible token of God's will to make that darkness light. Tis\nthat,\" he cried, more moved as he went on, \"that makes me so often\ngaze upward. Would to God I might see a sign in the skies! for there\nare no sign-posts on life's path to guide us on our way to the\nheavenly Jerusalem, which our ministers speak of.\"\n\n\"If thou diligently seekest for sign-posts, my good boy,\" my father\nanswered, \"fear not but that he who said, 'Seek, and you shall find,'\nwill furnish thee with them. He has not left himself without\nwitnesses, or his religion to be groped after in hopeless darkness, so\nthat men may not discern, even in these troublous times, where the\ntruth lies, so they be in earnest in their search after it. But I will\nnot urge thee by the cogency of arguments, or be drawn out of the\nreserve I have hitherto observed in these matters, which be\nnevertheless the mightiest that can be thought of as regards the\nsoul's health.\"\n\nAnd so, breaking off this discourse, he walked out upon the terrace;\nand I withdrew to the table, where my mother was sitting, and once\nmore conned over the last pages of _my lady's_ letter, which, when the\nreader hath read, he will perceive the writer's rank and her right to\nbe thus titled.\n\n  \"And now, Mistress Constance, I must needs inform you of a matter I\n  would not leave you ignorant of, so that you should learn from\n  strangers what so nearly concerns one whom you have a friendship to--\n  and that is my betrothal with my Lord Surrey. The ceremony was\n  public, inasmuch as was needful for the solemnising of a contract\n  which is binding for life--'until death us do part,' as the marriage\n  service hath it. How great a change this has wrought in my thoughts,\n  none knows but myself; for though I be but twelve years of age (for\n  his grace would have the ceremony to take place on my birthday), one\n  year older than yourself, and so lately a child that not a very long\n  time ago my grandmother would chastise me with her own hands for my\n  faults, I now am wedded to my young lord, and by his grace and all\n  the household titled Countess of Surrey! And I thank God to be no\n  worse mated; for my lord, who is a few months younger than me, and a\n  very child for frolicksome spirits and wild mirth, has,\n  notwithstanding, so great a pleasantness of manners and so forward a\n  wit, that one must needs have pleasure in his company; and I only\n  wish I had more of it. Whilst we were only friends and playmates, I\n  used to chide and withstand him, as one older and one more staid and\n  discreet than himself; but, ah me! since we have been wedded, 'tis\n  grand to hear him discourse on the duty of wives, and quote the\n  Bible to show they must obey their husbands. He carries it in a very\n  lordly fashion; and if I comply not at once with his commands, he\n  cries out what he has heard at the play-house:\n\n    'Such duty as the subject owes the prince\n    Even such a woman oweth to her husband;\n    And when she's froward, peevish sullen, sour,\n    And not obedient to his honest will,\n    What is she but a foul contending rebel\n    And graceless traitor to her loving lord?\n    I am ashamed that women are so simple\n    To offer war where they should kneel for peace;\n    Or seek for rule, supremacy, or sway,\n    Where they are bound to serve, love, and obey.'\n\n\n  He has a most excellent memory. If he has but once heard out of any\n  English or Latin book so much read as is contained in a leaf, he\n  will forthwith perfectly repeat it. My Lord Henry, his uncle, for a\n  trial, invented twenty long and difficult words a few days back,\n  which he had never seen or heard before; yet did he recite them\n  readily, every one in the same order as they were written, having\n  only once read them over. But, touching that matter of obedience,\n  which I care not to gainsay, 'tis not easy at present to obey my\n  lord my husband, and his grace his father, and Mistress Fawcett,\n  too, who holds as strict a hand over the Countess of Surrey as over\n  Mistress Ann Dacre; for the commands of these my rulers do not at\n  all times accord: but I pray to God I may do my duty, and be a good\n  wife to my lord; and I {95} wish, as I said before, my grandmother\n  had been here, and that I had been favored with her good counsel,\n  and had had the benefit of shrift and spiritual advice ere I entered\n  on this stage of my life, which is so new to me, who was but a child\n  a few weeks ago, and am yet treated as such in more respects than\n  one.\n\n  \"My lord has told me a secret which Higford, his father's servant,\n  let out to him; and 'tis something so weighty and of so great\n  import, that since he left me my thoughts have been truants from my\n  books, and Monsieur Sebastian, who comes to practice us on the lute,\n  stopped his ears, and cried out that the Signora Contessa had no\n  mercy on him, so to murther his compositions. Tis not the part of a\n  true wife to reveal her husband's secrets, or else I would tell you,\n  Mistress Constance, this great news, which I can with trouble keep\n  to myself; and I shall not be easy till I have seen my lord again,\n  which should be when we walk in the garden this evening; but I pray\n  to God he may not be off instead to the Mall, to play at kittlepins;\n  for then I have small chance to get speech with him to-day. Mr.\n  Martin is my very good friend, and reminds the earl of his duty to\n  his lady; but if my lord comes at his bidding, when he would be\n  elsewhere than in my company, 'tis little contentment I have in his\n  visits.\n\n  \"'Tis yesterday I writ thus much, and now 'tis the day to send this\n  letter; and I saw not my lord last night by reason of his\n  grandfather my Lord Arundel sending to fetch me unto his house in\n  the Strand. His goodness to me is so great, that nothing more can be\n  desired; and his daughter my Lady Lumley is the greatest comfort I\n  have in the world. She showed me a fair picture of my lord's mother,\n  who died the day he was born, not then full seventeen years of age.\n  She was of so amiable a disposition, so prudent, virtuous, and\n  religious, that all who knew her could not but love and esteem her.\n  And I read a letter which this sweet lady had written in Latin to\n  her father on his birthday, to his great contentment, who had\n  procured her to be well instructed in that language, as well as in\n  her own and in all commendable learning. Then I played at primero\n  with my Lord Arundel and my Lady Lumley and my uncle Francis. The\n  knave of hearts was fixed upon for the quinola, and I won the flush.\n  My uncle Francis cried the winning card should be titled Dudley.\n  'Not so,' quoth the earl; 'the knave that would match with the queen\n  in the suit of hearts should never win the game.' And further talk\n  ensued; from which I learnt that my Lord Arundel and the Duke of\n  Norfolk mislike my Lord Leicester, and would not he should marry the\n  queen; and my uncle laughed, and said, 'My lord, no good Englishman\n  is there but must be of your lordship's mind, though none have so\n  good reason as yourself to hinder so base a contract; for if my Lord\n  of Leicester should climb unto her majesty's throne, beshrew me if\n  he will not remember the box on the ear your lordship ministered to\n  him some time since;' at which the earl laughed, too; but my Lady\n  Lumley cried, 'I would to God my brother of Norfolk were rid of my\n  Lord Leicester's friendship, which has, I much fear me, more danger\n  in it than his enmity. God send he does not lead his grace into\n  troubles greater than can well be thought of!' Alack, Mistress\n  Constance, what uneasy times are these which we have fallen on! for\n  methinks 'troubles' is the word in every one's mouth. As I was about\n  to step into the chair at the hall-door at Arundel House, I heard\n  one of my lord's guard say to another, 'I trust the white horse will\n  be in quiet, and so we shall be out of trouble.' I have asked Mr.\n  Martin what these words should mean; whereupon he told me the white\n  horse, which indeed I might have known, was the Earl of Arundel's\n  cognisance; and that the times were very troublesome, and plots were\n  spoken of in the North anent the Queen of Scots, her majesty the\n  {96} queen's cousin, who is at Chatesworth; and when he said that,\n  all of a sudden I grew red, and my cheeks burned like two hot coals;\n  but he took no heed, and said, 'A true servant might well wish his\n  master out of trouble, when troubles were so rife.' And now shame\n  take me for taking up so much of your time, which should be spent in\n  more profitable ways than the reading of my poor letters; and I must\n  needs beg you to write soon, and hold me as long as I have held you,\n  and love me, sweet one, as I love you. My Lady Margaret, who is in a\n  sense twice my sister, says she is jealous of Mistress Constance\n  Sherwood, and would steal away my heart from her; but, though she is\n  a winsome and cunning thief in such matters, I warrant you she shall\n  fail therein. And so, commending myself to your good prayers, I\n  remain\n\n  \"Your true friend and loving servant,\n  \"ANN SURREY.\"\n\n\nAs I finished and was folding up my letter the clock struck nine. It\nwas waning darker without by reason of a cloud which had obscured the\nmoon. I heard my father still pacing up and down the gravel-walk, and\never and anon staying his footsteps awhile, as if watching. After a\nshort space the moon shone out again, and I saw the shadows of two\npersons against the wall of the kitchen garden. Presently the\nhall-door was fastened and bolted, as I knew by the rattling of the\nchain which hung across it. Then my father looked in at the door and\nsaid, \"'Tis time, goodwife, for young folks to be abed.\" Upon which my\nmother rose and made as if she was about to withdraw to her\nbed-chamber. Edmund followed us up stairs, and, wishing us both\ngood-night, went into the closet where he slept. Then my mother,\ntaking me by the hand, led me into my father's study.\n\n\n\n[TO BE CONTINUED.]\n\n------\n\nTranslated from Der Katholik.\n\nTHE TWO SIDES OF CATHOLICISM.\n\nI.\n\nThe Church is, in a twofold respect, universal or catholic. While, on\nthe one hand, she extends herself over the whole earth, and encircles\nthe entire human race with the bond of the same faith and an equal\nlove, on the other she makes known, by this very act, the most special\ninward character of her own being. Thus the Church is the Catholic\nChurch, both in her interior being and in her exterior manifestation.\n\nThe ground of the well-known saying of St. Ambrose, \"Where Peter is,\nthere is the Church,\"  [Footnote 7] lies in the thought, that the\nnature of the Church admits of only one form of historical\nmanifestation. The idea of the true Church can only be realized where\nPeter is, in the communion of the legitimate Pope as the successor of\nPeter.\n\n  [Footnote 7: Ubi Petrus ibi ecclesia. In Ps. xl. No. 30.]\n\nThis proposition has its proximate justification in that clear\nexpression of the will of Jesus Christ, the founder of the Church, in\nwhich he designates the Apostle Peter as the rock on which he will\nbuild his Church. Moreover, it is precisely this rock-foundation which\nis to make the Church indestructible. [Footnote 8] From this it\nfollows that, in virtue of the ordinance of Jesus, the office of\nPeter, or the primacy given him in the Church, was not to expire with\nthe death of the apostle. For, if the {97} Church is indestructible\nprecisely on account of her foundation upon the rock-man Peter, he\nmust remain for all time the support of the Church, and historical\nconnection with him is the indispensable condition on which the Church\ncan be firmly established in any part of the earth. This constant\nconnection with the Apostle Peter is maintained through the bishop of\nRome for the time being. For these two offices, the episcopate of Rome\nand the primacy, were connected with each other in the person of the\nApostle Peter. Consequently the same superior rank in the Church which\nPeter possessed is transmitted to the legitimate bishop of Rome at the\nsame time with the Roman episcopal see. Thus the Prince of the\nApostles remains in very deed the rock-foundation of the Church,\ncontinually, in each one of his successors for the time being.\n\n  [Footnote 8: Matt. xvi. 18.]\n\nIn the view of Christian antiquity, the unity of the Church was the\nparticular object for which the papacy was established.  [Footnote 9]\nThis unity, apprehended in its historical development, gives us the\nconception of catholicity.   [Footnote 10]\n\n  [Footnote 9: St. Cyprian, _De Unit Eccl. Primatus Petro dafur, ut\n  una Christi ecclesia et cathedra una monstretur_. The primacy is\n  given to Peter, that the Church of Christ may be shown to be one,\n  and the chair one.]\n\n  [Footnote 10: Ibid. _Ecclesia quoque una est, quae in multitudinem.\n  latius incremento faeccunditatis extenditur.... ecclesia Domini luce\n  perfusa per obem totam radios suos porrigit. Unum tamen lumen est,\n  quod ubique diffunditur, nec unitas corporis separatur._\n\n  The Church also is one, which is extended to a very great multitude\n  by the increase of fruitfulness . . . the Church of the Lord\n  pervaded with light extends its rays over the whole world.\n  Nevertheless the light which is everywhere diffused is one, and the\n  unity of the body is never separated.]\n\n\nBoth these marks of the Church must embody themselves in the form of\nan outwardly perceptible historical reality. The Church being indebted\nfor her unity, and by necessary consequence for her catholicity,\nprecisely to her historical connection with Peter, catholicity is thus\nrooted in the idea of the papacy. But does its ultimate and most\nprofound principle lie therein?\n\nThe argument, briefly sketched above, obliges us to rest the\ncatholicity of the Church on the actual institution of Christ. We can,\nhowever, inquire into the essential reason of this institution. Does\nthis reason lie simply in a free, voluntary determination of Christ,\nor in the interior essence of the Church herself? In the latter case,\nthe Church would appear as Catholic, because the end of her\nestablishment could be fulfilled under no other condition. There would\nbe in her innermost being a secret determination, by force of which\nthe idea of the Church is completely incapable of realization under\nany other form than that of catholicity. A Christian Church without\nthe papacy were, therefore, entirely inconceivable. If this is\nactually the case, there lies hidden under the rind of the Church's\nvisible form of catholicity, a still deeper catholicity, in which we\nare bound to recognize the most profound principle of the outward,\nhistorical side of catholicity.\n\nBut that inward principle, the marrow of the Church, where are we to\nlook for it? Our theologians, following St. Augustine, teach that the\nChurch, like man, consists of soul and body. The theological virtues\nform the soul of the Church, and her body is constituted by the\noutward profession of the faith, the participation of the sacraments,\nand exterior connection with the visible head of the Church.\n[Footnote 11] St. Augustine, indeed, also designates the Holy Ghost as\nthe soul or the inner principle of the Church. This is the same\nthought with the one which will be presently evolved, in which the\ninner principle of catholicity will be reduced to the conception of\nthe _supernatural_. This, however, considered in itself, is withdrawn\nfrom the region of historical manifestation. In order that it may pass\nfrom the region of the invisible into that of apprehensible reality,\nit needs a medium that may connect together both orders, the invisible\norder of the supernatural and the order of historical manifestation.\nIt is only in this {98} way that catholicity can acquire for itself a\nhistorical shape, and assume flesh and blood.\n\n  [Footnote 11: Bellarm., _De Eccl. milit._, cap. ii.]\n\nWe might be disposed to regard the sacraments as this medium, because\nthey are the instruments by which grace is conferred, in a manner\napprehensible through the senses. Nevertheless, we cannot find the\nconstitutive principle of the Church in the sacraments alone. It is\nwell known that Protestantism has set forth the legitimate\nadministration of the sacraments as a mark of the true Church. A\nsearching glance at the Protestant conception of the Church will\nhereafter give us a proof that a bare communication in sacraments, at\nleast from the Protestant stand-point, cannot possibly verify itself\nas making a visible Church. According to the Protestant doctrine of\njustification, a sacrament is indebted for its grace-giving efficacy\nsolely to the faith of the receiver. In this view, therefore, the\nconnection of the invisible element of the supernatural with the\nhistorically manifested reality, and consequently the making visible\nof the true Church, is dependent on conditions where historical\nfulfilment is not provable. Who can prove whether the recipient of a\nsacrament has faith? It is true that, according to the Catholic view,\nan objective efficacy is ascribed to the sacrament, i.e., the\noutwardly perceptible completion of the sacramental action of itself\npermits the invisible element of the supernatural to penetrate into\nthe sphere of the visible.\n\nNotwithstanding this, the Catholic sacrament is, by itself alone, no\nsufficient medium through which the being of the true Church can be\nbrought into visibility. Did she embody herself historically only in\nso far as a sensible matter and an outward action are endued with a\nsupernatural efficacy, the element of the supernatural would come to a\nhistorical manifestation only as the purely objective. A profound view\nof the essence of the Church would not find this satisfactory. The\nChurch, even on her visible side, is not a purely objective, or merely\noutward, institution. The ultimate principle of catholicity--and this\nstatement will make our conception intelligible--although implanted in\nthe world as a supernatural leaven from above, has nevertheless its\nseat in the deepest interior of the human spirit. Thence it penetrates\nupward into the sphere of historical manifestation, and thus proves\nitself a church-constitutive principle. Such a connection of the\nregion of the interior and subjective with that of historical and\nvisible reality is caused by the objective efficacy of a sacrament,\nonly in the case where the same is productive of its proper effect.\nThis, however, according to Catholic doctrine, presupposes an inward\ndisposition on the part of the recipient, the presence of which cannot\nbe manifested to outward apprehension. A Church, whose essence\nconsisted merely in the bond established through the sacraments, could\neither not be verified with certitude, or would have an exclusively\nexterior character. Accordingly, we have not yet found, in the\nCatholic sacramental conception, the middle term we are seeking, by\nwhich the essence of catholicity can be brought into visible\nmanifestation. Rather, this process has to be already completed and\nthe conception of the Church to be actualized, before the sacrament\ncan manifest its efficacy. Through this last, the element of the\nsupernatural, i.e., the invisible germ of the Church, must be\noriginally planted or gradually strengthened in individual souls. But\nthis is effected by the sacrament as the organ and in the name of the\nChurch, though in particular cases outside of her communion.\n\nThe continuous existence of Catholicity is essentially the\nself-building of the body of Christ. It produces its own increase\nthrough the instrumentality of the sacraments.  [Footnote 12] The\nunion between the supernatural and the historical actuality, or the\nbond of {99} catholicity, is not then first established in the\nsacraments. These only mediate for individual souls the reception into\nthe union, or confirm them in their organic relation to it, and are\nsigns of fellowship. In addition to what has been already said, there\nis another reason, and one of wider application, to be considered, as\nbearing on this point. The principle of a new life which has to be\ninfused into individual souls through the sacraments is sanctifying\ngrace. In this, therefore, by logical consequence, we should be\nobliged to recognize the interior constitutive principle of the\nChurch, if it were true that the connection between the inner being of\nthe Church and her historical manifestation were brought to pass\nthrough the efficacy of the sacraments. According to this apprehension\nof the subject, only the saints would belong to the true Church.\n\n  [Footnote 12: Eph. iv. 16.]\n\nOne might seek to evade this last conclusion by averring that in the\ninstance of baptism, the sacrament produces in the soul of the\nrecipient, beside sanctifying grace, still another effect,\nindependently of the disposition, namely, the baptismal character.\nThis character is an indelible mark impressed on the soul. Here, then,\nis given us a supernatural principle which penetrates the deepest\ninterior of the human spirit, and which is, at the same time, capable\nof verifying itself as a historical fact; inasmuch as it is infallibly\ninfused into the soul through an outward, sensible action, and\nthereby, through the medium of the latter, becomes visible. Beside\nthis, one might be still more inclined to regard the baptismal\ncharacter as the Church's formative principle, because the same is\nstamped upon the soul through a sacrament, whose special end is to\nincorporate with the body of Christ its individual members; for which\nreason, also, baptism is designated in the language of the Church as\nthe gate of the spiritual life, _vitae spiritualis janua_.   [Footnote\n13]\n\n  [Footnote 13: _Decret. pro Armenia_.]\n\nWe must, however, in this immediate connection, put in a reminder,\nthat it is a disputed point in theology, whether baptism is really, in\nall cases, the indispensably necessary condition of becoming a member\nof the Church. In the opinion of prominent theologians, a mere\ncatechumen can, under certain circumstances, be a member of the\nChurch.   [Footnote 14] Be that as it may, no one will certainly\ndispute the fact that a catechumen, whose soul is glowing with divine\nlove, belongs at least to the soul of the Church. In him, therefore,\nthe inner germ of the Church's life really exists before the reception\nof the baptismal character. Beside this, it appears to us that the\nsacramental character, precisely in view of its determinate end, is\nnot so qualified that we can put it forward as the interior principle\nof catholicity. The baptismal character is intended for a distinctive\nmark; by it the seal of Church membership is stamped on the soul. It\nis true that the same action by which the character is impressed on\nthe soul also makes the baptized person a member of the Church, or,\nthat in the same act which plants the inner germ of the Church's being\nin the heart, the soul receives also the characteristic outward\nimpress of that being. But in so far as it is the immediate and proper\nfaculty of the baptismal character to impress the stamp of the Church\nin indelible features upon the soul, the very conception of this\ncharacter presupposes necessarily the conception of the Church, as\nprior to itself; which shows that we cannot find the principle of the\ninterior being of the Church in the baptismal character. This is\nconfirmed by the additional consideration that the baptismal character\nis not effaced from those souls which have broken off every kind of\nconnection with the Church, and have absolutely nothing remaining in\nthem by which they communicate in her being. Finally, the existence of\nthe Church, at least so far as her inner being or soul is concerned,\n{100} does not date its origin from the institution of baptism. We\nmust, therefore, go one step further, in order to discover the\ninterior source of catholicity. As has been heretofore pointed out,\nthis source lies in that region which we are usually wont to designate\nas the Supernatural Order. Let us, therefore, make a succinct\nexposition of the interior law of development in this order.\n\n  [Footnote 14: Suarez, _De Fide. Disp._ ix., Sec. i., No. 18.]\n\nAccording to the Catholic doctrine, _faith_ is the beginning of human\nsalvation, the ground and root of justification, [Footnote 15] _i.e._,\nof the supernatural life of the soul. St. Paul designates faith \"the\nsubstance of things hoped for.\"   [Footnote 16] That is to say, the\nbeatific vision of God, and with it the point toward which the whole\nsupernatural order tends and in which it rests, has its foundation\nlaid in faith, and is already in germ contained in it. Christ, and\nwith him the fountain of our supernatural life, dwells in us through\nfaith.   [Footnote 17] Is Christ, therefore, called the foundation,\nbeside which no other can be laid,   [Footnote 18 ]then is faith\nrecognized in the basis of the supernatural order, because by faith we\nare immediately brought into union with Christ. Wherefore the apostle\nmakes our participation in the fruits of the work of redemption\nprecisely dependent on the condition, \"If so ye continue in the faith,\ngrounded and settled.\"  [Footnote 19] The same portion as foundation,\nwhich faith has in the inner life of grace in the soul, is also\naccorded to it in relation to the exterior structure of the Church.\nThe visibility of the true Church is only the historical embodiment of\nthe element of the supernatural. The divine building of the Church has\nfor its foundation the apostles,  [Footnote 20] that is, as the sense\nof the passage evidently is, through the faith which they preached.\nVery remarkable is the form of expression in the well-known saying of\nthe apostle: \"One Lord, one faith, one baptism.\"   [Footnote 21] Here\nthe unity of faith is given the precedence of the unity produced\nthrough baptism, as being its necessary pre-requisite. The one baptism\nis the bond of unity of the Church only in the second line. Through\nit, namely, the fruitful germ of the one faith in which exclusively\nthe unity of the Church has its root, is continually planted in\nindividual souls, an actual confession of that faith being also\nincluded in the ceremony of baptism itself.\n\n  [Footnote 15: _Trid. Sess._ vi.,  cap. 8.]\n\n  [Footnote 16: Heb. xi. i.]\n\n  [Footnote 17: Eph iii. 17.]\n\n  [Footnote 18: I Cor. iii. 11.]\n\n  [Footnote 19: Coloss. i. 23.]\n\n  [Footnote 20: Eph. ii. 20.]\n\n  [Footnote 21: Eph. iv. 5.]\n\n\nThe Church herself makes use of language which clearly shows that she\nregards faith as the deepest principle of her being.  [Footnote 22]\nThe Catechism of the Council of Trent defines the Church as \"the\nfaithful dispersed throughout the world.\"  [Footnote 23]\n\n  [Footnote 22: _Concil. Lateran., iv. cap. Firmiter: Una fidelium\n  universalis ecclesia_. ]\n\n  [Footnote 23: _Catech. Rom._,  pars 1,  cap. x. . qu. 2. ]\n\nAccording to St. Thomas, also, the unity, and consequently the\ncatholicity of the Church, is radically grounded in faith. The angelic\ndoctor means here living faith, or _fides formata_. According to this\nview, the principle of catholicity pervades the innermost depth of\nsubjectivity. At the same time it is clear how the same comes to an\nhistorical manifestation. This takes place in the symbol of the\nChurch. The faith which finds its historical expression in the\necclesiastical symbol is to be regarded as _fides formata_,  [Footnote\n24] for this reason, because it is a confession of faith made in the\nname and by the personality of the collective Church, which possesses\nits inward principle of unity in the _fides formata_, or living faith.\nMoreover, the symbol of the Church is a constant warning for those of\nher members who have not the grace of sanctification to make their\nfaith living through charity.   [Footnote 25]\n\n  [Footnote 24: That is, faith made perfect by charity as it exists in\n  a person who is in the state of grace, in contradistinction from the\n  faith of a sinner.--TRANSLATOR ]\n\n    [Footnote 25: _Secunda Secundae_, qu. 1. a. q. ad 3. ]\n\nIn the foregoing doctrinal exposition St. Thomas has marked out for us\nthe path to be followed in seeking {101} for the medium of union\nbetween the exterior and ulterior catholicity of the Church. Our\nargument must start, therefore, from the position that the unity of\nthe Church in the first line is a unity in faith. In this notion we\nhave the speculative middle term between the inner being of the Church\nand her historical form of manifestation. From the blending of both\nthese elements is formed the full, adequate idea of catholicity. This\nlast exhibits itself as a force acting in two distinct spheres, that\nof the inward subjectivity and that of historical objectivity.\nConsequently, the exterior and interior catholicity of the Church, or\nthe two sides of Catholicism, must be reduced to the same principle. A\nfurther evolution of this thought will make it clear, why the being of\nthe true Church can only find its true actualization in the historical\nform of Catholicism.\n\nThe catholic visible form of the Church, as pointed out above, is\nindicated in the papacy. But in what relation does the latter stand to\nthe interior catholicity of the Church? In order to find the right\nanswer to this decisive question, we must first more exactly define in\nwhat sense the papacy must be regarded as the bond of the historical\nunity of the Church. It must be so regarded, precisely in so far as\nthe primacy has been instituted for the special end of preserving the\nfaith incorrupt. According to the teaching of the Fathers of the\nChurch, Peter is the Church's foundation of rock, in virtue of his\nfaith.  [Footnote 26] By this, of course, is not meant the personal\nconfession of the Apostle Peter, but the object-matter of the same,\nthe contents of the faith to be preached by Peter and his successors.\nPeter, says Leo the Great, is called by Christ the Rock, on account of\nthe solidity of the faith which he was to preach, _pro soliditate\nfidei quam erat praedicaturus_.  [Footnote 27 ] This is not the place\nto develop further in what way the papacy proves itself in act the\ncement of the unity of faith. We shall speak of that later. It is\nenough for our purpose, in the meanwhile, to take note of the judgment\nof the ancient Church. According to the doctrine of the Fathers of the\nChurch, the fundamental significance which the papacy has for the\nChurch, rests upon a relation of dependence between her faith and the\nfaith of Peter, including by consequence that of his successors. In\nthis sense St. Hilarius distinctly calls the faith of the Apostle\nPeter the foundation of the Church.  [Footnote 28] The same view is\nfound in St. Ambrose,  [Footnote 29] expressed in nearly the same\nwords. But if Peter is the Church's foundation of rock precisely\nthrough his faith, that mutual relation between the inner catholicity\nof the Church and the papacy is no longer doubtful. For that the\nChurch, according to her inward essence, verifies herself as the\nCatholic Church, she owes precisely to her faith, as likewise, on the\nother side, her catholic visible form is conditioned by the outward\nprofession of the same faith. Consequently, the papacy as guardian of\nthe unity of faith, stands also in a necessary connection with the\ninner being of the Church. Here then we have the uniting member we\nhave been seeking between inward and outward catholicity, the essence\nand the manifestation of the Church. _In so far as the historical\nconnection with Peter must be conceived as a bond of faith, in this\nsame connection or in the form of Catholicism, the true Church, even\nas to her inner being, comes historically into visible manifestation._\n\n\n\n  [Footnote 26: See the relevant passages from the fathers in\n  Ballerini, _De vi ac rations primatus Rom. Pont._, cap. xii., Sec. 1,\n  No. 1. ]\n\n  [Footnote 27: Serm. 62.]\n\n  [Footnote 28: _De Trin_., vi. 37. ]\n\n  [Footnote 29: _De Incarn_., cap. 5. ]\n\n\nFaith, which we affirm to be the essential kernel of Catholicism, has\ntwo sides, one which is interior and subjective, and another which\ncomes to outward manifestation. With the heart we believe unto\njustification, but with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.\n[Footnote 30] A revealed truth {102} corresponds to supernatural faith\nas its necessary object. Therefore, it may be remarked in passing, the\nsubjective act of faith is equally infallible with the divine\ntestimony itself, upon which it is essentially based.   [Footnote 31]\nThis revealed object of faith, without which a supernatural faith is\nentirely inconceivable, is mediated or set forth through an organ\ndirectly instituted by God for this purpose. An individual, who thinks\nthat he has discovered, through private investigation or in any other\nway, a particular point of doctrine, which hitherto has not been\nuniversally received as such, to be a revealed truth, can only make it\nan object of supernatural faith, when he is able to judge with\ncertainty that this supposed new doctrine of faith would be approved\nby the infallible, divinely appointed organ of revealed truth.\n[Footnote 32]\n\n  [Footnote 30:  Rom. x. 10.]\n\n  [Footnote 31: St. Thomas, _Secunda Secunda_, q. 1 a. 3.]\n\n  [Footnote 32: Suarez, _De Fide. Disp._ iii., Sect, xiii., No. 9.]\n\n\n\nThis mediating organ is, however, as we shall fully show in the course\nof our further exposition, no other than the Apostle Peter, and\nthrough the relation which he bears to him, his legitimate successor\nin office. Peter is the support and the strength of his brethren,\ninasmuch as _his_ faith, to which the dogmatic utterance of his\nsuccessors gives a new expression according to the needs of the\nChurch, forms a criterion for the faith of the Church. Peter,\npreaching of the faith, continually apprehensible through the papal\ndefinitions of faith, gives to the faith of the Church the specific\nform under which the same incorporates itself historically in an\necclesiastical confession. But in the Church-confession of faith, as\nwe have before shown, its inner being comes into visible\nmanifestation. As medium of Peter's preaching of the faith, the papacy\nis consequently also a Church-constitutive principle, inasmuch as\nthrough the actualization of the supreme power delegated to him by\nChrist, the being of the Church is made visible, and obtains an\nhistorical form. This is the sense of the words, \"On this Rock I will\nbuild my Church.\"\n\nAs we have, in the foregoing remarks, conceived of the papacy as the\nangle at which the two sides of Catholicism meet, the uniting bond of\nthe outward and inward catholicity of the Church, we are further bound\nto show why precisely the papacy is the appropriate organ to establish\nthat union between the essence and the manifestation of Catholicism,\nand thereby to mediate the actualization of the true idea of the\nChurch. For this purpose we must endeavor to penetrate somewhat deeper\ninto the inner being or soul of the Church. We shall there find a\ntendency which makes the Catholic form of manifestation of the Church\na postulate of her being. This tendency lies in the character of the\n_supernatural_. In the conception of the supernatural we shall\nendeavor to point out the radical conception of Catholicism. The\npapacy, and the Catholic visible form of the Church mediated by it,\nis, in our opinion, the necessary consequence of the supernaturality\nof her being.\n\nThus far we have sketched in brief outlines the mutual relation of the\ntwo sides of Catholicism. We must reserve for a subsequent article the\ndetailed theological proof of that which we have for the present\nsuggested as a new theory. Meanwhile we would like to exhibit, in a\nfew words, the interest which an investigation of this subject claims\nfor itself at this particular period of time.\n\n\n\nII.\n\nThe distinction between an exterior and interior catholicity of the\nChurch is but slightly touched upon in our books of dogmatic\ninstruction. No one need wonder at this circumstance. It is well known\nthat the controversy with Protestantism gave occasion to the usual\nmodern method of treating of the marks of the Church. The {103} method\nof the great controversialists of the age of the Reformation has, at\nleast in regard to the present question, remained, to a considerable\nextent, the model for the dogmatic writers of the present time. The\ntheologians of a former time, however, found no necessity for\nexpressly distinguishing between the catholicity of the being of the\nChurch and that of her manifestation. It was enough for their purpose\nto prove that the Church, in her historical manifestation, is the\nCatholic Church.\n\nThe Protestantism of the epoch of the Reformation claimed for its\ncongregations the honor of having actualized the true idea of the\nChurch. The churches of Wittenberg, Zurich, and Geneva each pretended\nto be the true copy of the evangelical primitive Church. It was easy\nfor Catholic polemics to destroy this pretension. It was only\nnecessary to inspect the particular Protestant churches a little\nclosely. Such a reconnoissance conducted necessarily to the\nindubitable conclusion that none of those communions had the marks of\nthe true Church upon it, and that these were realized only in the\nChurch in communion with the Pope.\n\nModern Protestantism is much more modest in its pretensions. The\npresent champions of the Protestant cause characterize, without\ndisguise, the attempt of the Reformers to bring the essence of the\ntrue Church historically into manifestation in their communions as a\ngross error and a backsliding into Catholicism. They will have it,\nthat the characteristic principle of Protestantism lies precisely in\nthe acknowledgment that the true essence of the Church can find its\ncorrelative expression in none of the existing churches. The true\nChurch, according to this notion, remains an unattainable ideal as\nlong as the world stands. Not to actualize the idea of the Church,\nonly to strive after its actualization, is the task of a religious\ncommunion. The Protestantism of the day accordingly recognizes it as\nits vocation \"to give Christianity precisely the expression and form\nwhich best corresponds to the necessities of the time, the demands of\nan advanced science and culture, the grade of intellectual and moral\ndevelopment of the Christian nations.\"  [Footnote 33]\n\n  [Footnote 33: Schenkel, \"Essence of Prot.,\" p. 4.]\n\nProtestant polemic theology makes the following use of this view. Over\nagainst the magnificent historical manifestation of the Catholic\nChurch, the torn and rent condition of the Protestant religious\ncommunity presents a striking contrast. The proximate conclusion that\nthe true Church can only be found within the circle of Catholicism,\nthey seek now to anticipate on the Protestant side by the observation\nthat already from the outset one makes a false start who would wish to\nrecognize the true Church by her form of historical manifestation.\nAccording to the Protestant view, the mark of catholicity verifies\nitself exclusively in the inner being of the Church, and not in her\noutward manifestation. For, owing to the constant progress of human\ndevelopment, and the extremely diversified individuality of single\nnations, the historical manifestation of the Church must be multiform\nto the same extent as the intellectual and moral wants of the\ndifferent peoples are various. Nevertheless, in spite of the manifold\ndifferences which distinguish the particular churches in their\nhistorical manifestation, the members of the same blend themselves\ntogether into a great invisible spiritual kingdom. This is the _ideal_\nChurch.\n\nThis is the response which modern Protestantism makes when Catholic\ncriticism places before its eyes the melancholy picture of its inward\ndivisions and the history of its variations. From the historical\nmanifestation of a church to its inner being they say the conclusion\nis invalid. In order, therefore, to make Catholic polemics effective,\nthe relation between the essence and the manifestation of the Church\nmust be first of all theologically {104} established. It is only after\nthis has been done that the comparison between \"the Church and the\nchurches\" can be exhibited in its entire argumentative force.\n\nThe theory of the ideal church is not yet effectively refuted, when we\non the Catholic side content ourselves with proving that the true\nChurch must become visible. This general proposition does not exclude\nthe proposition of our opponents. For, according to the Protestant\ndoctrine, also, the creative power of the spirit of Christianity\nexhibits itself in the construction of visible congregations, and the\ngradual actualization of the ideal Church is conditioned by a sensibly\napprehensible mediation. The final decision of this question must\ntherefore be sought in the demonstration of the proposition that the\ninmost being of the Church can only realize itself historically in the\none specific form; that a catholicity of the essence of the Church\nwithout a catholicity in her manifestation is entirely inconceivable.\nOnly by this demonstration will the retreat of Protestant polemics\ninto the ideal Church be for ever cut off.\n\nSome have argued against the Protestant view, that as Christian truth\nis one so the visible Church can also be but one.  [Footnote 34] The\nargument is valid only in the prior supposition that there can be but\na single form of historical manifestation for the inner being of the\nChurch. This, however, Protestantism denies in the sense, that from\nits stand-point every particular church represents the idea of the\nChurch,  [Footnote 35] even though it may be on one side only.\nAccording to the diversified stages of cultivation in the Christian\npeople, so they say, now one, now another side of Christian truth\nattains to its expression in the particular confessions, but in none\nthe full and entire truth. The contradiction existing between these,\ntherefore, in nowise falls back upon the Christian verity itself. This\nProtestant evasion can also be alone met in the way above designated,\nby establishing the relation between the essence and the manifestation\nof Catholicism.\n\n  [Footnote 34: Moehler, \"Symbolism.\"]\n\n  [Footnote 35: This is also the theory of High-Church\n  Episcopalianism. Mr. Sewall has defined it more logically than any\n  other writer of that school. According to him, the unity of the\n  Church consists in this, that all churches are formed after one\n  ideal model, or on one principle, and the separate churches of\n  individual bishops are each a perfect organic whole. That is,\n  Catholic unity is an _abstract_ unity, concreted in each particular\n  bishop and diocese. Hence there can be no organized unity of the\n  universal Church, but only _union_ or friendly communion of\n  independent churches. This notion was highly approved by Bishop\n  Whittingham, who expressed it in this way, that the true communion\n  of churches with each other is in _speculo Trinitatis_. It is pure\n  Congregationalism, bating the difference between a diocese governed\n  by a chief and inferior pastors, and a single congregation under one\n  pastor or several of the same order. But it is the only logical\n  conception of a visible church possible, when the papacy, or\n  principle of universal organic unity, is denied. It is the logical\n  result of the schismatical position of the Greeks, who have no unity\n  among themselves except that which is national, but are divided into\n  several independent bodies. Hence, the so-called \"union movement,\"\n  as clearly shown by Cardinal Patrizi in the Decree sent to the\n  English bishops, is one which proceeds from a denial of Catholic\n  unity, and therefore can never lead to unity, but only aim at union,\n  or voluntary co-operation of distinct churches with each other. The\n  High-Church theory differs from that of the German Protestants in\n  this that the former requires that all churches should be alike, and\n  each one represent completely the ideal Church; but both are based\n  on the same principle, that of an abstract, invisible unity and\n  catholicity, concreted in an individual and not a generic and\n  universal mode.--TRANSLATOR.]\n\n\nIt has been further argued that a Church of the Nations, which the\nChristian Church must be, according to its idea, is entirely\ninconceivable without the papacy at its summit.  [Footnote 36] Here,\nalso, it is presupposed, as already proved, that the conception of\nuniversality which is essentially connected with the idea of the true\nChurch must also necessarily impress itself upon her actual\nexplication of herself in time. But it is precisely against this\nnotion that modern Protestantism contends. Therefore, if our polemic\narms are to bring down their man, the affair must begin with a sharper\ndelineation of the mutual relation between the essence and the visible\nform of the Church.\n\n  [Footnote 36: Doellinger, \"The Church and the Churches.\"]\n\nBeside the polemic advantages to be gained in the course which has\nbeen suggested, there is another in the interest of pacification.\nUnder the rubbish of the Protestant Church-idea there still lies\nburied a remnant of {105} Catholic truth. We ought not to shun the\ntrouble of bringing this to light. It is the Christian truth contained\nin his confession which binds the believing Protestant to it. Catholic\ntheology has to reclaim this as its own property. It has the mission\nintrusted to it to show how the religious satisfaction, which the\ndeeper Protestant mind thinks it finds in the doctrinal conception of\nits confession, is imparted to it in richer abundance and morally\npurified through the dogma of the Church. Through this conciliatory\nmethod, an understanding of the Catholic truth can be much more easily\nand effectually imparted to the unprejudiced Protestant mind than by a\nrough polemical method. This end is most essentially served by the\ndistinction between the essence and the manifestation of Catholicism.\n\nProtestant piety makes a great boast of its deep spirituality. The\nmodern ideal theory of the Church owes a great share of its popularity\nto its aptitude of application in this direction. By means of this\nconception, the Protestant Church is expected to exhibit itself in a\nnew light as the church of the interior and spiritual life. Does one\nattain the same depth of view from the Catholic stand-point? All doubt\non this point must disappear on thorough consideration of what we have\nabove named, the inner side of Catholicism.\n\nThere is another ground for the favor with which this ideal theory of\nthe Church is at present received. Protestant theology regards it as a\nmeans of its own resuscitation. The old doctrine of justification by\nfaith alone has in great part lost the charm it once exercised over\nthe hearts of the German people. The once mighty battle-cry of inward,\nsubjective faith is no longer to the taste of our age. Therefore, in\nour time, instead of the antiquated idea of immediate union with\nChrist, the world-moving power of the mind, the creative power of the\nidea, is set up as the distinguishing principle of Protestantism. The\nlatter is thus made to appear as the most powerful protector of the\nliberal aspirations of the age.\n\nCatholic controversy must take some cognizance of this, if it would\nmake its own proper principle prevail. While Protestantism seeks to\ngain the favor of the contemporary world by obsequiously yielding to\nthe caprices of the spirit of the age, the inner principle of\nCatholicism raises it above the vacillations which sway particular\nperiods. Only a Church which, thanks to its native principle, is not\nborne along by intellectual and social periodical currents, can\neffectually correct their movement. In order, therefore, to measure\naccurately the influence which the Church, by virtue of her\ninstitution, is called to exercise upon human society, we must\npenetrate into her innermost essence, to the very point where\nCatholicism has its deepest principle. First from this point can we\ncorrectly understand in how far the Church is a social power. From\nthis point of view alone can we comprehend her aptitude to be the\nteacher of the nations. And precisely of this social and instructive\nvocation have our contemporaries lost the right understanding to a\ngreat extent. It is one of the mightiest tasks of our modern theology\nto make the minds of men once more capable of apprehending this truth.\n[Footnote 37]\n\n  [Footnote 37: A few sentences rather digressive from the main topic\n  of the article are hero omitted.--TRANSLATOR.]\n\nThe high importance of authority in the system of Catholicism is well\nknown. This fundamental principle runs a danger of being placed in a\nfalse light, when it is depressed to the level of the historical and\nexterior side of the Church. Ecclesiastical authority, separated from\nthe ground which lies back of it and which is above the temporal\norder, may appear even to the well-disposed as a mere brake for the\nstoppage of all intellectual progress. This suggests a temptation to\ndesire a compromise between the Church and the spirit of the age. When\none takes a merely exterior and {106} historical view of church\nauthority, the proper spirit of joyousness which ought to belong to\nfaith is wanting in the submission which is rendered to its decrees.\nIt is very easy, then, to fall into a sort of diplomatic way of acting\ntoward the Church as teacher of doctrine. One seeks to accommodate\none's self to her doctrine through subtile distinctions. On the\ncontrary, the boldest scientific mind frankly and cheerfully bows\nitself under the yoke of the obedience of faith, when it sees that the\nChurch, in her doctrinal decision, is acting from her own interior\nprinciple.\n\nOur doctrinal exposition requires now that we should go into a more\nthorough argument respecting the immanent principle of Catholicism,\nwhich we shall first of all undertake to do on Scriptural grounds.\nThis part of the subject will be treated in an ensuing article.\n\n------\n\nFrom The Cornhill Magazine.\n\nMONSIEUR BABOU.\n\n\nI.\n\nIn the immediate vicinity of the capital of the kingdom of Lilliput\nthere is a charming village called \"Les Grenouillettes.\" This rural\nresort of the citizens of Mildendo consists, mainly, of three hotels,\nthirty public-houses, and five ponds. The population I should reckon\nat about ten millions, inclusive of frogs, who are the principal\ninhabitants, and who make a great noise in the world there.\n\nHither flock the jocund burgesses, and dance to the sound of harp and\nviol. . . .\n\nIt occurs to me that, sprightly as I may think it to call Belgium\nLilliput, the mystification might possibly become tiresome and\ninconvenient if persisted in throughout this narrative, beside\nbecoming absolutely unnecessary. As for the village in question, I\nhave a reason or two for not calling it by its right name.\n\nAbout half-a-dozen years ago, my brother (Captain John Freshe, R.N.),\nhis wife, and I had been wearily jogging all a summer's day in search\nof country lodgings for a few weeks in the immediate neighborhood of\nBrussels. Now nothing can be more difficult to find in that locality,\nexcept under certain conditions.\n\nYou can live at a village hotel, and pay a maximum price for minimum\ncomfort.\n\nYou can, possibly, lodge in a public-house, where it will cost you\ndear, however little you pay.\n\nOr you can, in some villages, hire empty rooms in an entirely empty\nhouse, and hire furniture from Brussels, and servants, if you have\nnone, by the month.\n\nThis last alternative has the advantage of ennobling your position\ninto a quasi-martyrdom, by, in a measure, compelling you to stay where\nyou are, whether you like it or not.\n\nToward the end of that longest of the long days, we began to regard\nlife and circumstance with the apathy of despair, and to cease to hope\nfor anything further from them except dinner.\n\nThe capital of the kingdom of Lilliput appeared to be partially\nsurrounded by a vast and melancholy campagna of turnips. These wilds,\nimmeasurably spread, seemed lengthening as we went. Village after\n{107} village had we reached, and explored in vain. Judging by our\nfeelings, I should say we had ransacked at least half-a-hundred of\nthose rural colonies. Almost all these villages possessed at least six\npublic-houses and two ponds. Some few had no ponds, but all had six\npublic-houses. Rural, dusty, cracked public-houses; with frowzy\ngardens, with rotten, sloppy tables and benches; with beery gorillas\nplaying at quoits and ninepins.\n\nThe names of none of these settlements seemed to us pronounceable by\nhuman beings, with the exception of two, which sounded like Diggum and\nHittumontheback. But our city driver appeared to be acquainted with\nthe Simian tongue, and was directed from village to village by the\ngood-natured apes whom he interrogated.\n\nAbout sunset we came to a larger and quite civilized place, with a\nFrench name, signifying \"The Tadpoles\"--the place I have described at\nthe commencement of this narrative. Our dusty fly and dejected horse\nturned into the carriage entrance of the first little hotel we saw. It\nstood sideways to a picturesque little lake, with green shores. The\ncarriage entrance went through the house. Beyond, we had caught sight\nof a paved yard or court, and of a vista of green leafiness that\nlooked cool and inviting. We heard the noisy jangling of a\nbarrel-organ playing a polka, and we found a performance going on in\nthe court that absorbed the attention of the whole household. No one\nseemed to hear, or at least to heed, the sound of our wheels, but,\nwhen our vehicle fairly stopped in the paved yard, a fishy-eyed waiter\ncame toward us, jauntily flipping time with his napkin. We begged him\nto get us dinner instantly.\n\n\"Way, Mosou,\" replied that official, in the sweet Belgian-French\nlanguage, and let us out of the fly. We had been so long cramped up in\nit that we were glad to walk, and stand, and look about the court\nwhile our food was got ready.\n\nThe organ-grinder had not ceased grinding out his polka for a moment.\nThe wiry screams of his infernal machine seemed to charm him as much\nas they did the rest of the company assembled. He was the usual\nSavoyard, with a face like a burnt crust; all fire-brown eyes, sable\nringlets, and insane grimace. He leaned against a low stone post, and\nground out that horrible bray, like a grinning maniac. We walked to a\nshort distance, and took in the scene.\n\nA little sallow young man, having a bushy mustache, stood near a door\ninto the house, with a dish in his hand, as if he had been transfixed\nin the act of carrying it somewhere. Beside him, on the step of the\ndoor, sat a blonde young woman, with large blue eyes and a little\nmouth--as pretty and as _fade_ as a Carlo-Dolcian Madonna. Evidently\nthese were the landlord and his lady.\n\nOn a garden-bench, by the low wall that divided the court from the\ngarden beyond, sat, a little apart, a young person of a decidedly\nFrench aspect, dressed quite plainly, but with Parisian precision, in\nblack silk. In her hand and on her lap lay some white embroidery. She\nwas not pretty, but had neat, small features, that wore a pleasant\nthough rather sad smile, as she suspended her work to watch what was\ngoing on. An old woman in a dark-blue gown and a clean cap, with a\npile of freshly-ironed linen in her arms, stood at the top of some\nsteps leading into a little building which was probably the laundry.\nShe was wagging her old head merrily to the dance tune. Other\nlookers-on lounged about, but some of them had vanished since our\narrival--for instance, the fishy-eyed waiter and a burly individual in\na white nightcap.\n\nThe centre of attraction remains to be described. Within a few paces\nof the organ-grinder, a little girl and boy danced indefatigably on\nthe stones, to the unmusical music of his box. The little boy was a\nsmall, fair, sickly child, in a linen blouse, and about four years\nold. He jumped, and stamped, and {108} laughed excitedly. The little\ngirl looked about a year older. She was plump and rosy, dressed in a\nfull pink frock and black silk apron. She had light brown hair, cut\nshort and straight, like a boy's. She danced very energetically, but\nsolemnly, without a smile on her wee round mouth. She poussetted, she\ntwirled--her pink frock spread itself out like a parasol. Her fat\nlittle bare arms akimbo, she danced in a gravely coquettish,\nthoroughly business-like way; now crossing, changing places with her\npartner; now setting to him, with little pattering feet; now suddenly\nwhisking and whirling off. The little boy watched her, and followed\nher lead: she was the governing spirit of the dance. Both children\nkept admirable time. They were dancing the tarantella, though they had\nnever heard of it; but of all the poetry of motion, the tarantella is\nthe most natural measure to fall into.\n\nThe organ-grinder ground, and grinned, and nodded; the landlord and\nhis wife exchanged looks of admiration and complacency whenever they\ncould take their eyes off the little dancing nymph: it was easy to see\nthey were her proud parents. The quiet young lady on the bench looked\ntenderly at the tiny, sickly boy, as he frisked. We felt sure she was\nhis mother. His eyes were light blue, not hazel; but he had the same\nneat little features.\n\nAll of a sudden, down from an open window looking into the court,\nthere came an enormous voice--\n\n\"Ah, ah! Bravo! Ah, ah, Monsieur Babebibo-BOU!\"\n\nThe little boy stopped dancing; so did the little girl, and every one\nlooked up at the window. The little boy, clapping his hands and\nscreaming with glee, ran under it. No one could be seen at that\naperture, but we had caught a momentary glimpse of a big blond man in\na blue blouse, who had instantly dropped out of sight, and who was\ncrouching on the floor, for we saw, though the child below could not,\nthe top of his straw hat just above the window-edge. The little boy\nscreamed, \"Papa, papa!\" The great voice, making itself preternaturally\ngruff, roared out--\n\n\"Qui est la? Est-ce par chance Monsieur Babebibo-BOU?\" (The first\nsyllables very fast, the final one explosive.)\n\n\"Way, way! C'est Mosou Babi--_bou_!\" cried the child, trying to\nimitate the gruff voice, and jumping and laughing ecstatically.\n\nOut of the window came flying a huge soft ball of many colors, and\nthen another roar: \"Avec les compliments du Roi de tous les joujoux, a\nMonsieur Babebibo-BOU!\"\n\nMore rapture. Then a large white packet, palpably sugar-plums, \"Avec\nles compliments de la Reine de tous les bonbons, a Mademoiselle Marie,\net a Monsieur Babebibo-BOU!\"\n\nRapture inexpressible, except by shrill shrieks and capers. The plump\nlittle girl gravely advances and assists at the examination of the\npacket, popping comfits into her tiny mouth with a placid melancholy,\nwhich I have often observed in fat and rosy faces.\n\nMeanwhile, the organ-grinder has at last stopped grinding, has lowered\nhis box, and is eating a plateful of cold meat and bread which the old\nwoman has brought out to him. The landlord and his wife have\ndisappeared. The young Frenchwoman on the garden-bench has risen, and\ncome toward the children; and now, from a doorway leading into the\nhouse, issues the big blond man we caught a momentary glimpse of at\nthe window.\n\nThe little boy abandons the sugar-plums to his playfellow, and crying\n\"Papa! papa!\" darts to the new comer, who stoops and gathers him up to\nhis broad breast, in his large arms and hands, kissing him fondly and\nrepeatedly. The child responds with like effusion. The father's great\nred face, with its peaked yellow beard, contrasts touchingly, somehow,\nwith the wee pale phiz of his little son. {109} The child's tiny white\npads pat the jolly cheeks and pull the yellow beard. Then the man in\nthe blouse sets his son carefully on the ground, and kisses the young\nFrenchwoman who stands by.\n\nThe big man has evidently been absent awhile from his family. \"How\ngoes it, my sister?\" says he.\n\n\"Well, my brother,\" she answers quietly. \"Thou hast seen Auguste\ndance. Thou hast seen how well, and strong, and happy he is--the good\nGod be thanked.\"\n\n\"And after him, thee, my good sister,\" says the big man,\naffectionately.\n\nWe had been called in to dinner by this time, but the open window of\nour eating-room looked into the court close to where the group stood.\nWe observed that Mademoiselle Marie had remained sole possessor of the\npacket of sweets; and that the little boy, content to have got his\npapa, made no effort to assert his rights in them. The big papa\ninterfered, saying, \"Mais, mais, la petite.... Give at least of the\nbonbons to thy comrade. It is only fair.\"\n\n\"Let her eat them, Jean,\" put in his sister, with naive feminine\ngenerosity and justice. \"They are so unwholesome for Auguste, seest\nthou?\"\n\nThe big man laughed, lit his pipe, and the three went away into the\nlittle garden, where they strolled, talking in the summer twilight.\n\nWe came happily to an anchor here, in this foggy little haven, and\nfinding we could secure, at tolerably moderate charges, the\naccommodation we required, made up our minds to stay at this little\nhotel for the few weeks of our absence from Brussels.\n\n\n\nII.\n\nNext morning we were breakfasting in the garden under a trellis of\nhop-leaves, when the big man in the blouse came up the gravel-walk,\nwith his small son on his shoulder.\n\nThey were making a tremendous noise. The little boy was pulling his\nfather's great red ear; he affected to bellow with anguish, his\nroaring voice topped by the child's shrill, gleeful treble. We saluted\nthe new comers in a neighborly manner.\n\n\"A beautiful day, Madame,\" said the big man, in French, taking off his\nhat and bowing politely to John's wife, at the same time surrounding\nhis son safely with his left arm.\n\n\"Madame and these Messieurs are English, is it not?\"\n\n\"A pretty place,\" we went on to say, after owning our nationality,\n\"and very pleasant in this hot weather after the glare of Brussels.\"\n\n\"It is that; and I am here as often as possible,\" returned our new\nacquaintance. \"My sister is staying here for the advantage of this\nlittle man. . . . Monsieur Auguste, at your service. Salute then the\nsociety, Auguste. You must know he has the pretension to be a little\ndelicate, this young man. An invalid, if you please; consequently his\naunt spoils him! It is a ruse on his part, you perceive. Ah, bah! An\ninvalid! My word, he fatigues my poor arm. Ah--h! I cannot longer\nsustain him. I faint--I drop him down he goes. . . la--a--a!\"\n\nHere, lowering him carefully, as if he were crystal, he pretended to\nlet his son suddenly tumble on a bit of grass-plot.\n\n\"At present\" (grumbling) \"here he is, broken to pieces probably; we\nshall have the trouble of mending him. His aunt must bring her needle\nand thread.\"\n\nMonsieur Auguste was so enchanted with this performance that he\nencored it ecstatically. His father obeyed, and then sent him off\nrunning to call out his aunt to breakfast, which was laid under a\nneighboring trellis.\n\n\"He is strong on his legs, is it not, Madame?\" said the father,\nlooking after him; his jolly face and light blue eyes a little grave,\nand wistful. \"His spirits are so high, see you? He is {110} too\nintelligent, too intellectual--he has a little exhausted his strength;\nthat says all. He is well enough; he has no malady; and every day he\nis getting stouter, plainly to the eye.\"\n\nHere the aunt and nephew joined us. Our new acquaintance introduced\nher.\n\n\"Ma belle-soeur. Ma chere,--Madame and these Messieurs are English.\nThey are good enough to take an interest in this infant Hercules of\nours.\"\n\nHe tossed the child on his shoulder again; established on which throne\nhis little monarch amused himself by ornamenting the parental\nstraw-hat with a huge flaring poppy and some green leaves, beneath\nwhich the jovial face bloomed Bacchic.\n\nMeanwhile the quiet young French-woman, smiling affectionately at\nthose playfellows as they went off together, sat down on a chair we\noffered her, and frankly entered into conversation.\n\nIn a few minutes we knew a great deal about this little family. The\nman in the blouse was a Belgian painter, Jean Baudin, and \"well seen\nin the expositions of Paris and Brussels.\" \"His wife was my sister: we\nwere of Paris. When our little Auguste was born, my poor sister died.\nShe was always delicate. The little one is very delicate. Ah, so\ndelicate, also. It is impossible to be over-careful of him. And his\nfather, who is so strong--so strong! But the little one resembles in\nevery manner his mother. His poor father adores him, as you see. Poor\nJean! he so tenderly loved his wife, who died in her first youth. . . .\nShe had but eighteen years--she had six years less than I. In dying\nshe begged me to be to her infant a mother, and to her poor Jean a\nsister. Jean is a good brother, bon et brave homme. And for the little\none, he is truly a child to be adored--judiciously, it is understood,\nmadame: I spoil him not, believe me. But he is clever to astonish you,\nthat child. So spiritual, and then such a tender little good heart--a\ndisposition so amiable. Hardly he requires correction. . . . Auguste!\nhow naughty thou art! Auguste! dost thou hear? Jean! take him then off\nthe dusty wall, and wipe him a little. Mon ami, thou spoilest the\nchild; one must be judicious.\"\n\nWe presently left the garden, and, in passing, beheld Monsieur Auguste\nat breakfast. He was seated between his papa and aunt, and was being\nadored by both (judiciously and injudiciously) to the heart's content\nof all three.\n\nWe stayed a month at this little hotel at The Tadpoles. The English\nfamily soon fraternized with that of Jean Baudin, the Flemish painter,\nalso sojourning there, and the only other resident guests.\n\nJohn's wife and Mademoiselle became good friends and gossips, and sat\nat work and chat many a summer hour under the hop trellises.\nMademoiselle Rose Leclerc was the Frenchwoman's name, but her name of\nceremony was simply \"Mademoiselle.\" John and I used to walked about\nthe country, among the lanes, and woods, and hamlets which diversify\nthe flats on that side of Brussels, accompanying Jean Baudin and his\npaint-box. We sat under a tree, or on a stone fence, smoking pipes of\npatience, while Jean made studies for those wonderful, elaborate tiny\npictures, the work of his big hands, by which he and his little son\nlived. I remember, in particular, a mossy old cottage, rough and grey;\nthe front clothed with vines, the quaint long gable running down\nbehind to within a yard of the ground. Baudin sketched that cottage\nvery often; and often used its many picturesque features.\n\nSometimes it was the rickety, black-timbered porch, garlanded with\nvine; a sonsy, blond-haired young Flemish maiden sat there, and\ntwirled the bobbins on a lace-cushion, in a warm yellow flicker of\nsunshine. Sometimes Jean went right into the porch and into the\ncottage itself, and presently brought us out an old blue-gowned,\nblack-coifed creature, knitting as she kicked the grand-babe's clumsy\ncradle {111} with her clumsy sabot;--a ray through the leafy little\nwindow-hole found the crone's white hair, and the infant cheek. Honest\nJean only painted what he saw with his eyes. He could copy such simple\npoetry as this, and feel it too, though he could indite no original\npoems on his canvas pages. He was a hearty good fellow, and we soon\ngot to like him, and his kindly, unpretentious, but not unshrewd,\ntalk--that is, when it could be got off the paternal grooves--which,\nto say the truth, was seldomer than we (who were not ourselves at that\nperiod the parents of prodigies) may have secretly desired.\n\nIn the summer evenings we used to sit in the garden all together, the\nladies graciously permitting us to smoke. We liked to set the children\na-dancing again on the grass-plot before us; and I must here confess\nthat they saltated to a mandolin touched by this hand. I had studied\nthe instrument under a ragged maestro of Naples, and flattered myself.\nI performed on it with credit to both, and to the general delight.\n\nSometimes Jean Baudin would tie to his cane a little\npocket-handkerchief of Monsieur Auguste, and putting this ensign into\nhis hand, cause him to go through a certain vocal performance of a\nmartial and defiant character. The pale little man did it with much\nspirit, and a truculent aspect, stamping fiercely at particular\nmoments of the strain. I can only remember the effective opening of\nthis entertainment. Thus it began--\"_Les Belges_\" (at this point the\nsmall performer threw up the staff and flag of his country, and\nshouted _ff_) \"_SONT BRAVES!!\"_ Papa and aunt regarded with pride that\nferocious champion of his valiant compatriots, looking round to read\nour astonishment and rapture in our faces.\n\nWe all got on excellently with the hotel folk, ingratiating ourselves\nchiefly by paying a respectful court to the solid and rosy little\nprincess of the house. Jean Baudin painted her, sitting placid, a\nlittle open-mouthed, heavy-lidded, over-fed, with a lapful of\ncherries. We all made much of her and submitted to her. John's wife\npresented her with a frock of English print, of a charming\napple-green; out of which the fat pink face bloomed like a\ncarnation-bud out of its calyx.\n\nThe young landlord would bring us out a dish to our garden\ndinner-table, on purpose that he might linger and chat about England.\nThat country, and some of its model institutions, appeared to excite\nin his mind a mixture of awe and curiosity, wonder and horror. For\ninstance, he had heard--he did not altogether believe it\n(deprecatingly)--that not only were the shops of London closed, with\nshutters, on the Sunday, but also the theatres; and not only the\ntheatres, but also the expositions, the gardens and salons of dance,\nof music, of play. How! it was actually the truth?\n\n\"Certainly, what Madame was good enough to affirm one must believe.\nBut then what do they? No business, no amusement what then do they,\nmon Dieu!--\"\n\n\"They go to church, read the Bible, and keep the Sabbath day holy,\"\nasserts Mrs. Freshe, in perfect good faith, and severely and proudly,\nas becomes a Protestant Britishwoman.\n\n\"Tiens, tiens! But it is triste, that--. Is it not that it is triste,\nMadame? Tiens, tiens! And this is that which is the Protestantism.\nSince Madame herself affirms it, one can doubt no longer.\"\n\nAnd he goes pondering away, to tell his wife; with no increased\ntendency to the reformed faith.\n\nEven Joseph, the stolid and fishy-eyed waiter, patronized us, and\ngravely did us a hundred obliging services beyond his official duty.\n\nOn a certain evening, Mademoiselle, John, John's wife, and I, sat as\nusual at book or work under the trellises; while the two children, at\nhealthful play, prattled under the shade of the laurel-bushes hard by.\nAs usual, the solid little Flemish maiden was {112} tyrannizing calmly\nover her playfellow. We constantly heard her small voice, quiet, slow,\nand dominating: \"_Je le veux_.\" \"_Je ne le veux pas_.\" They had for\nplaythings a little handbell and a toy-wagon, and were playing at\nrailways. Auguste was the porter, trundling up, with shrill cries,\nheavy luggage-trucks piled with gravel, gooseberry-skins, tin\nsoldiers, and bits of cork. Marie was a rich and haughty lady about to\nproceed by the next convoi, and paying an immense sum, in daisies, for\nher ticket, to Auguste, become a clerk. A disputed point in these\ntransactions appeared to be the possession of the bell; the frequent\nringing of which was indeed a principal feature of the performance.\nAuguste contended hotly, but with considerable show of reason, to this\neffect:--That the instrument belonged to him, in his official\ncapacities of porter and clerk, rather than to the rich and haughty\nlady, who as a passenger was not, and could not be, entitled to\nmonopolize the bell of the company. Indeed, he declared himself nearly\ncertain that, as far as his experience went, passengers never did ring\nit at all. But Marie's \"Je le veux\" settled the dispute, and carried\nher in triumph, after the crushing manner of her sex, over all\nfrivolous masculine logic.\n\nMademoiselle sat placid beside us, doing her interminable and\nelaborate satin-stitch. She was working at a broad white slip,\nintended, I understood, to form the ornamental base of a petticoat. It\nwas at least a foot wide, of a florid and labyrinthine pattern, full\nof oval and round holes, which appeared to have been cut out of the\nstuff in order that Mademoiselle might be at the pains of filling them\nup again with thready cobwebs. She would often with demure and\ninnocent complacency display this fabric, in its progress, to John's\nwife (who does not herself, I fancy, excel in satin-stitch), and\nrelate how short a time (four months, I think) she had taken to bring\nit so near completion. Mrs. Freshe regarded this work of art with\nfeminine eyes of admiration, and slyly remarked that it was really\nbeautiful enough \"meme pour un trousseau.\" At the same time she with\ndifficulty concealed her disapproval of the waste of precious time\nincurred by the authoress of the petticoat-border. Not that\nMademoiselle could be accused of neglecting the severer forms of her\nscience; such as the construction of frocks and blouses for Monsieur\nAuguste--adorned, it must be admitted, with frivolous and intricate\nconvolutions of braid. And the exquisite neatness of the visible\nportions of Monsieur Jean's linen also bore honorable testimony to\nMademoiselle's more solid labors.\n\nInto the midst of this peaceful garden-scene entered a new personage.\nA man of middle height, with a knapsack at his back, came up the\ngravel-walk: a handsome brown-faced fellow of five-and-thirty, with a\nbig black beard, and a neat holland blouse, and a grey felt hat.\n\nMademoiselle and he caught sight of each other at the same instant.\n\nBoth gave a cry. Her rather sallow little face flushed like a rose.\nShe started up; down dropped her petticoat-work; she ran forward,\nthrowing out her hands; she stopped short--shy, and bright, and\npretty as eighteen! The man made a stride and took her in his arms.\n\n\"Ma Rose! ma Rose! Enfin!\" cried he in a strangled voice.\n\nShe said nothing, but hung at his neck, her two little hands on his\nshoulders, her face on his breast.\n\nBut that was only for a moment. Then Mademoiselle disengaged herself,\nand glanced shamefacedly at us. Then she came quickly up--came to\nJohn's wife, slid an arm round her neck, and said rapidly,\ntremulously, with sparkling, tearful eyes:\n\n\"C'est Jules, Madame. C'est mon fiance depuis quatre ans. Ah, Madame,\nj'ai honte--mais,\"--and ran back to him. She was transformed. In place\nof that staid, almost old-maidish {113} little person we knew, lo! a\nbashful, rosy, smiling girl, tripping, skipping, beside herself with\nhappy love! And her little collar was all rumpled, and so were her\nsmooth brown braids. Monsieur Jules took off his felt hat, and bowed\npolitely when she came to us, guessing that he was being introduced.\nHis brown face blushed a little, too: it was a happy and honest one,\nvery pleasant to see.\n\nThe children had left off playing, and stared wide-eyed at these\nextraordinary proceedings. Mademoiselle ran to her little nephew, and\nbrought him to Jules.\n\n\"I recognize well the son of our poor Lolotte,\" said he, softly,\nlifting and kissing him. \"And that dear Jean, where is he?\"\n\nEven as he spoke there came a familiar roar from that window\noverlooking the court-yard, by which the painter sat at his easel\nalmost all day. \"Ohe! Monsieur Ba-Bou!\" The little boy nearly jumped\nout of his new friend's arms.\n\n\"Papa! papa! Laissez-moi, done, Mosou!--Papa!\"\n\n\"Is it that thou art by chance this monsieur whom they call?\" laughed\nJules, as he put him down.\n\n\"Way, way!\" cried the little man as he pattered off, with that gleeful\nshriek of his. \"C'est moi, Mosou Ba-Bou! Ba-Bou!\"\n\n\"Thou knowest that great voice of our Jean,\" said Mademoiselle; \"when\nhe has finished his day's labor he always calls his child like that.\nHaving worked all day for the little one, he goes now to make himself\na child to play with him. He calls that to rest himself. And truly the\nlittle one idolizes his father, and for him will leave all other\nplayfellows--even me. Come, then, Jules, let us seek Jean.\"\n\nAnd with a smiling salute to us the happy couple went arm-in-arm out\nof the garden.\n\n\n\nIII.\n\nWe did not see much of our friends the next day. After their early\ndinner, Jean came up the garden all alone, to smoke a pipe, and\nstretch his legs before he returned to his work. We thought his\ngood-natured face was a little sad, in spite of his cheerful _abord_,\nas he came to our garden parlor and spoke to us.\n\n\"It is a pleasure to see them, is it not?\" said he, looking after the\nlovers, just vanishing under the archway of the court-yard, into the\nsunny village road. Mademoiselle had left off her sober black silk,\nand floated in the airiest of chintz muslins.\n\n\"My good little Rose merits well her happiness. She sent that brave\nJules marching four years ago, because she had promised my poor wife\nnot to abandon her helpless infant. Truly she has been the best of\nlittle mothers to my Auguste. Jules went away angry enough; but\nwithout doubt he must have loved her all the better when he came to\nreflect. He has been to Italy, to Switzerland, to England--know I\nwhere? He is artist-painter, like me--of France always understood. Me,\nI am Flemish, and very content to be the compatriot of Rubens, of\nVandyke. But Jules has very much talent: he paints also the portraits,\nand has made successes. He is a brave boy, and deserves his Rose.\"\n\n\"Will the marriage take place now, at last?\" we ventured to ask.\n\n\"As I suppose,\" answered Jean, his face clouding perceptibly.\n\n\"But you will not separate; you will live together, perhaps,\"\nsuggested John's wife.\n\n\"Ah, Madame, how can that be? Jules is of France and I of Belgium.\nWhen I married I brought my wife to Brussels; naturally he will carry\nhis to Paris. C'est juste.\"\n\n\"Poor little Auguste will miss his aunt,\" said John's wife,\ninvoluntarily, \"and she will hardly bear to leave him, I think.\"\n\n\"Ah, Madame,\" said Jean, with ever so little bitterness in his tone,\n\"what would you? The little one must come second now; the husband will\n{114} be first. Yes, yes, and it is but fair! Auguste is strong now,\nand I must find him a good bonne. I complain not. I am not so\nungrateful. My poor Rose must not be always the sacrifice. She has\nbeen an angel to us. See you, she has saved the life of us both. The\nlittle one must have died without her, and apparently I must have died\nwithout the little one. C'est simple, n'est ce pas?\" smiling. Then he\ngave a sigh, truly as if he could not repress it, and walked away\nhastily. \"We looked after him, compassion in our hearts.\n\n\"That sickly little boy will hardly live if his aunt leaves him,\" said\nMrs. Freshe, \"_and his father knows it_.\"\n\n\"But what a cruel sacrifice if she stayed!\" said John.\n\n\"And can her lover be expected to wait till Auguste has grown up into\na strong man?\" I put in.\n\nThe day after was Sunday. Coming from an early walk, I heard a\ntremendous clamor, of woe or merriment, proceeding from a small\nsitting-room that opened into the entrance passage. The door was wide,\nand I looked in. Jean Baudin was jammed up in a corner, behind a\nbarricade of chairs, and was howling miserably, entreating to be let\nout. His big sun-browned face was crowned by a white coif made of\npaper, and a white apron was tied round his great waist over his blue\nblouse. Auguste and Marie danced about the barricade with shrill\nscreams, frantic with joy.\n\nWhen Baudin saw me he gave a dismal yell, and piteously begged me to\ncome to his assistance. \"See, then, my dear young gentleman, how these\nbandits, these rebels, these demons, maltreat their poor bonne! Help,\nhelp!\" and suddenly, with a roar like a small Niagara, he burst out of\nhis prison and took to his heels, round and round the court and up the\ngarden, the children screaming after him--the noise really terrific.\nPresently it died away, and he came back to the doorstep where I\nstood, Auguste on his shoulder and the little maiden demurely trotting\nafter. \"At present, I am the bonne,\" said he. \"Rose and her Jules are\ngone to church; so is our hostess. In the meanwhile, I undertake to\nlook after the children. Have you ever seen a little bonne more\npretty? with my coquette cap and my neat apron--hein?\"\n\nThat evening the lovers went out in a boat on the great pond, or\nlittle lake, at the back of the hotel. They carried Auguste with them.\nWe all went to the water's edge; the rest remained a while, leaning\nover the rails that partly skirted the parapet wall except Jean, who\nstrolled off with his tiny sketch-book. A very peaceful summer picture\nwas before us, which I can see now if I shut my eyes--I often see it.\nA calm and lovely August evening near sunset; a few golden feathers\nafloat in the blue sky. Below, the glassy pond that repeats blue sky,\nred-roofed cottages, green banks, and woody slopes--repeats, also, the\nsolitary boat rowed by Jules, the three light-colored figures it\ncontains, and a pair of swans that glide stately after. The little boy\nis throwing bits of bread or cake to them.\n\nAs we stood there and admired this pretty little bright panorama,\nJohn's wife observed that the child was flinging himself dangerously\nforward, in his usual eager, excited way, at every cast he made.\n\n\"I wonder,\" said she, \"that his aunt takes no notice. She is so\nabsorbed in talk with Jules she never turns her head. Look! look!\nA--h!\"\n\nA dreadful shriek went up from lake and shore. The poor little fellow,\nhad overbalanced himself, and had gone headlong into the lake. Some\none had flashed over the parapet wall at the same moment, and struck\nthe water with a splash and a thud. Some one was tearing through it\nlike a steam-engine, toward the boat. It was my brother John. We saw\nand heard Jules, frantic, and evidently impotent to save; we saw him\nmake a vain clutch at something that rose to the surface. At the same\ntime we {115} perceived that he had scarce power to keep Rose with his\nleft hand from throwing herself into the water.\n\nHardly three minutes had yet passed, yet half the population seemed\nthronging to the lake-side, here, where the village skirted it.\n\nAnd suddenly we beheld a terrible--a piteous sight. A big, bareheaded\nman, that burst through the people, pale, furious, awful; his teeth\nset, his light blue eyes flaring. He seemed to crash through the\ncrowd, splintering it right and left, like a bombshell through a wall,\nand was going crazy and headlong over the parapet into the water. He\ncould swim no more than Jules.\n\n\"Sauve! sauve!\" cried John's wife, gripping his hand and hanging to it\nas he went rushing past. \"My husband has found him. See! see there,\nJean Baudin! He holds up the dear child.\"\n\nShe could not have kept him back a moment--probably he did not feel her\ntouch; he was only dragging her with him. But his wild eyes, fixed and\nstaring forward, had seen for themselves what he never heard her say.\n\nFast, fast as one arm could oar him, my brother was bringing Jean his\nlittle one, held above water by the other hand. Then that poor huge\nbody swayed and shivered; the trembling hands went out, the face\nunlocked a little, there came a hoarse sob, and like a thin, strangled\ncry in a dream--\n\n\"Mon petit! mon petit!\"\n\nBut strong again, and savage with love, how he snatched the pale\nlittle burden from John, and tore up the bank to the hotel. There were\nwooden back-gates that opened into the court on the lake-side, but\nwhich were unused and locked. At one mighty kick they yawned open\nbefore Jean, and he rushed on into the house. Here all had been\nprudently prepared, and the little dripping body was quickly stripped\nand wrapped in hot blankets. The village doctor was already there, and\ntwo or three women. Jean Baudin helped the doctor and the women with a\ntouching docility. All his noisy roughness was smoothed. He tamed his\nbig voice to a delicate whisper. He spoke and moved with an affecting\nsubmissive gentleness, watching what there was he could do, and doing\nit exactly as he was bid. Now and then he spoke a word or two under\nhis breath--\"One must be patient, I know, Monsieur le Medecin; yes,\nyes.\" And now and then he muttered piteously \"Mon petit! mon petit!\"\nBut he was as gentle as a lamb, and touchingly eager to be helpful.\n\nIn half an hour his pain got the better of him a little.\n\n\"Mais, mon Dieu, mon Dieu!\" he moaned, \"how I suffer! Ah, Monsieur, is\nit not that he breathes a little, my dear little one? Ah, my God, save\nme him! Mon petit! mon petit!\"\n\nHe went into a corner of the room, and stood with his forehead against\nthe wall, his shoulders heaving with silent sobs. Then he came back\nquiet and patient again.\n\n\"Priez, priez pour moi, Madame,\" said he, once, to John's wife.\n\n\"I am praying without ceasing, my poor friend,\" said she. And once she\nhastily laid a handkerchief soaked in essence on his forehead, for she\nthought he was surely going to faint, when the hope, long, long\ndeferred, began to turn his heart sick.\n\nAll this time John and I lingered in the dusky passage, in which that\ndoor ajar made a cleft of yellow light. Every now and then a dim\nfigure stole up to us with an eager sad whisper, asking, \"How goes it?\nhow goes it?\" and slipped away down-stairs with the comfortless\nanswer.\n\nIt was poor Jules, who could do nothing for his Rose but this. She had\nthrown herself on the floor in a darkening room, and lay there\nmoaning. Her dire anguish, sharp as a mother's for the little one, was\ncruelly and unduly aggravated by self-reproach, and by the\nself-inflicted agony of her exile from that room up-stairs. She dared\nnot enter Jean's presence. She felt that he must for ever abhor the\nsight of her; she was afraid he {116} might curse her! She rejected\nall kindness, all sympathy, especially from Jules, whom she quite\nfiercely ordered to quit her. But when it got quite dark, the poor\nfellow took in a candle, and set it on a table; and he spent the time\nin going up and down-stairs to fetch her that whisper of news, which,\nperhaps, he sweetened with a little false hope before he offered it to\nher.\n\nAt last we outside heard a movement--a stifled exclamation; and then\none of the women ran out.\n\n\"The child has opened his eyes!\" said she, as she hurried down-stairs\nfor some article required.\n\nPresently we heard a man sobbing softly; and then--yes, a faint tiny\nvoice. And after that--nothing, for a long while. But at last at last!\na miserable, awful cry, and a heavy, heavy fall. And then came out\nJohn's wife, at sight of whose face we turned sick at heart, and\nfollowed her silently down-stairs. We knew what had happened: the\nlittle one was dead.\n\nHe had opened his eyes, and had probably known his father; for the\nlight that his presence always kindled there had come into the little\nwhite face. Jean, too ready to clutch the delusive hope, fell\na-sobbing with rapture, and kissing the little fair head. The child\ntried to speak, and did speak, though but once.\n\n\"He said, 'Ba-Bou' quite distinctly,\" said John's wife, \"and then such\na pretty smile came; and it's--it's there still, on his little dear\n_dead_ face, John.\"\n\nHere she broke down, and went into a passion of tears, sobbing for\n\"poor Jean! poor Jean!\"\n\nHe had fainted for the first time in his strong life, and so that\nblessed unconsciousness was deadening the first insupportable agony of\nhis dreadful wound. They carried him out, and laid him on his bed, and\nI believe the doctor bled him. They hoped he would sleep afterward\nfrom sheer exhaustion.\n\nPresently poor Jules came to us, crying like a child, and begging us\nto go to his Rose to try to rouse her, if only to make her weep. She\nhad fallen into a dry depth and abyss of despair--an icy crevasse,\nwhere even his love could not reach her.\n\nSince she had known the child was dead, she had not stirred, except to\nresist, moaning, every attempt to lift her from the floor, where she\nhad cast herself, and except that she shuddered and repulsed Jules,\nespecially, whenever he went near her.\n\nWe went into the room where she lay. My good brother stooped, and\nspoke to her in his tender, manly fashion, and lifted her, with a\nresolution to which she yielded, and seated her on a sofa beside his\nwife, whose kind arms closed round her suffering sister.\n\nAnd suddenly some one had come in whom Rose could not see, for her\neyes were pressed to that womanly bosom. John's wife made a little\nwarning gesture that kept us others silent.\n\nIt was poor Jean himself; he came in as if in search of somewhat; he\nwas deadly pale, and perhaps half unconscious what he did. He was\nwithout shoes, and his clothes and blond hair and beard were tumbled\nand disordered--just as when they had laid him on his bed. When he saw\nRose, he came straight up to her, and sat down on her other side.\n\n\"Ma pauvre Rose,\" said he piteously--\n\nShe gave a cry and start of terror, and turned and saw him. The poor\nfellow's broken heart was in his face; she could not mistake the\nsweet-natured anguish there. Half bewildered by his inconceivable\ngrief, he had gone to her, instinctively, like a child, for sympathy\nand comfort.\n\n\"Ma pauvre Rose,\" said he, brokenly; \"notre petit--\"\n\nPassionately she took his great head between her hands, and drew it\ndown on her bosom, and kissed it passionately weeping at last.\n\nAnd we all came out softly, and left them--left them to that Pity\nwhich sends us the wholesome agony of such tears.\n\n------\n\n{117}\n\n\nCARDINAL WISEMAN IN ROME.\n\n\n\"It was in the year 1863,\" says Monsignore Manning, in his funeral\noration on the great prince of the Church whose loss the whole\nCatholic world is now deploring, \"that the sovereign pontiff, speaking\nof the cardinal, described him as 'the man of divine Providence for\nEngland.'\" And truly it seems to us that the direct inspiration of the\nHoly Ghost has seldom been so clearly apparent in the choice of a\nbishop as it was in the case of him who has filled the cathedral chair\nof Westminster for the last fifteen years. When we remember the\npeculiar circumstances under which he began his pastorship--the\nreaction which was steadily, though as yet almost imperceptibly, going\non in favor of the Church; the doubt and perplexity and wavering with\nwhich a crowd of wandering souls were groping in darkness for the\nportals of divine truth; and then the outburst of anger with which the\nnation at large read the bulls of the Holy Father, raising up the\nEnglish Church from the humiliation in which she had lain for three\nhundred years, we shall readily understand that a rare union of\nqualities was required in the man who should understand and direct\nthose honest seekers after truth, and breast successfully that storm\nof popular fury. That Nicholas Wiseman, who had left England at the\nage of sixteen, and passed twenty years of his youth and early manhood\nat Rome--absorbed, just at the time when the character is most liable\nto be moulded by external associations, in the theological studies and\nceremonies and sacred traditions of the ecclesiastical capital--that\nhe, we say, should have displayed such a remarkable fitness for both\nthese works, is not only an indication of the great qualities of the\nman, but an instructive commentary on the school in which he had been\nformed. It shows us that a Roman education, while it enlarges the view\nand sweeps away local prejudices, yet leaves untouched the salient\npoints of national character. For his success in dealing with the\nCatholic movement which followed the emancipation act of 1829,\nCardinal Wiseman was largely indebted to the quickness and accuracy of\nperception in theological matters which he had acquired during his\nlong residence at the centre of the Christian Church; what helped him\nmost in his victory over the burst of Protestant fury which followed\nthe restoration of the English hierarchy, and found official\nexpression in the ecclesiastical titles bill, was his thorough English\nboldness and honesty of speech and manly bearing. He appealed to his\ncountrymen's traditional love of fair-play; they heard him; and before\nlong all classes learned to love and respect him.\n\nOf the twenty years' schooling by which he prepared himself for his\nwork in England, the cardinal has left us some admirable sketches,\nscattered through his books. Dr. Manning alluded briefly to the\ninfluence of his Roman education. We propose to gather up what the\ncardinal himself has said about it; to paint with his own pencil a\npicture of his life of preparation; leaving other hands, if they will,\nto paint his subsequent life of labor.\n\nNicholas Wiseman was born at Seville, in Spain, on the second of\nAugust, 1802. His father was an English merchant, his mother an Irish\nlady. He lost his father in infancy, and at the age of six, in\nconsequence of those wars of invasion which for a time made Spain no\nlonger habitable, was taken to Ireland to be educated. After spending\none or two years at a boarding-school near Waterford, his mother went\nwith him to England, and {118} placed him at St. Cuthbert's college,\nUshaw, near Durham. Dr. Lingard was then vice-president of the\ncollege, \"and I have retained upon my memory,\" wrote the cardinal,\nnearly fifty years afterward, \"the vivid recollection of specific acts\nof thoughtful and delicate kindness, which showed a tender heart,\nmindful of its duties amidst the many harassing occupations just\ndevolved on him through the death of the president and his own\nliterary engagements; for he was reconducting his first great work\nthrough the press. But though he went from college soon after, and I\nlater left the country, and saw him not again for fifteen years, yet\nthere grew up an indirect understanding first, and by degrees a\ncorrespondence and an intimacy which continued to the close of his\nlife.\"    [Footnote 38]\n\n  [Footnote 38: _Recollections of the Last Four Popes_. Leo XII. Chap.\n  vii.]\n\nIt was in the course of the eight years which he passed at this\nreverend seat of learning--lineal descendant of the old English\ncollege of Douay--that he determined to become a priest. Here he first\nbegan to manifest that deep affection for the city of St. Peter which\ndistinguished him down to the end of his life. \"Its history,\" he says,\n\"its topography, its antiquities, had formed the bond of a little\ncollege society devoted to this queen of cities, while the dream of\nits longings had been the hope of one day seeing what could then only\nbe known through hearsay tourists and fabulous plans.\" But the hope\nwas fulfilled soon and unexpectedly. In 1818, Pope Pius VII. restored\nthe English college at Rome, \"after it had been desolate and\nuninhabited during almost the period of a generation.\" Nicholas\nWiseman was one of a band of young men sent out to colonize it. He\ngives a charming description of the arrival of the little party at\ntheir Roman home, and the delight and surprise with which they roamed,\nalone and undirected, through the solemn building, with its wide\ncorridors; its neat and cheerful rooms; its wainscotted refectory,\nfrom whose groined ceiling looked down St. George and the dragon; its\nlibrary heaped with tumultuous piles of unorganized volumes; its\ngarden, glowing with the lemon and orange, and presenting to one's\nfirst approach a perspective in fresco by Pozzi; and, above all, its\nchapel, illuminated from floor to roof with saints of England and\ncelestial glories;--or, better still, adjoining the college, the old\nroofless church of the Holy Trinity, where in generations long past\nmany a pilgrim from the British Isles had knelt to pray when the good\npriests of his nation fed and lodged him on his visit to the tomb of\nthe apostles. Pleasant must have been the meeting, on that December\nafternoon in the year 1818, between these six young men and their\nappointed rector Dr. Gradwell, who, being absent when they arrived,\ncame home that evening and found himself at the head of a college, and\nhis frugal meal appropriated by the hungry students.\n\nThe happiness of that day casts a glow over the page on which, when he\nwas an old man, the cardinal recorded the incidents. On Christmas eve\nhe was presented, with some of his companions, to the venerable Pius\nVII. We can imagine the feelings of awe with which he approached this\nsaintly man, released only a few years before from the French\ncaptivity. \"There was the halo of a confessor round the tiara of Pius\nthat eclipsed all gold and jewels.... Instead of receiving us, as was\ncustomary, seated, the mild and amiable pontiff rose to welcome us,\nand meet us as we approached. He did not allow it to be a mere\npresentation, or a visit of ceremony. It was a fatherly reception, and\nin the truest sense our inauguration into the duties that awaited us.\n.... The friendly and almost national grasp of the hand, after due\nhomage had been willingly paid, between the head of the Catholic\nChurch, venerable by his very age, and a youth who had nothing even to\npromise; {119} the first exhortation on entering a course of\necclesiastical study--its very inaugural discourse from him whom he\nbelieved to be the fountain of spiritual wisdom on earth;--these\nsurely formed a double tie, not to be broken, but rather strengthened,\nby every subsequent experience.\"\n\nDoubtless his early dreams of Rome were now surpassed by the reality\nof his daily life. It was unalloyed spiritual and intellectual\nenjoyment. Study was no task; it was only a sort of pleasure; and the\nhours of relaxation became a source of mental schooling, even while he\nwas pursuing the most delightful recreations. It is not difficult to\nimagine how he must have spent his holidays--roaming through the field\nof art, or resting at some seat of the Muses, or wandering along the\nstream of time, bordered by monuments of past greatness--every\nfootstep awakening the echoes of classic antiquity, or calling up the\nmost sacred memories of the early suffering Church. Even the solitude\nof buried cemeteries, \"where the tombs themselves are buried, where\nthe sepulchres are themselves things decayed and mouldering in\nrottenness,\" is no solitude to him; for he peoples it with the shadowy\nforms of the Scipios and Nasones whose ashes are there deposited. How\noften, in after years, did he not recur with fond delight to the\n\"images of long delicious strolls, in musing loneliness, through the\ndeserted ways of the ancient city; of climbings among its hills, over\nruins, to reach some vantage-ground for mapping the subjacent\nterritory, and looking beyond on the glorious chains of greater and\nlesser mountains, clad in their imperial hues of gold and purple; and\nthen perhaps of solemn entrance into the cool solitude of an open\nbasilica, where the thought now rests, as the body then did, after the\nsilent evening prayer, and brings forward from many well-remembered\nnooks every local inscription, every lovely monument of art, the\ncharacteristic feature of each, or the great names with which it is\nassociated....  Thus does Rome sink deep and deeper into the soul,\nlike the dew, of which every separate drop is soft and weightless, but\nwhich still finds its way to the root of everything beneath the soil,\nimparting there to every future plant its own warm tint, its own balmy\nfragrance, and its own ever rejuvenescent vigor.\"\n\nSuch were his hours of recreation: still more delightful were his\nhours of study, especially in \"the great public libraries, where\nnoiseless monks brought him and piled round him the folios which he\nrequired, and he sat as still amidst a hundred readers as if he had\nbeen alone.\" Every day his love, his enthusiasm, for his work seemed\nto increase. So he passed six or seven years, \"lingering and lagging\nbehind others,\" and revelling in spiritual and intellectual luxury.\n\"Every school-fellow had passed on, and was hard at his noble work at\nhome, was gaining a crown in heaven to which many have passed.\" Our\nyoung student had kissed the feet of the dead Pius VII., as he lay in\nstate in one of the chapels of St. Peter's; had mourned over the\ndeparture of the great minister Consalvi; had presented himself to Leo\nXII., and told him, \"I am a foreigner who came here at the call of\nPius VII., six years ago; my first patrons, Pius VII., Cardinals\nLitta, De Pietro, Fontana, and now Consalvi, are dead. I therefore\nrecommend myself to your Holiness's protection, and hope you will be a\nfather to me at this distance from my country.\" He had obtained the\nHoly Father's promise. Already he was known for a youth of marvellous\ntalents and learning. He had maintained a public disputation in\ntheology, and been rewarded for his success by the title of D.D. At\nlast came the jubilee-year of 1825. \"The aim of years, the goal of\nlong preparation, the longed-for crown of unwavering desires, the only\nprize thought worthy of being aspired to, was attained in the bright\njubilee spring of Rome. It marks a blessed epoch in a {120} life to\nhave had the grace of the priesthood superadded to the exuberant\nbenedictions of that year.\"\n\nFortunately for the English college,--and fortunately, perhaps we\nshould add, for England,--he was not yet to depart for the field of\nhis great labor. To use his own modest words, he was found to be at\nhand in 1826, when some one was wanted for the office of vice-rector\nof the English college, and so was named to it; and when, in 1828, the\nworthy rector, Dr. Gradwell, was appointed bishop, Dr. Wiseman was, by\nalmost natural sequence, named to succeed him.\n\nThus he continued to drink in the spirit of catholicity, and devotion,\nand steadiness in faith, of which Rome is the fountain on earth. With\nreverent affection he traced out the mementos of primitive\nChristianity, the tombs of the martyrs and saints, the altars and\nhiding-places and sacred inscriptions of the catacombs. These holy\nretreats had for him a fascination such as no other spot even in Rome\npossessed. Again and again he recurs to them in his writings,\nlingering fondly around the hallowed precincts, and inspiring his\nreaders with the love for them that burned so ardently in his own\nbreast. One of the last pieces that came from his pen was the little\nstory of a martyr's tomb, which we have placed in this number of our\nmagazine.\n\nOther studies were not neglected. While his companions were indulging\nin the mid-day sleep, which almost everybody takes in Rome, he was at\nhis books. Often he passed whole nights in study, or walking to and\nfro, in meditation, through the corridors of the English college. The\nseasons of vacation he would often spend collating ancient manuscripts\nin the Vatican library, and one of the fruits of that labor was his\n_Horae Syriacae_, published when he was only twenty-five years old. In\nthe same year (1827), he was appointed--though without severing his\nconnection with the English college--professor of oriental languages\nin the Roman university. It is no doubt to these two events that he\nalludes in the following extract from his \"Recollections\" of Leo XII.,\nthough he tells the story as if he had been only a witness of the\ncircumstances: \"It so happened,\" he says, \"that a person connected\nwith the English college was an aspirant to a chair in the Roman\nuniversity. He had been encouraged to compete for it, on its\napproaching vacancy, by his professors. Having no claims of any sort,\nby interest or connection, he stood simply on the provision of the\npapal bull, which threw open all professorships to competition. It was\nbut a secondary and obscure lectureship at best; one concerning which,\nit was supposed, few would busy themselves or come forward as\ncandidates. It was, therefore, announced that this rule would be\noverlooked, and a person every way qualified, and of considerable\nreputation, would be named. The more youthful aspirant unhesitatingly\nsolicited an audience, at which I was present. He told the Pope\nfrankly of his intentions and of his earnest wish to have carried out,\nin his favor, the recent enactments of his Holiness. Nothing could be\nmore affable, more encouraging, than Leo's reply. He expressed his\ndelight at seeing that his regulation was not a dead letter, and that\nit had animated his petitioner to exertion. He assured him that he\nshould have a fair chance, 'a clear stage and no favor,' desiring him\nto leave the matter in his hands.\n\n\"Time wore on; and as the only alternative given in the bull was\nproof, by publication of a work, of proficiency in the art or science\nthat was to be taught, he quietly got a volume through the\npress--probably very heavy; but sprightliness or brilliancy was not a\ncondition of the bull. When a vacancy arrived, it was made known,\ntogether with the announcement that it had been filled up. All seemed\nlost, except the honor of the pontiff, to which alone lay any appeal.\nAnother audience was asked, and {121} instantly granted, its motive\nbeing, of course, stated. I was again present, and shall not easily\nforget it. It was not necessary to re-state the case. 'I remember it\nall,' the Pope said most kindly; 'I have been surprised. I have sent\nfor C----,  through whom this has been done; I have ordered the\nappointment to be cancelled, and I have reproved him so sharply that I\nbelieve it is the reason why he is laid up to-day with fever. You have\nacted fairly and boldly, and you shall not lose the fruits of your\nindustry. I will keep my word with you and the provisions of my\nconstitution.' With the utmost graciousness he accepted the\nvolume--now treasured by its author, into whose hands the copy has\nreturned--acknowledged the right to preference which it had\nestablished, and assured its author of fair play.\n\n\"The Pope had, in fact, taken up earnestly the cause of his youthful\nappellant; instead of annoyance, he showed earnestness and kindness;\nand those who had passed over his pretensions with contempt were\nobliged to treat with him and compromise with him on terms that\nsatisfied all his desires. Another audience for thanksgiving was\nkindly accorded, and I witnessed the same gentle and fatherly temper,\nquietly cheerful, and the same earnest sympathy with the feelings of\nhim whose cause had been so graciously carried through. If this young\nclient gained no new energies, gathered no strength from such repeated\nproofs of interest and condescension; if these did not both direct and\nimpel, steer and fill, the sails of his little bark through many\ntroubled waters; nay, if they did not tinge and savor his entire\nmental life, we may write that man soulless and incapable of any noble\nemotions.\"\n\nWe must not suppose, however, that all this while he was so lost among\nhis books as to have forgotten that land for whose conversion he was\ndestined to labor through the best part of his life. He told a dear\nfriend how, having to wait one day at the Sapienza for the Hebrew\nlecture, he went into the Church of St. Eustachio to pray; and there,\nbefore the altar of the Blessed Sacrament and the altar of the Holy\nVirgin Mother, the thought came into his mind that, as his native\ncountry, in the oath which she imposes upon the chief personages of\nthe state, solemnly abjures these sacred mysteries, it was his duty to\ndevote himself to the defense and honor of those very doctrines in\nEngland. And no one who has read his sermons and lectures and\npastorals can have failed to notice the burning love for the Eucharist\nand the Blessed Virgin which inspired him.\n\nThe time was not yet for his mission to England; and it is so hard,\nwhen the mind has been long running in one groove, to break out of it\nand take a totally different course, that perhaps he might have come\nin time to look upon the Roman theological schools as the ultimate\nsphere of usefulness for which God had destined him, had he not been\nsuddenly called forth from his studious retirement by the voice of the\nsupreme pontiff. It was in 1827 that Leo XII. determined to institute\nin the church of Gesu e Maria a course of English sermons, to be\nattended by all colleges and religious communities that spoke the\nlanguage, and by as many other persons as chose to listen. It was\nintended, of course, principally for the benefit of strangers. His\nHoliness appointed Dr. Wiseman preacher. \"The burden was laid there\nand then,\" says the cardinal, describing the audience at which he\nreceived this commission, \"with peremptory kindness, by an authority\nthat might not be gainsaid. And crushingly it pressed upon the\nshoulders. It would be impossible to describe the anxiety, pain, and\ntrouble which this command cost for many years after. Nor would this\nbe alluded to were it not to illustrate what has been kept in view\nthrough this volume--how the most insignificant life, temper, and mind\nmay be moulded by the action of a {122} great and almost unconscious\npower. Leo could not see what has been the influence of his\ncommission, in merely dragging from the commerce with the dead to that\nof the living one who would gladly have confined his time to the\nformer,--from books to men, from reading to speaking. Nothing but this\nwould have done it. Yet supposing that the providence of one's life\nwas to be active, and in contact with the world, and one's future\nduties were to be in a country and in times where the most bashful may\nbe driven to plead for his religion or his flock, surely a command\noverriding all inclination and forcing the will to undertake the best\nand only preparation for those tasks, may well be contemplated as a\nsacred impulse and a timely direction to a mind that wanted both. Had\nit not come then, it never more could have come; other bents would\nhave soon become stiffened and unpliant; and no second opportunity\ncould have been opened after others had satisfied the first demand.\"\n\nFrom this time it would seem as if England had a stronger hold upon\nhis heart than ever. The noble purpose--which worldly men have since\nlaughed at as a wild dream--of devoting himself to the conversion of\nEngland, became the ruling idea of his life. And often alone at night\nin the college chapel he would \"pour out his heart in prayer and\ntears, full of aspirations and of a firm trust; of promptings to go,\nbut fear to outrun the bidding of our divine Master.\" He offered\nhimself to the Pope for this great work; but still the time was not\ncome; and he was told to wait.\n\nBut if he was not to go yet himself, he had his part to perform in\nmaking others ready. He well knew that to fit his pupils for their\nwork, he must teach them something beside theology. Englishmen were a\nsort of Brahmins; the missionary who went among them must go as one\nversed in all learning, or he would not be listened to. He saw how the\nnatural sciences were growing to be the favorite pursuit--we may\nalmost say the hobby--of modern scholars, and in a preface to a thesis\nby a student of the English college he insisted on the necessity of\nuniting general and scientific knowledge to theological pursuits. As\nanother instance of the personal influence which several successive\npontiffs exercised over his studies, and the many kind marks of\ninterest which contributed to attach him so strongly to their persons,\nwe may repeat an anecdote which he tells in reference to this little\nessay. He went to present it to Pius VIII., but the Holy Father had it\nalready before him, and said, \"You have robbed Egypt of its spoil, and\nshown that it belongs to the people of God.\" The same idea which he\nbriefly exposed in this essay, he developed more fully and with great\nwealth of illustration in a course of lectures on the Connection\nbetween Science and Revealed Religion, delivered first to his pupils\nand afterward to a distinguished audience at the apartments of\nCardinal Weld. It was partly with a view to the revision and\npublication of these lectures that he visited England in 1835.\n\nDuring his stay in London, he preached a series of controversial\ndiscourses in the Sardinian chapel during the Advent of 1835, and\nanother in St. Mary's, Moorfields, in Lent, 1836. The latter were\npublished under the title of _Lectures on the Principal Doctrines and\nPractices of the Catholic Church_. They exhibit in a remarkable degree\nthe qualities, so rare in polemical literature, of kindness,\nmoderation, and charity for all men. The _odium theologicum_, indeed,\nhas less place at Rome than anywhere else in the Christian world. It\nwas at the very centre and chief school of the science of divinity\nthat he learned to fight against error without temper, and expose\nfalsehood without hard language. \"I will certainly bear willing\ntestimony,\" he says, \"to the absence of all harsh words and\nuncharitable insinuations against others in public lectures or private\nteaching, or even {123} in conversation at Rome. One grows up there in\na kinder spirit, and learns to speak of errors in a gentler tone than\nelsewhere, though in the very centre of highest orthodox feeling.\" Dr.\nWiseman went back to the English college, leaving among his countrymen\nat home an enviable reputation for honesty, learning, and good sense.\n\nA few years more passed in frequent contact with the Holy Father, and\nunder the continuous influence of the sacred associations with which\neighteen centuries have peopled the Christian capital, and Nicholas\nWiseman was then ready to go forth to his work. The recollection of\nnumberless favors and kind words from the supreme pontiff went with\nhim, and strengthened him, and colored his thoughts. He has told of\nthe cordial and paternal treatment with which he was honored by\nGregory XVI. in particular. \"An embrace would supply the place of\nceremonious forms on entrance. At one time a long, familiar\nconversation, seated side by side; at another a visit to the\npenetralia of the pontifical apartment (a small suite of entresols,\ncommunicating by an internal staircase) occupied the time.\n.....\nWhat it has been my happiness to hear from him in such visits, it\nwould be betraying a sacred trust to reveal; but many and many words\nthere spoken rise to the mind in times of trouble, like stars, not\nonly bright in themselves, but all the brighter in their reflection\nfrom the brightness of their mirror. They have been words of mastery\nand spell over after events, promises, and prognostics which have not\nfailed, assurances and supports that have never come to naught.\"\n[Footnote 39]\n\n  [Footnote 39: He gives an amusing account of a perplexing situation\n  from which this same Pope once unwittingly delivered him, while he\n  was engaged in his course of lectures on Science and Revealed\n  Religion at the apartments of Cardinal Weld. \"On one of the days of\n  delivery,\" says he, \"I had been prevented from writing the lecture\n  in time, and was laboring to make up for my delay, but in vain.\n  Quarter after quarter of each hour flew rapidly on, and my advance\n  bore no proportion to the matter before me. The fatal hour of twelve\n  was fast approaching, and I knew not what excuse I could make, nor\n  how to supply, except by a lame recital, the important portion yet\n  unwritten of my task--for an index to the lectures had been printed\n  and circulated. Just as the last moment arrived, a carriage from the\n  palace drove to the door, with a message that I would step into it\n  at once, as His Holiness wished to speak to me. This was, indeed, a\n  _deus ex machina_--the only and least thought of expedient that\n  could have saved me from my embarrassment. A messenger was\n  despatched to inform the gathering audience of the unexpected cause\n  of necessary adjournment of our sitting till the next day. The\n  object of my summons was one of very trifling importance, and\n  Gregory little knew what a service he had unintentionally rendered\n  me.\"]\n\n\nIn 1840 it was determined to increase the number of vicars apostolic\nin England from four to eight, and Dr. Wiseman, at the same time, was\nappointed coadjutor to Bishop Walsh at Wolverhampton. \"It was a\nsorrowful evening,\" he says, \"at the beginning of autumn, when, after\na residence in Rome prolonged through twenty-two years, till affection\nclung to every old stone there, like the moss that grew into it, this\nstrong but tender tie was cut, and much of future happiness had to be\ninvested in the mournful recollections of the past.\"\n\nHere we leave him. It was not until ten years later that he became\ncardinal, but though from 1840 to 1850 he filled only a subordinate\nposition, he was working hard and well during this period, and fast\nrising to be the foremost man of all the Catholics of England. And his\nwork never ceased. He lived to see the hierarchy established, and the\nconversion of his countrymen making steady if not rapid progress; but\nhis energy never flagged when a part of his task was done; he passed\non from one labor to another, until that last day, when \"he entered\ninto the sanctuary of God's presence, from which he never again came\nforth.\"\n\n------\n\n{124}\n\nFrom All The Year Bound.\n\n\nTHE NICK OF TIME.\n\n\nLet us suppose a case that might occur if it has not occurred.\n\nJohn Mullet, immersed (say) in the button trade at Birmingham, has\nmade money in business. He bequeaths his property by will, and is in\ndue time gathered to his fathers. His two sons, Jasper and Josiah,\ntake certain portions; and other portions are to go either to the\nfamily of Jasper or to that of Josiah, according as either one of\nthose brothers survives the other. Jasper remains in England; but\nJosiah goes out to Australia, to establish something that may make his\nchildren great people over there. Both brothers, twelve thousand miles\napart, die on the same day, May 1st, one at noon (Greenwich time), the\nother at noon (Sydney time). Jasper's children have been on pleasant\ncousinly terms with Josiah's; but they are aware of the fact that it\nwould be better for them that Josiah should die before their own\nfather, Jasper. Josiah's children, on the other hand, be they few or\nmany, although they always liked uncle Jasper, cannot and do not\nignore the fact that their interests would be better served by the\nsurvivorship of Josiah than that of Jasper. The two sets of cousins,\ntherefore, plunge into a contest, to decide the question of\nsurvivorship between the two sons of old John Mullet.\n\nThis is one variety of a problem which the courts of law and equity\nare often called upon to settle. Occasionally the question refers to\ntwo persons who die at the same time, and in each other's company. For\ninstance: Toward the close of the last century, George Netherwood, his\nchildren by his first wife, his second wife, and her son, were all\nwrecked during a voyage from Jamaica to England. Eight thousand pounds\nwere left by will, in such a way that the relations of the two wives\nwere greatly interested in knowing whether the second Mrs. Netherwood\ndid or did not survive her husband, even by one single minute--a\nmatter which, of course, could not be absolutely proved. Again, in\n1806, Mr. Mason and one son were drowned at sea; his remaining eight\nchildren went to law, some of them against the others; because, if the\nfather died before the son, L5,000 would be divided equally among the\nother eight children; whereas, if the son died before the father, the\nbrothers only would get it, the sisters being shut out. A few years\nafterward Job Taylor and his wife were lost in a ship wrecked at sea;\nthey had not much to leave behind them; but what little there was was\nmade less by the struggles of two sets of relatives, each striving to\nshow that one or other of the two hapless persons _might_ possibly\nhave survived the other by a few minutes. In 1819 Major Colclough, his\nwife, and four children, were drowned during a voyage from Bristol to\nCork; the husband and wife had both made wills; and there arose a\npretty picking for the lawyers in relation to survivorships and next\nof kin, and trying to prove whether the husband died first, the wife\nfirst, or both together. Two brothers, James and Charles Corbet, left\nDemerara on a certain day in 1828, in a vessel of which one was master\nand the other mate; the vessel was seen five days afterward, but from\nthat time no news of her fate was ever received. Their father died\nabout a month after the vessel was last seen. The ultimate disposal of\nhis property depended very much on the question whether he survived\nhis two sons or they survived him. Many curious arguments were used in\ncourt. Two or three captains stated that from August to January are\nhurricane {125} months in the West Indian seas, and that the ship was\nvery likely to have been wrecked quite early in her voyage. There\nwere, in addition, certain relations interested in James's dying\nbefore Charles; and they urged that, if the ship was wrecked, Charles\nwas likely to have outlived by a little space his brother James,\nbecause he was a stronger and more experienced man. Alas for the\n\"glorious uncertainty!\" One big-wig decided that the sons survived the\nfather, and another that the father survived the sons. About the\nbeginning of the present reign, three persons, father, mother, and\nchild, were drowned on a voyage from Dublin to Quebec; the husband had\nmade a will, leaving all his property to his wife; hence arose a\ncontest between the next of kin and the wife's relations, each\ncatching at any small fact that would (theoretically) keep one poor\nsoul alive a few minutes longer than the other. About ten years ago, a\ngentleman embarked with his wife and three children for Australia: the\nship was lost soon after leaving England; the mate, the only person\nwho was saved among the whole of the crew and passengers, deposed that\nhe saw the hapless husband and wife locked in each other's arms at the\nmoment when the waves closed over them. There would seem to be no\nquestion of survivorship here; yet a question really arose; for there\nwere two wills to be proved, the terms of which would render the\nrelatives much interested in knowing whether husband or wife did\nreally survive the other by ever so small a portion of time.\n\nThese entangled contests may rest in peace, so far as the actual\ndecisions are concerned. And so may others of a somewhat analogous\nnature. Such, for instance, as the case of an old lady and her\nhousekeeper at Portsmouth. They were both murdered one night. The lady\nhad willed all her property to the housekeeper, and then, the lawyers\nfought over the question as to which of the women died first. Or, the\ncase of a husband who promised, on his marriage-day, to settle L1,200\non his wife \"in three or four years.\" They were both drowned about\nthree years after the marriage; and it was not until after a tough\nstruggle in chancery that the husband's relatives conquered those of\nthe wife--albeit, the money had nearly vanished in law expenses by\nthat time. Or, the case of a man who gave a power of attorney to sell\nsome property. The property was sold on the 8th of June, but the man\nwas never seen after the 8th of the preceding March, and was supposed\nto have been wrecked at sea; hence arose a question whether the man\nwas or was not dead on the day when the property was sold--a question\nin which the buyer was directly interested. The decisions in these\nparticular cases we pass over; but it is curious to see how the law\nsometimes tries to _guess_ at the nick of time in which either one of\ntwo persons dies. Sometimes the onus of proof rests on one of the two\nsets of relations. If they cannot prove a survivorship, the judgment\nis that the deaths were simultaneous. Sometimes the law philosophizes\non vitality and decay. The Code Napoleon lays down the principle that\nof two persons who perish by the same calamity, if they were both\nchildren, the elder probably survived the younger by a brief space, on\naccount of having superior vital energy; whereas, if they were elderly\npeople, the younger probably survived the elder. The code also takes\nanatomy and physiology into account, and discourses on the probability\nwhether a man would or would not float longer alive than a woman, in\nthe event of shipwreck. The English law is less precise in this\nmatter. It is more prone to infer simultaneous death, unless proof of\nsurvivorship be actually brought forward. Counsel, of course, do not\nfail to make the best of any straw to catch at. According to the\ncircumstances of the case, they argue that a man, being usually\nstronger than a woman, probably survives her a little in a case of\n{126} simultaneous drowning; that, irrespective of comparative\nstrength, her greater terror and timidity would incapacitate her from\nmaking exertions which would be possible to him; that a seafaring man\nhas a chance of surviving a landsman, on account of his experience in\nsalt-water matters; that where there is no evidence to the contrary, a\nchild may be presumed to have outlived his father; that a man in good\nhealth would survive one in ill health; and so forth.\n\nThe nick of time is not less an important matter in reference to\nsingle deaths, under various circumstances. People are often very much\ninterested in knowing whether a certain person is dead or not. Unless\nunder specified circumstances, the law refuses to kill a man--that is,\na man known to have been alive at a certain date is presumed to\ncontinue to live, unless and until proof to the contrary is adduced.\nBut there are certain cases in which the application of this rule\nwould involve hardship. Many leases are dependent on lives; and both\nlessor and lessee are concerned in knowing whether a particular life\nhas terminated or not. Therefore, special statutes have been passed,\nin relation to a limited number of circumstances, enacting that if a\nman were seen alive more than seven years ago, and has not since been\nseen or heard of, he may be treated as dead.\n\nThe nick of time occasionally affects the distribution or amount of\nproperty in relation to particular seasons. Some years ago the\nnewspapers remarked on the fact that a lord of broad acres, whose\nrent-roll reached something like L40,000 a year, died \"about midnight\"\nbetween the 10th and 11th of October; and the possible consequences of\nthis were thus set forth: \"His rents are payable at 'old time,' that\nis, old Lady-day and old Michaelmas-day. Old Michaelmas-day fell this\nyear on Sunday, the 11th instant. The day begins at midnight. Now, the\nrent is due upon the first moment of the day it becomes due; so that\nat one second beyond twelve o'clock of the 10th instant, rent payable\nat old Michaelmas-day is in law due. If the lord died before twelve,\nthe rents belong to the parties taking the estates; but if after\ntwelve, then they belong to and form part of his personal estate. The\ndifference of one minute might thus involve a question on the title to\nabout L20,000.\" We do not know that a legal difficulty did arise; the\nfacts only indicate the mode in which one might have arisen. Sometimes\nthat ancient British institution, the house clock, has been at war\nwith another British institution, the parish church clock. A baby was\nborn, or an old person died, just before the house clock struck twelve\non a particular night, but after the church clock struck. On which day\ndid the birth or death take place--yesterday or to-day? And how would\nthis fact be ascertained, to settle the inheritance of an estate? We\nknow an instance (not involving, however, the inheritance to property)\nof a lady whose relations never have definitely known on which day she\nwas born; the pocket watch of the accoucheur who attended her mother\npointed to a little before twelve at midnight, whereas the church\nclock had just struck twelve. Of course a particular day had to be\nnamed in the register; and as the doctor maintained that his watch was\nright, there were the materials for a very pretty quarrel if the\nparties concerned had been so disposed. It might be that the nick of\ntime was midnight exactly, as measured by solar or sun-dial time: that\nis, the sun may have been precisely in the nadir at that moment; but\nthis difficulty would not arise in practice, as the law knows only\nmean time, not sun-dial time. If Greenwich time were made legal\neverywhere, and if electric clocks everywhere established\ncommunication with the master clock at the observatory, there might be\nanother test supplied; but under the conditions stated, it would be a\nnice matter of _Tweedledum_ and _Tweedledee_ {127} to determine\nwhether the house clock, the church clock, or a pocket watch, should\nbe relied upon. All the pocket watches in the town might be brought\ninto the witness-box, but without avail; for if some accorded with the\nhouse clock, others would surely be found to agree better with the\nchurch clock.\n\nThis question of clocks, as compared with time measured by the sun,\npresents some very curious aspects in relation to longitude. What's\no'clock in London will not tell you what's o'clock in Falmouth, unless\nyou know the difference of longitude between the two places. The sun\ntakes about twenty minutes to go from the zenith of the one to the\nzenith of the other. Local time, the time at any particular town, is\nmeasured from the moment of noon at that town; and noon itself is when\nthe sun comes to the meridian of that place. Hence Falmouth noon is\ntwenty minutes after London noon, Falmouth midnight twenty minutes\nafter London midnight; and so on. When it is ten minutes after\nmidnight, on the morning of Sunday, the 1st of January, in London, it\nis ten minutes before midnight, on Saturday, the 31st of December, at\nFalmouth. It is a Sabbath at the one place, a working-day at the\nother. That particular moment of absolute time is in the year 1865 at\nthe one, and 1864 at the other. Therefore, we see, it might become a\nticklish point in what year a man died, solely on account of this\nquestion of longitude, irrespective of any wrong-going or wrong-doing\nof clocks, or of any other doubtful points whatever. Sooner or later\nthis question will have to be attended to. In all our chief towns,\nnearly all our towns indeed, the railway-station clocks mark Greenwich\ntime, or, as it is called, \"railway time;\" the church clocks generally\nmark local time; and some commercial clocks, to serve all parties,\nmark both kinds of time on the same dial-face, by the aid of an\nadditional index hand. Railway time is gradually beating local time;\nand the law will by-and-by have to settle which shall be used as the\nstandard in determining the moment of important events. Some of the\nsteamers plying between England and Ireland use Greenwich time in\nnotifying the departures from the English port, and Dublin time in\nnotifying those from the Irish port; a method singularly embarrassing\nto a traveller who is in the habit of relying on his own watch. Does a\nsailor get more prog, more grog, more pay, within a given space of\nabsolute time when coming from America to England, or when going from\nEngland to America? The difference is far too slight to attract either\nhis attention or that of his employers; yet it really is the case that\nhe obtains more good things in the former of these cases than in the\nlatter. His days are shorter on the homeward than on the outward\nvoyage; and if he receive so much provisions and pay per day, he\ninterprets day as it is to him on shipboard. When in harbor, say at\nLiverpool, a day is, to him as to every one else who is stationary\nlike himself, a period of definite length; but when he travels\nEastward or Westward, his days are variable in length. When he travels\nWest, he and the sun run a race; the sun of course beats; but the\nsailor accomplishes a little, and the sun has to fetch up that little\nbefore he can complete what foot-racers call a lap. In other words,\nthere is a longer absolute time between noon and noon to the sailor\ngoing West, than to the sailor ashore. When he travels East, on the\ncontrary, he and the sun run toward each other; insomuch that there is\nless absolute time in the period between his Monday's noon and\nTuesday's noon than when he was ashore. The ship's noon is usually\ndinner-time for the sailors; and the interval between that and the\nnext noon (measured by the sun, not by the chronometer) varies in\nlength through the causes just noticed. Once now and then there are\nfacts recorded in the newspapers which bring this {128} truth into\nprominence--a truth demonstrable enough in science, but not very\nfamiliar to the general public. When the _Great Eastern_ made her first\nveritable voyage across the Atlantic in June, 1860, she left\nSouthampton on the 17th, and reached New York on the 28th. As the ship\nwas going West, more or less, all the while, she was going with or\nrather after the sun; the interval was greater between noon and noon\nthan when the ship was anchored off Southampton; and the so-called\neleven days of the voyage were eleven long days. As it was important,\nin reference to a problem in steam navigation, to know how many\nrevolutions the paddles made in a given time, to test the power of the\nmighty ship, it was necessary to bear in mind that the ship's day was\nlonger than a shore day; and it was found that, taking latitude and\nlongitude into account, the day on which the greatest run was made was\nnearly twenty-four and a half hours long; the ship's day was equal to\nhalf an hour more than a landsman's day. The other days varied from\ntwenty-four to twenty-four and a half. On the return voyage all this\nwas reversed; the ship met the sun, the days were less than\ntwenty-four ordinary hours long, and the calculations had to be\nmodified in consequence. The sailors, too, got more food in a homeward\nweek than an outward week, owing to the intervals between the meals\nbeing shorter albeit, their appetites may not have been cognizant of\nthe difference.\n\nAnd this brings us back to our hypothetical Mullets. Josiah died at\nnoon (Sydney time), and Jasper died on the same day at noon (Greenwich\ntime). Which died first? Sydney, although not quite at the other side\nof the world, is nearly so; it is ten hours of longitude Eastward of\nGreenwich; the sun rises there ten hours earlier than with us. It is\nnearly bed-time with Sydney folks when our artisans strike work for\ndinner. There would, therefore, be a reasonable ground for saying that\nJosiah died first. But had it been New Zealand, a curious question\nmight arise. Otago, and some other of the settlements in those\nislands, are so near the antipodes of Greenwich, that they may either\nbe called eleven and three-quarter hours East, or twelve and a quarter\nhours West, of Greenwich, according as we suppose the navigator to go\nround the Cape of Good Hope or round Cape Horn. At six in the morning\nin London, it is about six in the evening at New Zealand. But of which\nday? When it is Monday morning in London, is it Sunday evening or\nMonday evening in New Zealand? This question is not so easy to solve\nas might be supposed. When a ship called at Pitcairn Island several\nyears ago, to visit the singular little community that had descended\nfrom the mutineers of the Bounty, the captain was surprised to find\nexactly one day difference between his ship's reckoning and that of\nthe islanders; what was Monday, the 26th, to the one, was Tuesday, the\n27th, to the other. A voyage East had been the origin of one\nreckoning, a voyage West that of the other. Not unlikely we should\nhave to go back to the voyage of the Bounty itself, seventy-seven\nyears ago, to get to the real origin of the Pitcairners' reckoning.\nHow it may be with the English settlers in New Zealand, we feel by no\nmeans certain. If the present reckoning began with some voyage made\nround Cape Horn, then our Monday morning is New Zealand Sunday\nevening; but if with some voyage made round the Cape of Good Hope,\nthen our Monday morning is New Zealand Monday evening. Probabilities\nare perhaps in favor of the latter supposition. We need not ask,\n\"What's o'clock at New Zealand?\" for that can be ascertained to a\nminute by counting the difference of longitude; but to ask, \"What day\nof the week and of the month is it at New Zealand?\" is a question that\nmight, for aught we can see, involve very important legal\nconsequences.\n\n------\n\n{129}\n\nFrom the Dublin Review.\n\nRECENT DISCOVERIES IN THE CATACOMBS.\n\n\nThe chromo-lithographic press, established at Rome by the munificence\nof Pius IX., has issued its first publication, four sheets in large\nfolio, _Imagines Selectae Deiparae Virginis in Caemeteriis Suburbanis\nUdo depictae_, with about twenty pages of text from the pen of the\nCavaliere G. B. de Rossi. The subject and the author are amply\nsufficient to recommend them to the Christian archaeologist, and the\nwork of the artists employed is in every way worthy of both. It is by\nno means an uncommon idea, even among Catholics who have visited Rome\nand _done_ the catacombs, that our Blessed Lady does not hold any\nprominent place in the decorations of those subterranean cemeteries.\nProtestant tourists often boldly publish that she is nowhere to be\nfound there. The present publication will suffice to show, even to\nthose who never leave their own homes, the falsehood of this statement\nand impression. De Rossi has here set before us a selection of four\ndifferent representations of Holy Mary, as she appears in that\nearliest monument of the Christian Church; and, in illustrating these,\nhe has taken occasion to mention a score or two of others. Moreover,\nhe has vindicated for them an antiquity and an importance far beyond\nwhat we were prepared to expect; and those who have ever either made\npersonal acquaintance with him, or have studied his former writings,\nwell know how far removed he is from anything like uncritical and\nenthusiastic exaggerations. Even such writers as Mr. Burgon (\"Letters\nfrom Rome\") cannot refrain from bearing testimony to his learning,\nmoderation, and candor; they praise him, often by way of contrast with\nsome Jesuit or other clerical exponent of the mysteries of the\ncatacombs, for all those qualities which are calculated to inspire us\nwith confidence in his interpretations of any nice points of Christian\narchaeology. But we fear his Protestant admirers will be led to lower\ntheir tone of admiration for him, and henceforward to discover some\nflaw in his powers of criticism, when they find him, as in these\npages, gravely maintaining, concerning a particular representation of\nthe Madonna in the catacombs, that it is of Apostolic, or\nquasi-Apostolic antiquity. It is a painting on the vaulted roof of an\n_arcosolium_ in the cemetery of St. Priscilla, and it is reproduced in\nthe work before us in its original size. The Blessed Virgin sits, her\nhead partially covered by a short slight veil, holding the Divine\nInfant in her arms; opposite to her stands a man, holding in one hand\na volume, and with the other pointing to a star which appears between\nthe two figures. This star almost always accompanies our Blessed Lady\nin ancient paintings or sculptures, wherever she is represented either\nwith the Magi offering their gifts, or by the manger's side with the\nox and the ass; but with a single figure, as in the present instance,\nit is unusual. Archaeologists will probably differ in their\ninterpretation of this figure; the most obvious conjecture would, of\ncourse, fix on St. Joseph; there seem to be solid reasons, however,\nfor preferring (with De Rossi) the prophet Isaias, whose predictions\nconcerning the Messias abound with imagery borrowed from light, and\nwho may be identified on an old Christian glass by the superscription\nof his name. But this question, interesting as it is, is not so\nimportant as the probable date of the painting itself; and here no\nabridgment or analysis of' De Rossi's arguments can do justice to the\nmoderation, yet irresistible force, with which he accumulates proofs\nof {130} the conclusion we have already stated, viz., that the\npainting was executed, if not in Apostolic times and as it were under\nthe very eyes of the Apostles themselves, yet certainly within the\nfirst 150 years of the Christian era. He first bids us carefully to\nstudy the art displayed in the design and execution of the painting;\nhe compares it with the decorations of the famous Pagan tombs\ndiscovered on the Via Latina in 1858, and which are referred to the\ntimes of the Antoninuses; with the paintings in the pontifical\n_cubiculum_ in the cemetery of St. Callixtus, and with others more\nrecently discovered in the cemetery of Pretextatus, to both of which a\nvery high antiquity is conceded by all competent judges; and he justly\nargues that the more classical style of the painting now under\nexamination _obliges_ us to assign to it a still earlier date. Next, he\nshows that the catacomb in which it appears was one of the oldest,--St.\nPriscilla, from whom it receives its name, having been the mother of\nPudens and a contemporary of the Apostles (the impress of a seal, with\nthe name _Pudens Felix_, is repeated several times on the mortar round\nthe edge of a grave in this cemetery); nay, further still, it can be\nshown that the tombs of Sts. Pudentiana and Praxedes, and therefore,\nprobably, of their father St. Pudens himself, were in the immediate\nneighborhood of the very chapel in which this Madonna is to be seen;\nmoreover, the inscriptions which are found there bear manifest tokens\nof a higher antiquity than can be claimed by any others from the\ncatacombs: there is the complete triple nomenclature of pagan times,\ne.g., Titus Flavius Felicissimus; the epitaphs are not even in the\nusual form, _in pace_, but simply the Apostolic salutation, _Pax\ntecum, Pax tibi_; and finally, the greater number of them are not cut\non stone or marble slabs, but written with red paint on the tiles\nwhich close the graves--a mode of inscription of which not a single\nexample, we believe, has hitherto been found in any other part the\ncatacombs. This is a mere outline of the arguments by which De Rossi\nestablishes his conclusion respecting the age of this painting, and\nthey are not even exhibited in their full force in the present\npublication at all. For a more copious induction of facts, and a more\ncomplete elucidation both of the history and topography of the\ncatacombs, we must be content to wait till the author's larger work on\n_Roma Sotterranea_ shall appear.\n\nThe most recent painting of the Madonna which De Rossi has here\npublished is that with which our readers will be the most familiar. It\nis the one to which the late Father Marchi, S.J., never failed to\nintroduce every visitor to the catacomb of St. Agnes, and has been\nreproduced in various works; the Holy Mother with her hands\noutstretched in prayer, the Divine Infant on her bosom, and the\nChristian monogram on either side of her and turned toward her. This\nlast particular naturally directs our thoughts to the fourth century\nas the date of this work; and the absence of the _nimbus_ and some other\nindications lead our author to fix the earlier half of the century in\npreference to the later. Between these two limits, then, of the first\nor second, and the fourth century, he would place the two others which\nare now published; he distinguishes them more doubtfully, as belonging\nrespectively to the first and second half of the third century. In\none, from the cemetery of Domitilla, the Blessed Virgin sits holding\nthe Holy Child on her lap, whilst four Magi offer their gifts; the\nother, from the catacomb of Sts. Peter and Marcellinus, represents the\nsame scene, but with two Magi only. In both there is the same\ndeparture from the ancient tradition of the number of the wise men,\nand from the same cause, viz., the desire to give a proper balance and\nproportion to the two sides of the picture, the Virgin occupying the\nmiddle place. Indeed, in one of them, it is still possible to trace\n{131} the original sketch of the artist, designing another arrangement\nwith the three figures only; but the result did not promise to be\nsatisfactory, and he did what thousands of his craft have continued to\ndo ever since, sacrificed historic truth to the exigencies of his art.\n\nWe trust our readers will be induced to get this valuable work and to\nstudy it for themselves; the text may be procured either in French or\nin Italian, so that it is readily accessible to all. At the same time\nwe would take the opportunity of introducing to them another work by\nthe same indefatigable author, which is also published both in French\nand in Italian. At least, such is the announcement of a prospectus now\nlying before us, which states that the French translation is published\nby Vives, in Paris. We have ourselves only seen the original Italian.\nIt is a short monthly periodical, illustrations, _Bollettino di\nArcheologia Cristiana_, and is addressed not merely to _savans_,\nFellows of Royal Societies, and the like, but rather to all educated\nmen who care for the history of their religion and are capable of\nappreciating its evidences. De Rossi claims for the recent discoveries\nin the Roman catacombs the very highest place among the scientific\nevents of the day which have an important religious bearing, and we\nthink that the justice of his plea must be admitted. Unfortunately,\nhowever, the vastness of the subject, the multiplied engagements of\nthe author, and (not least) the political vicissitudes of the times,\nhave hitherto prevented the publication of these discoveries in a\ncomplete and extended form. We are happy to know that the work is\nsatisfactorily progressing; but meanwhile he has been persuaded by the\nsuggestions of many friends, and by the convenience of the thing\nitself, to publish this monthly periodical, which will keep us _au\ncourant_ with the most important additions that are being made from\ntime to time to our knowledge of those precious memorials of primitive\nChristianity, and also supply much interesting information on other\narchaeological matters. In these pages the reader is allowed to\naccompany, as it were, the author himself in his subterranean\nresearches, to assist at his discoveries, to trace the happy but\ndoubtful conjecture of a moment through all its gradual stages, until\nit reaches the moral certainty of a conclusion which can no longer be\ncalled in question; _e.g._, the author gives us a portion of a lecture\nwhich he delivered on July 3, 1852, to the Roman Pontifical Academy of\nArchaeology. In this lecture he maintained, in opposition to the usual\nnomenclature of the catacombs, and entirely on the strength of certain\ntopographical observations, that a particular cemetery, into which a\nvery partial opening had been made in 1848, was that anciently called\nby the name of Pretextatus, and in which were buried St. Januarius,\nthe eldest of the seven sons of St. Felicitas, Felicissimus and\nAgapitus, deacons of St. Sixtus, Pope Urban, Quirinus, and other\nfamous martyrs. Five years passed away, and this opinion had been\nneither confirmed nor refuted; but in 1857, excavations undertaken for\nanother purpose introduced our author into a crypt of this cemetery,\nof unusual size and richness of ornament, where one of the _loculi_\nbore an inscription on the mortar which had secured the grave-stone,\ninvoking the assistance of \"Januarius, Agatopus (for Agapitus), and\nFelicissimus, martyrs!\" This, of course, was a strong confirmation of\nthe conjecture which had been published so long before; but this was\nall which he could produce in the first number of his _Bollettino_ in\nJanuary, 1863. In the second number he could add that, as he was going\nto press (February 21), small fragments of an inscription on marble\nhad been disinterred from the same place, of which only single letters\nhad yet been found, but which, he did not hesitate to say, had been\nwritten by Pope Damasus and contained his name, as well as the name of\n{132} St. Januarius. In March he published the twelve or fourteen\nletters which had been discovered, arranging them in the place he\nsupposed them to have occupied in the inscription, which he\nconjecturally restored, and which consisted altogether of more than\nforty letters. In April he was able still further to add, that they\nhad now recovered other portions; amongst the rest, a whole word, or\nrather the contraction of a word (_episcop._ for _episcopus_), exactly in\naccordance with his conjecture, though, at the time he made the\nconjecture, only half of one of the letters had yet come to light.\n\nWe need not pursue the subject further. Enough has been said to\nsatisfy those of our readers who have any acquaintance with the\ncatacombs, both as to the kind and the degree of interest and\nimportance which belong to this publication. Its intelligence,\nhowever, is by no means confined to the catacombs. The basilica of San\nClemente; the recent excavations at San Lorenzo, _fuori le mura_; the\npostscript of St. Pamphilus the Martyr at the end of one of his\nmanuscript copies of the Bible, reproduced in the Codex Sinaiticus\nlately published by Tischendorf; the arch of Constantine; ancient\nscribblings on the wall (_graffiti_) of the palace of the Caesars on\nthe Palatine, etc., etc., are subjects of able and learned articles in\nthe several numbers we have received. With reference to the\n_graffiti_, one singular circumstance mentioned by De Rossi is worth\nrepeating here. Most of our readers are probably acquainted with the\n_graffiti_ from this place, published by P. Garrucci, in which one\nAlessamenus is ridiculed for worshipping as his God the figure of a\nman, but with the head of an ass, nailed to a cross. P. Garrucci had\nvery reasonably conjectured that this was intended as a blasphemous\ncaricature of the Christian worship; and recently other _graffiti_ in\nthe very same place have been discovered with the title _Episcopus_,\napparently given in ridicule to some Christian youth; for that the\nroom on whose walls these scribblings appear was used for educational\npurposes is abundantly proved by the numerous inscriptions announcing\nthat such or such a one _exit de paedagogio_. We seem, therefore, in\ndeciphering these rude scrawls, to assist, as it were, at one of the\nminor scenes of that great struggle between paganism and Christianity,\nwhereof the sufferings of the early martyrs, the apologies of Justin\nMartyr, etc., were only another but more public and historical phase.\nHistory tells us that Caracalla, when a boy, saw one of his companions\nbeaten because he professed the Christian faith. These _graffiti_ seem\nto teach us that there were many others of the same tender age, _de\ndomo Caesaris_, who suffered more or less of persecution for the same\ncause. Other interesting details of the same struggle have been\nbrought together by De Rossi, carefully gleaned from the patrician\nnames which appear on some of the ancient grave-stones, sometimes as\nbelonging to young virgins or widows who had dedicated themselves to\nthe service of Christ under the discipline of a religious community.\nThat such a community was to be found early in the fifth century, in\nthe immediate neighborhood of _S. Lorenzo fuori le mura_, or, at\nleast, that the members of such a community were always buried about\nthat time in that cemetery, is one of the circumstances which may be\nsaid to be clearly proved by the recent discoveries. The proofs are\ntoo numerous and minute for abridgment, but the student will be\ninterested in examining them as they appear in the _Bollettino_.\n\nAnother feature in this archaeological publication is its convenience\nas a supplement to the volume of Christian Inscriptions published by\nthe same author. That volume, as our readers are already aware,\ncontains only such inscriptions of the first six centuries as bear a\ndistinct chronological note by the names of the chief magistrates, or\nin some other way. Additional specimens of these are not unfrequently\ndiscovered in the excavations still {133} in progress on various sides\nof the city; and these De Rossi is careful to chronicle, and generally\nalso to illustrate by notes, in the pages of his _Bollettino_. The\nchief value of these additions, perhaps, is to be found in the\ncorroboration they _uniformly_ give to the conclusions which De Rossi\nhad already deduced, the canons of chronological distinction and\ndistribution which he had established, from the larger collection of\ninscriptions in the work referred to--whether as to the style of\nwriting or of diction and sentiments, etc.--canons, the full\nimportance of which will only be recognized when he shall have\npublished the second volume of the collection of epitaphs bearing upon\nquestions of Christian doctrine and practice.\n\nIn the earlier numbers of the _Bollettino_ for the present year there\nis a very interesting account of the recent discoveries in the\nAmbrosian basilica of Milan, where there seems no room to doubt but\nthat they have brought to light the very sarcophagus in which the\nrelics of the great St. Ambrose, as well as those of the martyrs Sts.\nGervasius and Protasius, have rested for more than ten centuries. The\nhistory of the discovery is too long to be inserted here, and too\ninteresting to be abridged. One circumstance, however, connected with\nit is too important to be omitted. The sarcophagus itself has not yet,\nwe believe, been opened; but, from the two sepulchres below and on\neither side of it, where the bishop and the martyrs were originally\ndeposited, and where they remained until their translation in the\nninth century, many valuable relics have been gleaned. We will only\nmention one of them--viz., portions of an _ampulla_ such as are found\nin the catacombs, and concerning which Dr. Biraghi, the librarian of\nthe Bibliotheca Ambrosiana (to whose zeal we are indebted for the\nwhole discovery, and for the account of it to his learning), assures\nus that it has been subjected to a chemical examination, and is shown\nto have contained blood. This, as De Rossi truly remarks, is the most\nnotable instance which has yet come before us of this _ampulla_ having\nbeen placed in the sepulchre of famous and historical martyrs, and it\nis of very special importance as throwing a flood of light on those\nwords of St. Ambrose about these relics so often quoted in the\ncontroversy on this subject--_Sanguine, tumulus madet; apparent\ncruoris triumphales notae; inviolatae reliquiae loco suo et ordine\nrepertae_. And it is certainly singular that this discovery should\nhave been made at a moment when the validity of these _ampullae_, as\nsure signs of martyrdom, has been so much called in question. The\nSacred Congregation of Rites had only recently reaffirmed their former\nsentence on this matter; and this fact now comes most opportunely from\nMilan to add further weight to their decision, by giving a historical\nbasis to an opinion which before had been thought by some rather to\nrest upon theory and conjecture. It will go far, we should think,\ntoward _rehabilitating_ in the minds of Christian archaeologists the\npious belief of former ages upon this subject, wherever it may have\nbeen shaken.\n\n------\n\n{134}\n\nMISCELLANY.\n\n\nSCIENCE.\n\n_The Mason-Spider of Corfu_.--A correspondent of a London journal gives\nan interesting account of certain habits of this insect, which belongs\nto the _mygalidae_ family. The mygales are chiefly found in hot\nclimates, and include the largest specimens of spiders known. They are\ncalled mason-spiders, from the curious manner in which they build\ntheir houses. \"The mygale nest,\" says the correspondent, \"varies much\nin size, from one inch in length to three or four, and even six or\nseven inches. In the West Indies, where the spiders are crab-like, the\ninsects measure six inches over. One nest, especially mentioned and\nminutely described by Mr. Oudouin, was three inches and a quarter long\nand eight-tenths of an inch wide. The nest, of cylindrical form, is\nmade by boring into the earth; making his excavation, the next thing,\nhaving decided upon the dimensions of his habitation, is to furnish\nit, and most beautiful are his paper-hangings. The whole of the\ninterior is lined with the softest possible silk, a tissue which the\n'major domo' spins all over the apartment until it is padded to a\nsufficient thickness and made soft enough. Silk lining like this gives\nthe idea of the mygale having a luxurious turn. This done, and the\ninterior finished, the mygale shows his peculiarity by taking steps to\nkeep out the [Greek text] of intruders by making not only a door, and\nthat self-closing, but a door with swinging hinge, and sometimes one\nat each end of his nest, which shows that he has a very good opinion\nof his own work within, and knows how to take care of it. Not having\nmet with any case where any one had seen the positive operation of\nmaking the door of these nests, I thought the details would be\ninteresting, the more so as they corroborated preconceived ideas of\ntheir construction, and were noticed by a friend quartered at Corfu,\nwho brought home the nest with him. The following is the description\nhe gave me:\n\n  \"Lying out in one of the sandy plateaux covered with olive groves\n  with which Corfu abounds, enjoying his cigar and lounging about in\n  the sandy soil, he came to a spider's nest. Examining it, he found\n  the lid or door would not open, and seemed held firmly within by the\n  proprietor--as if Jack were at home--so he applied forthwith the\n  leverage of a knife-blade, upon which the inmate retired to his\n  inner chamber. The aggressor decided not to disturb him any more\n  that day, but marking the place--most necessary thing to do--thought\n  he would explore further the next day, if fine.\n\n  \"Accordingly, the next day my friend called early, intending to take\n  off the door and to watch the progress of restoration, and how it\n  would be accomplished. After waiting a long time, out came Monsieur\n  Mygale, and looking carefully round, and finding all quiet,\n  commenced operations by running his web backward and forward across\n  the orifice of his nest, till there was a layer of silken web; upon\n  this he ejected a gluten, over which he scratched the fine sand in\n  the immediate neighborhood of his nest; this done, he again set to\n  work--webbing, then gluten, sand; then again web, gluten, sand, about\n  six times; this occupied in all about eight hours. But the puzzling\n  part was that this time he was cementing and building himself out\n  from his own mansion, when, to the astonishment and delight of his\n  anxious looker-on, he began the finishing stroke by cutting and\n  forming the door by fixing his hind legs in the centre of the new\n  covering, and from these as a centre he began cutting with his jaws\n  right through the door he had made, striking a clear circle round,\n  and leaving about one-eighth of the circumference as a hinge. This\n  done, he lifted the door up and walked in. My friend then tried to\n  open the door with a knife, but the insect pulled it tight from the\n  inside. He therefore dug round him and took him off bodily--mygale\n  and nest complete. The hinge is most carefully and beautifully\n  formed; and there appears to be an important object in view when the\n  spider covers over the whole of the orifice, for immediately the\n  door is raised it springs back as soon as released; and this is\n  caused by the elasticity of the web on the hinge and the peculiar\n  formation of the lid or door, which is made thicker on the lower\n  side, so that its {135} own weight helps it to be self-closing, and\n  the rabbeting of the door is wonderfully surfaced. Bolts and Chub\n  locks with a latch-key the mygale family do not possess, but as a\n  substitute the lower part of the door has clawholding holes, so that\n  a bird's beak or other lever being used, Mons. Mygale holds on to\n  the door by these, and with his legs against the sides of his house,\n  offers immense resistance against all comers.\"\n\n\n_Instinct of Insects_.--One of the regular course of free scientific\nlectures delivered at the Paris Sorbonne this last winter, under the\nauspices of the Minister of Public Instruction, was by the\ndistinguished naturalist M. Milne-Edwards, on the instinct and\nintelligence of animals. Taking for his text the saying of Linnaeus,\n_Natura maxime miranda in minimis,_ he spoke principally of the\ninstinct of insects, and especially of solitary bees. These\nhymenoptera, in fact, afford one of the most striking examples known\nof that faculty which impels an animal, either for its own\npreservation or for the preservation and development of its offspring,\nto perform the most complicated and intelligent actions, readily and\nskilfully, yet without having learned how to do them. One species, the\ncarpenter-bee (_xylocopa_), bores in the trunks of trees galleries\nrunning first horizontally and then vertically to a considerable\ndepth. She then collects a quantity of wax and honey. The honey she\nkneads into a little ball of alimentary matter, in the midst of which\nshe deposits her first egg. With the wax she constructs a horizontal\npartition, formed of concentric annular layers; this encloses the\ncell. On this partition she deposits a second egg, enclosed like the\nfirst in the provision destined for the support of the future larva;\nand over it builds another partition of wax; and so on, to the top of\nthe vertical cavity. Then she dies; she never sees her offspring. The\nlatter, so long as they remain larvae, feed upon the honey which the\nmaternal foresight provided for them; and so soon as they have passed\nthrough their second metamorphosis and become winged insects, issue\nforth from their retreat, to perform in their turn a similar labor.\n\nAnother species of solitary bee, whose larva is carnivorous, resorts\nto a still more wonderful, but, it must be confessed, very cruel,\nexpedient to supply the worm-like progeny with food. She constructs a\ngallery or tunnel in the earth, and crowns it with a chimney curved\nsomewhat like a crosier, so as to keep out the rain. Then she goes\na-hunting, and brings back to her den a number of caterpillars. If she\nkills them at once, they will spoil before her eggs are hatched; if\nshe lets them alone, they will run away. What shall she do? She\npierces the caterpillars with her venomous little dart, and injects\ninto them a drop of poison, which Mr. Claude Bernard no doubt will\nanalyze some day. It does not kill, it only paralyzes them; and there\nthey lie, torpid and immovable, till the larvae come into the world\nand feast off the sweet and succulent flesh at their leisure.\n\nEverybody is familiar with the habits and wonderful industry of\nhive-bees, wasps, and ants. These insects seem to be governed by\nsomething more than blind instinct: it is hardly too much to say that\nthey give indubitable signs of intelligence. They know how to modify\ntheir course according to circumstances, to provide against unexpected\nwants, to avert dangers, and to notify to each other whatever is of\nconsequence to be known by their whole community. Huber, the\ncelebrated bee-keeper of Geneva, relates the following anecdote: One\nof his hives having been devastated one night by a large sphinx-moth,\nthe bees set to work the next morning and plastered up the door,\nleaving only a small opening which would just admit them, one at a\ntime, but which the sphinx, with its big body and long wings, could\nnot pass. As soon as the season arrived when the moths terminate their\nshort lives, the bees, no longer fearing an invasion, pulled down\ntheir rampart. The next season, as no sphinx appeared to trouble them,\nthey left their door wide open.\n\n\n\n_Ostrich-keeping_.--By late news from the Cape of Good Hope we learn\nthat the farmers of that colony are beginning to find it profitable to\nkeep flocks of ostriches, for the feathers of those birds are worth\nL25 sterling the pound. For thirty-five ostriches, there must be three\nhundred acres of grazing-ground. The plucking takes place once in six\nmonths; the yield of feathers from each bird being worth from L10 to\nL12, 10s. The original cost of the young ostriches is said to be L5\neach. Some of the {136} farmers who have tried the experiment are of\nopinion that ostrich-feathers will pay better than any other produce\nof the colony.\n\n\n_Extraordinary Inland Navigation_.--We hear from South America that a\nsteamer built in England for the Peruvian government, for the\nexploration of rivers, has penetrated the great continent from the\nAtlantic side to a distance of ninety-five leagues only from the\nPacific, or nearly all across. The vessel, which draws seven feet\nwater, steamed seven hundred leagues up the Amazon, two hundred up the\nUcayati, and thence into the Pachitea, which had never before been\nnavigated except by native canoes. What a magnificent extent of inland\nnavigation is here opened to commercial enterprise! The mind becomes\nsomewhat bewildered in imagining the future of those vast\nriver-valleys when hundreds of steamers shall navigate the streams,\ntrading among millions of population dwelling on their banks.\n\n\n\n_Is the Sun getting Bigger?_--It is known that various speculations\nhave been put forward as to the cause or source of the sun's heat.\nAmong those who consider that it consists in the falling of asteroids\nor meteorites into the sun, is Mr. J. R. Mayer, of Heilbronn, who\nstates that the surface of the sun measures 115,000 million square\nmiles, and that the asteroids falling thereon form a mass every minute\nequal in weight to from 94,000 to 188,000 billion kilogrammes. It\nmight be supposed that this enormous shower would increase the mass\nand weight of the sun, and by consequence produce an appreciable\neffect on the motion of the planets which compose our system. For\ninstance, it would shorten our year by a second or something less. But\nthe calculations of astronomers show that this effect does not take\nplace; and Mr. Mayer states that to increase the apparent diameter of\nthe sun a single second by the shower of asteroids would require from\n33,000 to 66,000 years.\n\n\n\n_Teaching the Deaf and Dumb to Speak_.--Dr. Houdin, director of an\ninstitution for the deaf and dumb at Passy, lately announced to the\nFrench Academy, that after twenty-five years' experience he had proved\nthe possibility of communicating the faculty of speech, in a certain\ndegree, to deaf mutes. A commission appointed by the Academy and the\nFaculty to investigate the subject, reports that the learned doctor\nhas really succeeded in several instances in teaching these\nunfortunate beings to speak and even comprehend spoken language so\nwell that it is difficult to believe that they are not guided by the\near. The patients conversed with the members of the commission, and\nanswered the different questions put to them. They were found to be\nperfectly familiar with the use and mechanism of speech, though\ndestitute of the sense of hearing, and they comprehended what was said\nto them, reading the words upon the lips of the speaker with a\nmarvellous facility. Thus they become fit to enter into society and\ncapable of receiving all manner of instruction.\n\nBut here is another case still more wonderful. What would you do if\nyou had to instruct and prepare for first communion a child who was at\nthe same time deaf, dumb, and _blind_? The case is not an imaginary\none; it has occurred in an asylum for deaf-mutes at Notre Dame de\nLarnay, in the diocese of Poitiers. A nun was there charged with the\ninstruction of a child in this unfortunate state, to whom she could\nappeal only by the sense of touch. Yet the child, who astonishes\neverybody by her sensibility and intelligence, has come by that means\nto a knowledge of the spiritual life, of God and his divine Son, of\nreligion and its mysteries and precepts--has been prepared, in fine,\nfor a worthy reception of the Eucharist.\n\n\nART.\n\nThe past winter in New York has scarcely kept pace with its immediate\npredecessor in the number and merit of the collections of pictures\nopened to public inspection or disposed of at auction. The\nunprecedented prices obtained for the really excellent collection of\nMr. Wolfe, in Christmas week of 1863, seemed to have inoculated art\ncollectors and dealers with what may be called a _cacoethes vendendi_,\nand until far into the succeeding summer the picture auctioneers were\ncalled upon to knock down dozens of galleries of \"private gentlemen\nabout to leave the country,\" varying in merit from respectable to\npositively bad. In these sales the moderns had decidedly the best of\nit, the few {137} \"old masters\" who ventured to appeal to the\nsympathies and pockets of our collectors being at last treated with\nproper contempt. But the prices realized by the Wolfe gallery, even\nwhen reduced to a specie basis, were too high to become a recognized\nstandard of value, and gradually the interest in such sales, as well\nas the bids, declined, until the sellers became aware (the purchasers\nhad become aware some time previous) that the market was overstocked\nand the demand for pictures had ceased. The contributions of the\nforeign artists to the New York Sanitary Fair brought probably less\nthan a third of the money that would have been obtained for them had\nthey been sold in January instead of June, and such collections as\nhave been scraped together for sale during the present season have met\nwith but moderate pecuniary success. It is gratifying to know,\nhowever, that our resident artists, both native and foreign-born, have\nfor the most part been busily and profitably employed, and that in\nlandscape, and in some departments of _genre_, their works have not\nsuffered in competition with similar ones by reputable European\npainters. Without wishing in any respect to recommend or suggest a\nprotective system for fostering native art, we cannot but rejoice that\nthe overthrow of the late exaggerated prices for foreign works will\ntend to encourage and develop American artists.\n\nThe principal art event in anticipation is the opening of next\nexhibition of the National Academy of Design in the building now\nhastening to completion at the corner of Fourth avenue and\nTwenty-third streets. It is to be hoped that the contributions will be\nworthy of the place and the occasion. Recent exhibitions have not been\naltogether creditable to the Academy.\n\nDurand, the late president of the Academy, and one of our oldest and\nmost careful landscape painters, has a characteristic work on\nexhibition at Avery's Art Agency, corner of Fourth street and\nBroadway. It is called \"A Summer Afternoon,\" and is pervaded by a\nsoft, pensive sentiment of rural repose. In the elaboration of the\ntrees and in the soft, mellow distances the artist shows his early\nskill, albeit in some of his later pieces the timid handling\ninseparable from age is discernible.\n\nA collection of several hundred sketches and studies of no special\nmerit, by Hicks, has recently been disposed of at auction. The essays\nof this gentleman in landscape are not happy, and the specimens in\nthis collection had better, perhaps, have been excluded.\n\nRossiter's pictures representing Adam and Eve in Paradise, now on\nexhibition in New York, have excited more remark than commendation. It\nmay be said briefly, that they fail to do justice to the subject.\n\nCurnmings's \"Historic Annals of the Academy of Design\" have been\npublished, and constitute an interesting addition to the somewhat\nmeagre collection of works illustrating American art history.\n\nMr. Thomas Ball, the well-known sculptor of Boston, is about to depart\nfor Italy, with the intention of remaining several years in Florence,\nand executing there in marble a number of plaster models. Among these\nare a life-size statue of Edwin Forrest in the part of \"Coriolanus,\"\nand busts of the late Rev. Thomas Starr King and Edward Everett. The\nlatter is said to be an admirable likeness.\n\nM. J. Heade, an American artist, formerly of Boston and Providence, is\npublishing in London a work upon the humming-birds of Brazil,\nillustrated from designs by himself.\n\nThe United States Senate was recently the scene of a somewhat animated\ndebate on art matters, arising out of a proposition to authorize the\nartist Powell to \"paint a picture for the Capitol at a cost not to\nexceed $25,000.\" The scheme was defeated, chiefly through the\nopposition of Senator Sumner, who thought the present an improper time\nto devote so large a sum to such a purpose.\n\nA very remarkable picture by Gerome, the most original, and realistic\nof living French painters, is now on exhibition at Goupil's, in this\ncity. It is entitled \"The Prayer of the Arab in the Desert,\" and in a\nsmall space presents a complete epitome of Oriental life.\n\n\n\nIn London the General Exhibition of water-color drawings, and\ncollections of works of Holman Hunt, Madox Brown, and the late David\nRoberts, have recently been opened. The last named contains 900\npictures, drawings, and sketches, showing the amazing industry of the\nartist, and his skill as a draughtsman.\n\n{138}\n\nA monument to Shakespeare, from penny subscriptions, is to be erected\non Primrose Hill, near London.\n\n\n\nThe sale of the celebrated Pourtales collection at Paris has been the\nall-absorbing art topic abroad. The gallery, at last accounts, was\ndaily crowded with representatives from all parts of Europe, and the\nprices surpassed the estimates of the experts. The value set upon the\nwhole collection was upward of 3,000,000 francs, but that sum will\nprobably fall far short of the real total. The bronzes and terra-cotta\noccupied four days, and produced over 150,000 francs. The following\nare among the most remarkable items: A very small statuette of\nJupiter, found at Besancon in 1820, 8,000 francs; another small\nstatuette of the same, seated, formerly in the Denon collection,\n12,000 francs; the celebrated statuette of Apollo, supposed to date\nfrom the sixth century B.C., from the Neri collection, 5,000 francs;\nsmall statuette of Minerva, arms missing, found at Besancon, 19,200\nfrancs; armor found at Herculaneum, and presented by the Queen of\nNaples to Josephine, purchased by the Emperor for 13,000 francs; a\nsmall Roman bust, supposed by Visconti to be a Balbus, bought for the\nLouvre for 4,550 francs; a tripod, found in the ruins of the town of\nMetapont, and described by Panofka, purchased for the Berlin gallery,\n10,000 francs; fine old Roman seat, in bronze, bought for the Louvre,\n5,300 francs; vase from Locres, 7,000 francs; another vase, found in\none of the tombs of the Vulci, 9,000 francs.\n\nAt the sale of the collection of the Marquis de Lambertye, in Paris, a\ncharming work by Meissonier, \"Reynard in his Study, reading a\nManuscript,\" was purchased for 12,600 francs; had it not been for the\neffect of the Pourtales sale on the art market, the work would have\nfetched considerably more money. It was purchased of the artist\nhimself, for 16,000 francs, by the late marquis. Another and smaller\npicture, not six inches by four, also by Meissonier, was sold on the\nsame occasion--subject, \"Van de Velde in his Atelier\"--for 7,020\nfrancs. In the same collection were four works by Decamps, whose\npictures are in great request. One of these, an Eastern landscape,\nsold for 15,500 francs; another, a small work, a peasant girl in the\nforest, for 4,240 francs; and two still smaller and less important\nworks, \"Tide Out, with Sunset,\" and \"Gorges d'Ollioule,\" for 1,500\nfrancs each. Three small works by Eugene Delacroix, a \"Tiger attacking\na Serpent,\" \"Combat between Moors and Arabs,\" and \"The Scotch Ballad,\"\nsold, respectively, for 1,820 francs, 1,300 francs, and 2,300 francs.\nA minute picture by Paul Delaroche, \"Jesus on the Mount of Olives,\"\nsold for 2,200 francs; Diogenes sitting on the edge of an immense jar,\nholding his lantern, by Gerome, 1,950 francs; and \"Arnauts at Prayer,\"\nby the same, 3,900 francs. \"The Beach at Trouville,\" by the lately\ndeceased painter, Troyon, 4,000 francs, and \"Feeding the Poultry,\" by\nthe same, 4,850 francs.\n\nAt the sale of a collection of the works of M. Cordier, the sculptor,\nwho has earned considerable popularity by his variegated works,\ncomposed of marbles, onyx and bronze, and variously tinted and\ndecorated, a marble statue, called \"La Belle Gallinara,\" sold for\n4,100 francs; a young Kabyle child carrying a branch loaded with\noranges, in Algerian onyx and bronze, and partly colored, 3,000\nfrancs; an Arab woman, a statue of the same materials as the\npreceding, intended to support a lamp or candelabrum, purchased by the\nDue de Morny for 6,825 francs.\n\nThere is a report that the collections of pictures and curiosities\nbelonging to the Comte de Chambord will shortly be dispersed by the\nhammer in Paris.\n\nThe scaffolding before the north front of the cathedral of Notre Dame,\nin Paris, has been removed, and the facade, with the magnificent\nGothic window, forty feet in diameter, can now be seen to great\nperfection, all the rich sculptures having been admirably restored.\n\nA Paris letter says: \"The celebrated painting of the 'Assassination of\nthe Bishop of Liege,' by Eugene Delacroix, was recently sold at\nauction at 35,000 francs. The 'Death of Ophelia,' in pencil, by the\nsame painter, was knocked down for 2,020 francs, which was considered\na large sum for a sketch. 'St. Louis at the Bridge of Taillebourg,' in\nwater-colors, fetched 3,100 francs. Some copper-plates engraved by\nEugene Delacroix himself were likewise sold.\"\n\n\n\nAt the sale of the collection of the Chevalier de Knyff, at Brussels,\nthe Virgin with the host and surrounded by angels, by Ingres, was\nwithdrawn at 28,500 francs.\n\n{139}\n\nAmong the works of art destroyed in the recent conflagration of the\nducal palace at Brunswick was the colossal bronze figure of Brunonia,\nthe patron goddess of the town, standing in a car of victory, drawn by\nfour horses. It was executed by Professor Howaldt and his sons, after\na design by Rietschel.\n\n\nThe colossal bronze statue of Hercules, lately exhumed at Rome, has\nbeen safely deposited in the Vatican.\n\n------\n\nBOOK NOTICES.\n\n\nSERMONS ON OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST, AND ON HIS BLESSED MOTHER.\nBy his Eminence Cardinal Wiseman. 8vo., pp. 421. New York: D. & J.\nSadlier & Co.\n\n\nComing to us almost in the same moment in which we hear of Cardinal\nWiseman's death, these sermons will be read with a deep and peculiar\ninterest, now that the eloquent lips which uttered them are closed for\never. Most of them were preached in Rome, some so long ago as 1827.\nThese were addressed to congregations composed partly of\necclesiastics, partly of Catholic sojourners in the Eternal City, and\npartly of Protestants. At least one was delivered in Ireland in 1858.\nBut although some of the discourses belong to the period of the\nauthor's noviceship in the pulpit, and between some there is an\ninterval of more than thirty years, we are struck by no incongruity of\neither thought or style. The earliest have the finish and elegance of\nmaturity; the latest all the vigor and enthusiasm of youth.\n\nThey are not controversial, and hardly any of them can even be called\ndogmatic sermons. They are addressed more to the heart than directly\nto the understanding, although reasoning and exhortation are often so\nskilfully blended that it is hard to say where one begins and the\nother ends. They are the outpourings, in fact, of a warm and loving\nheart and a full brain. The argument is all the more effective because\nthe cardinal covers his frame-work of logic with the rich drapery of\nhis brilliant rhetoric. And yet, with all their gorgeous phraseology,\nthey are characterized by a simplicity of thought which brings them\ndown to the level of the commonest intellect.\n\nThe greater part of them were preached during the seasons of Lent and\nAdvent, and the subjects will therefore be found especially\nappropriate to the present period. Here is a beautiful passage in\nreference to our Lord's agony in the garden:\n\n  \"There are plants in the luxurious East, my dearly beloved brethren,\n  which men gash and cut, that from them may distil the precious\n  balsams they contain; but that is ever the most sought and valued\n  which, issuing forth of its own accord, pure and unmixed, trickles\n  down like tears upon the parent tree. And so it seems to me, we may\n  without disparagement speak of the precious streams of our dear\n  Redeemer's blood. When forced from his side, in abundant flow, it\n  came mixed with another mysterious fluid; when shed by the cruel\n  inflictions of his enemies, by their nails, their thorns, and\n  scourges, there is a painful association with the brutal instruments\n  that drew it, as though in some way their defilement could attaint\n  it. But here we have the first yield of that saving and life-giving\n  heart, gushing forth spontaneously, pure and untouched by the\n  unclean hand of man, dropping as dew upon the ground. It is the\n  first juice of the precious vine; before the wine-press hath bruised\n  its grapes, richer and sweeter to the loving and sympathizing soul,\n  than what is afterward pressed out. It is every drop of it ours; and\n  alas, how painfully so! For here no lash, no impious palm, no\n  pricking thorn hath called it forth; but our sins, yes, our sins,\n  the executioners not of the flesh, but of the heart of Jesus, have\n  driven it all out, thence to water that garden of sorrows! Oh, is it\n  not dear to us; is it not gathered up by our affections, with far\n  more reverence and love than by virgins of old was the blood of\n  martyrs, to be placed for ever in the very sanctuary, yea, within\n  the very altar of our hearts?\"\n\nFrom the discourse on the \"Triumphs of the Cross,\" we select the\nclosing paragraph:\n\n{140}\n\n  \"O blessed Jesus, may the image of these sacred wounds, as expressed\n  by the cross, never depart from my thoughts. As it is a badge and\n  privilege of the exalted office, to which, most unworthy, I have\n  been raised, to wear ever upon my breast the figure of that cross,\n  and in it, as in a holy shrine, a fragment of that blessed tree\n  whereon thou didst hang on Golgotha, so much more let the lively\n  image of thee crucified dwell within my bosom, and be the source\n  from which shall proceed every thought, and word, and action of my\n  ministry! Let me preach thee, and thee crucified, not the plausible\n  doctrines of worldly virtue and human philosophy. In prayer and\n  meditation let me ever have before me thy likeness, as thou\n  stretchest forth thine arms to invite us to seek mercy and to draw\n  us into thine embrace. Let my Thabor be on Calvary; there it is best\n  for me to dwell. There thou hast prepared three tabernacles; one for\n  such as, like Magdalen, have offended much, but love to weep at thy\n  blessed feet; one for those who, like John, have wavered in\n  steadfastness for a moment, but long again to rest their head upon\n  thy bosom; and one whereinto only she may enter whose love burns\n  without a reproach, whose heart, always one with thine, finds its\n  home in the centre of thine, fibre intertwined with fibre, till both\n  are melted into one in that furnace of sympathetic love. With these\n  favorites of the cross, let me ever, blessed Saviour, remain in\n  meditation and prayer, and loving affection for thy holy rood. I\n  will venerate its very substance, whenever presented to me, with\n  deep and solemn reverence. I will honor its image, wherever offered\n  to me, with lowly and respectful homage. But still more I will\n  hallow and love its spirit and inward form, impressed on the heart,\n  and shown forth in the holiness of life. And oh! divine Redeemer,\n  from thy cross, thy true mercy-seat, look down in compassion upon\n  this thy people. Pour forth thence abundantly the streams of\n  blessing, which flow from thy sacred wounds. Accomplish within them,\n  during this week of forgiveness, the work which holy men have so\n  well begun,  [Footnote 40] that all may worthily partake of thy\n  Paschal feast. Plant thy cross in every heart; may each one embrace\n  it in life, may it embrace him in death; and may it be a beacon of\n  salvation to his departing soul, a crown of glory to his immortal\n  spirit! Amen.\"\n\n  [Footnote 40: Alluding to the mission just closed by the Fathers of\n  the Institute of Charity.]\n\nWhat follows is from the sermon on the \"Veneration of the Blessed\nVirgin:\"\n\n  \"If, then, any one shall accuse me of wasting upon the mother of my\n  Saviour feelings and affections which he hath jealously reserved for\n  himself. I will appeal from the charge to his judgment, and lay the\n  cause before him, at any stage of his blessed life. I will go unto\n  him at the crib of Bethlehem, and acknowledge that, while, with the\n  kings of the East, I have presented to him all my gold and\n  frankincense and myrrh, I have ventured, with the shepherds, to\n  present an humbler oblation of respect to her who was enduring the\n  winter's frost in an unsheltered stable, entirely for his sake. Or I\n  will meet him, as the holy fugitives repose on their desert-path to\n  Egypt, and confess that, knowing from the example of Agar, how a\n  mother cast forth from her house into the wilderness, for her\n  infant's sake, only loves it the more, and needs an angel to comfort\n  her in her anguish (Gen. xxi. 17), I have not restrained my eyes\n  from her whose fatigues and pain were a hundred-fold increased by\n  his, when I have sympathized with him in this his early flight,\n  endured for my sins. Or I will approach a more awful tribunal, and\n  step to the foot of his cross, and own to him, that while I have\n  adored his wounds, and stirred up in my breast my deepest feelings\n  of grief and commiseration for what I have made him suffer, my\n  thoughts could not refrain from sometimes glancing toward her whom I\n  saw resignedly standing at his feet, and sharing his sorrows; and\n  that, knowing how much Respha endured while sitting opposite to her\n  children justly crucified by command of God (2 Kings xxi. 10), I had\n  felt far greater compassion for her, and had not withheld the\n  emotions, which nature itself dictated, of love, and veneration, and\n  devout affection toward her. And to the judgment of such a son I\n  will gladly bow, and his meek mouth shall speak my sentence, and I\n  will not fear it. For I have already heard it from the cross,\n  addressed to me, to you, to all, as he said: 'Woman, behold thy\n  son;' and again: 'Behold thy mother.' (John xix. 26, 27.)\"\n\nAn appendix to the volume contains six beautiful pastorals, on\ndevotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, in connection with education.\n\n\nSPIRITUAL PROGRESS. By J. W. Cummings, D.D., LL.D., of St. Stephen's\nChurch, New York City. 12mo., pp. 330. New York: P. O'Shea.\n\nWe cannot better state the purpose of this excellent little book than\nin the words of the author's preface: \"_Spiritual Progress_ is a\nfamiliar exposition of Catholic morality, which has for its object to\ntell people of common intelligence what they are expected to do in\n{141} order to be good Christians, and how they shall do it, and the\nresults that will follow.\" It is written not for those strong, heroic\nsouls, whose faith is firm, whose devotion is ardent, and who crave\nstrong spiritual food; but for that numerous class of weak Christians,\nrecent converts, honest inquirers, and fervent but uninstructed\nCatholics, who are not yet prepared to accept the more difficult\ncounsels of perfection; who are ready perhaps to do what God says they\nmust do; but need a little training before they can be brought to do\nany more. To put an ascetic work into the hands of such persons would\noften be like giving beef to a young baby: it would hurt, not help\nthem. Dr. Cummings's book, in fact, is a sort of spiritual primer for\nthe use of those who are just beginning their spiritual education. It\nis simple, straightforward, and practical. There is a charm in the\nstyle--so clear, so terse, often almost epigrammatic, and sometimes\nrising to the poetical--which carries the reader along in spite of\nhimself. The tone is not conversational; yet when you read, it seems\nas if you were not so much reading as listening. And that argues great\nliterary merit.\n\nHere is an extract from the chapter on \"Faults of Conversation:\"\n\n  \"Gossip is the bane of conversation, for it is the name under which\n  injustice makes her entrance into society. There is an element in\n  the breast of the most civilized communities, even in times of great\n  refinement, that explains how man may, under certain circumstances,\n  become a cannibal. It is exhibited in the turns our humor takes in\n  conversation. We are not ill-natured, nor disposed to lay a straw in\n  the way of any one who has not injured us, and yet, when spurred on\n  by the stimulus of talking and being talked to, we can bring\n  ourselves to mimic, revile, and misrepresent others, traduce and\n  destroy their good name, reveal their secrets, and proclaim their\n  faults; and all this merely to follow the lead of others, or for the\n  sake of appearing facetious and amusing, or for the purpose of\n  building up ourselves by running down those whom in our hearts we\n  know and believe to be better than we are.... But as the gossip\n  attacks the absent because the absent cannot defend himself or\n  herself, shall not we, dear readers, form a society to assist the\n  weak and the persecuted? Shall we not enter into a compact to defend\n  those who cannot defend themselves? Let us answer as a love of fair\n  play suggests. If we are at all influenced by regard for Christian\n  charity, let us remember that it takes two to carry on a\n  conversation against our neighbor, and that if our visitor is guilty\n  of being a gossip, a false witness, or a detractor, we are also\n  guilty by consenting to officiate as listeners.\"\n\nIn a chapter on the \"Schooling of the\nImagination,\" Dr. Cummings shows how\nthe imaginative faculty may be made to\nserve the cause of religion, especially in\nthe practice of meditation, and how\ndangerous it becomes when it is not held\nin check:\n\n  \"We hear songs and the flutters of many wings at Bethlehem, and see\n  the light streaming from heaven upon the face of the new-born\n  Saviour. We look out over the blue waters of the Lake of Genesareth,\n  and see the quaint little bark of Peter as it lay near the shore\n  when Jesus preached to the people from its side, or as it flew\n  before the wind when the sea waxed wroth, and a great storm arose,\n  he meanwhile sleeping and they fearing they would perish. With the\n  aid of this wonderful faculty we see him before us in the hour of\n  his triumph, surrounded by the multitudes singing, 'Hosanna to the\n  son of David,' and in that sad day of his final sorrow, when the\n  same voices swelled the fearful cry, 'Crucify him, crucify him.'\"\n\n\nA GENERAL HISTORY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, FROM THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE\nCHRISTIAN ERA UNTIL THE PRESENT TIME. By M. L'Abbe J. E. Darras. First\nAmerican from the last French edition. With an Introduction and Notes,\nby the Most Rev. M. J. Spalding, D.D., Archbishop of Baltimore. Parts\n1, 2, and 3. 8vo. New York: P. O'Shea.\n\nThis valuable work, which Mr. O'Shea, with a laudable spirit of\nenterprise, is giving us by instalments, is intended for just that\nclass of readers who stand most in need of a readable and pretty full\nChurch history. When completed it will fill four portly volumes,\nimperial octavo; yet it is a work adapted more especially to family\nreading than to the use of the scholar in his closet. The Abbe Darras\nhas judiciously refrained from obstructing the flow of his narrative\nby minute references and quotations, nor has he suffered his pen to\nrun away into long discussions of controverted questions. What he says\nof the chronology which he has followed, he might have said, if we\nhave read him {142} aright, of his whole work: \"We have adopted a\nsystem already completed, not that it may perhaps be the most exact in\nall its details, but because it is the one most generally followed.\"\nThis seems to be the principle which he has kept before his eyes\nthroughout; and considering the purpose for which he wrote, we think\nit a good one. With all the simplicity and modesty of his style,\nhowever, he shows a thorough knowledge of the intricacies of his\nsubject, and an acquaintance with what the best scholars have written\nbefore him. His history, therefore, fills a void which has long been\naching.\n\nThe translation, made by a lady well known and respected by the\nCatholics of the United States, reads smoothly, and we doubt not is\naccurate. It has been revised by competent theologians, and has the\nspecial sanction of the Archbishop of Baltimore, beside the\napprobation of the Archbishops of New York and Cincinnati. The work in\nthe original French received the warmest encomiums from the European\nclergy, and the author was honored, at the conclusion of his labors,\nby a kind letter from the Pope.\n\nThe mechanical execution of the book is beautiful. The paper is good,\nand the type large and clear. We thank Mr. O'Shea for giving us so\nimportant a work in such a rich and appropriate dress.\n\n\nTHE PROGRESS OF THE AGE, AND THE DANGER OF THE AGE. Two lectures\ndelivered before the St. Xavier Conference of the St. Vincent de Paul\nBrotherhood in the Hall of St. Louis University. By the Rev. Louis\nHeylen, S. J. 12mo., pp. 107. Cincinnati: John P. Walsh.\n\nThese two lectures formed parts of a course delivered during the\nwinter of 1862-63, by some of the professors of the St. Louis\nUniversity. They are admirable compositions, redolent of good sense,\nlearning, and ripe thought, and deeply interesting. The style has a\ntrue oratorical ring. In the first lecture Father Heylen, after\nadverting to the fact that every age since the days of Adam has been\nmarked by some special characteristic, examines the claim set forth by\nour own century to be emphatically the age of progress. In part he\nadmits and in part he denies it. In material progress, and in the\nnatural sciences, especially as applied to the purposes of industry\nand commerce, it stands at the head of ages. But moral progress is not\none of its characteristics. \"Here I feel,\" says he, \"that I am\nentering upon a difficult question. Has there been, in the last fifty\nyears, any marked increase of crime? Is our age, all things\nconsidered, really worse than preceding ages? This question I shall\nnot undertake to decide; but there are some forms of crime which\nappear to me decidedly peculiar to our age.\" A brief review of these\nsins of the day leads naturally to the subject of the second lecture.\nFather Heylen sees our greatest danger in that practical materialism\nwhich places material interests and materialistic passions above the\ninterests of the soul and the claims of virtue. He considers\nsuccessively its extent, its effects, and the means to avert it--the\nlast being, of course, the ennobling and spiritualizing influence of\nCatholicism.\n\nWe advise those who wish to see how a scholar and an orator can throw\na fresh charm into a stale subject, to read Father Heylen's review of\nthe startling discoveries of modern science in the first lecture, and\nhis brilliant description in the second of the ruins with which\nmaterialism has spread the pages of history and the new life which\nCatholicism has infused into effete civilizations.\n\nPrefixed to the little volume before us is a short biographical sketch\nof Father Heylen, who died in 1863.\n\n\n\nUNDINE, OR THE WATER-SPIRIT. Also SINTRAM AND HIS COMPANIONS.\nFrom the German of Friedrich de la Motte Fouque. I vol. 12mo., pp.\n238. New York: James Miller.\n\nTHIODOLF, THE ICELANDER. A Romance. From the German of the Baron de la\nMotte Fouque. 12mo., pp. 308. New York: James Miller.\n\nFor a man of refined and cultivated taste we know of hardly any more\ndelightful literary recreation than to turn from the novels of our own\nday to one of the exquisite romances of La Motte Fouque. There is a\nnobleness of sentiment in his wild and beautiful fancies which seems\nto lift us out of this world into a higher sphere. All his writings\nare pervaded by an ideal Christian chivalry, {143} spiritualizing and\nrefining the supernatural machinery which he is so fond of borrowing\nfrom the old Norse legends. No other author has ever treated the\nNorthern mythology so well; because no other has attempted to give us\nits beauties without its grossness. The gods and heroes of the\nNorsemen have been very much in fashion of late years; but take almost\nany of the Scandinavian tales recently translated--tales which, if\nthey have any moral, seem to inculcate the morality of lying and\ncheating, and the virtue of strong muscles and how immeasurably finer\nand more beautiful by the side of them appear the fairy legends which\nFouque interweaves with his romances, mingling old superstitions with\nChristian faith and virtues, in so delicate a manner that we see no\nincongruity in the association. This mutual adaptation, if we may call\nit so, he effects partly by transporting us back to those early times\nwhen the faith was as yet only half-rooted in the Northern soil, and\nwhen even many Christian converts clung almost unconsciously to some\nof their old pagan beliefs; partly by the genuine religious spirit\nwhich inspires every page of his books, no matter what their subject;\nand partly by the allegorical significance which his romances\ngenerally convey. So from tales of water-sprites and evil spirits,\ndevils, dwarfs, and all manner of supernatural appearances, we rise\nwith the feeling that we have been reading a lesson of piety, truth,\nintegrity, and honor. Carlyle calls the chivalry of Fouque more\nextravagant than that which we supposed Cervantes had abolished; but\nwe are far from agreeing in such a judgment. A chivalry which rests\nupon \"wise and pious thoughts, treasured in a pure heart,\" deserves\nsomething better to be said of it.\n\nThe three tales whose titles are given above are specimens of three\nsomewhat different styles in which Fouque treats his darling subject\nof Christian knighthood. The story of \"Undine\" has always been a pet\nin every language of Europe. Sir Walter Scott called it \"ravishing;\"\nColeridge expressed unbounded admiration of it; the author himself\ntermed it his darling child. For the tale of \"Sintram\" we have a\nparticular affection. As a work of art, it is not to be compared with\nthe former: it has but little of that tender aerial fancy which makes\nthe story of the {144} water-sprite so inexpressibly graceful; but\nthere is a sombre beauty in it which is not less captivating. It is a\nstory of temptation and trial, of battle with self and triumph over\nsin. Its allegorical meaning is more distinct than that of Undine; it\nspeaks more unmistakably of faith and heroic virtue. \"Thiodolf, the\nIcelander,\" is a picture of Norse and Byzantine manners in the tenth\ncentury, and presents an interesting contrast between the rough\nmanliness of the former and the luxury of the court of Constantinople.\nTo the merits of wealth of imagination, skilful delineation of\ncharacter, and dramatic power of narration, it is said to add\nhistorical accuracy.\n\n\n\nOUR FARM OF FOUR ACRES, AND THE MONEY WE MADE BY IT. 12mo., pp. 128.\nNew York: James Miller.\n\nIt is no slight proof of the merit of this little book that it has\ngone through at least twelve editions in England, and had so many\nimitators that it may almost be called the founder of a school of\nliterature. Its popularity is still undiminished, and promises long to\ncontinue so. Hardly any one can fail of being interested in this\nsimple narrative of the blunders, mishaps, and final triumphs of two\ncity-bred sisters, in their effort to keep a little farm and make it\npay; but to those who, either for health's sake or economy, are about\nentering on a similar enterprise, we cannot too strongly recommend it.\nIt is so practical that we cannot doubt it is all true--indeed its\ndirectness and air of truth and good sense are the secrets of its\nremarkable success. We commend it to our readers as an interesting\nexemplification of a truth which ought to be more widely known than it\nis--that with proper management a small family on a small place in the\ncountry can raise all their own vegetables, not only to their great\ncomfort, but with considerable pecuniary profit. Men who spend\nhalf-a-year's income in the rent of a city house would do well to take\nto heart the lessons of this little book.\n\n\n\nTHE IRVINGTON STORIES. By M. E. Dodge. Illustrated by F. O. C. Darley.\n16mo., pp. 256. New York: James O'Kane.\n\nThis is a collection of tales for young people, manufactured with\nconsiderable {145} taste and neatness. Some of the stories bear a good\nmoral, distinctly brought out.\n\n\n\nREPLY TO THE CHRISTIAN EXAMINER ON CATHOLICITY AND NATURALISM.\n8vo., pp. 24. Boston: Patrick Donahoe.\n\nThe _Christian Examiner_ for January, 1865, contained an article on\n\"The Order of St. Paul the Apostle, and the New Catholic Church,\" in\nwhich the writer, after describing a visit to the Paulist\nestablishment in Fifty-ninth street, and representing Father Hecker\nand his companions as being engaged in the attempt to found a new\nCatholic Church, passed on to the consideration of the question what\nform of religion is best adapted to the wants of the American people.\nIt was a remarkable article--remarkable not only for its graceful\ndiction, but for its curious admissions of the failure of\nProtestantism as a religious system. \"The process of disintegration,\"\nsays the _Examiner_, \"is going forward with immense rapidity\nthroughout Protestant Christendom. Organizations are splitting\nasunder, institutions are falling into decay, customs are becoming\nuncustomary, usages are perishing from neglect, sacraments are\ndeserted by the multitude, creeds are decomposing under the action of\nliberal studies and independent thought.\" But from these falling ruins\nmankind will seek refuge not in the bosom of the Catholic Church, says\nthe Christian Examiner, but in Naturalism. The object of the pamphlet\nbefore us is to show, after correcting certain misstatements\nconcerning the congregation of Paulists, that Naturalism is utterly\nunable to satisfy those longings of the heart which, as the _Examiner_\nconfesses, no Protestant sect can appease.\n\n\n\nPASTORAL LETTER OF THE MOST REV. MARTIN JOHN SPALDING, D. D.,\nARCHBISHOP OF BALTIMORE, ETC., TOGETHER WITH THE LATE ENCYCLICAL OF\nTHE HOLY FATHER, AND THE SYLLABUS OF ERRORS CONDEMNED. 8vo., pp. 43.\nBaltimore: Kelly & Piet.\n\nIn promulgating the jubilee lately proclaimed by the sovereign\npontiff, the Most Rev. Archbishop Spalding takes occasion to make a\nfew timely remarks on the Encyclical, the character of Pius IX., the\ntemporal power of the Popes, and the errors recently condemned. He\nexplains the true purport of the much-abused Encyclical, shows against\nwhom it is directed--namely, the European radicals and infidels--and\nproves that it never was the intention of the Pope, as has been\nalleged, to assail the institutions of this country. In view of the\nabsurd mistranslations of the Encyclical which have been published by\nthe Protestant press, Catholics will be glad to have the correct\nEnglish version of that important document, which is given by way of\nappendix to the pastoral.\n\n\n\nWe have received the _First Supplement to the Catalogue of the Library\nof the Young Men's Association of the City of Milwaukee_, with the\nannual report of the Board of Directors for 1863.\n\n------------------\n\nTHE CATHOLIC WORLD.\n\n\nVOL. I., NO. 2. MAY, 1865.\n\n\n\nFrom the Dublin Review.\n\n\nHEDWIGE, QUEEN OF POLAND.\n\n\nHedwige was the youngest daughter of Lewis, nephew and successor to\nCasimir the Great, who, on account of the preference he evinced for\nhis Hungarian subjects, drew upon himself the continued ill-will of\nthe nation he was called upon to govern. Finding he was unable to cope\nwith the numerous factions everywhere ready to oppose him, he, not\nwithout many humiliating concessions to the nobles of Poland, induced\nthem to elect as his successor his daughter Maria, wife of Sigismund,\nMarquis of Brandenburg (afterward emperor), and having appointed the\nDuke of Oppelen regent of the kingdom, retired to his native Hungary,\nunwilling to relinquish the shadow of the sceptre which continually\nevaded his grasp.\n\nOn his death, which happened in 1382, Poland became the theatre of\nintestine disorders fomented by the turbulent nobles, who,\nnotwithstanding the allegiance they had sworn to the Princess Maria,\nrefused to allow her even to enter the kingdom. Sigismund was not,\nhowever, inclined thus easily to forego his wife's claims; and as the\nLord of Mazovia at the same time aspired to the vacant throne, many of\nthe provinces became so desolated by civil war that the leaders of the\nadverse factions threw down their arms, and simultaneously agreed to\noffer the crown to the Princess Hedwige, then residing in Hungary\nunder the care of her mother Elizabeth. By no means approving of a\nplan which thus unceremoniously excluded her eldest daughter from the\nthrone, the queen dowager endeavored to oppose injustice by policy.\nHedwige was at the time only fourteen years of age, and the deputies\nwere informed that, as the princess was too young to undertake the\nheavy responsibilities of sovereignty, her brother-in-law Sigismund\nmust act in her stead until such time as she herself should be\nconsidered capable of assuming the reins of government. This stratagem\ndid not succeed; the duke was not allowed to cross the frontiers of\nPoland, and Elizabeth found herself compelled to part with her\ndaughter, if she would not see the crown placed on the brow of\nwhomever the diet might elect.\n\nNow commenced the trials of the young Hedwige, who was thus early\ncalled upon to exercise those virtues of heroic fortitude, patient\nendurance, and self-denial which rendered her life a sort of continual\nmartyrdom, a sacrifice daily offered up at the shrines of religion and\npatriotism. At the early age of four years she had been affianced to\nWilliam, Duke of Austria, {146} who, in accordance with the custom of\nthe times, had been educated in Hungary; his affection for his\nbetrothed growing with his growth, and increasing with his years.\nAmbition had no charms for Hedwige; her fervent piety, shrinking\nmodesty, and feminine timidity sought to conceal, not only her\nextraordinary beauty, but those rare mental endowments of which she\nwas possessed. Bitter were the tears shed by this gentle girl, when\nher mother, alarmed at the menaces of the Polish nobles, informed her\nshe must immediately depart for Cracow, under the protection of\nCardinal Demetrius, Bishop of Strigonia, who was pledged to deliver\nher into the hands of those whom she was disposed to regard rather as\nher masters than as her subjects. There had been one stipulation made,\nwhich, had she been aware of its existence, would have added a sharper\npang to the already poignant anguish of Hedwige: the Poles required\nthat their young sovereign should marry only with the consent of the\ndiet, and that her husband should not only reside constantly in\nPoland, but pledge himself never to attempt to render that country\ndependent on any other power. Although aware of the difficulties thus\nthrown in the way of her union with Duke William, her mother had\nsubscribed to these conditions; and Hedwige, having been joyfully\nreceived by the prelates and nobles of her adopted country, was\nsolemnly crowned in the cathedral at Cracow, October 15, 1385, being\nthe festival of her patron, St. Hedwige. Her youth, loveliness, grace,\nand intellectual endowments won from the fierce chieftains an\nenthusiastic affection which had been denied to the too yielding\nLewis; their national pride was flattered, their loyalty awakened, by\nthe innocent fascinations of their young sovereign, and they almost\nsought to defer the time which, in her husband, would necessarily give\nthem a ruler of sterner mould. Nor was Hedwige undeserving of the\nexalted station she had been compelled to fill: a worthy descendant of\nthe sainted Lewis, her every word and action waa marked by a gravity\nand maturity which bore witness to the supernatural motives and\nheavenly wisdom by which it was inspired; and yet, in the silence of\nher chamber, many were the tears she shed over the memory of ties\nsevered, she feared, for ever. Amongst the earliest candidates for her\nhand was Ziemovit, Duke of Mazovia, already mentioned as one of the\ncompetitors for the crown after the death of her father; but the\nPoles, still smarting from the effects of his unbridled ambition,\ndismissed his messengers with a refusal couched in terms of\nundisguised contempt. The question of her marriage once agitated, the\nmind of Hedwige naturally turned to him on whom her heart was\nunalterably fixed, and whom from her childhood she had been taught to\nconsider as her future husband; but an alliance with the house of\nAustria formed no part of Polish policy, and neither the wishes nor\nthe entreaties of their queen could induce the diet to entertain the\nidea for a moment; in short, their whole energy was employed in\nbringing about a union which, however disagreeable to the young\nsovereign, was likely to be in every way advantageous to the country\nand favorable to the interests of religion.\n\nJagello, the pagan Duke of Lithuania, was from his proximity and the\nextent of his possessions (comprising Samogitia and a large portion of\nRussia [Footnote 41]) a formidable enemy to Poland. Fame was not slow\nin wafting to his ears rumors of the beauty and accomplishments of\nHedwige, which being more than corroborated by ambassadors employed to\nascertain the truth, the impetuous Jagello determined to secure the\nprize, even at the cost of national independence. The idolatry of the\nLithuanians and the early betrothal of Hedwige to Duke William were\nthe chief obstacles with which he had to contend; but, after a brief\n{147} deliberation, an embassy was despatched, headed by Skirgello,\nbrother to the grand-duke, and bearing the most costly presents;\nJagello himself being with difficulty dissuaded from accompanying them\nin person. The envoys were admitted into the presence of the council,\nat which the queen herself presided, and the prince proceeded to lay\nbefore the astonished nobles the offers of the barbarian suitor,\noffers too tempting to be weighed in the balance against such a trifle\nas a girl's happiness, or the violation of what these overbearing\npoliticians were pleased to term a mere childish engagement,\ncontracted before the parties were able to judge for themselves. After\na long harangue, in which Skirgello represented how vainly the most\nillustrious potentates and the most powerful rulers had hitherto\nendeavored to effect the conversion of Lithuania, he offered as \"a\ntribute to the charms of the queen\" that Jagello and his brothers,\ntogether with the princes, lords, and people of Lithuania and\nSamogitia, should at once embrace the Catholic faith; that all the\nChristian captives should be restored unransomed; and the _whole of\ntheir extensive dominions be incorporated with Poland_; the grand-duke\nalso pledging himself to reconquer for that country Pomerania,\nSilesia, and whatever other territories had been torn from Poland by\nneighboring states; and, finally, promising to make good to the Poles\nthe sum of two hundred thousand florins, which had been sent to\nWilliam of Austria as the dowry forfeited by the non-fulfilment of the\nengagement entered into by their late king Lewis. A murmur of applause\nat this unprecedented generosity ran through the assembly; the nobles\nhailed the prospect of so unlooked-for an augmentation of national\npower and security; and the bishops could not but rejoice at the\nprospect of rescuing so many souls from the darkness of heathenism,\nand securing at one and the same time the propagation of the Catholic\nfaith and the peace of Poland. But the queen herself shared not these\nfeelings of satisfaction: no sooner had Skirgello ceased than she\nstarted from her seat, cast a hasty glance round the assembly, and, as\nif reading her fate in the countenances of the nobles, buried her face\nin her hands and burst into a flood of tears. All attempts to soothe\nand pacify her were in vain: in a strain of passionate eloquence,\nwhich was not without its effect, she pleaded her affection for Duke\nWilliam, the sacred nature of the engagement by which she was pledged\nto become his wife, pointed to the ring on her finger, and reminded an\naged prelate who had accompanied her from Hungary that he had himself\nwitnessed their being laid in the same cradle at the ceremony of their\nbetrothal. It was impossible to behold unmoved the anguish of so\ngentle a creature; not a few of the younger chieftains espoused the\ncause of their sovereign; and, at the urgent solicitation of Hedwige,\nit was finally determined that the Lithuanian ambassadors, accompanied\nby three Polish nobles, should repair to Buda for the purpose of\nconsulting her mother, the Queen of Hungary.\n\n  [Footnote  41: The territories of many of the Russian or Ruthenian\n  dukes which were conquered by the Lithuanian pagans.]\n\n\nBut Elizabeth, though inaccessible to the temptations of worldly\nambition, was too pious, too self-denying, to allow maternal affection\nto preponderate over the interests of religion. Aware that the\nbetrothal of her daughter to the Duke of Austria had never been\nrenewed from the time of their infancy, she, without a moment's\nhesitation, replied that, for her own part, she desired nothing, but\nthat the queen ought to sacrifice every human feeling for the glory of\nChristianity and the welfare of Poland. To Hedwige herself she wrote\naffectionately, though firmly, bidding her lay every natural\ninclination at the foot of the cross, and desiring her to praise that\nGod who had chosen so unworthy an instrument as the means by which the\npure splendor of Catholicity should penetrate the darkness of\nLithuania and the other pagan nations. Elizabeth was aware {148} of\nthe real power of religion over the mind of her child, and doubted not\nbut that, after the first paroxysm of grief had subsided, she should\nbe able to overcome by its means the violence of her daughter's\nrepugnance to the proposed measure. In order to give a color of\nimpartiality to their proceedings, a diet was convoked at Cracow,\nimmediately on the return of the embassy, to deliberate on the\nrelative claims of Jagello, William of Austria, and the Dukes of\nMazovia and Oppelen, all of whom aspired to the hand of Hedwige and\nthe crown of Poland. The discussion was long and stormy, for amongst\nthose nobles more immediately around the queen's person there were\nmany, including a large body of ecclesiastics, who, although convinced\nthat no lawful impediment existed to the marriage, yet shrank from the\ncruelty of uniting the gentle princess to a barbarian; and these\nfailed not to insist upon the insult which would be implied by such a\nchoice to the native Catholic princes. The majority, however, were of\na different opinion, and at the close of the diet it was decided that\nan ambassador should be despatched to Jagello, inviting him to Cracow\nfor the purpose of continuing the negotiations in his own person. But\nWilliam of Austria was too secure in the justice of his cause and the\naffection of his betrothed to resign his pretensions without an\neffort; and his ardor being by no means diminished by a letter which\nhe received from the queen herself, imploring him to hasten to her\nassistance, he placed himself at the head of a numerous retinue, and,\nwith a treasure by which he hoped to purchase the good-will of the\nadverse faction, appeared so suddenly at Cracow as to deprive his\nopponents of their self-possession. The determination of Hedwige to\nunite herself to the object of her early and deep affection was loudly\nexpressed, and, as there were many powerful leaders--among others,\nGniewosz, Vice-chamberlain of Cracow--who espoused her cause, and\nrallied round Duke William, the Polish nobles, not daring openly to\noppose their sovereign, were on the point of abandoning the cause of\nJagello, when Dobeslas, Castellain of Cracow, one of the staunchest\nsupporters of the Lithuanian alliance, resolved at any risk to prevent\nthe meeting of the lovers, and actually went so far as to refuse the\nyoung prince admission into the castle, where the queen at the time\nwas residing, not only drawing his sword, but dragging the duke with\nhim over the drawbridge, which he commanded to be immediately lowered.\nWilliam, thus repulsed, fixed his quarters at the Franciscan\nmonastery; and Hedwige, fired by the insult, rode forth accompanied by\na chosen body of knights and her female attendants, determined by the\ncompletion of her marriage to place an insuperable bar between her and\nJagello.\n\nIn the refectory of the monastery, the queen and the prince at length\nmet; and, after several hours spent in considering how best to avert\nthe separation with which they were threatened, it was arranged that\nWilliam should introduce himself privately into the castle of Cracow,\nwhere they were to be united by the queen's confessor. Some time\nelapsed before this plan could be carried into execution; for although\neven Dobeslas hesitated to confine his sovereign within her own\npalace, the castle gates were kept shut against the entrance of the\nDuke of Austria. Exasperated at this continued opposition, and her\naffection augmented by the presence of its object, from whom the\narrival, daily expected, of Jagello would divide her for ever, Hedwige\ndetermined to admit the prince disguised as one of her household, and\na day was accordingly fixed for the execution of this romantic\nproject. By some means or other the whole plan came to the knowledge\nof the vigilant castellain; the adventurous prince was seized in a\npassage leading to the royal apartments, loaded with insult, and\ndriven from the palace, within the walls of which the queen now found\nherself a prisoner. {149} It was in vain she wept, and implored to be\nallowed to see her betrothed once more, if only to bid him farewell;\nher letters were intercepted, her attendants became spies on her\nmovements, and, on the young prince presenting himself before the\ngates, his life was threatened by the barons who remained within the\nfortress. This was too much; alarmed for her lover's safety, indignant\nat the restraint to which she was subjected, the passion of the girl\ntriumphed over the dignity of the sovereign. Quitting her apartment,\nshe hurried to the great gate, which, as she apprehended, was secured\nin such a manner as to baffle all her efforts; trembling with fear,\nand eager only to effect her escape, she called for a hatchet, and,\nraising it with both hands, repeatedly struck the locks and bolts that\nprevented her egress. The childish simplicity of the attempt, the\nagony depicted in the beautiful and innocent countenance of their\nmistress, so touched the hearts of the rude soldiery, that, but for\ntheir dread of the nobles, Hedwige would through their means have\neffected her purpose. As it was, they offered no opposition, but stood\nin mournful and respectful silence; when the venerable Demetrius,\ngrand-treasurer of the kingdom, approached, and falling on his knees,\nimplored her to be calm, and to sacrifice her own happiness, if not to\nthe wishes of her subjects and the welfare of her country, at least to\nthe interests of religion. At the sight of that aged man, whose thin\nwhite hairs and sorrowful countenance inspired both reverence and\naffection, the queen paused, and, giving him her hand, burst into an\nagony of tears; then, hurrying to her oratory, she threw herself on\nthe ground before an image of the Blessed Virgin, where, after a sharp\ninterior conflict, she succeeded in resigning herself to what she now\nbelieved to be the will of God--embracing for his sake the heavy cross\nwhich she was to bear for the remainder of her life.\n\nMeanwhile Duke William, to escape the vengeance of the wrathful\nbarons, was compelled to quit Poland, leaving his now useless wealth\nin the charge of the vice-chamberlain, who still apparently continued\nhis friend. Not long after his departure, Jagello, at the head of a\nnumerous army, and attended by his two brothers, crossed the\nfrontiers, determined, as it seemed, to prosecute his suit. At the\nfirst rumor of his approach, the most powerful and influential among\nthe nobles repaired to Cracow, where prayers, remonstrances, and even\nmenaces were employed to induce the queen to accept the hand of the\nbarbarian prince. But to all their eloquence Hedwige turned a deaf\near: in vain did agents, despatched for the purpose, represent the\nduke as handsome in person, princely and dignified in manner; her\nconscience was troubled, duty had enlisted on the same side as\nfeeling, and the contest again commenced. Setting inclination aside,\nhow dared she break the solemn compact she had made with the Duke of\nAustria? She persisted in regarding her proposed marriage with Jagello\nas nothing short of an act of criminal infidelity; and, independently\nof the affliction of her heart, her soul became a prey to the most\nviolent remorse. To obtain the consent of Duke William to their\nseparation was of course out of the question; and before the puzzled\ncouncil could arrive at any decision, Jagello entered Cracow, more in\nthe style of a conqueror than a suitor, and repaired at once to the\ncastle, where he found the queen surrounded by a court surpassing in\nbeauty and magnificence all that his imagination had pictured. Pale as\nshe was from the intensity of her sufferings, he was dazzled, almost\nbewildered, by the childlike innocence and winning loveliness of\nHedwige; and his admiration was expressed the following day by the\nrevenues of a province being laid at her feet in the shape of jewels\nand robes of the most costly description. But the queen was more\nobdurate than ever. With her knowledge and consent Duke William had\nreturned to Cracow, though compelled {150} to resort to a variety of\ndisguises to escape the fury of the barons, now determined to put an\nend to his pretensions and his existence together; and it is said\nthat, in order to avoid his indefatigable enemy, Dobeslas, he was once\ncompelled to seek refuge in a large chimney. Forced eventually to quit\nthe capital without seeing Hedwige, he still loitered in the environs;\nnor did he return to Austria until her marriage with Jagello\nterminated those hopes which he had cherished from his earliest\ninfancy. In order to quiet the queen's religious scruples, a letter is\nsaid to have arrived from Rome, in which, after pronouncing that the\nearly betrothal involved no impediment to the marriage, the Holy\nFather placed before her the merits of the offering she was called\nupon to make, reminding her of the torments so cheerfully suffered by\nthe early martyrs for the honor of God, and calling upon her to\nimitate their example. This statement, however, is not sufficiently\nauthenticated.\n\nAfter the severest interior trials, days spent in tears, fasting, and\nthe most earnest petitions to the throne of Divine grace, the queen\nreceived strength to consummate the sacrifice demanded from her.\nNaturally ardent and impulsive, and at an age when every sentiment is\nfreshest and most keen, she was called upon to extirpate from her\nheart an affection not only deep but legitimate, to inflict a wound on\nthe object of her tenderest love, and, finally, to transfer her\ndevotion to one whom she had hitherto regarded with feelings of\nunqualified aversion. The path of highest, because self-sacrificing\nduty, once clear before her, she determined to act with generosity\ntoward a God from whom she had received so much: her beauty, talents,\nthe virtues with which she was adorned, were so many precious gifts to\nbe placed at the disposal of him by whom they had been bestowed.\nCovering herself with a thick black veil, she proceeded on foot to the\ncathedral of Cracow, and, repairing to one of the side chapels, threw\nherself on her knees, where for three hours, with clasped hands and\nstreaming eyes, she wrestled with the violent feeling that struggled\nin her bosom. At length she rose with a detached heart, having laid at\nthe foot of the cross her affections, her will, her hopes of earthly\nhappiness; offering herself, and all that belonged to her, as a\nperpetual holocaust to her crucified Redeemer, and esteeming herself\nhappy so that by this sacrifice she might purchase the salvation of\nthose precious souls for whom he had shed his blood. Before leaving\nthe chapel she cast her veil over the crucifix, hoping under that pall\nto bury all of human infirmity that might still linger round her\nheart, and then hastened to establish a foundation for the perpetual\nrenewal of this type of her \"soul's sorrow.\" This foundation yet\nexists: within the same chapel the crucifix still stands, covered by\nits sable drapery, being commonly known as _the Crucifix of Hedwige_.\n\nThe queen's consent to the Lithuanian alliance endeared her still more\nto the hearts of her subjects, who regarded her as a martyr to the\npeace of Poland. On the 14th of February, 1386, her marriage was\ncelebrated with becoming solemnity, Jagello having previously received\nthe sacrament of baptism; shortly afterward he was crowned, in the\npresence of Hedwige, under his Christian name of Wladislas, which he\nhad taken in deference to the wishes of the Poles. The unassuming\npiety, gentle disposition, and great learning of the young queen\ncommanded at once the respect and admiration of her husband. So great,\nindeed, was his opinion of her prudence, that, being obliged to march\ninto Upper Poland to crush the rebellion of the Palatine of Posnia, he\ntook her with him in the capacity of mediatrix between himself and the\ndisaffected leaders who had for months desolated that province. This\nmission of mercy was most acceptable to Hedwige; after the example of\nthe sainted {151} Elizabeth of Hungary, her generosity toward the\nwidows, orphans, and those who had lost their substance in this\ndevastating war, was boundless; whilst ministering to their wants, she\nfailed not, at the same time, to sympathize with their distress; and,\nlike an angel of peace, she would stand between her husband and the\nobjects of his indignation. On one occasion, to supply the necessities\nof the court, so heavy a contribution had been laid upon the peasants\nthat their cattle did not escape; watching their opportunity, they,\nwith their wives and children, threw themselves in the queen's path,\nfilling the air with their cries, and conjuring her to prevent their\nutter ruin. Hedwige, deeply affected, dismounted from her palfrey,\nand, kneeling by their side, besought her husband not to sanction so\nflagrant an act of oppression; and when the satisfied peasants retired\nfully indemnified for their loss, she is said to have exclaimed,\n\"Their cattle are restored, but who will recompense them for their\ntears?\" Having reduced the country to obedience, it was time for\nWladislas to turn his attention to his Lithuanian territories, more\nespecially Russia Nigra, which, although governed by its own princes,\nwas compelled to do homage to the house of Jagello. Pomerania, which\nby his marriage articles he was pledged to recover for Poland, had\nbeen usurped by the Teutonic Knights, who, sensible with how\nformidable an opponent they had to contend, endeavored to frustrate\nhis intentions, first by carrying fire and sword into Lithuania, and\nthen by exciting a revolution in favor of Duke Andrew, to whom, as\nwell as to the heathen nobles, the alliance (by which their country\nwas rendered dependent on Poland) was displeasing. Olgerd, the father\nof Wladislas, was a fierce pagan, and his thirteen sons, if we except\nthe elder, inherited his cruelty, treachery, and rapacity. The\npromised revolution in religion was offensive to the majority of the\npeople; and, to their shame be it spoken, the Teutonic Knights (whose\norder was first established to defend the Christian faith against the\nassaults of infidels) scrupled not to adopt a crooked policy, and, by\ninciting the Lithuanians against their sovereign, threw every\nimpediment in the way of their conversion. Before the king had any\nsuspicion of his intentions, the grand-master had crossed the\nfrontiers, the duchy was laid waste, and many important fortresses\nwere already in the hands of the order.\n\nWladislas, then absent in Upper Poland, despatched Skirgello into\nLithuania, who, though haughty, licentious, and revengeful, was a\nbrave and skilful general. Duke Andrew fled before the forces of his\nbrother, and the latter attacked the Knights with an impetuosity that\ncompelled them speedily to evacuate their conquests. The arrival of\nthe king, with a number of learned prelates, and a large body of\nclergy, proved he was quite in earnest regarding the conversion of his\nsubjects, hitherto immersed in the grossest and most degrading\nidolatry. Trees, serpents, vipers, were the inferior objects of their\nadoration; gloomy forests and damp caverns their temples; and the most\ndisgusting and venomous reptiles were cherished in every family as\nhousehold gods. But, as with the eastern Magi, fire was the principal\nobject of the Lithuanian worship; priests were appointed whose office\nit was to tend the sacred flame, their lives paying the penalty if it\nwere allowed to expire. At Wilna, the capital of the duchy, was a\ntemple of the sun; and should that luminary chance to be eclipsed, or\neven clouded, the people fled thither in the utmost terror, eager to\nappease the deity by rivers of human blood, which poured forth at the\ncommand of the Ziutz, or high priest, the victims vying with each\nother in the severity of their self-inflicted torments.\n\nAs the most effectual method of at once removing the errors of this\ninfatuated people, Wladislas ordered the forests to be cut down, the\nserpents to {152} be crushed under the feet of his soldiers, and,\nafter extinguishing with his own hand the sacred fires, he caused the\ntemples to be demolished; thus demonstrating to the Lithuanians the\nimpotency of their gods. With the cowardice ever attendant on\nignorance and superstition, the pagans cast themselves with their\nfaces to the earth, expecting to see the sacrilegious strangers\nblasted by the power of the profaned element; but, no such results\nfollowing, they gradually lost confidence in their deities, and of\ntheir own free will desired to be instructed in the doctrines of\nChrist. Their theological knowledge was necessarily confined to the\nLord's Prayer and the Creed, and a day was fixed for the commencement\nof the ceremony of baptism. As, on account of the number of\ncatechumens, it was impossible to administer the sacrament to each\nindividual separately, the nobles and their families, after leaving\nthe sacred font, prepared to act as sponsors to the people, who, being\ndivided into groups of either sex, were sprinkled by the bishops and\npriests, every division receiving the same name.\n\nHedwige had accompanied her husband to Lithuania, and was gratified by\nwitnessing the zeal with which he assisted the priests in their\narduous undertaking; whilst Wladislas, aware of the value of his young\nauxiliary, was not disappointed by the degree of enthusiastic\nveneration with which the new Christians regarded the sovereign who,\nat the age of sixteen, had conferred upon them peace and the light of\nthe true faith. Hedwige was admirably adapted for this task: in her\ncharacter there was no alloy of passion, pride, or frivolity; an enemy\nto the luxury and pomp which her sex and rank might have seemed to\nwarrant, her fasts were rigid and her bodily mortifications severe.\nNeither did her fervor abate during her sojourn in the duchy. By her\nprofuse liberality the cathedral of St. Stanislas of Wilna was\ncompleted. Nor did she neglect the other churches and religious\nfoundations which, by her advice, her husband commenced in the\nprincipal cities of his kingdom. Before quitting Lithuania, the\nqueen's heart was wrung by the intelligence she received of a domestic\ntragedy of the deepest dye. Her mother, the holy and virtuous\nElizabeth of Hungary, had during a popular insurrection been put to a\ncruel death; whilst her sister Maria, who had fallen into the power of\nthe rebel nobles, having narrowly escaped the same fate, was confined\nin an isolated fortress, subject to the most rigorous and ignominious\ntreatment.\n\nPaganism being at length thoroughly rooted out of Lithuania, a\nbishopric firmly established at Wilna, and the seven parishes in its\nvicinity amply supplied with ecclesiastics, Wladislas, preparatory to\nhis return to Poland, appointed his brother Skirgello viceroy of the\nduchy. This was a fatal error. The proud barbarians, little disposed\nto dependence on a country they had been accustomed to despoil at\npleasure, writhed under the yoke of the fierce tyrant, whose rule soon\nbecame odious, and whose vices were rendered more apparent by the\ncontrast which his character presented to that of his cousin Vitowda,\nwhom, as a check upon his well-known ferocity, Wladislas had\ndesignated as his colleague. Scarcely had the court returned to\nPoland, when the young prince, amiable, brave, and generous, by\nopposing his cousin's unjust and cruel actions, drew upon himself the\nvengeance of the latter, and, in order to save his life, was obliged\nto seek refuge in Pomerania, from whence, as his honor and patriotism\nalike forbade his assisting the Teutonic Knights in their designs upon\nhis country, he applied to the king for protection.\n\nWladislas, of a weak and jealous disposition, was, however, at the\ntime too much occupied in attending to foul calumnies uttered against\nthe spotless virtue of his queen to give heed to the application.\nNotwithstanding the prudence of her general conduct, and {153} the\ntender devotion evinced by Hedwige toward her husband, the admiration\nwhich her beauty and sweetness of disposition commanded from all who\napproached her was a continual thorn in his side. Her former love for\nthe Duke of Austria and repugnance to himself haunted him night and\nday, until he actually conceived suspicions injurious to her fidelity.\nIn the polluted atmosphere of a court there were not wanting those\nwho, for their own aggrandizement, were base enough to resort to\nfalsehood in order to destroy an influence at which the wicked alone\nhad cause to tremble. It was whispered in the ear of the unfortunate\nmonarch that his queen had held frequent, and of course clandestine,\ninterviews with Duke William, until, half frantic, he one day publicly\nreproached her, and, turning to the assembled bishops, wildly demanded\na divorce. The proud nobles indignantly interposed, many a blade\nrattled in its sheath, eager to vindicate the innocence of one who, in\ntheir eyes, was purity itself; but Hedwige calmly arose, and with\nmatronly dignity demanded the name of her accuser, and a solemn trial,\naccording to the custom of her country. There was a dead silence, a\npause; and then, trembling and abashed before the virtue he had\nmaligned, the Vice-chamberlain Gniewosz, before mentioned as the\nfriend of Duke William (whose wealth he had not failed to\nappropriate), stepped reluctantly forward. A murmur of surprise and\nwrath resounded through the council-chamber: many a sword was drawn,\nas though eager for the blood of the offender; but the ecclesiastics\nhaving at length calmed the tumult, the case was appointed to be\njudged at the diet of Wislica.\n\nThe queen's innocence was affirmed on oath by herself and her whole\nhousehold, after which the castellain, John Tenczynski, with twelve\nknights of noble blood and unsullied honor, solemnly swore to the\nfalsehood of the accusation, and, throwing down their gauntlets,\ndefied to mortal combat all who should gainsay their assertion. None,\nhowever, appeared to do battle in so bad a cause; and the convicted\ntraitor, silenced and confounded, sank on his knees, confessed his\nguilt, and implored the mercy of her he had so foully aspersed. The\nsenate, in deference to the wishes of Hedwige, spared his life; but he\nwas compelled to crouch under a bench, imitate the barking of a dog,\nand declare that, like that animal, he had dared to snarl against his\nchaste and virtuous sovereign.  [Footnote 42] This done, he was\ndeprived of his office, and banished the court; and Wladislas hastened\nto beg the forgiveness of his injured wife.\n\n  [Footnote 42: This was a portion of the punishment specially awarded\n  by the penal code of Poland to the crime of calumny. Like many other\n  punishments of those ages, it was symbolical in its character. (See\n  the valuable work of Albert du Boys, _Histoire du Droit Criminel des\n  Peuples Modernes_, liv. ii.; chap. vii.) Similar penalties had been\n  common in Poland from early times. Thus we find Boloslas the Great\n  inviting to a banquet and vapor bath nobles who had been guilty of\n  some transgression; after the bath he administered a paternal\n  reproof and castigation. Hence the Polish proverb, \"to give a person\n  a bath.\"]\n\nMeanwhile Prince Vitowda, despairing of assistance and pressed on all\nsides, after much hesitation joined the Teutonic Knights in an\nincursion against Lithuania. The country was invaded by a numerous\narmy, the capital taken by storm, abandoned to pillage, and finally\ndestroyed by fire; no less than fourteen thousand of the inhabitants\nperishing in the flames, beside numbers who were massacred without\ndistinction of sex or age. Fortunately the upper city was garrisoned\nby Poles, who determined to hold out to the last. The slight\nfortifications were speedily destroyed; but, being immediately\nrepaired, the siege continued so long that Skirgello had time to\nassemble an army before which the besiegers were eventually obliged to\nretreat. Vitowda, now too deeply compromised to draw back, though\nthwarted in his designs on Upper Wilna, gained possession of many of\nthe frontier towns, and, encouraged by success, aimed at nothing less\nthan the independent sovereignty of Lithuania. He was, however,\nopposed during {154} two or three campaigns by Wladislas person,\nuntil, wearied of the war, the king had the weakness not only to sue\nfor peace, but to invest Vitowda with the government of the duchy.\nThis, as might be expected, gave great umbrage to Skirgello, and to\nanother brother, Swidrigal, so that Lithuania, owing to the ambition\nof the rival princes, became for some time the theatre of civil\ndiscord.\n\nAmong her other titles to admiration, we must not omit to mention that\nHedwige was a munificent patroness of learning. She hastened to\nre-establish the college built by Casimir II., founded and endowed a\nmagnificent university at Prague for the education of the Lithuanian\nyouth, and superintended the translation of the Holy Scriptures into\nPolish, writing with her own hands the greater part of the New\nTestament. Her work was interrupted during her husband's absence by\nthe attack of the Hungarians on the frontiers of Poland; and it was\nthen that, laying aside the weakness of her sex, she felt herself\ncalled upon to supply his place. A powerful army was levied, of which\nthis youthful heroine assumed the command, directing the councils of\nthe generals, and sharing the privations of the meanest soldier. When\nshe appeared on horseback in the midst of the troops, nothing could\nexceed the enthusiasm of these hardy warriors; and the simplicity with\nwhich they obeyed the slightest order of their queen was touching in\nthe extreme. Hedwige led her forces into Russia Nigra, and, partly by\nforce of arms, partly by skilful negotiations, succeeded in\nreconquering the whole of that vast province, which her father Lewis\nhad detached from the Polish crown in order to unite it to that of his\nbeloved Hungary. This act of injustice was repaired by his daughter,\nwho thus endeared her name to the memory of succeeding generations.\nThe conquering army proceeded to Silesia, then usurped by the Duke of\nOppelen, where they were equally successful; so that Wladislas was\nindebted for the brightest trophies of his reign to the heroism of his\nwife.\n\nEncouraged by her past success, he determined to reconduct her into\nLithuania, in hopes by her means to settle the dissensions of the\nrival princes. Accordingly, in the spring of 1393, they proceeded\nthither, when the disputants, subdued by the irresistible charm of her\nmanners, agreed to refer their claims to her arbitration. Of a solid\nand mature judgment, Hedwige succeeded in pacifying them; and then, by\nmutual consent, they entered into a solemn compact that in their\nfuture differences, instead of resorting to arms, they would submit\ntheir cause unreservedly to the arbitration of the young Queen of\nPoland.\n\nNotwithstanding its restoration to internal tranquillity, this\nunfortunate duchy was continually laid waste by the Teutonic Knights;\nand Wladislas, determined to hazard all on one decisive battle,\ncommanded forces to be levied not only in Lithuania, but in Poland.\nBefore the preparations were completed, an interview was arranged to\ntake place between the king and the grand-master, Conrad de Jungen;\nbut the nobility, fearing lest the irritable temper of Wladislas would\nprove an insurmountable obstacle to all accommodation, implored him to\nallow the queen to supply his place. On his consent, Hedwige,\naccompanied by the ecclesiastics, the barons, and a magnificent\nretinue, proceeded to the place of rendezvous, where she was met by\nConrad and the principal knight-commanders of the order. The terms she\nproposed were equitable, and more lenient than the Teutonic Knights\nhad any reason to expect; but, under one trifling pretext or another,\nthey refused the restitution of the usurped territories on which the\nking naturally insisted, and the queen was at length obliged to\nreturn, prophesying, says the chronicler, that, after her death, their\nperversity would receive its deserved punishment at the hands of her\nhusband. Her prediction was fulfilled. Some years afterward, on the\nplains {155} between Grunnervaldt and Tannenberg, the grand-master,\nwith fifty thousand knights, was slain, and by this decisive victory\nthe order was placed at the mercy of Poland, though, from the usual\nindecision of its king, the fruits of this splendid action were less\nthan might have been expected.\n\nUntil her early death, Hedwige continued the guardian angel of that\nbeloved country for which she had made her first and greatest\nsacrifice; and it is likely that but for her watchfulness, its\ninterests would have been frequently compromised by the Lithuanian\nunion. Acting on this principle, she refused to recognize the\ninvestiture of her husband's favorite, the Palatine of Cracow, with\nthe perpetual fief of Podolia; and, undazzled by the apparent\nadvantages offered by an expedition against the Tartars headed by the\ngreat Tamerlane, she forbade the Polish generals to take part in a\ncampaign which, owing to the rashness of Vitowda, terminated so\nfatally.\n\nIt was shortly after her unsuccessful interview with the Teutonic\nKnights that, by the death of her sister Maria, the crown of Hungary\n(which ought to have devolved on her husband Sigismund) became again\nan object of contention. The Hungarians, attracted by the report of\nher moderation, wisdom, and even military skill--not an uncommon\naccomplishment in females of those times--determined to offer it to\nHedwige; but her brother-in-law, trusting to her sense of justice,\nhastened to Cracow, praying her not to accept the proposal, and\nearnestly soliciting her alliance. The queen, whom ambition had no\npower to dazzle, consented, and a treaty advantageous to Poland was at\nonce concluded.\n\nHedwige was a good theologian, and well read in the fathers and\ndoctors of the Church; the works of St. Bernard and St. Ambrose, the\nrevelations of St. Bridget, and the sermons of holy men, being the\nworks in which she most delighted. In Church music she was an\nenthusiast; and not long after the completion of the convent of the\nVisitation, which she had caused to be erected near the gates of\nCracow, she founded the Benedictine abbey of the Holy Cross, where\noffice was daily recited in the Selavonian language, after the custom\nof the order at Prague. She also instituted a college in honor of the\nBlessed Virgin, where the Psalms were daily chanted, after an improved\nmethod, by sixteen canons.\n\nIt was toward the close of the year 1398 that, to the great delight of\nher subjects, it became evident that the union of Wladislas and\nHedwige would at length be blessed with offspring. To see the throne\nfilled by a descendant of their beloved sovereign had been the dearest\nwish of the Polish people, and fervent had been the prayers offered\nfor this inestimable blessing. The enraptured Wladislas hastened to\nimpart his expected happiness to most of the Christian kings and\nprinces, not forgetting the Supreme Pontiff, Boniface IX., by whom the\nmerits of the young queen were so well appreciated that, six years\nafter her accession, he had addressed to her a letter, written with\nhis own hand, in which he thanked her for her affectionate devotion to\nthe Catholic Church, and informed her that, although it was impossible\nhe could accede to all the applications which might be transmitted to\nthe Holy See on behalf of her subjects, yet, by her adopting a\nconfidential sign-manual, those requests to which she individually\nattached importance should be immediately granted. The Holy Father\nhastened to reply in the warmest terms to the king's communication,\npromising to act as sponsor to the child, who, if a boy, he desired\nmight be named after himself.\n\nUnfortunately, some time before the queen's delivery, it became\nnecessary for her husband to quit Cracow, in order to direct an\nexpedition against his old enemies the Teutonic Knights. During his\nabsence, he wrote a long letter, in which, after desiring that the\nhappy event might be attended with all possible magnificence, he\nentered {156} into a minute detail of the devices and embroidery to be\nused in the adornment of the bed and chamber, particularly requesting\nthat the draperies and hangings might not lack gold, pearls, or\nprecious stones. This ostentatious display, though excusable in a fond\nhusband and a powerful monarch about to behold the completion of his\ndearest wishes, was by no means in consonance with Hedwige's intense\nlove of Christian simplicity and poverty. We find her addressing to\nher husband these few touching words, expressing, as the result\nproved, that presentiment of her approaching end which has often been\naccorded to saintly souls: \"Seeing that I have so long renounced the\npomps of this world, it is not on that treacherous couch--to so many\nthe bed of death--that I would willingly be surrounded by their\nglitter. It is not by the help of gold or gems that I hope to render\nmyself acceptable to that Almighty Father who has mercifully removed\nfrom me the reproach of barrenness, but rather by resignation to his\nwill, and a sense of my own nothingness.\" It was remarked after this\nthat the queen became more recollected than ever, spending whole hours\nin meditation, bestowing large alms, not only on the distressed of her\nown country, but on such pilgrims as presented themselves, and\nincreasing her exterior mortifications; wearing a hair shirt during\nLent, and using the discipline in a manner which, considering her\ncondition, might have been deemed injudicious. She had ever made a\npoint of spending the vigil of the anniversary of her early sacrifice\nat the foot of the veiled crucifix, but on this occasion, not\nreturning at her usual hour, one of her Hungarian attendants sought\nher in the cathedral, then but dimly lighted by the massy silver lamp\nsuspended before the tabernacle. It was bitterly cold, the wind was\nmoaning through the long aisles, but there, on the marble pavement, in\nan ecstacy which rendered her insensible to bodily sufferings, lay\nHedwige, she having continued in this state of abstraction from the\ntermination of complin, at which she invariably assisted.\n\nAt length, on the 12th of June, 1399, this holy queen gave birth to a\ndaughter, who was immediately baptized in the cathedral of Cracow,\nreceiving from the Pope's legate, at the sacred font, the name of\nElizabeth Bonifacia. The babe was weak and sickly, and the condition\nof the mother so precarious that a messenger was despatched to the\narmy urging the immediate return of Wladislas. He arrived in time to\nwitness the last sigh of his so ardently desired child, though his\ndisappointment was completely merged in his anxiety for his wife. By\nthe advice of the physicians it had been determined to conceal the\ndeath of the infant, but their precautions were vain. At the very\nmoment it occurred, Hedwige herself announced it to her astonished\nattendants, and then humbly asked for the last sacraments of the\nChurch, which she received with the greatest fervor. She, however,\nlingered until the 17th of July, when, the measure of her merits and\ngood works being full, she went to appear before the tribunal of that\nGod whom she had sought to glorify on earth. She died before\ncompleting her twenty-ninth year.\n\nA few days previously she had taken a tender leave of her distracted\nhusband; and, mindful to the last of the interests of Poland, she\nbegged him to espouse her cousin Anne, by whose claim to the throne of\nthe Piasts his own would be strengthened. She then drew off her\nnuptial ring, as if to detach herself from all human ties, and placed\nit upon his finger, and although, from motives of policy, Wladislas\nsuccessively espoused three wives, he religiously preserved this\nmemorial of her he had valued the most; bequeathing it as a precious\nrelic (and a memento to be faithful to the land which Hedwige had so\ntruly loved) to the Bishop of Cracow, who had saved his life in\nbattle. Immediately after her funeral, he retired to his Russian {157}\nprovince, nor could he for some time be prevailed upon to return and\nassume the duties of sovereignty.\n\nThere was another mourner for her loss, William of Austria, who,\nnotwithstanding the entreaties of his subjects, had remained single\nfor her sake. He was at length prevailed upon to espouse the Princess\nJane of Naples, but did not long survive the union.\n\nThe obsequies of Hedwige were celebrated by the Pope's legate with\nbecoming magnificence. All that honor and respect from which she had\nsensitively shrunk during life was lavished on her remains; she was\ninterred in the cathedral of Cracow on the left of the high altar; her\nmemory was embalmed by her people's love, and was sanctified in their\neyes. Numerous miracles are said to have been performed at her tomb:\nthither the afflicted in mind and body flocked to obtain through her\nintercession that consolation which during her life she had so\ncheerfully bestowed. Contrary to the general expectation, she was\nnever canonized;   [Footnote 43] her name, however, continued to be\nfondly cherished by the Poles, and by the people who under God were\nindebted to her for their first knowledge of Christianity, and of whom\nshe might justly be styled the apostle. On her monument was graven a\nLatin inscription styling her the \"Star of Poland,\" enumerating her\nvirtues, lamenting her loss, and imploring the King of Glory to\nreceive her into his heavenly kingdom.\n\n  [Footnote 43: Polish writers give her the title of saint, though her\n  name is not inserted in the Martyrologies.--_Butler's Lives of the\n  Saints_, October 17th.]\n\nThe life of Hedwige is her best eulogium. As it has been seen, she\ncombined all the qualities not only of her own, but of a more advanced\nage. The leisure which she could snatch from the affairs of government\nshe employed in study, devotion, and works of charity. True to her\nprinciples, she at her death bequeathed her jewels and other personal\nproperty in trust to the bishop and castellain of Cracow, for the\nfoundation of a college in that city. Two years afterward her wishes\nwere carried into effect, and the first stone was laid of the since\ncelebrated university.\n\nWladislas survived his wife thirty-five years. In his old age he was\ntroubled by a return of his former jealousy, thereby continually\nembittering the life of his queen, a Lithuanian princess, who,\nalthough exculpated by oath, as Hedwige had formerly been, was less\nfortunate, inasmuch as she was the continual victim of fresh\nsuspicions. The latter years of his reign were much disturbed by the\nhostilities of the Emperor Sigismund, and by the troubles occasioned\nin Lithuania by the rebels, who had again combined with the Teutonic\nKnights.\n\nWladislas died in 1434, at the age of eighty years. It is said that he\ncontracted his mortal sickness by being tempted to remain exposed too\nlong to the night air, captivated by the sweet notes of a nightingale.\nNotwithstanding his faults, this monarch had many virtues; his piety\nwas great, and he practised severe abstinences; and although he at\ntimes gave way to a suspicious temper, his general character was\ntrusting, frank, and generous even to imprudence. His suspicions, in\nfact, did not originate with himself. They sprang, in the case of both\nhis wives, from the tongues of calumniators, to whom he listened with\na hasty credulity. He raised the glory and extended and consolidated\nthe dominion of Poland. He was succeeded by his son, a child of eleven\nyears, who had previously been, elected to the throne, but not until\nJagello had confirmed and even enlarged the privileges of the nobles.\nHis tardy consent, at the diet of Jedlin, roused their pride, so that\nit was not until four years later that they solemnly gave their\nadhesion.\n\nIt has not been our purpose to give more than a page out of the Polish\nannals illustrative of the patriotic and Christian spirit of sacrifice\nfor which Poland's daughters have, down to the {158} present day, been\nno less noted than her sons. The mind naturally reverts to the late\ncruel struggle in which this generous people has once more succumbed\nto the overwhelming power of Russia, and her unscrupulous employment\nof the gigantic forces at her command. Europe has looked on\napathetically, and, after a few feeble diplomatic remonstrances, has\nallowed the sacrifice to be completed. But the cause of Poland is\nessentially the cause of Catholicism and of the Church; and this,\nperhaps, may account for the small degree of sympathy it has awakened\nin European governments. Russia's repression of her insurgent subjects\nbecame from the first a religious persecution. Her aim is not to\nRussify, but to decatholicize Poland. The insurrection, quenched in\nblood, has been followed by a wholesale deportation of Poles into the\neastern Russian provinces, where, with their country, it is hoped they\nwill, ere long, lose also their faith. These are replaced by Russian\ncolonists transplanted into Poland. To crush, extirpate, and deport\nthe nobility--to leave the lower class alone upon the soil, who,\ndeprived of their clergy--martyred, exiled, or in bonds--may become\nan easy conquest to the dominant schism--such is the plan of the\nautocrat, as we have beheld it actively carried out with all its\naccompanying horrors of sacrilege and ruthless barbarity. One voice\nalone--that of the Father of Christendom--has been raised to\nstigmatize these revolting excesses, and to reprove the iniquity of\n\"persecuting Catholicism in order to put down rebellion.\"  [Footnote\n44] The same voice has exhorted us to pray for our Polish brethren,\nand has encouraged that suffering people to seek their deliverance\nfrom the just and compassionate Lord of all.\n\n  [Footnote 44: The terms of the Holy Father's address have been\n  strangely exaggerated in many continental journals, where he is made\n  to refer to the subject politically, and loudly to proclaim the\n  justice of the Polish insurrection in that regard. The Pope entirely\n  restricted his animadversions on the Czar to his persecution of the\n  faith of his subjects.]\n\n\n------\n\nFrom The Lamp.\n\nMONKS AMONG THE MONGOLS.\n\n\nIn tracing the progress of the various branches of science during the\nMiddle Ages, there is nothing more striking than the slow stages by\nwhich a knowledge of the truth was reached on the subject of the\nearth's form, and the relative positions of the various countries\nwhich compose it. Though from the very earliest period the subject\nnecessarily occupied a considerable amount of attention, and though\nfacts began to be observed bearing upon it in the first ages after the\ndiffusion of mankind, and were largely multiplied in proportion as the\nformation of colonies and intercommunication for purposes of commerce\nor war became more frequent, yet we find very little advance made in\ngeographical knowledge from the days of Ptolemy, when the observations\nof the ancients were most systematically collected and arranged, till\nsome centuries after, when the maritime enterprise of the Portuguese\nimpelled them to the series of discoveries which led to the doubling\nof the Cape of Good Hope, and incited the genius of Columbus to the\ndiscovery of a new world.\n\nThe cause of this slow advance of geographical, in comparison with\nother branches of knowledge, was owing in some measure to the absence\nof any exact records of the discoveries made, by which they might have\nbeen communicated to others, and become the {159} starting-point for\nfurther investigations; but still more to the imperfect means of\nnavigation in existence, and to those barbarian uprisings and\nmigrations which for centuries, at least, were perpetually changing\nthe state of Europe and Asia, and, by removing the landmarks of\nnations, obliging geography to begin as it were anew. During the whole\nof this period, however, we find evidences of the patient cultivation\nof this, as of all other branches of human knowledge, within the walls\nof those monastic institutions which ignorant prejudice still regards\nas the haunts of idleness, but to which the learned of all creeds and\ncountries acknowledge their deep debt of obligation. Formal accounts\nof some distant land, either written by the traveller himself or\nrecorded from the oral information he communicated; historical\nchronicles, in which not alone the events, but all that was known of\nthe country is recorded, and maps in which the position of various\nplaces is attempted to be laid down, were to be found in every\nmonastery both on the continent and in our own island. The holy men,\ntoo, who preached the gospel to pagan nations were usually careful\nalso to enlarge their contemporaries' knowledge concerning the places\nand the people among whom they labored. Thus the great St. Boniface\nnot only converted the Sclavonic nations to Catholic truth, but, at\nthe special injunction of the Pope, wrote an account of them and of\ntheir country. St. Otho, bishop of Bamberg, did the same for the\ncountries upon the shores of the Baltic; the holy monk Anscaire for\nScandinavia, where he carried on his apostolic labors; and many others\nmight be mentioned.\n\nAmong the most valuable of the contributions to the geography of the\nMiddle Ages were those furnished by some monks of the order of St.\nFrancis, who in the middle of the thirteenth century penetrated into\nthe remote east, on special missions to the barbarian hordes that then\nthreatened the very existence of religion and civilization, and whose\nenterprises, embarked in at the call of duty, are in many respects\ninteresting.\n\nHistory, whether ancient or modern, has few chapters so remarkable as\nthat which records the rise of the Mongol power. A great chief, who\nhad ruled over an immense horde of this hitherto pastoral people,\ndied, leaving his eldest son an infant, and unable to command the\nadhesion of his rude subjects. The young chief, as he grew to man's\nestate, found his horde dispersed, and only a few families willing to\nacknowledge his sway. Determined, however, to regain his power and\ncarry out the ambitious design which he had formed of conquering the\nworld, he caused an assembly of the whole people to be summoned on the\nbanks of the Selinga. At this assembly one of the wise men of the\ntribes announced that he had had a vision, in which he saw the great\nGod, the disposer of kingdoms, sitting upon his throne in council, and\nheard him decree that the young chief should be \"Zingis Khan,\" or\n\"Greatest Chief\" of the earth. The shouts of the Mongols testified\ntheir readiness to accept the decree; Zingis Khan was raised to\nsupreme power over the whole Mongol race. He soon subdued the petty\nopposition of his neighbors, and, establishing the seat of his empire\nat Karakorum, spread his conquests in every direction with\nextraordinary rapidity, and died the ruler of many nations,\nbequeathing his power to sons and grandsons as warlike and ambitious\nas himself. One of these, Batoo Khan, invaded Europe with an immense\narmy. He overran Russia, taking Moscow and its other principal places;\nsubdued Poland and burnt Cracow; defeated the king of Hungary in a\ngreat battle; penetrated to Breslau, which he burned; and defeated,\nnear Liegnitz, an army composed of Christian volunteers from all\nlands;--one of the bloodiest battles ever fought against the eastern\nhordes.\n\nIt was four years after this great battle, namely, in 1246, and when\nall {160} Europe was trembling at the expectation of another invasion\nof the Mongols (who, having devastated the country with fire and\nsword, had retired loaded with spoils), that two embassies were\ndespatched by the Pope, Innocent IV., to endeavor to induce them to\nstop their progress into Europe, and to embrace Christianity. These\nimportant missions were intrusted to monks of the Franciscan order;\nJean du Plan Carpini being despatched toward the north-east, where the\ncamp of Batoo was fixed, and Nicholas Ascelin, the year after, sent\ninto Syria and Persia.\n\nAscelin's mission, which comprised three other monks of the same order\nbeside himself, was the most rapidly terminated. Following the south\nof the Caspian Sea, the party traversed Syria, Mesopotamia, and\nPersia, and at length reached the Mongol or Tatar encampment of\nBaiothnoy Khan. Being asked their object as they approached, the holy\nmen boldly but undiplomatically declared that they were ambassadors\nfrom the head of the Christian world, and that their mission was to\nexhort the Tatars to repent of their wicked and barbarous attacks upon\nGod's people. Being asked what presents they brought to the khan,\naccording to eastern custom, they further replied that the Pope, as\nthe vicar of God, was not accustomed to purchase a hearing or favor by\nsuch means, especially from infidels. The Mongols were astonished at\nthis bold language used toward a race accustomed to strike terror into\nall who came into contact with them. They were still more astonished\nwhen the holy men refused, as a reprehensible act of idolatry, to make\nthe usual genuflexions on being admitted to the presence of the khan,\nunless he first became a Catholic and acknowledged the Pope's\nsupremacy, when they offered to do so for the honor of God and the\nChurch. Hitherto the barbarians had borne patiently the display of\nwhat they doubtless regarded as the idiosyncrasies of the good friars,\nbut this last refusal incited their rage; the ambassadors and their\nmaster the Pope were insulted and threatened, and it was debated in\ncouncil whether they should not be flayed alive, their skins stuffed\nwith hay, and sent back to the Pope. The interposition of the khan's\nmother saved their lives, however; but the Mongols could never\nunderstand how the Holy Father, who they found from Ascelin kept no\narmy and had gained no battles, could have dared to send such a\nmessage to their victorious master, whom they styled the Son of\nHeaven. Ascelin and his companions were treated during their stay with\nscant courtesy, and were dismissed with a letter to the Pope from\nBaiothnoy Khan, commanding him, if he wished to remain in possession\nof his land and heritage, to come in his own person and do homage to\nhim who held just sway over the whole earth. They reached as speedily\nas possible the nearest Syrian port, and embarked for France. They\nbrought back to Europe some valuable information respecting the\ncountry of the Mongols, though small compared with that of the other\nambassadors whom we have to mention.\n\nCarpini was a man better fitted the office of ambassador, and able,\nwithout sacrificing his principles or his dignity, to become \"all\nthings to all men.\" He travelled with a numerous suite through Bohemia\nand Poland to Kiow, then the Russian capital. A quantity of skins and\nfurs was given him in the northern capitals, as presents to the Tatar\nchiefs, and all Europe watched with interest the result of the\nembassy. On the banks of the Dnieper they first encountered the\nbarbarians. The purpose of their journey being demanded, they replied\nthat they were messengers from the Pope to the chief of the Tatar\npeople, to desire peace and friendship between them, and request that\nthey would embrace the faith of Christ, and desist from the slaughter\nof the Pope's subjects, who had never injured or attempted to injure\nthem. Their {161} bearing made a very favorable impression. They were\nconducted to the tent of the chief, where they did not hesitate to\nmake the usual salutations; and by his command post-horses and a\nMongol escort were given them to conduct them to Batoo Khan. They\nfound him at a place on the borders of the Black Sea; and, before\nbeing admitted to an audience, had to pass between two fires, as a\ncharm to nullify any witchcraft or evil intention on their parts. They\nfound Batoo seated on a raised throne with one of his wives, and\nsurrounded by his court. They again made the usual genuflexions, and\nthen delivered their letters, which Batoo Khan read attentively, but\nwithout giving them any reply. For some months they were \"trotted\nabout,\" with a view to show them the wealth, power, and magnificence\nof the people they were among; and in order that they might\ncommunicate at home what they saw. The holy men passed Lent among the\nMongols; and, notwithstanding the fatigues they had passed through,\nobserved a strict fast, taking, as their only food for the forty days,\nmillet boiled in water, and drinking only melted snow. They witnessed\nthe imposing ceremony of the investiture of a Tatar chief, at which a\nlarge number of feudatory princes were present, with no less than four\nthousand messengers bearing tribute or presents from subdued or\nsubmitted states. After the investiture, they also were ushered into\nthe presence; but, alas, the gifts intrusted to them and their whole\nsubstance were already consumed. The Tatars, however, considerately\ndispensed with this usual part of the proceedings; for the coarse garb\nof the monks, contrasting as it did with the rich silks and garments\nof gold and silver which they describe as being worn generally during\nthe ceremonies, must have marked them as men who possessed little of\nthis world's goods.\n\nThe ceremonials of investiture over, Carpini was at length called upon\nto deliver his message to the newly-appointed khan; and a reply was\ngiven, which he was desired to translate into Latin, and convey to the\nPope. It contained only meaningless expressions of good-will; but the\nfact was, that the khan intended to carry the war into Europe, though\nhe did not desire to give notice of his intent. He offered to send\nwith them an ambassador to the Pope; but Carpini seems to have\nsurmised his purpose, and that this ambassador would really be only a\nspy; and he therefore found means to evade the offer. They returned\nhomeward through the rigors of a Siberian winter, accompanied by\nseveral Genoese, Pisan, and Venetian traders, who, following the papal\nenvoys, had found their way, in pursuit of commerce, to the Tatar\nencampment. The hardships the good men endured on the return journey\nwere of the most fearful kind. Often, in crossing the extensive\nsteppes of that country, they were forced to sleep all night upon the\nsnow, and found themselves almost buried in snow-drifts in the\nmorning. Kiow was at length reached; and its people, who had given up\nthe adventurous travellers as lost, turned out to welcome them, as men\nreturned from the grave. The rest of Carpini's life was spent in\nsimilar hardships, while preaching the gospel to the savage peoples of\nBohemia, Hungary, Denmark, and Norway; and death came to him with his\nreward, at an advanced age, in the midst of his apostolic labors.\n\nA few years after the missions of Ascelin and Carpini, another\nFranciscan, named William Van Ruysbroeck, better known as Rubriquis, a\nnative of Brabant, was sent by Saint Louis of France on a similar\nerrand to the Mongols, one of whose khans, it was reported, had\nembraced Christianity. He found the rumor void of foundation; and,\nthough received courteously, as Carpini had been, could perceive not\nthe slightest disposition among the barbarians to receive or even hear\nthe truth. At the camp of Sartach Khan, Rubriquis was commanded to\nappear before the chief in his priestly vestments, and did so,\ncarrying a missal {162} and crucifix in his hands, an attendant\npreceding him with a censer, and singing the _Salve Regina_. Everything\nhe had with him was examined very attentively by the khan and his\nwives, especially the crucifix; but nothing came of this curiosity.\nLike Carpini, the party were frequently exposed to great privations,\nboth at the encampments and on their journeys; and on one occasion\nRubriquis piously records: \"If it had not been for the grace of God,\nand the biscuit which we had brought with us, we had surely perished.\"\nOn one journey from camp to camp, they travelled for five weeks along\nthe banks of the Volga, nearly always on foot, and often without food.\nRubriquis' companion Barthelemi broke down under the fatigues of the\nreturn journey; but Rubriquis persevered alone, and traversed an\nimmense extent of country, passing through the Caucasus, Armenia, and\nSyria, before he took ship for France, to report the failure of his\nmission to the pious king.\n\nBootless as these journeys proved, so far as their main object was\nconcerned, there is no doubt that in many ways they effected a large\namount of good. The religious creed of the Mongols appears to have\nbeen confined to a belief in one God, and in a place of future rewards\nand punishments. For other doctrines, or for ceremonies of religion,\nthey appear to have cared little. They trampled the Caliph of Bagdad,\nthe \"successor of the Prophet,\" beneath their horses' hoofs at the\ncapture of that city; and they tolerated at their camps our Christian\nmonks, as well as a number of professors of the Nestorian heresy. It\nwas only on becoming Mohammedans that they, and the kindred but rival\nrace of Ottomans, became intolerant. But it is to be observed that\nIslamism, which allowed polygamy, and avoided interference with their\nother national habits and customs, would be likely to attract them, in\nconsequence of their religious indifference, as naturally as\nChristianity, which sought to impose restraints upon their ferocity\nand sensualism, would repel them. It is no wonder, therefore, that the\nefforts of the zealous Franciscans were unsuccessful. But their zeal\nand disinterestedness, their irreproachable lives and simple manners,\nwere not without producing an effect upon the savage men with whom\ntheir embassies brought them into contact; and by their intercourse,\nand that mercantile communication for which their travels pioneered\nthe way, the conduct of the Mongols toward the Christian races was\nsensibly affected beneficially, while on the other side they taught\nEurope to regard the Mongols as a people to be feared indeed, and\nguarded against, but not as the demons incarnate they had been\npictured by the popular imagination. The benefit these devoted monks\nconferred upon the progress of science and civilization is scarcely to\nbe over-estimated; as not only did they acquaint Europe with a number\nof minute, and in the main accurate, details respecting a vast tract\nof country previously unknown, and the peoples by whom it was\ninhabited, but they opened up new realms to commerce, in the exploring\nof which Marco Polo, Clavijo, and subsequent travellers, pushed onward\nto China, Japan, and India, and prepared the way for the great\nmaritime discoveries of the succeeding century.\n\n------\n\n{163}\n\nFrom The Month.\n\nCONSTANCE SHERWOOD.\n\n\n\nAN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.\n\n\nBY LADY GEORGIANA FULLERTON.\n\n\nCHAPTER III.\n\nAs I entered the library, which my father used for purposes of\nbusiness as well as of study, I saw a gentleman who had often been at\nour house before, and whom I knew to be a priest, though he was\ndressed as a working-man of the better sort and had on a riding coat\nof coarse materials. He beckoned me to him, and I, kneeling, received\nhis blessing.\n\n\"What, up yet, little one?\" he said; \"and yet thou must bestir thyself\nbetimes to-morrow for prayers. These are not days in which priests may\nplay the sluggard and be found abed when the sun rises.\"\n\n\"At what hour must you be on foot, reverend father?\" my mother asked,\nas sitting down at a table by his side she filled his plate with\nwhatever might tempt him to eat, the which he seemed little inclined\nto.\n\n\"Before dawn, good Mrs. Sherwood,\" he answered; \"and across the fields\ninto the forest before ever the laboring men are astir; and you know\nbest when that is.\"\n\n\"An if it be so, which I fear it must,\" my father said, \"we must e'en\nhave the chapel ready by two o'clock. And, goodwife, you should\npresently get that wench to bed.\"\n\n\"Nay, good mother,\" I cried, and threw my arms round her waist,\n\"prithee let me sit up to-night; I can lie abed all to-morrow.\" So\nwistfully and urgently did I plead, that she, who had grown of late\nsomewhat loth to deny any request of mine, yielded to my entreaties,\nand only willed that I should lie down on a settle betwixt her chair\nand the chimney, in which a fagot was blazing, though it was\nsummer-time, but the weather was chilly. I gazed by turns on my\nmother's pale face and my father's, which was thoughtful, and on the\ngood priest's, who was in an easy-chair, wherein they had compelled\nhim to sit, opposite to me on the other side of the chimney. He\nlooked, as I remember him then, as if in body and in mind he had\nsuffered more than he could almost bear.\n\nAfter some discourse had been ministered betwixt him and my father of\nthe journey he had been taking, and the friends he had seen since last\nhe had visited our house, my mother said, in a tremulous voice, \"And\nnow, good Mr. Mush, an if it would not pain you too sorely, tell us if\nit be true that your dear daughter in Christ, Mrs. Clitherow, as\nindeed won the martyr's crown, as some letters from York reported to\nus a short time back?\"\n\nUpon this Mr. Mush raised his head, which had sunk on his breast, and\nsaid, \"She that was my spiritual daughter in times past, and now, as I\nhumbly hope, my glorious mother in heaven, the gracious martyr Mrs.\nClitherow, has overcome all her enemies, and passed from this mortal\nlife with rare and marvellous triumph into the peaceable city of God,\nthere to receive a worthy crown of endless immortality and joy.\" His\neye, that had been before heavy and dim, now shone with sudden light,\nand it seemed as if the cord about his heart was loosed, and his\nspirit found vent at last in words after a long and painful silence.\nMore eloquent still was his countenance than his words as he\nexclaimed, \"Torments overcame her not, nor the sweetness of life, nor\nher vehement affection for {164} husband and children, nor the\nflattering allurements and deceitful promises of the persecutors.\nFinally, the world, the flesh, and the devil overcame her not. She, a\nwoman, with invincible courage entered combat against them all, to\ndefend the ancient faith, wherein both she and her enemies were\nbaptized and gave their promise to God to keep the same until death. O\nsacred martyr!\" and, with clasped hands and streaming eyes, the good\nfather went on, \"remember me, I beseech thee humbly, in thy perfect\ncharity, whom thou hast left miserable behind thee, in time past thy\nunworthy father and now most unworthy servant, made ever joyful by thy\nvirtuous life, and now lamenting thy death and thy absence, and yet\nrejoicing in thy glory.\"\n\nA sob burst from my mother's breast, and she hid her face against my\nfather's shoulder. There was a brief silence, during which many\nquickly-rising thoughts passed through my mind. Of Daniel in the\nlions' den, and the Machabees and the early Christians; and of the\ngreat store of blood which had been shed of late in this our country,\nand of which amongst the slain were truly martyrs, and which were not;\nof the vision in the sky which had been seen at Lichfield; and chiefly\nof that blessed woman Mrs. Clitherow, whose virtue and good works I\nhad often before heard of, such as serving the poor and harboring\npriests, and loving God's Church with a wonderful affection greater\nthan can be thought of. Then I heard my father say, \"How was it at the\nlast, good Mr. Mush?\" I oped my eyes, and hung on the lips of the good\npriest even as if to devour his words as he gave utterance to them.\n\n\"She refused to be tried by the country,\" he answered, in a tremulous\nvoice; \"and so they murthered her.\"\n\n\"How so?\" my mother asked, shading her eyes with her hand, as if to\nexclude the mental sight of that which she yet sought to know.\n\n\"They pressed her to death,\" he slowly uttered; \"and the last words\nshe was heard to say were 'Jesu, Jesu, Jesu! have mercy on me!' She\nwas in dying about a quarter of an hour, and then her blessed spirit\nwas released and took its flight to heaven. May we die the death of\nthe righteous, and may our last end be like hers!\"\n\nAgain my mother hid her face in my father's bosom, and methought she\nsaid not \"Amen\" to that prayer; but turning to Mr. Mush with a flushed\ncheek and troubled eye, she asked, \"And why did the blessed Mrs.\nClitherow refuse to be tried by the country, reverend father, and\nthereby subject herself to that lingering death?\"\n\n\"These were her words when questioned and urged on that point,\" he\nanswered, \"which sufficiently clear her from all accusation of\nobstinacy or desperation, and combine the rare discretion and charity\nwhich were in her at all times: 'Alas!' quoth she, 'if I should have\nput myself on the country, evidence must needs have come against me\ntouching my harboring of priests and the holy sacrifice of the mass in\nmy house, which I know none could give but only my children and\nservants; and it would have been to me more grievous than a thousand\ndeaths if I should have seen any of them brought forth before me, to\ngive evidence against me in so good a cause and be guilty of my blood;\nand, secondly,' quoth she, 'I know well the country must needs have\nfound me guilty to please the council, who so earnestly seek my blood,\nand then all they had been accessory to my death and damnably offended\nGod. I therefore think, in the way of charity, for my part to hinder\nthe country from such a sin; and seeing it must needs be done, to\ncause as few to do it as might be; and that was the judge himself.' So\nshe thought, and thereupon she acted, with that single view to God's\nglory and the good of men's souls that was ever the passion of her\nfervent spirit.\"\n\n\"Her children?\" my mother murmured in a faint voice, still hiding her\nface from him. \"That little Agnes {165} you used to tell us of, that\nwas so dear to her poor mother, how has it fared with her?\"\n\nMr. Mush answered, \"Her _happy_ mother sent her hose and shoes to her\ndaughter at the last, signifying that she should serve God and follow\nher steps of virtue. She was committed to ward because she would not\nbetray her mother, and there whipped and extremely used for that she\nwould not go to the church and hear a sermon. When her mother was\nmurthered, the heretics came to her and said that unless she would go\nto the church, her mother should be put to death. The child, thinking\nto save the life of her who had given her birth, went to a sermon, and\nthus they deceived her.\"\n\n\"God forgive them!\" my father ejaculated; and I, creeping to my\nmother's side, threw my arms about her neck, upon which she, caressing\nme, said:\n\n\"Now thou wilt be up to their deceits, Conny, if they should practice\nthe same arts on thee.\"\n\n\"Mother,\" I cried, clinging to her, \"I will go with thee to prison and\nto death; but to their church I will not go who love not our Blessed\nLady.\"\n\n\"So help thee God!\" my father cried, and laid his hand on my head.\n\n\"Take heart, good Mrs. Sherwood,\" Mr. Mush said to my mother, who was\nweeping; \"God may spare you such trials as those which that sweet\nsaint rejoiced in, or he can give you a like strength to hers. We have\nneed in these times to bear in mind that comfortable saying of holy\nwrit, 'As your day shall your strength be.'\"\n\n\"'Tis strange,\" my father observed, \"how these present troubles seem\nto awake the readiness, nay the wish, to suffer for truth's sake. It\nis like a new sense in a soul heretofore but too prone to eschew\nsuffering of any sort: 'tis even as the keen breezes of our own\nCannock Chase stimulate the frame to exertions which it would shrink\nfrom in the duller air of the Trent Valley.\"\n\n\"Ah! and is it even so with you, my friend?\" exclaimed Mr. Mush. \"From\nmy heart I rejoice at it: such thoughts are oftentimes forerunners of\nGod's call to a soul marked out for his special service.\"\n\nMy mother, against whom I was leaning since mention had been made of\nMrs. Clitherow's daughter, began to tremble; and rising said she would\ngo to the chapel to prepare for confession. Taking me by the hand, she\nmounted the stairs to the room which was used as such since the\nancient faith had been proscribed. One by one that night we knelt at\nthe feet of the good shepherd, who, like his Lord, was ready to lay\ndown his life for his sheep, and were shriven. Then, at two of the\nclock, mass was said, and my parents and most of our servants\nreceived, and likewise some neighbors to whom notice had been sent in\nsecret of Mr. Mush's coming. When my mother returned from the altar to\nher seat, I marvelled at the change in her countenance. She who had\nbeen so troubled before the coming of the Heavenly Guest into her\nbreast, wore now so serene and joyful an aspect, that the looking upon\nher at that time wrought in me a new and comfortable sense of the\ngreatness of that divine sacrament. I found not the thought of death\nfrighten me then; for albeit on that night I for the first time fully\narrived at the knowledge of the peril and jeopardy in which the\nCatholics of this land do live; nevertheless this knowledge awoke in\nme more exultation than fear. I had seen precautions used, and\nreserves maintained, of which I now perceived the cause. For some time\npast my parents had prepared the way for this no-longer-to-be-deferred\nenlightenment. The small account they had taught me to make of the\nwealth and comforts of this perishable world, and the histories they\nhad recounted to me of the sufferings of Christians in the early times\nof the Church, had been directed unto this end. They had, as it were,\nlaid the wood on the altar of my heart, which they prayed might one\nday burn into {166} a flame. And now when, by reason of the discourse\nI had heard touching Mrs. Clitherow's blessed but painful end for\nharboring of priests in her house, and the presence of one under our\nroof, I took heed that the danger had come nigh unto our own doors, my\nheart seemed to beat with a singular joy. Childhood sets no great\nstore on life: the passage from this world to the next is not terrible\nto such as have had no shadows cast on their paths by their own or\nothers' sins. Heaven is not a far-off region to the pure in heart; but\nrather a home, where God, as St. Thomas sings,\n\n    \"Vitam sine termino\n  Nobis donet in patria.\"\n\nBut, ah me! how transient are the lights and shades which flit across\nthe childish mind! and how mutable the temper of youth, never long\nimpressed by any event, however grave! Not many days after Mr. Mush's\nvisit to our house, another letter from the Countess of Surrey came\ninto my hand, and drove from my thoughts for the time all but the\nmatters therein disclosed.\n\n  \"SWEET MISTRESS CONSTANCE\"\n  (my lady wrote),--\"In my last letter I made mention, in an obscure\n  fashion, of a secret which my lord had told me touching a matter of\n  great weight which Higford, his grace's steward, had let out to him;\n  and now that the whole world is speaking of what was then in hand,\n  and that troubles have come of it, I must needs relieve my mind by\n  writing thereof to her who is the best friend I have in the world,\n  if I may judge by the virtuous counsel and loving words her letters\n  do contain. 'Tis like you have heard somewhat of that same matter,\n  Mistress Constance; for much talk has been ministered anent it since\n  I wrote, amongst people of all sorts, and with various intents to\n  the hindering or the promoting thereof. I mean touching the marriage\n  of his grace the Duke of Norfolk with the Queen of Scots, which is\n  much desired by some, and very little wished for by others. My lord,\n  as is reasonable in one of his years and of so noble a spirit, and\n  his sister, who is in all things the counterpart of her brother,\n  have set their hearts thereon since the first inkling they had of\n  it; for this queen had so noted a fame for her excellent beauty and\n  sweet disposition that it has wrought in them an extraordinary\n  passionate desire to title her mother, and to see their father so\n  nobly mated, though not more than he deserves; for, as my lord says,\n  his grace's estate in England is worth little less than the whole\n  realm of Scotland, in the ill state to which the wars have reduced\n  it; and when he is in his own tennis-court at Norwich, he thinks\n  himself as great as a king.\n\n  \"As a good wife, I should wish as my lord does; and indeed this\n  marriage, Mistress Constance, would please me well; for the Queen of\n  Scots is Catholic, and methinks if his grace were to wed her, there\n  might arise some good out of it to such as are dependent on his\n  grace touching matters of religion; and since Mr. Martin has gone\n  beyond seas, 'tis very little I hear in this house but what is\n  contrary to the teaching I had at my grandmother's. My lord saith\n  this queen's troubles will be ended if she doth marry his grace, for\n  so Higford has told him; but when I spoke thereof to my Lady Lumley,\n  she prayed God his grace's might not then begin, but charged me to\n  be silent thereon before my Lord Arundel, who has greatly set his\n  heart on this match. She said words were in every one's mouth\n  concerning this marriage which should never have been spoken of but\n  amongst a few. 'Nan,' quoth she, 'if Phil and thou do let your\n  children's tongues wag anent a matter which may well be one of life\n  and death, more harm may come of it than can well be thought of.' So\n  prithee, Mistress Constance, do you be silent as the grave on what I\n  have herein written, if so be you have not heard {167} of it but\n  from me. My lord had a quarrel with my Lord Essex, who is about his\n  own age, anent the Queen of Scots, a few days since, when he came to\n  spend his birthday with him; for my lord was twelve years old last\n  week, and I gave him a fair jewel to set in his cap, for a\n  love-token and for remembrance. My lord said that the Queen of Scots\n  was a lady of so great virtue and beauty that none else could be\n  compared with her; upon which my lord of Essex cried it was high\n  treason to the queen's majesty to say so, and that if her grace held\n  so long a time in prison one who was her near kinswoman, it was by\n  reason of her having murthered her husband and fomented rebellion in\n  this kingdom of England, for the which she did deserve to be\n  extremely used. My lord was very wroth at this, and swore he was no\n  traitor, and that the Queen of Scots was no murtheress, and he would\n  lay down his head on the block rather than suffer any should style\n  her such; upon which my lord of Essex asked, 'Prithee, my Lord\n  Surrey, were you at Thornham last week when the queen's majesty was\n  on a visit to your grandfather, my Lord Arundel?' 'No,' cried my\n  lord, 'your lordship being there yourself in my Lord Leicester's\n  suite, must needs have noticed I was absent; for if I had been\n  present, methinks 'tis I and not your lordship would have waited\n  behind her majesty's chair at table and held a napkin to her.' 'And\n  if you had, my lord,' quoth my Lord Essex, waxing hot in his speech,\n  'you would have noticed how her grace's majesty gave a nip to his\n  grace your father, who was sitting by her side, and said she would\n  have him take heed on what pillow he rested his head.' 'And I would\n  have you take heed,' cries my lord, 'how you suffer your tongue to\n  wag in an unseemly manner anent her grace's majesty and his grace my\n  father and the Queen of Scots, who is kinswoman to both, and even\n  now a prisoner, which should make men careful how they speak of her\n  who cannot speak in her own cause; for it is a very inhuman part, my\n  lord, to tread on such as misfortune has cast down.' There was a\n  nobleness in these words such as I have often taken note of in my\n  lord, though so young, and which his playmate yielded to; so that\n  nothing more was said at that time anent those matters, which indeed\n  do seem too weighty to be discoursed upon by young folks. But I have\n  thought since on the lines which 'tis said the queen's majesty wrote\n  when she was herself a prisoner, which begin,\n\n    'O Fortune! how thy restless, wavering state\n    Hath fraught with cares my troubled wit;\n    Witness this present prison, whither fate\n    Could bear me, and the joys I quit'--\n\n  and wondered she should have no greater pity on those in the same\n  plight, as so many be at this time. Ah me! I would not keep a bird\n  in a cage an I could help it, and 'tis sad men are not more tender\n  of such as are of a like nature with themselves!\n\n  \"My lord was away some days after this at Oxford, whither he had\n  been carried to be present at the queen's visit, and at the play of\n  _Palamon and Arcite_, which her majesty heard in the common hall of\n  Christ's Church. One evening, as my lady Margaret and I (like two\n  twin cherries on one stalk, my lord would say, for he is mightily\n  taken with the stage-plays he doth hear, and hath a trick of framing\n  his speech from them) were sitting at the window near unto the\n  garden practising our lutes and singing madrigals, he surprised us\n  with his sweet company, in which I find an ever increasing content,\n  and cried out as he approached, 'Ladies, I hold this sentence of the\n  poet as a canon of my creed, that whom God loveth not, they love not\n  music.' And then he said that albeit Italian was a very harmonious\n  and sweet language which pleasantly tickleth the ear, he for his\n  part loved English best, even in singing. Upon which, finding him in\n  the humor for discreet {168} and sensible conversation, which,\n  albeit he hath good parts and a ready wit, is not always the case,\n  by reason of his being, as boys mostly are, prone to wagging, I took\n  occasion to relate what I had heard my Lord of Arundel say touching\n  his visit to the court of Brussels, when the Duchess of Parma\n  invited him to a banquet to meet the Prince of Orange and most of\n  the chief courtiers. The discourse was carried on in French; but my\n  lord, albeit he could speak well in that language, nevertheless made\n  use of an interpreter. At the which the Prince of Orange expressed\n  his surprise to Sir John Wilson, who was present, that an English\n  nobleman of so great birth and breeding should be ignorant of the\n  French tongue, which the earl presently hearing, said, 'Tell the\n  prince that I like to speak in that language in which I can best\n  utter my mind and not mistake.' And I perceive, my lord,' I said,\n  'that you are of a like mind with his lordship, and no lover of\n  new-fangled and curious terms.'\n\n  \"Upon which my dear earl laughed, and related unto us how the queen\n  had been pleased to take notice of him at Oxford, and spoke merrily\n  to him of his marriage. 'And prithee, Phil, what were her highness's\n  words?' quoth his prying sister, like a true daughter of Eve. At\n  which my lord stroked his chin, as if to smooth his beard which is\n  still to come, and said her majesty had cried, 'God's pity, child,\n  thou wilt tire of thy wife afore you have both left the nursery.'\n  'Alack,' cried Meg, 'if any but her highness had said it, thy hand\n  would have been on thy sword, brother, and I'll warrant thou didst\n  turn as red as a turkey-cock, when her majesty thus titled thee a\n  baby. Nay, do not frown, but be a good lord to us, and tell Nan and\n  me if the queen said aught else.' Then my lord cleared his brow, and\n  related how in the hunting scene in the play, when the cry of the\n  hounds was heard outside the stage, which was excellently well\n  imitated, some scholars who were seated near him, and he must\n  confess himself also, did shout, 'There, there--he's caught, he's\n  caught!' upon which her grace's majesty laughed, and merrily cried\n  out from her box, 'Those boys in very troth are ready to leap out of\n  the windows!' 'And had you such pleasant sports each day, brother?'\n  quoth our Meg. 'No, by my troth,' my lord answered; 'the more's the\n  pity; for the next day there was a disputation held in physic and\n  divinity from two to seven; and Dr. Westphaling held forth at so\n  great length that her majesty sent word to him to end his discourse\n  without delay, to the great relief and comfort of all present. But\n  he would not give over, lest, having committed all to memory, he\n  should forget the rest if he omitted any part of it, and be brought\n  to shame before the university and the court.' 'What said her\n  highness when she saw he heeded not her commands?' Meg asked. 'She\n  was angered at first,' quoth my lord, 'that he durst go on with his\n  discourse when she had sent him word presently to stop, whereby she\n  had herself been prevented from speaking, which the Spanish\n  Ambassador had asked her to do; but when she heard the reason it\n  moved her to laughter, and she titled him a parrot.'\n\n  \"'And spoke not her majesty at all?' I asked; and my lord said, 'She\n  would not have been a woman, Nan, an she had held her tongue after\n  being once resolved to use it. She made the next day an oration in\n  Latin, and stopped in the midst to bid my Lord Burleigh be seated,\n  and not to stand painfully on his gouty feet. Beshrew me, but I\n  think she did it to show the poor dean how much better her memory\n  served her than his had done, for she looked round to where he was\n  standing ere she resumed her discourse. And now, Meg, clear thy\n  throat and tune thy pipe, for not another word will I speak till\n  thou hast sung that ditty good Mr. Martin set to music for thee.' I\n  have set it down here, Mistress Constance, with the notes as {169}\n  she sung it, that you may sing it also; and not like it the less that\n  my quaint fancy pictures the maiden the poet sings of, in her 'frock\n  of frolic green,' like unto my sweet friend who dwells not far from\n  one of the fair rivers therein named.\n\n    A knight, as antique stories tell,\n    A daughter had named Dawsabel,\n        A maiden fair and free;\n    She wore a frock of frolic green,\n    Might well become a maiden queen,\n        Which seemly was to see.\n\n    The silk well could she twist and twine,\n    And make the fine March pine,\n    And with the needle work;\n    And she could help the priest to say\n    His matins on a holy day,\n    And sing a psalm in kirk.\n\n    Her features all as fresh above\n    As is the grass that grows by Dove,\n    And lythe as lass of Kent;\n    Her skin as soft as Leinster wool,\n    And white as snow on Penhisk Hull,\n    Or swan that swims on Trent.\n\n    This maiden on a morn betime\n    Goes forth when May is in its prime,\n    To get sweet setywall,\n    The honeysuckle, the hurlock,\n    The lily and the lady-smock,\n    To deck her father's hall.\n\n  \"'Ah,' cried my lord, when Meg had ended her song, beshrew me, if\n  Monsieur Sebastian's madrigals are one-half so dainty as this\n  English piece of harmony.' And then,--for his lordship's head is at\n  present running on pageants such as he witnessed at Nonsuch and at\n  Oxford,--he would have me call into the garden Madge and Bess,\n  whilst he fetched his brothers to take part in a May game, not\n  indeed in season now, but which, he says, is too good sport not to\n  be followed all the year round. So he must needs dress himself as\n  Robin Hood, with a wreath on his head and a sheaf of arrows in his\n  girdle, and me as Maid Marian; and Meg, for that she is taller by an\n  inch than any of us, though younger than him and me, he said should\n  play Little John, and Bess Friar Tuck, for that she looks so\n  gleesome and has a face so red and round. 'And Tom,' he cried, 'thou\n  needst not be at pains to change thy name, for we will dub thee Tom\n  the piper.' 'And what is Will to be?' asked my Lady Bess, who, since\n  I be titled Countess of Surrey, must needs be styled My Lady William\n  Howard.' 'Why, there's only the fool left,' quoth my lord, 'for thy\n  sweetheart to play, Bess.' At the which her ladyship and his\n  lordship too began to stamp and cry, and would have sobbed outright,\n  but sweet Madge, whose face waxes so white and her eyes so large and\n  blue that methinks she is more like to an angel than a child, put\n  out her little thin hands with a pretty gesture, and said, 'I'll be\n  the fool, brother Surrey, and Will shall be the dragon, and Bess\n  ride the hobby-horse, an it will please her.' 'Nay, but she is Friar\n  Tuck,' quoth my lord, 'and should not ride.' 'And prithee wherefore\n  no?' cried the forward imp, who, now she no more fears her grandam's\n  rod, has grown very saucy and bold; 'why should not the good friar\n  ride, an it doth pleasure him?'\n\n  \"At the which we laughed and fell to acting our parts with no little\n  merriment and noise, and sundry reprehensions from my lord when we\n  mistook our postures or the lines he would have us to recite. And at\n  the end he set up a pole on the grass-plat for the Maying, and we\n  danced and sung around it to a merry tune, which set our feet flying\n  in time with the music:\n\n    Now in the month of maying,\n    When the merry lads are playing,\n        Fa, la, la.\n\n    Each with his bonny lasse,\n    Upon the greeny grasse,\n        Fa, la, la.\n\n  Madge was not strong enough to dance, but she stole away to gather\n  white and blue violets, and made a fair garland to set on my head,\n  to my lord's great content, and would have me unloose my hair on my\n  shoulders, which fell nearly to my feet, and waved in the wind in a\n  wild fashion; which he said was beseeming for a bold outlaw's bride,\n  and what he had seen in the Maid Marian, who had played in the\n  pageant at Nonsuch. Mrs. Fawcett misdoubted that this sport of ours\n  should be approved by Mr. Charke, who calls all {170} stage-playing\n  Satan's recreations, and a sure road unto hell; and that we shall\n  hear on it in his next preachment; for he has held forth to her at\n  length on that same point, and upbraided her for that she did suffer\n  such foolish and profane pastimes to be carried on in his grace's\n  house. Ah me! I see no harm in it; and if, when my lord visits me, I\n  play not with him as he chooses, 'tis not a thing to be expected\n  that he will come only to sing psalms or play chess, which Mr.\n  Charke holds to be the only game it befits Christians to entertain\n  themselves with. 'Tis hard to know what is right and wrong when\n  persons be of such different minds, and no ghostly adviser to be\n  had, such as I was used to at my grandmother's house.\n\n  \"All, Mistress Constance! when I last wrote unto you I said troubles\n  was the word in every one's mouth, and ere I had finished this\n  letter--which I was then writing, and have kept by me ever\n  since--what, think you, has befallen us? 'Tis anent the marriage of\n  his grace with the Queen of Scots; which I now do wish it had\n  pleased God none had ever thought of. Some weeks since my lord had\n  told me, with great glee, that the Spanish ambassador was about to\n  petition her majesty the queen for the release of her highness's\n  cousin; and Higford and Bannister, and the rest of his grace's\n  household--whom, since Mr. Martin went beyond seas, my lord spends\n  much of his time with, and more of it methinks than is beseeming or\n  to the profit of his manners and advancement of his behavior--have\n  told him that this would prepare the way for the\n  greatly-to-be-desired end of his grace's marriage with that queen;\n  and my lord was reckoning up all the fine sports and pageants and\n  noble entertainments would be enacted at Kenninghall and Thetford\n  when that right princely wedding should take place; and how he\n  should himself carry the train of the queen-duchess when she went\n  into church; who was the fairest woman, he said, in the whole world,\n  and none ever seen to be compared with her since the days of Grecian\n  Helen. But when, some days ago, I questioned my lord touching the\n  success of the ambassador's suits, and the queen's answer thereto,\n  he said: 'By my troth, Nan, I understand that her highness sent away\n  the gooseman, for so she entitled Senor Guzman, with a flea in his\n  ear; for she said he had come on a fool's errand, and gave him for\n  her answer that she would advise the Queen of Scots to bear her\n  condition with less impatience, or she might chance to find some of\n  those on whom she relied shorter by a head.' Oh, my lord,' I cried;\n  'my dear Phil! God send she was not speaking of his grace your\n  father!' 'Nan,' quoth he, 'she looked at his grace the next day with\n  looks of so great anger and disdain, that my lord of Leicester--that\n  false and villainous knave--gave signs of so great triumph as if his\n  grace was even on his way to the Tower. Beshrew me, if I would not\n  run my rapier through his body if I could!' 'And where is his grace\n  at present?' I asked. 'He came to town night,' quoth my lord, 'with\n  my Arundel, and this morning went Kenninghall.' After this for some\n  days I heard no more, for a new tutor came to my lord, who suffers\n  him not to stay in the waiting-room with his grace's gentlemen, and\n  keeps so strict a hand over him touching his studies, that in his\n  brief hours of recreation he would rather play at quoits, and other\n  active pastimes, than converse with his lady. Alack! I wish he were\n  a few years older, and I should have more comfort of him than now,\n  when I must needs put up with his humors, which be as changeful, by\n  reason of his great youth, as the lights and shades on the grass\n  'neath an aspen-tree. I must be throwing a ball for hours, or\n  learning a stage-part, when I would fain speak of the weighty\n  matters which be on hand, such as I have told you of. Howsoever, as\n  good luck would have it, my Lady Lumley sent for me to spend {171}\n  the day with her; and from her ladyship I learnt that his grace had\n  written to the queen that he had withdrawn from the court because of\n  the pain he felt at her displeasure, and his mortification at the\n  treatment he had been subjected to by the insolence of his foes, by\n  whom he has been made a common table talk; and that her majesty had\n  laid upon him her commands straightway to return to court. That was\n  all was known that day; but at the very time that I was writing the\n  first of these woeful tidings to you, Mistress Constance, his grace--\n  whom I now know that I do love dearly, and with a true daughter's\n  heart, by the dreadful fear and pain I am in--was arrested at\n  Burnham, where he had stopped on his road to Windsor, and committed\n  to the Tower. Alack! alack! what will follow? I will leave this my\n  letter open until I have further news to send.\n\n  \"His grace was examined this day before my Lord-keeper Bacon, and my\n  Lords Northampton, Sadler, Bedford, and Cecil; and they have\n  reported to her majesty that the duke had not put himself under\n  penalty of the law by any overt act of treason, and that it would be\n  difficult to convict him without this. My Lord of Arundel, at whose\n  house I was when these tidings came, said her majesty was so angered\n  at this judgment, that she cried out in a passion, 'Away! what the\n  law fails to do my authority shall effect;' and straightway fell\n  into a fit, her passion was so great; and they were forced to apply\n  vinegar to restore her. I had a wicked thought come into my mind,\n  Mistress Constance, that I should not have been concerned if the\n  queen's majesty had died in that fit, which I befear me was high\n  treason, and a mortal sin, to wish for one to die in a state of sin.\n  But, alack! since I have left going to shrift I find it hard to\n  fight against bad thoughts and naughty tempers; and when I say my\n  prayers, and the old words come to my lips, which the preachments I\n  hear do contradict, I am sometimes well-nigh tempted to give over\n  praying at all. But I pray to God I may never be so wicked; and\n  though I may not have my beads (which were taken from me), that the\n  good Bishop of Durham gave me when I was confirmed, I use my fingers\n  in their stead; and whilst his grace was at the Tower I did say as\n  many 'Hail Maries' in one day as I ever did in my life before; and\n  promised him, who is God's own dear Son and hers, if his grace came\n  out of prison, never to be a day of my life without saying a prayer,\n  or giving an alms, or doing a good turn to those which be in the\n  same case, near at hand or throughout the world; and I ween there\n  are many such of all sorts at this time.\n\n  \"Your loving servant to command, whose heart is at present heavier\n  than her pen,\n            \"ANN SURREY.\"\n\n  \"P. S. My Lord of Westmoreland has left London, and his lady is in a\n  sad plight. I hear such things said on all sides touching Papists as\n  I can scarce credit, and I pray to God they be not true. But an if\n  they be so bad as some do say, why does his grace run his head into\n  danger for the sake of the Popish queen, as men do style her? They\n  have arrested Higford and Bannister last night, and they are to\n  taste of the rack to-day, to satisfy the queen, who is so urgent on\n  it. My lord is greatly concerned thereat, and cried when he spoke of\n  it, albeit he tried to hide his tears. I asked him to show me what\n  sort of pain it was; whereupon he twisted my arm till I cried out\n  and bade him desist. God help me! I could not have endured the pain\n  an instant longer; and if they have naught to tell anent these plots\n  and against his grace, they needs must speak what is false when\n  under the rack. Oh, 'tis terrible to think what men do suffer and\n  cause others to suffer!\"\n\nThis letter came into my hand on a day when my father had gone into\nLichfield touching some business; and {172} he brought with it the\nnews of a rising in the north, and that his Grace of Northumberland\nand my Lord of Westmoreland had taken arms on hearing of the Duke of\nNorfolk's arrest; and the Catholics, under Mr. Richard Norton and Lord\nLatimer, had joined their standard, and were bearing the cross before\nthe insurgents. My father was sore cast down at these tidings; for he\nlooked for no good from what was rebellion against a lawful sovereign,\nand a consorting with troublesome spirits, swayed by no love of our\nholy religion but rather contrary to it, as my Lord of Westmoreland\nand some others of those leading lords. And he hence foreboded fresh\ntrials to all such as were of the ancient faith all over England;\nwhich was not long in accruing even in our own case; for a short time\nafter, we were for the first time visited by pursuivants, on a day and\nin such a manner as I will now briefly relate.\n\n\nCHAPTER IV.\n\nOn the Sunday morning which followed the day on which the news had\nreached us of the rising in Northumberland, I went, as was my wont,\ninto my mother's dressing-room, to crave her blessing, and I asked of\nher if the priest who came to say mass for us most Sundays had\narrived. She said he had been, and had gone away again, and that she\ngreatly feared we should have no prayers that day, saving such as we\nmight offer up for ourselves; \"together,\" she added after a pause,\n\"with a bitter sacrifice of tears and of such sufferings as we have\nheard of, but as yet not known the taste of ourselves.\"\n\nAgain I felt in my heart a throbbing feeling, which had in it an\nadmixture of pain and joy--made up, I ween, of conflicting\npassions--such as curiosity feeding on the presentment of an\napproaching change; of the motions of grace in a soul which faintly\ndiscerns the happiness of suffering for conscience sake; and the fear\nof suffering natural to the human heart.\n\n\"Why are we to have no mass, sweet mother?\" I asked, encircling her\nwaist in my arms; \"and wherefore has good Mr. Bryan gone away?\"\n\n\"We received advice late last evening,\" she answered, \"that the\nqueen's pursuivants have orders to search this day the houses of the\nmost noted recusants in this neighborhood; and 'tis likely they may\nbegin with us, who have never made a secret of our faith, and never\nwill.\"\n\n\"And will they kill us if they come?\" I asked, with that same\ntrembling eagerness I have so often known since when danger was at\nhand.\n\n\"Not now, not to-day, Conny,\" she answered; \"but I pray to God they do\nnot carry us away to prison; for since this rising in the north, to be\na Catholic and a traitor is one and the same in their eyes who have to\njudge us. We must needs hide our books and church furniture; so give\nme thy beads, sweet one, and the cross from thy neck.\"\n\nI waxed red when my mother bade me unloose the string, and tightly\nclasped the cross in both my hands \"Let them kill me, mother,\" I\ncried; \"but take not off my cross.\"\n\n\"Maybe,\" she said, \"the queen's officers would trample on it, and\ninjure their own souls in dishonoring a holy symbol.\" And as she spoke\nshe took it from me, and hid it in a recess behind the chimney; which\nno sooner was done, than we heard a sound of horses' feet in the\napproach; and going to the window, I cried out, \"Here is a store of\narmed men on horseback!\" Ere I had uttered the words, one of them had\ndismounted and loudly knocked at the door with his truncheon; upon\nwhich my mother, taking me by the hand, went down stairs into the\nparlor where my father was. It seemed as if those knocks had struck on\nher heart, so great a trembling came over her. My father bade the\nservants throw {173} open the door; and the sheriff came in, with two\npursuivants and some more men with him, and produced a warrant to\nsearch the house; which my father having read, he bowed his head, and\ngave orders not to hinder them in their duty. He stood himself the\nwhile in the hall, his face as white as a smock, and his teeth almost\nrunning through his lips.\n\nOne of the men came into the library,  and pulling down the books,\nscattered them on the floor, and cried:\n\n\"Look ye here, sirs, what Popish stuff is this, fit for the hangman's\nburning!\" At the which another answered:\n\n\"By my troth, Sam, I misdoubt that thou canst read. Methinks thou dost\nhunt Popery as dogs do game, by the scent. Prithee spell me the title\nof this volume.\"\n\n\"I will have none of thy gibing, Master Sevenoaks,\" returned the\nother. \"Whether I be a scholar or not, I'll warrant no honest\ngospeller wrote on those yellow musty leaves, which be two hundred\nyears old, if they be a day.\"\n\n\"And I'll warrant thee in that credence, Master Samuel, by the same\ntoken that the volume in thy hand is a treatise on field-sports, writ\nin the days of Master Caxton; a code of the laws to be observed in the\nhunting and killing of deer, which I take to be no Popish sport, for\nour most gracious queen--God save her majesty!--slew a fat buck not\nlong ago in Windsor Forest with her own hand, and remembered his grace\nof Canterbury with half her prey;\" and so saying, he drew his comrade\nfrom the room; I ween with the intent to save the books from his rough\nhandling, for he seemed of a more gentle nature than the rest and of a\nmore moderate disposition.\n\nWhen they had ransacked all the rooms below, they went upstairs, and\nmy father followed. Breaking from my mother's side, who sat pale and\nstill as a statute, unable to move from her seat, I ran after him, and\non the landing-place I heard the sheriff say somewhat touching the\nharboring of priests; to the which he made answer that he was ready to\nswear there was no priest in the house. \"Nor has been?\" quoth the\nsheriff; upon which my father said:\n\n\"Good sir, this house was built in the days of Her majesty's\ngrandfather, King Henry VII.; and on one occasion his majesty was\npleased to rest under my grandfather's roof, and to hear mass in that\nroom,\" he said, pointing to what was now the chapel, \"the church being\ntoo distant for his majesty's convenience: so priests have been within\nthese walls many times ere I was born.\"\n\nThe sheriff said no more at that time, but went into the room, where\nthere were only a few chairs, for that in the night the altar and all\nthat appertained to it had been removed. He and his men were going out\nagain, when a loud knocking was heard against the wall on one side of\nthe chamber; at the sound of which my father's face, which was white\nbefore, became of an ashy paleness.\n\n\"Ah!\" cried one of the pursuivants, \"the lying Papist! The egregious\nRoman! an oath is in his mouth that he has no priest in his house, and\nhere is one hidden in his cupboard.\"\n\n\"Mr. Sherwood!\" the sheriff shouted, greatly moved, \"lead the way to\nthe hiding-place wherein a traitor is concealed, or I order the house\nto be pulled down about your ears.\"\n\nMy father was standing like one stunned by a sudden blow, and I heard\nhim murmur, \"'Tis the devil's own doing, or else I am stark, staring\nmad.\"\n\nThe men ran to the wall, and knocked against it with their sticks,\ncrying out in an outrageous manner to the priest to come out of his\nhole. \"We'll unearth the Jesuit fox,\" cried one; \"we'll give him a\nbetter lodging in Lichfield gaol,\" shouted another; and the sheriff\nkept threatening to set fire to the house. Still the knocking from\nwithin went on, as if {174} answering that outside, and then a voice\ncried out, \"I cannot open: I am shut in.\"\n\n\"'Tis Edmund!\" I exclaimed; \"'tis Edmund is in the hiding-place.\" And\nthen the words were distinctly heard, \"'Tis I; 'tis Edmund Genings.\nFor God's sake, open; I am shut in.\" Upon which my father drew a deep\nbreath, and hastening forward, pressed his finger on a place in the\nwall, the panel slipped, and Edmund came out of the recess, looking\nscared and confused. The pursuivants seized him; but the sheriff cried\nout, surprised, \"God's death, sirs! but 'tis the son of the worshipful\nMr. Genings, whose lady is a mother in Israel, and M. Jean de Luc's\nfirst cousin! And how came ye, Mr. Edmund, to be concealed in this\nPopish den? Have these recusants imprisoned you with some foul intent,\nor perverted you by their vile cunning?\" Edmund was addressing my\nfather in an agitated voice.\n\n\"I fear me, sir,\" he cried, clasping his hands, \"I befear me much I\nhave affrighted you, and I have been myself sorely affrighted. I was\npassing through this room, which I have never before seen, and the\ndoor of which was open this morn. By chance I drew my hand along the\nwall, where there was no apparent mark, when the panel slipped and\ndisclosed this recess, into which I stepped, and straightway the\nopening closed and I remained in darkness. I was afraid no one might\nhear me, and I should die of hunger.\"\n\nMy father tried to smile, but could not. \"Thank God,\" he said, \"'tis\nno worse;\" and sinking down on a chair he remained silent, whilst the\nsheriff and the pursuivants examined the recess, which was deep and\nnarrow, and in which they brandished their swords in all directions.\nThen they went round the room, feeling the walls; but though there was\nanother recess with a similar mode of aperture, they hit not on it,\ndoubtless through God's mercy; for in it were concealed the altar\nfurniture and our books, with many other things besides, which they\nwould have seized on.\n\nBefore going away, the sheriff questioned Edmund concerning his faith,\nand for what reason he abode in a Popish house and consorted with\nrecusants. Edmund answered he was no Papist, but a kinsman of Mrs.\nSherwood, unto whose house his father had oftentimes sent him. Upon\nwhich he was counselled to take heed unto himself and to eschew evil\ncompany, which leads to horrible defections, and into the straight\nroad to perdition. Whereupon they departed; and the officer who had\nenticed his companion from the library smiled as he passed me, and\nsaid:\n\n\"And wherefore not at prayers, little mistress, on the Lord's day, as\nall Christian folks should be?\"\n\nI ween he was curious to see how I should answer, albeit not moved\nthereunto by any malicious intent. But at the time I did not bethink\nmyself that he spoke of Protestant service; and being angered at what\npassed, I said:\n\n\"Because we be kept from prayers by the least welcome visit ever made\nto Christian folks on a Lord's morning.\" He laughed and cried:\n\n\"Thou hast a ready tongue, young mistress; and when tried for\nrecusancy I warrant thou'lt give the judge a piece of thy mind.\"\n\n\"And if I ever be in such a presence, and for such a cause,\" I\nanswered, \"I pray to God I may say to my lord on the bench what the\nblessed apostle St. Peter spoke to his judges: 'If it be just in the\nsight of God to hear you rather than God, judge ye.'\" At which he\ncried:\n\n\"Why, here is a marvel indeed--a Papist to quote Scripture!\" And\nlaughing again, he went his way; and the house was for that time rid\nof these troublesome guests.\n\nThen Edmund again sued for pardon to my father, that through his rash\nconduct he had been the occasion of so great fear and trouble to him.\n\n{175}\n\n\"I warrant thee, my good boy,\" quoth my father, \"thou didst cause me\nthe most keen anguish, and the most sudden relief from it, which can\nwell be thought of; and so no more need be said thereon. And as thou\nmust needs be going to the public church, 'tis time that thou bestir\nthyself; for 'tis a long walk there and back, and the sun waxing hot.\"\n\nWhen Edmund was gone, and I alone with him, my father clasped me in\nhis arms, and cried:\n\n\"God send, my wench, thou mayest justify thy sponsors who gave thee\nthy name in baptism; for 'tis a rare constancy these times do call\nfor, and such as is not often seen, saving in such as be of a noble\nand religious spirit; which I pray to God may be the case with thee.\"\n\nMy mother did not speak, but went away with her hand pressed against\nher heart; which was what of late I had often seen her to do, as if\nthe pain was more than she could bear.\n\nOne hour later, as I was crossing the court, a man met me suited as a\nfarmer; who, when I passed him, laid his hand on my shoulder; at the\nwhich I started, and turning round saw it was Father Bryan; who,\nsmiling as I caught his hand, cried out:\n\n\"Dost know the shepherd in his wolf's clothing, little mistress?\" and\nhastening on to the chapel he said mass, at the which only a few\nassisted, as my parents durst not send to the Catholics so late in the\nday. As soon as mass was over, Mr. Bryan said he must leave, for there\nwas a warrant issued for his apprehension; and our house famed for\nrecusancy, so as he might not stay in it but with great peril to\nhimself and to its owners. We stood at the door as he was mounting his\nhorse, and my father said, patting its neck:\n\n\"Tis a faithful servant this, reverend father; many a mile he has\ncarried thee to the homes of the sick and dying since our troubles\nbegan.\"\n\n\"Ah! good Mr. Sherwood,\" Mr. Bryan replied, as he gathered up the\nbridle, \"thou hast indeed warrant to style the poor beast faithful. If\nI were to shut my eyes and let him go, no doubt but he would find his\nway to the doors of such as cleave to the ancient faith, in city or in\nhamlet, across moor or through thick wood. If a pursuivant bestrode\nhim, he might discover through his means who be recusants a hundred\nmiles around. But I bethink me he would not budge with such a burthen\non his back; and that he who made the prophet's ass to speak, would,\ngive the good beast more sense than to turn informer, and to carry the\nwolf to the folds of the lambs. And prithee, Mistress Constance,\" said\nthe good priest, turning to me, \"canst keep a secret and be silent,\nwhen men's lives are in jeopardy?\"\n\n\"Aye,\" cried my father quickly, \"'tis as much as worthy Mr. Bryan's\nlife is worth that none should know he was here to-day.\"\n\n\"More than my poor life is worth,\" he rejoined; \"that were little to\nthink of, my good friends. For five years I have made it my prayer\nthat the day may soon come--and I care not how soon--when I may lay it\ndown for his sake who gave it. But we must e'en have a care for those\nwho are so rash as to harbor priests in these evil times. So Mistress\nConstance must e'en study the virtue of silence, and con the meaning\nof the proverb which teacheth discretion to be the best part of\nvalor.\"\n\n\"If Edmund Genings asketh me, reverend father, if I have heard mass\nto-day, what must I answer?\"\n\n\"Say the queen's majesty has forbidden mass to be said in this her\nkingdom; and if he presseth thee more closely thereon, why then tell\nhim the last news from the poultry-yard, and that the hares have eat\nthy mignonette; which they be doing even now, if my eyes deceive me\nnot,\" said the good father, pointing with his whip to the\nflower-garden.\n\nSo, smiling, he gave us a last blessing, and rode on toward the Chase,\nand I went to drive the hares away {176} from the flower-beds, and\nthen to set the chapel in fair order. And ever and anon, that day and\nthe next, I took out of my pocket my sweet Lady Surrey's last letter,\nand pictured to myself all the scenes therein related; so that I\nseemed to live one-half of my life with her in thought, so greatly was\nmy fancy set upon her, and my heart concerned in her troubles.\n\n\nCHAPTER V.\n\nNot many days after the sheriff and the pursuivants had been at our\nhouse, and Mr. Bryan, by reason of the bloody laws which had been\nenacted against Papists and such as harbor priests, had left us,--\nthough intending to return at such times as might serve our commodity,\nand yet not affect our safety,--I was one morning assisting my mother\nin the store-room, wherein she was setting aside such provisions as\nwere to be distributed to the poor that week, together with salves,\nmedicines, and the like, which she also gave out of charity, when a\nspasm came over her, so vehement and painful, that for the moment she\nlost the use of speech, and made signs to me to call for help. I ran\naffrighted into the library for my father, and brought him to her,\nupon which, in a little time, she did somewhat recover, but desired he\nwould assist her to her own chamber, whither she went leaning on his\narm. When laid on her bed she seemed easier; and smiling, bade me\nleave them for awhile, for that she desired to have speech with my\nfather alone.\n\nFor the space of an hour I walked in the garden, with so oppressive a\ngrief at my heart as I had never before experienced. Methinks the\ngreat stillness in the air added thereunto some sort of physical\ndisorder; for the weather was very close and heavy; and if a leaf did\nbut stir, I started as if danger was at hand; and the noise of the\nchattering pies over my head worked in me an apprehensive melancholy,\nforeboding, I doubt not, what was to follow. At about eleven o'clock,\nhearing the sound of a horse's feet in the avenue, I turned round, and\nsaw Edmund riding from the house; upon which I ran across the grass to\na turning of the road where he would pass, and called to him to stop,\nwhich he did; and told me he was going to Lichfield for his father,\nwhom my mother desired presently to see. \"Then thou shouldst not\ntarry,\" I said; and he pushed on and left me standing where I was; but\nthe bell then ringing for dinner, I went back to the house, and, in so\ndoing, took notice of a bay-tree on the lawn which was withered and\ndried-up, though the gardener had been at pains to preserve it by\nsundry appliances and frequent watering of it. Then it came to my\nremembrance what my nurse used to say, that the dying of that sort of\ntree is a sure omen of a death in a family; which thought sorely\ndisturbed me at that time. I sat down with my father to a brief and\nsilent meal; and soon after the physician he had sent for came, whom\nhe conducted to my mother's chamber, whereunto I did follow, and\nslipped in unperceived. Sitting on one side of the bed, behind the\ncurtains, I heard her say, in a voice which sounded hollow and weak,\n\"Good Master Lawrenson, my dear husband was fain to send for you, and\nI cared not to withstand him, albeit persuaded that I am hastening to\nmy journey's end, and that naught that you or any other man may\nprescribe may stay what is God's will. And if this be visible to you\nas it is to me, I pray you keep it not from me, for it will be to my\nmuch comfort to be assured of it.\"\n\nWhen she had done speaking, he did feel her pulse; and the while my\nheart beat so quick and, as it seemed to me, so loud as if it must\nneeds impede my hearing; but in a moment I heard him say: \"God defend,\ngood madam, I should deceive you. While there is life, there is hope.\nGreater {177} comfort I dare not urge. If there be any temporal matter\non your mind, 'twere better settled now, and likewise of your soul's\nhealth, by such pious exercises as are used by those of your way of\nthinking.\"\n\nAt the hearing of these his words, my father fetched a deep sigh; but\nshe, as one greatly relieved, clasped her hands together, and cried,\n\"My God, I thank thee!\"\n\nThen, stealing from behind the curtain, I laid my head on the pillow\nnigh unto hers, and whispered, \"Sweet mother, prithee do not die, or\nelse take me with thee.\"\n\nBut she, as one not heeding, exclaimed, with her hands uplifted, \"O\nfaithless heart! O selfish heart! to be so glad of death!\"\n\nThe physician was directing the maids what they should do for her\nrelief when the pain came on, and he himself stood compounding some\nmedicine for her to take. My father asked of him when he next would\ncome; and he answered, \"On the morrow;\" but methinks 'twas even then\nhis belief that there would be no morrow for her who was dying before\nher time, like the bay-tree in our garden. She bade him farewell in a\nkindly fashion; and when we were alone, I lying on the bed by her\nside, and my father sitting at its head, she said, in a low voice,\n\"How wonderful be God's dealings with us, and how fatherly his care;\nin that he takes the weak unto himself, and leaves behind the strong\nto fight the battle now at hand! My dear master, I had a dream\nyesternight which had somewhat of horror in it, but more methinks of\ncomfort.\" My father breaking out then in sighs and tears as if his\nheart would break, she said, \"Oh, but thou must hear and acknowledge,\nmy loved master, how gracious is God's providence to thy poor wife.\nWhen thou knowest what I have suffered--not in body, though that has\nbeen sharp too, but in my soul--it will reconcile thine own to a\nparting which has in it so much of mercy. Thou dost remember the night\nwhen Mr. Mush was here, and what his discourse did run on?\"\n\n\"Surely do I, sweet wife,\" he answered; \"for it was such as the mind\ndoth not easily lose the memory of; the sufferings and glorious end of\nthe blessed martyr Mrs. Clitherow. I perceived what sorrowful heed\nthou didst lend to his recital; but has it painfully dwelt in thy mind\nsince?\"\n\n\"By day and by night it hath not left me; ever recurring to my\nthoughts, ever haunting my dreams, and working in me a fearful\napprehension lest in a like trial I should be found wanting, and prove\na traitor to God and his Church, and a disgrace and heartbreak to thee\nwho hast so truly loved me far beyond my deserts. I have bragged of\nthe dangers of the times, even as cowards are wont to speak loud in\nthe dark to still by the sound of their own voices the terrors they do\nfeel. I have had before my eyes the picture of that cruel death, and\nof the children extremely used for answering as their mother had\ntaught them, till cold drops of sweat have stood on my brow, and I\nhave knelt in my chamber wringing my hands and praying to be spared a\nlike trial. And then, maybe an hour later, sitting at the table, I\nspake merrily of the gallows, mocking my own fears, as when Mr. Bryan\nwas last here; and I said that priests should be more welcome to me\nthan ever they were, now that virtue and the Catholic cause were made\nfelony; and the same would be in God's sight more meritorious than\never before: upon which, 'Then you must prepare your neck for the\nrope,' quoth he, in a pleasant but withal serious manner; at the which\na cold chill overcame me, and I very well-nigh faulted, though\nconstraining my tongue to say, 'God's will be done; but I am far\nunworthy of so great an honor.' The cowardly heart belied the\nconfident tongue, and fear of my own weakness affrighted me, by the\nwhich I must needs have offended God, who helps such as trust {178} in\nhim. But I hope to be forgiven, inasmuch as it has ever been the wont\nof my poor thoughts to picture evils beforehand in such a form as to\nscare the soul, which, when it came to meet with them, was not shaken\nfrom its constancy. When Conny was an infant I have stood nigh unto a\nwindow with her in my arms, and of a sudden a terror would seize me\nlest I should let her fall out of my hands, which yet clasped her; and\nmethinks 'twas somewhat of alike feeling which worked in me touching\nthe denying of my faith, which, God is my witness, is dearer to me\nthan aught upon earth.\"\n\n\"'Tis even so, sweet wife,\" quoth my father; \"the edge of a too keen\nconscience and a sensitive apprehension of defects visible to thine\nown eyes and God's--never to mine, who was ever made happy by thy love\nand virtue--have worn out the frame which enclosed them, and will rob\nme of the dearest comfort of my life, if I must lose thee.\"\n\nShe looked upon him with so much sweetness, as if the approach of\ndeath had brought her greater peace and joy than life had ever done,\nand she replied: \"Death comes to me as a compassionate angel, and I\nfain would have thee welcome with me the kindly messenger who brings\nso great relief to the poor heart thou hast so long cherished. Now,\nthou art called to another task; and when the bruised, broken reed is\nremoved from thy side, thou wilt follow the summons which even now\nsounds in thine ears.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" cried my father, clasping her hand, \"art thou then already a\nsaint, sweet wife, that thou hast read the vow slowly registered as\nyet in the depths of a riven heart?\" Then his eyes turned on me; and\nshe, who seemed to know his thoughts, that sweet soul who had been so\nsilent in life, but was now spending her last breath in\nnever-to-be-forgotten words, answered the question contained in that\nglance as if it had been framed in a set speech.\n\n\"Fear not for her,\" she said, laying her cheek close unto mine. \"As\nher days, so shall her strength be. Methinks Almighty God has given\nher a spirit meet for the age in which her lot is cast. The early\ntraining thou hast had, my wench; the lack of such memories as make\nthe present twofold bitter; the familiar mention round thy cradle of\nsuch trials as do beset Catholics in these days, have nurtured thee a\nstoutness of heart which will stand thee in good stead amidst the\nrough waves of this troublesome world. The iron will not enter into\nthy soul as it hath done into mine.\" Upon which she fell back\nexhausted and for a while no sound was heard in or about the house\nsave the barking of our great dog.\n\nMy father had sent a messenger to a house where we had had notice days\nbefore Father Ford was staying but with no certain knowledge he still\nthere, or any other priest in neighborhood, which occasioned him no\nsmall disquietude, for my mother's strength seemed to be visibly\nsinking which was what the doctor's words had led him to expect. The\nman he sent returned not till the evening; in the afternoon Mr.\nGenings and son came from Lichfield, which, when my mother heard, she\nsaid God was gracious to permit her once more to see John, which was\nMr. Genings' name. They had been reared in the same house; and a\nkindness had always continued betwixt them. For some time past he had\nconformed to the times; and since his marriage with the daughter of a\nFrench Huguenot who lived in London, and who was a lady of very\ncommendable character and manners, and strenuous in her own way of\nthinking, he had left off practising his own religion in secret, which\nfor a while he used to do. When he came in, and saw death plainly writ\nin his cousin's face, he was greatly moved, and knelt down by her side\nwith a very sorrowful countenance; upon which she straightly looked at\nhim, and said: \"Cousin John, my {179} breath is very short, as my time\nis also like to be. But one word I would fain say to thee before I\ndie. I was always well pleased with my religion, which was once thine\nand that of all Christian people one hundred years ago; but I have\nnever been so well pleased with it as now, when I be about to meet my\nJudge.\"\n\nMr. Genings' features worked with a strange passion, in which was more\nof grief than displeasure, and grasping his son's shoulder, who was\nlikewise kneeling and weeping, he said: \"You have wrought with this\nboy, cousin, to make him a Catholic.\"\n\n\"As heaven is my witness,\" she answered, \"not otherwise but by my\nprayers.\"\n\n\"Hast thou seen a priest, cousin Constance?\" he then asked: upon which\nmy mother not answering, the poor man burst into tears, and cried:\n\"Oh, cousin--cousin Constance, dost count me a spy, and at thy\ndeath-bed?\"\n\nHe seemed cut to the heart; whereupon she gave him her hand, and said\nshe hoped God would send her such ghostly assistance as she stood in\nneed of; and praying God to bless him and his wife and children, and\nmake them his faithful servants, so she might meet them all in\nperpetual happiness, she spoke with such good cheer, and then bade him\nand Edmund farewell with so pleasant a smile, as deceived them into\nthinking her end not so near. And so, after a while, they took their\nleave; upon which she composed herself for a while in silence,\noccupying her thoughts in prayer; and toward evening, through God's\nmercy, albeit the messenger had returned with the heavy news that\nFather Ford had left the county some days back, it happened that Mr.\nWatson, a secular priest who had lately arrived in England, and was on\nhis way to Chester, stopped at our house, whereunto Mr. Orton, whom he\nhad seen in prison at London, had directed him for his own convenience\non the road, and likewise our commodity, albeit little thinking how\ngreat our need would be at that time of so opportune a guest, through\nwhose means that dear departing soul had the benefit of the last\nsacraments with none to trouble or molest her, and such ghostly aid as\nserved to smooth her passage to what has proved, I doubt not, the\nbeginning of a happy eternity, if we may judge by such tokens as the\nfervent acts of contrition she made both before and after shrift, such\nas might have served to wash away ten thousand sins through his blood\nwho cleansed her, and her great and peaceable joy at receiving him\ninto her heart whom she soon trusted to behold. Her last words were\nexpressions of wonder and gratitude at God's singular mercy shown unto\nher in the quiet manner of her death in the midst of such troublesome\ntimes. And methinks, when the silver cord was loosed, and naught was\nleft of her on earth save the fair corpse which retained in death the\nsemblance it had had in life, that together with the natural grief\nwhich found vent in tears, there remained in the hearts of such as\nloved her a comfortable sense of the Divine goodness manifested in\nthis her peaceable removal.\n\nHow great the change which that day wrought in me may be judged of by\nsuch who, at the age I had then reached to, have met with a like\naffliction, coupled with a sense of duties to be fulfilled, such as\nthen fell to my lot, both as touching household cares, and in respect\nto the cheering of my father in his solitary hours during the time we\ndid yet continue at Sherwood Hall, which was about a year. It waxed\nvery hard then for priests to make their way to the houses of\nCatholics, as many now found it to their interest to inform against\nthem and such as harbored them; and mostly in our neighborhood,\nwherein there were at that time no recusants of so great rank and note\nthat the sheriff would not be lief to meddle with them. We had\noftentimes had secret advices to beware of such and such of our\nservants who might betray our hidden conveyances of safety; and my\nfather scarcely durst {180} be sharp with them when they offended by\nslacking their duties, lest they might bring us into danger if they\nrevealed, upon any displeasure, priests having abided with us. Edmund\nwe saw no more since my mother's death; and after a while the news did\nreach us that Mr. Genings had died of the small-pox, and left his wife\nin so distressed a condition, against all expectation, owing to debts\nhe had incurred, that she had been constrained to sell her house and\nfurniture, and was living in a small lodging near unto the school\nwhere Edmund continued his studies.\n\nI noticed, as time went by, how heavily it weighed on my father's\nheart to see so many Catholics die without the sacraments, or fall\naway from their faith, for lack of priests to instruct them, like so\nmany sheep without a shepherd; and I guessed by words he let fall on\ndivers occasions, that the intent obscurely shadowed forth in his\ndiscourse to my mother on her deathbed was ripening to a settled\npurpose, and tending to a change in his state of life, which only his\nlove and care for me caused him to defer. What I did apprehend must\none day needs occur, was hastened about this time by a warning he did\nreceive that on an approaching day he would be apprehended and carried\nby the sheriff before the council at Lichfield, to be examined\ntouching recusancy and harboring of priests; which was what he had\nlong expected. This message was, as it were, the signal he had been\nwaiting for, and an indication of God's will in his regard. He made\ninstant provision for the placing of his estate in the hands of a\nfriend of such singular honesty and so faithful a friendship toward\nhimself, though a Protestant, that he could wholly trust him. And next\nhe set himself to dispose of her whom he did term his most dear\nearthly treasure, and his sole tie to this perishable world, which he\nresolved to do by straightway sending her to London, unto his sister\nMistress Congleton, who had oftentimes offered, since his wife's\ndeath, to take charge of this daughter, and to whom he now despatched\na messenger with a letter, wherein he wrote that the times were now so\ntroublesome, he must needs leave his home, and take advantage of the\nsisterly favor she had willed to show him in the care of his sole\nchild, whom he now would forthwith send to London, commending her to\nher good keeping, touching her safety and religious and virtuous\ntraining, and that he should be more beholden to her than ever brother\nwas to sister, and, as long as he lived, as he was bound to do, pray\nfor her and her good husband. When this letter was gone, and order had\nbeen taken for my journey, which was to be on horseback, and in the\ncharge of a maiden gentlewoman who had been staying some months in our\nneighborhood, and was now about in two days to travel to London, it\nseemed to me as if that which I had long expected and pictured unto\nmyself had now come upon me of a sudden, and in such wise as for the\nfirst time to taste its bitterness. For I saw, without a doubt, that\nthis parting was but the forerunner of a change in my father's\ncondition as great and weighty as could well be thought of. But of\nthis howbeit our thoughts were full of it, no talk was ministered\nbetween us. He said I should hear from him in London; and that he\nshould now travel into Lancashire and Cheshire, changing his name, and\noften shifting his quarters whilst the present danger lasted. The day\nwhich was to be the last to see us in the house wherein himself and\nhis fathers for many centuries back, and I his unworthy child, had\nbeen born, was spent in such fashion as becometh those who suffer for\nconscience sake, and that is with so much sorrow as must needs be felt\nby a loving father and a dutiful child in a first and doubtful\nparting, with so much regret as is natural in the abandonment of a\npeaceful earthly home, wherein God had been served in a Catholic\nmanner for many generations and up to that time without\ndiscontinuance, only of late years as it were by {181} night and\nstealth, which was linked in their memories with sundry innocent joys\nand pleasures, and such griefs as do hallow and endear the visible\nscenes wherewith they be connected, but withal with a stoutness of\nheart in him, and a youthful steadiness in her whom he had infected\nwith a like courage unto his own, which wrought in them so as to be of\ngood cheer and shed no more tears on so moving an occasion than the\ndebility of her nature and the tenderness of his paternal care\nextorted from their eyes when he placed her on her horse, and the\nbridle in the hand of the servant who was to accompany her to London.\nTheir last parting was a brief one, and such as I care not to be\nminute in describing; for thinking upon it even now 'tis like to make\nme weep; which I would not do whilst writing this history, in the\nrecital of which there should be more of constancy and thankful\nrejoicing in God's great mercies, than of womanish softness in looking\nback to past trials. So I will even break off at this point; and in\nthe next chapter relate the course of the journey which was begun on\nthat day.\n\n\n\n[TO BE CONTINUED.]\n\n------\n\nAbridged from Le Correspondant.\n\nTHE MARQUIS DE CHASTELLUX.\n\n\nIn the bleak region of Upper Burgundy, not far from the domain of\nVauban, stands the old manor of Chastellux, famous since the fifteenth\ncentury as the birth-place of two brothers, one of whom became an\nadmiral, the other a marshal of France. From this feudal stronghold\ncame forth one of the most amiable of the courtiers of Louis XVI.--a\ndisciple of Voltaire and Hume, a rival of Turgot and Adam Smith, a\nfriend of Washington and Jefferson, a forerunner of the revolutionists\nof 1789, a philosopher, an historian, a political economist, something\nof a poet, something of a naturalist, something of an artist, a man of\ntaste, an enthusiastic student, a brilliant talker, and an elegant\nwriter. The rude Sieurs de Chastellux would have been not a little\nastonished could they have foreseen what character of man was destined\nto inherit their title.\n\nFrancois Jean de Beauvoir, first known as Chevalier and afterward\nMarquis de Chastellux, was born at Paris in 1734. He was a son of the\nCount de Chastellux, lieutenant-general of the armies of the king, by\nMlle. d'Aguesseau, daughter of the chancellor. His mother, being left\na widow at an early period, withdrew thereupon into the privacy of\ndomestic life, and the young marquis had the good fortune to be\nbrought up under the eyes of the Chancellor d'Aguesseau himself. He\nentered the army at sixteen, and was hardly twenty-one before he had\nrisen to be colonel. He distinguished himself highly during the\ncampaigns of the Seven Years' War, and it was as a reward of his\ngallantry no less than out of compliment to his hereditary rank that\nhe was selected on one occasion to present to the king the flags of a\nconquered city. It is hard to understand how, in the midst of such an\nactive life, he could find time for study; but for all that he knew\nGreek, Latin, English, and Italian, and had some acquaintance with\nevery branch of science cultivated in his time. From boyhood he showed\na zealous interest in every sort of invention or discovery which\npromised to be of practical use {182} to mankind. When the principle\nof inoculation for small-pox was first broached in Europe, everybody\nshrank in alarm from the experiment. The young marquis had himself\ninoculated without his mother's knowledge, and then, running to\nBuffon, who knew his family, exclaimed joyfully, \"I am saved, and my\nexample will be the means of saving many others.\"\n\nWhen peace was declared in 1763, he was not yet thirty. With his\neminent gifts of mind and person, a brilliant career in society lay\nopen to him, but he aimed to be something more than a mere man of\nfashion. His first literary productions were biographical sketches of\ntwo of his brother officers, MM. de Closen and de. Belsunce, which\nappeared in the _Mercure_, in 1765. He wrote a lively and graceful\nlittle essay on the \"Union of Poetry and Music,\"--the same subject\nwhich Marmontel afterward treated in his poem of _Polymnie_. The great\nquarrel between the schools of Gluck and Piccini did not break out\nuntil ten years later; but mutterings of the coming tempest were heard\nalready. Italian music had its enthusiastic admirers and its\nimplacable foes, and in the midst of their disputes Monsigny and\nGretry had just given to France a lyric school of her own by creating\nthe comic opera. M. de Chastellux, like everybody else in those days,\nwas passionately fond of the theatre, and he espoused the cause of\nItalian music with the ardor that characterized everything he did.\nAbout the same time he fell into the society of the Encyclopoedists,\nand allied himself with Helvetius, d'Alembert, Turgot, and the rest of\nthe philosophical party, who received the illustrious recruit with\nopen arms.\n\n\n\nAbout the same time that M. de Chastellux left the army, and made his\ndebut in civil life, the Scottish historian and philosopher, David\nHume, arrived in Paris, with the British ambassador, Lord Hertford. He\nbecame the lion of the day. Courtiers and philosophers fell down and\nworshipped him; his skeptical opinions were eagerly imbibed, and the\nthree years that he spent in the French capital became, owing to his\nextraordinary influence, one of the most important epochs in the\nliterary history of the eighteenth century. M. de Chastellux shared in\nthe general enthusiasm; and the \"Essays\" and \"Political Discourses\" of\nHume, together with the _Essai sur les moeurs et l'esprit des nations_\nof Voltaire, which had appeared a few years before, wrought upon his\nmind a deep and lasting impression. The united influence of these two\nauthors led him to a course of study which resulted in a work upon\nwhich his reputation was finally established. This was his celebrated\ntreatise, \"On Public Felicity; or, Considerations on the Condition of\nMan at different Periods of his History,\" in two volumes. It bears a\nresemblance to both its parents. It is historical, like the _Essai sur\nles moeurs_, and dogmatic, like the \"Essays\" and \"Discourses.\" And\nthat is one of its defects. The \"Considerations\" on the condition of\nman at various periods serve by way of introduction to the author's\ntheory of public felicity; but the second part is inferior to the\nfirst. The body of the book is sacrificed to the introduction.\n\nThis was four years before the appearance of Adam Smith's \"Wealth of\nNations.\" The Marquis de Mirabeau and others of his school had begun\nto write; but their notions of political economy were still unfamiliar\nto the public. M. de Chastellux may therefore be regarded as one of\nthe first supporters of that doctrine of human perfectibility which\nlies at the bottom of all the prevailing opinions of the eighteenth\ncentury. To this he added another theory, that the only end of\ngovernment ought to be \"the greatest happiness of the greatest\npossible number.\" Nearly one hundred years ago, therefore, he\ndiscovered and developed the principle which is now one of the most\npopular epitomes of social science. His style is good, {183} but\nneither very concise nor very brilliant. It is now and then obscure,\nsometimes digressive, sometimes declamatory; but for the most part\nclear, lively, and abounding in those happy touches which show the\nwriter to be a man of the world as well as an author.\n\nIt is said that the immediate occasion of his writing the book was a\nconversation with Mably, the author of \"Observations on the History of\nFrance,\" who maintained that the world was constantly degenerating,\nand that the men of to-day were not half so good as their\ngrandfathers. The young philosopher, his head full of the new ideas,\nresolved to demonstrate the superiority of the present over the past.\nThe first edition of his work appeared in 1772, two years before the\ndeath of Louis XV. It was printed anonymously in Holland. Everywhere\nit was read with avidity, abroad as well as in France. It was\ntranslated into English, German, and Italian. Voltaire read it at\nFerney, and was so much struck by it that he covered his copy with\nmarginal notes--not always of approbation--which were reproduced in a\nnew edition of the work by the author's son, in 1822.\n\nDespite great merits, which cannot be denied it, the essay \"On Public\nFelicity\" is now almost forgotten. In the historical portion, M. de\nChastellux passes in review all the nations of ancient and modern\ntimes, for the purpose of showing that the general condition of man\nhas never before been so good as it is now. The fundamental principle\nof his work is disclosed in the following profession of faith: \"To say\nthat man is born to be free, that his first care is to preserve his\nliberty when he enjoys it, and to recover it when he has lost it, is\nto attribute to him a sentiment which he shares with the whole animal\nkingdom, and which cannot be called in question. And if we add that\nthis liberty is by its very nature indefinite, and that the liberty of\none individual can only be limited by that of another, we do but\nexpress a truth which few in this enlightened age will be found to\ncontradict. Look at society from this point of view, and you will see\nnothing but a series of encroachments and resistances; and if you want\nto form a just idea of government, you must consider it as the\nequilibrium which ought to result from these opposing struggles....\nGovernment and legislation are only secondary and subordinate objects.\nThey ought to be regarded merely as means through which men may\npreserve in the social state the greatest possible portion of natural\nliberty.\"\n\nIt is melancholy to see how, in a work that has so much to recommend\nit, the chapter which treats of the establishment of Christianity is\ndisfigured by the skeptical philosophy of the age. Our regret at this\nis perhaps the more keen because the fault was altogether without\nexcuse. Turgot had argued before the Sorbonne, only a few years\npreviously, that a belief in the progress of the human race, so far\nfrom being incompatible with the doctrine of redemption, is its\nnecessary consequence. De Chastellux might have shown that, if the\ncoming of our Lord did not immediately effect a sensible reformation\nthroughout the civilized world, it was because the vices and bad\npassions of the old pagan society long survived the overthrow of the\nold pagan gods. But there is this to be said for him: if he does not\nevince an adequate appreciation of the great moral revolution effected\nby Christianity, he at least does not speak of it in the same insolent\ntone that was fashionable in his day. When he comes down to modern\ntimes, and treats of density of population in its relation to national\nprosperity, he repeats the popular fallacy that the multiplication of\nreligious orders exerts a pernicious influence upon the progress of\npopulation. But when from general views he descends to statistics, he\nrefutes his own arguments. \"The number of monks in France,\" he says,\n\"according to a careful enumeration {184} made by order of government,\na few years ago, was 26,674, and it certainly is not less now.\" In\npoint of fact, the real number when the property of the clergy was\nconfiscated in 1790 was only 17,000; and what is that in a population\nof 24,000,000 or 26,000,000? The army withdraws from the marriage\nstate twenty times that number of men, in the vigor of their age;\nwhereas the greater part of the monks are men in the decline of life.\n\nIt is a matter of astonishment that a work which professes to treat of\n\"public felicity\" should devote itself entirely to the material\nwell-being of society, and have nothing to say of the moral condition\nof mankind, which is the more important element of the two in making\nup the sum of human happiness. Every author, of course, has a right to\nfix the limits of his subject; but then he must not promise on the\ntitle-page more than he means to perform.\n\nThe authorship of the essay on \"Public Felicity\" was not long a\nsecret; but de Chastellux received perhaps as much annoyance as glory\nfrom the discovery. His ideas did not please everybody, and among\nthose who fell foul of him for his philosophical errors were some of\nhis own family. He made little account of their opposition, and in\n1774 came out boldly with an eulogy on Helvetius, with whom he had\nlived for a long time on the most intimate terms. Two years later, he\npublished a second edition of his previous treatise, with the addition\nof a chapter of \"Ulterior Views,\" in which he points out the danger of\nsome of the revolutionary opinions which were then coming more and\nmore into vogue, and the futility of trying to realize in actual life\nthat form of government which might be theoretically the best. If he\nhad been alive in 1789, he would have belonged to the monarchical\nparty in the Constituent Assembly; and, after having done his part in\npaving the way for the revolution, he would have perished as one of\nits victims. Among political and social reformers, he must be classed\nwith the school of Montesquieu rather than with that of Rousseau.\n\n\n\nThe attention of France, however, was now fixed more and more firmly\nupon the contest going on in America between Great Britain and her\nrebellious colonies. Louis XVI., after some resistance, yielded to the\ndemand of public opinion, and, in 1778, not only recognized the\nindependence of the United States, but sent a fleet under Count\nd'Estaing to help them. A second expedition was despatched under Count\nde Rochambeau. M. de Chastellux, who then held the grade of marechal\nde camp [equivalent to something between brigadier and major-general\nin the present United States army--ED.], obtained permission to join\nit, and was appointed major-general. The expeditionary corps arrived\nat Newport, capital of the state of Rhode Island, July 10, 1780. It\nconsisted of eight ships of the line, two frigates, two gunboats, and\nover 5,000 troops. The next year came a reenforcement of 3,000 men.\nLord Cornwallis, who commanded the English force was shut up in\nYorktown, Va., and, being closely besieged by the allies and invested\nby land and sea, was compelled to surrender in October, 1781. This\nforced England to conclude a peace, and the auxiliary corps\nre-embarked at Boston on their return to France at the close of 1782.\nIt had been two years and a half in America, and during this time the\nrepublic had achieved its independence.\n\nDuring his visit to America, M. de Chastellux employed the brief\nperiods of leisure left him from military occupations in making three\ntours through the interior. He wrote down as he travelled a journal of\nhis observations, and printed at a little press on board the fleet\nsome twenty copies of it, ten or twelve of which found their way to\nEurope. So great was the eagerness {185} with which people there\nseized upon every book relating to America, that a number of copies\nwere surreptitiously printed, and a publisher at Cassel brought out an\nimperfect edition. The author then published the book himself in 1786\n(2 vols., 12mo, Paris), under the title, _Voyages de M. le Marquis de\nChastellux dans l'Amerique septentrionale en_ 1780, 1781, _et_ 1782.\nThough written originally only for his friends, it has a general\ninterest, and presents a curious picture of the condition of North\nAmerica at the period of which it treats.\n\nThe author set out from Newport, where the troops had landed and gone\ninto winter-quarters, in order to visit Pennsylvania. Accompanied by\ntwo aides-de-camp, one of whom was the Baron de Montesquieu, grandson\nof the author of the _Esprit des lois_, and by five mounted servants,\nhe started, November 11, 1780, on horseback, for that was the only\nmeans of travelling that the country afforded. The ground was frozen\nhard, and already covered with snow. The little party directed their\nsteps first toward Windham, where Lauzun's hussars, forming the\nadvance-guard of the army, were encamped. They found the Duke de\nLauzun at the head of his troops, and this meeting between the\ngrandsons of d'Aguesseau and Montesquieu, and a descendant of the\nLauzuns and Birons, all three fighting for the cause of liberty in the\nwilds of America, was a curious beginning of their adventures. It was\nthis same Duke de Lauzun, a friend of Mirabeau and Talleyrand, who\nbecame Duke de Biron after the death of his uncle, was chosen a member\nof the States General in 1789, commanded the republican army of La\nVendee, and finished his career on the scaffold.\n\nThe travellers crossed the mountains which separated them from the\nHudson, and, after passing through a wild and almost desert country,\narrived at West Point, a place celebrated at that time for the most\ndramatic incidents of the war of independence (the treason of General\nArnold and the execution of Major Andre), and now famous as the seat\nof the great military school of the United States. The American army\noccupying the forts of West Point, which Arnold's treachery had so\nnearly given over to the enemy, saluted the French major-general with\nthirteen guns--one for each state in the confederation. \"Never,\" says\nhe, \"was honor more imposing or majestic. Every gun was, after a long\ninterval, echoed back from the opposite bank with a noise nearly equal\nto that of the discharge itself. Two years ago, West Point was an\nalmost inaccessible desert. This desert has been covered with\nfortresses and artillery by a people who, six years before, had never\nseen a cannon. The well-filled magazines, and the great number of guns\nin the different forts, the prodigious labor which must have been\nexpended in transporting and piling up on the steep rocks such huge\ntrunks of trees and blocks of hewn stone, give one a very different\nidea of the Americans from that which the English ministry have\nlabored to convey to Parliament. A Frenchman might well be surprised\nthat a nation hardly born should have spent in two years more than\n12,000,000 francs in this wilderness; but how much greater must be his\nsurprise when he learns that these fortifications have cost the state\nnothing, having been constructed by the soldiers, who not only\nreceived no extra allowance for the labor, but have not even touched\ntheir regular pay! It will be gratifying for him to know that these\nmagnificent works were planned by two French engineers, M. du Portail\nand M. Gouvion,  [Footnote 45] who have been no better paid than their\nworkmen.\"\n\n  [Footnote 45: MM. du Portail and Gouvion went to America with\n  Lafayette, and returned with him. Each rose afterward to the rank of\n  lieutenant-general in the French army. The former, through the\n  influence of Lafayette, was appointed minister-of-war in 1790; he\n  fled to the United States during the Reign of Terror. The other was\n  created major-general of the National Guard of Paris in 1769; he\n  fell in battle in 1792.]\n\nWest Point stands on the bank of {186} the Hudson, in a situation\nwhich may well be compared with the most beautiful scenery of the\nRhine. M. de Chastellux describes it with the liveliest admiration;\nbut he remained there only a short time, because he was in haste to\nreach the head-quarters of Washington.\n\n\"After passing thick woods, I found myself in a small plain, where I\nsaw a handsome farm. A small camp which seemed to cover it, a large\ntent pitched in the yard, and several wagons around it, convinced me\nthat I was at the head-quarters of _His Excellency_, for so Mr.\nWashington is called, in the army and throughout America. M. de\nLafayette was conversing in the yard with a tall man about five feet\nnine inches high, of a noble and mild aspect: it was the general\nhimself. I was soon off my horse and in his presence. The compliments\nwere short; the sentiments which animated me and the good-will which\nhe testified for me were not equivocal. He led me into his house,\nwhere I found the company still at table, although dinner had long\nbeen over. He presented me to the generals and the aides-de-camp,\nadjutants, and other officers attached to his person, who form what is\ncalled in England and America the _family_ of the general. A few glasses\nof claret and madeira accelerated the acquaintances I had to make, and\nI soon felt at my ease in the presence of the greatest and best of\nmen. The goodness and benevolence which characterize him are evident\nfrom everything about him; but the confidence he inspires never gives\noccasion to familiarity, for it originates in a profound esteem for\nhis virtues and a high opinion of his talents.\"\n\nThe next day Washington offered to conduct his guest to the camp of\n_the marquis:_ this was the appellation universally bestowed in\nAmerica upon Lafayette, who commanded the advance of the army.\n\n\"We found his troops in order of battle, and himself at their head,\nexpressing by his air and countenance that he was better pleased to\nreceive me there than he would be at his estate in Auvergne.\n[Footnote 46] The confidence and attachment of his troops are\ninvaluable possessions for him, well-earned riches of which nobody can\ndeprive him; but what, in my opinion, is still more flattering for a\nyoung man of his age (he was not more than twenty-three) is the\ninfluence and consideration he has acquired in political as well as\nmilitary matters. I do not exaggerate when I say that private letters\nfrom him have often produced more effect upon some of the states than\nthe most urgent recommendations of the Congress. On seeing him, one is\nat a loss to decide which is the stranger circumstance--that a man so\nyoung should have given such extraordinary proofs of ability, or that\none who has been so much tried should still give promise of such a\nlong career of glory. Happy his country, should she know how to make\nuse of his talents! happier still, should she never stand in need of\nthem!\"\n\n  [Footnote 46: M. de Chastellux was cousin-german by the mother's\n  side to the Duchess of Ayen, the mother of Madame de Lafayette.]\n\nThis last remark shows that M. de Chastellux, with all his enthusiasm\nfor the present, was not without anxiety for the future. He spent\nthree days at head-quarters, nearly all the while at table, after the\nAmerican fashion. At the end of each meal nuts were served, and\nGeneral Washington sat for several hours, eating them, \"toasting,\" and\nconversing. These long conversations only increased his companion's\nadmiration.\n\n\"The most striking characteristic of this respected man is the perfect\naccord which exists between his physical and moral qualities. This\nidea of a perfect whole cannot be produced by enthusiasm, which would\nrather reject it, since the effect of proportion is to diminish the\nidea of greatness. Brave without rashness, laborious without ambition,\ngenerous without prodigality, noble without pride, virtuous without\nseverity, he seems always to have {187} confined himself within those\nlimits where the virtues, by clothing themselves in more lively but\nmore changeable and doubtful colors, may be mistaken for faults.\"\n\nThe city of Philadelphia was the capital of the confederation and the\nseat of the Congress. M. de Chastellux did not fail to visit it. He\nenjoyed there the hospitality of the Chevalier de la Luzerne, French\nminister to the United States, and had the pleasure of meeting several\nyoung French officers, some in the service of the United States,\nothers belonging to the expeditionary corps, whom the interruption of\nmilitary operations had left at liberty, like himself. Among them were\nM. de Lafayette, the Viscount de Noailles, the Count de Damas, the\nCount de Custine, the Chevalier de Mauduit, and the Marquis de la\nRouerie. Let us give a few particulars about these \"Gallo-Americans,\"\nas our author calls them. The Viscount de Noailles, brother-in-law of\nLafayette, and colonel of the chasseurs of Alsace, was afterward a\nmember of the States General, and principal author of the famous\ndeliberations of the 4th of August. The Count Charles de Damas, an\naide-de-camp of Rochambeau, in after years took part, on the contrary,\nagainst the revolutionists, and, attempting to rescue Louis XVI. at\nVarennes, was arrested with him. The Count de Custine, colonel of the\nregiment of Saintonge infantry, is the same who was general-in-chief\nof the republican armies in 1792, and who died by the guillotine the\nnext year, like Lauzun. The Chevalier de Mauduit commanded the\nAmerican artillery. At the age of fifteen, with his head full of\ndreams of classical antiquity, he ran away from college, walked to\nMarseilles, and shipped as cabin-boy on board a vessel bound for\nGreece, in order to visit the battle-fields of Plataea and\nThermopylae. The same spirit of enthusiasm carried him, at the age of\ntwenty, to America. Appointed, after the war, commandant at Port au\nPrince, he was assassinated there by his own soldiers in 1791. The\nhistory of the Marquis de la Rouerie, or Rouarie, is still more\nromantic. In his youth he fell violently in love with an actress, and\nwanted to marry her. Compelled by his family to break off this\nattachment, he determined to become a Trappist; but he soon threw\naside the monastic habit and went to America, where he commanded a\nlegion armed and equipped at his own cost. He abandoned his surname\nand title, and would only be known as Colonel Armand. After his return\nto France, he was concerned, with others of the nobility of Brittany,\nin the troubles which preceded the revolution. He was one of the\ntwelve deputies sent in 1787 to demand of the king the restoration of\nthe privileges of that province, and as such was committed to the\nBastile. The next year he had occasion to claim the same privileges,\nnot from the king, but from the Third Estate. In 1791 he placed\nhimself at the head of the disaffected, and organized the royalist\ninsurrection in the west. Denounced and pursued, he saved himself by\ntaking to the forest, lay hid in one chateau after another, fell sick\nin the middle of winter, and died in a fit of despair on hearing of\nthe execution of Louis XVI.\n\nThe Chevalier de la Luzerne, brother of the Bishop of Langres,\nafterward cardinal, so distinguished for his noble conduct in 1789,\nwas a man of more coolness and deliberation, but not less devoted to\nthe cause of the United States. He had given abundant proof of his\nfriendship by contracting a loan on his own responsibility for the\npayment of the American troops.\n\n\"M. de la Luzerne,\" says de Chastellux, \"is so formed for the station\nhe occupies, that one would be tempted to imagine no other could fill\nit but himself. Noble in his expenditure, like the minister of a great\nmonarchy, but plain in his manners, like a republican, he is equally\nfit to represent the king with the Congress, or the Congress with the\nking. He loves the {188} Americans, and his own inclination attaches\nhim to the duties of his administration. He has accordingly obtained\ntheir confidence, both as a private and a public man; but in both\nthese respects he is inaccessible to the spirit of party which reigns\nbut too much around him. He is anxiously courted by all parties, and,\nespousing none, he manages all.\" In acknowledgment of his services in\nAmerica, the Chevalier was appointed, after the peace, minister at\nLondon;--rather an audacious action on the part of the government of\nLouis XVI. to choose as their representative in England the very man\nwho had contributed most of all to the independence of the United\nStates. The state of Pennsylvania, in gratitude for his acts of\ngood-will, gave the name of Luzerne to one of her counties.\n\nThe principal occupation of these officers, during their stay at\nPhiladelphia, was to visit, notwithstanding the inclemency of the\nweather, the scenes of the recent conflicts near that city, or to\ndiscuss the causes which had turned the fortune of war, now in favor\nof the Americans, and now against them. Our author here shows himself\nin a new light, as a tactician who, with a thorough knowledge of the\nart of war, points out the circumstances which have led to the success\nor failure of this or that manoeuvre. Those affairs in which the\nFrench figured especially attracted his attention. Bravery,\ngenerosity, disinterestedness, all the national virtues were\nconspicuous in these volunteers who had crossed the ocean to make war\nat their own expense, and who softened the asperity of military\noperations by the charm of their elegant manners and chivalric\nbearing.\n\nAmong the battle-fields which these young enthusiasts, while a waiting\nsomething better to do, loved to trace out was that of Brandywine,\nwhere M. de Lafayette, almost immediately after his landing in\nAmerica, received the wound in the leg of which he speaks so gaily in\na letter to his wife. Lafayette himself acted as their guide, and\nrecounted to his friends, on the very scene of action, the incidents\nof this day, which was not a fortunate one for the Americans. He did\nthe honors of another expedition to the heights of Barren Hill, where\nhe had gained an advantage under rather curious circumstances. He had\nwith him there about two thousand infantry with fifty dragoons and an\nequal number of Indians, when the English, who occupied Philadelphia,\nendeavored to surround and capture him.\n\n\"General Howe [Sir Henry Clinton--ED.] thought he had now fairly\ncaught the marquis, and even carried his gasconade so far as to invite\nladies to meet Lafayette at supper the next day; and, whilst the\nprincipal part of the officers were at the play, he put in motion the\nmain body of his forces, which he marched in three columns. The first\nwas not long in reaching the advanced posts of M. de Lafayette, which\ngave rise to a laughable adventure. The fifty savages he had with him\nwere placed in ambuscade in the woods, after their own manner; that is\nto say, lying as close as rabbits. Fifty English dragoons, who had\nnever seen any Indians, entered the wood where they were hid. The\nIndians on their part, had never seen dragoon. Up they start, raising\na horrible cry, throw down their arms, and escape by swimming across\nthe Schuylkill. The dragoons, on the other hand, as much terrified as\nthey were, turned tail, and fled in such a panic that they did not\nstop until they reached Philadelphia. M. de Lafayette, finding himself\nin danger of being surrounded, made such skilful dispositions that he\neffected his retreat, as if by enchantment, and crossed the river\nwithout losing a man. The English army, finding the bird flown,\nreturned to Philadelphia, spent with fatigue, and ashamed of having\ndone nothing. The ladies did not see M. de Lafayette, and General Howe\n[Clinton] himself arrived too late for supper.\" By the side of these\nadmirable military sketches, we have an account of a ball at the\nChevalier de la Luzerne's. \"There were near twenty women, {189} twelve\nor fifteen of whom danced, each having her 'partner,' as the custom is\nin America. Dancing is said to be at once the emblem of gaiety and of\nlove; here it seems to be the emblem of legislation and of marriage:\nof legislation, inasmuch as places are marked out, the country-dances\nnamed, and every proceeding provided for, calculated, and submitted to\nregulation; of marriage, as it furnishes each lady with a partner,\nwith whom she must dance the whole evening, without being permitted to\ntake another. Strangers have generally the privilege of being\ncomplimented with the handsomest women; that is to say, out of\npoliteness, the prettiest partners are given to them. The Count de\nDamas led forth Mrs. Bingham, and the Viscount de Noailles, Miss\nShippen. Both of them, like true philosophers, testified a great\nrespect for the custom of the country by not quitting their partners\nthe whole evening; in other respects they were the admiration of the\nwhole assembly from the grace and dignity with which they danced. To\nthe honor of my country, I can affirm that they surpassed that evening\na chief justice of Carolina, and two members of Congress, one of whom\n(Mr. Duane) passed for being by ten per cent. more lively than all the\nother dancers.\"\n\nAt Philadelphia, as in camp, a great part of the day was passed at\ntable. The Congress having met, M. de Chastellux was invited to dinner\nsuccessively by the representatives from the North and the\nrepresentatives from the South; for the political body was even then\ndivided by a geographical line, each side having separate reunions at\na certain tavern which they used to frequent: so we see the\ndifferences between North and South are as old as the confederation\nitself. He made the acquaintance of all the leading members, and\nespecially of Samuel Adams, one of the framers of the Declaration of\nIndependence.  [Footnote 47] He saw also the celebrated pamphleteer,\nThomas Paine, who ten years afterward came to France, and was chosen a\nmember of the National Convention. Together with Lafayette, our author\nwas elected a member of the Academy of Philadelphia. Despite so many\ncircumstances to prepossess him in favor of the Americans, he appears\nnot a very ardent admirer of what he witnesses about him. He shows but\nlittle sympathy with the Quakers, whose \"smooth and wheedling tone\"\ndisgusts him, and whom he represents as wholly given up to making\nmoney. Philadelphia he calls \"the great sink in which all the\nspeculations of the United States meet and mingle.\" The city then had\n40,000 inhabitants; it now contains 600,000.\n\n  [Footnote 47: A mistake of the reviewer's. Samuel Adams had no hand\n  in writing the Declaration, nor does de Chastellux say that he\n  had.--ED. C. W. ]\n\nWe can easily conceive that, in contrasting the appearance of this\nrepublican government with the great French monarchy, he should have\nfound abundant food for study and reflection. He speaks with great\nreserve, but what little he says is enough to show that he was not so\nmuch enamored of republican ideas as Lafayette and most of his\nfriends. The disciple of Montesquieu loses much of his admiration for\nthe American constitutions when he sees them in operation, and seems\nespecially loath to introduce them into his own country. The\nconstitution of Pennsylvania strikes him as particularly defective.\n\n\"The state of Pennsylvania is far from being one of the best governed\nof the members of the confederation. The government is without force;\nnor can it be otherwise. A popular government can never have any\nwhilst the people are uncertain and vacillating in their opinions; for\nthen the leaders seek rather to please than to serve them, and end by\nbecoming the slaves of the multitude whom they pretended to govern.\"\n\nThis constitution had one capital defect: it provided only for a\nsingle legislative chamber. After a disastrous trial, Pennsylvania was\n{190} compelled to change her laws, and adopt the system of two\nchambers, like the other states of the Union.\n\nOur author betrays his misgivings most clearly in his narrative of an\ninterview with Samuel Adams. His report of the conversation is\nespecially curious, as it shows how entirely the two speakers were\npreoccupied by different ideas. Samuel Adams, who has been called \"the\nAmerican Cato,\" bent himself to prove the revolution justifiable, by\narguments drawn not only from natural right but from historical\nprecedent. The thoroughly English character of mind of these\ninnovators led them to make it a sort of point of honor to find a\nsanction for their conduct in tradition. M. de Chastellux, like a true\nFrenchman, made no account of such reasonings.\n\n\"I am clearly of opinion that the parliament of England had no right\nto tax America without her consent; but I am still more clearly\nconvinced that, when a whole people say, 'We will be free!' it is\ndifficult to demonstrate that they are in the wrong. Be that as it\nmay, Mr. Adams very satisfactorily proved to me that New England was\npeopled with no view to commerce and aggrandizement, but wholly by\nindividuals who fled from persecution, and sought an asylum at the\nextremity of the world, where they might be free to live and follow\ntheir own opinions; that it was of their own accord that these\ncolonists placed themselves under the protection of England; that the\nmutual relationship springing from this connection was expressed in\ntheir charters, and that the right of imposing or exacting a revenue\nof any kind was not comprised in them.\" There was no question between\nthe two speakers of the Federal Constitution, for it did not yet\nexist. The states at that time formed merely a confederation of\nsovereign states, with a general congress, like the German\nconfederation. They had no president or central administration. The\nconstitutions spoken of in this conversation were simply the separate\nconstitutions of the individual states, and Samuel Adams, being from\nMassachusetts, referred particularly to that state. M. de Chastellux,\naccustomed to the complex social systems of Europe, was surprised that\nno property qualification should be required of voters; the Americans,\non the contrary, who had always lived in a democratic community, both\nbefore and since the declaration of independence, could not comprehend\nthe necessity of such a restriction. Both were doubtless right; for it\nis equally difficult to establish political inequality where it does\nnot already exist, and to suddenly abolish it where it does exist. The\nconstitution of Massachusetts, superior in this respect to that of\nPennsylvania, provided for a moderating power by creation of a\ngovernor's council, elected by property-holders.\n\nOur author's first journey terminates in the north, near the Canada\nfrontier. He crosses the frozen rivers in a sleigh, in order to visit\nthe battle-field of Saratoga, the scene, three years before, the\ncapitulation of General Burgoyne, the most important success which the\nAmericans had achieved previous to the arrival of the French.\nReturning to Newport in the early part of 1781, after having\ntravelled, in the course of two months, more than three hundred\nleagues, on horseback or in sleighs, he passed the rest of the year\nsolely occupied in the duties of the glorious campaign which put an\nend to the war. He wrote a journal of this campaign, but it has not\nbeen published. He speaks of it in the narrative of his travels. From\nthe _Memoires_ of Rochambeau, however, we learn something of his\ngallant behavior at the siege of Yorktown, where, at the head of the\nreserve, he repulsed a sortie of the enemy.\n\nHis second journey was made immediately after the surrender of\nCornwallis, and was directed toward Virginia, the most important of\nthe southern, as Pennsylvania was of the northern, states. It was the\nbirth-place of Washington, of Jefferson, of Madison, and {191} of\nMonroe; the state which shared most actively in the war of\nindependence, and which is now the principal battle-field of the\nbloody struggle between North and South. This second journey did not\npartake of the military and political character of the first. Now that\nthe destiny of America seemed settled, the author gave his attention,\nprincipally, to natural history. In every phrase we recognize the\npupil and admirer of Buffon. His chief purpose was to visit a natural\nbridge of rock across one of the affluents of the James river, in the\nAppalachian mountains. He describes this stupendous arch with great\ncare, and illustrates his narrative with several drawings which he\ncaused to be made by an officer of engineers.\n\n_A propos_ of this subject, he indulges in speculations upon the\ngeological formation of the New World, quite after the manner of the\nauthor of _Epoques de la nature_. On the road he amused himself by\nhunting. He describes the animals that he kills, and gives an account\nof the mocking-bird, which almost equals Buffon's in vivacity, and\nexcels it in accuracy. He gives several details respecting the\nopossum, that singular animal which almost seems to belong to a\ndifferent creation. All natural objects interest him, and he studies\nthem with the zeal of a first discoverer. His description of the\nmocking-bird is well worth reproducing:\n\n\"I rose with the sun, and, while breakfast was preparing, took a walk\naround the house. The birds were heard on every side, but my attention\nwas chiefly attracted by a very agreeable song, which appeared to\nproceed from a neighboring tree. I approached softly, and perceived it\nto be a mocking-bird, saluting the rising sun. At first I was afraid\nof frightening it, but my presence, on the contrary, gave it pleasure;\nfor, apparently delighted at having an auditor, it sang better than\nbefore, and its emulation seemed to increase when it saw a couple of\ndogs, which followed me, draw near to the tree on which it was\nperched. It kept hopping incessantly from branch to branch, still\ncontinuing its song; for this extraordinary bird is not less\nremarkable for its agility than its charming notes. It keeps\nperpetually rising and sinking, so as to appear not less the favorite\nof Terpsichore than Polyhymnia. This bird cannot certainly be\nreproached with fatiguing its auditors, for nothing can be more varied\nthan its song, of which it is impossible to give an imitation, or even\nto furnish any adequate idea. As it had every reason to be satisfied\nwith my attention, it concealed from me none of its talents; and one\nwould have thought that, after having delighted me with a concert, it\nwas desirous of entertaining me with a comedy. It began to counterfeit\ndifferent birds; those which it imitated the most naturally, at least\nto a stranger, were the jay, the raven, the cardinal, and the lapwing.\nIt appeared desirous of detaining me near it; for, after I had\nlistened for a quarter of an hour, it followed me on my return to the\nhouse, flying from tree to tree, always singing, sometimes its natural\nsong, at others those which it had learned in Virginia and in its\ntravels; for this bird is one of those which change climate, although\nit sometimes appears here during the winter.\"\n\nContinuing his journey, the traveller visited Jefferson at his\ncountry-home, situated deep in the wilderness, on the skirts of the\nBlue Ridge. This visit gives him opportunity for a new historical\nportrait:\n\n\"It was Jefferson himself who built his house and chose the situation.\nHe calls it Monticello ['little mountain'], a modest title, for it is\nbuilt upon a very high mountain; but the name indicates the owner's\nattachment to the language of Italy, and above all to the fine arts,\nof which that country was the cradle. He is a man not yet forty, of\ntall stature and a mild and pleasant countenance; but his mind and\nunderstanding are ample substitutes for every external grace. {192} An\nAmerican who, without having ever quitted his own country, is skilled\nin music and drawing; a geometrician, an astronomer, a natural\nphilosopher, a jurist and a statesman; a senator who sat for two years\nin the congress which brought about the revolution, and which is never\nmentioned without respect, though unhappily not without regret;\n[Footnote 48] a governor of Virginia, who filled this difficult\nstation during the invasions of Arnold, of Phillips, and of\nCornwallis; in fine, a philosopher in voluntary retirement from the\nworld and public affairs, because he only loves the world so long as\nhe can flatter himself with the conviction that he is of some use to\nmankind. A mild and amiable wife, charming children, of whose\neducation he himself takes charge, a house to embellish, great\npossessions to improve, and the arts and sciences to cultivate--these\nare what remain to Mr. Jefferson after having played a distinguished\npart on the theatre of the New World. Before I had been two hours in\nhis company, we were as ultimate as if we had passed our whole lives\ntogether. Walking, books, but above all a conversation always varied\nand interesting, sustained by that sweet satisfaction experienced by\ntwo persons whose sentiments are always in unison, and who understand\neach other at the first hint, made four days seem to me only so many\nminutes. No object had escaped Mr. Jefferson's attention; and it\nseemed as if from his youth he had placed his mind, as he has done his\nhouse, on an elevation from which he might contemplate the universe.\"\n\n  [Footnote 48: The United States were then passing through a crisis\n  of anarchy, which lasted until the adoption of the Federal\n  Constitution in 1788, and the elevation of Washington to the\n  presidency.]\n\nAt the period of this visit, Mr. Jefferson thought only of retirement;\nbut when M. de Chastellux's _Voyages en Amerique_ appeared, three\nyears afterward, he was minister-plenipotentiary of the United States\nin Paris. The death of his wife had determined him to return to public\nlife. He formed a solid friendship for M. de Chastellux, of which his\ncorrespondence contains abundant proof. The brilliant French soldier\nintroduced the solitary of Monticello, the \"American wild-man of the\nmountains,\" to the _salons_ of Paris; and the republican statesman, with\nthe manners of an aristocrat, entered, nothing loath, into the society\nof the gay and polished capital, where he received the same welcome\nand honors that were accorded to Franklin.\n\nThis portion of the _Journal_ closes with some general remarks upon\nVirginia, which possess a new interest now that the people of that\nstate reappear upon the scene in the same bellicose and indomitable\ncharacter which they bore of old.\n\n\"The Virginians differ essentially from the people of the North, not\nonly in the nature of their climate, soil, and agriculture, but in\nthat indelible character which is imprinted on every nation at the\nmoment of its origin, and which, by perpetuating itself from\ngeneration to generation, justifies the great principle that\n'everything which is partakes of that which has been.' The settlement\nof Virginia took place at the commencement of the seventeenth century.\nThe republican and democratic spirit was not then common in England;\nthat of commerce and navigation was scarcely in its infancy. The long\nwars with France and Spain had perpetuated the military spirit, and\nthe first colonists of Virginia were composed in great part of\ngentlemen who had no other profession than that of arms. It was\nnatural, therefore, for these colonists, who were filled with military\nprinciples and the prejudices of nobility, to carry them even into the\nmidst of the savages whose lands they came to occupy. Another cause\nwhich operated in forming their character was the institution of\nslavery. It may be asked how these prejudices have been brought to\ncoincide with a revolution founded on such different principles? I\nanswer {193} that they have perhaps contributed to produce it. While\nthe insurrection in New England was the result of reason and\ncalculation, Virginia revolted through pride.\"\n\n\n\nThe third and last journey of M. de Chastellux led him through New\nHampshire, Massachusetts, and northern Pennsylvania. This was during\nthe months of November and December, 1782, on the eve of his return to\nFrance. He started from Hartford, the capital of Connecticut, and,\nafter visiting several other places, went to Boston, for he could not\nleave America without seeing this city, the cradle of the revolution.\nHe found at this port the French fleet, under command of M. de\nVaudreuil, which was to carry back the expeditionary corps to France.\nHe closes his _Journal_ with an interesting account of the university\nat Cambridge, which Ampere, who was, like him, a member of the French\nAcademy, visited and described seventy years afterward. In the\nappendix to his book he gives a letter written by himself on board the\nfrigate _l'Emeraude_, just before sailing, to Mr. Madison, professor\nof philosophy in William and Mary College. It is upon a subject which\nhas not yet lost its appropriateness--the future of the arts and\nsciences in America. A democratic and commercial society, always in a\nferment, seemed to him hardly compatible with scientific, and still\nless with artistic, progress. But, in his solicitude for the welfare\nof the country he had been defending, he would not allow that the\ndifficulty was insuperable. Some of his remarks upon this subject are\nextremely delicate and ingenious.\n\nThe question which troubled him is not yet fully answered, but it is\nin a fair way of being settled. The United States have really made but\nlittle progress in the arts, though they have produced a few pictures\nand statues which have elicited admiration even in Europe at recent\nindustrial exhibitions. They are beginning, however, to have a\nliterature. Even in the days of the revolution they could boast of the\nwritings of Franklin, which combined the-most charming originality\nwith refinement and solid good sense. Now they can show, among\nnovelists, Fenimore Cooper and the celebrated Mrs. Beecher Stowe,\nwhose book gave the signal for another revolution; among\nstory-tellers, Washington Irving and Hawthorne; among critics,\nTicknor; among historians, Prescott and Bancroft; among economists,\nCarey; among political writers, Everett; among moralists, Emerson and\nChanning; among poets, Bryant and Longfellow. In science they have\ndone still more. They have adopted and naturalized one of the first of\nmodern geologists, Agassiz; and the hydrographical labors of Maury,\n[late] director of the Washington Observatory, are the admiration of\nthe whole world. Their immense development in industrial pursuits\nimplies a corresponding progress in practical science. It was Fulton,\nan American, who invented the steamboat, and carried out in his own\ncountry the idea which he could not persuade Europe to listen to; and\nonly lately the reaping-machine has come to us from the shores of the\ngreat lakes and the vast prairies of the Far West.\n\nWhen the _Voyages en Amerique_ appeared, the revolutionary party in\nFrance were still more dissatisfied with the book than they had been\nwith the _Felicite publique_. They were angry at the wise and\nunprejudiced judgments which the author passed upon men and things in\nthe New World; they were angry that he found some things not quite\nperfect in republican society, that his praises of democracy were not\nlouder, his denunciations of the past not more sweeping. Brissot de\nWarville, whose caustic pen was already in full exercise, published a\nbitter review of the book. Some of the hostile criticisms found their\nway to the United States, and M. de Chastellux, in sending a copy of\nhis work to General Washington, took occasion to {194} defend himself.\nHe received from the general a long and affectionate reply, written at\nMount Vernon, in April, 1786.\n\n\n\nM. de Chastellux also wrote a \"Discourse on the Advantages and\nDisadvantages which have resulted to Europe from the Discovery of\nAmerica,\" and edited the comedies of the Marchioness de Gleon. This\nlady, celebrated for her wit and beauty, was the daughter of a rich\nfinancier. At her house, La Chevrette, near Montmorency, she\nentertained all the literary world, and gave representations of her\nown plays. Her friend, M. de Chastellux, was himself the author of a\nfew dramatic pieces, performed either at La Chevrette or at the Prince\nde Conde's, at Chantilly; but they have never been published. We shall\nrespect his reserve, and refrain from giving our readers a taste\neither of these compositions or of his \"Plan for a general Reform of\nthe French Infantry,\" and other unpublished writings.\n\n\nAfter his return from America, de Chastellux was appointed governor of\nLongwy. He had reached the age of nearly fifty and was still\nunmarried, when he met at the baths of Spa, which were still the\nresort of all the good company in Europe, a young, beautiful, and\naccomplished Irish girl, named Miss Plunkett, with whom he fell over\nhead and ears in love. He married her in 1787, but did not long enjoy\nhis happiness, for he died the next year. Like most men who devote\nthemselves to the public welfare, he had sadly neglected his private\naffairs. Being the youngest of five children, his fortune was not\nlarge, and it gave him little trouble to run through it. General\nofficers in those days took a pride in their profuse expenditures in\nthe field: he ruined himself by his American campaign. His widow was\nattached in the capacity of maid of honor to the person of the\nestimable daughter of the Duke de Penthievre, the Duchess of Orleans,\nmother of King Louis Philippe. This princess adopted, after a certain\nfashion, his posthumous son, who became one of the _chevaliers\nd'honneur_ of Madame Adelaide, the daughter of his patroness. He was\nsuccessively a deputy and peer of France after the revolution 1830. He\npublished a short memoir of his father, prefixed to an edition of the\n_Felicite publique_.\n\n------\n\n{195}\n\nFrom The Month.\n\nTHE LEGEND OF LIMERICK BELLS.\n\nBY BESSIE RAYNER PARKES.\n\n\n  There is a convent on the Alban hill,\n      Round whose stone roots the gnarled olives grow;\n  Above are murmurs of the mountain rill,\n      And all the broad Campagna lies below;\n  Where faint gray buildings and a shadowy dome\n  Suggest the splendor of eternal Rome.\n\n  Hundreds of years ago, these convent-walls\n      Were reared by masons of the Gothic age:\n  The date is carved upon the lofty halls,\n      The story written on the illumined page.\n  What pains they took to make it strong and fair\n  The tall bell-tower and sculptured porch declare.\n\n  When all the stones were placed, the windows stained,\n      And the tall bell-tower finished to the crown,\n  Only one want in this fair pile remained,\n      Whereat a cunning workman of the town\n  (The little town upon the Alban hill)\n  Toiled day and night his purpose to fulfil.\n\n  Seven bells he made, of very rare devise,\n      With graven lilies twisted up and down;\n  Seven bells proportionate in differing size,\n      And full of melody from rim to crown;\n  So that, when shaken by the wind alone,\n  They murmured with a soft AEolian tone.\n\n  These being placed within the great bell-tower,\n      And duly rung by pious skilful hand,\n  Marked the due prayers of each recurring hour,\n      And sweetly mixed persuasion with command.\n  Through the gnarled olive-trees the music wound,\n  And miles of broad Campagna heard the sound.\n\n  And then the cunning workman put aside\n      His forge, his hammer, and the tools he used\n  To chase those lilies; his keen furnace died;\n      And all who asked for bells were hence refused.\n  With these his best, his last were also wrought,\n  And refuge in the convent-walls he sought.\n\n  There did he live, and there he hoped to die,\n      Hearing the wind among the cypress-trees\n  Hint unimagined music, and the sky\n      Throb full of chimes borne downward by the breeze;\n  Whose undulations, sweeping through the air,\n  His art might claim as an embodied prayer.\n\n{196}\n\n----\n\n  But those were stormy days in Italy:\n      Down came the spoiler from the uneasy North,\n  Swept the Campagna to the bounding sea,\n      Sacked pious homes, and drove the inmates forth;\n  Whether a Norman or a German foe,\n  History is silent, and we do not know.\n\n  Brothers in faith were they; yet did not deem\n      The sacred precincts barred destroying hand.\n  Through those rich windows poured the whitened beam,\n      Forlorn the church and ruined altar stand.\n  As the sad monks went forth, that self-same hour\n  Saw empty silence in the great bell-tower.\n\n  The outcast brethren scattered far and wide;\n      Some by the Danube rested, some in Spain:\n  On the green Loire the aged abbot died,\n      By whose loved feet one brother did remain\n  Faithful in all his wanderings: it was he\n  Who cast and chased those bells in Italy.\n\n  He, dwelling at Marmontier, by the tomb\n      Of his dear father, where the shining Loire\n  Flows down from Tours amidst the purple bloom\n      Of meadow-flowers, some years of patience saw.\n  Those fringed isles (where poplars tremble still)\n  Swayed like the olives of the Alban hill.\n\n  The man was old, and reverend in his age;\n      And the \"Great Monastery\" held him dear.\n  Stalwart and stern, as some old Roman sage\n      Subdued to Christ, he lived from year to year,\n  Till his beard silvered, and the fiery glow\n  Of his dark eye was overhung with snow.\n\n  And being trusted, as of prudent way,\n      They chose him for a message of import,\n  Which the \"Great Monastery\" would convey\n      To a good patron in an Irish court;\n  Who, by the Shannon, sought the means to found\n  St. Martin's off-shoot on that distant ground.\n\n  The old Italian took his staff in hand,\n      And journeyed slowly from the green Touraine\n  Over the heather and salt-shining sand,\n      Until he saw the leaping crested main,\n  Which, dashing round the Cape of Brittany,\n  Sweeps to the confines of the Irish Sea.\n\n{197}\n\n  There he took ship, and thence with laboring sail\n      He crossed the waters, till a faint gray line\n  Rose in the northern sky; so faint, so pale,\n      Only the heart that loves her would divine,\n  In her dim welcome, all that fancy paints\n  Of the green glory of the Isle of Saints.\n\n  Through the low banks, where Shannon meets the sea,\n      Up the broad waters of the River King\n  (Then populous with a nation), journeyed he,\n      Through that old Ireland which her poets sing;\n  And the white vessel, breasting up the stream,\n  Moved slowly, like a ship within a dream.\n\n  When Limerick towers uprose before his gaze,\n      A sound of music floated in the air--\n  Music which held him in a fixed amaze,\n      Whose silver tenderness was alien there;\n  Notes full of murmurs of the southern seas,\n  And dusky olives swaying in the breeze.\n\n  His chimes! the children of the great bell-tower,\n      Empty and silent now for many a year,\n  He hears them ringing out the vesper hour,\n      Owned in an instant by his loving ear.\n  Kind angels stayed the spoiler's hasty hand,\n  And watched their journeying over sea and land.\n\n  The white-sailed boat moved slowly up the stream;\n      The old man lay with folded hands at rest;\n  The Shannon glistened in the sunset beam;\n      The bells rang gently o'er its shining breast,\n  Shaking out music from each lilied rim:\n  It was a requiem which they rang for him.\n\n  For when the boat was moored beside the quay,\n      He lay as children lie when lulled by song;\n  But never more to waken. Tenderly\n      They buried him wild-flowers and grass among,\n  Where on the cross alights the wandering bird,\n  And hour by hour the bells he loved are heard.\n\n------\n\n{198}\n\n\nFrom London Society.\n\nA PERILOUS JOURNEY.\n\n\nA TALE.\n\n\n  There is a tide in the affairs of men,\n  Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune--\n\n\nSo says the sage, and it is not to be gainsayed by any man whom forty\nwinters have chilled into wisdom. Ability and opportunity are fortune.\nOpportunity is not fortune; otherwise all were fortunate. Ability is\nnot fortune, else why does genius slave? Why? But because it missed\n_the_ opportunity that fitted it?\n\nWhat I have--wife, position, independence--I owe to an opportunity for\nexercising the very simple and unpretending combination of qualities\nthat goes by the name of ability. But to my story.\n\nMy father was a wealthy country gentleman, of somewhat more than the\naverage of intelligence, and somewhat more than the average of\ngenerosity and extravagance. His younger brother, a solicitor in large\npractice in London, would in vain remonstrate as to the imprudence of\nhis course. Giving freely, spending freely, must come to an end. It\ndid; and at twenty I was a well educated, gentlemanly pauper. The\ninvestigation of my father's affairs showed that there was one\nshilling and sixpence in the pound for the whole of his creditors, and\nof course nothing for me.\n\nThe position was painful. I was half engaged--to that is, I had\ngloves, flowers, a ringlet, a carte de visite of Alice Morton. That,\nof course, must be stopped.\n\nMr. Silas Morton was not ill-pleased at the prospect of an alliance\nwith his neighbor Westwood's son while there was an expectation of a\nprovision for the young couple in the union of estates as well as\npersons; but now, when the estate was gone, when I, Guy Westwood, was\nshillingless in the world, it would be folly indeed. Nevertheless I\nmust take my leave.\n\n\"Well, Guy, my lad, bad job this; very bad job; thought he was as safe\nas the Bank. Would not have believed it from any one--not from any\none. Of course all that nonsense about you and Alice must be stopped\nnow; I'm not a hard man, but I can't allow Alice to throw away her\nlife in the poverty she would have to bear as your wife; can't do it;\nwouldn't be the part of a father if I did.\"\n\nI suggested I might in time.\n\n\"Time, sir! time! How much? She's nineteen now. You're brought up to\nnothing; know nothing that will earn you a sixpence for the next six\nmonths; and you talk about time. Time, indeed! Keep her waiting till\nshe's thirty, and then break her heart by finding it a folly to marry\nat all.'\n\n\"Ah! Alice, my dear, Guy's come to say 'Good by:' he sees, with me,\nthat his altered position compels him, as an honorable man, to give up\nany hopes he may have formed as to the future.\"\n\nHe left us alone to say 'Farewell!'--a word too hard to say at our\nages. Of course we consulted what should be done. To give each other\nup, to bury the delicious past, that was not to be thought of. We\nwould be constant, spite of all. I must gain a position, and papa\nwould then help us.\n\nTwo ways were open; a commission in India, a place in my uncle's\noffice. Which? I was for the commission, Alice for the office. A\nrespectable influential solicitor; a position not to be despised;\nnothing but cleverness wanted; and my uncle's name, and no one to wait\nfor; no liver {199} complaints; no sepoys; no sea voyages; and no long\nseparation.\n\n\"Oh, I'm sure it is the best thing.\"\n\nI agreed, not unnaturally then, that it was the best.\n\n\"Now, you young people, you've had time enough to say 'Good by,' so be\noff, Guy. Here, my lad, you'll need something to start with,\" and the\nold gentleman put into my hands a note for fifty pounds.\n\n\"I must beg, sir, that you will not insult--\"\n\n\"God bless the boy! 'Insult!' Why I've danced you on my knee hundreds\nof times. Look you, Guy,\"--and the old fellow came and put his hand on\nmy shoulder,--\"it gives me pain to do what I am doing. I believe, for\nboth your sakes, it is best you should part. Let us part friends. Come\nnow, Guy, you'll need this; and if you need a little more, let me\nknow.\"\n\n\"But, sir, you cut me off from all hope; you render my life a burden\nto me. Give me some definite task; say how much you think we ought to\nhave; I mean how much I ought to have to keep Alice--I mean Miss\nMorton--in such a position as you would wish.\"\n\nAlice added her entreaties, and the result of the conference was an\nunderstanding that if, within five years from that date, I could show\nI was worth L500 a year, the old gentleman would add another L500; and\non that he thought we might live for a few years comfortably.\n\nThere was to be no correspondence whatever; no meetings, no messages.\nWe protested and pleaded, and finally he said--\n\n\"Well, well, Guy; I always liked you, and liked your father before\nyou. Come to us on Christmas day, and you shall find a vacant chair\nbeside Alice. There, now; say 'Good by,' and be off.\"\n\nI went off. I came to London to one of the little lanes leading out of\nCannon street. Five hundred a year in five years! I must work hard.\n\nMy uncle took little notice of me; I fancied worked me harder than the\nrest, and paid me the same. Seventy-five pounds a year is not a large\nsum. I had spent it in a month before now, after the fashion of my\nfather: now, I hoarded; made clothes last; ate in musty, cheap, little\ncook-shops; and kept my enjoying faculties from absolute rust by a\nweekly half-price to the theatres--the pit.\n\nThe year passed. I went down on Christmas, and for twenty-four hours\nwas alive; came back, and had a rise of twenty pounds in salary for\nthe next year. I waited for opportunity, and it came not.\n\nThis jog-trot routine of office-work continued for two years more, and\nat the end of that time I was worth but my salary of L135 per\nyear--L135! a long way from L500. Oh, for opportunity? I must quit the\ndesk, and become a merchant; all successful men have been merchants;\nmoney begets money. But, to oppose all these thoughts of change, came\nthe memory of Alice's last words at Christmas, \"Wait and hope, Guy,\ndear; wait and hope.\" Certainly; it's so easy to.\n\n\"Governor wants you, Westwood. He's sharp this morning; very sharp; so\nlook out, my dear nephy.\"\n\n\"You understand a little Italian, I think?\" said my uncle.\n\n\"A little, sir.\"\n\n\"You will start to-night for Florence, in the mail train. Get there as\nrapidly as possible, and find whether a Colonel Wilson is residing\nthere, and what lady he is residing with. Learn all you can as to his\nposition and means, and the terms on which he lives with that lady.\nWrite to me, and wait there for further instructions. Mr. Williams\nwill give you a cheque for L100; you can get circular notes for L50,\nand the rest cash. If you have anything to say, come in here at five\no'clock; if not, good morning. By-the-by, say nothing in the office.\"\n\nI need not say that hope made me believe my opportunity was come.\n\nI hurried to Florence and discharged my mission; sent home a {200}\ncareful letter, full of facts without comment or opinion, and in three\nweeks' time was summoned to return. I had done little or nothing that\ncould help me, and in a disappointed state of mind I packed up and\nwent to the railway station at St. Dominico. A little row with a\npeasant as to his demand for carrying my baggage caused me to lose the\nlast train that night, and so the steamer at Leghorn. The\nstation-master, seeing my vexation, endeavored to console me:\n\n\"There will be a special through train to Leghorn at nine o'clock,\nordered for Count Spezzato: he is good-natured, and will possibly let\nyou go in that.\"\n\nIt was worth the chance, and I hung about the station till I was\ntired, and then walked back toward the village. Passing a small\nwine-shop, I entered, and asked for wine in English. I don't know what\nwhim possessed me when I did it, for they were unable to understand me\nwithout dumb motions. I at length got wine by these means, and sat\ndown to while away the time over a railway volume.\n\nI had been seated about half an hour, when a courier entered,\naccompanied by a railway guard. Two more different examples of the\nhuman race it would be difficult to describe.\n\nThe guard was a dark, savage-looking Italian, with 'rascal' and\n'bully' written all over him; big, black, burly, with bloodshot eyes,\nand thick, heavy, sensual lips, the man was utterly repulsive.\n\nThe courier was a little, neatly-dressed man, of no age in particular;\npale, blue-eyed, straight-lipped, his face was a compound of fox and\nrabbit that only a fool or a patriot would have trusted out of arm's\nlength.\n\nThis ill-matched pair called for brandy, and the hostess set it before\nthem. I then heard them ask who and what I was. She replied, I must be\nan Englishman, and did not understand the Italian for wine. She then\nleft.\n\nThey evidently wanted to be alone, and my presence was decidedly\ndisagreeable to them; and muttering that I was an Englishman, they\nproceeded to try my powers as a linguist. The courier commenced in\nItalian, with a remark on the weather. I immediately handed him the\nNewspaper. I didn't speak Italian, that was clear to them.\n\nThe guard now struck in with a remark in French as to the fineness of\nthe neighboring country. I shrugged my shoulders, and produced my\ncigar case. French was not very familiar to me, evidently.\n\n\"Those beasts of English think their own tongue so fine they are too\nproud to learn another,\" said the guard.\n\nI sat quietly, sipping my wine, and reading.\n\n\"Well, my dear Michael Pultuski,\" began the guard.\n\n\"For the love of God, call me by that name. My name is Alexis Alexis\nDzentzol, now.\"\n\n\"Oh! oh!\" laughed the guard; \"you've changed your name, you fox; it's\nlike you. Now I am the same that you knew fifteen years ago, Conrad\nFerrate--to-day, yesterday, and for life, Conrad Ferrate. Come, lad,\ntell us your story. How did you get out of that little affair at\nWarsaw? How they could have trusted you, with your face, with their\nsecrets, I can't for the life of me tell; you look so like a sly\nknave, don't you, lad?\"\n\nThe courier, so far from resenting this familiarity, smiled, as if he\nhad been praised.\n\n\"My story is soon said. I found, after my betrayal to the police of\nthe secrets of that little conspiracy which you and I joined, that\nPoland was too hot for me, and my name too well known. I went to\nFrance, who values her police, and for a few years was useful to them.\nBut it was dull work; very dull; native talent was more esteemed. I\nwas to be sent on a secret service to Warsaw; I declined for obvious\nreasons.\"\n\n\"Good! Michael--Alexis; good, {201} Alexis. This fox is not to be\ntrapped.\" And he slapped the courier on the shoulder heartily.\n\n\"And,\" resumed the other, \"I resigned. Since then I have travelled as\ncourier with noble families, and I trust I give satisfaction.\"\n\n\"Good! Alexis; good Mich--good Alexis! To yourself you give\nsatisfaction. You are a fine rascal!--the prince of rascals! So decent;\nso quiet; so like the cure of a convent. Who would believe that you\nhad sold the lives of thirty men for a few hundred roubles?\"\n\n\"And who,\" interrupted the courier, \"would believe that you, bluff,\nhonest Conrad Ferrate, had run away with all the money those thirty\nmen had collected during ten years of labor, for rescuing their\ncountry from the Russian?\"\n\n\"That was good, Alexis, was it not? I never was so rich in my life as\nthen; I loved--I gamed--I drank on the patriots' money.\"\n\n\"For how long? Three years?\"\n\n\"More--and now have none left. Ah! Times change, Alexis; behold me.\"\nAnd the guard touched his buttons and belt, the badges of his office.\n\"Never mind--here's my good friend, the bottle--let us embrace--the\nonly friend that is always true--if he does not gladden, he makes us\nto forget.\"\n\n\"Tell me, my good Alexis, whom do you rob now? Who pays for the best,\nand gets the second best? Whose money do you invest, eh! my little\nfox? Why are you here? Come, tell me, while I drink to your success.\"\n\n\"I have the honor to serve his Excellency the Count Spezzato.\"\n\n\"Ten thousand devils! My accursed cousin!\" broke in the guard. \"He who\nhas robbed me from his birth; whose birth itself was a vile robbery of\nme--me, his cousin, child of his father's brother. May he be accursed\nfor ever!\"\n\nI took most particular pains to appear only amused at this genuine\noutburst of passion, for I saw the watchful eye of the courier was on\nme all the time they were talking.\n\nThe guard drank off a tumbler of brandy.\n\n\"That master of yours is the man of whom I spoke to you years ago, as\nthe one who had ruined me; and you serve him! May he be strangled on\nhis wedding night, and cursed for ever.\"\n\n\"Be calm, my dearest Conrad, calm yourself; that beast of an\nEnglishman will think you are drunk, like one of his own swinish\npeople, if you talk so loud as this.\"\n\n\"How can I help it? I must talk. What _he_ is, that _I_ ought to be: I\nwas brought up to it till I was eighteen; was the heir to all his vast\nestate; there was but one life between me and power--my uncle's--and\nhe, at fifty, married a girl, and had this son, this son of perdition,\nmy cousin. And after that, I, who had been the pride of my family,\nbecame of no account; it was 'Julian' sweet Julian!'\"\n\n\"I heard,\" said the courier, \"that some one attempted to strangle the\nsweet child, that was----?\"\n\n\"Me--you fox--me. I wish I had done it; but for that wretched dog that\nworried me, I should have been Count Spezzato now. I killed that dog,\nkilled him, no not suddenly; may his master die like him!\"\n\n\"And you left after that little affair?\"\n\n\"Oh yes! I left and became what you know me.\"\n\n\"A clever man, my dear Conrad. I know no man who is more clever with\nthe ace than yourself, and, as to bullying to cover a mistake, you are\nan emperor at that. Is it not so, Conrad? Come, drink good health to\nmy master, your cousin.\"\n\n\"You miserable viper, I'll crush you if you ask me to do that again.\nI'll drink--here, give me the glass--Here's to Count Spezzato: May he\ndie like a dog! May his carcase bring the birds and the wolves\ntogether! May his name be cursed and hated while the sun lasts! And\nmay purgatory keep him till I pray for his release!\"\n\n{202}\n\nThe man's passion was something frightful to see, and I was more than\nhalf inclined to leave the place; but something, perhaps a distant\nmurmur of the rising tide, compelled me to stay. I pretended sleep,\nallowing my head to sink, down upon the table.\n\nHe sat still for a few moments, and then commenced walking about the\nroom, and abruptly asked:\n\n\"What brought you here, Alexis?\"\n\n\"My master's horse, Signor Conrad.\"\n\n\"Good, my little fox; but why did you come on your master's horse?\"\n\n\"Because my master wishes to reach Leghorn to-night, to meet his\nbride, Conrad.\"\n\n\"Then his is the special train ordered at nine, that I am to go with?\"\nexclaimed the guard eagerly.\n\n\"That is so, gentle Conrad; and now, having told you all, let me pay\nour hostess and go.\"\n\n\"Pay! No one pays for me, little fox; no, no, go; I will pay.\"\n\nThe courier took his departure, and the guard kept walking up and down\nthe room, muttering to himself:\n\n\"To-night, it might be to-night. If he goes to Leghorn, he meets his\nfuture wife; another life, and perhaps a dozen. No, it must be\nto-night or never. Does his mother go? Fool that I am not to ask! Yes;\nit shall be to-night;\" and he left the room.\n\nWhat should be \"to-night?\" Some foul play of which the count would be\nthe victim, no doubt. But how? when? That must be solved. To follow\nhim, or to wait--which? To wait. It is always best to wait; I had\nlearned this lesson already.\n\nI waited. It was now rather more than half-past eight, and I had risen\nto go to the door when I saw the guard returning to the wine-shop with\na man whose dress indicated the stoker.\n\n\"Come in, Guido; come in,\" said the guard; \"and drink with me.\"\n\nThe man came in, and I was again absorbed in my book.\n\nThey seated themselves at the same table as before, and drank silently\nfor a while; presently the guard began a conversation in some patois I\ncould not understand; but I could see the stoker grow more and more\ninterested as the name of Beatrix occurred more frequently.\n\nAs the talk went on, the stoker seemed pressing the guard on some part\nof the story with a most vindictive eagerness, repeatedly asking, \"His\nname? The accursed! His name?\"\n\nAt last the guard answered, \"The Count Spezzato.\"\n\n\"The Count Spezzato!\" said the stoker, now leaving the table, and\nspeaking in Italian.\n\n\"Yes, good Guido; the man who will travel in the train we take\nto-night to Leghorn.\"\n\n\"He shall die! The accursed! He shall die to-night!\" said the stoker.\n\"If I lose my life, the betrayer of my sister shall die!\"\n\nThe guard, returning to the unknown tongue, seemed to be endeavoring\nto calm him; and I could only catch a repetition of the word \"Empoli\"\nat intervals. Presently the stoker took from the seats beside him two\ntin bottles, such as you may see in the hands of mechanics who dine\nout; and I could see that one of them had rudely scratched on it the\nname \"William Atkinson.\" I fancied the guard produced from his pocket\na phial, and poured the contents into that bottle; but the action was\nso rapid, and the corner so dark, that I could not be positive; then\nrising, they stopped at the counter, had both bottles filled with\nbrandy, and went out.\n\nIt was now time to get to the station; and, having paid my modest\nscore, I went out.\n\nA little in front of me, by the light from a small window, I saw these\ntwo cross themselves, grip each other's hands across right to right,\nleft to left, and part.\n\nThe stoker had set down the bottles, and now taking them up followed\nthe guard at a slower pace.\n\n{203}\n\nArrived at the station, I found the count, his mother, a female\nservant, and the courier.\n\nThe count came up to me, and said, in broken English, \"You are the\nEnglish to go to Leghorn with me? Very well, there is room. I like the\nEnglish. You shall pay nothing, because I do not sell tickets; you\nshall go free. Is that so?\"\n\nI thanked him in the best Italian I could muster.\n\n\"Do not speak your Italian to me; I speak the English as a native; I\ncan know all you shall say to me in your own tongue. See, here is the\ntrain special, as you call it. Enter, as it shall please you.\"\n\nThe train drew up to the platform; and I saw that the stoker was at\nhis post, and that the engine-driver was an Englishman.\n\nI endeavored in vain to draw his attention to warn him, and was\ncompelled to take my seat, which I did in the compartment next the\nguard's break--the train consisting of only that carriage and another,\nin which were the count, his mother, and the servant.\n\nThe guard passed along the train, locked the doors, and entered his\nbox.\n\n\"The Florence goods is behind you, and the Sienna goods is due at\nEmpoli Junction four minutes before you; mind you don't run into it,\"\nsaid the station-master, with a laugh.\n\n\"No fear; _we_ shall not run into _it_,\" said the guard, with a marked\nemphasis on the \"we\" and \"it\" that I recalled afterward.\n\nThe whistle sounded, and we were off. It was a drizzling dark night;\nand I lay down full length on the seat to sleep.\n\nAs I lay down a gleam of light shot across the carriage from a small\nchink in the wood-work of the partition between the compartment I was\nin and the guard's box.\n\nI was terribly anxious for the manner of the guard; and this seemed to\nbe a means of hearing something more. I lay down and listened\nattentively.\n\n\"How much will you give for your life, my little fox?\" said the guard.\n\n\"To-day, very little; when I am sixty, all I have, Conrad.\"\n\n\"But you might give something for it, to-night, sweet Alexis, if you\nknew it was in danger?\"\n\n\"I have no fear; Conrad Ferrate has too often conducted a train for me\nto fear to-night.\"\n\n\"True, my good Alexis; but this is the last train he will ride with as\nguard, for to-morrow he will be the Count Spezzato.\"\n\n\"How? To-morrow? You joke, Conrad. The brandy was strong; but you who\nhave drunk so much could hardly feel that.\"\n\n\"I neither joke, nor am I drunk; yet I shall be Count Spezzato\nto-morrow, good Alexis. Look you, my gentle fox, my sweet fox; if you\ndo not buy your life of me, you shall die tonight. That is simple,\nsweet fox.\"\n\n\"Ay; but, Conrad, I am not in danger.\"\n\n\"Nay, Alexis; see, here is the door\" (I heard him turn the handle).\n\"If you lean against the door, you will fall out and be killed. Is it\nnot simple?\"\n\n\"But, good Conrad, I shall not lean against the door.\"\n\n\"Oh, my sweet fox, my cunning fox, my timid fox, but not my strong\nfox; you will lean against the door. I know you will, unless I prevent\nyou; and I will not prevent you, unless you give me all you have in\nthat bag.\"\n\nThe mocking tone of the guard seemed well understood, for I heard the\nclick of gold.\n\n\"Good, my Alexis; it is good; but it is very little for a life. Come,\nwhat is your life worth, that you buy it with only your master's\nmoney? it has cost you nothing. I see you will lean against that door,\nwhich is so foolish.\"\n\n\"What, in the name of all the devils in hell, will you have?\" said the\ntrembling voice of the courier. \"Only a little more; just that belt\n{204} that is under your shirt, under everything, next to your skin,\nand dearer to you; only a little soft leather belt with pouches in. Is\nnot life worth a leather belt?\"\n\n\"Wretch! All the earnings of my life are in that belt, and you know\nit.\"\n\n\"Is it possible, sweet fox, that I have found your nest? I shall give\nMarie a necklace of diamonds, then. Why do you wait? Why should you\nfall from a train, and make a piece of news for the papers? Why?\"\n\n\"Take it; and be accursed in your life and death!\" and I heard the\nbelt flung on the floor of the carriage.\n\n\"Now, good Alexis, I am in funds; there are three pieces of gold for\nyou; you will need them at Leghorn. Will you drink? No? Then I will\ntell you why, without drink. Do you know where we are?\"\n\n\"Yes; between St. Dominico and Signa.\"\n\n\"And do you know where we are going?\"\n\n\"Yes; to Leghorn.\"\n\n\"No, sweet Alexis, we are not; we are going to Empoli: the train will\ngo no further. Look you, little fox; we shall arrive at the junction\none minute before the Sienna goods train, and there the engine will\nbreak down just where the rails cross; for two blows of a hammer will\nconvert an engine into a log; I shall get out to examine it; that will\ntake a little time; I shall explain to the count the nature of the\ninjury; that will take a little time; and then the goods train will\nhave arrived; and as it does not stop there, this train will go no\nfurther than Empoli, and I shall be Count Spezzato to-morrow. How do\nyou like my scheme, little fox? Is it not worthy of your pupil? Oh, it\nwill be a beautiful accident; it will fill the papers. That beast of\nan English who begged his place in the train will be fortunate; he\nwill cease, for goods trains are heavy. Eh! but it's a grand scheme--\nthe son, the mother, the servant, the stranger, the engine-driver, all\nshall tell no tales.\"\n\n\"And the stoker?\" said the courier.\n\n\"Oh, you and he and I shall escape. We shall be pointed at in the\nstreet as the fortunate. It is good, is it not, Alexis, my fox? I have\ntold him that the count is the man who betrayed his sister. He\nbelieves it, and is my creature. But, little fox, it was not my\ncousin, it was myself, that took his Beatrix from her home. Is it not\ngood, Alexis? Is it not genius? And Atkinson--he, the driver--is now\nstupid: he has drunk from his can the poppy juice that will make him\nsleep for ever. I will be a politician. I am worthy of office. I will\nbecome the Minister of a Bourbon when I am count, my dear fox, and you\nshall be my comrade again, as of old.\"\n\nI was, for a time, lost to every sensation save that of hearing. The\nfiendish garrulity of the man had all the fascination of the serpent's\nrattle. I felt helplessly resigned to a certain fate.\n\nI was aroused by something white slowly passing the closed window of\nthe carriage. I waited a little, then gently opened it and looked out.\nThe stoker was crawling along the foot-board of the next carriage,\nholding on by its handles, so as not to be seen by the occupants, and\nholding the signal lantern that I had noticed at the back of the last\ncarriage in his hand. The meaning of it struck me in a moment: if by\nany chance we missed the goods train from Sienna, we should be run\ninto from behind by the train from Florence.\n\nThe cold air that blew in at the open window refreshed me, and I could\nthink what was to be done. The train was increasing its pace rapidly.\nEvidently the stoker, in sole charge, was striving to reach Empoli\nbefore the other train, which we should follow, was due: he had to\nmake five minutes in a journey of forty-five, and, at the rate we were\ngoing, we should do it. We stopped nowhere, and the journey was more\nthan half over. We were now between Segua and {205} Montelupo; another\ntwenty minutes and I should be a bruised corpse. Something must be\ndone.\n\nI decided soon. Unfastening my bag, I took out my revolver, without\nwhich I never travel, and looking carefully to the loading and\ncapping, fastened it to my waist with a handkerchief. I then cut with\nmy knife the bar across the middle of the window, and carefully looked\nout. I could see nothing; the rain was falling fast, and the night as\ndark as ever. I cautiously put out first one leg and then the other,\nkeeping my knees and toes close to the door, and lowered myself till I\nfelt the step. I walked carefully along the foot-board by side steps,\nholding on to the handles of the doors, till I came to the end of the\ncarriages, and was next the tender. Here was a gulf that seemed\nimpassable. The stoker must have passed over it; why not I? Mounting\nfrom the foot-board on to the buffer, and holding on to the iron hook\non which the lamps are hung, I stretched my legs to reach the flat\npart of the buffer on the tender. My legs swung about with the\nvibration, and touched nothing. I must spring. I had to hold with both\nhands behind my back, and stood on the case of the buffer-spring, and,\nsuddenly leaving go, leaped forward, struck violently against the edge\nof the tender, and grasped some of the loose lumps of coal on the top.\nAnother struggle brought me on my knees, bruised and bleeding, on the\ntop. I stood up, and at that moment the stoker opened the door of the\nfurnace, and turned toward me, shovel in hand, to put in the coals.\nThe bright red light from the fire enabled him to see me, while it\nblinded me. He rushed at me, and then began a struggle that I shall\nremember to my dying day.\n\nHe grasped me round the throat with one arm, dragging me close to his\nbreast, and with the other kept shortening the shovel for an effective\nblow. My hands, numbed and bruised, were almost useless to me, and for\nsome seconds we reeled to and fro on the foot-plate in the blinding\nglare. At last he got me against the front of the engine, and, with\nhorrible ingenuity, pressed me against it till the lower part of my\nclothes were burnt to a cinder. The heat, however, restored my hands,\nand at last I managed to push him far enough from my body to loosen my\npistol. I did not want to kill him, but I could not be very careful,\nand I fired at his shoulder from the back. He dropped the shovel, the\narm that had nearly throttled me relaxed, and he fell. I pushed him\ninto a corner of the tender, and sat down to recover myself.\n\nMy object was to get to Empoli before the Sienna goods train, for I\nknew nothing of what might be behind me. It was too late to stop, but\nI might, by shortening the journey seven minutes instead of five, get\nto Empoli three minutes before the goods train was due.\n\nI had never been on an engine before in my life, but I knew that there\nmust be a valve somewhere that let the steam from the boiler into the\ncylinders, and that, being important, it would be in a conspicuous\nposition. I therefore turned the large handle in front of me, and had\nthe satisfaction of finding the speed rapidly increased, and at the\nsame time felt the guard putting on the break to retard the train.\nSpite of this, in ten minutes I could see some dim lights; I could not\ntell where, and I still pressed on faster and faster.\n\nIn vain, between the intervals of putting on coals, did I try to\narouse the sleeping driver. There I was, with two apparently dead\nbodies, on the foot-plate of an engine, going at the rate of forty\nmiles an hour, or more, amidst a thundering noise and vibration that\nnearly maddened me.\n\nAt last we reached the lights, and I saw, as I dashed by, that we had\npassed the dread point.\n\nAs I turned back, I could see the rapidly-dropping cinders from the\ntrain which, had the guard's break been sufficiently powerful to have\nmade me {206} thirty seconds later, would have utterly destroyed me.\n\nI was still in a difficult position. There was the train half a minute\nbehind us, which, had we kept our time, would have been four minutes\nin front of us. It came on to the same rails, and I could hear its\ndull rumble rushing on toward us fast. If I stopped there was no light\nto warn them. I must go on, for the Sienna train did not stop at\nEmpoli.\n\nI put on more fuel, and after some slight scalding, from turning on\nthe wrong taps, had the pleasure of seeing the water-gauge filling up.\nStill I could not go on long; the risk was awful. I tried in vain to\nwrite on a leaf of my note-book, and after searching in the tool-box,\nwrote on the iron lid of the tank with a piece of chalk, \"Stop\neverything behind me. The train will not be stopped till three red\nlights are ranged in a line on the ground. Telegraph forward.\" And\nthen, as we flew through the Empoli station, I threw it on the\nplatform. On we went; the same dull thunder behind warning me that I\ndare not stop.\n\nWe passed through another station at full speed, and at length I saw\nthe white lights of another station in the distance. The sound behind\nhad almost ceased, and in a few moments more I saw the line of three\nred lamps low down on the ground. I pulled back the handle, and after\nan ineffectual effort to pull up at the station, brought up the train\nabout a hundred yards beyond Pontedera.\n\nThe porters and police of the station came up and put the train back,\nand then came the explanation.\n\nThe guard had been found dead on the rails, just beyond Empoli, and\nthe telegraph set to work to stop the train. He must have found out\nthe failure of his scheme, and in trying to reach the engine, have\nfallen on the rails.\n\nThe driver was only stupefied, and the stoker fortunately only\ndangerously, not fatally, wounded.\n\nAnother driver was found, and the train was to go on.\n\nThe count had listened most attentively to my statements, and then,\ntaking my grimed hand in his, led me to his mother.\n\n\"Madam, my mother, you have from this day one other son: this, my\nmother, is my brother.\"\n\nThe countess literally fell on my neck, and kissed me in the sight of\nthem all; and speaking in Italian said--\n\n\"Julian, he is my son; he has saved my life; and more, he has saved\nyour life. My son, I will not say much; what is your name?\"\n\n\"Guy Westwood.\"\n\n\"Guy, my child, my son, I am your mother; you shall love me.\"\n\n\"Yes, my mother; he is my brother, I am his. He is English too; I like\nEnglish. He has done well. Blanche shall be his sister.\"\n\nDuring the whole of this time both mother and son were embracing me\nand kissing my cheeks, after the impulsive manner of their passionate\nnatures, the indulgence of which appears so strange to our cold blood.\n\nThe train was delayed, for my wounds and bruises to be dressed, and I\nthen entered their carriage and went to Leghorn with them.\n\nArrived there, I was about to say \"Farewell.\"\n\n\"What is farewell, now? No; you must see Blanche, your sister. You\nwill sleep to my hotel: I shall not let you go. Who is she that in\nyour great book says, 'Where you go, I will go?' That is my spirit.\nYou must not leave me till--till you are as happy as I am.\"\n\nHe kept me, introduced me to Blanche, and persuaded me to write for\nleave to stay another two months, when he would return to England with\nme. Little by little he made me talk about Alice, till he knew all my\nstory.\n\n\"Ah! that is it; you shall be unhappy because you want L500 every\nyear, and I have so much as that. I am a patriot to get rid of my\nmoney. So it is that you will not take money. You have saved my life,\nand you will {207} not take money; but I shall make you take money, my\nfriend, English Guy; you shall have as thus.\" And he handed me my\nappointment as secretary to one of the largest railways in Italy. \"Now\nyou shall take money; now you will not go to your fogland to work like\na slave; you shall take the money. That is not all. I am one of the\npractice patriots--no, the practical patriots--of Italy. They come to\nme with their conspiracies to join, their secret societies to adhere\nto, but I do not. I am director of ever so many railways; I make fresh\ndirections every day. I say to those who talk to me of politics, 'How\nmany shares will you take in this or in that?' I am printer of books;\nI am builder of museums; I have great share in docks, and I say to\nthese, 'It is this that I am doing that is wanted.' This is not\nconspiracy; it is not plot; it is not society with ribbons; but it is\nwhat Italy, my country, wants. I grow poor; Italy grows rich. I am not\nwise in these things; they cheat me, because I am an enthusiast. Now,\nGuy, my brother, you are wise; you are deep; long in the head; in\nshort, you are English! You shall be my guardian in these things--you\nshall save me from the cheat, and you shall work hard as you like for\nall the money you shall take of me. Come, my Guy, is it so?\"\n\nNeed I say that it was so? The count and his Blanche made their\nhoneymoon tour in England. They spent Christmas day with Alice and\nmyself at Mr. Morton's, and when they left, Alice and I left with\nthem, for our new home in Florence.\n\n------\n\nFrom The Cornhill Magazine.\n\nTHE WINDS.\n\n\n  O wild raving west winds....\n  Oh! where do ye rise from, and where do ye die?\n\n\nThe question which is put in these lines is one which has posed the\ningenuity of all who have ever thought on it; and though theories have\nrepeatedly been propounded to answer it, yet one and all fail, and we\nagain recur to the words of him who knew all things and said, \"The\nwind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but\ncanst not tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth.\"\n\nHowever, though we cannot assign exactly the source whence the winds\nrise or the goal to which they tend, the labors of meteorologists have\nbeen so far successful as to enable us to understand the causes of the\ngreat currents of air, and even to map out the winds which prevail at\ndifferent seasons in the various quarters of the globe. The problem\nwhich has thus been solved is one vastly more simple than that of\nsaying why the wind changes on any particular day, or at what spot on\nthe earth's surface a particular current begins or ends. Were these\nquestions solved, there would be an end to all uncertainty about\nweather. There need be no fear that the farmer would lose his crops\nowing to the change of weather, if the advent of every shower had been\nforetold by an unerring guide, and the precise day of the break in the\nweather predicted weeks and months before. This is the point on which\nweather-prophets--'astro-meteorologists' they call themselves\nnow-a-days--still venture their predictions, undismayed by their\nreported and glaring failures. {208} It has been well remarked that\nnot one of these prophets foretold the dry weather which lasted for so\nmany weeks during the last summer; yet, even at the present day, there\nare people who look to the almanacs to see what weather is to be\nexpected at a given date; and even the prophecies of \"Old Moore\" find,\nor used to find within a very few years, an ample credence. In fact,\nif we are to believe the opinions propounded by the positive\nphilosophers of the present day, we must admit that it is absurd to\nplace any limits on the possibility of predicting natural phenomena,\ninasmuch as all operations of nature obey fixed and unalterable laws,\nwhich are all discoverable by the unaided mind of man.\n\nTrue science, we may venture to say, is more modest than these\ngentlemen would have us to think it; and though in the particular\nbranch of knowledge of which we are now treating daily prophecies (or\n'forecasts,' as Admiral Fitzroy is careful to call them) of weather\nappear in the newspapers, yet these are not announced dogmatically,\nand no attempt is made in them to foretell weather for more than\nforty-eight hours in advance. We are not going to discuss the question\nof storms and storm-signals at present, so we shall proceed to the\nsubject in hand--the ordinary wind-currents of the earth; and in\nspeaking of these shall confine ourselves as far as possible to\nwell-known and recorded facts, bringing in each case the best evidence\nwhich we can adduce to support the theories which may be broached.\n\nWhat, then, our readers will ask, is the cause of the winds? The\nsimple answer is--the sun. Let us see, now, how this indefatigable\nagent, who appears to do almost everything on the surface of the\nearth, from painting pictures to driving steam-engines, as George\nStephenson used to maintain that he did, is able to raise the wind.\n\nIf you light a fire in a room, and afterward stop up every chink by\nwhich air can gain access to the fire, except the chimney, the fire\nwill go out in a short time. Again, if a lamp is burning on the table,\nand you stop up the chimney at the top, the lamp will go out at once.\nThe reason of this is that the flame, in each case, attracts the air,\nand if either the supply of air is cut off below, or its escape above\nis checked, the flame cannot go on burning. This explanation, however,\ndoes not bear to be pushed too far. The reason that the fire goes out\nif the supply of air is cut off is, that the flame, so to speak, feeds\non air; while the sun cannot be said, in any sense, to be dependent on\nthe earth's atmosphere for the fuel for his fire. We have chosen the\nillustration of the flame, because the facts are so well known. If,\ninstead of a lamp in the middle of a room, we were to hang up a large\nmass of iron, heated, we should find that currents of air set in from\nall sides, rose up above it, and spread out when they reached the\nceiling, descending again along the walls. The existence of these\ncurrents may be easily proved by sprinkling a handful of fine chaff\nabout in the room. What is the reason of the circulation thus\nproduced? The iron, unless it be extremely hot, as it is when melted\nby Mr. Bessemer's process, does not require the air in order to keep\nup its heat; and, in fact, the constant supply of fresh air cools it,\nas the metal gives away its own heat to the air as fast as the\nparticles of the latter come in contact with it. Why, then, do the\ncurrents arise? Because the air, when heated, expands or gets lighter,\nand rises, leaving an empty space, or vacuum, where it was before.\nThen the surrounding cold air, being elastic, forces itself into the\nopen space, and gets heated in its turn.\n\nFrom this we can see that there will be a constant tendency in the air\nto flow toward that point on the earth's surface where the temperature\nis highest--or, all other things being equal, to that point where the\nsun may be at that moment in the zenith. Accordingly, if the earth's\nsurface were either {209} entirely dry land, or entirely water, and\nthe sun were continually in the plane of the equator, we should expect\nto find the direction of the great wind-currents permanent and\nunchanged throughout the year. The true state of the case is, however,\nthat these conditions are very far from being fulfilled. Every one\nknows that the sun is not always immediately over the equator, but\nthat he is at the tropic of Cancer in June, and at the tropic of\nCapricorn in December, passing the equator twice every year at the\nequinoxes. Here, then, we have one cause which disturbs the regular\nflow of the wind-currents. The effect of this is materially increased\nby the extremely arbitrary way in which the dry land has been\ndistributed over the globe. The northern hemisphere contains the whole\nof Europe, Asia, and North America, the greater part of Africa, and a\nportion of South America; while in the southern hemisphere we only\nfind the remaining portions of the two last-named continents, with\nAustralia and some of the large islands in its vicinity. Accordingly,\nduring our summer there is a much greater area of dry land exposed to\nthe nearly vertical rays of the sun than is the case during our\nwinter.\n\nLet us see for a moment how this cause acts in modifying the direction\nof the wind-currents. We shall find it easier to make this\nintelligible if we take an illustration from observed facts. It takes\nabout five times as much heat to raise a ton weight of water through a\ncertain range of temperature, as it does to produce the same effect in\nthe case of a ton of rock. Again, the tendency of a surface of dry\nland to give out heat, and consequently to warm the air above it, and\ncause it to rise, is very much greater than that of a surface of water\nof equal area. Hence we can at once see the cause of the local winds\nwhich are felt every day in calm weather in islands situated in hot\nclimates. During the day the island becomes very hot, and thus what\nthe French call a _courant ascendant_ is set in operation. The air\nabove the land gets hot and rises, while the colder air which is on\nthe sea all round it flows in to fill its place, and is felt as a cool\nsea-breeze. During the night these conditions are exactly reversed:\nthe land can no longer get any heat from the sun, as he has set, while\nit is still nearly as liberal in parting with its acquired heat as it\nwas before. Accordingly, it soon becomes cooler than the sea in its\nneighborhood; and the air, instead of rising up over it, sinks down\nupon it, and flows out to sea, producing a land-wind.\n\nThese conditions are, apparently, nearly exactly fulfilled in the\nregion of the monsoons, with the exception that the change of wind\ntakes place at intervals of six months, and not every twelve hours. In\nthis district--which extends over the southern portion of Asia and the\nIndian ocean--the wind for half the year blows from one point, and for\nthe other half from that which is directly opposite. The winds are\nnorth-east and south-west in Hindostan; and in Java, at the other side\nof the equator, they are south-east and north-west. The cause of the\nwinds--monsoons they are called, from an Arabic word, _mausim_,\nmeaning season--is not quite so easily explained as that of the\nordinary land and sea breezes to which we have just referred. Their\norigin is to be sought for in the temperate zone, and not between the\ntropics. The reason of this is that the districts toward which the air\nis sucked in are not those which are absolutely hottest, but those\nwhere the rarefaction of the air is greatest. When the air becomes\nlighter, it is said to be rarefied, and this rarefaction ought\napparently to be greatest where the temperature is highest. This would\nbe the case if the air were the only constituent of our atmosphere.\nThere is, however, a very important disturbing agent to be taken into\nconsideration, viz., aqueous vapor. There is always, when it is not\nactually raining, a quantity of water rising from the surface of {210}\nthe sea and from every exposed water-surface, and mingling with the\nair. This water is perfectly invisible: as it is in the form of vapor,\nit is true steam, and its presence only becomes visible when it is\ncondensed so as to form a cloud. The hotter the air is, the more of\nthis aqueous vapor is it able to hold in the invisible condition.\n\nWe shall naturally expect to find a greater amount of this steam in\nthe air at places situated near the coast, than at those in the\ninterior of continents, and this is actually the case. The amount of\nrarefaction which the dry air on the sea-coast of Hindostan undergoes\nin summer, is partially compensated for by the increased tension of\nthe aqueous vapor, whose presence in the air is due to the action of\nthe sun's heat on the surface of the Indian ocean. In the interior of\nAsia there is no great body of water to be found, and the winds from\nthe south lose most of the moisture which they contain in passing over\nthe Himalayas. Accordingly the air is extremely dry, and a\ncompensation, similar to that which is observed in Hindostan, cannot\ntake place. It is toward this district that the wind is sucked in, and\nthe attraction is sufficient to draw a portion of the south-east\ntrade-wind across the line into the northern hemisphere. In our winter\nthe region where the rarefaction is greatest is the continent of\nAustralia; and accordingly, in its turn, it sucks the north-east\ntrade-wind of the northern hemisphere across the equator. Thus we see\nthat in the region which extends from the coast of Australia to the\ncentre of Asia we have monsoons, or winds which change regularly every\nsix months. As to the directions of the different monsoons, we shall\ndiscuss them when we have disposed of the trade-winds--which ought by\nrights, as Professor Dove observes, rather to be considered as an\nimperfectly developed monsoon, than the latter to be held as a\nmodification of the former.\n\nThe origin of the trade-winds is to be sought for, as before, in the\nheating power of the sun, and their direction is a result of the\nfigure of the earth, and of its motion on its axis. When the air at\nthe equator rises, that in higher latitudes on either side flows in,\nand would be felt as a north wind or as a south wind respectively, if\nthe earth's motion on its axis did not affect it. The figure of the\nearth is pretty nearly that of a sphere, and, as it revolves round its\naxis, it is evident that those points on its surface which are\nsituated at the greatest distance from the axis, will have to travel\nover a greater distance in the same time than those which are near it.\nThus, for instance, London, which is nearly under the parallel of 50,\nhas only to travel about three-fifths of the distance which a place\nlike Quito, situated under the equator, has to travel in the same\ntime. A person situated in London is carried, imperceptibly to\nhimself, by the motion of the earth, through 15,000 miles toward the\neastward in the twenty-four hours; while another at Quito is carried\nthrough 25,000 miles in the same time. Accordingly, if the Londoner,\npreserving his own rate of motion, were suddenly transferred to Quito,\nhe would be left 10,000 miles behind the other in the course of the\ntwenty-four hours, or would appear to be moving in the opposite\ndirection, from east to west, at the rate of about 400 miles an hour.\nThe case would be just as if a person were to be thrown into a railway\ncarriage which was moving at full speed; he would appear to his\nfellow-passengers to be moving in the opposite direction to them,\nwhile in reality the motion of progression was in the train, not in\nthe person who was thrown into it. The air is transferred from high to\nlow latitudes, but this change is gradual, and the earth, accordingly,\nby means of the force of friction, is able to retard its relative\nvelocity before it reaches the tropics so that its actual velocity,\nthough still considerable, is far below 400 miles an hour.\n\nThis wind comes from high latitudes and becomes more and more easterly\n{211} reaching us as a nearly true north-east wind; and as it gets\ninto lower latitudes becoming more and more nearly east, and forming a\nbelt of north-east wind all round the earth on the northern side of\nthe equator. In the southern hemisphere, there is a similar belt of\npermanent winds, which are, of course, south-easterly instead of\nnorth-easterly. These belts are not always at equal distances at each\nside of the equator, as their position is dependent on the situation\nof the zone of maximum temperature for the time being. When we reach\nthe actual district where the air rises, we find the easterly\ndirection of the wind no longer so remarkable, as has been noticed by\nBasil Hall and others. The reason is, that by the time that the air\nreaches the district where it rises, it has obtained by means of its\nfriction with the earth's surface a rate of motion round the earth's\naxis nearly equal to that of the earth's surface itself.\n\nThe trade-wind zones, called, by the Spaniards, the \"Ladies' Sea\"--_El\nGolfo de las Damas_--because navigation on a sea where the wind never\nchanged was so easy, shift their position according to the apparent\nmotion of the sun in the ecliptic. In the Atlantic the north-east\ntrade begins in summer in the latitude of the Azores; in winter it\ncommences to the south of the Canaries.\n\nIn the actual trade-wind zones rain very seldom falls, any more than\nit does in these countries when the east wind has well set in. The\nreason of this is, that the air on its passage from high to low\nlatitudes is continually becoming warmer and warmer. According as its\ntemperature rises, its power of dissolving (so to speak) water\nincreases also, and so it is constantly increasing its burden of water\nuntil it reaches the end of its journey, where it rises into the\nhigher regions of the atmosphere, and there is suddenly cooled. The\nchilling process condenses, to a great extent, the aqueous vapor\ncontained in the trade-wind air, and causes it to fall in constant\ndischarges of heavy rain. Throughout the tropics the rainy season\ncoincides with that period at which the sun is in the zenith, and in\nthis region the heaviest rain-fall on the globe is observed. The\nwettest place in the world, Cherrapoonjee, is situated in the Cossya\nhills, about 250 miles northeast of Calcutta, just outside the torrid\nzone. There the ram-fall is upward of 600 inches in the year, or\ntwenty times as much as it is on the west coasts of Scotland and\nIreland. However, in such extreme cases as this, there are other\ncircumstances to be taken into consideration, such as the position of\nthe locality as regards mountain chains, which may cause the clouds to\ndrift over one particular spot.\n\nTo return to the wind: When the air rises at the equatorial edge of\nthe trade-wind zone, it flows away above the lower trade-wind current.\nThe existence of an upper current in the tropics is well known.\nVolcanic ashes, which have fallen in several of the West Indian\nislands on several occasions, have been traced to volcanoes which lay\nto the westward of the locality where the ashes fell, at a time when\nthere was no west wind blowing at the sea-level. To take a recent\ninstance: ashes fell at Kingston, Jamaica, in the year 1835, and it is\nsatisfactorily proved that they had been ejected from the volcano of\nCoseguina, on the Pacific shore of Central America, and must\nconsequently have been borne to the eastward by an upward current\ncounter to the direction of the easterly winds which were blowing at\nthe time at the sea-level.\n\nCaptain Maury supposes that when the air rises, at either side of the\nequator, it crosses over into the opposite hemisphere, so that there\nis a constant interchange of air going on between the northern and\nsouthern hemispheres. This he has hardly sufficiently proved, and his\nviews are not generally accepted. One of the arguments on which he\nlays great stress in support of his theory is that on certain\noccasions dust has fallen in {212} various parts of western Europe,\nand that in it there have been discovered microscopical animals\nsimilar to those which are found in South America. This appears to be\nscarcely an incontrovertible proof; as Admiral Fitzroy observes:\n\"Certainly, such insects may be found in Brazil; but does it follow\nthat they are not also in Africa, under nearly the same parallel?\"\n\nThis counter-current, or \"anti-trade,\" as Sir J. Herschel has called\nit, is at a high level in the atmosphere between the tropics, far\nabove the top of the highest mountains; but at the exterior edge of\nthe trade-wind zone, it descends to the surface of the ground. The\nCanary islands are situated close to this edge, and accordingly we\nfind that there is always a westerly wind at the summit of the Peak of\nTeneriffe, while the wind at the sea-level, in the same island, is\neasterly throughout the summer months. Professor Piazzi Smyth, who\nlived for some time on the top of that mountain, making astronomical\nobservations, has recorded some very interesting details of the\nconflicts between the two currents, which he was able to observe\naccurately from his elevated position. In winter the trade-wind zone\nis situated to the south of its summer position in latitude, and at\nthis season the southwest wind is felt at the sea-level in the Canary\nislands. Similar facts to these have been observed in other localities\nwhere there are high mountains situated on the edge of the trade-wind\nzone, as, for instance, Mouna Loa, in the Sandwich islands. There can,\ntherefore, be no doubt that the warm, moist west wind, which is felt\nso generally in the temperate zones, is really the air returning to\nthe poles from the equator, which has now assumed a south-west\ndirection on its return journey, owing to conditions the reverse of\nthose which imparted to it a north-east motion on its way toward the\nequator. This, then, is our south-west wind, which is so prevalent in\nthe North Atlantic ocean that the voyage from Europe to America is not\nunfrequently called the up-hill trip, in contradistinction to the\ndown-hill passage home. These are the \"brave west winds\" of Maury,\nwhose refreshing action on the soil he never tires of recapitulating.\n\nThe south-west monsoons of Hindostan, which blow from May to October,\nand the north-west monsoons of the Java seas, which are felt between\nNovember and April, owe their westerly motion to a cause similar to\nthat of the anti-trades which we have just described. To take the case\nof the monsoons of Hindostan: we have seen above how the rarefaction\nof the air in Central Asia attracts the southeast trade-wind of the\nsouthern hemisphere across the equator. This air, when it moves from\nthe equator into higher latitudes, brings with it the rate of motion,\nto the eastward, of the equatorial regions which it has lately left,\nand is felt as a south-west wind. Accordingly, the directions of the\nmonsoons are thus accounted for. In the winter months the true\nnorth-east trade-wind is felt in Hindostan; while in the summer months\nits place is taken by the south-east trade of the southern hemisphere,\nmaking its appearance as the south-west monsoon. In Java, conditions\nexactly converse to these are in operation, and the winds are\nsouth-east from April to November, and north-west during the rest of\nthe year.\n\nThe change of one monsoon to the other is always accompanied by rough\nweather, called in some places the \"breaking out\" of the monsoon; just\nas with us the equinox, or change of the season from summer to winter,\nand _vice versa_, is marked by \"windy weather,\" or \"equinoctial\ngales.\"\n\nThe question may, however, well be asked, why there are no monsoons in\nthe Atlantic Ocean?\n\nIn the first place, the amount of rarefaction which the air in Africa\nand in Brazil undergoes, in the respective hot seasons of those\nregions, is far less considerable than that which is {213} observed in\nAsia and Australia at the corresponding seasons.\n\nSecondly, in the case of the Atlantic ocean, the two districts toward\nwhich the air is attracted are situated within the torrid zone, while\nin the Indian ocean they are quite outside the tropics, and in the\ntemperate zones. Accordingly, even if the suction of the air across\nthe equator did take place to the same extent in the former case as in\nthe latter, the extreme contrast in direction between the two monsoons\nwould not be perceptible to the same extent, owing to the fact that\nthe same amount of westing could not be imparted to the wind, because\nit had not to travel into such high latitudes on either side of the\nequator. A tendency to the production of the phenomena of the monsoons\nis observable along the coast of Guinea, where winds from the south\nand south-west are very generally felt. These winds are not really the\nsouth-east trade-wind, which has been attracted across the line to the\nnorthern hemisphere, They ought rather to be considered as of the same\nnature as the land and sea breezes before referred to, since we find\nit to be very generally the case, that in warm climates the ordinary\nwind-currents undergo a deflection to a greater or less extent along a\ncoast-line such as that of Guinea, Brazil, or north of Australia.\n\nOur readers may perhaps ask why it is, that when we allege that the\nwhole of the winds of the globe owe their origin to a regular\ncirculation of the air from the Polar regions to the equator, and back\nagain, we do not find more definite traces of such a circulation in\nthe winds of our own latitudes? The answer to this is, that the traces\nof this circulation are easily discoverable if we only know how to\nlook for them, In the Mediterranean sea, situated near the northern\nedge of the trade-wind zone, the contrast between the equatorial and\npolar currents of air is very decidedly marked. The two conflicting\nwinds are known under various names in different parts of the\ndistrict. The polar current, on its way to join the trade-wind, is\ntermed the \"tramontane,\" in other parts the \"bora,\" the \"maestral,\"\netc.; while the return trade-wind, bringing rain, is well known under\nthe name of the \"sirocco.\" In Switzerland the same wind is called the\n\"Fohn,\" and is a warm wind, which causes the ice and snow to melt\nrapidly, and constantly brings with it heavy rain.\n\nIn these latitudes the contrast is not so very striking, but even here\nevery one knows that the only winds which last for more than a day or\ntwo at a time are the north-east and the south-west winds, the former\nof which is dry and cold, the latter moist and warm. The difference\nbetween these winds is much more noticeable in winter than in summer,\ninasmuch as in the latter season Russia and the northern part of Asia\nenjoy, relatively to the British Islands, a much higher temperature\nthan is the case in winter; so that the air which moves from those\nregions during the summer months does not come to us from a climate\nwhich is colder than our own, but from one which is warmer.\n\nSo far, then, we have attempted to trace the ordinary wind-currents,\nbut as yet there are very many questions connected therewith which are\nnot quite sufficiently explained. To mention one of these, we hear\nfrom many observers on the late Arctic expeditions, that the most\nmarked characteristic of the winds in the neighborhood of Baffin's\nBay, is the great predominance of north-westerly winds. It is not as\nyet, nor can it ever be satisfactorily, decided how far to the\nnorthward and westward this phenomenon is noticeable. The question\nthen is, Whence does this north-west wind come?\n\nAs to the causes of the sudden changes of wind, and of storms, they\nare as yet shrouded in mystery, and we cannot have much expectation\nthat in our lifetime, at least, much will be done to unravel the web.\nMeteorology is a very young science--if it deserves {214} the title of\nscience at all--and until observations for a long series of years\nshall have been made at many stations, we shall not be in the\npossession of trustworthy facts on which to ground our reasoning. It\nis merely shoving the difficulty a step further off to assign these\nirregular variations to atmospheric waves. It will be time enough to\nreason accurately about the weather and its changes when we ascertain\nwhat these atmospheric waves are, and what causes them. Until the\n\"astro-meteorologists\" will tell us the principles on which their\ncalculations are based, we must decline to receive their predictions\nas worthy of any credence whatever.\n\n------\n\nFrom The Month.\n\nEUGENIE AND MAURICE DE GUERIN.\n\n\nThe life of Eugenie de Guerin forms a great contrast with those which\nare generally brought before the notice of the world. Not only did she\nnot seek for fame, but the circumstances of her life were the very\nones which generally tend to keep a woman in obscurity. Her life was\npassed in the deepest retirement of a country home. The society even\nof a provincial town was not within her reach. Poverty placed a bar\nbetween her and the means for study in congenial society. The routine\nof her life shut her out from great deeds or unusual achievements. In\nfact, her life, so far from being a deviation from the ordinary track\nwhich women have to tread, was a very type of the existence which\nseems to be marked out for the majority of women, and at which they\nare so often wont to murmur. The want of an aim in life, the necessity\nof some fixed, engrossing occupation, and the _ennui_ which follows on\nthe deprivation of these, forms the staple trial of thousands of\nwomen, especially in England, where there is much intellectual vigor\nwith so little power for its exercise. That the reaction from this\ndeprivation is shown by \"fastness,\" or an excessive love of dress and\namusement, is acknowledged by the most keen observers of human nature.\nBut to the large class of women who, disdaining such means of\ndistraction, bear their burden patiently, Eugenie de Guerin's _Journal\net Lettres_ possess an intense interest. Her life was so uneventful\nthat it absolutely affords no materials for a biography, but her\ncharacter is so full of interest that her name is now a familiar one\nin England and France.\n\nFar away in the heart of sunny Languedoc stands the chateau of Le\nCayla, the home of the de Guerins. They were of noble blood. The old\nchateau was full of reminiscences of the deeds of their ancestors. De\nGuerin, Bishop of Senlis and Chancellor of France, had gone forth,\nwith a valor scarcely befitting his episcopal character, to animate\nthe troops at the battle of Bouvines; and from the walls of Le Cayla\nlooked down from his portrait de Guerin, Grand Master of the Knights\nof Malta in 1206. A cardinal, a troubadour, and countless gallant and\nnoble soldiers filled up the family rolls--the best blood in France\nhad mingled with theirs; but now the family were obscure, forgotten,\nand poor. But these circumstances were no hindrances to the happiness\nof Eugenie's early life.\n\n\"My childhood passed away like one long summer-day,\" said she {215}\nafterward. Thirteen happy years fled by. There was the father,\ncherished with tender, self-forgetting love; the brother Eranbert; the\nsister Marie, the youngest pet of the household; the beautiful and\nprecocious Maurice; and the mother, the centre of all, loving and\nbeloved. But a shadow suddenly fell on the sunny landscape, and Madame\nde Guerin lay on her death-bed, when, calling to her Eugenie, her\neldest child, she gave to her especial charge Maurice, then aged\nseven, and his mother's darling. The dying lips bade Eugenie fill a\nmother's place to him, and the sensitive and enthusiastic girl\nreceived the words into her heart, and never forgot them.\n\nFrom that day her childhood, almost her youth, ended; and it is\nwithout exaggeration we may say that the depth of maternal love passed\ninto her heart. Henceforth Maurice was the one object and the\nabsorbing thought of her heart, second only to one other, and that no\nlove of earth. Sometimes, indeed, that passionate devotion to Maurice\ndisputed the sway of the true Master, as we shall hereafter see, but\nit was never ultimately victorious. It was not likely that their lives\nshould for long run side by side. The extraordinary brilliancy of\nMaurice's gifts made his father determine upon cultivating his mind.\nAs soon as possible, he was sent first to the _petit seminaire_ at\nToulouse, and then to the college Stanislaus at Paris.\n\nMaurice de Guerin was a singularly endowed being. He possessed that\nkind of personal beauty so very rare among men, and which is so hard\nto describe--a spiritual beauty, which insensibly draws the hearts of\nothers to its possessor. Added to this, he had that sweetness of tone\nand manner, that instinctive power of sympathy, that sparkling\nbrilliance which made him idolized by those who knew him, which\nrendered him literally the darling of his friends. \"_Il etait leur\nvie_,\" said those who spoke of him after he was gone from earth.\n\nThe early and ardent aspirations of this gifted being were turned\nheavenward. His youthful head was devoutly bowed in prayer. The\ncountry people called him \"_le jeune saint_;\" and his conduct at the\n_petit seminaire_ gave such satisfaction that the Archbishop of\nToulouse, and also the Archbishop of Rouen, offered to take the whole\ncharge of his future education on themselves; but his father refused\nboth. The temptations of a college life had left him scathless, and\nthe longing of his soul was for the consecration of the priesthood.\nWhat he might have been, had he fallen into other hands, cannot now be\nknown. Whether there was an inherent weakness and effeminacy in the\ncharacter which would have unfitted him for the awful responsibilities\nof the priestly office, we know not. At all events, he was attracted,\nas many minds of undoubted superiority were at that time, by the\nextraordinary brilliancy and commanding genius of de Lamennais; and\nMaurice de Guerin found himself in the solitude of La Chesnaie, a\nfellow-student with Hippolyte Lacordaire, Montalembert, Saint-Beuve,\nand a group of others. Here some years of his life were spent, divided\nbetween prayer, study, and brilliant conversation, led and sustained\nby M. de Lamennais. Maurice, of a shy and diffident disposition, does\nnot seem to have attached himself to Lamennais, although he admired\nand looked up to him, and although the insidious portion of his\nteaching was making havoc with his faith.\n\nAnd now, it may be asked, what of Eugenie? Dwelling in an obscure\nprovince, with no other living guide than a simple parish cure, with a\nnatural enthusiastic reverence for genius, and a predilection for all\nMaurice's friends, was she not dazzled from afar off by this great\nteacher of men's minds, this earnest reformer of abuses? The instinct\nof the single in heart was hers. Long ere others had discerned the\ncanker eating away the fruit so fair to look on, Eugenie, with\nprophetic voice, was warning Maurice. {216} Lacordaire's noble soul\nwas yet ensnared. Madam Swetchine's remonstrances had not yet\nprevailed; while this young girl in the country, whose name no one\nknew, was watching and praying for the issue of the deliberations at\nLa Chesnaie.\n\nAt length the break-up came--the memorable journey to Rome was over.\nSubmission had been required, and Lacordaire had given it. \"Silence is\nthe second power in the world,\" he had said to Lamennais; and he had\nwithdrawn with him to La Chesnaie for a time of retreat, where he was\nsoon undeceived as to Lamennais' intentions. And these two great men\nparted--one to reap the fruits of patient obedience in the success of\none of the greatest works wrought in his century, to gain a mastery\nover the men of his age, and to die at last worn out by labors before\nhis time, the beloved child of the Church, whose borders he had\nenlarged, whose honor he had defended; the other, to follow the course\nof self-will, and to quench his light in utter darkness.\n\nThe students of La Chesnaie went away, and Maurice was thrown on the\nworld with no definite employment. An unsuccessful attachment deepened\nthe natural melancholy of his sensitive nature. He went to Paris, and\nwas soon in the midst of the literary world. He wrote, and obtained\nfame; he was admired and sought after; but the beautiful faith of his\nyouth faded away like a flower, and the innocent pleasures of his\nchildhood, and the passionate love of his sister, had no attractions\nfor him compared to the brilliant circles of Parisian society.\n\nAnd thus was Eugenie's fate marked out. From afar off her heart\nfollowed him; and, partly for his amusement, partly to relieve the\noutpourings of her intensely-loving heart, she kept a journal,\nintended for Maurice's eye only. A few letters to Maurice and one or\ntwo intimate friends make up the rest of the volume, which was, after\nher death, most fortunately given to the world. In these pages her\ncharacter stands revealed, and no long description of her mode of life\ncould have made us more thoroughly acquainted with her than these\nwords, written sometimes in joy, sometimes in sorrow, in weariness and\ndepression, in all weathers, and at all times; for, believing that she\npleased her brother, nothing would prevent her from keeping her\npromise of a daily record of her life and thoughts. Its chief beauty\nlies in that she made so much out of so little. \"I have just come away\nvery happy from the kitchen, where I stood a long time this evening,\nto persuade Paul, one of our servants, to go to confession at\nChristmas. He has promised me, and he is a good boy and will keep his\nword. Thank God, my evening is not lost! What a happiness it would be\nif I could thus every day gain a soul for God! Walter Scott has been\nneglected this evening; but what book could have been worth to me what\nPaul's promise is? . . . _The 20th_.--I am so fond of the snow! Its\nperfect whiteness has something celestial about it. To-day I see\nnothing but road-tracks, and the marks of the feet of little birds.\nLightly as they rest, they leave their little traces in a thousand\nforms upon the snow. It is so pretty to see their little red feet, as\nif they were all drawn with pencils of coral. Winter has its beauties\nand its enjoyments, and we find them every-where when we know how to\nsee them. God spreads grace and beauty everywhere. ... I must have\nanother dish to-day for S.R., who is come to see us. He does not often\ntaste good things--that is why I wish to treat him well; for it is to\nthe desolate that, it seems to me, we should pay attentions. No\nreading to-day. I have made a cap for a little child, which has taken\nup all my time. But, provided one works, be it with the head or the\nfingers, it is all the same in the eyes of God, who takes account of\nevery work done in his name. I hope, then, that my cap has been a\ncharity--I have given my time, a little material, and a thousand\ninteresting lines that I could {217} have read. Papa brought me\nyesterday _Ivanhoe_, and the _Siecle de Louis XIV_. Here are\nprovisions for some of our long winter evenings.\"\n\nThen she had a keen sense of enjoyment, and a wonderful faculty of\nmaking the best of things. Thus a simple pleasure to her was a source\nof delight. Here is her description of Christmas night in Languedoc:\n\n\"_Dec. 31_. I have written nothing for a fortnight. Do not ask me why.\nThere are times when we cannot speak, things of which we can say\nnothing. Christmas is come--that beautiful fete which I love the most,\nwhich brings me as much joy as the shepherds of Bethlehem. Truly our\nwhole soul sings at the coming of the Lord, which is announced to us\non all sides by hymns and by the pretty _nadalet_.  [Footnote 49]\nNothing in Paris can give an idea of what Christmas is. You have not\neven midnight mass.  [Footnote 50] We all went to it, papa at our\nhead, on a most charming night. There is no sky more beautiful than\nthat of midnight: it was such that papa kept putting his head out of\nhis cloak to look at it. The earth was white with frost, but we were\nnot cold, and, beside, the air around us was warmed by the lighted\nfagots that our servants carried to light us. It was charming, I\nassure you, and I wish I could have seen you sliding along with us\ntoward the church on the road, bordered with little white shrubs, as\nif they were flowering. The frost makes such pretty flowers! We saw\none wreath so pretty that we wanted to make it a bouquet for the\nBlessed Sacrament, but it melted in our hands; all flowers last so\nshort a time. I very much regretted my bouquet; it was so sad to see\nit melt drop by drop. I slept at the presbytery. The cure's good\nsister kept me, and gave me an excellent _reveillon_ of hot milk.\"\nThen, again, the grave part of her nature prevails, and she continues:\n\n  [Footnote 49: A particular way of ringing the bells during the\n  fifteen days which precede the feast of Christmas, called in _patois\n  nodal_.]\n\n  [Footnote 50: Since the period at which Mdlle. de Guerin wrote,\n  midnight mass has been resumed in Paris.]\n\n\n\"These are, then, my last thoughts; for I shall write nothing more\nthis year; in a few hours it will be over, and we shall have begun a\nnew year. Oh, how quickly time passes! Alas, alas, can I say that I\nregret it? No, my God, I do not regret time, or anything that it\nbrings; it is not worth while to throw our affections into its stream.\nBut empty, useless days, lost for heaven, this causes me regret as I\nlook back on life. Dearest, where shall I be at this day, at this\nhour, at this minute, next year? Will it be here, elsewhere; here\nbelow, or above? God only knows; I am before the door of the future,\nresigned to all that can come forth from it. To-morrow I will pray for\nyour happiness, for papa, Mimi, Eran [her other brother and sister],\nand all those whom I love. It is the day for presents; I will take\nmine from heaven. I draw all from thence, for truly there are few\nthings which please me on earth. The longer I live, the less it\npleases me, and I see the years pass by without sorrow, because they\nare but steps to the other world. Do not think it is any sorrow or\ntrouble which makes me think this. I assure you it is not, but a\nhome-sickness comes over my soul when I think of heaven. The clock\nstrikes; it is the last I shall hear when writing to you.\"\n\nThe following is an account of what she called \"a happy day:\" \"God be\nblessed for a day without sorrow. They are rare in this life, and my\nsoul, more than others, is soon troubled. A word, a memory, the sound\nof a voice, a sad face, nothing, I know not what, often troubles the\nserenity of my soul--a little sky, darkened by the smallest cloud.\nThis day I received a letter from Gabrielle, the cousin whom I love so\nfor her sweetness and beautiful mind. I was uneasy about her health,\nwhich is so delicate, having heard nothing of her for more than a\nmonth. I was so pleased to see a letter from her, that I read it\nbefore my prayers. I was so eager to read it. To see a letter, and not\nto open it, is {218} an impossible thing. Another letter was given to\nme at Cahuzac. It was from Lili, another sweet friend, but quite\nwithdrawn from the world; a pure soul--a soul like snow, from its\npurity so white that I am confounded when I look at it--a soul made\nfor the eyes of God. I was coming from Cahuzac, very pleased with my\nletter, when I saw a little boy, weeping as if his heart were broken.\nHe had broken his jug, and thought his father would beat him. I saw\nthat with half a franc I could make him happy, so I took him to a\nshop, where we got another jug. Charles X. could not be happier if he\nregained his crown. Has it not been a beautiful day?\"\n\nHere is another instance of the way she had of beautifying the most\nsimple incidents: \"I must notice, in passing, an excellent supper that\nwe have had--papa, Mimi, and I--at the corner of the kitchen-fire,\nwith the servants: soup, some boiled potatoes, and a cake that I made\nyesterday with the dough from the bread. Our only servants were the\ndogs Lion, Wolf, and Tritly, who licked up the fragments. All our\npeople were in church for the instruction which is given for\nconfirmation;\" and, she adds, \"it was a charming meal.\"\n\nThe daily devotions of the month of Mary were very recently\nestablished when Eugenie wrote; she speaks thus of them: on one first\nof May when absent from home, she writes: \"On this day, at this\nmoment, my holy Mimi (a pet name for her sister) is on her knees\nbefore the little altar for the month of Mary in my room. Dear sister,\nI join myself to her, and find a chapel here also. They have given me\nfor this purpose a room filled with flowers; in it I have made a\nchurch, and Marie, with her little girls, servants, shepherds, and all\nthe household, assemble together every evening before the Blessed\nVirgin. They came at first only to look on, for they had never kept\nthe month of Mary before. Some good will result to them of this new\ndevotion, if it is only one idea, a single idea, of their Christian\nduties, which these people know so little of, and which we can teach\nthem while amusing them. These popular devotions please me so, because\nthey are so attractive in their form, and thereby offer such an easy\nmethod of instruction. By their means, salutary truths appear most\npleasing, and all hearts are gained in the name of our Lady and of her\nsweet virtues. I love the month of Mary, and the other little\ndevotions which the Church permits; which she blesses; which are born\nat the feet of the Faith like flowers at the mountain-foot.\"\n\nSpeaking of St. Teresa, to whom she had a great devotion, she says: \"I\nam pleased to remember that, when I lost my mother, I went, like St.\nTeresa, to throw myself at the feet of the Blessed Virgin, and begged\nher to take me for her daughter.\" At another time she says: \"To-day,\nvery early, I went to Vieux, to visit the relics of the saints, and,\nin particular, those of St. Eugenie, my patron. I love pilgrimages,\nremnants of the ancient faith; but these are not the days for them; in\nthe greater number of people the spirit for them is dead. However, if\nM. le Cure does not have this procession to Vieux, there will be\ndiscontent. Credulity abounds where faith disappears. We have,\nhowever, many good souls, worthy to please the saints, like Rose\nDrouille, who knows how to meditate, who has learnt so much from the\nrosary; then Francon de Gaillard and her daughter Jacquette, so\nrecollected in church. This holy escort did not accompany me; I was\nalone with my good angel and Mimi. Mass heard, my prayers finished, I\nleft with one hope more. I had come to ask something from St. Eugene?\nThe saints are our brothers. If you were all-powerful, would you not\ngive me all that I desired? This is what I was thinking of while\ninvoking St. Eugene, who is also my patron. We have so little in this\nworld, at least let us hope in the other.\"\n\nThose who are not of the same faith as Eugenie de Guerin have not\nfailed {219} to be attracted by the depth and ardor of her faith and\npiety. A writer in the _Cornhill Magazine_ observes, \"The relation to\nthe priest, the practice of confession assume, when she speaks of\nthem, an aspect which is not that under which Exeter Hall knows them.\"\n\n\"In my leisure time I read a work of Leitniz, which delighted me by\nits catholicity and the pious things which I found in it--like this on\nconfession:\n\n\"'I regard a pious, grave, and prudent confessor as a great instrument\nof God for the salvation of souls; for his counsels serve to direct\nour affections, to enlighten us about our faults, to make us avoid the\noccasions of sin, to dissipate our doubts, to raise up our broken\nspirit; finally, to cure or to mitigate all the maladies of the soul;\nand, if we can never find on earth anything more excellent than a\nfaithful friend, what happiness is it not to find one who is obliged,\nby the inviolable law of a divine sacrament, to keep faith with us and\nto succor souls?'\n\n\"This celestial friend I have in M. Bories, and therefore the news of\nhis departure has deeply affected me. I am sad with a sadness which\nmakes the soul weep. I should not say this to any one else; they would\nnot, perhaps, understand me, and would take it ill. In the world they\nknow not what a confessor is--a man who is a friend of our soul, our\nmost intimate confidant, our physician, our light, our teacher--a\nfriend who binds us to him, and is bound to us; who gives us peace,\nwho opens heaven to us, who speaks to us while we, kneeling, call him,\nlike God, our father; and faith truly makes him God and father. When I\nam at his feet, I see nothing else in him than Jesus listening to\nMagdalen, and pardoning much because she has loved much. Confession is\nbut an expansion of repentance in love.\"\n\nAgain she writes: \"I have learnt that M. Bories is about to leave us--\nthis good and excellent father of my soul. Oh, how I regret him! What\na loss it will be to me to lose this good guide of my conscience, of\nmy heart, my mind, of my whole self, which God had confided to him,\nand which I had trusted to him with such perfect freedom! I am sad\nwith the sadness which makes the soul weep. My God, in my desert to\nwhom shall I have recourse? Who will sustain me in my spiritual\nweakness? who will lead me on to great sacrifices? It is in this last,\nabove all, that I regret M. Bories. He knew what God had put into my\nheart. I needed his strength to follow it. The new cure cannot replace\nhim; he is so young; then he appears so inexperienced, so undecided.\nIt is necessary to be firm to draw a soul from the midst of the world,\nand to sustain it against the assaults of flesh and blood.\n\n\"It is Saturday--the day of pilgrimage to Cahuzac. I will go there;\nperhaps I shall come back more tranquil. God has always given me some\nblessing in that chapel, where I have left so many miseries... I was\nnot mistaken in thinking that I should come back more tranquil. M.\nBories is not going! How happy I am, and how thankful to God for this\nfavor. It is such a great blessing to me to keep this good father,\nthis good guide, this choice of God for my soul, as St. Francis de\nSales expresses it.\n\n\"Confession is such a blessed thing, such a happiness for the\nChristian soul; a great good, and always greater in measure when we\nfeel it to be so; and when the heart of the priest, into which we pour\nour sorrow, resembles that Divine Heart _which has loved us so much_.\nThis is what attaches me to M. Bories; you will understand it.\"\n\nNevertheless, when the trial of parting with this beloved friend did\ncome, at length, it was borne with gentle submission.\n\n\"Our pastor is come to see us. I have not said much to you about him.\nHe is a simple and good man, knowing his duties well, and speaking\nbetter of God than of the world, which he knows little of. Therefore,\nhe does not shine in conversation. {220} His conversation is ordinary,\nand those who do not know what the true spirit of a priest is would\nthink little of him. He does good in the parish, for his gentleness\nwins souls. He is our father now. I find him young after M. Bories. I\nmiss that strong and powerful teaching which strengthened me; but it\nis God who has taken it from me. Let us submit and walk like children,\nwithout looking at the hand which leads us.\"\n\nEugenie's life revolved round that of Maurice. No length of separation\ncould weaken her affection, nor make her interest in his pursuits less\nengrossing. His letters, so few and so scanty, were treasured up and\ndwelt upon in many a lonely hour. She suffered with him, wept over his\ndisappointments, and prayed for his return to the faith of his youth\nwith all the earnestness of her soul. With exquisite tact she avoided\npreaching to him. It was rather by showing him what religion was to\nher that she strove to lead him back to its practice.\n\n\"_Holy Thursday_.--I have come back all fragrant from the chapel of\nmoss, in the church where the Blessed Sacrament is reposing. It is a\nbeautiful day when God wills to rest among the flowers and perfumes of\nthe springtime. Mimi, Rose, and I made this _reposoir_, aided by M. le\nCure. I thought, as we were doing it, of the supper-room, of that\nchamber well furnished, where Jesus willed to keep the pasch with his\ndisciples, giving himself for the Lamb. Oh, what a gift! What can one\nsay of the Eucharist? I know nothing to say. We adore; we possess; we\nlive; we love. The soul is without words, and loses itself in an abyss\nof happiness. I thought of you among these ecstasies, and ardently\ndesired to have you at my side, at the holy table, as I had three\nyears ago.\"\n\nMademoiselle de Guerin occasionally composed; her brother was very\nanxious she should publish her productions, but she shrank from the\nresponsibility. \"St. Jean de Damas,\" she remarks, \"was forbidden to\nwrite to any one, and for having composed some verses for a friend he\nwas expelled from the convent. That seemed to me very severe; but one\nsees the wisdom of it, when, after supplication and much humility, the\nsaint had been forgiven, he was ordered to write and to employ his\ntalents in conquering the enemies of Jesus Christ. He was found strong\nenough to enter the lists when he had been stripped of pride. He wrote\nagainst the iconoclasts. Oh, if many illustrious writers had begun by\na lesson of humility, they would not have made so many errors nor so\nmany books. Pride has blinded them, and thus see the fruits which they\nproduce, into how many errors they lead the erring. But this chapter\non the science of evil is too wide for me. I should prefer saying that\nI have sewn a sheet. A sheet leads me to reflect, it will cover so\nmany people, so many different slumbers--perhaps that of the tomb. Who\nknows if it will not be my shroud, and if these stitches which I make\nwill not be unpicked by the worms? While I was sewing, papa told me\nthat he had sent, without my knowledge, some of my verses to Bayssac,\nand I have seen the letter where M. de Bagne speaks of them and says\nthey are very good. A little vanity came to me and fell into my\nsewing. Now I tell myself the thought of death is good to keep us from\nsin. It moderates joy, tempers sadness, makes us see that all which\npasses by us is transitory.\"\n\nAgain she writes: \"Dear one, I would that I could see you pray like a\ngood child of God. What would it cost you? Your soul is naturally\nloving, and prayer is nothing else but love; a love which spreads\nitself out into the soul as the water flows from the fountain.\"\n\n******\n\n\"_Ash-Wednesday_.--Here I am, with ashes on my forehead and serious\nthoughts in my mind. This 'Remember thou art dust!' is terrible to me.\nI hear it all day long. I cannot banish {221} the thought of death,\nparticularly in your room, where I no longer find you, where I saw you\nso ill, where I have sad memories both of your presence and your\nabsence. One thing only is bright--the little medal of Our Lady,\nsuspended over the head of your bed. It is still untarnished and in\nthe same place where I put it to be your safeguard. I wish you knew,\ndearest, the pleasure I have in seeing it--the remembrances, the\nhopes, the secret thoughts that are connected with that holy image. I\nshall guard it as a relic; and, if ever you return to sleep in that\nlittle bed, you shall sleep again near the medal of the Blessed\nVirgin. Take from, me this confidence and love, not to a bit of metal,\nbut to the image of the Mother of God. I should like to know, if in\nyour new room I should see St. Teresa, who used to hang in your other\nroom near the _benitier:_\n\n      'Ou toi, necessiteux\n  Defaillant, tu prenais l'aumone dans ce creux.'\n\nYou will no longer, I fear, seek alms there. Where will you seek them?\nWho can tell? Is the world in which you live rich enough for all your\nnecessities? Maurice, if I could but make you understand one of these\nthoughts, breathe into you what I believe, and what I learn in pious\nbooks--those beautiful reflections of the Gospel--if I could see you a\nChristian, I would give life and all for that.\"\n\n******\n\nMaurice's absence was the great trial of Eugenie's life; but there\nwere minor trials also, concerning the little things that make up the\nsum of our happiness. She suffered intensely and constantly from\n_ennui_. Her active, enterprising mind had not sufficient food to\nsustain it, and bravely did she fight against this constant depression\nand weariness.\n\nA duller life than hers could hardly be found; she had literally\n\"nothing to do.\" She had no society, for she lived at a distance from\nher friends. Sometimes the cure called, sometimes a priest from a\nneighboring parish, and then the monotonous days went on without a\nsingle incident. There was no outward sign of the struggle going on.\nSpeaking of her father, she says: \"A grave look makes him think there\nis some trouble, so I conceal the passing clouds from him; it is but\nright that he should only see and know my calm and serene side. A\ndaughter should be gentle to her father. We ought to be to them\nsomething like the angels are to God.\"\n\nNor would she distract her thoughts by any means which might injure\nher soul. \"I have scarcely read the author whose work you sent, though\nI admired him as I do M. Hugo; but these geniuses have blemishes which\nwound a woman's eye. I detest to meet with what I do not wish to see;\nand this makes me close so many books. I have had _Notre Dame de\nParis_ under my hands a hundred times to-day; and the style,\n_Esmeralda_, and so many pretty things in it, tempt me, and say to me,\n'Read--look.' I looked; I turned it over; but the stains here and\nthere stopped me. I read no more, and contented myself with looking at\nthe pictures.\" At another time, when she is staying at a \"deserted\nhouse,\" rather duller than her own, she writes: \"The devil tempted me\njust now in a little room, where I found a number of romances. 'Read a\nword,' he said to me; 'let us see that; look at this;' but the titles\nof the books displeased me. I am no longer tempted now, and will go\nonly to change the books in this room, or rather to throw them into\nthe fire.\"\n\nThere was one sovereign remedy for her ills, and she sought for it\nwith fidelity, and reaped her reward.\n\n\"This morning I was suffering. Well, at present, I am calm; and this I\nowe to faith, simply to faith, to an act of faith. I can think of\ndeath and eternity without trouble, without alarm. Over a deep of\nsorrow there floats a divine calm, a serenity, which is the work of\nGod only. In vain have I tried other things at a time like this; {222}\nnothing human comforts the soul, nothing human upholds it.\n\n  'A l'enfant il faut sa mere,\n  A mon ame il faut mon Dieu.'\"\n\nAt another time of suffering she writes: \"God only can console us when\nthe heart is sorrowful: human helps are not enough; they sink beneath\nit, it is so weighed down by sorrow. The reed must have more than\nother reeds to lean on.\"\n\n******\n\n\"To distract my thoughts, I have been turning over Lamartine, the dear\npoet. I love his hymn to the nightingale, and many other of his\n'Harmonies' but they are far from having the effect on me that his\n'Meditations' used to have. I was ravished and in ecstacy with them. I\nwas but sixteen, and time changes many things. The great poet no\nlonger makes my heart vibrate; to-day he has not even power to\ndistract my thoughts. I must try something else, for I must not\ncherish _ennui_, which injures the soul. What can I do? It is not good\nfor me to write, to communicate trouble to others. I will leave pen\nand ink. I know something better, for I have tried it a hundred times;\nit is prayer--prayer which calms me when I say to my soul before God,\n'Why art thou sad, and wherefore art thou troubled?' I know not what\nhe does in answering me, but it quiets me just like a weeping child\nwhen it sees its mother. The Divine compassion and tenderness is truly\nmaternal toward us.\"\n\n******\n\nAnd, further on: \"Now I have something better to do than write: I will\ngo and pray. Oh, how I love prayer! I would that all the world knew\nhow to pray. I would that children, and the old, and the poor, the\nafflicted, the sick in soul and body--all who live and suffer--could\nknow the balm that prayer is. But I know not how to speak of these\nthings. We cannot tell what is ineffable.\"\n\nShe had said once, as we have seen, that she would give life and all\nto see Maurice once more serving God. She had written to him thus, not\ncarelessly indeed, but as we are too wont to write--not counting the\ncost, because we know not what the cost is. She wrote thus, and God\ntook her at her word, and he asked from her not life, as she then\nmeant it, but her life's life. First came the trial of a temporary\nestrangement. Her journal suddenly stops; she believed it wearied him,\nand, without a word of reproach, she silenced her eager pen. Maurice,\nhowever, declared she was mistaken, and she joyfully resumed her task\nwith words which would evidence, if nothing else were left, us, the\nintense depth of her love for her brother. \"I was in the wrong. So\nmuch the better; for I had feared it had been your fault.\" Then\nMaurice's health, which had always been delicate, began to fail, and\nher heart was tortured at the thought of him suffering, away from her\nloving care, unable to send her news of him.\n\n\"I have, been reading the epistle about the child raised to life by\nElias. Oh, if I knew some prophet, some one who would give back life\nand health, I would go, like the Shunamite, and throw myself at his\nfeet.\"\n\nAnd again, most touchingly, she says: \"A letter from Felicite, which\ntells me nothing better about you. When will those who know more\nwrite? If they knew how a woman's heart beats, they would have more\npity.\"\n\nMaurice recovered from these attacks, and in the autumn of 1836\nmarried a young and pretty Creole lady. He had not the violent\nattachment as to the \"Louise\" of his early youth; but the union seemed\na suitable one on both sides. One of Eugenie's brief visits to Paris\nwas made for the purpose of being present at her brother's marriage.\nIt was a romantic scene. It took place in the chapel of the old and\nquaint Abbaye aux Bois. The church was filled with brilliant and\nadmiring friends. The bride and bridegroom, both so beautiful, knelt\nbefore the altar; the Pere Bugnet, who had {223} known Maurice as a\nboy, blessed the union. The gay procession passed from the church, and\nmet a funeral cortege! It fell like an omen on Eugenie's heart. Six\nshort months went by, and Eugenie was again summoned to Paris, to\nMaurice's sick-bed--his dying-bed it indeed was, but his sister's\npassionate love would not relinquish hope. The physicians, catching at\na straw, prescribed native air, and the invalid caught at the proposal\nwith feverish impatience. That eager longing sustained him through the\nlong and terrible journey of twenty days; for, the moment he revived,\nhe would be laid in the salon, and see the home-faces gathered round\nhim. Then he was carried to his room, and soon the end came. At last\nEugenie knew that he must go, and all the powers of her soul were\ngathered into that one prayer, that he might die at peace with God.\nCalmly she bent over him, and kissed the forehead, damp with the dews\nof death.\n\n\"Dearest, M. le Cure is coming, and you will confess. You have no\ndifficulty in speaking to M. le Cure?\" \"Not at all,\" he answered. \"You\nwill prepare for confession, then?\" He asked for his prayer-book, and\nhad the prayers read to him.\n\nWhen the priest came, he asked for more time to prepare. At last the\ncure was summoned.\n\n\"Never have I heard a confession better made,\" said the priest\nafterward. As he was leaving the room, Maurice called him back, and\nmade a solemn retraction of the doctrines of M. de Lamennais. Then\ncame the Viaticum and the last anointing. Life ebbed away; he pressed\nthe hand of the cure, who was by him to the last, he kissed his\ncrucifix, and died. Eugenie's prayer was heard. He died, but at home;\na wanderer come back; an erring child, once more forgiven, resting on\nhis Father's breast.\n\nAnd he was gone!--\"king of my heart! my other self!\" as she had called\nhim--and Eugenie was left behind. She had loved him too well for her\neternal peace, and it was necessary that she should be purified in the\ncrucible of suffering. Very gradually she parted from him; the gates\nof the tomb closed not on her love; slowly she uprooted the fibres of\nher nature which had been entwined in his. Her journal did not end,\nand she wrote still to him--to Maurice in heaven: \"Oh, my beloved\nMaurice! Maurice, art thou far from me? hearest thou me? Sometimes I\nshed torrents of tears; then the soul is dried up. All my life will be\na mourning one; my heart is desolate.\" Then, reproaching herself, she\nturns to her only consolation: \"Do I not love thee, my God? only true\nand Eternal Love! It seems to me that I love thee as the fearful\nPeter, but not like John, who rested on thy heart--divine repose which\nI so need. What do I seek in creatures? To make a pillow of a human\nbreast? Alas! I have seen how death can take that from us. Better to\nlean, Jesus, on thy crown of thorns.\n\n******\n\n\"This day year, we went together to St. Sulpice, to the one o'clock\nmass. To-day I have been to Lentin in the rain, with bitter memories,\nin solitude. But, my soul, calm thyself with thy God, whom thou hast\nreceived to-day, in that little church. He is thy brother, thy friend,\nthe well-beloved above all; whom thou canst never see die; who can\nnever fail thee, in this world or the next. Let us console ourselves\nwith this thought, that in God we shall find again all we have lost.\"\n\nOne great desire was, however, left to her; that of publishing the\nletters and writings of Maurice, and of winning for her beloved one\nthe fame which she so despised for herself. A tribute to his memory\nappeared the year after his death, in the _Revue des deux Mondes_,\nfrom the brilliant pen of Madame Sand; but it was the source of more\npain than pleasure to Eugenie. With the want of candor which is so\noften a characteristic of the class of writers to whom Madame Sand\n{224} belongs, she represented Maurice as a man totally without faith.\nEugenie believed that he had never actually lost it, although it had\nbeen darkened and obscured; and she was certainly far more in his\nconfidence than any of his friends.\n\nFor some time before his death he had gradually been returning to\nreligious exercises; and, as we have seen, on his death-bed, he had\nmost fully retracted and repented of whatever errors there had been in\nhis life. But Madame Sand was not very likely to trouble herself about\nthe dying moments of her friend, while it was another triumph to\ninfidelity to let the world think this brilliant young man lived and\ndied in its ranks.\n\n\"Madame Sand makes Maurice a skeptic, a great poet, like Byron, and it\nafflicts me to see the name of my brother--a name which was free from\nthese lamentable errors--thus falsely represented to the world.\" And\nagain: \"Oh, Madame Sand is right when she says that his words are like\nthe diamonds linked together, which make a diadem; or, rather, my\nMaurice was all one diamond. Blessed be those who estimated his price;\nblessed be the voice which praises him, which places him so high, with\nso much respect and enthusiasm! But on one point this voice is\nmistaken--when she says he had no faith. No; faith was not wanting in\nhim. I proclaim it, and attest it by what I have seen and heard; by\nhis prayers, his pious reading; by the sacraments he received; by all\nhis Christian actions; by the death which opened life unto him--a\ndeath with his crucifix.\"\n\nThis article of Madame Sand only increased Eugenie's desire to\nvindicate her brother, by letting the world judge from his own\nwritings and letters what Maurice really was. Many projects were set\non foot for publishing this work. Rather than leave it undone, Eugenie\nwould have undertaken it herself, though her broken spirit shrank more\nthan ever from any sort of notoriety, or communication with the busy\nworld outside her quiet home. But she would greatly have preferred the\ntask should be accomplished by one of his friends; and much of her\ncorrespondence was devoted to the purpose. Time passed, and plan after\nplan fell to the ground. This last satisfaction was not to be hers.\nShe was to see, as she thought, the name of her beloved one gradually\nfading away, and forgotten as years went on. To the very last drop she\nwas to drain the cup of disappointment and loss. Her journal ceased,\nand its last sentence was, \"Truly did the saint speak who said, 'Let\nus throw our hearts into eternity.'\"\n\nThere are a few fragments and letters, which carry us on some years\nlater; and in one of the last of these letters, dated 15th of June,\n1845, we find these consoling words: \"I have suffered; but God teaches\nus thus, and leads us to willingly place our hearts above. You are\nagain in mourning, and I have felt your loss deeply. I mean the death\nof your poor brother. Alas! what is life but a continual separation?\nBut you will meet in heaven, and there will be no more mourning nor\ntears; and there the society of saints will reward us for what we have\nsuffered in the society of men. And, while waiting, there is nothing\nelse to do than to humble one's self, as the Apostle says, 'under the\nmighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in the time of visitation;\ncasting all your care upon him, for he hath care of you.'\"\n\nThese are almost her closing words; and thus we see God comforted her.\nThree years more passed, of which we have no record; and we cannot but\ndeeply regret the determination of M. Trebutien not to give any\naccount of her beyond her own words. As long as they lasted, they are\nindeed sufficient; but we would have fain followed her into the\nsilence of those last years, and have seen the soul gradually passing\nto its rest. We would have liked to know if the friends she loved\nsoothed her dying hours--whether M. Bories, with his \"strong {225} and\npowerful words,\" was by her side in her last earthly struggle. But a\nveil falls over it all. We feel assured, as we close the volume, that\nwhatever human means were wanting, the God she had faithfully served\nconsoled his child to the last, and sustained her mortal weakness till\nshe reposed in him. After her death, her heart's wish was fulfilled,\nand abundant honor has been rendered to Maurice de Guerin. Nay, more;\nfor homage is ever given to the majesty of unselfish love; and from\nhenceforth, if Maurice the poet shall be forgotten, Maurice the\nbrother of Eugenie will never be. She has embalmed his memory with her\ndeep and fond devotion; and she has left a living record of how, in\nthe midst of a wearisome, an objectless, a monotonous life, a woman\nmay find work to do, and doing it, like Eugenie, with all her might,\nleave behind her a track of light by which others may follow after\nher, encouraged and consoled.\n           F.\n\n------\n\nTHE BUILDING OF MOURNE.\n\n\nA LEGEND OF THE BLACKWATER.\n\n\nBY ROBERT D. JOYCE.\n\n\nRome, according to the old aphorism, was not built in a day. Neither\nwas the old town of Mourne, although it was destroyed in a day, and\nmade fit almost for the sowing of salt upon its foundations, by the\ngreat Lord of Thomond, Murrough of the Ferns, when he gathered around\nit his rakehelly kerns, as Spenser in his spleen called them, and his\nfierce galloglasses and roving hobbelers. But the present story has\nnaught to do with the spoliation and burning of towns. Far different,\nindeed, was the founding of Mourne, to the story of the disastrous\ntermination of its prosperity. You will look in vain to the histories\nfor a succinct or circumstantial account of the building of this\nancient town; but many a more famous city has its early annals\ninvolved in equal obscurity--Rome, for instance. What tangible fact\ncan be laid hold of with regard to its early history, save the\nwill-o'-the-wisp light emanating from the traditions of a more modern\nday? A cimmerian cloud of darkness overhangs its founding and youthful\nprogress, through which the double-distilled microscopic eyes of the\nhistorian are unable to penetrate with any degree of certainty.\nMourne, however, though it cannot boast of a long-written history,\npossesses an oral one of remarkable perspicuity and certainty. The men\nare on the spot who, with a mathematical precision worthy of\nArchimedes or Newton, will relate everything about it, from its\nfoundation to its fall. The only darkness cast upon their most\ncircumstantial history is the elysian cloud from their luxuriant\ndudheens, as they whiff away occasionally, and relate--\n\nThat there was long ago a certain Dhonal, a nobleman of the warlike\nrace of Mac Caurha, who ruled over Duhallow, and the wild mountainous\nterritories extending downward along the banks of the Blackwater. This\nnobleman, after a long rule of prosperity and peace, at length grew\nweary of inaction, and manufactured in his pugnacious brain some cause\nof mortal affront and complaint against a neighboring potentate, whose\nterritory extended in a westerly direction on the opposite shore of\nthe river. So he mustered his vassals with all imaginable speed, and\nprepared to set out for the domains of his foe on a foray of unusual\nferocity and magnitude. Before departing from his castle, which stood\nsome miles above Mallow, on the banks of the river, he held a long and\nconfidential parley with his wife, in which he told her, if he were\ndefeated or slain, and if the foe should cross the Blackwater to make\nreprisals, that she should hold out the fortress while one stone would\nstand upon another, and especially that she should guard their three\nyoung sons well, whom, he doubted not, whatever might happen, would\none day gain prosperity and renown. After this, he set out on his\nexpedition, at the head of a formidable array of turbulent kerns and\nmarauding horsemen. But his neighbor was not a man to be caught\nsleeping; for, at the crossing of a ford near Kanturk, he attacked\nDhonal, slew him in single combat, and put his followers to the sword,\nalmost to a man. After this he crossed the Blackwater, laid waste the\nterritories of the invader, and at length besieged the castle, where\nthe widowed lady and her three sons had taken refuge. For a long time\nshe held her own bravely against her enemy; but in the end the castle\nwas taken by assault, and she and her three young sons narrowly\nescaped with their lives out into the wild recesses of the forest.\n\nAfter wandering about for some time, the poor lady built a little hut\nof brambles on the shore of the Clydagh, near the spot where stand the\nruins of the preceptory of Mourne, or Ballinamona, as it is sometimes\ncalled. Here she dwelt with her children for a long time, in want and\nmisery. Her sons grew up without receiving any of those\naccomplishments befitting their birth, and gained their subsistence,\nlike the children of the common people around, by tilling a little\nplot of land before their hut, and by the products of the chase in the\nsurrounding forest. One day, as Diarmid, the eldest, with his bow and\narrows ready for the chase, was crossing a narrow valley, he met a\nkern, one of the followers of the great lord who had slain his father.\nNow, neither Diarmid nor his brothers recollected who had killed their\nfather, nor the high estate from which they had fallen, for their\nmother kept them carefully in ignorance of all, fearing that they\nmight become known, and that their enemies would kill them also. So\nthe kern and himself wended their way for some time together along the\nside of the valley. At length they started a deer from its bed in the\ngreen ferns. Each shot his arrow at the same moment, and each struck\nthe deer, which ran downward for a short space, and at last fell dead\nbeside the little stream in the bottom of the valley.\n\n\"The deer is mine!\" said the strange kern, as they stood over its\nbody.\n\n\"No!\" answered Diarmid, \"it is not. See! your arrow is only stickin'\nin the skin of his neck, an' mine is afther rattlin' into his heart,\nthrough an' through!\"\n\n\"No matther,\" exclaimed the kern, with a menacing look. \"I don't care\nhow he kem by his death, but the deer I must have, body an' bones,\nwhatever comes of it! Do you think sich a _sprissawn_ as you could\nkeep me from it, an' I wantin' its darlin' carkiss for the table o' my\nlord, the Mac Donogh?\"\n\nNow Diarmid recollected that his mother and brothers were at the same\ntime almost dying in their little hut for want of food. So without\nfurther parley he drew his long skian from its sheath.\n\n\"Very well,\" said he, \"take it, if you're a man; but before it goes,\nmy carkiss must lie stiff an' bloody in its place!\"\n\nThe kern drew his skian at the word, and there, over the body of the\nfallen deer, ensued a combat stern and fierce, which at last resulted\nin Diarmid's plunging his skian through and through the body of his\nfoe into the gritty sand beneath them.\n\n{227}\n\nDiarmid then took the spear and other weapons of the dead kern, put\nthe deer upon his broad shoulders, and marching off in triumph, soon\ngained his mother's little hut. There, after eating a comfortable\nmeal, and telling his adventure, Diarmid began to lay down his future\nplans.\n\n\"Mother,\" he said, \"the time is come at last when this little cabin is\ntoo small for me. I'm a man now, an' able to meet a man, body to body,\nas I met him to-day; so I'll brighten up my weapons, an' set off on my\nadventures, that I may gain renown in the wars. Donogh here, too, has\nthe four bones of a man,\" continued he, turning to his second brother;\n\"so let him prepare, an' we'll thramp off together as soon as we can,\nan' perhaps afther all we'd have a castle of our own, where you could\nreign in glory, as big an' grand as Queen Cleena o' the Crag!\"\n\n\"Well, then,\" answered his mother, \"if you must go, before you leave\nme, you and your brothers must hunt in the forest for a month, and\nbring in as much food as will do me and Rory here for a year and a\nday.\"\n\n\"But,\" said Rory, the youngest, or Roreen Shouragh, or the Lively, as\nhe was called, in consequence of the 'cute and merry temperament of\nhis mind--\"but, Diarmid, you know I am now beyant fifteen years of\nage, an' so, if you go, I'll folly you to the worldt's end!\"\n\n\"You presumptious little atomy of a barebones,\" answered his eldest\nbrother, \"if I only see the size of a thrush's ankle of you follyin'\nus on the road, I'll turn back an' bate that wiry an' freckled little\ncarkiss o' yours into frog's jelly! So stay at home in pace an'\nquietness, an' perhaps when I come back I might give you a good purse\no' goold to begin your forthin with.\"\n\n\"That for your mane an' ludiacrous purse o' goold!\" exclaimed Roreen\nShouragh, at the same time snapping his fingers in the face of his\nbrother. \"Arrah! do you hear him, mother? But never mind. Let us be\noff into the forest to-morrow, an' we'll see who'll bring home the\nmost food before night!\"\n\n\"Well,\" said his mother, \"whether he stays at home or goes away, I\nfear he'll come to some bad end with that sharp tongue of his, and his\nwild capers.\"\n\n\"With all jonteel respect, mother,\" answered Shouragh again, \"I mane\nto do no such thing. I think myself as good a hairo this\nminnit--because I have the sowl an' heart o' one as King Dathi, who\nwas killed in some furrin place that I don't recklect the jography of,\nor as Con o' the Hundhert Battles, or as the best man amongst them,\nFion himself--an' I'll do as great actions as any o' them yet!\"\n\nThis grandiloquent boast of Roreen Shouragh's set his mother and\nbrothers into a fit of laughter, from which they only recovered when\nit was time to retire to rest. In the morning the three brothers\nbetook themselves to the forest, and at the fall of night returned\nwith a great spoil of game. From morning till night they hunted thus\nevery day for a month, at the end of which time Diarmid said that they\nhad as much food stored in as would last his mother and Rory for a\nyear and a day.\n\nOn a hot summer noon the two brothers left the little hut, with their\nmother's blessing on their heads, and set off on their adventures.\nAfter crossing a few valleys, they came at length to the shore of the\nBlackwater, and sat down in the shade of a huge oak-tree on the bank\nto rest themselves. Beneath them, in a clear, shady pool, a huge pike,\nwith his voracious jaws ready for a plunge, was watching a merry\nlittle speckled trout, which in its turn was regarding with most\naffectionate eyes a bright blue fly, that was disporting overhead on\nthe surface of the water. Suddenly the trout darted upward into the\nair, catching the ill-starred fly, but, in its return to the element\nbeneath, unfortunately plumped itself into the Charybdis-like jaws of\nthe villanous {228} pike, and was from that in one moment quietly\ndeposited in his stomach.\n\n\"Look at that!\" said Diarmid to his brother. \"That's the way with a\nman that works an' watches everything with a keen eye. He'll have all\nin the end, just as the pike has both fly and throut--an' just as I\nhave both fly, an' throut, an' pike!\" continued he, giving his spear a\nquick dart into the deep pool, and then landing the luckless pike,\ntransfixed through and through, upon the green bank. \"That's the way\nto manage, and the divvle a betther sign o' good luck we could have in\nthe beginning of our journey, than to get a good male so aisy!\"\n\n\"Hooray!\" exclaimed a voice behind them. \"That's the way to manage\nmost galliantly. What a nate dinner the thurminjous monsther will make\nfor the three of us!\" and on turning round, the two brothers beheld\nRoreen Shouragh, accoutred like themselves, and dancing with most\nexuberant delight at the feat beside them on the grass.\n\n\"An' so you have follied us afther all my warnin', you outragious\nlittle vagabone!\" exclaimed Diarmid, making a wrathful dart at Roreen,\nwho, however, eluding the grasp, ran and doubled hither and thither\nwith the swiftness of a hare, around the trunks of the huge oak-trees\non the shore. In vain Diarmid tried every ruse of the chase to catch\nhim. Roreen Shouragh could not be captured. At length the elder\nbrother, wearied out, returned to Donogh, who, during the chase, was\ntumbling about on the grass in convulsions of laughter.\n\n\"'Tis no use, Donogh,\" he said, \"we must only let him come with us.\nHe'll never go back. Come here, you aggravatin' young robber,\"\ncontinued he, calling out to Roreen, who was still dancing in defiance\nbeneath a tree, some distance off--\"come here, an' you'll get your\ndinner, an' may folly us if you wish.\"\n\nRoreen knew that he might depend on the word of his brother. \"I towld\nye both,\" said he, coming up to the spot, \"that I'd folly ye to the\nworldt's end; so let us have pace, an' I may do ye some service yet.\nBut may I supplicate to know where ye're preamblin' to at present; for\nif ye sit down that way in every umberagious coolin' spot, as the song\nsays, the divvle a much ye'll have for yeer pains in the ind?\"\n\n\"I'll tell you then,\" answered Donogh, now recovered from his fit of\nlaughing. \"We're goin' off to Corrig Cleena, to see the Queen o' the\nFairies, an' to ask her advice what to do so as to win wealth an'\nrenown.\"\n\n\"'Tis aisier said than done,\" said Roreen, \"to see Queen Cleena. But\nhowsomdever, when we're afther devourin' this vouracious thief of a\npike here, we'll peg off to the Corrig as swift as our\ngambadin'-sticks will carry us!\"\n\nAfter the meal the three brothers swam across the river, and proceeded\non their way through the forest toward Corrig Cleena. On gaining the\nsummit of a little height, a long, straight road extended before them.\n\nOn and on the straight road they went, till, turning up a narrow path\nin the forest, they beheld the great grey boulders of Corrig Cleena\ntowering before them. They searched round its base several times for\nan entrance, but could find none. At length, as they were turning away\nin despair, they saw an extremely small, withered old atomy of a\nwoman, clad all in sky blue, and sitting beside a clump of fairy\nthimbles, or foxgloves, that grew on a little knoll in front of the\nrock. They went up and accosted her:\n\n\"Could you tell us, ould woman,\" asked Diarmid, \"how we can enter the\nCorrig? We want to speak to the queen.\"\n\n\"Ould woman, inagh!\" answered the little atomy in a towering passion.\n\"How daar you call me an ould woman, you vagabone? Off wid\nyou--thramp, I say, for if you sted there till your legs would root in\nthe ground, you'd get no information from me!\"\n\n{229}\n\n\"Be aisy, mother,\" said Donogh, in a soothing voice; \"sure, if you can\ntell us, you may as well serve us so far, an' we'll throuble you no\nmore.\"\n\n\"Ould woman an' mother, both!\" screamed the little hag, starting up\nand shaking her crutch at the brothers; \"this is worse than all. You\ndirty an' insultin' spalpeens, how daar ye again, I say call me sich\nnames? What for should I be decoratin' my fingers wid the red blossoms\no' the Lusmore, if I was as ould as you say? Be off out o' this, or be\nthis an' be that, I ruinate ye both wid a whack o' this wand o' mine!\"\n\n\"Young leedy,\" said Roreen Shouragh, stepping up cap in hand at this\njuncture, and making the old hag an elaborately polite bow--\"young,\nan' innocent, an' delightful creethur, p'r'aps you'd have the kindness\nto exercise that lily-white hand o' yours in pointin' out the way for\nus into Queen Cleena's palace!\"\n\n\"Yes, young man,\" answered the crone, greatly mollified at the\nhandsome address of Roreen. \"For your sake, I'll point out the way.\nYou at laste know the respect that should be paid to youth an'\nbeauty!\"\n\n\"Allow me, my sweet young darlint,\" said Roreen at this, as he stepped\nup and offered her his arm--\"allow me to have the shuprame pleasure of\nconductin' you. I'm sure I must have the honor an' glory of ladin' on\nmy arm one of the queen's maids of honor. May those enticin' cheeks o'\nyours for ever keep the bloomin' an' ravishin' blush they have at the\npresent minnit, an' may those riglar ivory teeth o' yours, that are as\nwhite as the dhriven snow, never make their conjay from your purty an'\ndelightful mouth!\"\n\nThe \"delightful young creethur\" allowed herself, with many a gratified\nsmirk, to be conducted downward by the gallant Roreen toward the rock,\nwhere, striking the naked wall with her crutch, or wand as she was\npleased to call it, a door appeared before them, and the three\nbrothers were immediately conducted into the presence of the fairy\nqueen.\n\nIt would be long, but pleasant, to tell the gallant compliments paid\nby Roreen to the queen, and the queen's polite and gracious acceptance\nof them; merry to relate the covert laughter of the lovely maids of\nhonor, as Roreen occasionally showered down praises on the head of the\n\"young leedy\" who so readily gained him admittance to the palace, and\nwho was no other than the vain old nurse of the queen; but, despite\nall such frivolities, this history must have its course. At length the\nqueen gave them a gentle hint that their audience had lasted the\nproper time, and as they were departing she cast her bright but\nlove-lorn eyes upon them with a kindly look.\n\n\"Young man,\" she said, \"you ask my advice how to act so as to gain\nwealth and renown. I could give you wealth, but will not, for wealth\nthus acquired rarely benefits the possessor. But I will give you the\nadvice you seek. Always keep your senses sharp and bright, and your\nbodies strong by manly exercise. Look sharply round you, and avail\nyourselves honorably of every opportunity that presents itself. Be\nbrave, and defend your rights justly; but, above all, let your hearts\nbe full of honor and kindness, and show that kindness ever in aiding\nthe poor, the needy, and the defenceless. Do all this, and I doubt not\nbut you will yet come to wealth, happiness, and renown. Farewell!\"\n\nAnd in a moment, they knew not how, they found themselves sitting in\nthe front of the Rock of Cleena, upon the little knoll where Roreen\nhad so flatteringly accosted the \"young leedy.\" Away they went again\ndown to the shore, swam back across the river, and wandered away over\nhill and dale, till they ascended Sliabh Luchra, and lost themselves\nin the depths of the great forest that clothed its broad back. Here\nthey sat down in a green glade, and began to consider what they should\nfurther do with themselves. At length {230} they agreed to build a\nlittle hut, and remain there for a few days, in order to look about\nthe country. No sooner said than done.\n\nTo work they went, finished their hut beneath a spreading tree, and\nwere soon regaling themselves on a young fawn they had killed as they\ndescended the mountain. Next day they went out into the forest, killed\na deer, brought him back to the hut, in order to prepare part of him\nfor their dinner. Diarmid undertook the cooking for the first day,\nwhile his two younger brothers went out along the back of the mountain\nto kill more game. With the aid of a small pot, which they had\nborrowed from a forester at the northern part of the mountain, and a\nladle that accompanied it, Diarmid began to cook the dinner, stirring\nthe pieces of venison round and round over the fire, in order to have\nsome broth ready at the return of his brothers. As he was stirring and\ntasting alternately with great industry, he heard a light footstep\nbehind him, and on looking round, beheld sitting on one of the large\nmossy stones they used for a seat a little crabbed-looking boy, with a\nred head almost the color of scarlet, a red jacket, and tight-fitting\ntrowsers of the same hue, which, reaching a little below the knee,\nleft the fire-bedizened and equally rubicund legs and feet exposed in\nfree luxury to the air. His face was handsomely formed, but brown and\nfreckled, and he had a pair of dark, keen eyes, which seemed to pierce\ninto the very soul of Diarmid as he sat gazing at him. There was a\nwild, elfish look about him altogether, as, with a vivacious twinkle\nof his acute eye, he saluted Diarmid politely, and asked him for a\nladleful of the broth. Diarmid, however, in turning round from the\npot, had spilt the contents of the ladle on his hand, burning it\nsorely, and was in consequence not in the most amiable humor.\n\n\"Give you a ladle of broth, indeed, you little weasel o' perdition!\"\nexclaimed he. \"Peg off out o' my house this minute, or I'll catch you\nby one o' them murtherin' legs o' yours, an' bate your brains out\nagainst one o' the stones!\"\n\n\"I'm well acquainted with the cozy an' indestructible fact, that a\nman's house is his castle,\" said the little fellow, at the same time\nthrusting both his hands into his pockets, inclining his head slightly\nto one side, and looking up coolly at Diarmid; \"but some o' that broth\nI must have, for three raisons. First, that all the wild-game o' the\nforest are mine as well as yours; second, that I'm a sthranger, an'\nyou know that hospitality is a virthue in ould Ireland; an', third an'\nbest, because you darn't refuse me! So, sit down there an' cool me a\ngood rich ladleful, or, be the hole o' my coat! there'll be wigs on\nthe green bethune you an' me afore you're much ouldher!\"\n\n\"Ther's for your impidence, you gabblin' little riffin!\" said Diarmid,\nmaking a furious kick at the imperturbable little intruder, who,\nhowever, evaded it by a nimble jump to one side; and then leaping up\nsuddenly, before his assailant was aware, hit him right and left two\nstunning blows with his hard and diminutive fists in the eyes. Round\nand round hopped redhead, at each hop striking the luckless Diarmid\nright in the face, till at length, with one finishing blow, he brought\nhim to the ground, stunned and senseless.\n\n\"There,\" he said, as he took a ladleful o' broth and began to cool it\ndeliberately, \"that's the most scientific facer I ever planted on a\nman's forehead in my life. I think he'll not refuse me the next time I\nask him.\"\n\nWith that he drank off the broth at a draught, laid the ladle\ncarefully in the pot, stuck his hands in his pockets, and jovially\nwhistling up, \"The cricket's rambles through the hob,\" he left the\nhut, and strutted with a light and cheerful heart into the forest.\n\nWhen Diarmid's brothers returned, they found him just recovering from\nhis swoon, with two delightful black eyes, and a nose of unusual\ndimensions. {231} He told them the cause of his mishap, at which they\nonly laughed heartily, saying that he deserved it for allowing himself\nto be beaten by such an insignificant youngster. Next day, Diarmid and\nRoreen went out to hunt, leaving Donogh within to cook the dinner.\nWhen they returned, they found the ill-starred Donogh lying almost\ndead on the floor, with two black eyes far surpassing in beauty and\nmagnitude those received on the preceding evening by his brother.\n\n\"Let me stay within to-morrow,\" said Roreen, \"for 'tis my turn; an' if\nhe has the perliteness o' payin' me a visit, I'll reward him for his\ncondescension.\"\n\n\"Arrah!\" said both his brothers, \"is it a little traneen like you to\nbe able for him, when he bate the two of us?\"\n\n\"No matther,\" answered Roreen; \"tis my turn, an' stay I will, if my\neyes were to be oblitherated in my purricranium!\"\n\nAnd so, when the morrow came, Diarmid and Donogh went out to hunt, and\nRoreen Shouragh stayed within to cook the dinner. As the pot commenced\nboiling, Roreen kept a sharp eye around him for the expected visitor,\nwhom he at length descried coming up the glade toward the door of the\nhut, whistling cheerfully as he came.\n\n\"Good-morrow, youngster!\" said the chap as he entered, and made a most\nhilarious bow; \"you seem to have the odor o' charity from your\nhandsome face here, at laste it comes most aromatically from the pot,\nanyhow.\"\n\n\"Ah, then! good-morrow kindly, my blushin' little moss-rose!\" said\nRoreen, answering the salutation with an equally ornamental\ninclination of his head--\"welcome to the hall o' my fathers. P'r'aps\nyou'd do me the thurminjous honor o' satin' that blazin' little\ncarkiss o' yours on the stone fornent me there.\"\n\n\"With all the pleasure in the univarse,\" answered the other, seating\nhimself; \"but as the clay is most obsthreporously hot an' disthressin'\nto the dissolute traveller, p'r'aps you'd have the exthrame kindness\no' givin' me a ladleful o' broth to refresh myself.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Roreen, \"I was always counted a livin' respectacle o' the\nhospitality of ould Ireland. Yet, although the first law is not to ask\nthe name of a guest, in regard to the unmerciful way you thrated my\nbrothers, I must make bowld, before I grant your request, to have the\nhonor an' glory of hearin' your cognomen.\"\n\n\"With shuprame pleasure,\" answered the visitor. \"My name, accordin' to\nthe orthography o' Ogham characters, is Shaneen cus na Thinne, which,\nlarnedly expounded, manes John with his Feet to the Fire. But the\nferlosophers an' rantiquarians of ould Ireland, thracin' effect from\ncause, call me Fieryfoot, an' by that name I shall be proud to be\naddhressed by you at present.\"\n\n\"Well,\" rejoined Roreen, \"it only shows their perfound knowlidge an'\nlove for truth, to be able to make out such a knotty ploberm in\nderivations; an' so, out o' compliment to their oceans o' larnin',\nyou'll get the broth; but,\" continued he, as he took up a ladleful and\nheld it to cool, \"as there are a few questions now and then thrublin'\nmy ruminashins, p'r'aps you may be so perlite as to throw a flash o'\nlightnin' on them, while we're watin'. One is in nathral history. I've\nheerd that of late the hares sleep with one eye shut an' th' other\nopen. What on earth is the raison of it?\"\n\n\"That,\" answered Fieryfoot, \"is aisily solvoluted. Tis on account o'\nthe increase o' weasels, and their love for suckin' the blood o' hares\nin their sleep. So the hares, in ordher to be on their guard an'\nprevent it, sleep with only one eye at a time, an' when that's rested\nan' has slept enough, they open it an' shut the other!\"\n\n\"The other,\" said Roreen, \"is in asthronomy, an' thrubbles me most of\nall, sleepin' an' noddin', aitin' an' dhrinkin'. Why is it that the\nman in the moon always keeps a rapin'-hook in his hand, and never uses\nit?\"\n\n{232}\n\n\"Because,\" answered Fieryfoot, getting somewhat impatient, \"because,\nyou poor benighted crathure, he's not a man at all, but the image of a\nman painted over the door of Brian Airach's shebeen there, where those\nthat set off on a lunarian ramble go in to refresh themselves, as I\nwant to refresh myself with that ladle o' broth you're delayin' in\nyour hand!\"\n\n\"Oh! you'll get it fresh an' fastin'!\" exclaimed Roreen, and with that\nhe dashed the ladleful of scalding broth right into the face of\nFieryfoot, who started up with a wild cry, and rushed half-blinded\nfrom the hut. Away went Roreen in hot pursuit after him, with the\nladle in his hand, and calling out to him, with the most endearing\nnames imaginable, to come back for another supply of broth--away down\nthe glades, till at length, on the summit of a smooth, green little\nknoll, Fieryfoot suddenly disappeared. Roreen went to the spot, and\nfound there a square aperture, just large enough to admit his body. He\nimmediately went and cut a sapling with his knife, stuck it by the\nside of the aperture, and placed his cap on it for a mark, and then\nreturned to the hut, and found his brothers just after coming in. He\nrelated all that happened, and they agreed to go together to the knoll\nafter finishing their dinner. When the dinner was over, the three\nbrothers went down to the knoll, and easily found out the aperture\nthrough which Fieryfoot had disappeared.\n\n\"An' now, what's to be done?\" asked Diarmid.\n\n\"What's to be done, is it?\" said Roreen; \"why just to have me go down,\nas I'm the smallest--smallest in body I mane--for, to spake\nshupernathrally, my soul is larger than both of yurs put together;\nan', in the manetime, to have ye build another hut over the spot an'\nlive there till I return with a power o' gold an' dimons, and oceans\no' renown an' glory!\"\n\nWith that he crept into the aperture, while his brothers busied\nthemselves in drawing brambles and sticks to the spot in order to\nbuild a hut as he had directed. As Roreen descended, the passage began\nto grow more broad and lightsome, and at length he found himself on\nthe verge of a delightful country, far more calm and beautiful than\nthe one he had left. Here he took the first way that presented itself,\nand travelled on till he came to the crossing of three roads. He saw a\nlarge, dark-looking house, part of which he knew to be a smith's\nforge, from the smoke, and from the constant hammering that resounded\nfrom the inside. Roreen entered, and the first object that presented\nitself was Fieryfoot, as fresh and blooming as a trout, and roasting\nhis red shins with the utmost luxuriance and happiness of heart before\nthe blazing fire on the hob.\n\n\"Wisha, Roreen Shouragh,\" exclaimed Fieryfoot, starting from his seat,\nspitting on his hand for good luck, and then offering it with great\ncordiality, \"you're as welcome as the flowers o' May! Allow me to\noffer you my congratulations, _ad infinitum_, for your superior\ncuteness in the art of circumwentin' your visitors. I prizhume you'll\nhave no objection to be presented to the three workmen I keep in the\nhouse--the smith there, the carpenter, an' the mason. Roreen Shouragh,\ngentlemin, the only man in the world above that was able to circumwint\nyour masther!\"\n\n\"A cead mille failte, young gintleman!\" said the three workmen in a\nbreath.\n\nRoreen bowed politely in acknowledgment.\n\n\"Any news from the worldt above?\" asked the smith, as he rested his\nponderous hammer on the anvil.\n\n\"Things are morthially dull,\" answered Roreen, giving a sly wink at\nFieryfoot. \"I've heard that the Danes are making a divarshin in\nIreland; that a shower o' dimons fell in Dublin; that the moon is\ngettin' mowldy for want o' shinin'; and that there's a say in the west\nthat is gradually becoming transmogrified into whiskey. I humbly hope\nthat the latther intelligence {233} is unthrue, for if not, I'm afraid\nthe whole worldt will become drunk in the twinklin' of a gooldfrinch's\neye!\"\n\n\"Mile, mile gloire!\" exclaimed the three workmen, \"but that's grate\nan' wondherful intirely! P'r'aps masther,\" continued they, addressing\nFieryfoot, and smacking their lips at the thought of whiskey, \"p'r'aps\nyou'd have the goodness o' givin' us a few days' lave of absence!\"\n\n\"Not at present,\" answered Fieryfoot; \"industry is the soul o'\npleasure, as the hawk said to the sparrow before he transported him to\nhis stomach, so ye must now set to work an' make a sword, for I want\nto make my frind here a present as a compliment for his superior\nwisdom.\"\n\nTo work they went. The smith hammered out, tempered, and polished the\nblade, the carpenter fashioned the hilt, which the mason set with a\nbrilliant row of diamonds; and the sword was finished instantly.\n\n\"An' now,\" said Fieryfoot, presenting the sword to Roreen, \"let me\nhave the immorthial pleasure o' presenting you with this. Take it and\nset off on your thravels. Let valior and magnanimity be your guide,\nand you'll come to glory without a horizintal bounds. In the manetime\nI'll wait here till you return.\"\n\n\"I accept it with the hottest gratitudinity an' gladness,\" said\nRoreen, taking the sword and running his eye critically along hilt and\nblade. \"'Tis a darlin', handy sword; 'tis sharp, shinin', an' killin',\nas the sighin' lover said to his sweetheart's eyes, an' altogether\n'tis the one that matches my experienced taste, for 'tis tough, an'\nlight, and lumeniferous, as Nero said to his cimitar, whin he was\npreparin' to daycapitate the univarsal worldt wid one blow!\"\n\nSaying this, Roreen buckled the sword to his side, bade a ceremonious\nfarewell to the polite Fieryfoot and his workmen, left the house, and\nproceeded on his adventures. He took the west and broader road that\nled by the forge, and travelled on gaily till night. For seven days he\ntravelled thus, meeting various small adventures by the way, and\ngetting through them with his usual light-heartedness, till at length\nhe saw a huge dark castle before him, standing on a rock over a\nsolitary lake. He accosted an old man by the way-side, who told him\nthat a huge giant of unusual size, strength, and ferocity dwelt there,\nand that he had kept there in thrall, for the past year and a day, a\nbeautiful princess, expecting that in the end she'd give her consent\nto marry him. The old peasant told him also that the giant had two\nbrothers, who dwelt far away in their castles, and that they were the\nstrangest objects ever seen by mortal eyes; one being a valiant dwarf\nas broad as he was long, and the other longer than he was broad, for\nhe was tall as the giant, but so slightly formed that he was\ndesignated by the inhabitants of the country round Snohad na Dhial, or\nthe Devil's Needle. Roreen thanked the old man with great urbanity,\nand proceeded on his way toward the castle. When he came to the gate,\nhe knocked as bold as brass, and demanded admittance. He was quickly\nanswered by a tremendous voice from the inside, which demanded what he\nwanted.\n\n\"Let me in, ould steeple,\" said Roreen; \"I'm a poor disthressed boy\nthat's grown wary o' the worldt on account o' my fatness, an' I'm come\nto offer myself as a volunthary male for your voracious stomach!\"\n\nAt this the gate flew open with a loud clang, and Roreen found himself\nin the great court-yard of the castle, confronting the giant. The\ngiant was licking his lips expectantly while opening the gate, but\nseemed now not a little disappointed as he looked upon the spare, wiry\nform standing before him.\n\n\"If you're engaged, ould cannibal,\" said Roreen again, \"in calkalatin'\na gasthernomical ploberm, as I'm aweer you are, by the way you're\nlookin' at me, allow me perlitely to help you in hallucidatin' it. In\nthe first place, if {234} you intend to put me in a pie, I must tell\nyou that you'll not get much gravy from my carkiss, an' in the next,\nif you intend to ate me on the spot, raw, I must inform you that\nyou'll find me as hard as a Kerry dimon, an' stickin' in your throat,\nbefore you're half acquainted with the politics of your abdominal\nkingdom!\"\n\nAs an answer to this the giant did precisely what Roreen Shouragh\nexpected he would do. He stooped down, caught him up with his\nmonstrous hand, intending to chop off his head with the first bite;\nbut Roreen, the moment he approached his broad, hairy chest, pulled\nsuddenly out the sword presented to him by Fiery foot, and drew it\nacross the giant's windpipe, with as scientific a cut as ever was\ngiven by any champion at the battle of Gaura, Clontarf, or of any\nother place on the face of the earth. The giant did not give the usual\nroar given by a giant in the act of being killed. How could he, when\nhis windpipe was cut? He only fell down simply by the gate of his own\ncastle, and died without a groan. Roreen, by way of triumph, leaped\nupon his carcass, and with a light heart cut a few nimble capers\nthereon, and then proceeded on his explorations into the castle. There\nhe found the beautiful princess sad and forlorn, whom he soon relieved\nfrom her apprehensions of further thraldom. She told him that she was\nnot the only lady whose wrongs were unredressed in that strange\ncountry, for that the two remaining brothers of the giant, to wit, the\ndwarf and the Devil's Needle, had kept, during her time of thrall, her\ntwo younger sisters in an equally cruel bondage.\n\n\"An' now, my onrivalled daisy,\" said Roreen, after some conversation\nhad passed between them, \"allow me, while I'm in the humor for\nperformin' deeds o' valior, to thramp off an' set them free!\"\n\n\"But,\" said the princess, \"am I to be left behind pining in this\nforlorn dungeon of a castle?\"\n\n\"Refulgint leedy,\" answered Roreen, \"a pair of eyes like yours, when\npurferrin' a request, are arrisistible, but this Kerry-dimon' heart o'\nmine is at present onmovable; and in ferlosophy, when an arrisistible\naffeer conglomerates against an onmovable one, nothin' occurs, an' so\nI must have the exthrame bowldness of asking you to stay where you are\ntill I come back, for 'tis always the maxim of an exparienced an'\nrenowned gineral not to oncumber himself with too much baggage when\nsettin' out on his advinthures!\"\n\nAnd so the young princess consented to stay, and Roreen, with many\nbows and compliments, took his leave. For three days he travelled,\ntill at length he espied the castle of the dwarf towering on the\nsummit of a great hill. He climbed the hill as fast as his nimble legs\ncould carry him, blew the horn at the gate, and defied the dwarf to\nsingle combat. To work they went. The skin of the dwarf was as hard\nand tough as that of a rhinoceros, but at length Roreen's sword found\na passage through it, and the dwarf fell dead by his own gate. Roreen\nwent in, brought the good news of her sister's liberation to the lady,\nand after directing her to remain where she was till his return, set\nforward again. For three days more he travelled, till he came to the\nshore of a sea, where he saw the castle of Snohad na Dhial towering\nhigh above the waves. He climbed up the rock on which the castle\nstood, found the gate open, and whistling the romantic pastoral of\n\"The piper in the meadow straying,\" he jovially entered the first door\nhe met. On he went, through room after room, and saw no one, till at\nlast he came before an exceedingly lofty door, with a narrow and\nperpendicular slit in it, extending almost from threshold to lintel.\nHe peeped in through the open slit, and beheld inside the most\nbeautiful young lady his eyes ever rested upon. She was weeping, and\nseemed sorely troubled. Roreen opened the door, presented himself\nbefore her, and told her how he had liberated her {235} sisters. In\nreturn she told him how that very day she was to be married to Snohad\nna Dhial, and wept, as she further related that it was out of the\nquestion to think of vanquishing him, for that he was as tall as the\ngiant, yet so slight that the slit in the door served him always for\nan entrance, but then he was beyond all heroes strong, and usually\nkilled his antagonist by knotting his long limbs around him and\nsqueezing him to death.\n\n\"No matther,\" said Roreen. \"I'll sing a song afther my victory, as the\ngamecock said to the piper. An' now, most delightful an' bloomin'\ndarlint o' the worldt, this purriliginious heart o' mine is melted at\nlast with the conshumin' flame o' love. Say, then, the\nheart-sootherin' an' merlifluous word that you'll have me, an' your\nthrubbles are over in the twinklin'--\"\n\n\"Not over so soon!\" interrupted a loud, shrill voice behind them, and\nRoreen, turning round, beheld Snohad na Dhial entering at the slit,\nwith deadly rage and jealousy in his fiery eyes. Snohad, however, in\nhis haste to get in and fall upon Roreen, got his middle in some way\nor other entangled in the slit, and in his struggles to free himself,\nhis feet lilted upward, and there he hung for a few moments, inward\nand outward, like the swaying beam of a balance. For a few moments\nonly; for Roreen, running over, with one blow of his faithful sword on\nthe waist cut him in two, and down fell both halves of Snohad na Dhial\nas dead as a door-nail. After this Roreen got the heart-sootherin'\nanswer he so gallantly implored. He then bethought himself of\nreturning. After a few weeks he found himself with the three sisters,\nand with a cavalcade of horses laden with the most precious diamonds,\npearls, and other treasures belonging to the three castles, in front\nof the forge where he had met Fieryfoot, and talking merrily to that\nworthy.\n\n\"An' now,\" said Fieryfoot, after he had complimented the ladies on\ntheir beauty, and Roreen on his success and bravery, \"I am about to\ngive my three workmen lave of absence. But they must work seven days\nfor you first. Then they may go on their peregrinations about ould\nIreland. Farewell. Give my ondeniable love to the ladle, and remember\nme to your brothers balligerently!\"\n\nWith that the two friends embraced, on which Fieryfoot drew out a\nsmall whistle and blew a tune, which set Roreen Shouragh and the three\nprincesses into a pleasant sleep; on awakening from which they found\nthemselves by the side of the little hut on the knoll, with the three\nworkmen beneath them, holding the horses and guarding their loads of\ntreasure. Roreen's two brothers had just returned from the chase, and\nwere standing near them in mute wonderment at the spectacle. After\nsome brief explanations, the whole cavalcade set out on their journey\nhome, and travelled on till they came to the hut of the lonely widow\non the banks of the Clydagh. It was nightfall when they reached the\nplace. Roreen told the three workmen that he wanted to have a castle\nbuilt on the meadow beside the hut, and then went in and embraced his\nmother. The workmen went to the meadow, and when the next morning\ndawned, had a castle of unexampled strength and beauty built for\nRoreen and his intended bride. The two succeeding mornings saw two\nequally splendid castles built for the two brothers and their brides\nelect, for they were about to be married to the two elder princesses.\nBy the next morning after that they had a castle finished for Roreen's\nmother. On the second morning afterward they had a town built, and at\nlength, on the seventh morning, when Roreen went out, he found both\ncastles and town' enclosed by a strong wall, with ramparts, gateways,\nand every other necessary appliance of defence. The three workmen\nthen took their leave, and by the loud smacking of their lips as they\ndeparted, Roreen knew that they were going off to the west in search\nof the \"say\" of whiskey. After this the three {236} brothers were\nmarried to the three lovely princesses, mercenary soldiers flocked in\nfrom every quarter, and took service under their banners; the\ninhabitants of the surrounding country removed into the town, and\nmatters went on gaily and prosperously. The name of Roreen's wife was\nMourne Blanaid, or the Blooming, and on a great festival day got up\nfor the purpose, he called the town Mourne, in honor of her. In a\npitched battle they defeated and killed the slayer of their father,\nand drove his followers out of their patrimony, and after that they\nlived in glory and renown till their death.\n\nFor centuries after the town of Mourne flourished, still remaining in\npossession of the race of the Mac Carthys. At length the Normans came\nand laid their mail-clad hands upon it. In the reign of King John,\nAlexander de St. Helena founded a preceptory for Knights Templars near\nit, the ruins of which stand yet in forlorn and solitary grandeur\nbeside the little river. Still the town flourished and throve, though\nmany a battle was fought within it, and around its gray walls, till at\nlength, according to Spenser, Murrogh na Ranagh, prince of Thomond,\nburst out like a fiery flame from his fastnesses in Clare, overran all\nMunster, burnt almost every town in it that had fallen into the\npossession of the English, and among the rest Mourne, whose woeful\nburning did not content him, for he destroyed it altogether, scarcely\nleaving one stone standing there upon another. And now only a few\nmounds remain to show the spot where Roreen Shouragh got his town\nbuilt, and where he ruled so jovially.\n\nAnd so, gentle reader, if you look with me to the history of Troy,\nRome, the battle of Ventry Harbor, the Pyramids, or Tadmor in the\nDesert, I think you will say that there is none of them so clear, so\ncircumstantial, and so trustworthy as the early history of the old\ntown of Mourne.\n\n\n\n----\n\n{237}\n\nHANS EULER.\n\nFROM THE GERMAN OF J. G. SEIDL.\n\n  \"Hark, child--again that knocking!  Go, fling wide the door, I pray;\n  Perchance 'tis some poor pilgrim who has wandered from his way.\n  Now save thee, gallant stranger! Sit thou down and share our cheer:\n  Our bread is white and wholesome see! our drink is fresh and clear.\"\n\n  \"I come not here your bread to share, nor of your drink to speak.\n  Your name?\"--\"Hans Euler.\"--\"So! 'tis well: it is your blood I seek.\n  Know that through many a weary year I've sought you for a foe:\n  I had a goodly brother once: 'twas you who laid him low.\n\n  \"And as he bit the dust, I vowed that soon or late on you\n  His death should be avenged; and mark! that oath I will keep true.\"\n  \"I slew him; but in quarrel just. I fought him hand to hand:\n  Yet, since you would avenge his fall,--I'm ready; take your stand.\n\n  \"But I war not in my homestead, by this hearth whereon I tread;\n  Not in sight of these--my dear ones--for whose safety I have bled.\n  My daughter, reach me down yon sword,--the same that laid him low;\n  And if I ne'er come back again, Tyrol has sons enow.\"\n\n  So forth they fared together, up the glorious Alpine way,\n  Where newly now the kindling east led on the golden day.\n  The sun that mounted with them, as he rose in all his pride,\n  Still saw the stranger toiling on, Hans Euler for his guide.\n\n  They climbed the mountain summit; and behold! the Alpine world\n  Showed clear and bright before them, 'neath the mists that upward curled.\n  Below them, calm and happy, lay the valley in her rest,\n  With the chalets in her arms, and with their dwellers on her breast.\n\n  Amidst were sparkling waters; giant chasms, scarred and riven;\n  Vast, crowning woods; and over all, the pure, blest air of heaven:\n  And, sacred in the sight of God, where peace her treasures spread,\n  On every hearth, on every home, the soul of freedom shed!\n\n  Both gazed in solemn silence down. The stranger stayed his hand.\n  Hans Euler gently pointed to his own beloved land:\n  \"'Twas this thy brother threatened; such a wrong might move me well.\n  'Twas in such a cause I struggled:--'twas for such a fault he fell.\"\n\n  The stranger paused: then, turning, looked Hans Euler in the face;\n  The arm that would have raised the sword fell powerless in its place.\n  \"You slew him. Was it, then, for this--for home and fatherland?\n  Forgive me! 'Twas a righteous cause. Hans Euler, there's my hand!\"\n\n    ELEANORA L. HERVEY.\n\n\n{238}\n\n\nFrom All the Year Round.\n\nTHE MODERN GENIUS OF THE STREAMS.\n\n\nWater to raise corn from the seed, to clothe the meadow with its\ngrass, and to fill the land with fruit and flowers; water to lie\nheaped in fantastic clouds, to make the fairy-land of sunset, and to\nspread the arch of mercy in the rainbow; water that kindles our\nimagination to a sense of beauty; water that gives us our meat, and is\nour drink, and cleans us of dirt and disease, and is our servant in a\nthousand great and little ways--it is the very juice and essence of\nman's civilization. And so, whether we shall drag over cold water, or\nlet hot water drag us, is one way of putting the question between\ncanal and steam communication for conveyance of our heavy traffic. The\ncanal-boat uses its water cold without, the steam-engine requires it\nhot within. Before hot water appeared in its industrial character to\nhiss off the cold, canals had all the glory to themselves. They are\nnot yet hissed off their old stages and cat-called into contempt by\nthe whistle of the steam-engine, for canal communication still has\nadvantages of its own, and canal shares are powers in the money\nmarket.\n\nLittle more than a century ago, not only were there neither canals nor\nrailroads in this country, but the common high-roads were about the\nworst in Europe. Corn and wool were sent to market over those bad\nroads on horses' or bullocks' backs, and the only coal used in the\ninland southern counties was carried on horseback in sacks for the\nsupply of the blacksmiths' forges. Water gave us our over-sea\ncommerce, that came in and went out by way of our tidal rivers; and\nthe step proposed toward the fostering of our home industries was a\ngreat one when it occurred to somebody to imitate nature, by erecting\nartificial rivers that should flow whereever we wished them to flow,\nand should be navigable along their whole course for capacious,\nflat-bottomed carrying-boats.\n\nThe first English canal, indeed, was constructed as long as three\nhundred years ago, at Exeter, by John Trew, a native of\nGlamorganshire, who enabled the traders of Exeter to cancel the legacy\nof the spite of an angry Countess of Devon, who had, nearly three\nhundred years before that time, stopped the ascent of sea-going\nvessels to Exeter by forming a weir across the Exe at Topham. Trew\ncontrived, to avoid the obstruction, a canal from Exeter to Topham,\nthree miles long, with a lock to it. John Trew ruined himself in the\nservice of an ungrateful corporation.\n\nAfter this time, improvements went no further than the clearing out of\nsome channels of natural water-communication, until the time of James\nBrindley, the father of the English canal system.\n\nJames Brindley was born in the year 1716, the third of the reign of\nGeorge the First, in a cottage in the parish of Wormhill, midway\nbetween the remote hamlets of the High Peak of Derby. There his\nfather, more devoted to shooting, hunting, and bull-running, than to\nhis work as a cottier, cultivated the little croft he rented, got into\nbad company and poverty, and left his children neglected and untaught.\nThe idle man had an industrious wife, who taught the children, of whom\nJames was the eldest, what little she knew; but they must all help to\nearn as soon as they were able, and James Brindley earned wages at any\nordinary laborer's work that he could get until he was seventeen years\nold. {239} He was a lad clever with his knife, who made little models\nof mills, and set them to work in mill-streams of his own contrivance.\nThe machinery of a neighboring grist-mill was his especial delight,\nand had given the first impulse to his modellings. He and his mother\nagreed that he should bind himself, whenever he could, to a\nmillwright; and at the age of seventeen he did, after a few weeks'\ntrial, become apprentice for seven years to Abraham Bennett,\nwheelwright and millwright, at the village of Sutton, near\nMacclesfield, which was the market-town of Brindley's district.\n\nThe millwrights were then the only engineers; they worked by turns at\nthe foot-lathe, the carpenter's bench, and the anvil; and, in country\nplaces where there was little support for division of labor, they had\nto find skill or invention to meet any demand on mechanical skill.\nBennett was not a sober man, his journeymen were a rough set, and much\nof the young apprentice's time was at first occupied in running for\nbeer. He was taught little, and had to find out everything for\nhimself, which he did but slowly; so that, during some time, he passed\nwith his master for a stupid bungler, only fit for the farm-work from\nwhich he had been taken. But, after two years of this sort of\npupilage, a fire having injured some machinery in a small silk-mill at\nMacclesfield, Brindley was sent to bring away the damaged pieces; and,\nby his suggestions on that occasion, he showed to Mr. Milner, the mill\nsuperintendent, an intelligence that caused his master to be applied\nto for Brindley's aid in a certain part of the repairs. He was\nunwillingly sent, worked under the encouragement of the friendly\nsuperintendent with remarkable ability, and was surprised that his\nmaster and the other workmen seemed to be dissatisfied with his\nsuccess. When they chaffed him, at the supper celebrating the\ncompletion of the work, his friend Milner offered to wager a gallon of\nthe best ale that, before the lad's apprenticeship was out, he would\nbe a cleverer workman than any of them there present, master or man.\nThis was a joke against Brindley among his fellow-workmen; but in\nanother year they found \"the young man Brindley\" specially asked for\nwhen the neighboring millers needed repairs of machinery, and\nsometimes he was chosen in preference to the master himself. Bennett\nasked \"the young man Briudley\" where he had learnt his skill in\nmill-work, but he could tell no more than that it \"came natural like.\"\nHe even suggested and carried out improvements, especially in the\napplication of the water-power, and worked so substantially well, that\nhis master said to him one day, \"Jem, if thou goes on i' this foolish\nway o' workin', there will be very little trade left to be done when\nthou comes oot o' thy time: thou knaws firmness o' wark's h' ruin o'\ntrade.\"\n\nBut presently Jem's \"firmness o' wark\" was the saving of his master.\nBennett got a contract to set up a paper-mill on the river Dane, upon\nthe model of a mill near Manchester. Bennett went to examine the\nManchester mill, brought back a confused and beery notion of it, and,\nproceeding with the job, got into the most hopeless bewilderment. An\nold hand, who had looked in on the work, reported, over his drink at\nthe nearest public-house, that the job was a farce, and that Abraham\nBennett was only throwing away his employer's money. Next Saturday,\nafter his work, young Jem Brindley disappeared. He was just of age,\nand it was supposed he had taken it into his head to leave his master\nand begin life on his own account. But on Monday morning, there he was\nat his work, with his coat off, and the whole duty to be done clear in\nhis head. He had taken on Saturday night a twenty-five mile walk to\nthe pattern mill, near Manchester. On Sunday morning he had asked\nleave of its proprietor to go in and examine it. He had spent {240}\nsome hours on Sunday in the study of its machinery, and then had\nwalked the twenty-five miles back, to resume his work and save his\nmaster from a failure that would have been disastrous to his credit.\nThe conduct of the work was left to him; he undid what was amiss, and\nproceeded with the rest so accurately, that the contract was completed\nwithin the appointed time, to the complete satisfaction of all persons\nconcerned. After that piece of good service, Bennett left to James\nBrindley the chief care over his business. When Bennett died, Brindley\ncarried on to completion all work then in hand, and wound up the\naccounts for the benefit of his old master's family. That done, he set\nup in business on his own account at the town of Leek, in\nStaffordshire; he was then twenty-six years old, having served seven\nyears as an apprentice and two years as journeyman.\n\nLeek was then but a small market-town, with a few grist-mills, and\nBrindley had no capital; but he made himself known beyond Leek as a\nreliable man, whose work was good and durable, who had invention at\nthe service of his employers, and who always finished a job within the\nstipulated time. He did not confine himself to mill-work, but was\nready to undertake all sorts of machinery connected with the draining\nof mines, the pumping of water, the smelting of iron and copper, for\nwhich a demand was then rising, and became honorably known to his\nneighbors as \"the Schemer.\" At first he had no journeyman or\napprentice, and he cut the tree for his own timber. While working as\nan apprentice, he had taught himself to write in a clumsy,\nhalf-illegible way--he never learnt to spell--and when he had been\nthirteen years in business, he would still charge an employer his\nday's work at two shillings for cutting a big tree, for a mill-shaft\nor for other use. When he was called to exercise his skill at a\ndistance upon some machinery, he added a charge of sixpence a day for\nextra expenses.\n\nWhen the brothers John and Thomas Wedgwood, potters in a small way at\nthe outset of their famous career, desired to increase the supply of\nflint-powder, they called \"the Schemer\" to their aid, and the success\nof the flint-mill Brindley then erected brought him business in the\npotteries from that time forward.\n\nAbout this time, also, a Manchester man was being married to a young\nlady of mark in the potteries, and, during the wedding festivities,\nconversation once turned on the cleverness of the young millwright of\nLeek. The Manchester man wondered whether he was clever enough to get\nthe water out of some hopelessly drowned coal mines of his, and\nthought he should like to see him. Brindley was sent for, told the\ncase and its hitherto insuperable difficulties, went into a brown\nstudy, then suddenly brightened up, and told in what way he thought\nthat, without great expense, the difficulty might be conquered. The\ngist of his plan was to use the fall of the river Irwell, that formed\none boundary of the estate, and pump the water from the pits by means\nof the greater power of the water in the river. His suggestion was\nthought good, and, being set to work upon this job, he drove a tunnel\nthrough six hundred yards of solid rock, and by the tunnel brought the\nriver down upon the breast of an immense water-wheel, fixed in a\nchamber thirty feet below the surface of the ground; the water, when\nit had turned the wheel, was carried on into the lower level of the\nIrwell. That wheel, with its pumps, working night and day, soon\ncleared the drowned outworkings of the mine; and for the invention and\ndirection of this valuable engineering work, he seems only to have\ncharged his workman's wages of two shillings a day.\n\nAn engineer from London had been brought down to superintend the\nbuilding of a new silk-mill at {241} Congleton, and Brindley was\nemployed under him to make the water-wheel and do the common work of\nhis trade. The engineer from London got his work into a mess, and at\nlast was obliged to confess his inability to carry out his plan. \"The\nSchemer\" Brindley was applied to by the perplexed proprietor. Could he\nput the confusion straight? James Brindley asked to see the plans; but\nthe great engineer refused to show them to a common millwright. \"Well,\nthen,\" said Brindley to the proprietor of the mill, \"tell me exactly\nwhat you want the machinery to do, and I will try to contrive what\nwill do it. But you must leave me free to work in my own way.\" He was\ntold the results desired, and not only achieved them, but achieved\nmuch more, adding new contrivances, which afterward proved of the\ngreatest value.\n\nAfter this achievement, Brindley was employed by the now prospering\npotters to build flint-mills of more power upon a new plan of his own.\nOne of the largest was that built for Mr. Baddely, of which work there\nis record in such trade entries of his as \"March 15, 1757. With Mr.\nBaddely to Matherso about a now\" (new) \"flint-mill upon a windey day 1\nday 3s. 6d. March 19 draing a plann 1 day 2s. 6d. March 23 draing a\nplann and to sat out the wheelrace 1 day 4s.\"\n\nAt this time Brindley is also exercising his wit on an attempt at an\nimproved steam-engine; but though his ideas are good, it is hard to\nbring them into continuously good working order, and after the close\nof entries about it in his memorandum-book, when it seems to have\nbroken down for a second time, he underlines the item \"to Run about a\nDrinking Is. 6d.\" But he confined his despair to the loss of a day and\nthe expenditure of eighteen pence. Not long afterward he had developed\na patent of his own, and erected, in 1763, for the Walker Colliery at\nNewcastle, a steam-engine wholly of iron, which was pronounced the\nmost \"complete and noble piece of iron-work\" that had up to that time\nbeen produced. But the perfecting of the steam-engine was then safe in\nthe hands of Watt, and Brindley had already turned into his own path\nas the author of our English canal system.\n\nThe young Duke of Bridgewater, vexed in love by the frailty of fair\nwoman, had abjured interest in their sex, had gone down to his estate\nof Worsley, on the borders of Chat Moss, and, to give himself\nsomething more wholesome to think about than the sisters Gunning and\ntheir fortunes, conferred with John Gilbert, his land steward, as to\nthe possibility of cutting a canal by which the coals found upon his\nWorsley estate might be readily taken to market at Manchester.\nManchester then was a rising town, of which the manufacturers were yet\nunaided by the steam-engine, and there was no coal smoke but that\nwhich arose from household fires. The roads out of Manchester were so\nbad as to be actually closed in winter, and in summer the coal, sold\nat the pit mouth by the horse-load, was conveyed on horses' backs at\nan addition to its cost of nine or ten shillings a ton.\n\nWhen the duke discussed with Gilbert old abandoned and new possible\nschemes of water conveyance for his Worsley coal, Gilbert advised the\ncalling in of the ingenious James Brindley of Leek, \"the Schemer.\"\nWhen the duke came into contact with Brindley, he at once put trust in\nhim, and gave him the direction of the proposed work; whereupon he was\nrequested to base his advice upon what he enters in his\nmemorandum-book of jobs done, as an \"ochilor,\" (ocular) \"servey or a\nricconitering.\"\n\nBrindley examined the ground, and formed his own plan. He was against\ncarrying the canal down into Irwell by a flight of locks, and so up\nagain on the other side to the proposed level, but counselled carrying\nthe canal by solid embankments and a stone aqueduct right over the\nriver upon one {242} level throughout. The duke accepted his opinion,\nand had plans prepared for a new application to parliament, Brindley\noften staying with him at work and in consultation for weeks together,\nwhile still travelling to and fro in full employment upon mills,\nwater-wheels, cranes, fire-engines, and other mechanical work. Small\nas his pay was, he lived frugally. He had by this time even saved a\nlittle money, and gained credit enough to be able, by borrowing from a\nfriend at Leek, to pay between five and six hundred pounds for a\nfourth share of an estate at Turnhurst, in Staffordshire, supposed by\nhim to be full of minerals.\n\nThe Duke of Bridgewater obtained his act in the year 1760, but the\nbold and original part of Brindley's scheme, which many ridiculed as\nmadness, caused the duke much anxiety. In England there had never been\nso great an aqueduct, but the scheme was not only for the carrying of\nwater in a water-tight trunk of earth over an embankment, but also for\nthe carrying of ships on a bridge of water over water. Brindley had no\nmisgivings. To allay the duke's fears, he suggested calling in and\nquestioning another engineer, who surprised the man of genius by\nending an adverse report thus: \"I have often heard of castles an the\nair; but never before saw where any of them were to be erected.\"\n\nThe duke, however, with all his hesitation, had most faith in the head\nof James Brindley, bade him go on in his own way, and resolved to run\nthe risk of failure. And so, on a bridge of three arches, the canal\nwas carried over the Irwell by the Barton aqueduct, thirty-nine feet\nabove the river. The water was confined within a puddled channel, to\nprevent leakage, and the work is at this day as sound as it was when\nfirst constructed. For the safe carrying of water along the top of an\nearthen embankment, Brindley had relied upon the retaining powers of\nclay puddle. It was by help also of clay puddle that he carried the\nweight of the embankment safe over the ooze of Trafford Moss.\n\nWith great ingenuity, also, Brindley provided for the crossing of his\ncanal by streams intercepting its course, without breach of his rule\nthat it is unsafe to let such waters freely mix with the canal stream.\nThus, to provide for the free passage of the Medlock without causing a\nrush into the canal, an ingenious form of weir was contrived, over\nwhich its waters flowed into a lower level, and thence down a well\nseveral yards deep, leading to a subterranean passage by which the\nstream was passed into the Irwell, near at hand. Arthur Young, who saw\nBrindley's canal soon after it was opened, said that \"the whole plan\nof these works shows a capacity and extent of mind which foresees\ndifficulties, and invents remedies in anticipation of possible evils.\nThe connection and dependence of the parts upon each other are happily\nimagined; and all are exerted in concert, to command by every means\nthe wished-for success.\" At the Worsley end Brindley constructed a\nbasin, into which coal was brought from different workings of the mine\nby a subterranean water channel. Brindley also invented cranes for the\nmore ready loading of the boats, laid down within the mines a system\nof underground railways leading from the face of the coal where the\nminers worked, to the wells that he had made at different points in\nthe tunnels for shooting the coal down into the boats waiting below.\nHe drained and ventilated with a water-bellows the lower parts of the\nmine. He improved the barges, invented water-weights, raising dams,\nriddles to wash the coal for the forges. At the Manchester end\nBrindley made equally ingenious arrangements for the easy delivery of\nthe coal at the top of Castle Hill. At every turn in the work his\ninventive genius was felt. When the want of lime for the masonry was a\nserious impediment, Brindley discovered how to make, of a useless,\nunadhesive lime-marl, by tempering it and casting it in {243} moulds\nbefore burning, an excellent lime, a contrivance that alone saved the\nduke several thousands of pounds cost. When the water was let in, and\nthe works everywhere stood firm, people of fashion flocked to see\nBrindley's canal, as \"perhaps the greatest artificial curiosity in the\nworld:\" and writers spoke in glowing terms of the surprise with which\nthey saw several barges of great burden drawn by a single mule or\nhorse along a \"river hung in the air,\" over another river flowing\nbeneath.\n\nAs for Manchester, with the price of coal reduced one half, it was\nready to make the best use of the steam-engine when it was established\nas the motive-power in our factories.\n\nWithin two months of the day, seventeenth of July, 1761, when the\nfirst boat-load of coals travelled over the Barton viaduct, Brindley's\nnotes testify that he was at Liverpool \"recconitoring\" and by the end\nof September he was levelling for a proposed extension of his canal\nfrom Manchester to Liverpool, by joining it with the Mersey, eight\nmiles below Warrington Bridge, whence there is a natural tideway to\nLiverpool, about fifteen miles distant. At that time there was not\neven a coach communication over the bad roads between Manchester and\nLiverpool, the first stage-coach having been started six years later,\nwhen it required six, and sometimes eight horses to pull it the thirty\nmiles along the ruts and through the sloughs. The coach started from\nLiverpool early in the morning, breakfasted at Prescot, dined at\nWarrington, and reached Manchester by supper-time. From Manchester to\nLiverpool it made the return journey next day. The Duke of\nBridgewater's proposed canal was strongly opposed as an antagonist\ninterest by the Mersey and Irwell Navigation Company. The canal\npromised to take freights at half the price charged by the Navigation\nCompany. A son of the Earl of Derby took the part of the \"Old\nNavigators,\" and as the Duke of Bridgewater was a Whig, Brindley had\nto enter in his note-book that \"the Toores\" (Tories) had \"mad had\"\n(made head) \"agane ye Duk.\" But at last his entry was: \"ad a grate\nDivision of 127 fort Duk 98 nos for t e Duke 29 Me Jorete,\" and the\nDuke's cause prospered during the rest of the contest.\n\nBrindley bought a new suit of clothes to grace his part as principal\nengineering witness for the canal, and having upset his mind for some\ndays by going to see Garrick play Richard the Third, (wherefore he\ndeclared against all further indulgence in that sort of excitement),\nhe went to the committee-room duly provided with a bit of chalk in his\npocket, and made good the saying that originated from his clear way of\nshowing what he meant, upon the floor of the committee-room, that\n\"Brindley and chalk would go through the world.\" When asked to produce\na drawing of a proposed bridge, he said he had none, but could\nimmediately get a model. Whereupon he went out and bought a large\ncheese, which he brought into the committee-room and cut into two\nequal parts, saying, \"Here is my model.\" The two halves of the cheese\nrepresented the two arches of his bridge, the rest of the work\nconnected with them he built with paper, with books, or with whatever\nhe found ready to hand. Once when he had repeatedly talked about\n\"puddling,\" some of the members wished to know what puddling was.\nBrindley sent out for a lump of clay, hollowed it into a trough,\npoured water in, and showed that it leaked out. Then he worked up the\nclay with water, going through the process of puddling in miniature,\nagain made a trough of the puddled clay, filled it with water, and\nshowed that it was water-tight. \"Thus it is,\" he said, \"that I form a\nwater-tight trunk to carry water over rivers and valleys, wherever\nthey cross the path of the canal.\"\n\nAnd so the battle was fought, and the canal works completed at a total\n{244} cost of two hundred and twenty thousand pounds, of which\nBrindley was content to take as his share a rate of pay below that of\nan ordinary mechanic at the present day. The canal yielded an income\nwhich eventually reached eighty thousand pounds a year; but three and\nsixpence a day, and for a greater part of the time half a crown a day,\nwas the salary of the man of genius by whom it was planned and\nexecuted. Yet Brindley was then able to get a guinea a day for\nservices to others, though from the Duke of Bridgewater he never took\nmore than a guinea a week, and had not always that. The duke was\ninvesting all the money he could raise, and sometimes at his wit's end\nfor means to go on with the work. Brindley gave his soul to the work\nfor its own sake, and if he had a few pence to buy himself his dinner\nwith--one day he enters only \"ating and drinking 6d.\"--he could live,\ncontent with having added not a straw's weight of impediment to the\ngreat enterprise he was bent with all the force of his great genius\nupon achieving. It gave him the advantage, also, of being able, as was\nmost convenient, to treat with the duke on equal terms. He was invited\nas a canal maker to Hesse by offers of any payment he chose to demand,\nbut stuck to the duke, who is said even to have been in debt to him\nfor travelling and other expenses, which he had left unpaid with the\nanswer, \"I am much more distressed for money than you; however, as\nsoon as I can recover myself, your services shall not go unrewarded.\"\nAfter Brindley's sudden death his widow applied in vain for sums which\nshe said were due to her late husband.\n\nThe Staffordshire Grand Trunk Canal, Brindley's other great work,\nstarted from the duke's canal, near Runcorn, passed through the\nsalt-making districts of Cheshire and the Pottery district, to unite\nthe Severn with the Mersey by one hundred and forty miles of\nwater-way. This canal went through five tunnels, one of them, that at\nHarecastle, being nearly three thousand yards long, a feature in the\nscheme accounted by many to be as preposterous as they had called his\nformer \"castle in the air.\" The work was done; bringing with it\ntraffic, population, and prosperity into many half-savage midland\ndistricts. It gave comfort and ample employment in the Pottery\ndistrict, while trebling the numbers of those whom it converted, from\na half-employed and ill-paid set of savages, into a thriving\ncommunity.\n\nOnce, when Brindley was demonstrating to a committee of the House of\nCommons the superior reliableness and convenience of equable canals as\ncompared with rivers, liable to every mischance of flood and drought,\nhe was asked by a member, \"What, then, he took to be the use of\nnavigable rivers?\" and replied, \"To make canal navigations, to be\nsure!\" From the Grand Trunk, other canals branched, and yet others\nwere laid out by Brindley before he died. He found time when at the\nage of fifty to marry a girl of nineteen, and the house then falling\nvacant on the estate of Turnhurst, of which he had, for the sake of\nits minerals, bought a fourth share, and by that time had a colliery\nat work, he took his wife home as the mistress of that old, roomy\ndwelling. He was receiving better pay then as the engineer of the\nGrand Trunk Canal, and his new home was conveniently near to the\nworkings of its great Harecastle Tunnel, into which he and his\npartners sent a short branch canal--of a mile and a half long--from\ntheir coal mine, which was only a few fields distant from his house.\n\nWater, that made his greatness, was at last the death of Brindley. He\ngot drenched one day while surveying a canal, went about in his wet\nclothes, and when he went to bed at the inn was put between damp\nsheets. This produced the illness of which he died, at the age of\nfifty-six. It was not the first time that he had taken to his bed.\nScarcely able to read, and if he could have read, engaged on work so\nnew that no book precedents could have {245} helped him, whenever\nBrindley had some difficulty to overcome that seemed for a time\ninsuperable, he went to bed upon it, and is known to have stopped in\nbed two or three days, till he had quietly thought it all over, and\nworked his way to the solution. It is said that when he lay on his\ndeath-bed some eager canal undertakers urged to see him and seek from\nhim the solution of a problem. They had met with a serious difficulty\nin the course of their canal, and must see Mr. Brindley and get his\nadvice. They were admitted, and told him how at a certain place they\nhad labored in vain to prevent their canal from leaking. \"Then puddle\nit,\" murmured Brindley. \"Sir, but we have puddled it.\" \"Then\"--and\nthey were almost his last words in life--\"puddle it again--and\nagain.\" As he had wisely invested his savings in Grand Trunk shares,\nthey and his share in the colliery enabled him to leave ample\nprovision for his widow and two daughters.\n\nAs for the canal system that he established, it has not been made\nobsolete by its strong younger brother, the railway system. The duke's\ncanal is as busy as ever. Not less than twenty million tons of traffic\nare at this date carried yearly upon the canals of England alone, and\nthis quantity is steadily increasing.\n\nWe have taken the facts in this account of Brindley, from a delightful\npopular edition of that part of Mr. Smiles's Lives of the Engineers\nwhich tells of him and of the earlier water engineers. Of Mr. Smiles's\nLives of George and Robert Stephenson there is a popular edition as a\ncompanion volume, and therein all may read, worthily told, the tale of\nthe foundation and of the chief triumphs of that new form of\nengineering which dealt with water, not by the riverful, but by the\nbucketful, and made a few buckets of water strong as a river to sweep\nmen and their goods and their cattle in a mighty torrent from one\ncorner of the country to another.\n\n----\n\nFrom Chambers's Journal.\n\nA LIE.\n\n\n  A thistle grew in a sluggard's croft,\n  Rough and rank with a thorny growth,\n  With its spotted leaves, and its purple flowers\n  (Blossoms of Sin, and bloom of Sloth);\n  Slowly it ripened its baneful seeds,\n  And away they went in swift gray showers.\n\n  But every seed was cobweb winged,\n  And they spread o'er a hundred miles of land.\n  'Tis centuries now since they first took flight,\n  In that careless, gay, and mischievous band,\n  Yet still they are blooming and ripening fast,\n  And spreading their evil by day and night.\n\n\n{246}\n\nFrom The Dublin Review.\n\nCHRISTIAN ART.\n\n\n_The History of our Lord as exemplified in Works of Art;_ with that of\nthe Types, St. John the Baptist and other persons of the Old and New\nTestament. Commenced by the late Mrs. JAMESON; continued and completed\nby Lady EASTLAKE. 2 vols. London: Longman. 1864.\n\n\nThe series of works on Christian Art brought out by the late Mrs.\nJameson, and which earned for her so high a reputation as an art\ncritic, was conceived upon a plan of progressive interest and\nimportance. From \"Sacred and Legendary Art,\" published in 1848, she\npassed to the special legends connected with Monastic Orders, and in\n1852 gave to the public her most charming volume, entitled \"Legends of\nthe Madonna.\" The series was to have closed with the subject of the\nvolume now before us, and some progress had been made by Mrs. Jameson\nin collecting notes on various pictures, when, in the spring of 1860,\ndeath cut her labors short. The work, however, has passed into hands\nwell able to complete it worthily. We may miss some of the freshness\nand genuine simplicity with which Mrs. Jameson was wont to transfer to\npaper rare impression made on her mind and heart; but Lady Eastlake,\nwhile bringing to her task the essential qualification of earnestness\nand exhibiting considerable grace and force of style, is possessed of\na far wider and more critical acquaintance with the history of art\nthan her amiable predecessor either had or pretended to have. It is\npleasant to find in these pages, as in those which preceded them, the\nevidence of a desire to avoid controversial matter; and that, without\ncompromise of personal conviction, care has been generally taken not\nto wound the feelings of those who differ from the writer in religious\nbelief. The primary object of the work is aesthetic and artistic, not\nreligious; and it is seldom that the laws of good taste are\ntransgressed in its pages by gratuitous attacks upon the tenets of the\ngreat body of artists who are the immediate subject of criticism.\nIndeed, considering that these volumes are the production of a\nProtestant, we think that less of Protestant animus could hardly be\nshown, at all consistently with honesty of purpose and frankness of\nspeech. That no traces of the Protestant spirit should appear, would\nbe next to an impossibility; and the affectation of Catholic feeling,\nwhere it did not exist, would be offensive from its very unreality. So\nmuch self-control in traversing a vast extent of delicate and\ndangerous ground deserves all the more hearty acknowledgment, as it\nmust have been peculiarly difficult to a person of Lady Eastlake's\nardent temperament and evident strength of conviction. If, therefore,\nin the course of our remarks, we feel bound to point out the evil\ninfluence which Lady Eastlake's religious views seem to us to have\nexercised on her critical appreciations, it will be understood that\ntheories, not persons, are the object of our animadversions. It is at\nall times an ungrateful task to expose the weak points of an author;\nit would be especially ungenerous to be hard upon the shortcomings of\none who has done such good service to the cause of truth, in proving,\nhowever unconsciously, by the mere exercise of persistent candor, the\nidentity of Christian and Catholic art. Catholics, indeed, do not\nordinarily stand in need of such proof. If they know anything of art,\nthe fact of this identity must be with them an early discovery; but it\nis gratifying, especially in a time and country in which scant justice\non such matters is too often dealt out to us, to be able to adduce a\n{247} testimony the more valuable because given in despite of an\nadverse bias. It is quite possible, indeed, that the writer has not\nperceived the full import of her work; but no one, we think, can study\nher examples or weigh the force of her criticism with out coming to\nthe true conclusion upon this subject.\n\nBut, before establishing the correctness of this assertion, we must\ndraw attention to one point upon which we are at issue with Lady\nEastlake: a point, moreover, of no small importance, as it vitally\naffects the value of a large part of her criticisms. A question arises\nat the outset, what standard or test of Christian art is to be set up;\nand Lady Eastlake makes an excellent start in the investigation. There\nis, perhaps, no principle so steadily kept in view throughout the\nwork, or so often and earnestly insisted on, as this: that genuine\nChristian art and true Christian doctrine are intimately and\nessentially connected. Art is bound to depict only the truth in fact\nor doctrine (vol. ii., p. 266, note). Departure from sound theology\ninvolves heresy in art. Now, no principle can be more true than this,\nor of greater importance toward forming a correct judgment upon works\nprofessing to belong to Christian art. Beauty and truth are\nobjectively identical, for beauty is only truth lighted up and\nharmonized by the reason; and to supernatural beauty, which Christian\nart essentially aims at expressing, supernatural truth must\nnecessarily correspond. For here we have nothing to do with mere\nmaterial beauty, \"the glories of color, the feats of anatomical skill,\nthe charms of chiaroscuro, the revels of free handling.\" Admirable as\nthese are in themselves, and by no means, theoretically at least,\ninjurious to Christian art, they belong properly to art as art, and\nare more or less separable from art as Christian. Christian art is\nnever perfect as art, unless material beauty enters into the\ncomposition; but as Christianity is above art, and the soul superior\nto the body, so material beauty must never forget its place, never\nstrive to obtain the mastery, or constitute itself the chief aim of\nthe artist, upon pain of total destruction of the Christian element.\nThe soul of Christian art is in the idea--the shadowing out by symbol\nor representation, under material forms and conditions, of immaterial,\nsupernatural, even uncreated beauty, the beauty of heavenly virtue, or\nheavenly mystery or divinity itself. But how are these objects, in all\ntheir harmony, proportion, and splendor, to be realized--how is\nsupernatural beauty to be conceived--except by a soul gifted with\nsupernatural perceptions? Faith, at least, is indispensably requisite\nto the truthfulness of any artistic work intended to represent the\nsupernatural. Without faith, distortion and caricature are inevitable.\nWith faith--the foundation of all knowledge of the supernatural in\nthis life--much, very much, may be accomplished. But it is when faith,\nenlivened and perfected by supernatural love, exercises itself in\ncontemplation, that the spiritual sight becomes keen, and the soul,\nfrom having simply a just appreciation, passes to a vision of\nexquisite beauty, sublimity, and tenderness, which a higher perception\nof divine mysteries has laid open to its gaze. The hand may falter,\nand be faithless to the mental conception, so as to produce imperfect\nexecution and inadequate artistic result. Faith and love do not make a\nman an artist. But, amidst deformity or poverty of art in the material\nelement, if there is any, however slight, artistic power employed, the\noutward defects will be qualified, and almost transformed, to the eye\nof an appreciating spectator, through the inner power which speaks\nfrom the painter's soul to his own: just as we learn to overlook, or\neven to admire, plain features, and anything short of positive\nugliness of outline, in those whose mental greatness and moral beauty\nwe have learned to venerate and to love. On the other hand, any amount\nof material perfection in contour and color is insipid as a doll,\n{248} a mere mask of nothingness, incapable of arresting attention or\ncaptivating the heart, unless within there be a soul of beauty--that\ninward excellence which subordinates to itself, while it gives life\nand meaning to, the outward form. On the side of the object, truth; on\nthe part of the spectator, faith and love--these are the palmary\nconditions of Christian art and its appreciation. For it must ever be\nremembered that supernatural truth lies beyond the ken of any but\nsouls elevated by faith; and, what is of equal importance, that faith\ncan have no other object than the truth. Its object is infallible\ntruth, or it is not faith. No wonder, then, that, when we see a\nprodigality of manual skill and grace of form, and even moral beauty\nof the natural order, devoid of the inspiration of supernatural faith\nand love, we are forced to exclaim with St. Gregory, as he gazed on\nthe fair Saxon youths, _Heit proh dolor! quod tam lucidi vultus\nhomines tenebrarum auctor possideret, tantaque gratia frontis\nconspicui mentem ab aeterna gratia vacuam gestarent._   [Footnote 51]\nAlas! that so much physical beauty should embody nothing but a pagan\nidea! It were as unreasonable to look for Christian art as the product\nof an heretical imagination, as to demand Christian eloquence or\nChristian poetry from an heretical preacher or a free-thinking poet.\nThe vision is wanting, the appreciation is not there--how, then, is\nthe expression possible?\n\n  [Footnote 51: \"Alas! what pain it is to think that men of such\n  bright countenance should be the possession of the Prince of\n  Darkness; and that though conspicuous for surprising grace of\n  feature, they should bear a soul within untenanted by everlasting\n  grace.\"]\n\nNor is this a mere abstract theory, erected on  _a priori_\nprinciples. It would be easy to verify our position by a large\ninduction from the history of art. Is there a picture whose mute\neloquence fills the soul with reverential awe, or holy joy, or\nsupernatural calm, or deep, deep sympathy with the sufferings of our\nLord, or the sorrows of his Immaculate Mother, we may be sure the\npainter was some humble soul, ascetical and pious, who, like Juan de\nJoanes, or Zurbaran, spent his days in lifelong seclusion, given up to\nthe grave and holy thoughts which their pictures utter to us; or that\nother Spaniard, Luis de Vargas, famed alike for his austerity and\namiable Christian gaiety; or a Sassoferrato, or a Van Eyck, seeking\nin, holy communion the peace of soul which can alone reflect the\ncalmness of sanctity, or the bliss of celestial scenes; or the holy\nfriar, John of Fiesoli, known to all as the Angelic whose heroic\nhumility and Christian simplicity, learned in a life of prayer and\ncontemplation, invest his pictures with an unearthly charm. These, and\nmany another pious painter, known or unknown by name to men, looked on\ntheir vocation as a holy trust, and sought to keep themselves\nunspotted from the world. Theirs was the practical maxim so dear to\nthe blessed Angelico, that \"those who work for Christ must dwell in\nChrist.\" On the other hand, does a picture, albeit Christian in\nsubject and in name, offend us by false sentiment, or cold\nconventionalism, or sensuality, or affectation, or strain after\ntheatrical effect, or any of the hundred forms which degraded art\nexhibits when it has wandered from the Christian type--we know that we\nare looking on the handiwork of some schismatic Greek, or modern\nProtestant; or that, if the painter be a Catholic, he lived in the\ndays or wrought under the influence of the Renaissance, when paganism\nmade its deadly inroads upon art, substituting the spirit of\nvoluptuousness for the sweet and austere graces that spring of divine\ncharity; or under the blighting influence of Jansenism, which killed\nalike that queenly virtue and her sister humility by false asceticism\nand pharisaic rigor. We might even trust the decision as to the\ntruthfulness of our view to an inspection of the examples with which\nLady Eastlake has so abundantly illustrated her volumes. Indeed,\nhitherto her principle and ours are one.\n\n{249}\n\nBut unfortunately, though the _major_ premise of the art-syllogism is\ngranted on both sides, Lady Eastlake adopts a _minor_, from which we\nutterly dissent. It is implied in one and all of the following\nstatements, and is more or less interwoven with the whole staple of\nher work. She tells us that \"the materials for this history in art are\nonly properly derivable from Scripture, and therefore referable back\nto the same source for verification\" (vol. i., p. 3). And again: \"It\nmay be at once laid down as a principle, that the interests of art and\nthe integrity of Scripture [by integrity is meant literal adherence to\nthe text of Scripture] are indissolubly united. Where superstition\nmingles, the quality of Christian art suffers; where doubt enters,\nChristian art has nothing to do. It may even be averred that, if a\nperson could be imagined, deeply imbued with aesthetic instincts and\nknowledge, and utterly ignorant of Scripture, he would yet intuitively\nprefer, as art, all those conceptions of our Lord's history which\nadhere to the simple text. . . . All preference for the simple\nnarrative of Scripture he would arrive at through art--all\ncondemnation of the embroideries of legend through the same channel\"\n(vol. i., p. 6). And again: \"The simplicity of art and of the Gospel\nstand or fall together. The literal narrative of the agony in the\ngarden lost sight of, all became confusion and error\" (vol. ii., p.\n30).\n\nNow, whatever obscurity and confusion these passages contain--and they\ndo contain a great deal--one thing is unmistakably clear, that the\northodoxy of the ultra-Protestant maxim, \"The Bible and the Bible\nonly,\" is a fixed principle with Lady Eastlake. And the consequence\nis, that, whenever she looks at a religious picture, she refers to the\nGospel narrative for its verification. If it does not stand this test,\nit is nowhere in her esteem. What is not in Scripture is legendary and\nunartistic, because necessarily at variance with scriptural truth.\nThus whole provinces of art in connection with our Lord are banished\nfrom her pages. Surely such a canon of taste is not only narrow, but\narbitrary: narrow, as excluding whatever comes down to us hallowed by\ntradition, considered apart from or beyond the limits of scriptural\nstatement; arbitrary, because it leaves art at the mercy of the sects,\nwith their manifold dissensions as to the extent of Scripture, or its\ntrue interpretation. Thus, Lady Eastlake, being herself no believer in\nthe doctrine of the real presence, does not recognize its enunciation\nin the sacred pages, and loses, apparently, all interest in the great\npictures which symbolize or relate to the most holy sacrament of the\naltar. So, too, most of the special devotions to the person of our\nLord, which have sprung out of the living faith of the church, and\nhave furnished subjects for pictures incontestably of a high order,\nare totally omitted from her classification of devotional\ncompositions. We can hardly imagine it possible for her to adhere\nconsistently to her rule in other departments of Christian art. The\nImmaculate Conception, for instance, the Assumption, the Coronation of\nour Lady, the marriage of St. Catherine, the stigmata of St. Francis,\nthe vision of St. Dominic, the miracles of the saints--subjects, many\nof which have inspired some of the noblest productions of her favorite\nFra Angelico, or of Raphael, or Murillo, or Velasquez--undoubtedly do\nviolence to her criteria of artistic merit, though we cannot believe\nthat she would contest their universally acknowledged claim to the\nhighest honors in Christian art. Indeed, fidelity to this narrow\nProtestant maxim would have rendered these two volumes an\nimpossibility. Strange, then, that it should not have occurred to the\nmind of the authoress that by far the larger part, and, on her own\nshowing, the most glorious part, of the fraternity of Christian\nartists have been men full to overflowing of the spirit of a church\nwhich has never adopted her standard of orthodoxy.\n\n{250}\n\nThe Catholic Church is at once the parent, historically, of all\nChristian art and the upholder of that grand principle of tradition\nwhich gives to art, no less than to doctrine, a range far wider and\nmore ample than the mere letter of the biblical records. Of course,\ncontradiction of Scripture, or \"alterations of the text, which,\nhowever slight, affect the revealed character of our Lord,\" must give\noffence to every judicious critic; but it is tradition and the voice\nof the living Church--together with that instinctive sense of the\nfaithful which, so long as they live in submission to their\ndivinely-appointed teachers, is so marvellously true and\nunerring--that must be the criteria of orthodoxy, and determine when\nthe artist's conceptions or mode of treatment are contrary to, or in\naccordance with, the spirit of the sacred text.\n\nLady Eastlake does not like the notion of our Lord's falling under the\ncross. It is not in the Bible, and she pronounces it to be counter to\nthe spirit and purport of the Gospel narrative. She grows positively\nangry with some painters for having represented an angel holding the\nchalice, surmounted by a cross or host, before the eyes of our blessed\nRedeemer in his agony. She has her own standard of feeling, abstract\nand arbitrary, to which she refers the decision of such points. But\nwhere is the guarantee for the correctness of that standard, or the\nsecurity for its general acceptance? The Bible does not tell us what\nits own spirit and purport are, and outside the Bible Lady Eastlake,\nat least, cannot point to any infallible authority. She is, therefore,\nimposing her own judgment, unsupported by any assigned reason, upon\nthe world, as a rule to be followed. So, too, St. Veronica to her is\nalways _de trop_, morally and pictorially, in the Way of the Cross;\nand scholastic interpretations, seemingly because they are scholastic,\nof the types of the Old Testament, are invariably pronounced by her to\nbe strained, unreal, and superstitious. So effectually does\nProtestantism interfere with the capacity of a critic to appreciate\nthe higher developments and fuller expression of Christian art.\n\nNot that a Protestant or a free-thinker can have no sense at all of\nthe supernaturally beautiful. If they are trained to a high degree of\nmoral and intellectual cultivation in the natural order, and in\nproportion to the height of their attainments in that order, they will\nnot fail to be affected by beauty of a superior order. For there is no\ncontradiction between the truth of nature and the truth which is above\nnature. The Protestant, indeed, as sincerely holding large fragments\nof Christian truth, will necessarily have much sympathy with many\nexhibitions of supernatural beauty. But he lacks the clue to it as a\nwhole; and if he can often admire, rarely, if ever, can he create.\nBoth Protestant and unbeliever must therefore labor under much\nvagueness and uncertainty of judgment, inasmuch as they can have no\nfixity of principle. Often they will not know what they want; they\nwill praise in one page what they condemn in the next; or, when moved,\nwill be at a loss to account for their emotion. They will exhibit\nphenomena not unlike those so often presented in this country by\nunbelievers, who, entering our churches, are one while overawed by a\npresence they cannot define, and which bewilders their intellect,\nwhilst it captivates their imagination; and another while, as\nunaccountably, are moved to disgust and derision by what to them is an\ninsoluble riddle, a perplexity, and an annoyance. To such critics some\nphases of the supernatural will never be welcome. The tortures of the\nmartyrs, the self-inflicted macerations of ascetics, the sublime\nself-abandonment of heroic charity--whatever, in a word, embodies and\nbrings home the grand, sacred, but, to the natural man, repugnant idea\nof the cross, will always be offensive, and produce a sense of\nirritation, such as even Lady Eastlake, with all her {251}\nself-mastery and good taste, cannot wholly suppress or conceal. So\ntrue is it in the sphere of Christian art, as in that of Christian\ndoctrine and devotion, _Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis_. Casual\nexcitement, transient enthusiasm, unmeaning admiration, are at best\nthe pitiful substitutes for an intelligent and abiding appreciation of\nexcellence, in those who are not possessed of supernatural ideas in\ncommon with the subjects and authors of the works of genuine Christian\nart.\n\nIt would be unfair, however, not to mention that Lady Eastlake admits\nmany important modifications of this rigid principle of adherence to\nthe letter of Scripture. The following secondary canons go far to\nsoften down the asperity of her Protestantism. They shall be stated in\nher own words:\n\n\"On the other hand, additions to Scripture given in positive images,\nif neither prejudicial to art nor inconsistent with our Lord's\ncharacter, are not in themselves necessarily objectionable; but will,\naccording to their merits, be looked upon with indulgence or\nadmiration. The pictures, for instance, representing the disrobing of\nour Lord--a fact not told in Scripture, yet which must have\nhappened--will be regarded with pathetic interest. The same will be\nfelt of Paul Delaroche's exquisite little picture, where St. John is\nleading the Virgin home; for such works legitimately refresh and carry\non the narrative in a scriptural spirit. Nay, episodes which are more\npurely invention--such as the ancient tradition of the Mother of Christ\nwrapping the cloth round her son, previous to his crucifixion; or,\nagain, the picture by Paul Delaroche, of the agony of her and of the\ndisciples, represented as gathered together in a room while Christ\npasses with his cross--even such imaginary episodes will silence the\nmost arrant Protestant criticism, by their overpowering appeal to the\nfeelings; since in neither case is the great duty of art to itself or\nto its divine object tampered with.\n\n\"The same holds good where symbolical forms, as in Christian art of\nclassic descent, are given, which embody the idea rather than the\nfact. For instance, where the Jordan is represented as a river god,\nwith his urn under his arm, at the baptism of our Lord; or when,\nlater, the same event is accompanied by the presence of angels, who\nhold the Saviour's garments. Such paraphrases and poetical imaginings\nin no way affect the truth of the facts they set forth, but rather, to\nmortal fancy, swell their pomp and dignity.\n\n\"Still less need the lover of art and adorer of Christ care about\ninconsistencies in minor matters. As, for example, that the entombment\ntakes place in a renaissance monument, in the centre of a beautiful\nItalian landscape, and not in a cave in a rock in the arid scenery of\nJudea. On the contrary, it is right that art should exercise the\nutmost possible freedom in such circumstances, which are the signs and\nhandwriting of different schools and times, and enrich a picture with\nsources of interest to the historian and the archaeologist. It is the\nmoral expression which touches the heart and adorns the tale, not the\narchitecture or costume; and whether our Lord be in the garb of a\nRoman citizen or of a German burgher (though his dress is usually\nconventional in color and form), it matters not, if he be but God in\nall.\"\n\nThe arbitrariness of the principles set forth in the earlier portion\nof this passage, and the quiet assumption that all ancient traditions\nare pure inventions, may well be excused by the reader for the sake of\nthe inconsistency which saves from condemnation not a few glorious\npictures, which could never otherwise have been made to square with\nthe rule of literal adherence to the Gospel narrative.\n\nAnother principle essential to the right appreciation of art is\nadmirably stated by Lady Eastlake:\n\n\"All will agree that the duty of the Christian artist is to give not\nonly the {252} temporary fact, but the permanent truth. Yet this\nentails a discrepancy to which something must be sacrificed. For, in\nthe scenes from our Lord's life, fact and truth are frequently at\nvariance. That the Magdalen took our Lord for a gardener, was the\nfact; that he was Christ, is the truth. That the Roman soldiers\nbelieved him to be a criminal, and therefore mocked and buffeted him\nwithout scruple, is the fact; that we know him through all these\nscenes to be the Christ, is the truth. Nay, the very cruciform nimbus\nthat encircles Christ's head is an assertion of this principle. As\nvisible to us, it is true; as visible even to his disciples, it is\nfalse. There are, however, educated people so little versed in the\nconditions of art, as to object even to the nimbus, as a departure\nfrom fact, and, therefore, an offence to truth; preferring, they say,\nto see our Lord represented as he walked upon earth. But this is a\nfallacy in more than one sense. Our Lord, as he walked upon earth, was\nnot known to be the Messiah. To give him as he was seen by men who\nknew him not, would be to give him not as the Christ. It may be urged\nthat the cruciform nimbus is a mere arbitrary sign, nothing in itself\nmore than a combination of lines. This is true; but there _must_ be\nsomething arbitrary in all human imaginings (we should prefer to say\nsymbolizings) of the supernatural. Art, for ages, assumed this sign as\nthat of the Godhead of Christ, and the world for ages granted it. It\nserved various purposes; it hedged the rudest representations of\nChrist round with a divinity, which kept them distinct from all\nothers. It pointed him out to the most ignorant spectator, and it\nidentified the sacred head, even at a distance.\"\n\nThis principle may, indeed, be legitimately extended much further. The\npurpose of Christian art is instruction, either in morals or in dogma,\nor in both. It is not, therefore, a sin in art to sacrifice upon\noccasion some portion of historical truth, in subservience to this\nend. Nor in fact, in Catholic ages, was there danger of the people\nbeing led into error on the fundamental facts of religion. The Gospel\nnarrative was too familiar to them for that. They seem, as is well\nremarked by Father Cahier, to have had hearts more elevated than ours,\nand more attuned by meditation and habitual catholicity of spirit to\nmystery, and its sublimer lessons; and therefore, whenever we find in\nearly paintings what seems to us anomalous in an historic point of\nview, we may conclude with safety that there was a dogmatic intention.\n\nThere are, however, limits to liberties of this kind, which may not be\ntransgressed without incurring censure. Overbold speculation has ere\nnow betrayed even orthodox theologians into accidental error. And a\nCatholic artist may depict, as a Catholic schoolman may enunciate,\nviews which deserve to be stigmatized as rash, offensive, erroneous,\nscandalous, or even, in themselves, heretical. There have been\noccasions in which the Church has felt herself bound to interfere with\nwanderings of the artistic imagination, as injurious, morally or\ndoctrinally, to the faithful committed to her charge. Nor have\ntheologians failed to protest from time to time against similar\nabuses. Bellarmine frowned upon the muse in Christian art. Savonarola,\nin his best days, made open war upon the pagan corruptions which in\nhis time had begun to abound in Florentine paintings. Father Canisius\ndenounces those painters as inexcusable who, in the face of Scripture,\nrepresent our Lady as swooning at the foot of the cross; and Father de\nLigny reprobates, on the same grounds, the introduction of St. Joseph\ninto pictures of the meeting between the Blessed Virgin and St.\nElizabeth. For--whatever we may think as to his having accompanied our\nLady on the journey--had he been present at the interview, he would\nhave been enlightened upon the mystery, his ignorance of which\nafterward threw him into such perplexity.\n\n{253}\n\nAs to the order of the work, Lady Eastlake gives ample explanation in\nthe preface:\n\n\"In the short programme left by Mrs. Jameson, the ideal and devotional\nsubjects, such as the Good Shepherd, the Lamb, the Second Person of\nthe Trinity, were placed first; the scriptural history of our Lord's\nlife on earth next; and, lastly, the types from the Old Testament.\nThere is reason, however, to believe, from the evidence of what she\nhad already written, that she would have departed from this\narrangement. After much deliberation, I have ventured to do so, and to\nplace the subjects chronologically. The work commences, therefore,\nwith that which heads most systems of Christian art--The Fall of\nLucifer and Creation of the World--followed by the types and prophets\nof the Old Testament. Next comes the history of the Innocents and of\nJohn the Baptist, written by her own hand, and leading to the Life and\nPassion of our Lord. The abstract and devotional subjects, as growing\nout of these materials, then follow, and the work terminates with the\nLast Judgment.\"\n\nMrs. Jameson's own share in the work is confined mainly to some of the\ntypes, the histories specified above, and familiar scenes in the\nearlier portions of the Gospel narrative, including a few of the\nmiracles and parables of our Lord. The notes are fragmentary, but\nwritten in her usual interesting and lively style. How refreshing, for\ninstance, and characteristic are the following comments upon some\npictures representing the dismissal of Hagar and Ishmael at the\nimperious request of Sarah:\n\n\"I believe the most celebrated example is the picture by Guercino, in\nthe Brera; but I do not think it deserves its celebrity--the pathetic\nis there alloyed with vulgarity of character. I remember that, when I\nfirst saw this picture, I could only think of the praises lavished on\nit by Byron and others, as the finest expression of deep, natural\npathos to be found in the whole range of art. I fancied, as many do,\nthat I could see in it the beauties so poetically described. Some\nyears later, when I saw it again, with a more cultivated eye and\ntaste, my disappointment was great. In fact, Abraham is much more like\nan unfeeling old beggar than a majestic patriarch, resigned to the\ndivine will, yet struck to the heart by the cruel necessity under\nwhich he was acting. Hagar cries like a housemaid turned off without\nwages or warning, and Ishmael is merely a blubbering boy. For\nexpression, the picture by Govaert Hiricke (Berlin Gallery, 815) seems\nto me much superior; the look of appealing anguish in the face of\nHagar as she turns to Abraham, and points to her weeping boy, reaches\nto the tragic in point of conception, but Ishmael, if very natural,\nwith his fist in his eye, is also rather vulgar. Rembrandt's\ncomposition is quite dramatic, and, in his manner, as fine as\npossible. Hagar, lingering on the step of the dwelling whence she is\nrejected, weeps reproachfully; Ishmael, in a rich Oriental costume,\nsteps on before, with the boyish courage of one destined to become an\narcher and a hunter in the wilderness, and the father of a great and\neven yet unconquered nation; in the background Sarah is seen looking\nout of the window at her departing rival, with exultation in her\nface.\"\n\nThose who are acquainted with Italian paintings of the 15th century\nmust have remarked the frequency with which the great masters of the\nTuscan school in that era treat the subject of \"The Massacre of the\nInnocents.\" Though our Lord is not an actor in the scene, it is\nintimately connected with his history. The Innocents were the first\nmartyrs in his cause, and from the earliest times attracted the\nveneration and tender affection of Christians. Painful as the subject\nis, it affords scope for the exercise of the highest tragic power. The\nmere fact that Herod's sword swept the nurseries of Bethlehem, though\nnecessarily entering into the picture, becomes subordinate to the\n{254} sorrow which then started into life in so many mothers' hearts.\nThat is the point made most prominent in the Gospel by the citation of\nthe pathetic words of Jeremias in the prophecy: \"In Rama was there a\nvoice heard, lamentations, and weeping, and great mourning. Rachel\nweeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are\nnot.\" The mind is carried back to the time when the very sound of\nthose tottering feet sufficed to waken the pulses of love in the\nmother's bosom; when those confiding hands were ever locked in hers.\nHow dear had been the pretty prattle of those little ones, the first\nstammerings of the tongue, the silvery laughter, even the cries of\npassion or of pain! Hitherto all had bsen sunshine, or once and again\nthe shadow of some light cloud had drifted across the face of heaven;\nbut now agony comes on the wings of the whirlwind--a pitiless storm\nthat leaves nothing but blank, broken hearts behind. Here we see a\nbereaved mother, wildly passionate, tossing her frantic arms\nheavenward; we almost fancy we hear her rave and moan. There we mark\nthe wandering footsteps, no longer obedient to the helm of reason.\nAnother, with clasped hands, kneels, gazing on the purple stains which\ndye the ivory limbs of her slaughtered darling. Or the eye rests with\nawful compassion on a standing figure, another speechless Niobe, pale\nand unconscious as a statue, still pressing her dead infant to her\nbreast. Upon one or two upturned faces a light has broken; the grand\nthought seems just to have flashed upon their souls--that the purple\nstains are the dye of martyrdom, destined by a loving Providence to\nadorn a robe of unfading glory. And so sorrow passes almost into joy,\nand the imagination reaches forward to another sorrowful Mother\n--Mother of sorrows--who is to sit in desolation, yet mastering her\ndeep woe, and, with a sacrificing love that transcends resignation,\nentering into and uniting herself with the mysterious designs of God.\nIn spite, however, of the interest of the subject, for ages it was\nrarely depicted. Mrs. Jameson gives the following account of its\nsudden rise into general favor:\n\n\"All at once, however, in the latter half of the 15th century--that\nis, after 1450--we find the subject of the Holy Innocents assuming an\nextraordinary degree of popularity and importance. Then, for the first\ntime, we find chapels dedicated to them, and groups of martyred\nchildren in altar-pieces round the throne of Christ or the Virgin.\nFrom this period we have innumerable examples of the terrible scene of\nthe massacre at Bethlehem, treated as a separate subject in pictures\nand prints, while the best artists vied with each other in varying and\nelaborating the details of circumstantial cruelty and frantic despair.\n\n\"For a long time, I could not comprehend how this came about, nor how\nit happened that through all Italy, especially in the Tuscan schools,\na subject so ghastly and so painful should have assumed this sort of\nprominence. The cause, as it gradually revealed itself, rendered every\npicture more and more interesting; connecting them with each other,\nand showing how intimately the history of art is mixed up with the\nlife of a people.\n\n\"There had existed at Florence, from the 13th century, a hospital for\nfoundlings, the first institution of the kind in Europe. It was\nattached to the Benedictine monastery of San Gallo, near one of the\ngates of the city still bearing the name. In the 15th century, when\nthe population and extent of the city had greatly increased, it was\nfound that this hospital was too small, and the funds of the monastery\nquite inadequate to the purpose. Then Lionardo Buruni, of Arezzo, who\nwas twice chancellor of Florence--the same Lionardo who gave to\nGhiberti the subjects of his famous gates--filled with compassion for\nthe orphans and neglected children, addressed the senate on the\nsubject, and made such an affecting appeal in their behalf, that not\nthe senate only, but the whole people of {255} Florence, responded\nwith enthusiasm, frequently interrupting him with cries of 'Viva\nMesser Lionardo d'Arezzo!' 'And,' adds the historian, 'never was a\nquestion of importance carried with such [more] quickness and\nunanimity' (_mai con maggior celerita e pienezza de' voti fu vinto\npartito di cosa grave come questa_). Large sums were voted, offerings\nflowed in, a superb hospital was founded, and Brunelleschi was\nappointed architect. When finished, which was not till 1444, it was\nsolemnly dedicated to the '_Holy Innocents_.' The first child\nconsigned to the new institution was a poor little female infant, on\nwhose breast was pinned the name 'Agata,' in remembrance of which an\naltar in the chapel was dedicated to St. Agatha. We have proof that\nthe foundation, progress, and consecration of this refuge for\ndestitute children excited the greatest interest and sympathy, not\nonly in Florence, but in the neighboring states, and that it was\nimitated in Pisa, Arezzo, and Siena. The union of the two hospitals of\nSan Gallo and the 'Innocenti' took place in 1463. Churches and chapels\nwere appended to the hospitals, and, as a matter of course, the\npainters and sculptors were called upon to decorate them. Such are the\ncircumstances which explain, as I think, the popularity of the story\nof the Innocents in the 15th century, and the manner in which it\noccupied the minds of the great cotemporary artists of the Tuscan\nschool, and others after them.\"\n\nWe cannot pretend to decide upon the truth of this supposed connection\nbetween the establishment of an institution to minister to the wants\nof the forsaken and the development of a special branch of Christian\nart. Whether true or not, this much is certain, that it is in keeping\nwith a multitude of instances which go to prove how favorable the\npractice of Catholic charity is to the progress of the arts. Love ever\npours itself around in streams of radiance, lighting up whole regions\nwhich lie beyond its immediate object. It copies the creative\nliberality of God, who, in providing us with what is necessary for\nsubsistence, surrounds us at the same time with a thousand superfluous\nmanifestations of beauty.\n\nBut it is time to pass on to the second volume of this history, which\nwe owe almost entirely to the pen of Lady Eastlake. It is mainly\noccupied with the Passion of our Lord; and certainly the diligent\nattention paid by the authoress to this subject, and the judgment\ndisplayed in the arrangement of the narrative and the selection of\nexamples, cannot be too highly commended. The style is generally\nclear, simple, and earnest. Always dignified, it sometimes rises to\neloquence, as in the description of Rembrandt's etching of the \"Ecce\nHomo,\" and in the following criticism of Leonardo da Vinci's\ncelebrated \"Last Supper.\" After a clever disquisition on the\ndifficulties of the subject, and the conditions essential to its\neffective treatment, she thus proceeds:\n\n\"We need not say who did fulfil these conditions, nor whose Last\nSupper it is--all ruined and defaced as it may be--which alone arouses\nthe heart of the spectator as effectually as that incomparable shadow\nin the centre has roused the feelings of the dim forms on each side of\nhim. Leonardo da Vinci's _Cena_, to all who consider this grand\nsubject through the medium of art, is _the_ Last Supper--there is no\nother. Various representations exist, and by the highest names in art,\nbut they do not touch the subtle spring. Compared with this _chef\nd'oeuvre_, their Last Suppers are mere exhibitions of well-drawn,\ndraped, or colored figures, in studiously varied attitudes, which\nexcite no emotion beyond the admiration due to these qualities. It is\nno wonder that Leonardo should have done little or nothing more after\nthe execution, in his forty-sixth year, of that stupendous picture. It\nwas not in man not to be fastidious, who had such an unapproachable\nstandard of his own {256} powers perpetually standing in his path.\n\n\"Let us now consider this figure of Christ more closely.\n\n\"It is not sufficient to say that our Lord has just uttered this\nsentence, viz., 'Verily, verily, I say unto you, one of you shall\nbetray me;' we must endeavor to define in what, in his own person, the\nvisible proof of his having spoken consists. The painter has cast the\neyes down--an action which generally detracts from the expression of a\nface. Here, however, no such loss is felt. The outward sight, it is\ntrue, is in abeyance, but the intensest sense of inward vision has\ntaken its place. Our Lord is looking into himself--that self which\nknew 'all things,' and therefore needed not to lift his mortal lids to\nascertain what effect his words had produced. The honest indignation\nof the apostles, the visible perturbation of the traitor, are each\nright in their place, and for the looker-on, but they are nothing to\nhim. Thus here at once the highest power and refinement of art is\nshown, by the conversion of what in most hands would have been an\ninsipidity into the means of expression best suited to the moment. The\ninclination of the head, and the expression of every feature, all\ncontribute to the same intention. This is not the heaviness or even\nthe repose of previous silence. On the contrary, the head has not yet\nrisen, nor the muscles of the face subsided from the act of mournful\nspeech. It is just that evanescent moment which all true painters\nyearn to catch, and which few but painters are wont to observe--when\nthe tones have ceased, but the lips are not sealed--when, for an\ninstant, the face repeats to the eye what the voice has said to the\near. No one who has studied that head can doubt that our Lord has just\nspoken: the sounds are not there, but they have not travelled far into\nspace.\n\n\"Much, too, in the general speech of this head is owing to the skill\nwith which, while conveying one particular idea, the painter has\nsuggested no other. Beautiful as the face is, there is no other beauty\nbut that which ministers to this end. We know not whether the head be\nhandsome or picturesque, masculine or feminine in type--whether the\neye be liquid, the cheek ruddy, the hair smooth, or the beard\ncurling--as we know with such painful certainty in other\nrepresentations. All we feel is, that the wave of one intense meaning\nhas passed over the whole countenance, and left its impress alike on\nevery part. Sorrow is the predominant expression--that sorrow which,\nas we have said in our Introduction, distinguishes the Christian's\nGod, and which binds him, by a sympathy no fabled deity ever claimed,\nwith the fallen and suffering race of Adam. His very words have given\nhimself more pain than they have to his hearers, and a pain he cannot\nexpend in protestations as they do, for this, as for every other act\nof his life, came he into the world.\n\n\"But we must not linger with the face alone; no hands ever did such\nintellectual service as those which lie spread on that table. They,\ntoo, have just fallen into that position--one so full of meaning to\nus, and so unconsciously assumed by him--and they will retain it no\nlonger than the eye which is down and the head which is sunk. A\nspecial intention on the painter's part may be surmised in the\nopposite action of each hand: the palm of the one so graciously and\nbountifully open to all who are weary and heavy-laden; the other\naverted, yet not closed, as if deprecating its own symbolic office. Or\nwe may consider their position as applicable to this particular scene\nonly; the one hand saying, 'Of those that thou hast given me none is\nlost,' and the other, which lies near Judas, 'except the son of\nperdition.' Or, again, we may give a still narrower definition, and\ninterpret this averted hand as directing the eye, in some sort, to the\nhand of Judas, which lies nearest it, 'Behold, the hand of him that\n{257} betrayeth me is with me on the table.' Not that the science of\nChristian iconography has been adopted here, for the welcoming and\ncondemning functions of the respective hands have been reversed--in\nreference, probably, to Judas, who sits on our Lord's right. Or we may\ngive up attributing symbolic intentions of any kind to the painter--a\nsource of pleasure to the spectator more often justifiable than\njustified--and simply give him credit for having, by his own exquisite\nfeeling alone, so placed the hands as to make them thus minister to a\nvariety of suggestions. Either way, these grand and pathetic members\nstand as preeminent as the head in the pictorial history of our Lord,\nhaving seldom been equalled in beauty of form, and never in power of\nspeech.\n\n\"Thus much has been said upon this figure of our Lord, because no\nother representation approaches so near the ideal of his person. Time,\nignorance, and violence have done their worst upon it; but it may be\ndoubted whether it ever suggested more overpowering feelings than in\nits present battered and defaced condition, scarcely now to be called\na picture, but a fitter emblem of him who was 'despised and rejected\nof men.'\"\n\nPerhaps there is no other passage in the work so lovingly elaborated\nas this. Rivalling in energy, it surpasses in delicate discrimination\neven such brilliant criticisms as that of the eloquent Count de\nMontalembert on Fra Angelico's \"Last Judgment\"--a criticism which must\nhave struck all readers of \"Vandalism and Catholicism in Art\" as\nworthy of the painting it describes. But the mention of the blessed\nfriar of Fiesoli reminds us that he is a special favorite with Lady\nEastlake also. The spell of his tender and reverent contemplations has\ntold upon her with considerable power, to an extent, indeed, which\nmakes her scarcely just toward Raphael himself. Several graphic pages\nare devoted to a description of Fra Angelico's \"Last Judgment.\" His\n\"Adoration of the Cross\" also is dwelt upon with much affection, and\nin great detail. But our readers will be enabled, we hope, to form\nsome idea of the feelings with which Lady Eastlake regards this most\nChristian of all artists, from the shorter extracts which we subjoin.\nAfter criticizing a fine fresco by Giotto of \"Christ washing the\nDisciples' feet,\" she thus comments upon Fra Angelico's treatment of\nthe same subject:\n\n\"Of all painters who expressed the condescension of the Lord by the\nimpression it produced upon those to whom it was sent, Fra Angelico\nstands foremost in beauty of feeling. Not only the hands, but the feet\nof poor shocked Peter protest against his Master's condescension. It\nis a contest for humility between the two; but our Lord is more than\nhumble, he is lovely and mighty too. He is on his knees; but his two\noutstretched hands, so lovingly offered, begging to be accepted, go\nbeyond the mere incident, as art and poetry of this class always do,\nand link themselves typically with the whole gracious scheme of\nredemption. True Christian art, even if theology were silent, would,\nlike the very stones, cry out and proclaim how every act of our Lord's\ncourse refers to one supreme idea.\"\n\nAnd, once more, speaking of the same artist's picture of the \"Descent\nfrom the Cross,\" she thus contrasts his conception with those of Luca\nSignorelli, Michael Angelo, Raphael, Razzi, Da Volterra, and other\nItalian versions of the 15th and 16th centuries:\n\n\"After contemplating these conceptions of the deposition in which a\ncertain parade of idle sorrow, vehement action, and pendent\nimpossibilities are conspicuous, it is a relief to turn to one who\nhere, as ever, stands alone in his mild glory. Fra Angelico's Descent,\npainted for the Sta. Trinita at Florence, now in the Accademia there,\nis the perfect realization of the most pious idea. No more Christian\nconception of the subject, and no more probable {258} setting forth,\nof the scene, can perhaps be attained. All is holy sorrow, calm and\nstill; the figures move gently, and speak in whispers. No one is too\nexcited to help, or not to hinder. Joseph and Nicodemus, known by\ntheir glories, are highest in the scale of reverential beings who\npeople the ladder, and make it almost look as if it lost itself, like\nJacob's, in heaven. They each hold an arm close to the shoulder.\nAnother disciple sustains the body as he sits on the ladder, a fourth\nreceives it under the knees; and St. John, a figure of the highest\nbeauty of expression, lifts his hands and offers his shoulder to the\nprecious burden, where in another moment it will safely and tenderly\nrepose. The figure itself is ineffably graceful with pathetic\nhelplessness, but _Corona gloriae_, victory over the old enemy,\nsurrounds a head of divine peace. He is restored to his own, and rests\namong them with a security as if he knew the loving hands so quietly\nand mournfully busied about him. And his peace is with them already:\n'Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you.' In this picture it\nis as if the pious artist had sought first the kingdom of God, and all\nthings, even in art, had been added unto him. . . . We have taken only\nthe centre group (the size forbidding more), leaving out the sorrowing\nwomen on the right, with the Mother piously kneeling with folded\nhands, as if so alone she could worthily take back that sacred form.\"\n\nSuch a picture might have been supposed to be the source of Father\nFaber's most pathetic description of the same scene in his \"Foot of\nthe Cross,\" did we not know that there is sure to be a strong family\nlikeness between the conceptions of two gentle, humble souls, deriving\ntheir inspiration from the same exercise of prayerful and\ncompassionate contemplation.\n\nIt would be a pity to mar the impression made upon our readers by\npassages such as we have quoted, and of which there are many kindred\nexamples scattered throughout Lady Eastlake's volume, by the painful\ncontrast of a sad passage upon the Agony in the Garden (vol. ii., p.\n30). Though not the sole, it is the most serious, blot upon her work.\nMisconceiving altogether the symbolic intention of Catholic artists in\nplacing the chalice and host in the hand of the ministering angel,\nLady Eastlake for once allows the Protestant spirit within to break\nthrough all bounds of decorum. In what sense the eucharistic chalice,\nintroduce it where you will, can be a _profane_ representation, it is\nimpossible to conceive. Good taste, not to say reverence, should have\nproscribed the employment of such an epithet. A little patient\nreflection, or the still easier and surer method of inquiry at some\nCatholic source, would, we venture to think, have overcome her\nrepugnance, and have saved her Catholic readers some unnecessary pain.\nBut we are willing to let this offence pass, and to leave the logic of\nthe accompanying strictures, bad as it is, unchallenged, in\nconsideration of the eminent service rendered by the work, as a whole,\nto the cause of Christian art. Few could have brought together a\nlarger amount of instructive and interesting matter. Few, perhaps no\none, at least among Protestants, could have undertaken the task with\nso much to qualify, so little to disqualify, them for the office of\nhistorian and critic of the glorious series of monuments which\nChristian artists have bequeathed to us.\n\nOne lesson, above all, every unprejudiced reader ought to derive from\nthese volumes--that Christian art and Catholic art are identical. Not\nto every Catholic artist is it given to produce true Christian art;\nbut he, _caeteris paribus_, is most certain of attaining the true\nstandard who is most deeply imbued with true Catholic principles, most\nhighly gifted with the Catholic virtues of supernatural faith and\nlove. Looking at the whole range of Christian art, it may be safely\naverred that whatever shortcomings there have been within the Church\nhave been owing to {259} the influence of principles foreign to her\nspirit; and that, outside the Church (we say it in spite of Lady\nEastlake's admiration of Rembrandt), there has simply never existed\nany Christian art at all. In our own days the rule is not reversed.\nWhom have Protestants to set against Overbeck, Cornelius, Deger,\nMolitor, and we are proud to add our own illustrious countryman,\nHerbert? Not surely the Pre-Raphaelite school in England, though it is\nthe only one that has the least pretensions to the cultivation of\nChristian art. No, it is the Catholic Church alone that can stamp upon\nthe painter's productions the supernatural impress of those notes by\nwhich she herself is recognizable as true.\n\nThere is a unity of intention, scope, and spirit in Catholic art of\nevery age and clime. Like the doctrines and devotions of the Church,\nCatholic art, in all its various forms--symbolical, historical,\ndevotional, ideal--ever revolves round one centre, and is referable to\none exemplar. Divine beauty \"manifest in the flesh\"--the image of the\nFather clothed in human form and living in the Church--he is the\ninspirer of Christian art. _Deum nemo vidit unquam: unigenitus Filius,\nqui est in sinu Patris, ipse narravit_.  [Footnote 52] The God-man is\nthe primary object of artistic contemplation. As in doctrine, so in\naestheticism, every truly Catholic artist may exclaim, _Verbum caro\nfactum est, et habitavit in nobis; et vidimus gloriam ejus, gloriam\nquasi unigeniti a Patre, plenum gratia et veritatis_.  [Footnote 53]\n\n  [Footnote 52: \"No man hath seen God at any time: the only-begotten\n  Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.\"--John\n  i. 18.]\n\n  [Footnote 53: \"The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us; and we\n  saw his glory, the glory as it were of the only-begotten of the\n  father, full of grace and truth.\"--John i. 14.]\n\nBut this unity, how exuberant in its fertility! The unity of the\nChurch is the source of her catholicity. The two stand or fall\ntogether. And, so, too, the oneness of Catholic art is the secret of\nits universality. It admits of no partial view, excludes no variety or\ndifference. Unity of spirit binds all together in perfect harmony,\njust as diversity of race and multiplicity of individual gifts, in her\nmembers, are fitted together, organized, and held in balance by the\nunity of the Church. Unity is the basis and safeguard of catholicity;\ncatholicity the glory and crown of unity.\n\nNor is the note of apostolicity wanting. For the Bible, and the Bible\nonly, as the rule and standard of art, substitute Catholic tradition\nhanded down from the apostles, inclusive of all that is in Scripture,\nbut reaching beyond the limits of the written word, and ever\ninterpreted to the artist, no less than to the rest of the faithful,\nby the living voice of the teaching Church, and then the principle\nwhich identifies orthodoxy with Christian art may safely be applied as\na test to religious painting.\n\nLastly--we had almost said above all--the beauty of holiness is\nstamped exclusively upon all art created after the mind of the Church.\nFor Catholic art is nothing else than the product of contemplation in\nsouls gifted with artistic capacities; and contemplation is only\nanother word for the gaze of supernatural faith, quickened and\nperfected by supernatural love, upon one or other of those mysteries\nwhich the Church sets before the minds of her children. So at least we\nhave learned from the Angelic Doctor; who tells us  [Footnote 54] that\nbeauty is found primarily and essentially in the contemplative life.\nFor, although St. Gregory teaches that contemplation consists in the\nlove of God, we are to understand this rather of the motive than of\nthe precise act. The will inflamed with love desires to behold the\nbeauty of the beloved object, either for its own sake--the heart\nalways being where the treasure is--or for the sake of the knowledge\nitself which results from the act of vision. Sometimes it is the\nsenses which are thus compelled to act, sometimes the intellect which\nis prompted to this gaze, according as the object is material or\nspiritual. But how is the beauty of the object {260} perceived? What\nis the faculty whose office it is to light up and reduce to order and\ndue proportion what is seen? Evidently, the reason. For reason is\nlight, and where there is reason there is harmony and proportion. And\nso beauty, whose essence is brightness and due proportion, is, as we\nhave said, primarily and necessarily found in the contemplative life;\nor, which is the same thing, in the exercise of the reason--its\nnatural exercise, if the beauty contemplated be in the natural order;\nits supernatural exercise, if revealed mystery be that which attracts\nand occupies the soul.\n\n  [Footnote 54: 2. 2. Q. clxxx. a. 1, and a. 2. ad 3.]\n\n----\n\nFrom Chambers's Journal.\n\nPOUCETTE.\n\n\nNearly seven years ago, I was walking hurriedly along the boulevards\nof Paris one winter's evening; it was Christmas-eve, and had been\nushered in by thick fog and miserable drizzling rain, which provoked\nthe inhabitants of the gay capital to complain loudly of the change\nwhich they fancied had taken place in the seasons of late years,\nwhereby the detested _brouillards de Londres_ had been introduced into\ntheir once clear, pure atmosphere. The weather was certainly most\nunseasonable, and took away almost entirely the small remnant of\nChristmas-like feeling, which an Englishman, with all his efforts, can\nmanage to keep up in a foreign land. I had sat chatting with a friend\nover a cosey fire until dusk; and, on leaving his house, neither a\n_remise_ nor a _fiacre_ was to be met with empty; so I made up my mind\nto a wet walk, and amused myself, as I went on, by observing the\nvarious groups of passengers, some of them suddenly benighted like\nmyself, as they sped on their way along the crowded thoroughfare. The\nbrilliant lamps hung from the shops threw a glare over each face as it\nflitted past, or paused to look in at the windows; and the noise of\nhammers resounded incessantly from the edge of the pavement, where\nworkmen were busy erecting small wooden booths for the annual\nNew-Year's fair. Some were already completed, and their owners hovered\nabout, ever and anon darting forth from behind their small counters,\nto pounce upon a likely customer, to whom they extolled the beauty and\ncheapness of their wares in tempting terms.\n\n\"Tenez, monsieur!\" cries an old woman, whose entire stock-in-trade\nconsists of a few pairs of doll's shoes of chocolate, displayed upon a\ntin tray, over which she carefully holds a weather-beaten umbrella.\n\"Two sous the pair, two sous!\" \"Voila, mesdames,\" bawls a youth of\nten, who, in London, would probably execute an unlimited number of\nCatherine-wheels under the feet of paterfamilias, as he crosses a\ncrowded street; here he is carefully watching a basinful of water, in\nwhich float a number of glass ducks of the most brilliant and\nunnatural colors. \"Pour un sou!\" and he holds up one tiny image\nbetween his finger and thumb, with a business-like air. \"Fi done!\"\nanswers a sharp-visaged elderly woman, as she withdraws six of the\nducks from their watery bed, and places them gently in a corner of her\ncapacious basket, offering the owner at the same time four sous, {261}\nwhich he accepts with the invariable \"Merci, madame,\" and the polite\nParisian bow; and depositing the coins in some deep recess of his huge\ntrouser-pockets, he resumes his cry of \"Un sou, mesdames, pour un\nsou,\" with unblushing mendacity. Just at the corner of the boulevard,\nwhere the Rue de la Paix joins it, stood a lively, wiry-looking little\nman, whose bows and cries were incessant, holding something in his\noutstretched hands carefully wrapped in wet grass, which he entreats\nthe bystanders to purchase. As I approach him, he uncovers it, and\ndiscloses a small tortoise, who waves his thin neck from side to side\ndeprecatingly, and looks appealingly out of his dark eyes. \"Buy him,\nmonsieur,\" cries the little owner: \"he is my last; he will be your\nbest friend for many years, and afterward he will make an excellent\nsoup!\" A laugh from some of the passers-by rewarded this very naive\ndefinition of a pet; and leaving the lively bustle of the boulevard, I\nturned down the Rue de la Paix, and into the dark-looking Rue Neuve\nSt. Augustin; a little way down which, I perceived a small knot of\npeople gathered under the arched entrance to a _hotel_.\n\nThere were not many--a few bloused workmen returning from their daily\ntoil, two or three women, and the usual amount of active _gamins_\ndarting about the outskirts; within, I could perceive the cocked-hat\nof the ever-watchful _sergent de ville_. Prompted by that gregarious\ninstinct which leads most men toward crowds, I went up to it; and, by\nthe help of a tolerably tall figure, I looked over the heads of the\npeople into the centre, at a group, the first sight of whom I shall\nnot soon forget. There, before me, on the cold pavement, now wet with\nwintry rain, lay a little, a very little girl, fainting. Her face,\nwhich was deadly pale, looked worn and pinched by want into that aged,\nhard look so touching to see in the very young, because it tells of a\npremature exposure to trial and care, if not of a struggle literally\nfor life. Her jet-black hair, of which she had a profusion, lay\nunbound over her shoulders like a mantle. Her dress was an old black\nvelvet frock, covered with spangles, with a piece of something red\nsewn on the skirt, and a scarlet bodice. Her neck and arms were bare;\nand the gay dress, where it had been opened in front, showed nothing\nunderneath it but the poor thin body. Her legs were blue and mottled\nwith cold; and the tiny feet were thrust into wooden _sabots_, one of\nwhich had dropped off, a world too wide for the little foot it was\nmeant to protect. A kind-looking elderly woman knelt on the pavement,\nand supported the child's head in her arms, chafing her cold hands,\nand trying, by every means in her power, to restore animation; and\nwandering uneasily up and down beside them, was a curious-looking\nnon-descript figure, such as one can rarely meet with out of Paris. It\nwas a poodle--at least so its restless, bead-like, black eyes and\nmuzzle betokened, and also a suspicious-looking tuft of hair, now\nvisible, waving above its garments--but the animal presented a most\nludicrous appearance, from being dressed up in a very exact imitation\nof the costume of a fine lady during the century of Louis le Grand.\nThe brilliant eyes were surmounted by a cleverly contrived wig,\nfrizzed, powdered, and sparkling with mock jewels; the body decked out\nin a cherry-colored satin bodice, with a long peaked stomacher,\ntrimmed with lace, and a stiff hoop, bell-like in shape, but, in\nproportion, far within the dimensions of a modern crinoline; even the\nhigh-heeled shoes of scarlet leather were not forgotten; and the\nstrange anomaly between the animal and its disguise was irresistibly\nludicrous. The dog was perfectly aware that something was going\non--something strange, pitiful, and, what was more to the purpose,\nnearly concerning himself; and clever as he was, he could not yet see\na way through his difficulties.\n\nHis misery was extreme; he pattered piteously up and down the space\n{262} round the fainting child, and raised himself up anxiously on his\nhind-legs to peer into her little wan face, presenting thus a still\nmore ludicrous aspect than before. With his wise doggish face peeping\nout curiously from the ridiculous human head-dress, he sniffed all\nover the various feet which encircled his precious mistress,\nsuspiciously; and finally placing himself, still on his hind-legs,\nclose by her side, he laid his head lovingly to her cheek, and uttered\na low dismal howl, followed, after an instant's pause, by an impatient\nbark. The child stirred--roused apparently by the familiar\nsound--gasped for breath once or twice; and presently opening her\neyes, she cried feebly, \"Mouton, ou es tu done?\" He leaped up in an\necstacy, trying, in the height of his joy, to lick her face; but this\nwas not to be: she pushed him away as roughly as the little feeble\nhand had strength to do.\n\n\"Ah, wicked dog, go away; you do mischief,\" she said, fixing a pair of\neyes as round and almost as black as his own upon the unfortunate\nanimal. He dropped instantly, and with a subdued, sorrowful air, lay\ndown, licking diligently, in his humility, the little foot from which\nthe sabot had fallen: he had evidently proved that submission was the\nonly plan to pursue with his imperious mistress. The girl was stronger\nnow, and able to sit up with the help of the good woman's knee, and\nshe drank off a cup of milk which the compassionate wife of the\n_concierge_ handed to her. \"Thanks, madame,\" said the child, with native\npoliteness; \"I am better now. You are a good Christian,\" she added,\nturning her head so as to look in the face of the woman who supported\nher.\n\n\"What are you called, my child?\" asked her friend. \"Where do you\nlive?\"\n\n\"Antoinette Elizabeth is my baptismal name,\" answered the child, with\nodd gravity; \"but I am generally called _Poucette_, because, you see,\nI am small;\" and a faint tinge of color came into her pale cheeks.\n\nNo wonder the name was bestowed upon her, for we could see that she\nwas small, very small; and, from the diminutive size of her limbs, she\nseemed likely to remain so till the end of her days.\n\n\"Will you go home now?\" asked the woman, after a moment's pause.\n\n\"No, not just yet,\" said the tiny being. \"I have had no supper. I\nshall go to Emile, but Mouton may go home. Go!\" she cried,\nimperiously, to the dog, as she swiftly slid off the marvellous dress\nand wig, out of which casing Mouton came forth an ordinary looking and\ndecidedly dirty poodle. He hesitated for an instant, when she raised\nher little clenched fist, and shook it fiercely at him, repeating\n\"Go!\" in louder tones. He wagged his tail deprecatingly, licked his\nblack lips, looked imploringly at her out of his loving eyes, and\nseemed to beg permission to remain with her; but in vain; then, seeing\nher endeavor to rise, he turned, fled up the street with the swiftness\nof a bird, and disappeared round the corner. His mistress, in the\nmeantime, folded up the dog's finery carefully, and deposited it\ninside her own poor garments; then, after an instant's pause, she rose\nto her feet, and looked round at us. She was well named Poucette: in\nstature she did not exceed a child of four years old; but she was\nperfectly made, and the limbs were in excellent proportion with the\nstature, only her face showed age. There was a keen, worldly look\nabout the mouth, with its thin scarlet lips; and a vindictive\nexpression shining in the bold, black eyes--altogether a hard-looking\nface, not at all attractive in its character; and yet I felt myself\ndrawn to the poor child.\n\nShe was evidently half-starved, fighting her own hard battle with the\nworld, and keeping her struggle as much to herself as she could; and\nwhen, scanning curiously over the faces surrounding her, her eyes\nrested on mine, I stepped forward, and offered her a five-franc piece.\nTo my surprise, she threw the money on the pavement {263} with the\nbitterest scorn. \"I don't want money,\" she shrieked, passionately--\"I\nwant my supper. Go away, _canaille!_\" I stooped down toward her, and\ntook her hand. \"Come with me,\" I said to her, \"and you shall have some\nsupper. I live close by.\" She stood on tiptoe even then, and peered\ninto my face with her sharp eyes. Apparently, however, a short\ninspection satisfied her, for she said softly, \"Thank you,\" and tried\nto hold my hand. Finding it too much for her small grasp, she clung to\nmy trousers with one hand, and with the other she waved off the\nwondering bystanders with a most majestic air. I offered payment for\nthe milk, which the good woman civilly refused; and then I sent for a\n_fiacre_ in which to get to my lodgings in the Rue Rivoli, shrinking,\nI must confess, from the idea of the ridiculous figure I should cut\nwalking along the streets with this absurd though unfortunate\ncreature. Presently the concierge arrived with one, and we stepped in,\nPoucette entering majestically first. I gave the word, and we started.\nHardly had we turned out of the street, when the impulsive child\nbeside me seized me with both hands, and in an ecstacy of gratitude\nthanked me with streaming eyes for what I was doing for her. \"I am\nstarving,\" she sobbed--\"I fainted from hunger. I have been dancing on\nthe boulevards all day with Mouton, who is hungry, too, poor fellow,\nfor he only ate a small bit of bread which a good little gentleman\ngave him this morning.\"\n\n\"Why did you not take the money, then?\" I asked. \"You might have\nbought food for yourself and Mouton.\"\n\n\"I did not want money,\" said the girl proudly--\"I don't beg.\"\n\n\"But you say you are hungry.\"\n\n\"That is nothing. I never beg; I dance; and tonight, when I have had\nsome supper, I shall dance for you, and you shall see,\" drawing\nherself up.\n\nAt this speech I hesitated. What in the world had I to do with a\ndancing-girl in my quiet bachelor rooms? Did she intend taking them by\nstorm, and quartering herself upon me, whether I liked it or not? The\nquestion was a difficult one; but yet, when I looked down at the tiny\nfigure, with its poor, woe-begone face, so thin and weary-looking, its\nutter weakness and dependence, I felt that, come what might, I could\nnot act otherwise than I was doing. \"There, go up stairs, _au\ntroisieme_\" said I to my charge, as the fiacre stopped, and we got\nout; when lo! from behind a large stone close by the entrance to the\n_porte-co-chere_, the black round eyes of Mouton glanced furtively out\nupon us. His behavior was exceedingly reserved; he durst not even wag\nhis tail for fear of giving offence, but he glanced at me in the\nmeekest, humblest entreaty ever dog did. \"Don't send him away,\" I said\nto Poucette: \"take him up stairs with you; I wish him to remain.\"\n\nShe made no reply, but snapped her fingers encouragingly at him, and\nhe followed her closely, as she walked up stairs. I paused a moment\nwith the concierge, to ask her to provide some dinner for my\nunexpected guests; and then mounted the stairs after them. I found\nAntoinette Elizabeth and her faithful follower seated at my door,\ngravely awaiting my arrival. Mouton recognized me as a friend, and\nfaintly wagged his tail; evidently he was careful, in the presence of\nhis mistress, upon whom he bestowed his favors. We entered my room,\nall three of us; and presently the dinner arrived, and was done ample\njustice to. Poucette ate heartily, but not ravenously; and after the\nmeal was over, we drew our chairs round the fire, and sat eating\nwalnuts. She asked then, with more timidity than she had yet shown:\n\"When shall we have the honor of dancing for monsieur?\" raising her\nlarge black eyes, which had lost their fierce look, to my face.\n\n\"Not just yet, Poucette,\" I replied. \"Tell me something about yourself\nfirst, and eat more walnuts.\"\n\n{264}\n\nShe looked up sharply at this, as if to say, What business is that of\nyours? then away into the fire, which was evidently a novel luxury to\nher; and finally her glance rested on Mouton, who, having devoured\nevery superfluous piece of meat, and gnawed the only bone at table,\nhad now stretched himself on the hearth-rug, and slumbered peacefully\nat her feet. \"Monsieur is very good,\" she said presently, with a sigh,\nstill with her eyes fixed on Mouton. \"My history is nothing very\ngreat. I am not a Parisian; my father was a Norman.\"\n\n\"Is he alive now?\" I asked, as she paused here.\n\n\"I don't know about that,\" she answered haughtily. \"He was a wicked\nman. Monsieur understands me?\" she said questioningly, with a piercing\nlook.\n\n\"Yes, poor child. And your mother, what of her?\"\n\n\"She is an angel,\" faltered the girl. \"She went up to heaven last\nChristmas;\" and the tears filled her eyes as she said it.\n\n\"How have you lived since?'\n\n\"Oh, that was at Marseilles; and I came on here with Mouton. We\ndance,\" she continued in a firmer voice; \"we go out with a man called\nEmile, who plays the organ very well, and he has another dog like\nMouton,' only not at all clever: the stupid creature can only hold a\nbasket in his mouth, and beg for sous; he has no talent.\" She shrugged\nher shoulders, and continued, \"We live with Emile and his wife; they\nare not always kind to me; but I love Jean.\"\n\n\"Who is this Jean?\" I asked.\n\n\"Ah! he is a poor boy,\" she replied; the whole expression of her\ncountenance softening at his name, and her sallow cheeks crimsoning\nwith a tender flush. \"He is lame; he cannot walk, and is pulled about\nin a little carriage; but he does not like to beg, so Emile will not\ntake him out with us.\"\n\n\"Is Emile his father?\" I asked.\n\n\"No, monsieur; his father is dead but his mother is Emile's wife. I\ntake care of Jean myself.\"\n\n\"Are they good to you?\"\n\n\"Yes, pretty well. You see I dance for them, and people give more\nmoney because I am there; and then Mouton is so clever; one does not\neasily meet with a dog like that, who will stand on his hind-legs for\nan hour together, and dance as he does. Look at his dress too;\" and\nshe pulled out of the bosom of her frock Mouton's paraphernalia, and\ndisplayed it with evident pride. \"In my opinion now, there is no such\ndress as that for a dog in all Paris,\" she said, as she held it up\nadmiringly to the lamp. \"Jean made those shoes; ar'n't they droll? And\nthe wig; look, that is superb!\"\n\n\"Who made the wig?\" I asked.\n\n\"Ah! it was a little boy who is apprenticed to a wigmaker,\" she\nanswered. \"Monsieur, it was a bargain between us; he wanted something\nfrom me, and--and I said I would give it him if he made a wig for\nMouton; and this is the wig. He is not bad himself, that little boy;\nbut he is not at all so good as Jean.\"\n\n\"How old is Jean?\" I asked.\n\n\"He is twelve years old, monsieur.\"\n\n\"And you?\"\n\n\"I am ten,\" she replied, with a little sigh and a blush. \"But I may\ngrow still, may I not?\" she asked timidly, looking up into my face so\npathetically, that I had hardly sufficient gravity to answer, \"Yes, of\ncourse; you will doubtless grow for a long time yet.\"\n\n\"Ah! that is exactly what Jean says,\" she exclaimed gaily; then added\nin a lower voice, \"Jean says he likes little people best; but, you\nsee, he may say that because he likes me.\"\n\nI answered nothing to this; and presently she roused herself from a\nlittle reverie, and said, \"Now we shall dance for you, because it gets\nlate, and I must go home.\"\n\n\"If you like to remain here all night,\" I said, \"the wife of the\nconcierge will let you sleep in a little {265} room off theirs, down\nstairs; and when you have had some breakfast, you can then return.\"\n\n\"No, no,\" she repeated sharply; \"I will not sleep here; I go home to\nJean.\"\n\n\"Will Emile be glad to see you?\"\n\n\"That depends; if he is cross, he will beat me for staying so long;\nbut it does not matter; I wished to stay, and I liked my dinner, and\nthis warm fire\" (she looked wistfully at it). \"Monsieur is very good.\nCome, Mouton, my friend; wake yourself up.\"\n\nThe dog rose, shook himself, and patiently allowed himself to be\ndressed once more. He took an unfair advantage of his mistress,\nhowever, when she knelt down to put on his shoes, and licked her face.\n\"Ah, _cochon_, how often must I box your ears for that trick!\" she\nsaid, as she gave him a tap on the side of his head, for the liberty.\n\"Come now, walk along.\" The dog paced soberly toward the door on his\nhind-legs.--\"That is the _ancien regime_,\" she explained to me.--\"Now,\nMouton, show us how people walk at the present day.\" The dog stopped,\nand at once imitated the short, mincing step of a Parisian belle,\nshaking his hoop from side to side in most ludicrous fashion; and as\nhe reached his mistress, he dropped a little awkward courtesy.\n\n\"That is well,\" she said. \"Now sing for us like Madame G----,\" naming\na famous opera-singer, whose fame was then at its height, and she laid\na light piece of music-paper across his paws. The dog looked closely\ndown on the paper for an instant, licked his lips, looked round at an\nimaginary audience, and then throwing back his head, and fixing his\nblack eyes on the ceiling, he uttered a howl so shrill and piercing\nthat I stopped my ears; he then ceased for an instant, looked at his\nmusic attentively, then at his audience, and again uttered that\near-piercing howl. \"That is enough,\" said Poucette; \"bow to the\ncompany.\" The dog rose and sank with the grace almost of the prima\ndonna herself.\n\n\"Now, Mouton, we are going to dance;\" and taking the animal by its\npaw, she put the other arm round it, and the two whirled round in a\nwaltz, keeping admirable time to a tune which Poucette whistled. \"Now\nread a book, and rest yourself whilst I dance;\" and again the piece of\nmusic was laid on Mouton's paws, and he bent his eyes on it,\napparently with the most devoted attention, whilst Poucette slipped\noff her heavy sabots, and with naked feet thrust into a pair of old\nsatin slippers, which she produced from some pocket in her dress, she\nexecuted a sort of fancy dance, half Cachuca, half Bolero, throwing\nherself into pretty, graceful attitudes, with a step as light as a\nfairy's; then, as she approached Mouton in the figure, she lifted the\nmusic, and taking him by one paw, she led him forward to the front of\nmy chair on the points of her toes, the two courtesying nearly to the\nground, when Mouton affectionately kissed his mistress on the cheek.\n\n\"There, it is over now,\" said Poucette; \"that is all. He does not know\nthe minuet perfectly yet: next week, perhaps, we shall try it for the\n_Jour de l'An_.\"\n\n\"Well done!\" I exclaimed, and clapped my hands. \"He is a famous dog;\nand you--you dance beautifully.\"\n\nMouton came to be patted and made much of; and his mistress now\nannounced her intention of going home at once. Finding it useless to\ntry and induce her to stay, I offered to go with her myself, and see\nher safely through the still crowded streets; but this she firmly\ndeclined.\n\n\"No, not to-night,\" she said. \"You may come to-morrow, if you will be\nso kind, but not to-night. You have been very good, monsieur; I am not\nungrateful. You may come to-morrow; Rue----,  No.----,  quite close to\nNotre Dame.\" She took my hand, raised it to her lips, courtesied, and\nwas gone.\n\n{266}\n\nI followed her down stairs, and watched the little figure hurrying\nalong with a firm step, upright as a dart, the light from the\ngas-lamps falling now and then on the spangles of her dress, and\nmaking them twinkle for an instant; and the dark outline of Mouton\nfollowing closely behind her, under the shadow of the houses.\nPresently they crossed the street, and disappeared in the distance;\nand I turned and walked up stairs to my cosey well-lighted room, to\nthink over the strange life of a street dancing-girl.\n\nAfter this, I made inquiries about Poucette in the part of the town\nwhere she lived, and visited the man Emile and his wife often. Here I\nfound the cripple boy Jean, to whom Poucette clung with a tenacity of\naffection that was touching to witness. He had had a fall as an\ninfant, so his mother said, and never had walked; but his fingers were\nskilful in making toys, baskets, and small rush-mats, which Poucette\nsold during her daily rounds. To him she devoted her affections, her\nlife, with a steady ardor not often met with at her age. Toward\nothers, she was always grave, distant, often haughty and bitter in her\nexpressions of anger, but to him never. However tired she might return\nhome after dancing or selling his wares on the boulevard, she never\nshowed him that she was so; if he wished to go out, she drew him in a\nrude wooden sledge to the gardens of the Luxembourg; and the two would\nsit there by the hour together on Sundays, criticising the passers-by\nas they walked about in their gay dresses. At night, if the invalid\nwas restless or in pain, Poucette sat beside him, sometimes till day\ndawned, with a sympathizing cheerful face, ready to attend upon every\nwant. There she shone; but take away Jean out of her world, and\nPoucette stood forth a vixen. Madame Emile, who was herself somewhat\nof a shrew, vowed that if it were not that she and Jean were so bound\nup together, and nothing could separate them, she must have sent away\nPoucette long ago. \"No one could endure her temper, monsieur,\" she\nwould declare to me; and when she began upon this subject, madame\nwaxed eloquent. \"She is a girl such as there is not besides in Paris.\nFor Jean, she will give up dress, company, the theatre, everything;\nbut except for him, she would not go one step out of her way to be\nmade an empress. It is not natural that. After she first came here, we\nhad a great deal of trouble with her, and Emile beat her well; but\nthen she would run away in a rage, and come back again during the\nnight, for fear Jean should want something. Now we are more used to\nher, and we let her have her own way pretty much.\"\n\nJean I could get nothing out of except a \"Bonjour, monsieur\" at\nentering and on leaving his house. He sat silently plaiting his mats\nor carving toys with his long fingers, looking as if he neither heard\nnor understood what we were talking about; but he carefully repeated\nall the conversation afterward to his friend Poucette, for she told me\nso often when we were together. She used to come and see me at my\nrooms, when it was wet, or business was slack; and I succeeded in\nfinding a customer for her wares in a toy-merchant, who promised to\ntake all Jean's work at a reasonable price, and was liberal toward the\ntwo children. Poucette was thus able to give up her public dancing,\nand stay more at home; and the toyman's daughter taught her dainty\nembroidery, in which her skilful fingers soon excelled. She tamed down\nwonderfully that winter, and even made some efforts to learn reading,\nas I suggested to her what a source of pleasure it would be to Jean,\nwhose thirst for hearing stories related was intense, if he could read\nthem for himself. But she was very slow at this; the letters proved a\nheavy task to learn, and when we came to spelling, I often despaired;\nstill she toiled on, and when I left Paris in May, she could read a\nvery little.\n\n{267}\n\nSix months passed, and again I turned my steps to my old\nwinter-quarters. The summer and autumn had been spent by me partly in\nEngland, partly in Switzerland. My protege was unable to write, and I\nhad heard nothing of her since I left Paris. I had not returned there\nlonger than a week, when I set off into the _cite_, to discover again\nmy little pupil. It was much the same sort of a day as that on which\nwe had first met; cold, dank, misty rain kept falling, and streets\nwere wet and sloppy. The part of the town where Poucette lived was\nwretchedly poor, dingy, and dirty-looking, especially in such weather\nas I now visited it, and the reputed haunt of thieves and evil-doers\nof various kinds. I picked my way along narrow ill-paved streets, with\nthe gutters in the middle, and at last I reached her old abode. There\nwas no one stirring about; but the door was ajar. I pushed it open,\nand walked in. The dwelling had once been some nobleman's hotel in\nbygone days, and its rooms were large and lofty, and at present each\ninhabited by different poor families. Emile's was on the ground\nfloor--a long room, formerly used either as a guard-room or for\nplaying billiards in. It had one large window, opening in the center,\nand crossed outside with thick iron bars, which partially excluded the\nlight. I was confused on entering from the outer air, and at first\ncould only perceive that the room was filled with a crowd of people,\nof various ages and sexes, but all of the lowest order, some sitting,\nsome standing. A woman came forth to meet me, whom I recognized as\nMadame Emile, sobbing and holding her apron to her eyes. \"Ah, mon\nDieu, mon Dieu!\" she whispered, as she looked at me and clasped her\nhands piteously; \"the poor Poucette, how hard it is! Monsieur, you are\nwelcome; but this is a sorrowful time; she is much hurt.\" She led me\ngently through the various groups, all sorrowfully silent, toward a\nlow pallet, at the head of the room, where, crushed, bleeding, and now\ninsensible from pain, lay the form of poor Poucette. \"What is this?\" I\nasked in a whisper. \"How did it happen?\"\n\n\"Ah, it was a vile remise,\" eagerly answered a dozen voices. \"She was\nreturning home yesterday from selling the mats, and the driver was\ndrunk. She fell in crossing, and he did not see her. The wheel crushed\nher poor chest. Ah, she will die, the unhappy child!\"\n\n\"Where is Jean?\" I asked.\n\nHis mother silently pointed out what looked like a bundle of clothes\nhuddled up in the bed beside the dying child. She was dying, my poor\nPoucette. One of the kind-hearted surgeons from the _hopital_ had been\nto see her early that morning, and pronounced that beside the blow on\nher chest, which was of itself a dangerous one, severe internal\ninjuries had taken place, which must end her life in a few hours. Poor\nPoucette! I seated myself by the little couch in the dark room, which\nwas so soon to be filled by the presence of death, and presently the\nsurgeon came again. All eyes turned anxiously toward him as he walked\nto the bed, and kneeling down beside it, carefully examined the poor\nlittle sufferer, whose only sign of consciousness was a groan of\nanguish now and then.\n\n\"Can nothing be done for her?\" I asked, as he rose to his feet and\nstood by the bed, looking pityingly down at the two children.\n\n\"Nothing whatever,\" he said, with a mournful shake of his head. \"She\nwill not last through the night.\"\n\n\"Does she suffer?\" I asked.\n\n\"Acutely, but it will not be for long. Mortification is setting in\nrapidly.\" He paused, then added: \"She will probably regain\nconsciousness at the last;\" and left the room.\n\nSlowly the weary hours glided on; gradually the moans became weaker,\nand the pulse quick and fitful. Suddenly she opened her eyes, and\nlooked at me inquiringly; then her eyes fell {268} on Jean, who lay at\nher side, and uttered an exclamation of joy. \"I am not in pain now,\"\nshe said faintly; \"that is over.--Ah, my good monsieur, you said you\nwould return. I am glad.\"\n\n\"I am grieved to find you thus, Poucette,\" I whispered. \"Can I do\nanything for you?\"\n\n\"Perhaps you would like to have Mouton,\" she said calmly, as if\nthinking aloud.\n\n\"I will keep him, if you like it,\" I replied. \"Is there anything else\nyou would like?\"\n\n\"Only Jean, dear Jean,\" and her soft dark eyes were fixed timidly yet\nimploringly on my face.\n\n\"I will take care of Jean.\"\n\n\"The good God reward you, my kind monsieur! That is all that I want.--\nAdieu, madame. Adieu, my good friends. It is over.\" Just then Mouton\nraised himself on his hind-legs by the bed, and peered anxiously into\nher face. She put out her little right hand, and gently patted his\nhead; then, with a last effort, she turned round from us, and flung\none tiny arm round the crippled boy at her side. \"Je t'aime toujours,\"\nshe whispered, as she bent over and kissed him. It was a last effort.\nA slight shiver passed over the little figure; one long-drawn sigh\nescaped the white lips. Poucette was gone to her mother; the wanderer\nhad been taken home; the desolate one was comforted!\n\nMy tale is ended, except to say that, from that evening, Mouton has\nbeen my inseparable companion. He is by no means, however, as\ncomplaisant to me as he was to his mistress; on the contrary, Mouton,\nlike many other _nouveaux riches_, is rather a spoiled dog, and the\ntyrant of my small household. Jean became a basket-maker, and it is\nnot improbable that my fair readers may have in their possession some\nof the productions of his skilful fingers. Such was the fruit of my\nChristmas-eve in Paris six years ago. I have never spent one there\nsince.\n\n----\n\nTranslated from Der Katholik.\n\nDANTE'S DIVINA COMMEDIA.\n\n\nThere is none of the Christian poets who has exercised so great an\ninfluence in the intellectual world as Dante Alighieri. His \"Vision of\nHell, Purgatory, and Paradise\" has been, ever since its appearance, a\nmine in which artists, poets, philosophers, theologians, historians,\nand statesmen have found treasures. In Italy, immediately after his\ndeath, professors were appointed in the universities to explain his\nwork, and numbers of both lay and clerical savants, among them even\nprinces, bishops, and archbishops, took delight in its study and\nexposition. With the spread of the Italian language, on which Dante\nhas stamped for ever the impress of his genius, and with the progress\nof Italian culture, all Europe became acquainted with the Commedia,\nand learned to admire its beauty and its grandeur. It was translated\ninto other tongues; learned foreigners undertook to fathom its depths;\nand even the spirit of religious unity in the sixteenth century did\nnot check its influence over the Roman-Germanic nations. Protestant\ntranslators and expositors contended with the Catholic writers who\nmade of the work of Dante a special study. The Germans especially have\n{269} not been backward in this respect, and to prove it we need only\nname Kannegieser, Strecksufs, Kofisch, Witte, Wegele, and Philalethes\n(the present king of Saxony).\n\nWhen we wish to assign Dante his proper place in Christian art and\npoetry, by comparison with antiquity, we are reminded at once of Homer\nand the veneration in which he was held by the Greeks. But how has the\nFlorentine poet merited such high consideration? Is it by the might of\nhis genius and the peculiarity of his chosen theme? By the perfection\nand the poetic charm of his expression and language? By his deep\nknowledge of life and of human nature? By the philosophic and moral\ntruths which he has woven into his poem? By his religious and\npolitical views? Or by his judgment of historical personages and\nfacts?\n\nNo doubt all these have been helping causes to establish Dante's fame\nand give him the position which he holds. But the true reason of all\nthe singular prerogatives of the poet and of the poem, the reason\nwhich gives us the key to the right understanding of the \"Divine\nComedy,\" and of the various and discrepant explanations of it, must be\nsought deeper. There is a principal cause of Dante's greatness, from\nwhich the secondary causes, just named, diverge, as rays of light from\na common centre, and to the knowledge of which only a philosophical\ncomprehension of history, and especially of poetry, can lead us. We\nshall endeavor in this essay to discover this cause, after having\ngiven a brief sketch of the contents and the scope of the great poem.\n\n\nI.\n\nThe _Commedia_, which, in the form of a vision, paints the condition\nof the soul after death, is divided into three parts, Hell, Purgatory,\nand Paradise. Each part consists of thirty-three cantos, which, with\nthe introductory canto, make the round number one hundred. Surrounded\nby trials and troubles of various kinds, Dante is guided into the\nregions of the invisible by his favorite poet Virgil, who comes to his\nassistance. Virgil here represents poetry and the idea of the poem. It\nwas through him that Dante was first led to the serious study of\ntruth, and to direct his mind to the philosophical consideration of\nthe condition of mankind.\n\nOur poet now proceeds into the realm of the damned souls, into the\nregions of night and hell, which he represents in the form of a funnel\nhaving nine gradually narrowing eddies, in which the souls of the\ndamned are revolving to the throne of Satan, who sits at the top of\nthe cone. The narrower grow the circles, the more intense become the\npunishments inflicted, in proportion to the increasing guilt of the\nculprits. The lowest place among the lost souls is occupied by the\ntraitors, Brutus, Cassius, and Judas.\n\nThe power of the devil over men, and the inexorable character of the\nChristian idea of retributive justice, is grandly portrayed in this\npart of the work, by interweaving the most moving and striking\nepisodes, in which well-known characters are described as receiving\npunishment equal to their crimes. Even paganism is made to lend its\ngraces to increase the sublimity of the picture, and clothe the\nthoughts of the writer in poetic garments.\n\nBoth poets then leave the darkness and horror of hell behind them, and\napproach the regions of purification or purgatory, over which\nperpetual twilight reigns. This realm of temporary suffering is\nsupposed by the poet to be on the opposite side of the earth, where\nthe antipodes dwell. This abode of those souls who are being purified\nand doing penance for minor offences, and whose pains are lessened by\nthe hope of future happiness, is represented in the form of a\nmountain, to whose summit one ascends by nine successive degrees, as\nthe descent through the {270} funnel of hell was by nine lessening\ncircles. At the top of the mountain is placed that earthly paradise\nwhich was lost by the sins of our first parents, and from which the\nway to heaven leads. Having arrived in the terrestrial paradise, Dante\nsuddenly finds himself deserted by Virgil, who from the beginning had\npromised to guide him only so far. But Beatrice meets our poet here,\nBeatrice the beloved of his youth. She teaches him the science of God,\nand, aided by the light of faith and revelation, which Virgil had not,\nshe shows him the higher knowledge given to human reason under the\ninfluence of Christianity. At her voice and teaching, Dante is moved\nto repentance for his transgressions, and she becomes his future\nguide.\n\nDante paints in the most lively colors, and describes with the\ngreatest beauty, in episodes and conversations, the intimate relation\nof the souls in purgatory with each other, and with those they left\nbehind them on earth, and with the blessed in heaven. This latter\npoint is illustrated by the frequent appearance of angels, who descend\nfrom time to time into the dusky realms of purgatory.\n\nLed by his beloved Beatrice, our poet now mounts to heaven, and\ntraverses its various spheres, which are represented according to the\nsystem of Ptolemy. Beginning by the moon, the poet travels through\nMercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, the glory and\nhappiness of the beatified increasing as he advances, in proportion\nwith their virtues and holiness, till he arrives at the so-called\nEmpyrean, at the very throne of God. In the highest sphere Dante\nbeholds the mystical rose, that is, the glory of the Blessed Virgin,\nwho is surrounded by the highest saints and angels in the form of a\nrose; and among these glorified spirits he sees with delight his\nBeatrice near the Mother of God, who gives an honorable place to those\nwho had been her fervent followers during life. The Vision of Heaven\nends by a glance at the mysteries of the Holy Trinity and the\nIncarnation, which mortal eye, though supernaturally strengthened, is\nunable to dwell upon for excess of light.\n\nDante in this part of his work treats the most difficult questions,\nnot only of philosophy, which he had also done in the preceding\ncantos, but also of theology, with the greatest clearness, depth, and\npoetic grace. He treats in it of the fundamental ideas of\nChristianity, of faith, hope, and charity. The spirits that he\nrepresents to the reader in hell, purgatory, and paradise are by no\nmeans the mere wilful creations of his fancy, but for the most part\nare historical characters, some of them but little removed from his\nown time, others contemporary; and even those which he borrows from\nJudaism or paganism to embellish his poem are symbolical, and have an\nintimate connection with some reality. On this very account we should\nnot judge the Vision as an allegory, although in many respects it has\nthe peculiarities of an allegorical poem. It is, rather, a mystic\npoem, in which the deepest religious and philosophical truths are\nrepresented under the shadow of visionary forms and ethereal\nsimilitudes; and realities are raised to an ideal sphere, where the\nmind's eye can penetrate through their misty covering and contemplate\nthem to satiety. But what is the cause of the great influence which\nthis poem has exerted on mankind? This is the question which we have\nundertaken to answer, and which we shall now endeavor to solve.\n\n\n\nII.\n\nAs in the history of nations and of mankind there are certain epochs\nin which the elements that had formed the groundwork of society, and\nof national life, in their gradual development, culminate in a certain\npoint, where the mental powers of the people put forth all their\nstrength in the production of facts, or works of various kinds that\ngive expression to the spirit {271} of the age; so in the history of\npoetry there are poets and poems in which the ruling ideas of their\ntime and nation appear in all their truth and power.\n\nIn the works of great poets we have, as it were, a copy of God's\ncreative power. He seems to lend it to the poet. Of all the\nproductions of the human mind, the poem has the greatest similarity\nwith the works of Almighty power, and both offer to human\ncontemplation beauties ever varying and ever new. But between the\nworks of divine and of human skill there is an essential difference.\nThe works of God express the thoughts of the Creator, whose glory and\ninvisibility, according to the Psalmist, the heavens declare, and\nwhose eternal might and divinity creatures proclaim; but with the\neffects of human genius it is entirely different.\n\nEvery individual is but a member of the great whole, which we call the\nhuman family; he can do nothing alone, but depends on others both for\nhis material and spiritual support; and the degree of culture which he\nattains, the aim which he proposes to himself in life, and the germ of\nhis future progress, are as much the result of the influences\nexercised on him from the cradle to the grave, by the family circle,\nby the school, and by the associations of society, as they are the\neffects of his own independent strength and originality. Hence the\nwork of the poet, no matter how great he may be, is not to be\nconsidered the exclusive product of the individual, for it must bear\non it the stamp of his education, and of the people among whom he\ndwells, and of the age in which he lives. As the waters of a lake do\nnot merely reflect their own color, but also the green shore of the\nsurrounding woods and hills, the passing clouds, the deep blue of the\nheavens above, and of the stars that glitter in it; so in the poem we\nsee not only the soul of its creator, but every great emotion that\nswelled in the breast of the men of his age and nation. In a word, we\nsee the whole circle of contemporary ideas more or less vividly\nexpressed in it. Nor are the productions of human genius lessened by\nthis fact; they are, on the contrary, enhanced in value. For it is no\nlonger one person, with his subjective views of his own world and\nlife, who speaks to us in them, but it is the spirit of a portion of\nmankind, expressing to us the ideas of a certain stage in the progress\nof civilization.\n\nNow, if such a work of genius be at the same time the foundation of a\nfurther development in the future, and of such a character that it\nrepresents the condition not only of one nation, but of several; and\nif the ideas which it contains and which sway men be such as by their\ntruth and universality overleap the limits of time and space; then\nsuch a power will maintain its hold upon the admiration and esteem of\nmen, not only in a certain epoch and among a certain people, but for\never and among all nations where the same order of civilization\nreigns. Poets who are distinguished above others by the creative power\nand superiority of their genius in the production of such a work, are\nnot merely the poets of one age, or of one nation, but they belong to\nall times and to all nations. They will not be merely read once, and\nthen thrown aside; but they will be reperused and studied with ever\nincreasing pleasure.\n\nThe age of Dante was an epoch of this character among the Christian\nnations. He has hardly his superior as a poet, either among the\nancients or the moderns. Hence, if we contemplate the _Commedia_ from\nthis point of view, we shall be able not only to understand the\ngeneral scope of the work, but even to comprehend with ease all its\ndetails and peculiarities.\n\nBut in order to show that the period at which Dante appeared (the\nsecond half of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth\ncentury) was one like that which we have described, we must briefly\nrecall to mind the condition of the Church, of the state of science\nand art, and give {272} expression to the spirit of the age in a\nscientific formula.\n\nIf we then look at the Church, we find her displaying such fecundity\nand power as we shall hardly find at any other period in her history.\nShe is not only busy in the work of converting the still pagan nations\nof Europe, especially in the north, and strengthening the faith among\nbelievers by missions, voyages, and diplomacy; by the foundation of\nnew congregations and bishoprics; by councils; by stringency of\nexternal discipline, and greater solemnity in the public worship; but\nalso by the internal reformation effected by such men as popes\nAlexander III., Innocent III., and Innocent IV., who continued the\ngood work begun by Gregory VII., of freeing the Church from the\noppressions of secular power. They succeeded at length in propagating\nand realizing among the Christian nations of the West the idea of one\nvast spiritual community, under the headship of one spiritual ruler,\nwho, instead of destroying national diversity and independence,\nprotected and favored them. This idea prevailed through the agency of\nthe supreme pontiffs over the pagan idea so cherished by the emperors\nof a universal monarchy. The crusades, too, fostered and led by the\nChurch, and which are the clearest expression of the thoroughly\nChristian spirit of those centuries, bring the West into closer\nintimacy with the East, and enrich the former with all the material\nand spiritual treasures of the latter. Then arise those great orders\nwhich--half religious and half secular, as the Knights Hospitallers\nand the Templars, or entirely religious, like the Dominicans and\nFranciscans--defended the Church, cared for the sick and the poor,\nsacrificed themselves in spreading Christian faith and morality, and\ngave birth to countless institutions of charity.\n\nIf we now glance at the political condition of the people, a spectacle\nequally grand as that just described offers itself to our view. On the\nimperial throne of Germany appear those powerful princes of the house\nof Hohenstaufen, who contended so heroically with the papacy for the\nsuccess of the Ghibelline idea of a universal monarchy, but who in the\nend were worsted in the fight; while in France a St. Louis IX., and in\nEngland a Richard the Lion-hearted, excite the admiration of the\nworld. In Italy, even in the midst of the struggle between the secular\nand the spiritual powers, and between the Guelphs and Ghibellines,\nmighty republics spring up under the protection of the Church; and in\nthe other nations also we see a powerful effort for national\nindependence and freedom appearing in the many guilds, corporations,\nfree cities, states, and parliaments which were everywhere rising into\na dignified existence. But above all, the order of chivalry in the\ntwelfth and thirteenth centuries--an order which even yet throws such a\nhalo of poetry and romance around the middle ages in which it\nnourished, walking hand in hand with religion, which had consecrated\nit--helped much to civilize the barbarian character of the age, and\nimprove the moral condition of society.\n\nAs to science in the epoch of which we write, it was mostly occupied\nin the investigation of those subjects which lay next the Christian\nheart of the people; namely, in theology, philosophy, and ethics. And\nhow great has been its success! What great results has not mediaeval\nscience effected! I need only mention the immortal names of Anselem of\nCanterbury, of St. Bernard, Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas,\nBonaventure, Roger Bacon, and Vincent of Beauvais; men whose works in\ntheology, philosophy, history, and in the natural sciences, remain to\nthe present time as monuments of genius, hardly equalled by ancient or\nmodern productions.\n\nAt this period, too, sprang up the universities, which realize in\ntheir conception the universal idea of catholicity. They were founded\nin every land, and all the sciences were taught in {273} them. The\nChurch herself, in the Council of Vienne, in 1311, decreed that,\nbeside the chairs of theology, philosophy, medicine, and\njurisprudence, there should be in the four principal universities, and\nwherever the papal court should be held, professors of Hebrew,\nChaldaic, Arabic, and Greek. But what especially shows the\nintellectual bent of this age is the zeal and youthful ardor\nmanifested in every rank for all the different branches of science.\nPopes, emperors, kings, and nobles emulated each other in this\nrespect, and consecrated their energies to the furtherance of\nlearning.\n\nIf we now turn to the state of art and poetry, on every side the old\ncathedrals and monuments erected in the twelfth and thirteenth\ncenturies meet our eyes, and in their various styles of Gothic and\nRoman architecture excite our admiration, fill us with holy awe, and,\nas they lift their spires to heaven, speak more eloquently of the\ngreatness of the spirit and aesthetic feeling of the people than any\nwords of ours could do. In the suite of architecture the other arts\nfollowed and were elevated to its height; and even before Dante, and\ncontemporaneously with him, lived the founders of the Italian schools\nof painting and sculpture, which so soon after attained to such\nperfection. As for poetry, we need only remember that at this time\nmost of the modern languages began to be developed and become the\nmediums of literature. \"It was the gay time of the troubadours and\nincense-singers,\" says Vilmar, in his History of German National\nLiterature, \"in which the melody of song rang out from hamlet to\nhamlet, from city to city, from castle to castle, and court to court,\nand a thousand harmonious echoes, near and far, from hill and valley,\nanswered out of the people's heart.\" It was the first classic period\nof German literature, in which the national and artistic epic appear\nwell developed in such works as the _Nibelungen, Gudrun, Parceval_,\nand others.\n\nNo doubt there are shadows on the picture of the age just described,\nas there are in our own. But still, whoever considers the facts we\nhave alleged, cannot fail to admit the age as a real epoch in the\nhistory of the Christian world, unless he is blind or wilfully shuts\nhis eyes to the light. In view of these facts, also, he must perceive\nthat the civilization of the various western nations was most\nintimately connected; that it rested on the same common foundation;\nand that the ideas which ruled them and constituted their vital\nprinciple were eternally and universally true, and became the platform\nof succeeding intellectual evolution. Hence, those nations, though\ndiffering in origin and political independence, made but one grand\nspiritual community, bound together by a common faith and a common\nchurch. But if we would now express the spirit of this epoch in a\nphilosophical formula, we should say that it was the period in which\nthe Roman and Germanic races were converted to Christianity after the\ndecease of the old world and of pagan civilization; and after these\nraces had become a spiritual community under the hierarchy of the\npopes, and become bound together under the government of one worldly\nempire, after various combats with outward enemies and triumphs over\ninternal elements of discord; when these races had appropriated to\nthemselves Christianity as their vital element, and recognized it as\nthe power which moved and governed the world, and sought to produce,\nrealize, and use Christian ideas in every direction, in the sciences,\nin arts, in society, in the state, and in the Church. The Protestant,\nVilmar, whom we have already cited, agrees with this assertion, when\nhe writes: \"It was the spirit of Christianity which had become the\nspirit of the western nations, and which inspired, in the highest\ndegree, the higher ranks of society, the nobility, and the clergy; and\nwhich penetrated into the masses, not so much as a theory, but as a\nfact--not as a science, but as an element of their life; it was\nChristianity, not as a simple doctrine or idea, but as a practical\n{274} boon and benefit; it was a joy to the Christian Church and to\nits internal and external glory, and a blessing with its gifts, more\ngeneral than it has been since, and so strong that even the struggle\nbetween the popes and the emperors, for over two centuries, could not\naffect the great happiness of men whose social and individual\nexistence was actuated by the spirit of Christianity.\"\n\n\n\nIII.\n\nTaking, therefore, this comprehensive view of the state of society;\nconsidering the triumph of the Christian idea in history, the\nconsciousness of Christianity as the principle of life in the\nnewly-organized world, and the struggle of this element to mould and\nfashion everything according to its nature, we may easily answer the\nquestion as to the character of a poem which should thoroughly express\nthe spirit of the age. It would not be hard to show that the Divine\nComedy of Dante derived its matter, its form, its name, and its\nsentiment from the peculiar condition of the epoch. In fact, any poem\nthat represents, the conquest of the Christian idea in all conditions\nof private and public life must ever exercise great influence over\nmen. But in order to give a poetical representation of this thought,\nthe poet should choose a framework sufficiently large to contain the\nvast picture in which God and man, heaven and earth, nature and grace,\ncreation and redemption, past, present, and future, science and life,\nchurch and state, appear; and such a framework was offered to him in\nthe Christian idea of the judgment, of God, and of the existence of\nthe other world, in its three divisions of hell, purgatory, and\nparadise.\n\nNow, only by carrying up ordinary facts to this higher, ideal sphere\nwas it possible to overleap the limits of time and space, and give\ngreater unity to the picture, and make it a masterpiece. But he who\nlives here below is ignorant of the future, and of the condition of\nthe departed souls. Only by a supernatural revelation can we know\ntheir lot. Consequently, the form of a wonderful vision, in which the\npoet enters into communion with the spirits of the dead, and wanders\nthrough their regions, is the most natural manner of representing his\nidea in the poem; consequently, it should be called by right a \"divine\ndrama,\" a _Divina Commedia_, as the most appropriate title.\n\nThe true scope of the poem, therefore, must not be sought for either\nin a purely religious, or a purely political, or a purely scientific\nor personal point of view; but in the prosecution of a far more\ngeneral, comprehensive, higher, philosophic, theological, and\nparticularly moral or ethical object, to which all the details of the\nwork are subordinated. Hence, he who examines these details from this\nor that stand-point may give them the most different explanations, as\nin fact many commentators of the poem do--not having fathomed its\ndepths and perceived the general object of the sacred epic.\n\nDante himself leaves us no reason to doubt on this point. In his\ndedicatory epistle to Cardinal Grande della Scala, he speaks thus:\n\"The meaning of this poem is not simple, but multiple. The first sense\nis in the words, the second in the things expressed: the one is called\nliteral, the other moral or allegorical. Taken literally, the whole\nwork is simple, and expresses the condition of souls after death, for\nthis is expressed by the whole tenor of the poem. But taken in the\nhigher sense, its object is man, either deserving rewards or\nchastisements through the exercise of his free will. And if we wish to\nname the kind of philosophy contained in the work, we must call it\nmoral, or ethics. For the whole tends to practice and action, and is\nnot content with simple contemplation and speculation.\"\n\nGiacomo di Dante, the son of the poet, develops more clearly the scope\nof the work, in the preface to his {275} commentary. \"The whole work,\"\nsays he, \"is divided into three parts; the first of which treats of\nhell, the second of purgatory, and the third of paradise. In order to\nunderstand the general allegorical bearing, I say that the object of\nthe poet is to represent to us in figurative language the three\nseveral divisions of mankind. The first part considers vice in man,\nand is called hell, to show us that mortal sin by its depth of\niniquity is directly opposed to the sublimity of virtue. The second\ncontemplates those who detach themselves from vice and strive after\nvirtue. His place for such persons he calls purgatory, or place of\npurification, to show the condition of the soul, which cleanses itself\nfrom its sins in time, for time is the medium in which all changes\nhappen. The third considers perfect man, and is called paradise, in\norder to express the greatness of its bliss, and the elevation of mind\nconnected with it; two things without which a knowledge of the supreme\ngood cannot be attained. And thus the poet pursues his object through\nthe three several parts of his poem by means of the figures and\nrepresentations with which he surrounds himself.\"\n\nBut the poet, in order to realize his grand idea, should be gifted not\nonly with the highest poetical genius in order to represent the\nphilosophical principles of Christianity in the peculiar characters\nand types of Christian art, and give them a new, independent, and\nmajestic appearance; but he should be also possessed, on the one hand,\nof a clear and perfect knowledge of Christian doctrine and ethics, and\na deep and extensive knowledge of philosophy and theology; and, on the\nother, of a profound and extensive acquaintance with men and human\nlife, as well as with the history of the human race. Both these\nrequisites are found in Dante in the highest degree. Christian faith\nand morality is as well and correctly explained by him as by the best\napproved theologians. But this fact will not excite our surprise if we\nconsider that, in his Vision, without however sacrificing his\nindividuality, he adheres strictly to the great doctors of the age,\nSaints Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure, as King John of Saxony clearly\nproves in his commentary on the Divine Comedy.\n\nHence, at an early period Dante's work became a favorite theme of\nscholastic study, and under the portal of the cathedral at Florence\nthere is seen an old statue of the poet near that of the patron saint\nof the city, with this inscription: _Theologus Dante, nullius dogmatis\nexpers_--\"Dante the theologian, to whom no dogma was unknown.\" In the\nRaphael chamber in the Vatican, he is represented crowned with laurel\non the famous painting of the _disputa_, among the popes, bishops, and\ndoctors assembled round the holy sacrament of the altar.\n\nAn occasional writer has suspected the faith of Dante, because in his\npoem he deplores several abuses in the Church, such as the corruption\nof some of the clergy and monks, and lashes some of the popes and the\nrelation of the papacy to the secular power in his time. But such a\nsuspicion is unwarranted when we consider that many Catholic\nreformers, even saints like Peter Damien, Saint Thomas of Canterbury,\nSaint Bernard, Saint Hildegard, Jacopone, and others, have spoken even\nmore strongly than Dante against abuses; and that he never confounds\nthe use with the abuse, excrescences of an institution with the\ninstitution itself, or persons with principles.\n\nDante's thorough knowledge of human life and of history is fully shown\nin his surprising explanations, and by the manner in which with one\ntrait he paints the famous characters and facts in the _Commedia_, as\nwell as by the examples and narrations which he takes from all times,\nregions, and nations of the earth. But in his judgment of persons and\nfacts in the past and present, Dante is not always impartial or just,\nfor, being {276} subject to human frailties and prejudices, he is\noften guilty of great injustice to those against whom he had motives\nof hatred. Consequently, in order to appreciate Dante's poem on this\npoint, we must consider the character of his life and fortunes, as\nwell as the history of his native city and country.\n\nDante Alighieri was born at Florence in the year 1265, and received in\nbaptism the name of Durante, which was shortened to that of Dante.\nEarly in his youth an event happened which determined his life, and to\nwhich posterity is indebted for his great work. In the year 1274, in\nthe ninth year of his age, Dante saw, at a church festival, the\ndaughter of Falco Portinari, Beatrice, a child eight years old, whom\nhe says, in one of his poems, no one could see without crying out,\n\"This is not a woman, but one of the most beautiful of the heavenly\nangels!\" He conceived for her, on the spot, the most violent passion,\nbut, at the same time, one so pure and holy that Beatrice, even on\nearth and wedded to another, became for him and his muse a perfect\nideal that inspired all his first and tenderest poems, and moved him\nto high and holy thoughts. But after Beatrice's untimely death, she\nbecame, in the imagination of the poet, a holy spirit, whose glory he\nundertook to exalt after a wonderful vision which he had, and who\nbecame, in all the sorrows of his life, a star of hope and anchor of\nsafety to him. A few years after the decease of his beloved, Dante\nespoused Gemma di Donati, a lady of a noble family in Florence, and\nthrough this marriage, as well as by his profound theological and\nphilosophical studies, he was drawn into the vortex of the politics of\nhis native city, in which, after many struggles, the Guelph party\ngained the ascendency, toward the end of the thirteenth century.\n\nSprung from a Guelph family and surrounded by Guelph influences, and\nprominent by his genius in the party, although keeping clear of its\nexcesses, Dante, from 1293 to 1299, filled many posts of honor,\nespecially many places of ambassador, and was elected, with five\nothers, in the year 1300, to the priorate, the highest office in the\nrepublic. But soon after his prosperous career was changed to one of\nmisfortune. In 1292 a division was made in the Guelph party, when,\nunder the tribune Giano della Bella, the constitution of the state was\nchanged, the nobles driven from the magistracy, and the government of\nthe city given entirely into the hands of the plebeians; and this\ndivision led gradually to an open rupture between the parties called\nthe Blacks and the Whites \"_Neri_\" and \"_Bianchi_.\" The latter were by\nfar the more moderate, and the Ghibellines, both nobles and plebeians,\njoined them. Dante belonged to the Whites, who stood at the head of\naffairs. But by the interference of Charles of Valois, whom the Blacks\ncalled to Florence in order to seize the government with his aid, the\nWhites lost their power, and Dante, who was then on an embassy to\nRome, together with the other chiefs of the party, was exiled by a\ndecree, which was repealed in the year 1302.\n\nThis trial was important in two ways to our poet. It excited his\nhatred against one party of the Guelphs, and then against them all;\nand evoked his inclination for the Ghibellines and his dislike toward\nthe popes, who gave assistance to the Guelph party, and finally made\nhim a strong partisan of the Ghibellines and their operations against\nFlorence, and of the empire against the papacy. On the other hand, he\nbecame, by his misfortunes, more devoted to virtue, his studies, and\nhis poem, from the prosecution of which he had been distracted by\npolitical cares; so that the whole history of his exile is nothing\nelse than the history of his scientific life and the execution of the\nDivine Comedy. After having wandered from city to city, from country\nto country, to Verona, Bologna, Padua, Paris, and England, and dwelt\nfor a time in Pisa, and in {277} Lucca at the monastery of\nFonteavelluna and in Udine, and after having finished his great\nworks--\"The Banquet,\" \"_De Vulgari Eloquio_,\" \"_De Monarchia_\"--and\nthe three parts of his great poem, he rested at last in Ravenna,\nwhere, in the year 1321, he fell sick and died, in the 56th year of\nhis age, after having received, as Boccacio tells us, the last\nsacraments with humility and piety, and become reconciled to God by\ntrue repentance for all he had done contrary to his holy will. The\npoet was buried in the Franciscan church, where his ashes still\nrepose.\n\nThis sketch of his life and fortunes gives us the key to the solution\nof many peculiarities of the Divine Comedy. We can now understand why\npolitics play so conspicuous a _role_ in the great poem, in spite of\nits higher philosophico-theological and ethical scope; and why some\nshould have considered the work as of a purely political character.\nThis sketch of his life also shows the partial truth contained in the\nassertion of Wegele, a German commentator on Dante. This writer says\nthe leading thought of the poet was to work out his own salvation by\nconsidering the state of the world at his time; and in fact Dante\nfound consolation and strength against earthly misfortune, found the\nway of virtue and eternal salvation, in the execution of his poem. For\nsimilar reasons, others considered the poem as purely didactic, and\nthis view has a foundation in the confession of the poet himself.\n\nBut above all, the life of Dante explains his ideas about the\nrelations between the papacy and the empire, expressed not only in his\nbook on monarchy, but also in the Divine Comedy; and his strange\njudgments about persons and circumstances, especially of his own age.\nIt is true Dante never for a moment disputes the primacy and divine\nappointment of the popes in the Church; and even in hell he describes\nthose pontiffs whom he condemns to it as having certain distinctions.\nHe maintains in the clearest manner the freedom and independence of\nthe divine power in regard to the secular, and acknowledges a certain\nsuperiority in the former, for he requires that Caesar should have\nthat reverence for Peter which the first-born son should have to his\nfather, so that Caesar, illuminated by the light of paternal grace,\nmight shine more brilliantly over the earth. But as Dante was\npossessed with the Ghibelline idea, and as he saw in the temporal\npower of the popes, who were the head of the Guelph party, the\ngreatest obstacle to the success of his principles, we must not be\nsurprised to find him the enemy of the pope's temporal power, and, in\nhis judgment of men and things, to see him frequently led away by\nparty rage and revenge for injuries received.\n\nDante, however, was noble and Christian enough to keep his eyes open\neven to the faults of his own party, and he spared not even the heads\nof the Ghibellines, as Frederic II. and other noble and popular\npersons, if they seemed to him deserving of blame. Nor must we imagine\nthat Dante really thought all those were in hell whom he places there,\nany more than he thought the real pains of hell were such as he\ndescribed them: only the vulgar could believe this. Those persons were\nonly such as in his eyes were guilty of mortal sins; and the\npunishments inflicted were such as his fancy conceived to be adequate\nto the guilt. But we must bear in mind that his judgments must always\nbe received with caution when there is question of facts, persons, and\ncircumstances connected with the opposite party; and we have the right\nto examine and correct the criticisms of Dante by the light of\nhistory. Dante, for instance, goes so far as to put in hell even Pope\nCelestine, who, after governing the Church for six months, tired of\nthe tiara, went into solitude; because, in the opinion of the poet,\nCelestine renounced the pontificate through timidity and weakness, and\nmade way {278} for the hated Boniface, VIII. The Church, on the\ncontrary, puts Celestine among the saints on account of his\nextraordinary virtues.\n\nBut let us now turn from the dark side of the picture, and from the\nweakness of the great man, to take a view of the fortunes of the\n_Commedia_ in the course of six centuries. We have already in the\nbeginning of this essay spoken of the great number of editions,\ntranslations, and commentaries on the great work, and in this respect\nno other work can compare with it except the Holy Scripture and the\nFollowing of Christ. But these proofs of admiration and study of the\nDivine Comedy are not equally divided among the centuries, and the\nrecent and renowned writer of Dante's life, Count Caesar Balbo, justly\nremarks that, at those periods in which an earnest religious and truly\npatriotic feeling pervaded the fatherland of the poet and Christian\nEurope in general, those proofs are to be found in greater number than\nwhen the knowledge and study of supreme truth had grown less, love of\nreligion and country had died or gone astray, and the minds of men\nsunk in the earthly and the sensible. Thus, in the fifteenth century,\nafter the invention of the art of printing, nineteen or twenty\neditions of Dante appeared; in the sixteenth century, forty; in the\nseventeenth, only three; in the eighteenth, thirty-four; in the\nnineteenth, up to 1839, over seventy, and perhaps up to the present\nyear one hundred. This is a striking proof of the increasing love of\nthe spiritual in our century, in spite of the great influence of\nmaterialism.\n\nBut in this age of surprises and contradictions, a new glory of which\nhe had never dreamt has been added to Dante's name. For some time in\nItaly that political party which aims at the subversion of the\nexisting order of things, and the establishment of a single republic\nor monarchy, and which finds in the papacy or States of the Church the\nprincipal obstacle to the carrying out of its plans, has made use of\ncommentaries on the Divine Comedy, among other means, to spread its\nprinciples among the people. Hence, two Italian refugees, Ugo Foscolo\nand Rosetti, during their sojourn in England, undertook the dreary\ntask of explaining Dante's poem in a purely political point of view,\nand with learning and wit they have attempted to prove that the poet\nwas opposed to the temporal power of the pope, and the head, or at\nleast a member, of a secret society.\n\nIn Italy, however, and in Germany, especially by the great critic,\nSchlegel, this theory has been refuted. It falls to the ground by the\nsimple consideration of the fact, that if the Divine Comedy was as\nclear in every point as where he speaks against the popes of his time\nand their earthly possessions, no commentary on the poem would be\nnecessary. Yet, no sooner was war against Rome proclaimed at Paris and\nTurin, than recourse was had to Dante, and an attempt made to conjure\nup his spirit as a partisan in the fight. Rosetti already occupies a\nchair in the Sardinian capital, from which he expounds Dante in the\ninterest of Italian unity, and in Germany the secret societies applaud\nhis course; so that, if in 1865 there be in Italy a celebration of\nDante's six hundredth birthday, as in Germany there is of Schiller, we\nmay expect to find the politicians make use of it to further their\nends.\n\nSo then we have lived to see the day when Dante, the Ghibelline and\nfanatical adherent of the German empire; who was opposed to the\ntemporal power of the pope only because it stood in the way of a\nuniversal secular monarchy; who invoked the wrath of heaven on the\nGerman Albert because he delayed coming to subjugate Italy; and who\nwrote the famous letter to the Emperor Henry VII., inviting him to\ncome and chastise his native city; when that Dante, I say, has become\nthe herald and standard-bearer of a party which calls itself the old\nnational Guelph party, whose {279} watch-word is \"Death to the Germans\nand foreign rulers,\" and which, like the ancient Guelphs, is aided by\nFrench soldiers in its struggle against the German emperors.\n\nIn spite of his Ghibelline proclivities, Dante was filled with lively\nfaith, and he had so great a veneration for the power of the keys\nentrusted by Christ to Peter and his successors that even in hell he\nbowed with respect before one of those who had borne them, and even in\nhis narration of the arrest and ill-treatment of Boniface VIII., whom\nhe hated and placed in hell, he breaks out into the following strains:\n\n      \"Lo! the flower de luce\n  Enters Alagna; in his Vicar Christ?\n  Himself a captive, and his mockery\n  Acted again. Lo! to his holy lip\n  The vinegar and gall once more applied;\n  And he 'twixt living robbers doomed to bleed.\n  Lo! the new Pilate, of whose cruelty\n  Such violence cannot fill the measure up,\n  With no decree to sanction, pushes on\n  Into the temple his yet eager sails.\n  O sovereign Master! when shall I rejoice\n  To see the vengeance, which thy wrath, well pleased,\n  In secret silence broods?\"\n\n        (Purg. xx. 85-97. _Carey's translation_.)\n\nSo we have lived to see the day when the author of the above lines is\nrepresented as the herald of a party which has treated so shamefully\nthe gentle successor of Boniface VIII., Pius IX., whose only fault was\nto have opened the prison doors to his enemies, and recalled them from\nexile with too great indulgence. They have made him drink the chalice\nof humiliation to the dregs, and, leagued with a French despot, they\nrenew in the Vicar of Christ all the insults heaped of old on the\nSaviour by the Roman soldiers, when, putting on him the mantle of\npurple and the crown of thorns, they mocked him, saying, \"Hail, King\nof the Jews!\" Dante was no such Christ-killer.\n\nAnd what folly is it not to imagine Dante, the haughty aristocrat,\nwhose pride of birth shows itself everywhere in his poem, a partisan\nof a faction which, like that which governed Florence during the\nmiddle ages, is made up of the rabble and of levelers, haters of all\nnobility.\n\nIn another age, when it was not the principle of public life to have\nno principle at all, such contradictions as those of which we write\nwould have been incomprehensible; but in our own century, in which\ntruth wages an unequal conflict with falsehood, not so much because\nmen do not know how to separate truth from falsehood, as because men\nfind truth less useful for their purposes than falsehood, the conduct\nof the so-called national party in Italy is easily explained. But if\nDante were to rise up from the grave, how strongly he would rebuke\nthose who are making such an unwarrantable use of his name! He would\nquote for them, perhaps, as he does in many parts of his great work,\nan apt text of the Holy Scriptures; and none, probably, would come\nsooner to his mind than the following:\n\n\"Why have the Gentiles raged, and the people devised vain things?\n\n\"The kings of the earth stood up, and the princes met together,\nagainst the Lord and against his Christ.\n\n\"Let us break their bonds asunder: and let us cast away their yoke\nfrom us.\n\n\"He that dwelleth in heaven shall laugh at them; and the Lord shall\nderide them. Then shall he speak to them in his anger, and trouble\nthem in his rage.\"\n\n------\n\n{280}\n\n\nMISCELLANY.\n\n\nSCIENCE.\n\n\n_Important Geological Discovery_.--Sir Charles Lyell, in his address\nto the British Association a few months ago, mentioned the discovery\nof a fossil animal much more ancient than any previously supposed to\nexist. Heretofore, as is well known, an immense series of rocks below\nthe silurians have been termed _azoic_, as exhibiting no remains of\nanimal life; but this term must now be dismissed.\n\nIt is well known that a staff of competent geologists, under the\ndirection of Sir William E. Logan, have been engaged for some years in\na geological survey of Canada. The oldest rocks in that country are\ngranite, described as upper and lower Laurentian, their thickness\nbeing 40,000 feet, with bands of limestone intervening. In one of\nthese bands in the lower series of rocks, which are the most ancient,\nthere were discovered, in 1858, certain flattish rounded masses, which\nseemed to be of organic origin. These were examined under the\nmicroscope by Dr. Dawson of Montreal, who, from their structure,\ndeclared them to be _foraminifera_, similar in character, but by no\nmeans in size, to the _foraminifera_ living at the present day in vast\nmultitudes at the bottom of the sea; and to this newly-discovered and\nwonder-exciting creature he gave the significant name _Eozoon\nCanadense_, or the Dawn-animal of Canada.\n\nThe _foraminifer_ of the present day is a microscopic creature; the\n_eozoon_ was enormous in comparison, about twelve inches diameter, and\nfrom four to six inches in thickness, presenting the general form of a\nmuch flattened globe. Its growth was by the process technically known\nas gemmation, or the continued development of cells upon the surface;\nhence, these cells form successive layers of chambers, separated by\nexceedingly thin walls or laminae of calcareous matter. They are now\nall filled with solid matter, mineral silicates, serpentine, and\nothers; but sections or slices cut from the mass, and examined, show\nthe form of the cells still perfect, and what is more remarkable, the\nvery minute tubes (tubuli) by which communication was maintained from\none to the other throughout the entire animal. Mr. Sterry Hunt, the\nchemist employed on the Canadian survey, is of opinion that the\nsilicates and solid matters were directly deposited in waters in the\nmidst of which the _eozoon_ was still growing, or had only recently\nperished, and that these solid matters penetrated, enclosed, and\npreserved the structure of the animals precisely as carbonate of lime\nmight have done. Here, then, we have an example of fossilization,\naccomplished by reactions going on at the earth's surface, not by slow\nmetamorphism in deeply-buried sediments.\n\nPapers on this subject and one by Sir W. Logan himself--have been read\nbefore the Geological Society, and will shortly be published; and at a\nrecent meeting of the Royal Society, a highly, interesting\ncommunication in further elucidation of the matter was made by Dr.\nCarpenter, who has devoted himself for some years to the study of\n_foraminifera_. He confirms Dr. Dawson's general conclusions, and\nidentifies among living _foraminifera_ the species which has most\naffinity with this very ancient dawn-animal. He makes out the\nidentification in an ingenious way, resting his proof on the peculiar\nstructure of the cell-walls, and of the minute tubuli by which, as\nbefore observed, communication between the cells was maintained.\nHenceforth, we shall have to regard the silurian fossils as modern.\n\nSince this discovery was made public, it has been ascertained that\nthere are fossil remains of the eozoon in the serpentine rocks of\nGreat Britain. The importance of this of course depends on the age of\nserpentine, and that is a question which geologists have not yet\nsettled; but some of them are of opinion that the British serpentines\nare of the same age as the Laurentian rocks in which the Canadian\neozoon was found. Pending their decision of the question, keen\nexplorers are on the search for other specimens.\n\n\n_Curious and Delicate Experiments_.--Dr. Bence Jones recently\ncommunicated to the Royal Society of Great Britain the result of a\nseries of experiments by {281} which he had attempted to ascertain the\ntime required for certain crystallized substances to reach the\ntextures of the body after being taken into the stomach. In other\nwords, he proposed to solve these problems: If a dose of medicine be\ngiven, what becomes of it, and does it arrive quickly or slowly at the\nparts for which it is intended? It is obvious, that if these questions\ncould be accurately determined, medical men would have a better\nknowledge than at present of the action and progress, so to speak, of\nmedicine within the body. Substances, when taken into the stomach,\npass into the blood, which may be supposed to distribute them to all\nparts of the body. If, in ordinary circumstances, no trace of a\nparticular substance can be found in a body, but is found after doses\nof the substance have been administered, it is clear that the doses\nare the source from which that trace is derived.\n\nLithium is a substance sometimes given as medicine. Dr. Jones gave\nhalf a grain of chloride of lithium to a guinea-pig, on three\nsuccessive days; and, by means of the spectrum analysis, he found\nlithium in every tissue of the animal's body, even in the cartilages,\nthe cornea, and the crystalline lens of the eye. In another\nexperiment, the lithium was found in the eye eight hours after the\ndose had been administered; and in another, four hours after. In\nanother, the lithium was found after thirty-two minutes, in the\ncartilage of the hip, and in the outer part of the eye. These cases\nshow that chemical substances do find their way very quickly into the\ntissues of the body; and a similar result appears from experiments on\nthe human subject. A patient, dying of diseased heart, took fifteen\ngrains of nitrate of lithia thirty-six hours before death, and a\nsimilar quantity six hours before death. Lithium was afterward found\ndistinctly in the cartilage of one of the joints, and faintly in the\neye and the blood. A like result was obtained with a patient who had\ntaken ten grains of carbonate of lithia five and a half hours before\ndeath. And to this Dr. Bence Jones adds, that he expects to find\nlithium in the lens of the eye after operation for cataract.\n\n\n\n_Giant Trees of California_.--Some time ago, much regret was expressed\nthat the giant trees (_Wellingtonia_) of California had been\nrecklessly cut down. Their fall was a loss to the world. But Sir\nWilliam Hooker has received a letter in which Professor Brewer, of the\nCalifornia State Geological Survey, reports that \"an interesting\ndiscovery has been made this year of the existence of the big trees in\ngreat abundance on the western flanks of the Sierra Nevada. They\nabound along a belt at 5,000-7,000 feet of altitude for a distance of\nmore than twenty-five miles, sometimes in groves, at others scattered\nthrough the forest in great numbers. You can have no idea of the\ngrandeur they impart to the scenery, where at times a hundred trees\nare in sight at once, over fifteen feet in diameter, their rich\nfoliage contrasting so finely with their bright cinnamon-colored bark.\nThe largest I saw was 106 feet in circumference at four feet from the\nground, and 276 feet high.\n\n\"There seems no danger of the speedy extinction of the species, as it\nis now known in quite a number of localities; and, contrary to the\npopular notion, there are immense numbers of younger trees of all\nsizes, from the seedling up to the largest. There has been much\nnonsense and error published regarding them.\"\n\n\n\n_Photographing the Interior of the Great Pyramid_.--Our readers may\nremember that some time last winter a distinguished English savant,\nProfessor Piazzi Smyth, went out to Egypt for the purpose of taking\nphotographic views of the interior chambers of the great pyramid. The\nimpossibility of lighting these vast halls had hitherto proved an\ninsuperable bar to the undertaking; ordinary methods of illumination\nseemed, if we may so speak, to make no impression upon the thick\ndarkness. But with the discovery of the wonderful powers of the\nmagnesium wire light, this difficulty was removed. Professor Smyth\nwrites as follows to the London Chemical News; his letter is dated\nEast Tomb, Great Pyramid, February 2d:\n\n\"We are settled down at last to the measuring; the chief part of the\ntime hitherto (about three weeks) having been occupied in concert with\na party of laborers, furnished by the Egyptian government, in clearing\naway rubbish from important parts of the interior, {282} and in\ncleansing and preparing it for nice observation. The magnesium wire\nlight is something astounding in its power of illuminating difficult\nplaces. With any number of wax candles which we have yet taken into\neither the king's chamber or the grand gallery, the impression left on\nthe mind is merely seeing the candles and whatever is very close to\nthem, so that you have small idea whether you are in a palace or a\ncottage; but burn a triple strand of magnesium wire, and in a moment\nyou see the whole apartment and appreciate the grandeur of its size\nand the beauty of its proportions. This effect, so admirably complete,\ntoo, as it is, and perfect in its way, probably results from the\nextraordinary intensity of the light, apart from its useful\nphotographic property; for side by side with the magnesium light the\nwax candle flame looked not much brighter than the red granite of the\nwalls of the room. ... Whatever can be reached by hand is chipped, and\nhammered, and fractured to a frightful degree; and this maltreatment\nby modern men, combined with the natural wear and tear of some of the\nsofter stones under so huge a pressure as they are exposed to, and for\nso long duration, has made the measuring of what is excessively\ntedious and difficult, and the concluding what _was_, in some cases,\nrather ambiguous.\"\n\n\n\nART.\n\n_Domestic_.--The National Academy exhibition will probably be open\nbefore our readers receive these pages; and from those cognizant of\nthe internal arrangements of the new building, and of the preparations\nmaking by our resident artists, we learn that the collection will\nexceed in the number, and probably in the merit of the pictures, any\nof its predecessors. The make-shift character and unsuitableness of\nthe rooms in which the Academy has of late years held its annual\nexhibitions, have deterred many of its most prominent members from\nsending in contributions, which they were satisfied could not be seen\nto advantage; and this sin of omission was so evident in the last two\nor three exhibitions, that one of the leading objects of the\nAcademy--the improvement of public taste by the display of the annual\nproductions of our best artists--seemed in danger of being defeated.\nThe new galleries, it is said, can exhibit to advantage more than\nfifteen hundred pictures, and a capacity so ample, in conjunction with\nthe prestige attending the opening of the new building, ought to cover\nthe walls to their fullest extent. The public will not be surprised\nthen to learn that an unusual number of artists have been, and are\nstill, busily applying the final touches to their works, in\nanticipation of \"opening day\" (to borrow a phrase from the milliners);\nand it is to be hoped that the Academy, having now \"ample room and\nverge enough\" to satisfy fastidious members, may soon become the\nfostering abode of art which its projectors intended to make it. A\nslight foretaste of what the exhibition is likely to contain was\nafforded at the recent reception of the Brooklyn Art Association,\nwhere an elaborate and effective work by Grignoux, entitled \"Among the\nAlps,\" and several by Leutze, Gifford, Huntington, Stone, White, Hart,\nBeard, and others, were on view. A number of pictures destined for the\nAcademy were also exhibited at the monthly social gatherings of the\nCentury and Athenaeum clubs of this city in the beginning of April. We\npropose to give an extended notice of the new building and its art\ncollections in our next number.\n\nThe inaugural ceremonies of the New York association for \"The\nAdvancement of Science and Art\" took place at the Cooper Institute on\nthe evening of March 31st. One of the objects of the association is\nthe collection and preservation of works of art, and one of the\nfifteen sections into which it is divided is devoted to the fine arts.\nAmid the multiplicity of special branches, which the association\nproposes to investigate and promote, from jurisprudence and the\nprevention of pauperism down to chronology, the fine arts must\nnecessarily receive but a limited share of attention; but even this,\nif guided by taste and intelligence, is better than the indifference\nto aesthetic matters which is too often characteristic of a commercial\nmetropolis; and the association will find plenty of well-wishers, and,\nwe trust, some who will add substantial aid to their sympathy.\n\nAmong the attractions of the Central Park will be a hall of statuary,\nnow in the course of preparation in the old {283} arsenal building\nnear the Fifth Avenue, which is not yet open to public inspection. It\nwill contain, what ought to prove a boon to all students of form, a\ncollection of casts from Crawford's principal works. The Park\nCommissioners have, in this instance, shown an enlightened enterprise\nwhich might be imitated by wealthy private individuals. A few bronze\nstatues of American statesmen, soldiers, or authors, placed on\nappropriate sites in the park, would add greatly to its attractions.\nAnd if it should be thought desirable to illustrate a national era,\nwhat one more worthy than the memorable epoch through which we are now\npassing, the termination of which will be coeval with the completion\nof the park?\n\nA new group by Rogers, entitled \"The Home Guard--Midnight on the\nBorder,\" attracts throngs of gazers before the windows of Williams and\nStevens's art emporium in Broadway. The story is naturally and\neffectively told. A mother and her daughter, the only inmates,\nprobably, of some lonely farm-house, have been aroused from their\nslumbers by marauding bushwhackers, and tremblingly prepare to repel\nthe assailants, or sell their lives dearly. The elder of the two\nfemales, with her body slightly poised on one foot, stands in attitude\nof rapt attention, while mechanically cocking a revolver, her sole\nweapon of defence. The daughter, less resolute in expression and\naction, cowers at her side. As a work of art, it is perhaps inferior\nto the \"Wounded Scout\" or \"One Shot More,\" which exhibit the artist's\nhighest efforts in characteristic expression and the management of\ndetails; but it presents a vivid idea of a scene we fear only too\nfrequently enacted along the border, and will speak to aftertimes of\nthe horrors of civil war. The steady improvement which Mr. Rogers has\nshown in his groups, illustrating the episodes of our great struggle,\ncan be readily seen by an inspection of his collected works, the\nearliest of which were scarcely better than clever caricatures; and it\nis not surprising to learn that there is a demand for them in Europe,\nwhither the artist himself proposes going during the present season.\nForeign critics may now obtain a correct notion of the outward aspects\nof the participators in the war, if they cannot appreciate its motives\nor character. Mr. Rogers is at present engaged upon a group entitled\n\"The Bushwhacker,\" which he will finish before his departure.\nAccording to one of the daily newspapers it \"represents a wife in the\nact of drawing away from her husband--an old, grizzled, and care-worn\nfighter--his gun, and at the same time appealing to him to leave his\nperilous vocation. The Bushwhacker clasps in his arms his little\nchild, who is toying with his shaggy beard. If we may judge from the\nhalf-relenting expression of his countenance, we can safely conclude\nthat the wife will not sue in vain, although he still resistingly\ngrasps his musket with one hand. The pose and execution of the figures\nare carefully attended to, and the work is one of the most spirited\nand successful of Mr. Rogers' productions.\"\n\nAmong other American artists who intend to visit Europe the present\nseason, are Ives, the sculptor, and Haseltine and Dix, painters of\ncoast and marine scenery. The last named gentleman four years ago\nforsook his profession, in which he had begun to attain some skill, to\naccept a place on the military staff of his father, Major General Dix,\nand now, with renewed ardor, resumes his pencil. He will study\nprincipally along the Mediterranean coasts.\n\nA very miscellaneous collection of pictures, containing a vast deal of\nrubbish, and a few good specimens of foreign artists, was disposed of\nat auction by Messrs. Leeds & Miner, in the latter part of March, at\ntolerably fair prices. The following will serve as examples: \"Snow\nScene\" by Gignoux, $900 (quite as much as it was worth); \"Lady with\nFlowers,\" by Plassan, $750; \"A Reverie,\" by Chavet, $850; \"Evening\nPrayer,\" by E. Frere, $1,000; \"The Alchemyst,\" by Webb, $380. A\ncurious essay of Col. Trumbull in the perilous regions of \"high art,\"\nentitled \"The Knighting of De Wilton,\" fetched the moderate sum of\n$150. As an example of the style of composition and treatment affected\nby the painters who illustrated Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery, it was\nboth amusing and instructive. Fortunately for his reputation, the\npainter of \"Bunker Hill\" and the \"Sortie from Gibraltar\" did not often\nrecur to Walter Scott for subjects.\n\nQuite recently there has been on exhibition at Goupil's gallery a\nremarkable picture by the French artist Jean Leon Gerome, entitled\n_L'Almee_, which {284} may be thus briefly described: Scene, a\ndilapidated Egyptian Khan or coffee shop; in the foreground and centre\nof the picture a Ghawazee, or dancing girl, performing a striking but\nimmodest dance, which consists wholly of movements of the body from\nthe hips, the legs remaining stationary; a group of fierce looking and\nfantastically bedizened Bashi-Bazouks, sitting cross-legged on a\ndivan, spectators of the performance; and in the background some\nmusicians and an attendant or two. It would be almost impossible to\nover-praise the marvellous finish of this work, the skilful blending\nof the colors, the subdued yet appropriate tone, or the dramatic force\nof the composition. If these qualities were all that are demanded in a\nwork of art, we might stop here; but when the subject is repulsive,\nthey prove a source of aggravation rather than of pleasure, and few,\nwe think, will deny that the scene depicted by Gerome, though\nillustrating a peculiar and perhaps important phase of Oriental life,\nis one of too gross a character to subserve the purposes of true art.\nA vast deal of sentiment has been wasted upon the \"moral significance\"\nof pictures of this type. The less said upon that score, the better.\nWe do not instruct children to abstain from vice by putting immoral\nbooks into their hands, trusting that some innate sense of propriety\nmay prompt them thereby to see virtue in a clearer light. If disposed\nto criticise the technical part of this work, we should say that the\nfinish is too elaborate. Everything, to the smallest minutiae, is\npolished almost to the degree of hardness, and one instinctively longs\nfor an occasional roughness or evidence of the brush--something of\nthat manual movement which indicates the passing thought of the\npainter. Where all is of so regular and level a merit, the contrasts\nwhich should give strength and spirit to a painting are sure to be\nwanting. In this respect Gerome compares unfavorably with Meissonier.\nBoth finish with scrupulous exactness; but the latter never makes\nfinish paramount to the proper expression of his subject. Hence the\nlife and action, so to speak, of his most nicely elaborated figures.\nIn the _Almee_, on the other hand, the group of soldiers, though\nwearing an admirable expression of stoical sensuality, are too rigid\nand immovable, too much like well painted copies of the lay figures\nwhich served as models for them. So, too, of many of the details,\nexcepting always the draperies, which could not be improved. A little\nmore attention to the _ars celare artem_ would render Gerome almost\nunapproachable in his peculiar style.\n\nBefore leaving Goupil's, we cannot avoid drawing attention to some\nstudies of trees and foliage, by Richards, of Philadelphia, now\nexhibited there. One of them, representing the interior of a wood in\nearly autumn, is the best delineation of that phase of nature we have\nrecently seen. Generally, the pictures of this artist are wanting in\nrelief; his foliage lies flat upon the canvas; the trunks of his trees\nhave no rounded outline, nor can the eye penetrate through the\nrecesses of the wood; there is, in fact, no atmosphere to speak of.\nThese defects have been happily overcome in the present instance, and,\nwith no lack of Pre-Raphaelite power in delineating the outward aspect\nof nature, there is a pervading tone of melancholy appropriate to the\nscene and the season. Less remarkable than this, but of considerable\nmerit, is a mountain landscape, in which the season depicted is also\nthe autumn.\n\n\n\n_Foreign_.--Abroad there seems to be a perfect fever to buy and sell\nworks of art. \"Everybody,\" says the London Athenaeum, \"who has a\ncollection, seems determined to dispose of it, and accident has thrown\na large number of works on the art-market; but as those who have taste\nand means seem just as eager to buy as the collectors are to sell, the\nactivity of the art-marts is but a natural consequence of the law of\nsupply and demand, the natural limit having been extended in several\ninstances by the accidental re-appearance of many works twice or three\ntimes during the season.\" This has been the case especially with\nrespect to the pictures of Delacroix. It is always dangerous to assume\nthe prophetic character; but it appears very improbable that, on the\naverage, works of art will fetch higher sums than they have during the\npresent season.'' In Paris the Pourtales sale continues, and is daily\ncrowded by eager _virtuosi_, whose competition runs up prices to an\nextent bordering on the extravagant. The proceeds of the third portion\nof the sale, which occupied three days, and included the engraved\n{285} gems, antique jewelry and glass, were 45,743 francs; those of\nthe fourth section, the coins and medals, 18,430 francs; and of the\nfifth, which comprised the sculpture in ivory and wood, the\nrenaissance bronzes, arms, _faiences_, glass, and some miscellaneous\narticles, 505,640 francs. The following are some of the prices\nobtained for the sculptures in ivory, of which there was a magnificent\ncollection of 70 pieces: A statuette of Hercules resting on his club,\none foot on the head of the Hydra, purchased for England,\n$3,280.--Venus with Cupid at her side, left by Fiamingo as security in\nthe house at Leghorn wherein he died, $1,180.--A renaissance bronze\nbust of Charles IX., of France, life size, artist unknown, formerly\nthe property of the Duc de Berri, brought $9,000.--\"Henry II. ware,\"\nthe well-known _biberon_, with cover bearing the arms of France,\nsurmounted by a coronet, and bearing the arms and initials of _Diane\nde Poitiers_, uninjured, just over ten inches in height, $5,500.--The\ncelebrated Marie Stuart cup, presented to her when affianced to the\nDauphin, was disposed of for $5,420. It is but a few inches in height,\nbut is covered, inside and out, with designs illustrating classical\nmythology and allegory, and with profuse ornamentation, all in\nexquisite taste and of perfect workmanship. It was executed by Jean\nCourt _dit_ Vigier, about 1556.--A round basin, in grisaille, by\nPierre Raymond (1558), representing the history of Adam and Eve, in\nenamel on a black ground, brought $4,040; a large oval salver, by Jean\nCourtois, enamelled in the richest manner, representing the passage of\nthe Red Sea, with borders decorated with figures, medallions, etc.,\n$6,000. These prices, it may be observed, were considered by competent\njudges to be rather low! The vases and goblets of rock crystal were\nalso well contested. A magnificent head, of Apollo, in marble,\nformerly in the Justiniani gallery, was bought, it is said, for the\nBritish Museum, for $9,000; and the celebrated Pallas vase, the most\nperfect specimen of Greek work in porphyry extant, fetched $3,400.\n\nThe new chapel of the Palais de l'Elysee has just been completed, and\nis said to be a perfect gem of artistic decoration. The style is\nByzantine, the mosaic work of the altar being executed in marbles of\nthe rarest kinds; but the pillars and vaulted roof are in stucco,\nimitating porphyry, vert antique, and gold, in such perfection that it\nis difficult to believe that the mines of Sweden and Russia had not\nbeen ransacked to produce the rich coloring and massive effect which\nstrikes the eye of the visitor. The twelve patron saints of France are\nrepresented--including Charlemagne and St. Louis.\n\nThe Aguado pictures were announced for sale, in Paris, on the 10th of\nApril. They include the famous \"Death of Sainte Claire,\" by Murillo,\nbrought from the convent of Saint Francois d'Asrise in Seville, by\nMathieu Fabirer, Commissary-General of Napoleon's army--a very large\ncanvas, including no less than twenty-eight figures.\n\nThe collection of ancient and modern pictures and water-color drawings\nformed by Mr. Thomas Blackburn, of Liverpool, was recently disposed of\nat auction in London for L8,763. Some of the water-color drawings by\nCopley Fielding, Louis Haghe, John Gilbert, Prout, Birket Foster, and\nothers, realized very large sums.\n\nTheed's colossal statue of the Prince Consort, which has been cast in\nbronze at Nuremberg, has recently arrived in London. The model of this\nfigure was originally executed by command of her majesty, and sent as\na present to Coburg, where it at present remains, a bronze cast having\nbeen taken from it. The town of Sydney being desirous of erecting a\nstatue of the prince, this second cast was executed by command of the\nDuke of Newcastle, on the ground that of all the numerous likenesses\nnow extant this was the best. The figure is ten feet high, and\nrepresents the prince in a commanding attitude, dressed in the robes\nof the garter.\n\nThe alterations in progress in the Wolsey Chapel, at Windsor Castle,\nhave brought to light three full-length portraits of knights of the\ngarter, attired in the military costume of the order, capped with\nhelmets, and wearing cloaks with the insignia. These were hidden by\nstone slabs, and as there are upwards of twenty similar slabs, it is\nprobable that other similar paintings may be discovered.\n\nMr. G. T. Doo's large line-engraving from Sebastiano del Piombo's\n\"Resurrection of Lazarus,\" in the National Gallery, by far the most\nimportant of its kind produced for many years past, is {286} now\nfinished. The figure of Christ is 13 inches high, that of Lazarus is\nstill larger, and, being naked, invoked the utmost care and knowledge\nof the engraver to deal with its superbly drawn forms and perfect\nsurface. The execution, if not the whole design, of this figure has\nbeen, on good grounds, attributed to Michael Angelo. Mr. Doo has\nrendered these with great success, even to giving the somewhat hard\nand positive tone of the original; and with one or two exceptions, the\ndrawing is described as admirable throughout. In view of the few\nreally good line-engravings now produced, and of the prospect of the\nart perhaps becoming extinct within the present century, the\nproduction of such a work possesses a genuine though somewhat\nmelancholy interest.\n\n\n\nKaulbach, it is said, will finish his paintings in the Berlin Museum\nthis spring. The price he has received for them is given at $187,000,\nwith an addition of $18,700 for the cost of materials. One of the\nsmaller pictures for the series represents Germany absorbed in reading\nHumboldt's \"Cosmos,\" and letting the imperial crown fall off her head\nin the abstraction caused by her studies. Underneath, the various\nsmall states that compose the confederation are poking out their heads\nas far as possible to escape from under a hat which is coming down\nupon them--an illusion to the popular phrase of uniting the whole of\nGermany \"under one hat.\"\n\n\n\nThe Pontifical Academy of Roman Archaeology has decreed that the\ncollossal statue of Hercules in gilt bronze, recently discovered among\nthe ruins of Pompey's theatre, and sent to the Vatican, shall bear the\nname of \"The Hercules Mastai,\" in honor of Pius IX.\n\n------\n\nNEW PUBLICATIONS.\n\n\nTHE BOYNE WATER: A TALE. By John Banim. Post 8vo., pp. 578, Boston:\nPatrick Donahoe. [For sale in New York by P. O'Shea, Bleecker street].\nThis story is reprinted from _The Boston Pilot_, of whose columns it has\nformed for some months past a principal attraction. It is one of the\nearliest of Banim's works, and the favorable judgment which it\nreceived on its first appearance has now a success of forty years to\nconfirm it. It is a novel of the historical school which Scott made so\npopular in the last generation, the incidents upon which it is founded\nbelonging to the revolution of 1688, which established William of\nOrange on the throne of Great Britain. It gives a graphic picture of\nthe siege and capitulation of Limerick, and brings upon the scene\nJames and William, Sarsfield, Tyrconnel, Ginkell, and other familiar\ncharacters of that stirring epoch. Banim delights, also, in\ndescriptions of natural scenery. In these he is spirited, and, we\nbelieve, accurate. He spared no pains to make himself thoroughly\nfamiliar with the localities of which he wrote. While he was engaged\nupon his novels he used to journey, in company with his brother,\nthrough the theatre of action, and study each historical spot with the\ncare of an antiquary. The perfect acquaintance thus obtained with the\nplaces of which he wrote had, of course, no little effect upon the\nvivacity of his narrative.\n\nHis pictures of Irish life are vivid and truthful, though he is\nhappier in narrative or description than in dialogue. His heroes and\nheroines are too much addicted to stilted conversation and to\nsentimental remarks, which look very well in print, but are never\nheard in ordinary life. The minor characters, especially those of the\npeasant class, such as Rory na Choppell, the \"whisperer,\" or\nhorse-tamer, have the gift of speech in a much more natural and\nagreeable manner. The subordinate parts of the book, in fact, are its\nbest parts. The Gaelic chieftain, reduced to poverty by the English\nconquerors, but retaining all his pride of spirit and {287} authority\nover his people, in a sequestered hut among the mountains; the blind\nharper; the old priest; the mad woman of the cavern; the fanatical\nsoldier of Cromwell; and the lawless Rapparees, are depicted with\ngreat skill. The heroes of the story--for there are two--are the one a\nCatholic, the other a Protestant. They fight on opposite sides, and in\nthe delineation of their characters, and the division of fine\nsentiments between them, Banim holds an even hand. He wrote for an\nEnglish public, and fearful of offending by too warm an avowal of his\nreligious convictions, he seems to us to have gone occasionally to the\nopposite extreme, and penned several passages which Catholics cannot\nread without displeasure. But, despite these faults, which are neither\nvery many nor very serious, \"The Boyne Water\" ranks among the best of\nIrish novels, and Banim as a worthy companion of Carleton and Gerald\nGriffin.\n\n\nSERMONS ON MORAL SUBJECTS. By his Eminence Cardinal Wiseman. 8vo.,\npp.434. New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co.\n\nThe discourses contained in this volume form an appropriate supplement\nto the \"Sermons on our Lord and on His Blessed Mother\" which we\nnoticed last month. They were delivered under the same circumstances\nas the previous collection--that is, for the most part, at the English\nCollege in Rome--and ought not, therefore, to be considered as a\nregular course. But if they do not pretend to be a complete series of\nmoral instructions, they will, nevertheless, be found to touch upon\nnearly all the fashionable sins, and to afford ample food for\nreflection to all classes of persons. They have the same\ncharacteristics of thought and expression which mark the cardinal's\nother writings--the same kind tone of remonstrance with sinners and\nencouragement for the penitent, the same earnest love of God and man,\nand the same, rich, sometimes exuberant, diction. Cardinal Wiseman\nranged through a great variety of subjects, and touched nothing that\nhe did not adorn, but his style never varied much; from one of his\nbooks you can easily judge of all. There is little difference between\nthe style of the \"Sermons on Moral Subjects\" and that, for instance,\nof \"Fabiola,\" or the \"Lectures on Science and Revealed Religion.\" It\nis an ornate mode of writing which accommodates itself to a diversity\nof subjects, and never, in the cardinal's pages, seems out of place.\n\nThe sermons now before us are eminently practical; and, although a\nlarge proportion of them are addressed directly to irreligious\npersons, and treat of such subjects as \"The Love of the World,\"\n\"Scandal,\" \"Detraction,\" \"Unworthy Communion,\" \"Unprepared Death,\" and\nthe \"Hatefulness of Sin,\" they display, in a very marked manner, that\naffectionateness to which we have elsewhere alluded as a\ncharacteristic of the cardinal's discourses. He seems to love rather\nto expostulate than to upbraid; rather to remind us of the happiness\nwe have lost by sin than to threaten us with the punishment of\nimpenitence; and even when his subject calls for stern language, the\nkindly spirit continually breaks out.\n\nThe last sermon in the volume is entitled \"Conclusion of a Course.\" It\ncontains the following passage, explanatory of the purpose of the\nwhole collection:\n\n\"These instructions, my dear brethren, have obviously one tendency;\nthey are all directed to expound what the law of God commands us to\nbelieve and to practice, in order to reach those rewards which he has\nprepared for his faithful servants. They are directed to suggest such\nmotives as may induce us to fulfil these commands; to encourage those\nwho are already on the path to persevere in it; to bring back those\nwho have wandered; to impart strength to the weak and resolution to\nthe wavering and undecided.\"\n\n\n\nAT ANCHOR; A STORY OF OUR CIVIL WAR. By an American. 12mo., pp. 311.\nNew York: D. Appleton & Company.\n\nThe writer of this novel is evidently a Catholic, but the story is\npolitical, not religious. It purports to be the autobiography of a\nloyal Massachusetts woman. She marries a Carolinian whom she does not\nlove, and accompanies him to his plantation-home. At the breaking out\nof the war, the husband accepts a commission in the Confederate\nservice. He is reported killed, and the wife, having learned during\nhis absence to love him, devotes herself to the sick and wounded in\nRichmond. After a time she makes her way back to Massachusetts, and\nthere, at the end of the book, the missing lord turns up; not only\nsafe and sound, but converted from the political errors of his ways,\nand eager to fight under the Federal {288} flag. He enlists as a\nprivate, and has risen to be sergeant when a wound disables him for\nfurther service, and husband and wife are at last united and happy in\neach other. This plot, if it is a plot, is interwoven--we cannot say\ncomplicated--with several interesting incidents. The heroine has\nanother lover, toward whom she leans a willing ear,  both in maiden\nlife and during her supposed widowhood; and he, on his part, has\nanother mistress, who turns out to be our heroine's half-sister. Of\ncourse he marries this lady; and so both couples, after much tossing\nabout, are peacefully \"at anchor.\"\n\nThis is something far better than the common sort of sensational\nwar-stories. It contains neither a guerrilla nor a spy; narrates no\nthrilling deed of blood or hair's-breadth escape; describes no battle;\nand admits that both parties embrace many noble and honorable men. The\nwriter (it needs little penetration to see that she is a woman)\nexpresses herself fearlessly, but without undue bitterness, on\npolitical matters, and scatters over her pages many excellent\nreflections.\n\n\nTHE MYSTICAL ROSE; OR, MARY OF NAZARETH, THE LILY OF THE HOUSE OF\nDAVID. By Marie Josephine. 12mo., pp. viii., 290. New York: D.\nAppleton & Company.\n\nThe authoress of this work is a Vermont lady of some literary\nexperience. Her book gives ample evidence of a cultivated and\nwell-stored mind. It is an attempt to present, in irregular verse, a\nlegendary narrative of the life of the Blessed Virgin; and if the\npoetry is not all of the first order, it is at least devotional, or\nperhaps we should, say consistent with devotional ideas--for the\nwriter deals more with the poetical than the religious aspect of her\nsubject. She has drawn the rough materials for her poem from a great\nvariety of sources, to which she gives reference in copious notes. She\nclaims to have \"appropriated every coveted relic or tradition handed\ndown by historian, Christian or pagan, from the archives of Latin\nChurch, Hebrew, or Greek, coming within scope of her original plan.\"\nShe has certainly succeeded in bringing together a great number of\nbeautiful legends, which she handles in the most affectionate manner.\n\n\nTHE CORRELATION AND CONSERVATION OF FORCES: A series of Expositions,\nby Prof. Grove, Prof. Helmholtz, Dr. Mayer, Dr. Faraday, Prof. Liebig,\nand Dr. Carpenter. With an Introduction and brief Biographical Notices\nof the Chief Promoters of the New Views. By Edward L. Youmans, M. D.\n12mo., pp. xlii., 438. New York: D. Appleton & Company.\n\nThis excellent work reached us too late for an extended notice in the\npresent number. We shall speak of it at greater length next month. In\nthe meantime we warmly recommend our readers to buy it.\n\n\n\nWe have received the April number of _The New Path: a Monthly Art\nJournal_, the publication of which, after an interval of several\nmonths, is resumed under the auspices of James Miller, 522 Broadway.\nThis little periodical represents radical and peculiar views or art,\nBeing allied in opinions to the Pre-Raphaelite school; but its\nindependent and out-spoken, and often valuable, criticisms must have\nstruck the limited circle of readers to whom it formerly appealed. We\nhope under its new management it will exercise a healthful influence\non American art. The present number contains articles on Miss Hosmer's\nStatue of Zenobia, \"Our Furniture,\" notices of recent exhibitions,\netc., etc.\n\n\nMurphy & Co., Baltimore, send us _The Mysteries of the Living Rosary_,\nprinted in sheets, and accompanied by appropriate instructions,\nprayers, and meditations.\n\n\n----------------\n{289}\n\n\nTHE CATHOLIC WORLD,\n\n\nVOL. I., NO. 3. JUNE, 1865.\n\n\nTHE WORKINGS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.\n\n\nA LETTER TO THE REV. E. B. PUSEY, D.D. BY HENRY EDWARD MANNING, D.D.\n\n\nMY DEAR FRIEND,--I do not know why twelve years of silence should\nforbid my calling you still by the name we used both to give and to\naccept of old. Aristotle says indeed--\n\n[Greek text]\n\nbut he did not know the basis and the affections of a Christian\nfriendship such as that to which--though I acknowledge in myself no\nclaim to it--you were so kind as to admit me. Silence and suspension\nof communications cannot prevail against the kindliness and confidence\nwhich springs from such years and such events as once united us.\nContentions and variances might indeed more seriously try and strain\nsuch a friendship. But, though we have been both parted and opposed,\nthere has been between us neither variance nor contention. We have\nboth been in the field indeed where a warfare has been waging, but,\nhappily, we have not met in contest. Sometimes we have been very near\nto each other, and have even felt the opposition of each other's will\nand hand; but I believe on neither side has there ever been a word or\nan act which has left a needless wound. That I should have grieved and\ndispleased you is inevitable. The simple fact of my submitting to the\nCatholic Church must have done so, much more the duties which bind me\nas a pastor. If, in the discharge of that office, I have given you or\nany one either pain or wound by personal faults in the manner of its\ndischarge, I should be open to just censure. If the displeasure arise\nonly from the substance of my duties, \"necessity is laid upon me,\" and\nyou would be the last to blame me.\n\nYou will perhaps be surprised at my beginning thus to write to you. I\nwill at once tell you why I do so. Yesterday I saw, for the first\ntime, your pamphlet on the legal force of the Judgment of the Privy\nCouncil, and I found my name often in its pages. I have nothing to\ncomplain of in the way you use it. And I trust that in this reply you\nwill feel that I have not forgotten your example. But your mention of\nme, and of old days, kindled in me a strong desire to pour out many\nthings which have been for years rising in my mind. I have long wished\nfor the occasion to do so, but I {290} have always felt that it is\nmore fitting to take than to make such an occasion: and as your\nkindness has made it, I will take it.\n\nBut before I enter upon the subject of this letter I wish to say a few\nwords of yourself, and of some others whom I am wont to class with\nyou.\n\nAmong the many challenges to controversy and public disputation which\nit has been my fortune to receive, and, I may add, my happiness to\nrefuse, in the last twelve or thirteen years, one was sent me last\nautumn at Bath. It was the only one to which, for a moment, I was\ntempted to write a reply. The challenger paid me compliments on my\nhonesty in leaving the Church of England, denouncing those who,\nholding my principles, still eat its bread. I was almost induced to\nwrite a few words to say that my old friends and I are parted because\nwe hold principles which are irreconcileable; that I once held what\nthey hold now, and was then united with them; that they have never\nheld what I hold now, and therefore we are separated; that they are as\nhonest in the Church of England now as I was once; and that our\nseparation was my own act in abandoning as untenable the Anglican\nChurch and its rule of faith, Scripture and antiquity, which you and\nthey hold still, and in submitting to the voice of the Catholic and\nRoman Church at this hour, which I believe to be the sole\nauthoritative interpreter of Scripture and of antiquity. This\nprinciple no friend known to me in the Church of England has ever\naccepted. In all these years, both in England and in foreign\ncountries, and on occasions both private and public, and with persons\nof every condition, I have borne this witness for you and for others.\n\nI felt no little indignation at what seemed to me the insincerity of\nmy correspondent, but on reflection I felt that silence was the best\nanswer.\n\nI will now turn to your pamphlet, and to the subject of this letter.\n\nYou speak at the outset of \"the jubilee of triumph among\nhalf-believers\" on the occasion of the late Judgment of the Crown in\nCouncil; and you add, \"A class of believers joined in the triumph. And\nwhile I know that a very earnest body of Roman Catholics rejoice in\nall the workings of God the Holy Ghost in the Church of England\n(whatever they think of her), and are saddened in what weakens her who\nis, in God's hands, the great bulwark against infidelity in this land,\nothers seemed to be in an ecstasy of triumph at this victory of\nSatan.\"  [Footnote 55] Now, I will not ask where you intended to class\nme. But as an anonymous critic of a pamphlet lately published by me\naccused me of rejoicing in your troubles, and another more\nrecently--with a want of candor visible in every line of the attack--\naccused me of being \"merry\" over these miseries of the Church of\nEngland, I think the time is made for me to declare how I regard the\nChurch of England, and events like these; and I know no one to whom I\nwould rather address what I Have to say than to yourself.\n\n  [Footnote 55: \"Legal Force of the Judgment of the Privy Council,\" by\n  the Rev. E. B. Pusey, D.D., pp. 3, 4.]\n\nI will, then, say at once:\n\n1. That I rejoice with all my heart in all the workings of the Holy\nGhost in the Church of England.\n\n2. That I lament whensoever what remains of truth in it gives way\nbefore unbelief.\n\n3. That I rejoice whensoever what is imperfect in it is unfolded into\na more perfect truth.\n\n4. But that I cannot regard the Church of England as \"the great\nbulwark against infidelity in this land,\" for reasons which I will\ngive in their place.\n\n1. First, then, I will say what I believe of the Church of England,\nand why I rejoice in every working of the Holy Spirit in it. And I do\nthis the more gladly because I have been sometimes grieved at hearing,\nand once at even seeing in a handwriting which I reverence with\naffection, the {291} statement that Catholics--or at least the worst\nof Catholics called converts--deny the validity of Anglican baptism,\nregard our own past spiritual life as a mockery, look upon our\ndeparted parents as heathen, and deny the operations of the Holy\nSpirit in those who are out of the Church. I do not believe that those\nwho say such things have ever read the Condemned Propositions, or are\naware that a Catholic who so spoke would come under the weight of at\nleast two pontifical censures, and the decrees of at least two general\ncouncils.\n\nI need not, however, do more than remind you that, according to the\nfaith and theology of the Catholic Church, the operations of the Holy\nSpirit of God have been from the beginning of the world co-extensive\nwith the whole human race.  [Footnote 56]\n\n  [Footnote 56: Suarez, _De Divina Gratia_. Pars Secunda, lib. iv., c.\n  viii. xi. xii. Ripalda, _De Ente Supenaturali_, lib. i., disp. xx.,\n  s. xii. and s. xxii. Viva, _Cursus Theol_., pars iii., disp. i.,\n  quaest. v. iii.]\n\nBelieving, then, in the operations of the Holy Spirit, even among the\nnations of the world who have neither the revelation of the faith nor\nthe sacraments, how much more must we believe his presence and grace\nin those who are regenerate by water and the Holy Ghost? It would be\nimpertinent for me to say to you--whose name first became celebrated\nfor a tract on baptism, which, notwithstanding certain imperfections\ninseparable from a work written when and where you wrote it, is in\nsubstance deep, true, and elevating--that baptism, if rightly\nadministered with the due form and matter, is always 'valid by\nwhatsoever hand it may be given.  [Footnote 57]\n\n  [Footnote 57: _Concil. Florent. Decretum Eugenii IV. Mansi Concil._,\n  tom, xviii. 547. \"In casu autem necessitatis non solum sacerdos vel\n  diaconus sed etiam laicus vel mulier, immo etiam paganus et\n  haereticus baptizare potest, dummodo formam servet Ecclesiae, et\n  facere intendat quod facit Ecclesia.\" The Council of Trent repeats\n  this under anathema, Sess. vii., can. iv.: \"Si quis dixerit\n  Baptismum qui etiam datur ab haereticis in Nomine Patris, et Filii,\n  et Spiritus Sancti, cum intentione esse verum Baptismum, anathema\n  sit.\" See also Bellarm. _Controversial, De Baptismo_, lib. i., c.]\n\nLet me, then, say at once\n\n1. That in denying the Church of England to be the Catholic Church, or\nany part of it, or in any divine and true sense a church at all, and\nin denying the validity of its absolutions and its orders, no Catholic\never denies the workings of the Spirit of God or the operations of\ngrace in it.\n\n2. That in affirming the workings of grace in the Church of England,\nno Catholic ever thereby affirms that it possesses the character of a\nchurch.\n\nThey who most inflexibly deny to it the character of a church affirm\nmost explicitly the presence and the operations of grace among its\npeople, and that for the following reasons:\n\nIn the judgment of the Catholic Church, a baptized people is no longer\nin the state of nature, but is admitted to a state of supernatural\ngrace. And though I believe the number of those who have never been\nbaptized to be very great in England, and to be increasing every year,\nnevertheless I believe the English people, as a mass, to be a Baptized\npeople. I say the number of the unbaptized is great, because there are\nmany causes which contribute to produce this result. First, the\nimperfect, and therefore invalid, administration of baptism through\nthe carelessness of the administrators. You, perhaps, think that this\nis exaggerated, through an erroneous belief of Catholics as to the\nextent of such carelessness among the Protestant ministers, both in\nand out of the Church of England. It is, however, undeniable, as I\nknow from the evidence of eye-witnesses, that such carelessness has,\nin times past, been great and frequent. This I consider the least, but\na sufficient, reason for believing that many have never been baptized.\nAdd to this, negligence caused by the formal disbelief of baptismal\nregeneration in a large number of Protestant ministers. There are,\nhowever, two other reasons far more direct. The one is the studied\nrejection, as a point of religious profession, of the practice of\ninfant baptism. Many therefore grow up without baptism who in adult\nlife, for various causes, never seek it. {292} The other, the sinful\nunbelief and neglect of parents in every class of the English people,\nwho often leave whole families of children to grow up without baptism.\nOf the fact that many have never been baptized, I, or any Catholic\npriest actively employed in England, can bear witness. There are few\namong us who have not had to baptize grown people of every condition,\npoor and rich; and, of children, often whole families together. There\nhas indeed been, in the last thirty years, a revival of care in the\nadministration of baptism on the part of the Anglican ministers, and\nof attention on the part of parents in bringing their children to be\nbaptized; but this reaction is by no means proportionate to the\nneglect, which on the other side has been extending. My fear is that,\nafter all, the number of persons unbaptized in England is greater at\nthis moment than at any previous time.\n\nStill the English people as a body are baptized, and therefore\nelevated to the order of supernatural grace. Every infant, and also\nevery adult baptized, having the necessary dispositions, is thereby\nplaced in a state of justification; and, if they die without\ncommitting any mortal sin, would certainly be saved. They are also, in\nthe sight of the Church, Catholics. St. Augustine says, \"Ecclesia\netiam inter eos qui foris sunt per baptismum generat suos.\" A mortal\nsin of any kind, including _prava voluntatis electio_, the perverse\nelection of the will, by which in riper years such persons chose for\nthemselves, notwithstanding sufficient light, heresy instead of the\ntrue faith, and schism instead of the unity of the Church, would\nindeed deprive them of their state of grace. But before such act of\nself-privation all such people are regarded by the Catholic Church as\nin the way of eternal life. With perfect confidence of faith, we\nextend the shelter of this truth over the millions of infants and\nyoung children who every year pass to their Heavenly Father. We extend\nit also in hope to many more who grow up in their baptismal grace.\nCatholic missionaries in this country have often assured me of a fact,\nattested also by my own experience, that they have received into the\nChurch persons grown to adult life, in whom their baptismal grace was\nstill preserved. Now how can we then be supposed to regard such\npersons as no better than heathens? To ascribe the good lives of such\npersons to the power of nature would be Pelagianism. To deny their\ngoodness, would be Jansenism. And, with such a consciousness, how\ncould any one regard his past spiritual life in the Church of England\nas a mockery? I have no deeper conviction than that the grace of the\nHoly Spirit was with me from my earliest consciousness. Though at the\ntime, perhaps, I knew it not as I know it now, yet I can clearly\nperceive the order and chain of grace by which God mercifully led me\nonward from childhood to the age of twenty years. From that time the\ninterior workings of his light and grace, which continued through all\nmy life, till the hour in which that light and grace had its perfect\nwork, to which all its operations had been converging, in submission\nto the fulness of truth of the Spirit of the Church of God, is a\nreality as profoundly certain, intimate, and sensible to me now as\nthat I live. Never have I by the lightest word breathed a doubt of\nthis fact in the divine order of grace. Never have I allowed any one\nwho has come to me for guidance or instruction to harbor a doubt of\nthe past workings of grace in them. It would be not only a sin of\ningratitude, but a sin against truth. The working of the Holy Spirit\nin individual souls is, as I have said, as old as the fall of man, and\nas wide as the human race. It is not we who ever breathe or harbor a\ndoubt of this. It is rather they who accuse us of it. Because, to\nbelieve such an error possible in others shows how little\nconsciousness there must be of the true doctrine of grace in\nthemselves. And such, I am forced {293} to add, is my belief, because\nI know by experience how inadequately I understood the doctrine of\ngrace until I learned it of the Catholic Church. And I trace the same\ninadequate conception of the workings of grace in almost every\nAnglican writer I know, not excepting even those who are nearest to\nthe truth.\n\nBut, further, our theologians teach, not only that the state of\nbaptismal innocence exists, and may be preserved out of the Church,\nbut that they who in good faith are out of it, if they shall\ncorrespond with the grace they have already received, will receive an\nincrease or augmentation of grace.  [Footnote 58] I do not for a\nmoment doubt that there are to be found among the English people\nindividuals who practise in a high degree the four cardinal virtues,\nand in no small degree, though with the limits and blemishes\ninseparable from their state, the three theological virtues of faith,\n[Footnote 59] hope, and charity, infused into them in their baptism. I\ndo not think, my dear friend, in all that I have said or written in\nthe last fourteen years, that you can find a word implying so much as\na doubt of the workings of the Holy Spirit among all the baptized who\nare separated from the Catholic Church.\n\n  [Footnote 58: Suarez, _De Div. Gratia_, lib. iv., c. xi. Ripalda,\n  _De Ente Supernaturali_, lib. i., disp. xx., sect. xii. _et seq. S.\n  Alphonsi Theol. Moral._, lib. i., tract, 1. 5, 6. ]\n\n  [Footnote 59: De Lugo, _De Virtute divinae Fidei_, disp. xvii.,\n  sect. iv, v. Viva, _Cursus Theol._, p. iv., disp. iv., quaest. iii.  7.]\n\nI will go further still. The doctrine, \"_Extra ecclesiam nulla salus_\"\nis to be interpreted both by dogmatic and by moral theology. As a\ndogma, theologians teach that many belong to the Church who are out of\nits visible unity;  [Footnote 60] as a moral truth, that to be out of\nthe Church is no personal sin, except to those who sin in being out of\nit. That is, they will be lost, not because they are _geographically_\nout of it, but because they are _culpably_ out of it. And they who are\nculpably out of it are those who know--or might, and therefore ought\nto, know--that it is their duty to submit to it. The Church teaches\nthat men may be _inculpably_ out of its pale. Now they are inculpably\nout of it who are and have always been either physically or morally\nunable to see their obligation to submit to it. And they only are\nculpably out of it who are both physically and morally able to know\nthat it is God's will they should submit to the Church; and either\nknowing it will not obey that knowledge, or, not knowing it, are\nculpable for that ignorance. I will say then at once, that we apply\nthis benign law of our Divine Master as far as possible to the English\npeople. First, it is applicable in the letter to the whole multitude\nof those baptized persons who are under the age of reason. Secondly,\nto all who are in good faith, of whatsoever age they be: such as a\ngreat many of the poor and unlettered, to whom it is often physically,\nand very often morally, impossible to judge which is the true\nrevelation or Church of God. I say physically, because in these three\nhundred years the Catholic Church has been so swept off the face of\nEngland that nine or ten generations of men have lived and died\nwithout the faith being so much as proposed to them, or the Church\never visible to them; and I say morally, because the great majority of\nthe poor, from lifelong prejudice, are often incapable of judging in a\nquestion so far removed from the primary truths of conscience and\nChristianity. Of such simple persons it may be said that, _infantibus\naequiparantur_, they are to be classed morally with infants. Again, to\nthese may be added the unlearned in all classes, among whom many have\nno contact with the Catholic Church, or with Catholic books. Under\nthis head will come a great number of wives and daughters, whose\nfreedom of religious inquiry and religious thought is unjustly {294}\nlimited or suspended by the authority of parents and husbands. Add,\nlastly, the large class who have been studiously brought up, with all\nthe dominant authority of the English tradition of three hundred\nyears, to believe sincerely, and without a doubt, that the Catholic\nChurch is corrupt, has changed the doctrines of the faith, and that\nthe author of the Reformation is the Spirit of holiness and truth. It\nmay seem incredible to some that such an illusion exists. But it is\ncredible to me, because for nearly forty years of my life I was fully\npossessed by this erroneous belief. To all such persons it is morally\ndifficult in no small degree to discover the falsehood of this\nillusion. All the better parts of their nature are engaged in its\nsupport: dutifulness, self-mistrust, submission, respect for others\nolder, better, more learned than themselves, all combine to form a\nfalse conscience of the duty to refuse to hear anything against \"the\nreligion of their fathers,\" \"the church of their baptism,\" or to read\nanything which could unsettle them. Such people are told that it is\ntheir duty to extinguish a doubt against the Church of England, as\nthey would extinguish a temptation against their virtue. A conscience\nso subdued and held in subjection exercises true virtues upon a false\nobject, and renders to a human authority the submissive trust which is\ndue only to the divine voice of the Church of God.\n\n  [Footnote 60: See Perrone _Praelect. Theolog_., pars i., c. ii. 1, 2:\n\n    \"Omnes et soli justi pertinent ad Ecclesiae animam.\"\n\n    \"Ad Christi Ecclesiae corpus spectant fideles omnes tam justi quam\n    peccatores.\"\n\n    St. Augustine expresses these two propositions in six words,\n    \"Multae oves foris, multi lupi intus.\" St. Aug., tom, iii., p. ii.\n    600.]\n\nOne last point I will add. I believe that the people of England were\nnot all guilty of the first acts of heresy and schism by which they\nwere separated from the Catholic unity and faith. They were robbed of\nit. In many places they rose in arms for it. The children, the poor,\nthe unlearned at that time, were certainly innocent: much more the\nnext generation. They were born into a state of privation. They knew\nno better. No choice was before them. They made no perverse act of the\nwill in remaining where they were born. Every successive generation\nwas still less culpable, in proportion as they were born into a\ngreater privation, and under the dominion of a tradition of error\nalready grown strong. For three centuries they have been born further\nand further out of the truth, and their culpability is perpetually\ndiminishing; and as they were passively borne onward in the course of\nthe English separation, the moral responsibility for the past is\nproportionately less.\n\nThe divine law is peremptory--\"to him who knoweth to do good, and\ndoeth it not, to him it is sin.\"  [Footnote 61] Every divine truth, as\nit shines in upon us, lays its obligation on our conscience to believe\nand to obey it. When the divine authority of the Church manifests\nitself to our intellect, it lays its jurisdiction upon our conscience\nto submit to it. To refuse is an act of infidelity, and the least act\nof infidelity in its measure expels faith; one mortal act of it will\nexpel the habit of faith altogether.   [Footnote 62] Every such act of\ninfidelity grieves the Holy Ghost by a direct opposition to his divine\nvoice speaking through the Church; the habit of such opposition is one\nof the six sins against the Holy Ghost defined as \"impugning the known\ntruth.\" All that I have said above in no way modifies the absolute and\nvital necessity of submitting to the Catholic Church as the only way\nof salvation to those who know it, by the revelation of God, to be\nsuch. But I must not attempt now to treat of this point.\n\n  [Footnote 61: St. James iv. 17. ]\n\n  [Footnote 62: De Lugo, _De Virtute Fidel Divinae_, disp. xvii.,\n  sect. iv. 53 _et seq_. ]\n\nNevertheless for the reasons above given we make the largest allowance\nfor all who are in invincible ignorance; always supposing that there\nis a preparation of heart to embrace the truth when they see it, at\nany cost, a desire to know it, and a faithful use of the means of\nknowing it, such as study, docility, prayer, and the like. But I do\nnot now enter into the case of the educated or the learned, or of\nthose who have liberty of mind and means of inquiry. I cannot class\nthem under {295} the above enumeration of those who are inculpably out\nof the truth. I leave them, therefore, to the only Judge of all men.\n\nLastly, I will not here attempt to estimate how far all I have said is\nbeing modified by the liberation and expansion of the Catholic Church\nin England during the last thirty years. It is certain that the\nrestoration of the Catholic hierarchy, with the universal tumult which\npublished it to the whole world, still more by its steady,\nwide-spread, and penetrating action throughout England, is taking away\nevery year the plea of invincible ignorance.\n\nIt is certain, however, that to those who, being in invincible\nignorance, faithfully co-operate with the grace they have received, an\naugmentation of grace is given; and this at once places the English\npeople, so far as they come within the limits of these conditions, in\na state of supernatural grace, even though they be out of the visible\nunity of the Church. I do not now enter into the question of the state\nof those who fall from baptismal grace by mortal sin, or of the great\ndifficulty and uncertainty of their restoration. This would lead me\ntoo far; and it lies beyond the limits of this letter.\n\nIt must not, however, be forgotten, for a moment, that this applies to\nthe whole English people, of all forms of Christianity, or, as it is\ncalled, of all denominations. What I have said does not recognize the\ngrace _of_ the Church of England as such. The working of grace _in_ the\nChurch of England is a truth we joyfully hold and always teach. But we\nas joyfully recognize the working of the Holy Spirit among Dissenters\nof every kind. Indeed, I must say that I am far more able to assure\nmyself of the invincible ignorance of Dissenters as a mass than of\nAnglicans as a mass. They are far more deprived of what survived of\nCatholic truth; far more distant from the idea of a Church; far more\ntraditionally opposed to it by the prejudice of education; I must add,\nfor the most part, far more simple in their belief in the person and\npassion of our Divine Lord. Their piety is more like the personal\nservice of disciples to a personal Master than the Anglican piety,\nwhich has always been more dim and distant from this central light of\nsouls. Witness Jeremy Taylor's works, much as I have loved them,\ncompared with Baxter's, or even those of Andrews compared with\nLeighton's, who was formed by the Kirk of Scotland.\n\nI do not here forget all you have done to provide ascetical and\ndevotional books for the use of the Church of England, both by your\nown writings, and, may I not say it, from your neighbor's vineyard?\n\nWith truth, then, I can say that I rejoice in all the operations of\nthe Holy Spirit out of the Catholic Church, whether in the Anglican or\nother Protestant bodies; not that those communions are thereby\ninvested with any supernatural character, but because more souls, I\ntrust, are saved. If I have a greater joy over these workings of grace\nin the Church of England, it is only because more that are dear to me\nare in it, for whom every day I never fail to pray. These graces to\nindividuals were given before the Church was founded, and are given\nstill out of its unity. They are no more tokens of an ecclesiastical\ncharacter, or a sacramental power in the Church of England, than in\nthe Kirk of Scotland, or in the Wesleyan connexion; they prove only\nthe manifold grace of God, which, after all the sins of men, and in\nthe midst of all the ruins he has made, still works in the souls for\nwhom Christ died. Such, then, is our estimate of the Church of England\nin regard to the grace that works not _by_ it, nor _through_ it, but _in_\nit and among those who, without faults of their own, are detained by\nit from the true Church of their baptism.\n\nAnd here it is necessary to guard against a possible misuse of what I\nhave said. Let no one imagine that he may still continue in the Church\nof England because God has hitherto mercifully bestowed his grace upon\n{296} him. As I have shown, this is no evidence that salvation is to\nbe had _by_ the Church of England. It is an axiom that _to those who do\nall they can God never refuses his grace_. He bestows it that he may\nlead them on from grace to grace, and from truth to truth, until they\nenter the full and perfect light of faith in his only true fold. The\ngrace they have received, therefore, was given, not to detain them in\nthe Church of England, but to call them out of it. The grace of their\npast life lays on them the obligation of seeking and submitting to the\nperfect truth. God would \"have all men to be saved, and to come to the\nknowledge of the truth.\"   [Footnote 63] But his Church is an eminent\ndoctrine, and member of that truth; and all grace given out of the\nChurch is given in order to bring men into the Church, wheresoever the\nChurch is present to them. If they refuse to submit to the Church they\nresist the divine intention of the graces they have hitherto received,\nand are thereby in grave danger of losing them, as we see too often in\nmen who once were on the threshold of the Church, and now are in\nrationalism, or in states of which I desire to say no more.\n\n  [Footnote 63: 1 Tim. ii. 4.]\n\n2. Let me next speak of the truths which the Church of England still\nretains. I have no pleasure in its present trials; and the anonymous\nwriter who describes me as being \"positively merry\" over its disasters\nlittle knows me. If I am to speak plainly, he seems to me to be guilty\nof one of the greatest offences--a rash accusation against one whom he\nevidently does not know. I will further say that I lament with all my\nheart whensoever what remains of truth in the Anglican system gives\nway before unbelief.\n\nI do not, indeed, regard the Church of England as a teacher of _truth_,\nfor that would imply that it teaches the truth in all its\ncircumference, and in all its divine certainty. Now this is precisely\nwhat the Church of England does not, and, as I will show presently,\nhas destroyed in itself the power of doing. I am willing to call it a\nteacher of _truths_, because many fragmentary truths, shattered,\ndisjointed from the perfect unity of the Christian revelation, still\nsurvive the Reformation, and, with much variation and in the midst of\nmuch contradiction, are still taught in it. I have been wont always to\nsay, and to say with joy, that the Reformation, which has done its\nwork with such a terrible completeness in Germany, was arrested in\nEngland; that here much of the Christian belief and Christian order\nhas survived. Until lately I have been in the habit of saying that\nthere are three things which missionaries may take for granted in\nEngland: first, the existence of a supernatural world; secondly, the\nrevelation of Christianity; and thirdly, the inspiration of Scripture.\nThe Church of England has also preserved other doctrines with more or\nless of exactness, such as the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, the\nincarnation, baptism, and the like. I will not now enter into the\nquestion as to what other doctrines are retained by it, because a few\nmore or a few less would make little difference in the final estimate\na Catholic must make of it. A teacher of Christian truths I gladly\nadmit it to be. A teacher of Christian truth--no, because it rejects\nmuch of that truth, and also the divine principle of its perpetuity in\nthe world. Nevertheless, I rejoice in every fragment of doctrine which\nremains in it; and I should lament the enfeebling or diminution of any\nparticle of that truth. I have ever regarded with regret the so-called\nLow-Church and Latitudinarian schools in the Anglican Church, because\nI believe their action and effect is to diminish what remains of truth\nin it. I have always regarded with joy, and I have never ceased to\nregard with sympathy, notwithstanding much which I cannot either like\nor respect, the labors of the High-Church or Anglo-Catholic party,\nbecause I believe that their action and effect are \"to strengthen the\nthings which remain, which were ready {297} to die.\" For myself, I am\nconscious how little I have ever done in my life; but as it is now\ndrawing toward its end, I have at least this consolation, that I\ncannot remember at any time, by word or act, to have undermined a\nrevealed truth; but that, according to my power, little enough as I\nknow, I have endeavored to build up what truth I knew, truth upon\ntruth, if only as one grain of sand upon another, and to bind it\ntogether by the only bond and principle of cohesion which holds in\nunity the perfect revelation of God. A very dear friend, whose\nfriendship has been to me one of the most instructive, and the loss of\nwhich was to me one of the hardest sacrifices I had to make, has often\nobjected to me, with the subtlety which marks his mind, that my act in\nleaving the Church of England has helped forward the unbelief which is\nnow invading it. No doubt he meant to say that the tendency of such an\nact helped to shake the confidence of others in the Church of England\nas a teacher of truth. This objection was, like his mind, ingenious\nand refined. But a moment's thought unravelled it, and I answered it\nmuch in these words:\n\n  I do not believe that by submitting to the Catholic Church any one\n  can weaken the witness of the Church of England for the truth which\n  it retains. So far as it holds the truth, it is in conformity to the\n  Catholic Church. In submitting to the Catholic Church, I all the\n  more strongly give testimony to the same truths which the Church of\n  England still retains. If I give testimony against the Church of\n  England, it is in those points in which, being at variance with the\n  truth, the Church of England is itself undermining the faith of\n  Christianity.\n\nIt was for this reason I always lamented the legalizing of the\nsacramentarian errors of the Low-Church party by the Gorham Judgment;\nand that I lament now the legalizing of the heresies of the \"Essays\nand Reviews,\" and the spreading unbelief of Dr. Colenso. I believe\nthat anything which undermines the Christianity of England is drawing\nit further and further from us. In proportion as men believe more of\nChristianity, they are nearer to the perfect truth. The mission of the\nChurch in the world is to fill up the truth. Our Divine Lord said, \"I\nam not come to destroy, but to fulfil;\" and St. Paul did not overthrow\nthe altar of the Unknown God, but gave to it an object of divine\nworship and a true adoration. For this cause I regard the present\ndownward course of the Church of England and the Christianity of\nEngland with great sorrow and fear. And I am all the more alarmed\nbecause of those who are involved in it so many not only refuse to\nacknowledge the fact, but treat us who give warning of the danger as\nenemies and accusers.\n\nOne of my critics has imagined, that I propose to myself and others\nthe alternative of Catholicism or atheism. I have never attempted to\nbring any one to the perfect truth by destroying or by threatening the\nimperfect faith they might still possess. I do not believe that the\nalternative before us is Catholicism or atheism. There are lights of\nthe natural order, divine witnesses of himself inscribed by the\nCreator on his works, characters engraven upon the conscience, and\ntestimonies of mankind in all the ages of the world, which prove the\nexistence and perfections of God, the moral nature and responsibility\nof man anterior to Catholicism, and independently of revelation. If a\nman, through any intellectual or moral aberration, should reject\nChristianity, that is Catholicism, the belief of God and of his\nperfections stands immutably upon the foundations of nature.\nCatholicism, or deism, is indeed the only ultimately logical and\nconsistent alternative, though, happily, few men in rejecting\nCatholicism are logically consistent enough to reject Christianity.\nAtheism is an aberration which implies not only an intellectual\nblindness, but a moral insensibility. The theism {298} of the world\nhas its foundation on the face of the natural world, and on the\nintellect and the heart of the human race. The old paganism and modern\npantheism are reverent, filial, and elevating compared with the\natheism of Comte and of our modern secularists. It would be both\nintellectually and morally impossible to propose to any one the\nalternative of Catholicism or atheism. Not only then do I lament to\nsee any truth in the Church of England give way before unbelief, but I\nshould regard with sorrow and impatience any attempt to promote the\nbelief of the whole revelation of Christianity by a mode of logic\nwhich undermines even the truths of the natural order. The Holy See\nhas authoritatively declared that the existence of God may be proved\nby reason and the light of nature,  [Footnote 64] and Alexander VIII.\ndeclared that men who do not know of the existence of God are without\nexcuse. [Footnote 65] Atheism is not the condition of man without\nrevelation. As Viva truly says in his comment on this declaration,\natheists are anomalies and exceptions in the intellectual tradition of\nmankind.\n\n  [Footnote 64: \"Ratiocinatio Dei existentiam, animae spiritualitatem,\n  hominis libertatem, cum certitudine probare potest.\" _Theses a SS.\n  D. N. Pio IX. approbatae_, 11 _Junii_ 1855. Denzinger's Enchiridion,\n  p. MS. Ed. 1856. ]\n\n  [Footnote 65: Viva, _Propos. damnatae,_ p. 372. Ripalda, De _Ente\n  Supernaturali_. disp. xx., s. 12, 59. ]\n\nNay, I will go further. I can conceive a person to reject Catholicism\nwithout logically rejecting Christianity. He would indeed reject the\ndivine certainty which guarantees and proposes to us the whole\nrevelation of the day of Pentecost. But, as Catholic theologians\nteach, the infallible authority of the Church does not of necessity\nenter into the essence of an act of faith.  [Footnote 66] It is,\nindeed, the divine provision for the perfection and perpetuity of the\nfaith, and _in hac providentia_, the ordinary means whereby men are\nilluminated in the revelation of God; but the known and historical\nevidence of Christianity is enough to convince any prudent man that\nChristianity is a divine revelation. It is quite true that by this\nprocess he cannot attain an explicit faith in all the doctrines of\nrevelation, and that in rejecting Catholicism he reduces himself to\nhuman and historical evidence as the maximum of extrinsic certainty\nfor his religion, and that this almost inevitably resolves itself in\nthe long run into rationalism. It is an inclined plane on which, if\nindividuals may stand, generations cannot. Nevertheless, though the\nalternative in the last analysis of speculation be Catholicism or\ndeism, the practical alternative may be Catholicism and fragmentary\nChristianity.\n\n  [Footnote 66: De Lugo,--De Virtute Fidei Divinae, disp. i., sect.\n  xii. 250-53. Viva, _Cursus Theol._, p. iv., disp. i., quaest. iv.,\n  art. iii. Ripalda, _De Ente Supern._, disp. xx., seet. xxii. 117.]\n\nI have said this to show how far I am from sympathizing with those, if\nany there be, and I can truly say I know none such, who regard the\ngiving way of any lingering truth in the Church of England under the\naction of unbelief with any feeling but that of sorrow. The Psalmist\nlamented over the dying out of truths. \"Diminutae sunt veritates a\nfiliis hominum,\" and I believe that every one who loves God, and\nsouls, and truth must lament when a single truth, speculative or\nmoral, even of the natural order, is obscured; much more when any\nrevealed truth of the elder or of the Christian revelation is rejected\nor even doubted. Allow me also to answer, not only for myself, which\nis of no great moment, but for an eminent personage to whom you have\nreferred in your pamphlet. I can say, with a personal and perfect\nknowledge, that no other feeling has ever arisen in His Eminence's\nmind, in contemplating the troubles of the Anglican Church, than a\nsincere desire that God may use these things to open the eyes of men\nto see the untenableness of their positions; coupled with a very\nsincere sorrow at the havoc which the advance of unbelief is making\namong the truths which yet linger in the Church of England.\n\n3. It is, however, but reason that I {299} should rejoice when\nwhatsoever remains in it of imperfect truth is unfolded into a more\nperfect faith: and that therefore I desire to see not only the\nconversion of England, but the conversion of every soul to whom the\nmore perfect truth can be made known. You would not respect me if I\ndid not. Your own zeal for truth and for souls here speaks in my\nbehalf. There are two kinds of proselytism. There are the Jews whom\nour Lord condemned. There are also the Apostles whom he sent into all\nthe world. If by proselytizing be meant the employing of unlawful and\nunworthy means, motives, or influences to change a person's religion,\nI should consider the man who used such means to commit _lese-majeste_\nagainst truth, and against our Lord who is the truth. But if by\nproselytizing be meant the using all the means of conviction and\npersuasion which our divine Master has committed to us to bring any\nsoul who will listen to us into the only faith and fold, then of this\nI plead guilty with all my heart. I do heartily desire to see the\nChurch of England dissolve and pass away, as the glow of lingering\nembers in the rise and steady light of a reviving flame. If the Church\nof England were to perish to-morrow under the action of a higher and\nmore perfect truth, there would be no void left in England. All the\ntruths hitherto taught in fragments and piecemeal would be still more\nvividly and firmly impressed upon the minds of the English people. All\nof Christianity which survives in Anglicanism would be perfected by\nthe restoration of the truths which have been lost, and the whole\nwould be fixed and perpetuated by the evidence of divine certainty and\nthe voice of a divine Teacher. No Catholic desires to see the Church\nof England swept away by an infidel revolution, such as that of 1789\nin France. But every Catholic must wish to see it give way year by\nyear, and day by day, under the intellectual and spiritual action of\nthe Catholic Church: and must watch with satisfaction every change,\nsocial and political, which weakens its hold on the country, and would\nfaithfully use all his power and influence for its complete removal as\nspeedily as possible.\n\n4. But lastly, I am afraid we have reached a point of divergence.\nHitherto I hope we may have been able to agree together; but now I\nfear every step of advance will carry us more wide of each other. I am\nunable to consider the Church of England to be \"in God's hands the\ngreat bulwark against infidelity in this land.\" And my reasons are\nthese:\n\n1.) First, I must regard the Anglican Reformation, and therefore the\nAnglican Church, as the true and original source of the present\nspiritual anarchy of England. Three centuries ago the English people\nwere in faith _unius labii:_ they were in perfect unity. Now they are\ndivided and subdivided by a numberless multiplication of errors. What\nhas generated them? From what source do they descend? Is it not\nself-evident that the Reformation is responsible for the production of\nevery sect and every error which has sprung up in England in these\nthree hundred years, and of all which cover the face of the land at\nthis day? It is usual to hear Anglicans lament the multiplication of\nreligious error. But what is the productive cause of all? Is it not\nAnglicanism itself which, by appealing from the voice of the Church\nthroughout the world, has set the example to its own people of\nappealing from the voice of a local and provincial authority?\n\nI am afraid, then, that the Church of England, so far from, a barrier\nagainst infidelity, must be recognized as the mother of all the\nintellectual and spiritual aberrations which now cover the face of\nEngland.\n\n2.) It is true, indeed, that the Church of England retains many truths\nin it. But it has in two ways weakened the evidence of these very\ntruths which it retains. It has detached them from {300} other truths\nwhich by contact gave solidity to all by rendering them coherent and\nintelligible. It has detached them from the divine voice of the\nChurch, which guarantees to us the truth incorruptible and changeless.\nThe Anglican Reformation destroyed the principle of cohesion, by which\nall truths are bound together into one. The whole idea of theology, as\nthe science of God and of his revelation, has been broken up.\nThirty-nine Articles, heterogeneous, disjointed, and mixed with error,\nis all that remains instead of the unity and harmony of Catholic\ntruth. Surely this has been among the most prolific causes of error,\ndoubt, and unbelief. So far from the bulwark against it, Anglicanism\nappears to me to be the cause and spring of its existence. As I have\nalready said, the Reformation placed the English people upon an\ninclined plane, and they have steadily obeyed the law of their\nposition, by descending gradually from age to age, sometimes with a\nmore rapid, sometimes with a slower motion, but always tending\ndownward. Surely it would be unreasonable to say of a body always\ndescending, that it is the great barrier against reaching the bottom.\n\nI do not, indeed, forget that the Church of England has produced\nwriters who have vindicated many Christian truths. I am not unmindful\nof the service rendered by Anglican writers to Christianity in\ngeneral, nor, in particular, of the works of Bull and Waterland in\nbehalf of the Holy Trinity; of Hammond and Pearson in behalf of\nEpiscopacy; of Butler and Warburton in behalf of Revelation, and the\nlike. But whence came the errors and unbeliefs against which they\nwrote? Were they not generated by the Reformation abroad and in\nEngland? This is like the spear which healed the wounds it had made.\nBut it is not the divine office of the Church to make wounds in the\nfaith that it may use its skill in healing. They were quelling the\nmutiny which Protestantism had raised, and arresting the progress of\nthe Reformation which, like Saturn, devours its own children.\n\nMoreover, to be just I must say that if the Church of England be a\nbarrier against infidelity, the Dissenters must also be admitted to a\nshare in this office and commendation. And in truth I do not know\namong the Dissenters any works like the Essays and Reviews, or any\nBiblical criticism like that of Dr. Colenso. They may not be very\ndogmatic in their teaching, but they bear their witness for\nChristianity as a divine revelation, for the Scriptures as an inspired\nbook, and, I must add further, for the personal Christianity of\nconversion and repentance, with an explicitness and consistency which\nis not less effectual against infidelity than the testimony of the\nChurch of England. I do not think the Wesleyan Conference or the\nauthorities of the three denominations would accept readily this\nassumed superiority of the Anglican Church as a witness against\nunbelief. They would not unjustly point to the doctrinal confusions of\nthe Church of England as causes of scepticism, from which they are\ncomparatively free. And I am bound to say that I think they would have\nan advantage. I well remember that while I was in the Church of\nEngland I used to regard Dissenters from it with a certain, I will not\nsay aversion, but distance and recoil. I never remember to have borne\nanimosity against them, or to have attacked or pursued them with\nunkindness. I always believed many of them to be very earnest and\ndevoted men. I did not like their theology, and I believed them to be\nin disobedience to the Church of England; but I respected them, and\nlived at peace with them. Indeed, I may say that some of the best\npeople I have ever known out of the Church were Dissenters or children\nof Dissenters. Nevertheless, I had a dislike of their system, and of\ntheir meeting-houses. They seemed to me to be rivals of the Church of\nEngland, and my loyalty to it made me look somewhat impatiently upon\nthem. But I remember, from {301} the hour I submitted to the Catholic\nChurch, all this underwent a sensible change. I saw that the whole\nrevelation was perpetuated in the Church alone, and that all forms of\nChristianity lying round about it were but fragments more or less\nmutilated. But with this a sensible increase of kindly feeling grew\nupon me. The Church of England and the dissenting communions all alike\nappeared to me to be upon the same level. I rejoiced in all the truth\nthat remains in them, in all the good I could see or hope in them, and\nall the workings of the Holy Spirit in them. I had no temptation to\nanimosity toward them; for neither they nor the Church of England\ncould be rivals of the imperishable and immutable Church of God. The\nonly sense, then, in which I could regard the Church of England as a\nbarrier against infidelity, I must extend also to the dissenting\nbodies; and I cannot put this high, for reasons I will give.\n\n3.) If the Church of England be a barrier to infidelity by the truths\nwhich yet remain in it, I must submit that it is a source of unbelief\nby all the denials of other truths which it has rejected. If it\nsustains a belief in two sacraments, it formally propagates unbelief\nin five; if it recognizes an undefined presence of Christ in the\nsacrament, it formally imposes on its people a disbelief in\ntransubstantiation and the sacrifice of the altar; if it teaches that\nthere is a church upon earth, it formally denies its indissoluble\nunity, its visible head, and its perpetual divine voice.\n\nIt is not easy to see how a system can be a barrier against unbelief\nwhen by its Thirty-nine Articles it rejects, and binds its teachers to\npropagate the rejection, of so many revealed truths.\n\n4.) But this is not all. It is not only by the rejection of particular\ndoctrines that the Church of England propagates unbelief. It does so\nby principle, and in the essence of its whole system. What is the\nultimate guarantee of the divine revelation but the divine authority\nof the Church? Deny this, and we descend at once to human teachers.\nBut it is this that the Church of England formally and expressly\ndenies. The perpetual and ever-present assistance of the Holy Spirit,\nwhereby the Church in every age is not only preserved from error, but\nenabled at all times to declare the truth, that is the infallibility\nof the living Church at this hour--this it is that the Anglican Church\nin terms denies. But this is the formal antagonist of infidelity,\nbecause it is the evidence on which God wills that we should believe\nthat which his veracity reveals. Do not be displeased with me. It\nappears to me that the Anglican system, by this one fact alone,\nperpetually undoes what it strives to do in behalf of particular\ndoctrines. What are they, one by one, when the divine certainty of all\nis destroyed? Now, for three hundred years the Anglican clergy have\nbeen trained, ordained, and bound by subscriptions to deny not only\nmany Christian truths, but the divine authority of the [Greek text],\nthe living Church of every age. The barrier against infidelity is the\ndivine voice which generates faith. But this the Anglican clergy are\nbound to deny. And this denial opens a flood-gate in the bulwark,\nthrough which the whole stream of unbelief at once finds way.\nSeventeen or eighteen thousand men, educated with all the advantages\nof the English schools and universities, endowed with large corporate\nrevenues, and distributed all over England, maintain a perpetual\nprotest, not only against the Catholic Church, but against the belief\nthat there is any divine voice immutably and infallibly guiding the\nChurch at this hour in its declaration of the Christian revelation to\nmankind. How can this be regarded as \"the great bulwark in God's hand\nagainst infidelity?\"\n\nIt seems to me that the Church of England, so far from being a bulwark\nagainst the flood, has floated before it. Every age has exhibited an\nadvance to a more indefinite and heterogeneous state of religious\nopinion within its {302} pale. I will not go again over ground I have\nalready traversed. Even in our memory the onward progress of the\nChurch of England is manifest. That I may not seem to draw an\nunfavorable picture from my own view, I will quote a very unsuspected\nwitness. Dr. Irons, in a recent pamphlet, says: \"The religion of the\nChurch has sunk far deeper into conscience now than the surviving men\nof 1833-1843 are aware of. _And all that Churchmen want_ of their\nseparated brethren is that they accept nothing, and profess nothing,\nand submit to nothing which has 'no root' in their conscience.\"\n[Footnote 67] If this means anything, it means that objective truth\nhas given place to subjective sincerity as the Anglican rule of faith.\nYou will know better than I whether this be the state of men's minds\namong you. To me it is as strange as it is incoherent, and a sign how\nfar men have drifted. This certainly was not the faith or religion\nthat we held together in the years when I had the happiness of being\nunited in friendship with you. Latitudinarian sincerity was not our\nbasis, and if the men of 1833 and 1843 have arrived at this, it is\nvery unlike the definite, earnest, consistent belief which animated us\nat that time. You say in your note (page 21) kindly, but a little\nupbraidingly, that my comment on your letter to the _\"Record\"_ was not\nlike me in those days: forasmuch as I used then to join with those\nwith whom even then you could not. It was this that made me note your\ndoing so now. It was this which seemed to me to be a drifting backward\nfrom old moorings. For myself, it is true, indeed, that I have moved\nlikewise. I have been carried onward to what you then were, and beyond\nit. What I might have done then, I could not do now. What you do now\nseems to me what you would not have done then. I did not note this\nunkindly, but with regret, because, as I rejoice in every truth, and\nin every true principle retained in the Church of England, it would\nhave given me great joy to see you maintaining with all firmness, not\nonly all the particular truths you held, but also the impossibility of\nuniting with those who deny both those truths and the principles on\nwhich you have rested through your laborious life of the last thirty\nyears.\n\n  [Footnote 67: \"Apologia pro vita Ecclesias Anglicanae,\" p. 22.]\n\nAnd now I will add only a few more words of a personal sort, and then\nmake an end. It was not my fate in the Church of England to be\nregarded as a contentious or controversial spirit, nor as a man of\nextreme opinions, or of a bitter temper. I remember indeed that I was\nregarded, and even censured, as slow to advance, somewhat tame,\ncautious to excess, morbidly moderate, as some one said. I remember\nthat the Catholics [Greek text] used to hold me somewhat cheap, and to\nthink me behindhand, uncatholic, over-English, and the like. But now,\nis there anything in the extreme opposite of all this which I am not?\nUltramontane, violent, unreasoning, bitter, rejoicing in the miseries\nof my neighbors, destructive, a very Apollyon, and the like. Some who\nso describe me now are the same who were wont then to describe me as\nthe reverse of all this. They are yet catholicizing the Church of\nEngland, without doubt more catholic still than I am. Well, what shall\nI say? If I should say that I am not conscious of these changes, you\nwould only think me self-deceived. I will therefore only tell you\nwhere I believe I am unchanged, and then where I am conscious of a\nchange, which, perhaps, will account for all you have to say of me.\n\nI am unconscious, then, of any change in my love to England in all\nthat relates to the natural order. I am no politician, and I do not\nset up for a patriot; but I believe, as St. Thomas teaches, that love\nof country is a part of charity, and assuredly I have ever loved\nEngland with a very filial love. My love for England {303} begins with\nthe England of St. Bede. Saxon England, with all its tumults, seems to\nme saintly and beautiful. Norman England I have always loved less,\nbecause, though more majestic, it became continually less Catholic,\nuntil the evil spirit of the world broke off the light yoke of faith\nat the so-called Reformation. Still, I loved the Christian England\nwhich survived, and all the lingering outlines of dioceses and\nparishes, cathedrals and churches, with the names of saints upon them.\nIt is this vision of the past which still hovers over England and\nmakes, it beautiful, and full of memories of the kingdom of God. Nay,\nI loved the parish church of my childhood, and the college chapel of\nmy youth, and the little church under a green hillside, where the\nmorning and evening prayers, and the music of the English Bible, for\nseventeen years, became a part of my soul. Nothing is more beautiful\nin the natural order, and if there were no eternal world I could have\nmade it my home. But these things are not England, they are only its\nfeatures, and I may say that my love was and is to the England which\nlives and breathes about me, to my countrymen whether in or out of the\nChurch of England. With all our faults as a race, I recognize in them\nnoble Christian virtues, exalted characters, beautiful examples of\ndomestic life, and of every personal excellence which can be found,\nwhere the fulness of grace and truth is not, and much, too, which puts\nto shame those who are where the fulness of grace and truth abounds.\nSo long as I believed the Church of England to be a part of the Church\nof God I loved it, how well you know, and honored it with a filial\nreverence, and labored to serve it, with what fidelity I can affirm,\nwith what, or if with any utility, it is not for me to say. And I love\nstill those who are in it, and I would rather suffer anything than\nwrong them in word or deed, or pain them without a cause. To all this\nI must add, lastly, and in a way above all, the love I bear to many\npersonal friends, so dear to me, whose letters I kept by me till two\nyears ago, though more than fifty of them are gone into the world\nunseen, all these things are sweet to me still beyond all words that I\ncan find to express it.\n\nYou will ask me then, perhaps, why I have never manifested this\nbefore? It is because when I left you, in the full, calm, deliberate,\nand undoubting belief that the light of the only truth led me from a\nfragmentary Christianity into the perfect revelation of the day of\nPentecost, I believed it to be my duty to walk alone in the path in\nwhich it led me, leaving you all unmolested by any advance on my part.\nIf any old friend has ever written to me, or signified to me his wish\nto renew our friendship, I believe he will bear witness to the\nhappiness with which I have accepted the kindness offered to me. But I\nfelt that it was my act which had changed our relations, and that I\nhad no warrant to assume that a friendship, founded upon agreement in\nour old convictions, would be continued when that foundation had been\ndestroyed by myself, or restored upon a foundation altogether new. And\nI felt, too, a jealousy for truth. It was no human pride which made me\nfeel that I ought not to expose the Catholic Church to be rejected in\nmy person. Therefore I held on my own course, seeking no one, but\nwelcoming every old friend--and they have been many--who came to me.\nThis has caused a suspension of nearly fourteen years in which I have\nnever so much as met or exchanged a line with many who till then were\namong my nearest friends. This, too, has given room for many\nmisapprehensions. It would hardly surprise me if I heard that my old\nfriends believed me to have become a cannibal.\n\nBut perhaps you will say, This does not account for your hard words\nagainst us and the Church of England. When I read your late pamphlet I\nsaid to myself, Have I ever written such hard words as these? I will\nnot quote them, but truly I do not think {304} that, in anything I\nhave ever written, I have handled at least any person as you, my dear\nfriend, in your zeal, which I respect and honor, have treated certain\nvery exalted personages who are opposed to you. But let this pass. It\nwould not excuse me even if I were to find you in the same\ncondemnation.\n\nOne of my anonymous censors writes that \"as in times past I had\nwritten violently against the Church of Rome, so now I must do the\nsame against the Church of England.\" Now I wish he would find, in the\nbooks I published when out of the Church, the hard sayings he speaks\nof. It has been my happiness to know that such do not exist. I feel\nsure that my accuser had nothing before his mind when he risked this\ncontroversial trick. I argued, indeed, against the Catholic and Roman\nChurch, but I do not know of any railing accusations. How I was\npreserved from it I cannot tell, except by the same divine goodness\nwhich afterward led me into the perfect light of faith.\n\nBut I have written, some say, hard things of the Church of England.\nAre they hard truths or hard epithets? If they are hard epithets, show\nthem to me, and I will erase them with a prompt and public expression\nof regret; but if they be hard facts, I cannot change them. It is\ntrue, indeed, that I have for the last fourteen years incessantly and\nunchangingly, by word and by writing, borne my witness to the truths\nby which God has delivered me from the bondage of a human authority in\nmatters of faith. I have borne my witness to the presence and voice of\na divine, and therefore infallible, teacher, guiding the Church with\nhis perpetual assistance, and speaking through it as his organ. I have\nalso borne witness that the Church through which he teaches is that\nwhich St. Augustine describes by the two incommunicable notes--that it\nis \"spread throughout the word\" and \"united to the Chair of Peter.\"\n[Footnote 68] I know that the corollaries of these truths are severe,\nperemptory, and inevitable. If the Catholic faith be the perfect\nrevelation of Christianity, the Anglican Reformation is a cloud of\nheresies; if the Catholic Church be the organ of the Holy Ghost, the\nAnglican Church is not only no part of the Church, but no church of\ndivine foundation. It is a human institution, sustained as it was\nfounded by a human authority, without priesthood, without sacraments,\nwithout absolution, without the real presence of Jesus upon its\naltars. I know these truths are hard. It seems heartless, cruel,\nunfilial, unbrotherly, ungrateful so to speak of all the beautiful\nfragments of Christianity which mark the face of England, from its\nthousand towns to its green villages, so dear even to us who believe\nit to be both in heresy and in schism. You must feel it so. You must\nturn from me and turn against me for saying it; but if I believe it,\nmust I not say it? And if I say it, can I find words more weighed,\nmeasured, and deliberate than those I have used? If you can, show them\nto me, and so that they are adequate, I will use them always\nhereafter. God knows I have never written a syllable with the intent\nto leave a wound. I have erased, I have refrained from writing and\nspeaking, many, lest I should give more pain than duty commanded me to\ngive. I cannot hope that you will allow of all I say. But it is the\ntruth. I have refrained from it, not only because it is a duty, but\nbecause I wish to disarm those who divert men from the real point at\nissue by accusations of bitterness and the like. It has been my lot,\nmore than of most, to be in these late years on the frontier which\ndivides us. And--why I know not--people have come to me with their\nanxieties and their doubts. What would you have done in my place? That\nwhich you have done in your own; which, _mutato nomine_, has been my\nduty and my burden.\n\n  [Footnote 68: _S. Aug. Op._, tom, ii., pp. 119, 120; torn, x.,  p. 93]\n\nAnd now I have done. I have a hope that the day is coming when all\n{305} in England who believe in the supernatural order, in the\nrevelation of Christianity, in the inspiration of Holy Scripture, in\nthe divine certainty of dogmatic tradition, in the divine obligation\nof holding no communion with heresy and with schism, will be driven in\nupon the lines of the only stronghold which God has constituted as\n\"the pillar and ground of the truth.\" This may not be, perhaps, as\nyet; but already it is time for those who love the faith of\nChristianity, and look with sorrow and fear on the havoc which is\nlaying it waste among us, to draw together in mutual kindness and\nmutual equity of judgment. That I have so ever treated you I can truly\nsay; that I may claim it at your hands I am calmly conscious; but\nwhether you and others accord it to me or not, I must leave it to the\nDisposer of hearts alone to determine. Though we are parted now, it\nmay not be for ever; and morning by morning, in the holy Sacrifice, I\npray that the same light of faith which so profusely fell upon myself,\nnotwithstanding all I am, may in like manner abundantly descend upon\nyou who are in all things so far above me, save only in that one gift\nwhich is not mine, but his alone who is the Sovereign Giver of all\ngrace.\n\n  Believe me, my dear friend,\n  Always affectionately yours,\n  HENRY EDWARD MANNING.\n\n  ST. MARY'S, BAYSWATER,\n  Sept. 27, 1864.\n\nP.S.--My attention has just been called to the concluding pages of the\nlast number of the _Quarterly Review_, in which I am again described\nby a writer who evidently has abilities to know better, to be in\n\"ecstasies.\" The writer represents, as the sum or chief argument of my\n\"Second Letter to an Anglican Friend,\" the passing reference I there\nmade to the Lord Chancellor's speech. I quoted this to prove that the\nlate judgment is a part of the law, both of the land and of the Church\nof England. But the whole of the letter, excepting this single point,\nis an argument to show that the vote of the Convocation carries with\nit no divine certainty, and resolves itself into the private judgment\nof the majority who passed it. For all this argument the writer has\nnot a word. I cannot be surprised that he fills out his periods with\nmy \"ecstasies,\" \"shouts of joy,\" \"wild paeans,\" a quotation from\n\"Shylock,\" and other things less fitting. This is not to reason, but\nto rail. Is it worthy? Is it love of truth? Is it good faith? Is it\nnot simply the fallacy of evasion? I can assure him that this kind of\ncontroversy is work that will not stand. We are in days when\npersonalities and flimsy rhetoric will not last long. Neither will it\nbear to be tried by \"the fire,\" nor will it satisfy, I was about to\nsay, nor will it mislead, men who are in earnest for truth or for\nsalvation. I had hoped that this style of controversy had been cured\nor suppressed by a greater sincerity and reality of religious thought\nin these days of anxiety and unbelief. There either is, or is not, a\ndivine Person teaching perpetually through the Church in every age,\nand therefore now as always, generating faith with divine certainty in\nthe minds of men. This question must be answered; and, as men answer\nit, we know where to class them, and how to deal with them. All the\nevasions and half-arguments of such writers are becoming daily more\nand more intolerable to those of the English people--and they are a\nmultitude--who would give all that they count dear, and life itself, to\nknow and to die in the full and certain light of the revelation of God\nin Jesus Christ.\n\nH. E. M.\n\n----\n\n{306}\n\nTranslated from Le Correspondant.\n\n\nA RUSSIAN RELIGIOUS.\n\nBY PRINCE AUGUSTIN GALITZIN.\n\n\nOn the 6th of May, 1840, in a little hut upon the slope of that chain\nof mountains which separates the northern from the southern states of\nthe American Union, died an old man who had spent his life in\nspreading the faith through those distant regions. A crowd of persons\nsurrounded his bed in tears; for during half a century he had been the\ndepositary of public misfortunes, domestic troubles, and spiritual\ndistress. Though known by the humble name of Father Smith, this priest\nwas not a native of the land which received his last breath: he was a\nRussian by birth, and his name was Galitzin.\n\nOn the 1st of September in the same year eight women landed at New\nYork, clad all in black, and wearing no ornament but a cross on the\nbreast. They came to educate new generations in the New World. The\neldest of them was not, like her sisters, a Frenchwoman; the same\nblood ran in her veins as in those of the missionary just dead, and\nher heart beat with the same love. She too was a Russian, and her name\nwas Madame Elizabeth Galitzin.\n\nBorn at St. Petersburg in 1795, the Princess Elizabeth was the\ndaughter of a woman of whom it is praise enough to say that she was\nthe worthiest and most intimate friend of Madame Swetchine, who called\nher \"her second conscience.\"   [Footnote 69] On the day when Elizabeth\nreached her fifteenth year, her mother confided to her the secret that\nshe had become a Catholic, and told the reasons which had induced her\nnot, as is still supposed in Russia, to abandon the faith of her\nfathers, but to return to it in all its integrity. Elizabeth thus\ndescribes the emotion which she felt in listening to this disclosure,\nand the influence which it had upon her own future. [Footnote 70]\n\n  [Footnote 69:  _Lettres de Mme. Swetchine_, I. 321. ]\n\n  [Footnote 70: This extract and the details that follow are taken\n  from or confirmed by the Rev. A. Guidee's _Vie du P. Rozaven_ and\n  the Rev. J. Gagarin's notice of Madame Galitzin in his _Etudes de\n  theologie, de philosophie et d'histoire_, vol. ii.]\n\n\"The secret which my mother confided to me filled me with despair; I\nburst into tears, without uttering a word. For several days I wept\nbitterly whenever I was alone, and during the night. I believed that\nmy mother had committed a great sin, because the government punished\nso severely those who forsook the religion of the country. The reasons\nwhich she gave made no impression on me; I did not even understand\nthem: the moment of the _fiat lux_ was not yet come. From that day I\nfelt an implacable hatred of the Catholic religion and its ministers,\nespecially of the Jesuits, who, as I supposed, had effected my\nmother's conversion. One night, as I was lamenting my isolated\ncondition, separated from my mother by this division of sentiments, I\nwas struck by the sudden thought, 'If the Jesuits have gained over so\nexcellent a woman as mamma,--a woman so reasonable, so well-informed,\nand of so much experience, what will they not do with an ignorant,\nunsophisticated girl like me? I must protect myself against their\npersecutions. I firmly believe that the Greek Church is the true\nchurch; I am resolved to be faithful to it unto death. To withdraw\nmyself effectually from the seductions of the Jesuits, I will write\ndown a vow that I will never change my religion.' No sooner said than\n{307} done. I rose at once, and despite the darkness wrote out my vow\nin due form, invoking the wrath of God if I ever broke it. Then I went\nback to bed, feeling much more composed, and believing that I had\ngained a great victory over the devil. Alas! it was he that guided my\npen. For four years I repeated that vow every day when I said my\nprayers; I never omitted it. I gloried in my obstinacy, and took every\nopportunity to show my aversion to the Catholic religion, and above\nall to the Jesuits. In this I was encouraged by my confessor. He asked\nme one day if I had any leaning toward Catholicism.\n\n\"'I, father! I detest the Catholic religion and the Jesuits!'\n\n\"'Good, good!' said he; 'that is as it should be.'\n\n\"I let slip no occasion of defaming these holy men. I delighted in\nrepeating all the absurd stories that I heard against them, and\nbelieved them as much as if they were articles of faith. But about the\nmiddle of the fourth year an excellent Italian priest, who had given\nme lessons, died. My mother sometimes requested me to go to the\nCatholic church on days of great ceremony, and I durst not refuse,\nthough I used to go with rage in my heart. When she invited me,\nhowever, to go with her to the funeral of the poor priest, I consented\nwillingly, out of gratitude, and respect for the memory of the\ndeceased. As soon as I entered the church a voice within me seemed to\nsay, 'You hate this church, but you will one day belong to it\nyourself.' The words sank into my heart. I was deeply moved, and shed\nabundance of tears all the while I remained in the church--I could not\ntell why. A thought all at once occurred to me: 'You hate the\nJesuits,' said I to myself; 'is not hatred a sin? When did you learn\nto consider this feeling a virtue? If it is a sin, I must not commit\nit again: I will not hate the Jesuits then; I will pray for them.' And\nso, in fact, I did, every day from that moment. I struggled against my\ndislike for them.\n\n\"In the meanwhile we went to pass the summer away from home. In this\nretirement our good Lord vouchsafed to speak to my heart and inspire\nme with such a lively sorrow for my sins that I often passed part of\nthe night in weeping. I watered my couch with tears, and judging\nmyself unworthy to sleep on a bed, I cast myself on the ground, and\nused to lie there until fatigue obliged me to return to my pillow. At\nthe end of three months we went back to St. Petersburg, and I there\nlearned that a cousin of mine [Footnote 71] had become a convert. I\nwas deeply pained. I accused the Jesuits of being the cause of the\nstep, and had hard work not to yield to my old hatred of them. I\navoided speaking with my cousin alone, because I did not want to\nreceive the confidence which I knew she was anxious to give me. But at\nlast, to my great regret, I had to listen to her. When she had told me\nwhat I was so unwilling to know, I burst into tears, and replied:\n\n  [Footnote 71: The lady here mentioned was the mother of Monseigneur\n  de Segur. ]\n\n\"'If you believe that the Catholic religion is the true one, you were\nright to embrace it; but I do not understand how you could believe\nit.'\n\n\"'Oh,' said she, 'if you would only read something that my mother\n[Footnote 72] has written on the Greek schism and the truth of the\nCatholic Church, you would be persuaded as I was.'\n\n  [Footnote 72: The Countess Rostopchine, whom Madame de Stael\n  mentions with so much praise in her _Dix annees d'exil_. ]\n\n\"'You may send me whatever you wish,' I answered, 'but you may be\ncertain that it will not affect me. I am too firmly convinced that\ntruth lives in the Greek Church.'\n\n\"I went home in great distress of mind. For the first time in four\nyears I omitted to repeat my vow before going to bed; it seemed to me\nrash. I retired, but God would not let me sleep; he filled my mind\nwith salutary thoughts. 'I must examine this matter,' said I, 'it is\ncertainly worth the {308} trouble; it is something of too much\nconsequence to be deceived about.' I thought over all that I knew\nabout the Catholic faith, and at that moment God opened my eyes. I saw\nas clear as day that hitherto I had been in the wrong, and the truth\nwas to be found only in the Catholic Church. 'It is our pride,' I\nexclaimed, 'which prevents our acknowledging the supremacy of the\nPope: to-morrow I will embrace the truth. Yet how can I? And my vow?\nAh, but the vow is null; it can be no obstacle to the fulfilment of my\nresolution. If I had taken an oath to commit a murder, the oath would\nhave been a sin, and to fulfil it would be another. I will not commit\nthe second sin. I will not put off being a Catholic beyond to-morrow.'\n\n\"I waited impatiently for day that I might read my aunt's little\ntreatise,--not because I needed arguments to convince me, but I\nwanted to have it to say that I had read something. At day-break I\nwrote to my cousin these words: 'Send me the manuscript, pray for me,\nand hope.' I read it quickly; it consisted of not more than thirty\npages. I found in it all that I had said to myself during the night. I\nhesitated no longer, but hastened to my mother, declared myself a\nCatholic, and begged her to send for Father Rozaven. He came the same\nmorning. He was not a little surprised at the unexpected intelligence,\nand asked me if I was ready to suffer persecution, even death itself,\nif need were, for the love of the religion which I was going to\nembrace. My blood froze in my veins, but I answered: 'I hope\neverything from the grace of God.' The good father doubted no longer\nthe sincerity of my conversion, and promised to hear my confession the\nnext day but one, that is, the 18th of October. It was during the\nnight of the 15th and 16th of October, 1815, that God spoke for me the\nwords _fiat lux._\"\n\n\n\nAfter she had been received into the Church, Father Rozaven said to\nher: \"I wish to establish in your heart a great love of God which\nshall manifest itself not by fine sentiments but by practical results,\nand shall lead you to fulfil with zeal and courage all your duties\nwithout exception. I want you to strive ardently to acquire the solid\nvirtues of humility, love of your neighbor, patience and conformity to\nthe will of God. I want to see in you a grandeur, an elevation, and a\nfirmness of soul, and to teach you to seek and find your consolation\nin God.\"\n\nThe princess became all that her wise director wished her to be; and\nthe constant practice of the fundamental Christian virtues soon led\nher to aim at a still more perfect life. Even her mother for a long\ntime opposed her design. Her friends ridiculed her for wanting to lead\nwhat they called a \"useless\" life. Sensitive to this reproach, so\nconstantly made by people who themselves do nothing at all, she begged\nthe learned Jesuit to furnish her with weapons to repel it. Her\nrequest called forth the following excellent reply, which may be read\nwith especial profit just now, when so much is said about the\nuselessness of nuns:\n\n\"Tell me, my child, have you read the catechism? One of the first\nquestions is, Why has God created us and placed us in this world? To\nknow him, love him, and serve him, and by this means to obtain\neverlasting life. It does not say, to be 'useful.' Even when a nun is\nof no use to others, she is useful to herself, and to be so is her\nfirst duty; she labors to sanctify herself and to save her soul. Is\nnot this the motive which led St. Paul, St. Anthony, and so many\nthousands of anchorets into the desert? These saints were certainly\nnot fools. Beside, is it true that nuns are useless? Was it not the\nstory of the virtues of St. Anthony which determined the conversion of\nSt. Augustine? and certainly this conversion was something far greater\nthan all that St. Anthony could have done by remaining in the world.\nBut to say nothing of the example of the saints, are not nuns useful\nto each {309} other? Do you see no advantage in the union of twenty or\nthirty persons, more or less, who incite each other to the acquisition\nof virtue, and take each other by the hand in their journey to the\nsame goal, the salvation of their souls? And then again, many\nreligious communities devote themselves to the education of youth; and\nsurely there are few occupations more useful than bringing up in the\nknowledge and practice of religion young girls who are destined to\nbecome mothers of families, and to fulfil all the duties of society\nthat belong to their sex.\"\n\n\n\nA devotion of this sort commended itself especially to our young\nconvert. She made choice of the new order of the Sacred Heart, and\nafter eleven years' delay finally entered it at Metz in 1826. She made\nher vows in 1828 at Rome, and remained there until she was ordered to\nFrance in 1834 and made general secretary of the congregation. In 1839\nshe was chosen assistant mother, and appointed to visit the houses of\nthe Sacred Heart in America, and to found some new ones. Her\ncorrespondence during this period with her mother is now before me,\nand will show, far better than any words of mine, not only her piety,\nbut the serenity of her soul and that love of country and kindred,\nwhich religion, far from extinguishing, can alone purify by carrying\nit beyond the narrow boundaries of this life. Like those austere\nChristians whose lives Count de Montalembert has written, she kept a\nlarge place in her heart for love and friendship, and clung ardently\nto those natural ties which she did not feel called upon to break when\nshe gave herself to God.\n\nI shall then leave Madame Elizabeth to speak in her own words; and in\nso doing, it seems to me that I am fulfilling the wish of Madame\nSwetchine, who wrote thus to Father Gagarin (ii. 360): \"There are many\ndetails respecting her life which might be found and authenticated,\nand I am convinced that many interesting particulars might be obtained\nfrom her correspondence during her two journeys in America.\"\n\n\n\n  NEW YORK, Sept. 1, 1840.\n\n  MY DEAREST MAMMA,--I arrived at New York a few hours ago, after a\n  voyage of forty-five days. Our voyage, thank God, was a good one,\n  despite thirty-two days of contrary winds. We had neither storms nor\n  rough weather; the trip was a long one, that is all. Having two\n  priests with us, we had mass often; you may imagine what a\n  consolation it was to us. I was sea-sick only one week; after that,\n  so well that I passed a great part of my time in drawing.\n\n  \"I am here for only four days; at least I trust that the business\n  which I have to transact with the bishop will not keep me longer.\n  Then I shall go with my seven companions and a worthy priest who has\n  us in charge, to St. Louis in the state of Missouri, 2,000 versts\n  from New York. They say that we shall reach there in twelve days; by\n  this reckoning we shall arrive at our first house about the 20th of\n  September. I believe that I shall die of joy when I get there; for\n  here in the midst of the world, though surrounded by excellent\n  people, who show us a thousand attentions, I am like a fish out of\n  water. I will write to you as soon as I reach St. Louis. I cannot\n  remain with our family of the Sacred Heart there more than a\n  fortnight, for I must then visit two other establishments not far\n  distant. I shall return to St. Louis, and leave there about the\n  middle of November for our house at St. Michael, near New Orleans,\n  which is 1,500 versts from St. Louis. After a few days' rest I shall\n  then go to our house at Grand Coteau, also in Louisiana; and after\n  staying there three weeks I shall return to pass the winter at St.\n  Michael. I hope to do well there, for the climate is warmer than\n  that of Rome. In the spring I shall make another visitation of the\n  houses in Missouri, and then go back to New York to begin the\n  foundation {310} of a new establishment there. So you see I shall\n  not be very long in any one place.\n\n  \"What a consolation it will be for me if I find a letter from you at\n  St. Louis! I am impatient for news of you and my brothers. How did\n  they take the news of my departure for America? With indifference\n  perhaps; but they are far from being indifferent to me. God knows\n  what wishes I form for them, and how sweet it is to me to be able to\n  offer up for them the fatigues and petty sufferings which divine\n  Providence sends us. When you write to my brothers do not fail to\n  remember me to them, for, they are dearer to me than ever in our\n  Lord.\n\n  \"I was in hopes of finding our relative in America; but he is dead.\n  He died universally regretted. Everybody looked upon him as a saint.\n  I will make it a point to obtain his works and send them to you.\"\n\n\n  \"St. Louis, Nov. 9, 1840.\n\n  \"I have had the consolation of receiving your letter dated the 15th\n  of July. Write to me now at St. Louis, at the _Academy_ of the\n  Ladies of the Sacred Heart, for so they call here those religious\n  houses which receive pupils as boarders. For my part, I am\n  determined to send you this letter at once, because I am afraid that\n  Paris will be turned topsy-turvy by the remains of Bonaparte, which\n  are to be removed thither in the month of November.\n\n  \"It is too true that our 'American uncle' is dead. You may suppose\n  how deeply I regret it. He was not a bishop; only a simple\n  missionary. He invariably refused all dignities, and devoted himself\n  for more than forty years to the missions, in which he displayed a\n  zeal worthy of an apostle. He died at the age of seventy-two, like a\n  saint as he had lived, having given himself to God since his\n  seventeenth year. The whole country in which he preached the gospel\n  weeps for him as for a father. His memory is revered in America\n  among Protestants as well as Catholics. I have been shown an article\n  about him in the _Gazette_: it gives his whole history, and it would\n  be impossible to write a more touching eulogy of him. I have some of\n  his works; they are excellent.\n\n  \"I expected that my departure for America would have but little\n  effect upon my brothers. Our good Lord permits it to be so, and we\n  must wish whatever he wishes. A day will come, I trust, when their\n  hearts will be touched. Let us wait and pray, and suffer with more\n  fervor than ever. Remember me to them and to my aunts. Beg for me\n  the light of the Holy Ghost: I need it sorely, for my post is a very\n  difficult one.\"\n\n\n  \"ST. MICHAEL, Dec. 6, 1840.,\n\n  \"Here I am, near New Orleans; but I shall soon start on another\n  journey, and not be at rest again before the month of June. I am now\n  in the land of the sugar-cane; it is very nice to eat, or rather to\n  suck. As if I brought the cold with me in all my travels, I had\n  scarcely arrived here when bitter cold weather set in, and the ice\n  was as thick as a good fat finger. The weather has moderated since\n  then--to my great satisfaction, for I have not enough of the spirit\n  of mortification to bear cold very well. I begin to believe that\n  there is not a single warm country under the sun, and that the\n  reputation of those lands that are called so is not well-founded.\n\n  \"I send you only these few words, that you may not be uneasy about\n  me; for I have no leisure. Remember me to my brothers. Bless me, and\n  believe, dear mamma, in my tender and respectful attachment.\"\n\n\n  \"ST. MICHAEL, Feb. 28, 1841.\n\n  \"I leave this place on the 15th of March, and shall be in St. Louis\n  for the feast of the Annunciation. I shall remain three weeks at\n  three of our houses in Missouri, and then go to Cincinnati and\n  Philadelphia; so I hope to be in New York by the beginning of May.\n  Do not fear on my {311} account the dangers of railroads and\n  steamboats. Those who are sent on a mission are under the special\n  protection of divine Providence. I have never met with the slightest\n  accident; and this constant journeying about has moreover rid me of\n  my fever. I am perfectly well. I rise every morning at twenty\n  minutes after four; I fast and abstain; and nothing hurts me. So\n  don't be uneasy about me. I think I shall stay in New York until\n  November, if God opposes no obstacle to my doing so; I shall then\n  make a last visit to our houses in Louisiana and Missouri, and sail\n  for Europe probably during the summer of 1842. In fifteen months I\n  shall be afloat again on the great ocean. I hope Alexander will not\n  be off again before that, so that I may have the consolation of\n  seeing him once more. He is the only one of my brothers whom I may\n  never see again, and he was my Benjamin. Tell them I do not forget\n  them in my prayers, and I wish they would also remember me before\n  God: that will come some day, I hope. Pray have some masses said for\n  me; I have great need of them. If you only knew what it was to hold\n  such an office as mine! The responsibility is enough to make one\n  tremble.\"\n\n\n  \"LOUISIANA, March 29, 1841.\n\n  \"Before starting on my journey I must send you a few lines. It is a\n  little before my accustomed time for writing; but I shall be nearly\n  two months on the route before reaching New York, and I am afraid I\n  shall have no opportunity of writing except on my arrival in that\n  city, and after my return here. So do not be anxious on account of\n  my future silence: it will not be a sign of anything bad. I am\n  better than ever. Make your mind at rest about my health. Our Lord\n  gives me astonishing strength. Fatigue has no effect upon me.\"\n\n\n  \"NEW YORK, May 15, 1841.\n\n  \"I arrived here without accident, and take comfort in thinking that\n  I shall be stationary now until October. Since I left Rome I have\n  not been six weeks at a time in any one place. I am about founding\n  an establishment here, and the task is no easy one, in any point of\n  view. The expenses to be incurred are enormous, and our resources,\n  to say the best of them, are very moderate. So I have begged our\n  mother-general to allow the 200 francs which you were so good as to\n  send us for postage, to be devoted to the first expenses of the\n  chapel.\n\n  \"You have no idea how deeply our 'relative' is regretted here. He\n  was universally loved and respected. People look upon me with favor,\n  because I bear the same name.\"\n\n\n\n  \"NEW YORK, June 20, 1841.\n\n  \"The climate of New York is very disagreeable. It was so cold\n  yesterday that even with a woollen coverlid I had hard work to keep\n  warm through the night. It is not cold two days in succession. The\n  temperature varies even between morning and evening--that is, when it\n  is not continually raining. I believe after all that the climate of\n  St. Petersburg is the best. Oar summers at least are superb, and we\n  have long days; but here it is hardly light, this time of year, at\n  half after four in the morning, and by half after seven in the\n  evening we need lamps. In fact, you must go to a cold climate if you\n  want to keep warm and to see well!\n\n  \"I have had an agreeable surprise here, and you would never guess\n  what it is. It is to have _klioukva_ [Footnote 73 ] to eat nearly\n  every day; it is the first time I have seen them since I left\n  Russia. This is absurd, I know, but I cannot tell you what pleasure\n  it gave me.\n\n     [Footnote 73: Cranberries. ]\n\n  \"New York is an immense city; it has nearly 400,000 inhabitants, and\n  is as noisy as Paris. There are some 80,000 Catholics and only eight\n  churches, but religion is making progress. The next time I write to\n  you, it will be from our house of the Sacred {312} Heart. I am\n  burning with impatience to be in it; for though we are extremely\n  comfortable with the good Sisters of Charity, who are truly sisters\n  to us, we nevertheless long to be at home, where we can live in\n  conformity to our rule and customs.\n\n  \"What news of my brothers? How happy I shall be when you can tell me\n  that all is well with them! I would give a thousand lives for that.\n  The day and hour of God will come; let us be patient and pray. Say a\n  thousand affectionate things to them for me.\"\n\n\n  \"NEW YORK, Aug. 2, 1841.\n\n  \"I dare say you will be pleased to learn, dear mamma, that I have\n  just opened a little mission among the Indian savages in Missouri,\n  300 miles beyond St. Louis. Four of our community have been\n  established there. The population consists of 900 Indians, all\n  converted by the Jesuits. Thanks be to God, his kingdom is extending\n  itself, and what it loses on one side through the wiles of the\n  enemy, it gains on another.\n\n  \"I never let a month pass without writing to you, despite my many\n  occupations, because I know your anxiety; but do not distress\n  yourself. I am, if possible, but too well, in every respect. Our\n  houses here are like those in Europe; while within doors we never\n  could suspect that we had been transplanted into the new world (that\n  used to be). Don't be afraid about crocodiles. The country abounds\n  in them, as it does in snakes; but nobody thinks of them, and I have\n  never even seen one. Several, however, have been pointed out to me;\n  but as my eyes were cast down, I saw nothing.\"\n\n\n  \"NEW YORK, Sept. 13, 1841.\n\n  \"Our establishment is well under way; the house is finished, and we\n  have already twelve pupils. I have no doubt their number will\n  increase next month to twenty, and perhaps more, for there have been\n  already at least forty applications. Beside this, I have just\n  established a mission among the Potawatamie Indians in the Indian\n  Territory. There is a population of 3,000 Indians in the place where\n  our ladies are, 1,000 of whom are fervent Catholics; the others are\n  pagans, but to some extent civilized. We have there already a school\n  of fifty little girls, and a great many women come to learn from us\n  how to work.\n\n  \"I shall leave New York and pass the winter in Louisiana. I am quite\n  well--better than in Europe; but I am over-burdened with work. You\n  may readily believe it when I tell you that beside governing this\n  house, and my province, which comprises seven houses, I have had to\n  paint three large pictures for the chapel, and to finish them in six\n  weeks. At last, thank God, they are done, and our chapel is really\n  charming. What a pity that you cannot come and hear mass in it!\"\n\n\n  \"_En route_, between St. Michael and Grand Coteau, Dec. 4, 1841.\n\n  \"From a tavern on the banks of the Mississippi I write to wish you\n  and all the family a happy New Year! I pray devoutly that it may be\n  fertile in graces and divine blessings; everything else is\n  superfluous and valueless, and therefore unnecessary. I have\n  travelled a good deal since I wrote you from Harrisburg, Penn. I am\n  now going to our house at Grand Coteau, where I shall stay about\n  five weeks; then I shall spend an equal time at St. Michael. This\n  will bring me to the end of February; after which I shall start for\n  St. Louis, and visit our other establishments in Missouri, including\n  our new mission among the Potawatamie savages. Don't let the word\n  'savages' frighten you. They won't eat me; for they are more than\n  civilized. One thousand of them are Catholics, in the place to which\n  I have sent our sisters, who are only four in number, and have a\n  school which succeeds admirably. Our good savages are so fervent\n  that they come every day to church at half-past five in the morning.\n  They say their prayers, meditate for half an hour, and then hear\n  mass, {313} during which they sing canticles in their savage\n  fashion. After mass one of the Indians teaches the catechism to\n  about thirty little boys and a like number of girls; that over, they\n  go off to their respective employments, and about six in the evening\n  they come back to the church to say their prayers together. It was\n  the Jesuits who converted this tribe, and they are still doing a\n  vast amount of good out there. I shall probably go there in April;\n  it will be a three-weeks' journey. After that I mean to return to\n  New York, and probably about the 1st of June I shall sail for Havre.\n  So there you have my route; you see that I lead the life of a\n  regular courier more than ever. But fortunately, to one who has the\n  happiness of being a religious, all things are indifferent, provided\n  they are in accordance with holy obedience. I am very much afraid I\n  shall miss some of your letters, for they must follow me at a\n  gallopping pace or they will not overtake me.\n\n  \"Assure yourself, my dear mamma, that Russia is not the coldest\n  country in the world. The so-called burning Louisiana is colder.\n  From the 25th to the 30th of November we had hard frosts which\n  chilled us through and through. Perhaps I am mistaken, but I have a\n  pleasant recollection that in November at St. Petersburg we have\n  more rain than frost. In a word, now that I have tried, so to speak,\n  all climates, I am firmly persuaded that there is not a warm country\n  on the face of the earth, and I have resigned myself to look for\n  pleasant and eternal warmth only in the next world.\n\n  \"What news of my brothers and my sisters-in-law? Are they as great\n  vagabonds as I? Ah, if their hearts and minds could only be composed\n  and settled in God alone! It will come, some day or other; we must\n  hope, even against all hope. Our Lord is the master of hearts, and\n  he wills from all eternity that these hearts shall be wholly his. A\n  touch of his grace will soften those of my brothers; the day of\n  illusions will pass away, and we shall sing eternally with them that\n  God is good and his mercies are unspeakable. A thousand kisses, dear\n  mamma; bless your dutiful and grateful daughter\n    ELIZABETH.\"\n\n\nIn 1842 Madame Elizabeth went to Rome to give an account of her\nfruitful mission to her superiors. I have before me a last letter of\nhers, written to her mother, whom she had just lost at St. Petersburg\nalmost at the same hour in which her eldest brother died in Paris in\nthe bosom of the Catholic Church.\n\n  \"I confess to you,\" she says, \"that for several months past, I have\n  continually felt impelled to make a sacrifice of my life for my\n  brothers. Perhaps you will think this presumptuous on my part, so I\n  will explain myself. When I am making my preparation for death,\n  according to custom, the thought often comes into my mind to offer\n  the sacrifice of my life in advance, and to beseech our Lord to\n  accept it, as well as all the sufferings I may have to undergo,\n  especially at that terrible moment when the soul is separated from\n  the body, in order that I may obtain the conversion of my brothers.\n  I have asked permission to transfer to them all the merit which, by\n  God's grace, I may acquire through resignation or suffering--not only\n  in my last sickness, but even during the period of life which yet\n  remains to me--so that, accumulating no more merits by way of\n  satisfaction for my own sins, I may have, for my part, purgatory\n  without any alleviation; for in that place of propitiation and peace\n  I can no longer be of any use to them. I hope our Lord will grant my\n  request: all I know is that since that time my habitual gladness of\n  heart is increased a hundred-fold, and that I think of death with\n  unspeakable consolation.\"\n\nThis sacrifice, which reminds one of a similar incident in the life of\nSt. Vincent de Paul,  [Footnote 74] seems to have been {314} accepted\nby God. Returning to America in 1843, Madame Elizabeth had not time to\nenjoy the fruits of her labors. She was attacked at St. Michael by the\nyellow fever, and there fell asleep in the Lord on the feast of the\nImmaculate Conception, saying: \"I do not fear death; I long for it, if\nit is God's will.\"   [Footnote 75]\n\n  [Footnote 74: One day, moved with compassion at the state of an\n  unfortunate priest, a doctor of theology, who had lost his faith,\n  because he had ceased to study the science of divinity, St. Vincent\n  de Paul besought God to restore to this man the liveliness of his\n  faith, offering to take up himself, if necessary, the burden which\n  this poor brother was unable to bear. His prayer was heard at once,\n  and for four years this great saint remained as it were deprived of\n  that faith which was nevertheless his life. \"Do you know how he\n  passed through this trial?\" says an admirable master of the\n  spiritual life. \"He passed through it by becoming St. Vincent de\n  Paul; that is to say, all that this name signifies.\"--GRATRY, _Les\n  Sources_, p. 82.]\n\n  [Footnote 75: Writing from Lyons to Bishop Hughes in September,\n  1842, Madame Galitzm said: \"I avail myself of this opportunity to\n  write a few lines, although detained in my bed with the fever for\n  upward of three weeks. My health is in a poor state, and if I go on\n  as I did these two months, there is more prospect for me to go to\n  heaven next year than to return to America.\" The letter is in\n  English, which she wrote with apparent ease and considerable\n  approach to purity. ED. CATH. WORLD. ]\n\n\n\"What more glorious title of nobility,\" says Monseigneur the Duke\nd'Aumale, \"than to count saints and martyrs among one's ancestors?\" My\nobject is not so much to lay claim to this distinction, as to show,\nfor the honor of my country, the part which some of her children have\ntaken in the genesis of civilization and Catholicism in America. And\nthis ambition will perhaps seem excusable to those who admit that\nevery gift of God ought to be an object of our most religious care.\n\n----\n\nFrom The Month.\n\nTHE STOLEN SKETCH.\n\n\nI was sitting in the National Gallery, copying one of Murillo's\nglorious little beggar-boys. A tube of color fell from my box and\nrolled out upon the floor. A gentleman passing picked it up, and\nrestored it to me. I thanked him; and then he lingered some minutes by\nmy chair, watching my work and giving me some useful hints with the\nair of a person who thoroughly understands the art. I was striving to\nbe an artist, struggling through difficult uphill labor. I was not\nacquainted with any one of the profession. I had no one to give me\ncounsel. Those few friendly words of advice from a stranger fell on my\near like so many pearls, and I gathered them gratefully and stored\nthem fast in memory's richest jewel-casket.\n\nAfter that he seemed to take an interest in my progress, gave me\nvaluable lessons, and occasionally lent me colors or brushes. I\nwondered at myself for conversing with him fearlessly, for I was\nusually shy of strangers; but his manner was so quiet and easy, his\ntone so deferential, and he spoke so well on the subjects which\ninterested me most, that I forgot to be nervous, and listened and\nanswered with delight. He was copying a picture quite near to me, and\nI felt humbled when returning to my own effort after glancing at his\nmasterly work. But he cheered me with kind words of encouragement,\nwhich had a different effect upon me from my mother's fond admiration\nand Hessie's eloquent praises. It was so new to be told to expect\nsuccess by one whose words might be hailed as a prophecy. I grew to\nlook forward with increased interest to my long day's work in the\ngallery, and to think the place lonely when the kind artist {315} was\nnot there. Before my picture was finished I felt that I had gained a\nfriend.\n\nOne afternoon on leaving the gallery I was dismayed to find that it\nrained heavily. Quite unprepared for the wet, I yet shrank from the\nexpense of a cab. While standing irresolute upon the steps, I\npresently saw my artist friend at my side. He shot open his umbrella,\nand remarked on the unpleasant change in the weather. Perhaps he saw\nmy distress in my face, for he asked me how far I had to go. He also\nwas going to Kensington, he said, and begged permission to shelter me.\nI was obliged to accept his offer, for it was getting late. It was one\nof those evenings so dreaded by women who are forced to walk alone in\nLondon, when the light fades quickly out, and darkness drops suddenly\nupon the city.\n\nTying my thick veil over my face, and wondering at myself, I took his\narm and walked by his side through the twilight streets. I thought of\na time long ago when I used to get upon tiptoe to clasp my father's\narm, he laughing at my childish pride, while we sauntered up and down\nthe old garden at home, far away. Never, since that dear arm had been\ndraped in the shroud, had my hand rested on a man's sleeve. Memory\nkept vexing me sorely; and I, who seldom cried, swallowed tears behind\nmy veil and went along in silence. Still I liked the walk. As we\npassed on, sliding easily through those rough crowds which at other\ntimes I dreaded so much, I felt keenly how good it is to be taken care\nof. I seemed to be moving along in a dream. Even when it began to\nthunder, and lightning flashed across our eyes, the storm could not\nrouse me from my reverie. I felt no fear, stoutly protected as I was.\n\n\n\nII.\n\nWhen we reached my home, a violent gust of rain made my friend step\ninside the open doorway. I asked him to come into the parlor till the\nshower should lighten; and he did so. My mother sat by the fender in\nher armchair, the fire burned blithely, the tea-things were on the\ntable. The room looked very cosy after the stormy streets.\n\nMy mother received the unexpected visitor cordially. She had heard of\nhis kindness to me before. Hessie came in with the bread and butter,\nin her brown housefrock, with her bright curls a little tossed, and\nher blue eyes wondering wide at sight of a stranger. My mother asked\nhim to stay for tea, and I went upstairs to take off my bonnet.\n\nNever before had I felt so anxious to have my hair neat, and to find\nan immaculate collar and cuffs. My hands trembled as I tied my apron\nand drew on my slippers. This was always to me a pleasant hour, when\nmy return made Hessie and my mother glad, when I got refreshingly\npurified from the stains and odor of paint, and when we all had tea\ntogether. To-night a certain excitement mingled with my usual quiet\nthankful satisfaction.\n\nI hurried down to the parlor. Hessie was filling the cups, and Edward\nVance (our new friend) was talking pleasantly to my mother. He looked\nup as I came in, and when I reached my seat a sensation of gladness\nwas tingling from my heart's core to my finger-ends. My mother took my\nhand and fondled it in hers, and thanked him for his kindness to her\n\"good child.\" I felt that he could not but sympathize with my dear,\nsick, uncomplaining mother, and I somehow felt it sweet that she\nshould give me that little word of praise while speaking to him. After\ntea Hessie played us dreamy melodies from Mozart in the firelight, and\nI sat by mother's side tracing pictures in the burning coals.\n\nAfter that first evening Edward Vance often came to our house. At\nthese times our conversation was chiefly upon art-subjects. Hessie and\nmy mother were deeply interested in them for my sake; I, for their\nown, and for {316} the hopes which were entwined about them.\n\nI thought him an ambitious man, one whose whole soul was bent upon\nsuccess. I liked him for it. I thought, \"The noblest man is he who\nconcentrates all his powers upon one worthy aim, and wins a\nlaurel-crown from his fellow-men as the reward of his stead-fastness.\"\nYet he seemed often troubled when we asked him about his own works.\n\nA remark I overheard one day in the gallery puzzled me. Some one said,\n\"Vance? Oh, yes! he's a clever copyist--a determined plodder; but he\noriginates nothing.\" I don't know that I had any right to be\nindignant; but I was. That very evening I asked him to show us some of\nhis designs. His face got a dark troubled look upon it, and he evaded\nthe promise.\n\nMeantime he took a keen interest in my work. He taught me how to\nfinish my etchings more delicately, and his remarks on my compositions\nwere always most useful. His suggestions were peculiarly happy. The\ndrawing was ever enhanced in strength or beauty by his advice. His\nideas were just and true; his taste daintily critical. This convinced\nme that the remark overheard in the gallery was made either in\nignorance or ill-nature; or perhaps that there were more artists\ncalled Vance than one.\n\nHe came often now, very often. I ceased to feel angry at myself for\nstarting when his knock came. Many small things, too trivial to be\nmentioned, filled my life with a delicious calm, and breathed a\nrose-colored atmosphere around me. Everything in my inner and outer\nworld had undergone a change. I grew subject to idle fits at my work;\nbut then the suspended energy came back with such a rush of power,\nalmost like inspiration, that I accomplished far more than I ever had\ndone in the former quiet days when there was little sunshine to be\nhad, and I thought I had been born to live contentedly under a cloud\nall my life. Art seemed glorified a thousandfold in my eyes. The\ngalleries had looked to me before like dim treasuries of phantom\nbeauty, shadowy regions of romance and perfection, through the gates\nof which I might peer, though the key was not mine. Now they teemed\nwith a ripe meaning; the meaning which many glorious souls that once\nbreathed and wrought on this earth have woven into their creations;--a\nmeaning which unlocked for me the world of love, and gave me long\nbright visions of its beautiful vistas.\n\nMy mother looked from Edward Vance to me, and from me to him; and I\nknew her thought. It sweetened yet more that food of happiness on\nwhich I lived. Something said to me, \"You may meet his eye fearlessly,\nplace your hand frankly in his clasp, follow his feet gladly.\"\n\nOne evening after he had gone my mother stroked my head lying on her\nknee.\n\n\"You are very happy, Grace?\" she said.\n\n\"I am, mother,\" I whispered.\n\n\"Ah! your life is set to music, my love,\" she murmured; \"the old\ntune.\"\n\n\nIII.\n\nNever was one sister so proud of another as I of Hessie. She was only\nseventeen, three years younger than I, and I felt almost a motherly\nlove for her. She was slight and fair, and childish both in face and\ndisposition. I gloried in her beauty; her head reminded me of\nRaffaelle's angels. I thought that one day I should paint a picture\nwith Hessie for my model--a picture which should win the love and\nadmiration of all who gazed. One leisure time, in the midst of my\nhappiness, I suddenly resolved to commence the work. I chose a scene\nfrom our favorite poem of _Enid_--the part where the mother goes to\nher daughter's chamber, bearing Geraint's message, and finds\n\n{317}\n\n  'Half disarrayed, as to her rest, the girl,\n  Whom first she kissed on either cheek, and then\n  On either shining shoulder laid a hand,\n  And kept her off, and gazed into her face,\n  And told her all their converse in the hall,\n  Proving her heart. But never light and shade\n  Coursed one another more on open ground,\n  Beneath a troubled heaven, than red and pale\n  Across the face of Enid, hearing her;\n  While slowly falling, as a scale that falls\n  When weight is added only grain by grain,\n  Sank her sweet head upon her gentle breast.\n  Nor did she lift an eye, nor speak a word,\n  Rapt in the fear, and in the wonder of it.\"\n\nI made a sketch. Never had I been so happy in any attempt. My own\nmother, worn, sad, dignified--I gave her face and form to the poet's\nconception of Enid's mother. And Hessie made a very lovely Enid, with\nthe white drapery clinging to her round shoulders, and her golden head\ndrooped. I wrought out all the accessories with scrupulous care--the\nshadowy old tower-chamber; the open window, and the dim drifts of\ncloud beyond; the stirring tapestry; the lamp upon the table, flinging\nits yellow light on the rich faded dress of the mother and on Enid's\nglistening hair.\n\nI toiled at the sketch almost as if I had meant to make it a finished\npicture. It was large. I lavished labor upon it with a passionate\nenergy. I never wearied of conjuring up ideas of beauty, to lay them\nin luxurious profusion under my brush. I gloried in the work of my\nhands; and yet I felt impatient when others praised it. I burned to\nshow them what the finished picture should prove to be. This sketch,\nmuch as I prized it as an earnest of future success, I held only as\nthe shadow of that which must one day live in perfection on the\ncanvas. So I raved in my dreams.\n\nI had resolved not to speak of it to Edward Vance till I had completed\nthe sketch. I had Hessie's promise not to show it, not to tell him. I\nworked at it daily, not feeling that I worked, but only that I\nlived--only that my soul was accomplishing its appointed task of\ncreation; that it breathed in its element, revelled in its God-given\npower; that it was uttering that which should stir many other souls\nwith a myriad blessed inspirations, long after the worn body had\nrefused to shelter it longer, and eternity had summoned it from the\nworld of endeavor to that rest which, in the fever of its earnestness,\nit knew not yet how to appreciate.\n\nAnd Hessie stood for me, patient day after day.\n\n        \"But never light and shade\n  Coursed one another more on open ground,\n  Beneath a troubled heaven, than red and pale\n  Across the face of Enid, hearing her.\"\n\nI read aloud the passage again and again, that Hessie might feel it as\nwell as I. And truly, as I worked, the color on Hessie's cheek changed\nand changed under my eyes, till I forgot my purpose in wondering at\nher. One day, while I laid down my brush questioning her, she burst\ninto tears, and sobbed in childish impetuous distress. She would not\nanswer my anxious questions; she shunned my sympathy.\n\nBut that night, before I slept, I had my little sister's secret. She\nworshipped Edward Vance as simple childish natures worship heroes whom\nthey exalt to the rank of gods.\n\n\n\nIV.\n\nI had no more joy, no more heart to work. I laid my sketch in my\nportfolio, and said that it was finished, and that I should not\ncommence the picture at present. I could not work looking at Hessie's\nchanged face.\n\nWhat should I do? How should I restore happiness to my little sister?\nThis was the question which haunted me. Night or day it would give me\nno peace. I could not rest at home. I undertook a work once more at\nthe National Gallery, and stayed away all day. Often I sat for hours,\nand did nothing, thinking with painful pertinacity of that one\nquestion, \"How should I restore happiness to my little sister?\" Edward\nVance had never asked me to be his wife. Perhaps Hessie did not guess\nthat I had believed and hoped that he would. My mother--but then a\nmother's eye will see where others are blind.\n\nI sat in my deserted corner of the gallery, dropping tears into my\nlap, {318} and pondering my question. If my mother were dead, if I\nwere married, how lonely would not Hessie be in her misery! But if\nHessie were a happy wife, why, I could support myself and live in\npeace and independence, blessed with congenial occupation, solaced by\nthe love and joy of my art. \"Edward Vance must never ask me to be his\nwife.\" I repeated the words again and again, till the resolve burnt\nitself into my heart.\n\n\"I believe that he has loved me, that he loves me now; but I can so\nwrap myself up in my work, so seem to forget him in my art, that I\nshall cease to be loveable; and then he must, he will, perceive\nHessie's affection, and take her to his heart. He cannot help it,\nbeautiful and fresh and simple as she is.\" So I looked at her face as\nshe lay dreaming, sullen and grieved like a vexed child, even in\nsleep; and I vowed to carry out my strange resolve--to crush my love\nfor Edward, to destroy his for me, to link the two dear ones together,\nand go on my life alone, with no comforter but God and my toil. It was\nbut a short time since I had contemplated such a prospect with calm\ncontent; and why could I not forget all that had lately been, and\nreturn to my serene quiet? I said it should be so.\n\nBut in this I assumed a power over my own destiny and the destinies of\nothers which none but God had a right to sway, and he had entered it\nagainst me in the great book of good and evil. He had planted in my\nheart a natural affection, and laid at my feet a treasure of\nhappiness. I had stretched forth my hand to uproot that beautiful\nflower which should have borne me joy. I had turned aside from the\nrich gift, and thought to sweep it from my path. I had vowed to do\nevil, that good might come of it; and a mighty hand was already\nextended to punish my presumption.\n\n\n\nV.\n\nIn pursuance of my resolve, I absented myself from home as much as\npossible, leaving Hessie to entertain Edward Vance when he came. I did\nnot intend to quarrel with him--I could not have done that; but I\nwanted him to see more of Hessie and less of me. I had so much faith\nin her superior beauty and loveableness, that in the morbid frame of\nmind into which I had fretted myself, I believed my object would soon\nbe accomplished.\n\nI had succeeded in obtaining some tuitions; and between the time which\nthey occupied and the hours spent in the galleries, I was very little\nat home. My mother looked at me uneasily; but I smiled and deceived\nher with pleasant words. On coming home late, I sometimes heard that\nMr. Vance had been there; my mother always told me--Hessie never. I\nlonged to lay my head on my mother's knee and say, \"Did he ask for\nme?\" but the voice never would come.\n\nSometimes he came, as of old, to spend the whole evening. I would not\nnotice how he bore my altered ways. I sat all the time apart by the\nwindow, seemingly absorbed, puzzling out some difficult design, or\nworking up some careful etching. I did not ask his advice; I did not\nclaim his sympathy with my occupation. I sat wrapped up within myself,\ngrave and ungenial, while he lingered by Hessie at the piano, and\nasked her to play her soft airs again. And all the time I sat staring\nfrom my paper into the little patch of garden under the window,\ntwining my sorrow about the old solitary tree, building my unhealthy\npurpose into the dull wall of discolored brick, which shut us and our\ntroubles from our neighbors. I sat listening to the plaintive tunes\nwith which so many associations were inwoven, hearing Hessie's musical\nprattle--she was always gay while he stayed--and Edward's rich voice\nand pleasant laugh, contrasting with them as a deep wave breaks in\namong the echoes of a rippling creek. I sat and listened in silence,\nwhile all my life {319} rebelled in every vein and pulse at the false\npart I acted.\n\nBut it was too late now to retract. Though every day proved to me that\nthe task I had undertaken was too difficult, the step had been made\nand could not be retraced. I had lifted my burden, and I must bear it\neven to the end. I had no doubt from Hessie's shy happy face that at\nleast my object must be attained, whatever it might cost myself.\n\nI had never shown Edward Vance the dear sketch for which I had once so\nkeenly coveted his approval. So absorbed had I lately been in other\nthoughts, that it lay by forgotten. One evening my mother desired\nHessie to bring it out and show it to him. I seldom looked at him, but\nfor a moment I now glanced at his face. His eyelids flickered, and a\nstrange expression passed over his countenance. It was admiration,\nsurprise, and something else--I knew not what; something strange and\nunpleasant. The admiration, I jealously believed, was for Hessie's\nface in its downcast beauty. He gazed at it long, but put it aside\nwith a few cold words of commendation. I felt, with an intolerable\npang, that even so he had put me aside, and thought no more about me.\nBut at different times afterward I saw him glance to where the sketch\nlay.\n\nThat night my mother kept me with her after Hessie had gone to bed.\nShe questioned me anxiously; asked me if I had quarrelled with Edward\nVance. I said, \"No, mother, why should we quarrel?\"\n\nBy-and-by she said, \"Grace, can it be that he has not asked you to be\nhis wife?\"\n\nI answered quickly, \"Oh, no; it is Hessie whom he loves.\"\n\nMy mother looked puzzled and grieved, though I smiled in her face.\n\n\nVI.\n\nOne evening I came home and found Hessie dull and out of humor. My\nmother told me that Mr. Vance had called and mentioned that he was\nabout to leave town for some weeks. He had left his regards for me. I\nknew by Hessie's face that he had said nothing to make her happy\nduring his absence.\n\nSome evenings after, I found my mother sitting alone in the parlor,\nand on going upstairs Hessie curled up on our bed with her face in the\npillows. I so loved this little sister, that I could not endure to see\nher grieve without sharing her vexation. So I sat down by her side and\ndrew her head upon my shoulder. Sitting thus I coaxed her trouble from\nher. She had been out walking, and had met Edward Vance in Kensington.\nHe had seen her. He had pretended not to see her. He had avoided her.\n\nAt first this seemed so very unlikely, I jested with her, laughed at\nher, said she must have been mistaken. He had been delayed in London,\nand had not recognized her. But Hessie declared vehemently that he had\npurposely avoided her, and cried as though her heart would break.\n\nThen I said: \"Hessie, if he be a person to behave so, we need neither\nof us trouble ourselves about him. We lived before we knew him, and I\ndare say we shall get on very well now that he has gone.\" But Hessie\nonly stared and turned her face from me. She could not understand such\na view of the case. She thought I did not feel for her.\n\nAfter that the weeks passed drearily. We heard no news of Edward\nVance; but he had not left London, for I saw him once in the street. I\ntold Hessie, for I thought it right to rouse her a little rudely from\nthe despondent state into which she had fallen. I tried, gently but\ndecidedly, to make her understand that we had looked on as a steadfast\nfriend one who for some reason had been tired of us, and made an\nexcuse to drop our acquaintance; and that she would be doing serious\ninjury to her self-respect did she give him one more thought.\n\nFor myself I mused much upon his {320} strange conduct. It remained an\nenigma to me. A dull listlessness hung upon me, which was more\nterrible than physical pain. I spent the days at home, because I could\nnot leave Hessie to mope her life away, and damp my mother's spirits\nwith her sad face. So I had not even the obligation of going out to\ndaily work to stimulate me to healthful action. Now, indeed, was my\nlife weary and burdensome for one dark space, which, thank God and his\ngift of strong energy, was not of vast compass. So long as we\nsacrifice ourselves for those we love, whether in reality or in\nimagination, something sublime in the idea of our purpose--whether that\npurpose be mistaken or not--is yet a rock to lean on in the weakest\nhour of anguish. But when our eyes are opened, and we see that we have\nonly dragged others as well as ourselves deeper into misery, then\nindeed it is hard to \"suffer and be strong.\"\n\n\n\nVII.\n\nI had done nothing of late--nothing, although I had toiled\nincessantly; for I did not dignify with the name of \"work\" the\nsoulless mechanical drudgery which had kept me from home during the\npast months. My spirit had grovelled in a state of prostration,\nstripped of its wings and its wand of power. I now knelt and cried:\n\"Give, oh, give me back my creative impulse!\"\n\nI had never since looked at the beloved sketch. I longed now to draw\nit forth, and commence the picture while I stayed at home. But Hessie\nshuddered when I spoke of it, and looked so terrified, pleading that\nshe could not stand for me, that I gave up the idea for the time. I\nthought she had distressing memories connected with it, and I tried to\nrid her of them by speaking cheerfully of how successful I expected\nthe picture to be, and what pleasure we should have in working at it.\nI regretted bitterly that I had not commenced it long before, just\nafter I had made the sketch. I should then, perhaps, have had it\nfinished in time for the Exhibition drawing near. But that was\nimpossible now. I must wait in patience for another year. I did not at\nthat time even look between the leaves of the portfolio. Though I\nthought it right to talk briskly and cheerily about it for both our\nsakes, I had sickening associations with that work of my short,\nbrilliant day of happiness which Hessie, with all her childish\ngrieving, could hardly have comprehended.\n\nI allowed some time to pass, and at last I thought Hessie's whim had\nbeen indulged long enough. She must learn how to meet a shock and\noutlive it. I did not like the idea of having ghosts in the house--\nskeletons of unhealthy sentiment hidden away in unapproachable\nchambers. The shadow should be hunted from its corner into the light.\nThe sketch must grow into a picture, which a new aspect of things must\ndespoil of all stinging associations.\n\nI went to seek the sketch; but the sketch was gone. I sought it in\nevery part of the house; but to no purpose. It had quite disappeared.\nI mentioned the strange circumstance to my mother in Hessie's\npresence, and Hessie suddenly left the room. Then it struck me for the\nfirst time that my sister had either destroyed it (which I could\nhardly believe), or that some accident had happened to it in her\nhands. I observed that she never alluded to it, never inquired if I\nhad found it. I did not question her about it. Indeed I felt too much\nvexed to speak of it. I grieved more for its loss than I had believed\nit remained in me to grieve at any fresh trial. I loved it as we do\nlove the creation on which we have lavished the most precious riches\nof our mind, on which we have spent our toil, in which we have\nconquered difficulty, striven and achieved, struggled and triumphed. I\nshould have loved it all my life, hanging in my own chamber, if no one\nmight ever see it but myself; and borne my {321} sorrows with a better\nspirit, and tasted keener joys, while thanking God that I had been\npermitted to call it into existence. I gloried too much in the work of\nmy own hands, and I was punished.\n\nNever since have I tasted that vivid sense of delight in any\nachievement of my own. I have worked as zealously, and more\nsuccessfully, but it has been with a humbler heart. And looking\nbackward, I now believe that it was my inner happiness which haloed my\ncreation with a beauty that was half in my own glad eyes.\n\n\nVIII.\n\nThe succeeding few months were quiet, in the dullest sense of the\nword. Strive as I would, the sunshine had gone from our home. Hessie\nwas no longer the bright Hessie of old days.\n\nI tried to forget my dear sketch of \"Enid,\" and made several attempts\nto paint some other picture; but the Exhibition drew near, and I had\nnothing done.\n\nOne bright May morning I read in the newspaper an account of the\nAcademy Exhibition. The list of artists and their works stirred me\nwith a strange trouble. Tears rose in my eyes and blotted out the\nwords. I spread the paper on the table before me, pressed my temples\nwith my fingers, and travelled slowly through the criticisms and\npraises which occupied some columns. Why was there no work of mine\nmentioned there? Why had I lost my time so miserably during the past\nmonths? And questioning myself thus, I was conscious of two sins upon\nmy own head. The first was in glorying in and worshipping the creation\nof my own labor: the second, in exalting myself upon an imaginary\npinnacle of heroism by a fancied self-sacrifice, and having brought\ndeeper trouble upon the sister whose happiness I thought to compass. I\nwept the choking tears out of my throat and read on.\n\nSomething dazzled my eyes for a moment, and brought the blood to my\nforehead. A picture was mentioned with enthusiastic praise; a picture\nby E. Vance. It was called \"Enid,\" and was interpreted by a quotation\nfrom the poem; my passage--the subject of my lost sketch! A strange\nidea glanced across my mind. I half smiled at it and put it away. But\nall day I was restless; and that evening I proposed to Hessie an\nexpedition early next morning to see the pictures. My mother longed to\ngo with us; but as she could not, I promised to bring home a\ncatalogue, and describe each painting to the best of my memory.\n\nWith a feverish haste I sought out the picture of \"Enid\" by E. Vance.\nWas I dreaming? I passed my hand across my eyes as though some\nimaginary scene had come between me and the canvas. I did not feel\nHessie's hand dropping from my arm. I stood transfixed, grasping the\ncatalogue, and staring at the picture before me.\n\nIt was my \"Enid.\" My own in form, attitude, tint, and expression. It\nwas the \"Enid\" of my dreams realized; the \"Enid\" of my labor wrought\nto completion; the \"Enid\" of my lost sketch ennobled, perfected,\nglorified.\n\nMy work on which I had lavished my love and toil was there, and it was\nnot mine.\n\nAnother, a more skilled, a subtler hand, had brought out its meaning\nwith delicate appreciation, ripened its original purpose, enriched the\nsubdued depths of its coloring, etherealized the whole by the purest\nfinish. But that hand had robbed me, with cruel cowardly deliberation.\nIt had stolen my mellow fruit; taken my sweetest rose and planted it\nin a strange garden. I felt the wrong heavy and sore upon me. I\nresented it fiercely. I could not endure to look at the admiring faces\naround me. I turned away sick and trembling, while the blood pulsed\nindignantly in my throat and beat painfully at my temples.\n\nWhy should he who had already so troubled my life enjoy success and\ngold which should have been mine? {322} \"O mother, mother!\" I inwardly\ncried, \"how much would the price of this picture have done for you!\"\nAnd I thought of her yearnings for the scent of sea spray, and the\ntaste of sea breath, which the scanty purse forbade to be satisfied.\n\nI sought Hessie, and found her sitting alone and very pale. I said,\n\"Come home, Hessie;\" and she followed me, obeying like a child.\n\nWhen we reached our house, I was thankful that my mother slept upon\nthe couch, for I needed a time to calm myself, and think and pray. I\nthrew away my bonnet, and sat down by our bedside. Hessie came and\ncrept to my feet.\n\n\"Grace,\" she sobbed, \"can you ever forgive me? I gave him the sketch;\nbut I declare on my knees that I did not know why he wanted it.\"\n\nFor a moment I felt very harsh and stern, but my woman's nature\nconquered. What were all the pictures in the world compared with my\nlittle sister's grief? I bent over her, and wiped away the tears from\nher face.\n\n\"Don't say any more about it, Hessie,\" I said; \"I'd rather not hear\nany more. I know that you meant to do me no wrong. It is with him that\nthe injustice lies. But, Hessie, I will only ask you one question: Can\nyou--do you think you ought to waste a regret on such a person?\"\n\nHessie dried up her tears with more resolution than I had ever seen\nher show before, and answered:\n\n\"No, no, Grace dear; I am cured now.\"\n\nAnd then she put her arms about my neck, asking my pardon for all her\npast wilful conduct; and in one long embrace all the estrangement was\nswept away, and we two sisters were restored to one another. Hessie\nwent off to get tea ready with a cheerful step, and I to make the room\ncosy and kiss my mother awake, when the fire glowed and the pleasant\nmeal was on the table. We both sat by her with bright faces, and told\nher all about the pictures we could remember; all except one.\n\n\n\nIX.\n\n* * * * * *\n\nI have outlived all that trouble about the picture of \"Enid,\" and many\ntroubles beside; I have kissed my mother's dear face in her coffin. I\nhave won success, and I have won gold; and neither seem to me quite\nthe boons some hold them to be.\n\nHessie's early grief passed away like a spring shower. She is now a\nhappy wife; and I have at this moment by my side a little gold-haired\nfairy thing, her child. My dear sister's happiness is secured; her\nboat of life is safe at anchor. Edward Vance's shadow only crossed her\npath and passed away. She never met him since the old days; I but\nonce. His career has strangely disappointed his friends.\n\nFor me, my life is calm and contented. I think the healthy-spirited\nalways make for themselves happiness out of whatever materials may be\naround them; and I find rich un-wrought treasure on every side,\nwhithersoever I turn my eyes. My sister's glad smile is a blessing on\nmy life; and one rare joy is the bright-faced little lisper at my\nside, who peers over my shoulder with spiritual eyes, and asks\nmysterious questions about my work. And, standing always by my side\nlike an angel, bearing the wand of power and the wings of peace, I\nhave my friend, my beautiful art. She fills my days with purpose and\nmy nights with sweet rest and dreams. She places in my hands the means\nof doing good to others. While illumining my upward path, she seems to\nbeckon me higher and yet higher. Looking ever in her dear eyes, I\nbless God for the abundance of his gifts; and I muse serenely on the\ntime when she, the interpreter of the ideal here on earth, will\nconduct me to the gates of eternal beauty.\n\n------\n\n{323}\n\nFrom Once a Week.\n\nIMPERIAL AND ROYAL AUTHORS.\n\n\nBY S. BARING GOULD.\n\n\nIs the present Emperor of the French aware that in publishing his _Vie\nde Cesar_, he is treading a beaten path? that his predecessors on the\nFrench throne have, from a remote age, sought to unite the fame of\nauthorship with the glory of regal position? and is he aware of the\nfact, that their efforts in this quarter have not unfrequently been\naccounted dead failures? Julius Caesar has already been handled by one\nof them, and with poor success, for Louis XIV., at the age of sixteen,\nproduced a translation of the first book of the Commentaries of\nCaesar, under the title _Guerre des Suisses, traduite dupremier livre\ndes Commentaires de Jules Cesar, par Louis XI V., Dieu-Donne, roi de\nFrance et de Navarre_. This work, consisting of eighteen pages, was\nprinted at the royal press in folio, 1651.\n\nLouis XIV., however, was not the first French monarch to try his hand\nupon Julius Caesar; he had been preceded by Henry IV., who translated\nthe whole work, and did not give it up after the first book. Will the\npresent _Vie de Cesar_ reach a second volume? and, if it does, will it\nextend to a fourth? Those who know best the occupations of the\nimperial writer, say that it might be rash to feel sure beyond the\nfirst volume, or to calculate on more than a second. Let us see\nwhether there is much novelty in the circumstance of a monarch\nbecoming an author. We shall only look at the emperors of Rome and the\nkings of France. We know well enough that our own Alfred translated\nBoethius, Orosius, and Bede, and that Henry VIII. won the title of\n\"Defender of the Faith\" by his literary tilt with Luther; and that\nJames I. wrote against tobacco; and we are not disposed to revive the\ndispute about the Eikon Basilike.\n\nLet us then turn to the Roman emperors after Caesar, who was an author\nhimself, or neither Henry IV., nor Louis XIV., nor Louis Napoleon,\nwould have had much to say about him.\n\nAugustus, we are told by Suetonius, composed several works, which he\nwas wont to read to a circle of friends. Among these were,\n\"Exhortations to the Study of Philosophy,\" which we have no doubt the\nselect circle listened to with possible edification, and probable\nennui. He wrote likewise his own memoirs in thirteen books, but he\nnever finished them, or brought them beyond the Cantabrian war. His\nepigrams were written in his bath. He commenced a tragedy upon Ajax,\nbut, little pleased with it, he destroyed it; and in answer to the\nselect circle which asked, \"What had become of Ajax?\" \"Ah! poor\nfellow!\" replied the emperor, \"he fell upon the sponge, and perished;\"\nmeaning that he had washed the composition off his papyrus.\n\nTiberius, says the same author, composed a lyric poem on the death of\nJulius Caesar, but his style was full of affectation and conceits.\n\nClaudius suffered from the same passion for becoming an author, and\ncomposed several books of history, as well as memoirs of his own life,\nand these were read in public, for the friendly circle was too narrow\nfor his ambition.\n\nHe also invented three letters, which he supposed were necessary for\nthe perfection of the alphabet, and he wrote a pamphlet on the\nsubject, before assuming the purple. {324} After having become\nemperor, he enforced their use. He wrote also, in Greek, twenty books\nof Tyrian, and eight of Carthaginian history, which were read publicly\nevery year in Alexandria. Nero composed verses, Domitian a treatise on\nhair-dressing, Adrian his own life; Marcus Aurelius wrote his\ncommentaries, which are lost, and his moral reflections, and letters\nto Fronto, which are still extant. Julian the Apostate was the author\nof a curious work, the \"Misopogon, or Foe to the Beard,\" a clever and\nwitty squib directed against the effeminate inhabitants of Antioch. A\nfew passages from this work will not be out of place.\n\n\"I begin at my face, which is wanting in all that is agreeable, noble,\nand good; so I, morose and old, have tacked on to it this long beard,\nto punish it for its ugliness. In this dense beard perhaps little\ninsects stroll, as do beasts in a forest; I leave them alone. This\nbeard constrains me to eat and to drink with the utmost\ncircumspection, or I should infallibly make a mess of it. As good luck\nwill have it, I am not given to kissing, or to receiving kisses, for a\nbeard like mine is inconvenient on that head, as it does not allow the\ncontact of lips. .... You say that you could twine ropes out of my\nbeard; try it, only take care that the roughness of the hair does not\ntake the skin off your soft and delicate hands.\"\n\nValentinian I. is said to have emulated Ausonius in licentious poetry.\n\nOf the later emperors some have obtained celebrity by their writings.\n\nLeo VI., surnamed the Wise, was the author of a very interesting and\nprecious treatise on the art of warfare. He also composed some\nprophecies, sufficiently obscure to make the Greeks in after ages find\nthem apply to various events as they occurred. Constantine VI. was\nalso an eminent contributor to literature. This prince had been early\nkept from public affairs by his uncle Alexander, and his mother Zoe,\nso that he had sought pleasure and employment in study. After having\ncollected an enormous library, which he threw open to the public, he\nemployed both himself and numerous scribes in making collections of\nextracts from the principal classic authors. The most important of\nthese, and that to which he attached his own name, consisted of a mass\nof choice fragments, gathered into fifty-three books. This vast work\nis lost, together with many of the books cited, except only two parts:\none treating of embassies, the other of virtues and vices. Constantine\nalso wrote a curious geographical account of the provinces of the\nGreek empire, a treatise on the administration of government, and\nanother on the ceremonies observed in the Byzantine Court; a life of\nthe Emperor Basil, an account of the famous image of Edessa, and a few\nother trifles.\n\nLet us now turn to the French monarchs, and we shall find that they\nbegan early to take the pen in hand; and, unfortunately, the very\nfirst royal literary work in France was a blunder. King Chilperic\nwrote a treatise on the Trinity, under the impression that he had a\ngift for theological definition, and he signalized his error by\nasserting that the word person should not be used in speaking of the\nthree members of the Trinity. Having burned his fingers by touching\ntheology, the semi-barbarian king attempted poetry with like success.\nBut his pretensions did not end there. He added the Greek letter u to\nthe Latin alphabet, and three characters of his own invention, so as\nto introduce into that language certain Teutonic sounds. \"He sent\norders,\" writes Gregory of Tours, \"into every city of his kingdom,\nthat all children should be taught in this manner, and that ancient\nwritten books should be effaced, and rewritten in the new style.\"\n\nThe great and wise Charlemagne, perceiving the glories of his native\ntongue, and the beauties of his national poetry, carefully collected\nthe Teutonic national poems, and commenced a grammar of the language.\nRobert II. {325} was not only a scholar, but a musician; he composed\nsome of the Latin hymns still in use in the Church, with their\naccompanying melodies. His queen, Constantia, seeing him engaged on\nhis sacred poetry, one day, in joke, asked him to write something in\nmemory of her. He at once composed the hymn, _O constantia martyrum_,\nwhich the queen, not understanding Latin, but hearing her name\noccurring in the first line, supposed to be a poem in her honor.\n\nLouis XI. is supposed to have contributed to the _Cent Nouvelles\nnouvelles_, which collection, however much credit it may do him in a\nliterary point of view, is inexcusably wanting in decency.\n\nA volume of poems by Francis I. exists in MS. in the Imperial Library.\nIt contains, among other interesting matter, a prose letter, and\nanother in verse, written from his prison to one of his mistresses.\nThe king was bad in his orthography, as may be judged from the\nfollowing portion of a letter written by him to his mother at the\nraising of the siege of Mezieres:--\n\n_\"Madame, tout asetheure (a cette heure), yn sy (ainsi) que je me\nvouloys mettre o lyt (au lit), est aryce (arrive) Laval, lequel m'a\naporte la sertenete (certitude) deu levemant du syege de Mesyeres.\"_\n\nI presume a schoolboy would be whipped if he wrote as bad a letter as\nthis king.\n\nLouis XIII. had, says his epitaph, \"a hundred virtues of a valet, not\none of a master;\" but he could write sonnets, and compose the music\nfor them. The best, perhaps, is that composed on, or for, Madame de\nHautefort,--\n\n      \"Tu crois, bean soleil!\n  Qu'a ton eclat rien n'est pareil;\n      Mais quoi! tu palis\n      Aupres d'Amaryllis,\"\n\n--set to music which is charming. But Louis XIII. was more of a barber,\ngardener, pastrycook, and farmer, than an author.\n\nLouis XIV., beside his translation of Caesar's Commentaries, Book I.,\ncomposed _Memoires historiques, politiques, et militaires;_ but his\nwritings were not remarkable, as his education had been so neglected\nby his mother and Mazarin, that, according to La Porte, his valet, he\nwas not allowed to have the history of France read to him, even for\nthe sake of sending him to sleep.\n\nLouis XV. wrote a little treatise on the course of the rivers of\nEurope, and printed it with his own hands. It consisted of sixty-two\npages, and contained nothing which was not perfectly well known\nbefore, as, for instance, that the Thames ran into the North Sea or\nGerman Ocean, and that the Rhone actually fell into the Mediterranean.\nIn 1766 appeared a description of the forest of Compiegne, and guide\nto the forest, by Louis, afterward Louis XVI., composed by the\nunfortunate prince at the age of twelve.\n\nLouis XVIII. wrote an account of a journey from Paris to Coblentz,\nwhich was published in 1823.\n\nThis work was full of inaccuracies and mistakes, so that it became the\nprey of critics.\n\nFinally, Napoleon I. wrote much, but not in the way of bookmaking,\nthough he began a history of Corsica, which remained in MS. His\nwritings have been collected and published in five volumes, under the\ntitle, _OEuvres de Napoleon Bonaparte._ 8vo. 1821.\n\n----\n\n{326}\n\nFrom The Lamp.\n\nHISTORY OF A BLIND DEAF-MUTE.\n\n\nTRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF M. CARTON,\nHEAD OF THE INSTITUTE FOR THE\nDEAF AND DUMB AT BRUGES, BY CECILIA CADDELL.\n\n\nAnna, the deaf, dumb, and blind girl, whose story I am about to\nrelate, was born at Ostend, of poor but honest parents, in the year\n1818. She was blind from her birth, but during the first years of her\ninfancy appeared to have some sense of hearing. This, unfortunately,\nsoon vanished, leaving her blind, deaf, and dumb; one of the three\npersons thus trebly afflicted existing at this moment in the province\nof West Flanders. Losing both her parents while still an infant, she\nwas brought up by her grandmother, who received aid for the purpose\nfrom the \"Commission des Hospices\" of the town. To the good offices of\nthese gentlemen she is likewise indebted for the education she has\nsince received; for when I first proposed taking her into my\nestablishment, both her aunt and her grandmother were most unwilling\nto part with her, fearing, very naturally, that strangers would never\ngive her the affectionate care which, in her helpless condition, she\nso abundantly required; they only yielded at last to the\nrepresentations and entreaties of their charitable friends. Their love\nfor this poor child, who could never have been anything but an anxiety\nand expense to them, was indeed most touching; and they wept bitterly\nwhen they parted from her; declaring, in their simple but expressive\nlanguage, that I was taking away from them the blessing of their\nhouse. They were soon satisfied, however, that they had acted for the\nbest; and having once convinced themselves of her improvement both in\nhealth and happiness, they never, to the day of their death, ceased to\nrejoice at the decision which they had come to in her regard. When\nAnna was first entrusted to my care, her relations, and every one else\nwho knew her, supposed her to be an idiot, and this had been their\nprincipal reason for opposing me in my first efforts for her\ninstruction. Poor themselves and ignorant, and earning their bread by\nthe labor of their own hands, they had had neither time nor thought to\nbestow on the development of this intellect, closed as it was against\nall the more ordinary methods of instruction; and the child had been\nleft, of necessity, to her own resources for occupation and amusement.\nFew, indeed, and trivial these resources were! Blind, and fearing even\nto move without assistance; deaf, and incapable of hearing a syllable\nof the conversation that was going on around her; dumb, and unable to\ncommunicate her most pressing wants save by that unearthly and\nunwilling cry which the deaf mutes are compelled to resort to, like\nanimals in the moment of their utmost need,--the child had remained day\nafter day seated in the same corner of the cottage. Knowing nothing of\nthe bright sunshine, or the green field, or the sweet smell of\nflowers; nothing of the sports of childhood or its tasks; night the\nsame as day in her estimation, excepting for its sleep; winter only\ndistinguished from summer by the sharper air without, and the\nincreased heat of the wood-piled fire within--no wonder that she\nseemed an idiot. Her only amusement--the only thing approaching to\noccupation which her friends had been able to procure her--consisted,\nat first, in a string of glass beads. These Anna amused herself by\ntaking off and {327} putting on again at least twenty times a day; and\nthis and the poor meals, which she seemed to take without appetite or\npleasure, were the only breaks in the twelve long hours of her\nsolitary days. Some charitable person at last made her a present of a\ndoll; and with this doll she played, after her own fashion, until she\nwas twenty years of age. She never, in fact, lost her taste for it\nuntil she had succeeded in learning to knit; then it was cast from her\nwith disdain, and she never afterward recurred to it for amusement.\n\nNotwithstanding her enforced inaction, she managed to tear her clothes\ncontinually. Perhaps, poor child, she found some relief from the\ntedium of her daily life in this semblance of an occupation, for she\nhad an insuperable objection to changing her tattered garments; and it\nwas a long time before we could induce her to do so with a good grace.\nOnce, however, accustomed to the change, she seemed to take pleasure\nin it, delighted in new clothes, and used often to come of her own\naccord to beg that the old ones might be washed. There was nothing\nvery prepossessing in her external appearance; at first it was almost\nrepulsive. She was of the ordinary height of a girl of her age; but\nher hands were small and thin, from want of use, as those of a little\nchild. When she first came to my establishment her head was bowed down\non her neck from weakness; she had sore eyes; her face was covered\nwith a cutaneous eruption; she walked with difficulty, and appeared to\ndislike the exertion excessively. Afterward, care and good feeding\nimproved her very much. She acquired strength; and the skin disease\nwhich had been her chief disfigurement entirely disappeared. I have no\nintention of describing all that she did and said (by signs), or all\nthe pains and trouble that she cost us in the early months of her\nresidence among us. During that time, however, I kept a journal of her\nconduct; which, as a history of her mental development, is so curious,\nthat I venture to lay some extracts from it before my readers, the\nremainder being reserved for future publication.\n\nI must begin by explaining my ideas as to the proper method to be\npursued in instructing these unfortunates. I try, in the first place,\nto put myself in the place of a person deaf, blind, and dumb; and then\nask myself, \"What do I know, what can I know, in such a state?\" In my\nfirst course of instruction, therefore, I make it a rule never to give\nthe word until certain that the thing which that word expresses has\nbeen clearly understood. In the case of Anna there was an additional\ndifficulty. Not only had she no' preconceived idea of the use or\nnature of a word, but her blindness prevented her seeing the\nconnection between it and the substance it was intended to represent.\nNor would it be sufficient for her full instruction that she should\nlearn by the touch to distinguish one word from another; she would\nalso require to be taught the elements of which words were themselves\ncomposed. If I began by giving her words alone, she would never have\nlearned to distinguish letters. If, on the other hand, I commenced\nwith letters, without attaching any especial idea to them, she would\nhave been disgusted, and have left off at the second lesson. A letter,\nin fact, would have been nothing but a letter to her; for there would\nbe no means of making her comprehend that it was but the first step\ntoward the knowledge I was desirous of imparting. I resolved,\ntherefore, neither to try letters by themselves nor whole words in the\nfirst lesson which I gave her. It was in the Flemish language, of\ncourse; but the method I pursued would be equally applicable to any\nother.\n\nIn order to give, at one and the same moment, the double idea of a\nletter and a word, I chose a letter which had some resemblance to the\nform I intended it to express, and gave it the significance of an\nentire word. For {328} this purpose I fixed upon the letter _O_, and\nmade her understand that this letter signified mouth, in fact it is\none of the four letters which express the word in Flemish--_mond_,\nmouth. Afterward I took a double _o(00)_, which are the first letters\nin the Flemish, _oog_, eye. One O, then, signified mouth; two meant\neyes. The lesson was easy; she caught it in a moment; and thus, with\ntwo words and two ideas attached to them, her dictionary was\ncommenced. It was quite possible, however, that as these letters\nrepresented, to a certain extent, the objects of which they were the\nexpression, she might fall into the error of supposing that all\nletters did the same; and in order to prevent this mistake, I\nimmediately added the letter _R_ to her collection.\n\nThis not only became a new acquisition for her dictionary, but, by\nforming with the two previous letters the Flemish word _oor_ (ear), it\nbecame an easy transition between the natural expression dependent on\nthe form, which she had already acquired, and the arbitrary, dependent\non the spelling, which it was my object she should acquire. Proceeding\non this principle, and always taking care to commence the lesson from\na point already known, we lessened the difficulties, and made rapid\nprogress. A cap, an apron, a ribbon, or gown, always interest the sex;\nand, like any other girl, Anna valued them extremely. I took care\nlikewise often to choose words expressive of anything she liked,\nespecially to eat; and it was by the proper use of these words that\nshe first convinced me how completely she had seized upon the meaning\nof my lessons. Whenever she was desirous of obtaining any little\ndainty, she used to point to the word in her collection; and of course\nit was given to her immediately. Poor child! her joy, when she found\nshe could really make herself understood, was very touching; and her\nsurprise was nearly equal to her joy.\n\nA person born blind does not naturally make signs; for a sign\naddresses itself to the sight, and of the faculty of sight they have\nno conception. A sign in relief, however--a sign which they can\ndistinguish by the touch, and by means of which they can communicate\nwith their fellow-men--must come to these benighted intelligences like\na message of mercy from God himself. We always gave Anna the object,\nin order to make her comprehend the word--the substance, to explain\nthe substantive. One day, not long after her arrival, her instructress\ngave her the word _egg_, placing one at the same time before her; and\nAnna immediately made signs that she wished to eat it. She offered me\nat the same moment a small piece of money, which some one had given\nher, as if for the purpose of buying the food. The bargain was made at\nonce; and she ate the egg, while I pocketed the money. I quite\nexpected she would try this over again, for she had some money, and\nwas fond of eggs. The very next day, in fact, she searched the word\nout in her vocabulary, and brought it to her instructress, with an air\nthat quite explained her meaning. I placed an egg before her; she\ntouched it--touched the word; coaxed and patted the egg; and at last\nburst into a fit of laughter, caused, no doubt, by pleasant\nastonishment at having so easily obtained her wish. I hoped and\nexpected that she would propose to purchase, for I was anxious to find\nout if she had any real notion of the use of money. My hopes were\nfulfilled, for she offered at once her price of two centimes, with the\nevident intention of making a purchase. Much to her astonishment,\nhowever, this time I took both the money and the egg. At first she\nlaughed, evidently thinking that I was only joking. I gave her time to\ncomprehend that I was serious, and that, having taken both, I meant to\nkeep them. She acquiesced at last with regard to the egg; it was mine,\nand I had a right to keep it if I liked; but she was indignant that I\ndid not return the money. She asked for it in {329} every way she was\ncapable of asking, and grew at last both red and angry at the delay. I\nhad tried her sufficiently. It was high time to prove myself an honest\nman; so I gave her back her money, and she restored me to her good\ngraces. I was happy indeed to find so clear a sense of justice, so\ncomplete a knowledge of the value of \"mine\" and \"thine,\" in a creature\nso defective in her animal organization.\n\nOnce in possession of a little stock of words, Anna was never weary of\naugmenting it, and she soon found out a way of compelling us, almost,\nto satisfy her wish. She would take the hand of her mistress, and with\nit imitate the action of writing, by making points upon the paper with\nthe finger. If her wishes were complied with, she was delighted; but\nif, to try her, the mistress pretended to hesitate, then Anna took the\nmatter into her own hands, and positively refused to do anything else.\nEvery other employment suggested to her would be indignantly rejected,\nand she would persist in asking over and over again for the word she\nwanted, never resting or letting any one else rest until she got it.\nThe nuns, of course, always ended by complying with her desires; and\nit would be hard to say which felt most delight,--the blind girl, who\nhad succeeded in adding to her small stock of knowledge, or the\nreligious, who by the aid of Providence had enabled her to do so.\n\nA mother who hears for the first time the low stammering of her child\ncan alone form a conception of all one feels at such a moment, for God\nis very good; and when he imposed upon society the task of instructing\nthe ignorant, he attached an ineffable delight to the accomplishment\nof that duty.\n\nWhen Anna knew how to read and understand about forty substantives, I\ntaught her the manual alphabet, and from that moment I could test her\nknowledge with unfailing exactitude. She first read the word with her\nfingers, and then repeated it by means of the dactology; it was a\nlesson in reading and writing both. She was soon sufficiently advanced\nto venture upon verbs. I began with the imperative mood; not only\nbecause it is the simplest form of the verb, but also because I myself\nwould have to use it in giving her the lesson. She seized with\nwonderful facility upon the relative positions of the substantive and\nverb.\n\nI always made her perform the action signified by the verb which she\nhad learned, and thus the lesson became quite an amusement to her.\nHowever silly in appearance might be the association between the verb\nand substantive, she never failed to apprehend it; and when told to do\nanything ridiculous or out of the common way, she enjoyed the fun, and\nnever failed to execute the commission to the best of her ability. If\nI told her to walk upon the table, she would take off her shoes, climb\nup, and walk cautiously upon it; if told to eat the chair, after a\nminute's hesitation as to the best manner of complying with the order,\nshe would take it up and pretend to devour it. One day she was\nterribly embarrassed by some one writing the following phrase: \"Throw\nyour head on the floor.\" She read the sentence over and over again to\nmake sure that she was not mistaken, laughed very much, and then\nsuddenly growing serious, shook her head, as much as to say, the thing\nwas absolutely impossible. At last, however, and as if to finish the\nbusiness, she took her head in both her hands, and made a gesture, as\nif to fling it on the floor. Having done this, she evidently felt that\nnothing more could be expected from her, and showed herself both\npleased and proud at having understood the phrase, and found so easy a\nmethod of getting out of the difficulty.\n\nShe distinguished very readily between the verbs \"to lay down\" and \"to\nthrow down,\" clearly comprehending that the one action was to be {330}\ndone with vivacity, the other with caution; and it was curious to\nwatch her perplexity when commanded to throw down anything liable to\nbe broken. She knew well what would be the consequence of the command,\nand you could see the questioning that went on in her own mind as to\nhow it could be accomplished with least damage to the article in\nquestion. She would begin by feeling all along the ground, and trying\nto form an exact idea of the distance it would have to fall; and then\nat last she would throw it down with a mixture of care and yet of\ncaution, which showed she was perfectly aware of the mischief she was\ndoing.\n\nThe moment she thoroughly understood the imperative, we had only to\nadd her name or that of one of the sisters to produce the indicative;\nand then, by changing Anna into I, she passed easily to the pronouns,\nas thus: \"Strike the table;\" \"Anna strikes the table;\" \"I strike the\ntable.\" I had at first omitted the article; but I soon perceived my\nmistake. We have no means of teaching a deaf-mute the reason for\npreceding a substantive by an article; and still more impossible would\nit be to give any plausible explanation of the distinction between the\ngenders. Habit does this for each of us when we learn our mother\ntongue; and habit and frequent repetition did it so well for Anna,\nthat now she rarely, if ever, makes any mistake.\n\nWhen she had advanced thus far, I made her observe that by adding the\nletters _en_, which constitute our Flemish plural, several of the same\nsort of substantives were intended to be expressed; and passing from\nthis to numbers, I gave her a lesson in numeration. She readily seized\nupon both ideas; and constant practice soon made her perfect in their\napplication.\n\nVerbs such as _jeter_, to throw down, _poser_, to lay down, naturally\nintroduced the use of prepositions to express the mode in which the\nverb acts upon the substantive. This enabled me to make various\ncombinations with words known to her already; and I found it of great\nuse to place the same word in such different positions in a phrase as\nto alter entirely, or at least modify, the meaning.\n\nThe last lesson which she received was to make use of and understand\nthe meaning of the pronouns \"my,\" \"your,\" \"our,\" and the conjunction\n\"and.\" We have also made her comprehend the use and meaning of\nadjectives expressive of forms, as \"square,\" \"round,\" etc., as well as\nthe physical and mental state of being implied in the words \"good,\"\n\"bad,\" \"sick,\" \"well,\" etc. She makes such phrases as the following,\nand reads them easily when they are given to her in writing: \"Give me\nmy knitting;\" \"My work is on the table;\" \"My apron is square.\"\n\nOne last observation I must make about the pronouns. The third person\nsingular or plural would have been difficult to Anna, since, being\nblind, she could not have distinguished whether the action spoken of\nhad been done by one person or by several; by \"him,\" in fact, or by\n\"they.\" The pronouns which she can most readily comprehend are the\nfirst and second; and to these I generally confine her. For \"he\" or\n\"they\" I have substituted \"one:\" \"One strikes the table.\"\n\nAnna might have been taught the others; but she would often probably\nhave been mistaken in their application, and would perhaps have ended\nby supposing that there was no positive rule in their regard, and that\nthey might be used as it were at random.\n\nPeople only learn willingly what they can clearly comprehend; and if\nchildren dislike instruction, the fault is almost always with the\nmaster. If the latter would but bring his intelligence to the level of\nhis pupils, he might be almost certain of their attention.\n\nTo sum up the whole, I will give the order in which I taught her the\ndifferent parts of speech necessary for the knowledge of a language.\nThe substantive, because, being itself an object, it falls more\nimmediately beneath the {331} recognition of the senses; the verb,\nbecause by the verb alone we speak, and without it there could be no\nlanguage; the preposition, because it indicates the nature of the\naction expressed by the verb; and finally, the adjective and the\nadverb. I had many reasons for keeping back these two last to the end.\nNeither of them is essential to a phrase which can be complete without\nthem. Anna would have been much retarded in her progress if I had\nstopped to teach her the attributes of words, when words themselves\nwere what she wanted. She could learn language only by use and habit;\nand it was of the highest importance that she should acquire that\nhabit as speedily as possible. I threw aside, therefore, without\nhesitation, all that could embarrass her progress, and confined\nmyself, in the first instance, to such things as it was absolutely\nessential she should know, in order to be able to converse at all. It\nmay be asked why I taught her to make phrases by means of whole words,\ninstead of giving her the letters of the alphabet and teaching her to\nmake words themselves. The result of the mode I did adopt must be my\nanswer. Anna has already a clear idea of language; all her\nacquisitions in the way of words are classed in her mind as in a\ndictionary, and ready to come forth at a moment's notice. The reason\nfor this rapid progress is very plain. It is far less troublesome to\ntake a whole word, and put it in the grammatical order it ought to\noccupy, than to be obliged to make the word itself by means of\nseparate letters. She had need of all her attention to learn the\nelements of a phrase; and it would have been imprudent to weaken that\nattention by directing it also to learn the elements of words. I\ndivided difficulties in order to overcome them: this was the secret of\nmy method, and the cause of its success. My lessons were also almost\nor entirely an amusement to her; and sometimes I composed a phrase\nwhich she first read, and acted afterward. Sometimes it was I who\nperformed the action, while she gave me an account of what I had done\nin writing.\n\nIt was a lesson at once in reading and in writing, in hearing and in\nspeaking; and the moment we had got thus far, communication by means\nof language was established between us. I had given my lessons at\nfirst by words or phrases written in a book; but now, to test more\nperfectly the knowledge she had acquired, and to prevent her reading\nbecoming a mere matter of form and guess-work, I cut all her phrases\ninto words, gummed them upon cardboard, and threw them pell-mell into\na box, from which she had to take out every separate word that she\nrequired for a phrase. This new exercise vexed her very much at first;\nbut if it was tedious, it was also sure. By degrees she became\naccustomed to it, and at last seemed to prefer it to the book,\nprobably because it admitted of greater facilities for varying her\nphrases. Nevertheless it was troublesome work; and I was curious to\nsee if Anna would seek, of her own accord, to arrange her words in\nsuch a way as to avoid the trouble of hunting through the whole mass\nfor every separate one she wanted. It seemed not unlikely, for she was\nvery ingenious; and so, in fact, it happened.\n\nFrom time to time I observed that she put aside certain words, and\nkept them separate from the others; and it was impossible to mistake\nher exultation when these selected words were called for in her\nlesson. Of course I saw them as she put them by; and, in order to\nencourage her, I managed to introduce them pretty often into our\nconversations. Acting also upon this hint, I had a drawer divided into\nsmall compartments placed in the table at which she took her lessons.\nEach compartment was intended for a separate class of words, but she\nwas permitted to arrange them according to her own ideas; and the\nmoment a word had been examined and understood, she placed it in the\ncompartment to which she imagined it belonged. Nouns, pronouns, verbs,\narticles--each {332} had their separate partition; but I observed, with\ndelight, that when I gave her the verb \"to drink,\" instead of placing\nit with the other verbs, she put it at once into the compartment she\nhad destined for liquids. Having remarked that it was always employed\nwith these substantives, it naturally struck her that its proper place\nwould be among them. To casual observers this may seem but a trifling\nthing to mention, but it was an act of reasoning; and in their\nhalf-mutilated natures the whole power of instruction hangs so\nentirely on the capacity for passing by an act of reason from one fact\nto another, from the known to that which is still unknown, that every\nindication which a pupil gives of possessing such capacity is hailed\nwith delight by her teacher as an assurance of further progress.\nWithout it he knows that instruction would be impossible.\n\n\n\nWhen Anna was first introduced into my establishment, she evidently\ncomprehended that she had fallen among strangers. She brought us her\npoor playthings, and insisted on our examining them attentively, for\nshe was a baby still; a baby of twenty years of age indeed, but as\nanxious to be caressed and as requiring of notice as a child of two\nyears old. When led in the evening to her bedside, she immediately\nbegan to undress herself, and the next morning rose gaily, showing\nherself much pleased with the good bed in which she had passed the\nnight. She made a little inclination of the head to the sister who\nwaited on her, as if to salute her. At breakfast we observed that she\nate with more cleanliness and propriety than is usual among the blind.\n\nHer first regular lesson was to knit; and we found it far less\ndifficult to teach her the stitch itself than to habituate her to work\nsteadily for a long time together. She had evidently no idea of making\nit the regular occupation of the day. She would begin by knitting a\nlittle; then she would undo or tear up all that was already done; and\nthis would happen regularly over and over again at least twenty times\na day. It was weary work at first; but after a time we managed to turn\nthis dislike for continuous occupation into a means of teaching her\nmore important things. The moment she threw aside her work, we took it\nup, and pretended to insist upon her continuing it; and then at last,\nwhen we saw that she was quite vexed and wearied out by our\nsolicitations, we used to offer her her letters. She would take them,\nand, evidently to avoid further worry, begin to study them; but the\nletters, like the knitting, were soon flung aside, and then the work\nonce more was put into her hands. In this way, and while she fancied\nshe was only indulging in her own caprices, we were advancing steadily\ntoward our object--training her to occupation, and giving her the\nmeans of future communication with her fellow-creatures. We also\ndiscovered that it was quite possible to pique her out of her idle\nhabits; for one day in the earlier period of her education, when she\nhappened to be more than usually idle and inattentive, her mistress\nled her toward a class of children busily employed in working, and\nsaid to her by signs, \"These little children work; and you, who are\ntwice their size, do you wish to sit there doing nothing?\" From that\ntime we had less trouble with her; and once she had learned to knit\nwell and easily, this kind of work seemed to become a positive\nnecessity to her. She delighted in feeling with her fingers the\nprogress she was making, and the needles were scarcely ever out of her\nhands. When Sunday came, she asked as usual for her knitting, and was\nterribly disappointed when she found that it was withheld. I took the\nopportunity to give her an idea of time--a very important point in her\nfuture education; so I said to her, \"You shall not knit _to-day;_ but\nafter having slept once more--_to-morrow_ in fact--the needles shall\nbe given to you again.\" I foresaw this to be an explanation that would\nneed repeating; and {333} accordingly, the very next Sunday, she asked\nagain for her knitting, and was again refused. She was vexed at first,\nbut grew calm directly I had assured her she should have it \"on the\nmorrow.\"\n\nMany weeks afterward, and when she seemed quite to understand that\nwork on this day was forbidden, she came with a very serious\ncountenance and demanded her knitting; then bursting into a fit of\nlaughing, made signs that she knew she was not to knit on that day,\nbut that to-morrow she should have her work again. She obtained a\nknowledge of the past and future much sooner than she did of the\npresent, using the signs expressive of the two first long before she\nmade an attempt even at the latter.\n\nIt was a matter of great importance that she should understand them\nall; therefore I not only introduced them over and over again in our\nconversations, in order to render her familiar with them, but I\nwatched her carefully to see that she made a right use of them in her\ncommunications with her companions. A circumstance at last occurred\nwhich satisfied me that she was perfect in the lesson. On the feast of\nSt. Aloysius Gonzaga she went with the other children to a church\nwhere the festival was being celebrated. On her return she expressed\nher gratitude for the pleasure she had received, and the next morning\nI observed that she told every one she met that \"yesterday she had\nbeen to such a church;\" while the day afterward I perceived that in\ntelling the same story she made the sign of \"yesterday\" twice over--a\nproof how perfectly she comprehended the nature and division of time.\n\nFor a long time after she began to reside with us, she never mentioned\neither her grandmother or aunt, probably because she was so completely\nabsorbed by the lessons of her new existence as to have no time to\nthink of them. Gradually, however, they came back to her recollection,\nand then she spoke of them with gratitude and affection. She began\nalso to compare her present state with her past, evidently considering\nthe change for the better in her physical and mental being as due to\nthe care that has been bestowed on her here. She has twenty little\nways of expressing her gratitude. \"My face was all over blotches,\" she\nsays by signs; \"I could neither write nor walk; now I can hold myself\nupright, and I can read, and know how to knit.\" This consciousness,\nhowever, does not at all interfere with her affection for her\ngrandmother; and when the old woman died she grieved for some time\nbitterly. What idea does the word \"death\" bring to the mind of this\nchild? I know not; but when we told her about her grandmother, her\nmistress made her lie down on the floor, and then reminded her of a\nchild who had died in the establishment about a year before; after\nwhich we explained to her that the body would be laid in the ground,\nand be seen upon earth no more. She wept a great deal at first; but\nsuddenly drying her tears knelt down, making signs to her mistress and\ncompanions that they should do the same; and, that there might be no\nmistake about her meaning, she held up her rosary, to show them they\nmust pray. She did not forget her poor grandmother for a considerable\ntime, and every morning made it a point to inquire from her companions\nif they also had remembered her that day. One of her aunts died about\nthe same time, leaving to Anna as a legacy a portion of her wardrobe.\nAnna's attention instantly became concentrated upon this new\nacquisition, and gowns and handkerchiefs underwent a minute and\nsearching examination. The gowns pleased her exceedingly; so also did\nsome woollen pelerines, which she instantly observed must be intended\nfor the winter. At that moment she was a complete woman, with all a\nwoman's innate love of dress and desire for ornamentation. \"Are there\nnot also ear-rings?\" she asked, anxiously; and being answered in the\nnegative, she expressed clearly, by her gestures, that it was a pity:\nit was quite a pity.\n\n{334}\n\nAnna soon came to understand that I was her master, and she attached\nherself in consequence more strongly to me than to any one else, for\nshe perfectly appreciated the service she has received. One day after\na lesson, at which I had kept her until she thoroughly understood it,\nshe showed herself more than usually grateful. She took my hand and\nkissed it repeatedly, gratitude and affection beaming in her face, and\nthen, drawing her mistress toward her, she made her write, \"I love M.\nCarton.\" I, on my part, was enchanted to find that she thus, of her\nown accord, asked for words to express the sentiments of the heart;\nand I felt not a little proud of being the object by whom this latent\nfeeling had first been called into expression. But if Anna loves me,\nshe also fears me. In the beginning of her education, I was the only\nperson about her who had strength enough to prevent her scratching or\nkicking--exercises to which she was rather addicted when put in a\npassion. She likewise knew that it was I who imposed any penance on\nher, and that when she was compelled to remain without handkerchief or\ncap in the schoolroom, it was to M. Carton she was indebted for the\nhumiliation. One day, in a fit of anger, she tore her cap; and her\nmistress, as soon as she was calm enough to understand her,\nremonstrated with her, telling her at the same time that I should be\ninformed of her misdeeds. To escape the punishment which she knew must\nfollow, she had recourse to the other children, acknowledged her fault\nto them, and begged them to kneel down and join their hands, in order\nto obtain her pardon. Not one of the children, whether among the blind\nor deaf mutes, misunderstood her signs, and this was one of the\nactions of Anna which astonished me the most. Some one was foolish\nenough once to tell her that I was going away for some days, and she\ntook advantage of the chance to behave extremely bad. They made the\nsign by which she understands that they mean me, and by which they\ngenerally contrived to frighten her into submission; but it was all in\nvain. She laughed in the face of her mistress, and told her she was\nquite aware that I should not be back for three days. They have taken\ngood care ever since not to let her know when I am absent, though it\nprobably would make no difference now, for her character has\ncompletely changed since those early days, and it is six months at\nleast since she has indulged in anything like a fit of passion. After\nme, her greatest affection is reserved for my friend, M. Cauwe. She is\nquite delighted when he comes, and feels his face all over to make\nsure that it is he. If she has a new dress, he must feel and remark\nit; if she learns a new phrase, or a new kind of work, it must be\nshown to him immediately, in order that she may receive his praise;\nand if by any chance his visit has been delayed, she is sure to\nperceive it, and to inquire into the cause of his absence.\n\nAnna is also very fond of all the younger deaf and dumb children. She\ntakes them on her knees, carries them in her arms, pets and punishes\nthem, and adopts a general and motherly air of kindness and protection\ntoward them. One of them the other day happened to be in an\nexceedingly troublesome and tormenting mood. Anna could not keep her\nquiet, or prevent her teasing; and at last, rather than lose her\ntemper, and strike her, as she would formerly have done, she left her\nusual place, and went to sit at the opposite side of the room. In\nfact, she never now attempts to attack any of her companions, though\nshe does not fail in some way or other to pay back any provocation she\nhas received. She takes nothing belonging to others, but attaches\nherself strongly to her own possessions, and is particularly indignant\nif they attempt to meddle with her objects for instruction. One of the\nblind children happened to take a sheet of her writing in points, in\norder to try and read it; but Anna was no {335} sooner aware of the\ntheft than she angrily reclaimed it. The next day the same child\nbegged as a favor that she would lend her a sheet, in order to\npractise her reading; but Anna curtly refused, observing, that\nyesterday she had taken it without leave, and that to-day she\ncertainly should not have it, even for the asking. Anna's chief pet\nand charge among the little children is a child, blind, and maimed of\none arm, called Eugenie. When this little thing was coming first to\nthe establishment Anna was told of it, and the expected day named for\nher arrival. She immediately set to work and made all sorts of\narrangements in her own mind for the reception of the new child. The\nmistress would, of course, teach it to read; but it would have a seat\nbeside Anna, and with the companion whom she already had, there would\nbe three to walk and amuse themselves together. It so happened that\nEugenie did not arrive on the expected day. Anna was quite downcast in\nconsequence; and when at last it did appear, it instantly became the\nobject of all her tenderest petting and endearment. She led it to its\nseat, tried to make it understand all that it would have to do and\nlearn, and at last, when she touched its little arm, and found that it\nwas maimed, and incapable of being used, she burst into tears, and was\nfor a long time inconsolable. I tried to find out the cause of her\ngrief, and in what she considered the greatness of the child's\nmisfortune to consist, and she immediately directed my attention to\nthe fact that the child would never be able to learn to knit. The\npower of occupation had been such an inestimable boon to herself, that\nshe naturally felt any inability on that score to be the most\nintolerable misfortune that could befall a human being. When we\nassured her that Eugenie would be able to knit as well and easily as\nshe did herself, she became calm. The next day, however, she was\ndiscovered trying to knit with both hands shut, as if they had been\nmaimed like the blind child's, and she immediately made her mistress\nobserve that in such a state she could neither knit, blow her nose,\nnor dress herself, ending all by expressing the immense happiness she\nfelt at possessing the free use of her hands. Providence has provided\nan antidote to every misfortune. The blind child pities the deaf-mute,\nthe deaf-mute sighs over the blind, and the blind, deaf, and dumb girl\nfeels her heart filled with inexpressible compassion for one deprived\nof the free use of her hands. Anna kept her word, and took great care\nof the little Eugenie. She placed herself indeed somewhat in the\nposition of a mother to the child, watched over its conduct, examined\nits work, and went so far as occasionally to administer a slight\ncorrection.\n\nIf the weather was cold, she never went to bed herself without feeling\nthat Eugenie was well covered up, and giving her her blessing; a good\ndeed she always took care to make known to me in the morning. When\nfirst the little thing came it was rather refractory and disinclined\nto submit to rules, and the mistress acquainted Anna with the fact.\n\"Does not she like to knit?\" asked Anna. \"It is not with that,\"\nanswered the mistress, \"but with her reading lesson, that she will not\ntake pains.\" Anna immediately went over to the child, to try and\npersuade her to fulfil her duty. She took her hand, laid it on the\nbook, remained for at least a quarter of an hour persuading and\nencouraging her; and then, perceiving that she had begun to be really\nattentive, bade her get up and ask pardon of her mistress for her past\ndisobedience.\n\nAnother day she examined the child's knitting, and finding it badly\ndone, shook her head gravely, in sign of disapprobation. She then took\nEugenie's hand, made her feel with her own fingers the long loose\nstitches she had made; and making her kneel down in the middle of the\nroom, pinned the work to her back, with threats of even more serious\npunishment in the future. Just then the {336} mistress joined the\nclass, and found Eugenie in tears, and on her knees, with her work\npinned behind her. \"Eugenie,\" she asked, \"what are you doing there,\nand why do you cry?\" \"The deaf and dumb girl has punished me because\nmy knitting was badly done,\" said the child; \"and she says, when M.\nCarton comes in, he will throw a glass of water in my face.\" In order\nto prevent this terrible assault, the mistress advised her to ask\npardon of Anna, which she immediately did; but the latter felt it due\nto the dignity of the situation to allow herself to be entreated a\nlong time before she consented to grant it.\n\nBut though Anna considered it a part of her duty to punish Eugenie for\nher idleness, she was always otherwise very gentle to the child. In\ngiving her a lesson, her mistress, with a view of testing her\nknowledge of the verb in question, once bade her \"strike Eugenie.\"\nAnna behaved very prettily on this occasion. Before she would perform\nthe act required, she took the blind child's hand and laid it on the\nletters, in order to show her that if she struck her, it was not\nbecause she was angry with her, but simply because that phrase had\nbeen given to her as an exercise in language. On another occasion one\nof the blind children disturbed the arrangement of her words in their\nseparate cases, and one or two of them were lost. Anna wept bitterly;\nand not content with doing everything in her own power to discover the\nauthor of the mischief, she asked her mistress to assist in her\nresearches. The guilty one was found out at last, and, in the heat of\nthe moment, Anna demanded that she should be punished; but yielding\nafterward to the natural goodness of her heart, she went herself and\ninterceded for the little criminal. \"She is blind, like myself,\" she\nsaid, by way of excuse; and then embraced her with great cordiality in\ntoken of forgiveness. From that time, however, she became suspicious,\nand scarcely dared to leave her place for fear of a similar\nmisfortune. Some one, seeing this, advised her to keep her letters in\nher pocket. \"Very pleasant indeed!\" she answered, bursting into a fit\nof laughter; \"and a nice way, certainly, of preventing confusion! No;\nI will ask M. Carton to give me a lock and key for my box, and then no\none can touch them without my knowing it.\" This was accordingly done;\nand the key once safe in her pocket, Anna could leave her property in\nperfect security that it would not be injured or stolen in her\nabsence.\n\n\n\nAnna likes dainty food, and is very fond of fruit. I suspected,\nhowever, when first she came, that she had not an idea of the way in\nwhich it was procured. She had been so shut up in her old home, that\nnature was still an unexplored page to her; and blind, deaf, and dumb\nas she was, it was only through the fingers that even now this poor\nchild could ever be taught to read and comprehend it. It is not\ndifficult, therefore, to imagine her astonishment and joy at each new\ndiscovery of this kind which she makes. One day I led her to an\napricot tree, and made her feel and examine it all over. She dislikes\ntrees extremely, probably because in her solitary excursions she must\nhave often hurt herself against them. She obeyed me, however, though\nvery languidly and unwillingly at first; but I never saw such\nastonishment on any face before as I did on hers, when, after a short\ndelay, I took her hand and laid it on an apricot. She clasped her\nhands delightedly together, then made me touch the fruit, as if she\nexpected that I also would be astonished; and then recommenced her\nexamination of the tree, returning over and over again, with an\nexpression of intense joy over all her person, to the fruit she had so\nunexpectedly discovered. I permitted her at last to pull the fruit and\neat it, and she kissed my hand most affectionately, in token of\ngratitude for the immense favor I had conferred upon her. After\nclasstime she returned alone to the garden; {337} and as I foresaw\nthat the discovery of the morning would not be sterile, but that, once\nput on the track, she would continue her explorations on her own\naccount, I watched her closely. So, in fact, it happened.\n\nShe was no sooner in the garden than she began carefully to examine\nall the plants and trees around her, and it was amusing beyond\nanything to watch her making her way cautiously among the cabbages,\ntouching the leaves and stems, and trying with great care and prudence\nto discover if this plant also produced apricots. I suffered her to\ncontinue this exercise for a little time in vain; then coming to the\nrescue, after making her comprehend that cabbages, though good in\nthemselves to be eaten, did not bear apricots, I led her to various\nkinds of fruit-trees growing in the garden. I did not name any of them\nto her then, for I knew that in time she would learn to distinguish\none from the other, and she had still so much to discover of nature\nand her ways, that I did not like to delay her by dwelling on\ndistinctions which were, comparatively speaking, of little consequence\nto her in that early stage of her education. This little course of\nbotany we continued throughout the year. She was taught to observe the\nfall of the leaf, encouraged to examine the tree when entirely bereft\nof foliage, and when the spring-buds began to swell she was once more\nbrought to touch them, and made to understand that they were about to\nburst again into leaf and flowers. The moment the leaves were visible\nshe inquired of one of her companions if the tree was going to bear\nfruit likewise; and received for answer that it would certainly do so\nwhenever the weather should become sufficiently warm. Satisfied with\nthis information, she waited some time with patience; but a few very\nwarm days chancing to occur in the month of May, she reminded her\ncompanion of what she had been told, and inquired eagerly if the fruit\nwas at last come.\n\nIn this way, during all that summer, she found constant amusement in\nwatching the progress of the different fruit-trees, and I found her\none day examining a pear with great attention. She had not met with\none before, so it was quite a discovery to her, and she begged me to\nlet her have it in order that she might show it to her mistress and\nlearn its name. With all her love of fruit, however, I must record it\nto the honor of this poor child that she never attempted to touch it\nwithout permission; and that having been guided once to a tree by one\nof her deaf-mute companions, and incited to gather the fruit, she made\na very intelligible sign that it must not be done without an order\nfrom me. On another occasion I gave her a bunch of currants and told\nher to eat them, but the moment she touched them she discovered that\nthey were not ripe, and made signs to me that she \"must wait for a few\ndays longer, and that then they would be good to eat.\"\n\nHer delicacy of touch is in fact surprising. I have often effaced her\nletters, and flattened them with my nail until it seemed impossible to\ndiscover even a trace of them, and yet with her finger she has never\nfailed in following out the form. She often also finds pins and small\npieces of money, and picks them up when walking. She is very proud on\nthese occasions, and takes good care to inform any one who comes near\nher of the fact. She is very active now, and always ready to go and\nlook for any thing or person that she wants; and if she does not\nsucceed in finding them, she engages one of her companions to aid her\nin the search. She seemed indeed always to suspect that we knew better\nthan she did what was passing around us; though it was probably some\ntime before she asked herself what the nature of her own deficiency\nmight be. A day came, however, upon which she obtained some clearer\nknowledge on the subject; and this was the way it happened.\n\nShe had dropped one of her knitting-needles, and after a vain attempt\nto {338} find it for herself, she was obliged to have recourse to her\nmistress, who immediately picked it up and gave it back to her. Anna\nappeared to reflect earnestly for a moment, and then drawing the\nsister toward her writing-table, she wrote: \"Theresa,\" naming one of\nthe pupils of the institution--\"Theresa is deaf; Lucy is deaf; Jane is\nblind; I am blind and deaf; you are--;\" and then she presented her\ntablets to the sister, in order that the latter might explain to her\nthe nature of that other faculty which she possessed, and which\nenabled her to find so easily anything that was lost.\n\nThis was a problem which had evidently occupied her for a long time;\nand with her head bent forward and fingers ready to seize the\nslightest gesture, Anna waited eagerly for the answer by which she\nhoped the mystery would be solved to her at last. In a second or two\nthe embarrassment of the mistress was nearly equal to the eagerness of\nthe pupil; but after a minute's hesitation she, with great tact,\nresolved to repeat the action which had caused Anna's question. Making\nthe blind-mute walk down the room with her, she desired her once more\nto drop her needle and then to pick it up again, after which she wrote\nupon the board, \"The needle falls; you touch the needle with your\nhand; you pick it up with your fingers.\" Anna read these words with an\nair which seemed to say, \"I know all that already; but there must be\nsomething more;\" and so there was.\n\nHer mistress made her once more drop her needle; and then, just as\nAnna was stooping to pick it up, she dragged her, in spite of the poor\ngirl's resistance, so far from it that she could not touch it either\nwith her hands or feet. \"It is ever so far away,\" Anna said, in her\nmute language; and stooping down to the floor, she stretched out her\nhand as far as ever it would go in a vain attempt to reach it. The\nsister waited until she was a little pacified, and then wrote: \"The\nneedle falls.\" Anna answered: \"Yes.\" \"The needle is far off,\" the\nsister wrote again; and Anna replied: \"Alas, it is.\" \"Sister N. cannot\ntouch the needle with her hand.\" \"Nor I either,\" Anna wrote in answer.\n\"Sister N. can touch the needle with her eyes.\" Then followed a mimic\nscene, in which the thing expressed by words was put into action. Anna\nunderstood at last; but, evidently in order to make certain that she\ndid, she desired the sister to guide her hand once more to the fallen\nneedle. Her mistress complied with her request, and Anna was\nconvinced. The experiment was repeated over and over again. Anna threw\nher needle into various places, and then asked the sister if she could\ntouch it without stooping. \"Yes,\" replied her mistress; \"I touch the\nneedle with my eyes.\" \"Can you pick it up with your eyes?\" asked Anna.\nThe sister made her feel that her eyes were not fingers; and then once\nmore picking up the needle she gave it to Anna, to be satisfied that\nshe at last understood the nature of the faculty which her\ninstructress possessed and which was wanting in herself.\n\nFrom that time she invariably made a distinction between the blind\nchildren and those who were merely deaf-mutes. She had always hitherto\nbeen ready enough to avenge herself on any of her companions who\nstruck her, whether accidentally or on purpose. Now if she found it\nwas a blind child who had done so, she would of her own accord excuse\nher, saying, \"She is blind; she cannot touch me with her eyes when I\nam at a distance from her.\" In the same manner, if she lost anything,\nshe would ask the first deaf-mute whom she met to help her to look for\nit, while she never attempted to seek a similar service from any of\nthe children whom she knew to be blind. She showed her knowledge of\nthe difference between the two classes most distinctly upon one\noccasion, when her knitting having got irretrievably out of order, she\ncommunicated her perplexity to the {339} blind child at her side. The\nlatter wanted to take it from her in order to arrange it; but Anna\ndrew it back, and, touching first the eyes of the child and then her\nown, as if she would have said, \"You also are blind, and can do no\nbetter than myself,\" she waited quietly until she could give it to the\nmistress to disentangle for her.\n\nAnna delights in telling her companions all her adventures, though she\ntakes care never to mention her faults or their punishment. She will\nacknowledge the former if taxed with them, but she does not like to be\nreminded either of the one or of the other. \"I have done my penance,\"\nshe says: \"it is past; you must not speak of it any more.\" With this\nexception she tells all that she has done or intends to do; and she is\nenchanted beyond measure when she can inform them that she has\nsucceeded in playing a trick on her mistress. She will tell the story\nwith infinite glee, and always contrives exceedingly well to put the\nthing in its most ridiculous light before them.\n\nShe was fond of milk, and observed, or was told, one day that a cup of\nmilk had been given to a child who was sick. The next morning, while\nin chapel, she burst into tears. Her mistress led her from the class,\nand asked what was the matter. She coughed, showed her tongue, held\nout her hand, that the mistress might feel her pulse; in fact she was\nas ill as she could be, and excessively thirsty. A cup of milk was\nbrought; and the medicine was so good, that five minutes afterward she\nmanaged to eat her breakfast with an excellent appetite. During the\nrecreation that followed, she took care to explain to her companions\nthe means by which she had procured herself the milk. A few days\nafterward she recommenced the comedy, and played it so well, that,\nthinking she really was ill, her mistress desired her to go to bed.\nThis was more than she wished for; but she went upstairs, trusting, no\ndoubt, that something would happen to extricate her from the dilemma.\nHer mistress went to see her; and finding her sitting on the side of\nthe bed, asked why she did not get into it, as she had been desired.\n\"Madame,\" said Anna, \"it is very cold, but I should get warm if you\nwould give me a cup of milk; that would cure me in no time; and a\nlittle bread and butter with it would also do me good.\" The sister\nthen perceived how the case really stood, and answered promptly, \"If\nyou will get into bed you shall have the milk, but not the bread and\nbutter. If, on the contrary, you prefer to go downstairs, you shall\nhave the bread and butter, but not the milk. Which do you choose?\"\n\"Both,\" quoth Anna. But as both were not to be had, she was obliged to\ncontent herself with the amusement of telling her intended trick to\nher companions, which she did with many regrets that it had not been\nsuccessful.\n\nBut though Anna likes to tell all these little schemes and adventures\nto any one who will listen to her; and though, if taxed with them by\nher mistress, she is quite ready to acknowledge them with a laugh, it\nis far otherwise when the action itself contains anything seriously\ncontrary to honesty or justice. In that case she takes good care to be\nsilent on the subject; and if silence is impossible, she endeavors, in\nall manner of ways, to explain it away or excuse it.\n\nOne day she entered the schoolroom before any of the other pupils, and\nfinding that a piece of wire, belonging to the pedal of the piano, was\nloose, she broke it quite off, put it into her pocket, and returned\ntriumphantly to her place. Her mistress, happening to be in the room\nat the moment, saw the whole affair, and placed herself in her way, in\norder that Anna might know she had been observed. She then asked her\nwhat she had put in her pocket, and Anna instantly replied that it was\nher beads. Her mistress gave her to understand that she was trying to\ndeceive her, and made her touch, as a {340} proof, the other end of\nthe wire which she had broken. She was evidently confused, and became\nas red as fire, but with marvellous adroitness managed to let the wire\nslip out of her pocket to the ground. She had, of course, no idea that\nit would make a noise in falling; and fancying that she had concealed\nthe theft, continued positively to deny it. In order still better to\nprove her innocence, she then knelt down and began feeling all over\nthe floor, until she had found the wire which she had dropped, and\nholding it up in triumph, said, by signs, \"I will ask M. Carton to\ngive it to me that I may make it into a cross for my beads.\"\n\nIn this way she is always being ingenious in finding excuses for her\nfaults. Her mistress once complained of her knitting, and she\nimmediately held up her needles, which were bent, as if she would have\nsaid, \"How is it possible to knit with such needles as these?\" Another\nday, feeling more idle than usual, and wishing to remain in bed, she\nmade them count her pulse, and begged by signs that they would send\nimmediately for M. Verte, the physician of the house. We knew well it\nwas only a trick to stay a little longer in bed, and she was the first\nto acknowledge it as soon as she had risen.\n\nI like to watch her when she fancies herself alone, as I then often\nfind in her most trivial actions a something interesting or suggestive\nfor her future improvement. I discovered her once alone in the\nclass-room and busily engaged in examining every corner of the desks.\nAll at once she went toward the black table on which the deaf-mutes\nwrite their exercises, and taking a piece of chalk, began to trace\nlines upon it at random. I was curious to know what discovery she was\ntrying to make, and in a few minutes I perceived it. As soon as she\nhad traced her lines, she passed her hands over them to see if she\ncould read them. She was aware that her companions read upon this\nboard; and as she knew of no other method of reading than by letters\nin relief, she naturally supposed that the lines she had traced would\nbe sufficiently raised to enable her to do so. For a few minutes she\ncontinued thus trying to follow with her finger the chalk-lines she\nhad made; but finding considerable difficulty in doing so, she at last\nreturned to her book, compared the letters in it with the lines on the\nboard, and evidently pronounced a verdict in favor of the former. I\ncould see, in fact, that she was quite delighted with its apparent\nsuperiority, and she never attempted to write on the black-board\nagain.\n\nShe often makes signs that seem to indicate an inexplicable knowledge\nof things of which it is impossible she can naturally have any real\nperception. She was born blind; she can look at the sun without\nblinking, and the pupil of the eye is as opaque as the skin.\nNevertheless her mistress happening to ask her one night why she had\nleft off her work, she answered that it was too dark to work any\nlonger, and that she must wait for a light.  [Footnote 76] In chapel,\nalso, she has evidently impressions which she does not receive\nelsewhere. She likes to go there; often asks to be permitted to do so,\nand while in it always remains in an attitude and with an expression\nof face which would indicate a profound consciousness of the presence\nof God. One of her companions once told her that I was ill. Anna\nperceived that the child was crying: \"I will not cry,\" she said\nimmediately, \"but I will pray;\" and she actually did go down on her\nknees, and remained in that position for nearly a quarter of an hour.\nShe told me this herself, and I was enchanted; for who can doubt that\nGod held himself honored by the supplicating attitude of his poor\nmutilated creature? And yet what passes in the mind of this child\nduring the moments which she spends in the attitude of prayer? What is\nher idea of {341} God? What is the language of her heart when she thus\nplaces herself in solemn adoration in his presence? What is, in fact,\nher prayer? I know not; it is a mystery yet a mystery--which I trust\nshe will some day find words to explain to me herself. One thing alone\nis certain;--there is _that_ in her heart and mind which has not been\nplaced there by man, and which tells her there is a Father and a God\nfor her in heaven.\n\n  [Footnote 76: She possibly may have learned the expression from some\n  of the deaf-mutes not blind.--TR.]\n\n\nCONCLUSION.\n\nExtract of a letter from M. Carton, announcing the death of the blind\nmute, Anna Timmermans, after a residence of twenty-one years in his\nestablishment at Bruges:\n\n   BRUGES, Sept. 26, 1859.\n\n  GENTLEMEN,--I write to you in deep affliction, for death hath this\n  day deprived me of my blind mute, Anna Timmermans, whom you may\n  remember to have seen at my establishment last year.\n\n  She was just forty-three years of age; and twenty-one of these had\n  been passed at my asylum. God has taken her from this life to bestow\n  upon her a better, and his holy will be done! It was a great mercy\n  to her, but I shall regret her all my lifetime, even while rejoicing\n  at her present happiness, and feeling most thankful for that love\n  and knowledge of Almighty God to which, through all the physical\n  difficulties of her position, he enabled her to attain. She loved\n  him indeed with all the _naivete_, and invoked him with the simple\n  confidence of a child; and the last weeks of her life were almost\n  entirely devoted to earnest entreaties that he would call her to\n  himself.\n\n  You are the first to whom I announce my loss, because of all those\n  persons who have visited my house, you seem best to have\n  comprehended the painful position of a deaf-mute, and the exquisite\n  sensibility which they are capable of feeling toward any one who\n  shows them sympathy and affection. I have already described Anna as\n  she was when she came first among us--a girl twenty-one years of age,\n  with the stature of a woman and the habits of a child. I need not\n  recall her to your remembrance as she appeared to you last year, a\n  woman thoughtful beyond the common, and endowed with such true\n  knowledge of God and of religion, that you deemed it no indignity to\n  ask her prayers, and were pleased by her simple promise never to\n  forget you.\n\n  Thanks be to God for his great goodness toward his poor, afflicted\n  child! She not only learned to know him and to love him, but we were\n  enabled by degrees to place her in still closer communication with\n  him, by means of those sacraments which he has appointed to convey\n  grace to the soul. The last confession which she made previous to\n  receiving extreme unction reminds me of all the difficulty we had\n  long ago experienced in persuading her to make her first.\n\n  \"It will soon be Easter,\" said one day to her the sister appointed\n  to prepare her for this duty. \"It will soon be Easter, and then you\n  and all of us will have to go to confession.\"\n\n  \"What is confession?\" asked Anna. \"It is to tell our sins to the\n  priest,\" explained the sister; \"and to ask pardon of them from God.\"\n\n  \"But why should we do that?\" quoth Anna.\n\n  \"Because,\" replied the sister, \"God himself has commanded us to\n  confess our sins. You will have to do it, therefore, like the rest\n  of us; and when you go to confession, you must say in your heart to\n  God, 'I am sorry for my sins. Forgive me, O my God; and I promise I\n  will sin no more.'\"\n\n  \"And what are the sins I must confess?\" asked Anna. She was standing\n  in the midst of her class, who had all assembled to receive\n  instruction, at the moment when she put the question.\n\n  \"You have been in a passion,\" replied the sister; \"you must confess\n  {342} that. You have broken M. Carton's spectacles. You have torn\n  the cap of Sister So-and-so. You have scratched one of the blind\n  children;--and you must mention all these things when you go to\n  confession.\"\n\n  \"All these things are past and gone,\" replied Anna, resolutely;\n  \"when I broke M. Carton's spectacles, I was made, for my punishment,\n  to kneel down; and,\" she continued, lightly passing one hand over\n  the other, as if rubbing out something, \"that was effaced. When I\n  tore Sister So-and-so's cap, I was not allowed any coffee; and,\"\n  repeating the action with her hands, \"that was effaced. When I\n  scratched the blind child, I went to bed without supper; and that\n  was effaced. I will not, therefore, confess any of these things.\"\n\n  \"But, Anna,\" replied the sister, \"we are all obliged to go to\n  confession. I am going myself, as well as you.\"\n\n  \"Oui da! Have you, then, also, been in a passion, my sister? Have\n  you broken M. Carton's spectacles, torn our sister's cap, and\n  scratched a blind child?\"\n\n  Anna asked these questions with an immense air of triumph, and\n  waited the answer with a wicked smile, which seemed to say she had\n  put the sister in a dilemma. Not one of the class misunderstood the\n  little malice of her questions. Indeed, the uncharitable surmise as\n  to the nature of their mistress's conduct appeared so piquant to all\n  of them, that they unanimously insisted on its receiving a reply. It\n  is not difficult, indeed, to imagine their amusement, for they were\n  all daughters of Eve; and, beside, the best of children have an\n  especial delight in embarrassing their superiors. Altogether it was\n  a scene for a painter.\n\n  \"I have not been in a passion; God forbid!\" replied the poor sister,\n  gently. \"And I have not scratched or done injury to any one; but I\n  _have_ done so-and-so, and so-and-so.\" And here, with the greatest\n  _naivete_ and humility, the sister mentioned some of her own\n  shortcomings. \"I have done so-and-so and so-and-so, and am going to\n  confess them; for I know I have sinned by doing these things; but I\n  hope God will pardon me, and give me grace not to offend him again\n  in like manner.\"\n\n  When the children heard this humble confession, they one by one\n  quietly left the class, like those in the gospel, beginning with the\n  eldest; but Anna, even while acknowledging herself defeated, could\n  not resist the small vengeance of giving the sister a lecture on her\n  peccadilloes.\n\n  \"Remember, my sister, you are never again to do so-and-so and\n  so-and-so. You must be very sorry, and promise to be wiser another\n  time. And above all other things, you must go to confession to\n  obtain God's pardon.\"\n\n  \"And you?\" asked the sister, as her only answer to this grave\n  exhortation.\n\n  \"And I also will go to confession,\" replied Anna, completely\n  vanquished at last by the tenderness and humility of the good\n  religious.\n\n  From that time, in fact, Anna went regularly to confession; and so\n  far from having any difficulty in persuading her to do so, she often\n  reminded us herself when the time was approaching for the\n  performance of that duty.\n\n  During the winter preceding her death she grew weaker from day to\n  day; and her loss of appetite, extreme emaciation, and inability to\n  exert herself, all convinced us that we were about to lose her. She\n  herself often spoke about dying, though for a long time she would\n  not permit any one else to address her on the subject. If any of the\n  sisters even hinted at her danger, she would grow quite pale, and\n  turn off the conversation; and even when she alluded of her own\n  accord to the symptoms that alarmed her, it seemed as if, like many\n  other invalids, she did so in order to be reassured as to her state.\n  She became convinced at last, however, that she could not recover,\n  and from that moment her life was one uninterrupted act of\n  resignation {343} to the will of God, submission to his providence,\n  and hope and confidence in his mercy. These sentiments never forsook\n  her even for a moment. \"I suffer,\" she used to say,--\"I suffer a\n  great deal; but Jesus suffered more;\" and, embracing her crucifix,\n  she would renew all her good resolutions to suffer patiently, and\n  her earnest entreaties for grace to do so.\n\n  Previous to receiving the last sacraments, Anna disposed of\n  everything belonging to her in favor of her companions, and then\n  causing them all to be brought to her bedside, she kissed each one\n  affectionately, and bade her adieu. After that she refused to see\n  any of them again, seeking only the company of the sisters, and of\n  that one in particular who best understood the silent language of\n  the fingers. \"Let us speak a little,\" the poor sufferer would often\n  say, \"of God and heaven;\" and then would follow long and earnest\n  conversations full of faith and hope and love, confidence in the\n  mercies of Almighty God, and gratitude for his goodness.\n\n  During these communications Anna would become quite absorbed, as it\n  were, in the love of God; her poor face would brighten into an\n  expression of absolute beauty; and she seemed to lose all sense of\n  present suffering in her certain hope and expectation of the joy\n  that was about to come in on her soul.\n\n  \"A little more,\" she would often say, when she fancied the\n  conversation was about to finish; \"speak to me a little more of God.\n  I love him and he loves me. O my dear sister, will you not also come\n  soon to heaven, and love him for evermore?\"\n\n  Her agony commenced on the morning of the 26th of September, and she\n  expired about noon, so quietly that we scarce perceived the moment\n  in which she passed away (safe and happy, as I trust) to the\n  presence of her God.\n\n  I recommend her to your good prayers; and I trust that she also will\n  sometimes think of us and pray for us in heaven.\n\n----\n\n{344}\n\n\nFrom Macmillan's Magazine.\n\nTWILIGHT IN THE NORTH.\n\n\"UNTIL THE DAY BREAK, AND THE SHADOWS FLEE AWAY.\"\n\n\n  Oh the long northern twilight between the day and the night,\n  When the heat and the weariness of the world are ended quite;\n  When the hills grow dim as dreams; and the crystal river seems\n  Like that River of Life from out the Throne where the blessed walk in white.\n\n  Oh the weird northern twilight, which is neither night nor day,\n  When the amber wake of the long-set sun still marks his western way;\n  And but one great golden star in the deep blue east afar\n  Warns of sleep and dark and midnight--of oblivion and decay.\n\n  Oh the calm northern twilight, when labor is all done,\n  And the birds in drowsy twitter have dropped silent one by one;\n  And nothing stirs or sighs in mountains, waters, skies--\n  Earth sleeps--but her heart waketh, till the rising of the sun.\n\n  Oh the sweet, sweet twilight, just before the time of rest,\n  When the black clouds are driven away, and the stormy winds suppressed:\n  And the dead day smiles so bright, filling earth and heaven with light--\n  You would think 'twas dawn come back again--but the light is in the west.\n\n  Oh the grand solemn twilight, spreading peace from pole to pole!--\n  Ere the rains sweep o'er the hill-sides, and the waters rise and roll,\n  In the lull and the calm, come, O angel with the palm--\n  In the still northern twilight, Azrael, take my soul.\n\n----\n\n{345}\n\nFrom Chambers's Journal.\n\n\nA NIGHT IN A GLACIER.\n\n\nNothing is more common than to hear the wish expressed among ordinary\ntourists \"to see Switzerland in the winter;\" and nothing is more\ndisappointing than its fulfilment. To _see_ Switzerland then is just\nwhat you cannot do; all that is visible is one vast sheet of blinding\nsnow, unrelieved by a particle of color; and the view is not even\ngrand--it is simply monotonous. However, in April, 1864, I made the\nexperiment of choosing that month, instead of the conventional August,\nfor a mountaineering ramble; and having been weather-bound at least\nhalf a dozen times, in various places, found myself in the same\nmiserable predicament, at the hospice of the Great St. Bernard. It was\nterribly wearisome work. We had exhausted all our small-talk, had\ndiscussed all the celebrated passages of the Alps, from that of\nHannibal with his vinegar-cruets to that of Macdonald with his\ndragoons; had worked the piano to death by playing derisive waltzes;\nhad elicited fearful wheezings from the harmonium, and blundered\ninappropriate marches on the organ--when, early on the third morning,\ntwo momentous events occurred. In the first place, the weather had\nbecome suddenly fine; and in the second, the news had arrived that a\nparty of Italian wood-carvers had reached St. Remy, on their passage\nto the Rhone valley, and that two of their number had left the main\nbody on the previous evening, avowing their intention of making their\nway to a little stone hut, which is used in summer as a dairy for the\nsupply of the hospice, and passing the night there. This hut, however,\nhad been visited that morning, and found to be untenanted; and as the\ntraces of the two wanderers had been obliterated by the snow during\nthe night, the messenger had been sent forward to obtain assistance in\nthe search for them.\n\nThough the unusually large fall of snow in the winter of 1863-64 made\nmountain-climbing singularly easy in the past autumn (Mont Blanc was\nascended by more than seventy tourists in the latter year), yet in the\nspring the passes were rendered more than usually difficult by the\nloose snow which the sun had not yet been powerful enough to solidify\nby regelation. Most travellers who cross in summer must have noticed a\nline of stout posts about ten or twelve feet high, which are placed on\nthe most elevated points of the path, so that their summits, which the\nsnow rarely reaches, may serve as landmarks in the winter; but at this\ntime the posts were entirely covered, and it was not without great\ndifficulty that the man who brought the news had been able to find his\nway to the Hospice. There was no time to be lost. Abandoning their\nusual costume for a dress more suited to do battle with the elements,\nfour of the \"fathers\" were soon ready to start, two of them\nshouldering knapsacks of provisions, one bearing a stout rope, and the\nfourth carrying an axe, with which to cut steps, if necessary, in the\nice. Just as they were leaving, it was discovered that the last-named\nimplement had a crack in its handle, which would most probably cause\nit to break short off when brought into active service; and as some\ndelay would be caused by fitting a fresh handle, Pere Christophe, to\nwhose cordial politeness few travellers are not indebted, came to ask\nfor the loan of my axe for the day. \"Perhaps, however,\" he said, \"as\nmonsieur is used to glacier expeditions, he would like to accompany us\nin our search, and so to carry his axe himself?\"--a proposal {346} with\nwhich I eagerly closed, promising that my preparations should not\ndelay them above five minutes.\n\nThe messenger had arrived at eight in the morning; and in less than\nhalf an hour afterward, we were making our way over the lake on the\nItalian side of the pass. Two of the renowned dogs were with us; but\ntheir proceedings did not confirm the idea which had long ago been\nproduced on my childish mind by the well-known print of a St. Bernard\ndog, with a bottle of wine and a basket of food round its neck,\nscratching away the snow under which a wayfarer was supposed to lie\nburied. For finding lost travellers, indeed, they are, as I was\nassured by the monks, in no-wise adapted; their function, and a most\nimportant one it is, is to find the direct path up and down the pass,\nwhen it is covered with snow, and in this duty they are unrivalled.\nFortunately, the frosts had been very severe, so that we were able to\ntramp cheerily over the crisp snow, instead of having to undergo the\nfatigue of sinking up to our knees at every step. But probably the\npoor fellows down below wished that the frost had been lighter, and\nour walk heavier. The scene was grand in its wildness. Huge clouds\nhung along the mountain-sides at our feet, now whirling boisterously,\nnow creeping sullenly along; and rough gusts of wind dashed the snow\nwith blinding coldness into our faces, and produced on ears and nose a\ntingling terribly suggestive of frost-bites. It was unusual, M.\nChristophe said, for the fathers themselves to go out in search of\ntravellers; the latter generally waited at the house of refuge near\nthe Cantine, or that near St. Remy, and a servant was sent down with a\ndog to lead them up; but in cases like the present, where search must\nbe made in different directions, it was of advantage to have three or\nfour people with local knowledge to join in it. Beside, the expedition\nwas a relief to the ordinary monotony of convent life; though the\nkindness of English travellers had done much for the comfort of the\nbrethren, in supplying them with musical instruments, books, and\nsimilar means of recreation. The circumstances under which the Prince\nof Wales sent them their piano were curious enough. He had bought one\nof the dogs, which, being quite young and very fat, was given into the\ncharge of a porter to carry down. The man stupidly let it fall, and it\nwas killed on the spot. The prince (this was some time ago) burst into\ntears, and was almost inconsolable; but the monks, on hearing of the\nloss, sent another dog, which the prince received while at Martigny;\nand when he reached Paris, he forwarded, as a royal acknowledgment for\nthe gift, one of Erard's best piano-fortes, which has been the great\ncheerer of their winter evenings, and on which they set no small\nstore.\n\nPleasantly chatting after this fashion, my friend beguiled the way to\nthe house of refuge, which we reached before ten o'clock, and where we\nfound collected about five-and-twenty people, waiting to be led up to\nthe hospice. Leaving them in charge of one of the monks, we proceeded\nalong the valley where the _vacherie_ of the hospice is situated,\ntoward the Col de la Fenetre, in search of the man and woman who were\nmissing. It appeared that they were natives of the Val de Lys, which\ndescends from Monte Rosa toward Italy, and the inhabitants of which\nhave, from time immemorial, held themselves aloof from all\ncommunication with their neighbors, and have formed of their little\ncommunity a sort of nation within a nation, to which a native of\nAlagna or St. Martin would have no more chance of being admitted by\nmarriage, than a reformer of the franchise would of being elected a\nmember of the Carlton Club. So we discovered that the two lost sheep,\npresuming on their fortunate accident of birth, had been sneering at\nthe others as having been \"raised\" in the country of cretins and lean\npigs, and had excited such a storm of abuse about their ears, that,\nfinding themselves only two to twenty, they {347} had beaten a\nretreat, and decided to sleep at the cow-hut. At this we arrived in\nabout half an hour; but it was evident that it had not been tenanted\nfor some weeks by anything but marmots, of which we saw a couple\nscudding along with that awkward mixture of scratch and shuffle which\nis their ordinary mode of locomotion. From here we each made casts, to\nuse the hunting phrase, in different directions, especially trying\nplaces which lay on the leeward side of rocks, and on which,\ntherefore, any tracks might not have been effaced by the night's snow.\nA diabolical yell, which was the result of an attempt to imitate the\n_joedel_ of the Oberland guides, met with no human response, but was\ntaken up, as it seemed, by a chorus of imps in the depths of the\nmountain; and by the multiplying echoes so common in Switzerland was\ncarried on from crag to crag, till it appeared to be lost only at the\ntop of the valley. We fixed on a point about a mile off at which to\nreunite, as what was snow in the lower part of the valley would be ice\nhigher up, and would probably be crossed by crevasses, among which it\nwould be dangerous to go singly, and without the protection of the\nrope. Presently there came a shout from the extreme left of our\nquartett, and we saw the young _marronnier_ (that is, a half-fledged\nmonk or deacon) standing on the top of some rocks, and indulging in\nvarious contortions and gesticulations, which we interpreted as a\nsummons for our help; and when we reached him, he wanted it badly\nenough, for right before him were the objects of our search; but how\nto get at them was a problem which required all our skill and all our\nstrength for its solution.\n\nHe had come to where the glacier joined the rocks over which our\ncourse had hitherto been, when his progress was stopped by a\n_bergschrund_ or deep chasm between a nearly perpendicular wall of\nrock on one side, and a wall of ice on the other, inclined at an angle\nof probably sixty-five degrees. On reaching this, we could see the\nfugitives about fifty feet below us, and were relieved by the\nassurance that they were neither of them seriously injured, except by\nthe cold, which had made them unable to do anything to extricate\nthemselves. It was evident that nothing could be done from the side of\nthe rocks, so we made our way as quickly-as-possible along the side of\nthe bergschrund, to cross on to the glacier. This involved a long\ndetour; but the bergschrund was too wide to be jumped, and far too\nsteep to be scaled, while the insecurity of the snow-bridges over it\nwas apparent. At last we found one that seemed solid, and M.\nChristophe led the way upon it boldly, but had scarcely reached the\nmiddle, when it suddenly broke down; and but for the rope--that great\nprotection of mountaineers--he would have had very little chance of\nseeing the hospice again. As it was, I was the chief sufferer, for I\nhappened to be second in line, and had my waist (round which the rope\nwas tied in a slip-knot) reduced to wasp-like proportions by the jerk\nof a man of fourteen stone falling in front, and the counteracting\nstrain which my rear-rank man forthwith put on behind. At last we\ncrossed, and hastily made our way to the scene of action. I have\nestimated the angle of the ice-wall at sixty-five degrees, and\ntremendous as that inclination is, I believe I have rather understated\nit, though, as my clinometer was left behind, I could only compare it\nmentally with the well-known ice-wall on the Strahleck, which seemed\nabout fifteen degrees less. Our rope was about ten feet too short to\nreach the bottom, so the axe was brought into requisition to cut steps\nfor that distance, and to carve out a ledge which should give us\nsecure hand-hold as well. This done, we let down the rope; but the\nman's fingers were so benumbed with the night's exposure, that he was\nunable to tie it round his wife; and though she offered to attach it\nto him first, he refused to be drawn up until after her. This\npunctilio seemed rather misplaced, as it involved {348} the descent of\none of our number; but you cannot argue with a man who has spent the\nnight in the heart of a glacier; so the lightest of our party lost no\ntime in descending, which was only difficult from the piercing cold\nthat was beginning to get the better of us, and which was so\nbenumbing, that cutting the five-and-fifty steps for the descent was a\nrather formidable task.\n\nThe appearance of the girl's face--she was scarcely more than a girl--\nwas one to fix itself in the memory. It was white--almost as white as\nthe snow which had so nearly formed her cold winding-sheet; stains of\nblood were on the blue lips, which she had involuntarily bitten\nthrough in that night's agony. Her large Italian eyes seemed\nfascinated by the wall of snow at which she glared; and even now, when\nrescue was certain, she could only burst into a flood of tears, and\nrepeatedly ejaculate _\"gerettet!\"_ (saved!) having again sunk into the\ncrouching position from which the question as to the rope had roused\nher. The tears indeed gave relief to the heart over which a shadow of\na terrible death had for long hours been brooding. The shortness of\nour rope caused the only difficulty in the ascent; but we managed to\nhew out a sort of stage on the ice at which we could rest with her,\nwhile the two younger monks carried the rope to the top, and then\ncompleted her restoration to the upper day. The husband's ascent was\nrather harder of achievement, as his chilled limbs made him as\nhelpless as a child in arms, without reducing his weight in the same\nproportion; but after some awkward slips, it was managed; and having\nrefreshed the inner man, we made our way painfully toward the hospice,\nobliging the husband to walk, in spite of the agony which it caused\nhim, as the only means of saving his limbs. We then learned that on\nthe previous evening they had started for the chalet, the situation of\nwhich was well known to them, but had been completely enveloped in a\ncloud of thick mist which had risen from the valley, and had obscured\ntheir way; that after numerous turnings, they had decided, just before\ndarkness came on, to make their way up the St. Bernard valley, knowing\nthat in time they must come to the hospice, but that they had actually\nmistaken for it the valley leading up to the Col de la Fenetre, which\nis nearly at right angles to the other, and had come upon the\nbergschrund at a point where there was fortunately a huge cornice of\nsnow. On this they must have unwittingly walked, as they believed, for\nmany yards, when it suddenly gave way with that terrible rushing sound\nat which most explorers of the great ice-world have shuddered once or\ntwice in their lives. Fortunately, an immense mass of snow gave way,\nand its bulk broke their fall, and saved them from being dashed with\nfatal violence against the rocks. They were warmly clad, and had the\ncourage to keep in motion during nearly the whole night, performing an\nevolution corresponding to the goose-step of the volunteers, as they\ndared not change their ground in the darkness.\n\nWhen the gray morning showed that there was no possibility of their\nextricating themselves, and the snow fell, which they knew would hide\ntheir track, the husband sank down in despair, saying: \"Nun bedeckt\nmich mien Grabtuch\" (Now my shroud is covering me)--and two hours of\ninaction were sufficient to allow the cold to seize his hands and\nfeet. It was curious to observe how, as we gleaned the story from\nhusband and wife, each praised the other's endurance, and depreciated\nhis or her own. They had only been married at Gressonnay St. Giacomo\nfour days before, and were on their way to the celebrated wood-carving\nmanufactory at Freyburg. We had nearly reached the hospice, having had\nhard work in helping our friend to walk, and in beating his fingers\nsmartly to restore circulation, when the girl, who had refused our aid\n_en route_, suddenly gave a shriek and fainted away. The cause of this\nhad not to be sought for long. Our path had led {349} us close by the\nMorgue, in which, as is well known, the rarity of the air preserves\nthe corpses so thoroughly that they retain for years the appearance of\nonly recent death. There, placed upright against the wall, is the\nghastly row; and one figure--that of a woman with a child in her arms--\nis especially noticeable for having preserved not only the features,\nbut even the expression which marked the last agony of despair. To see\nthese, you must generally wait some moments before your eyes get\naccustomed to the dim light in which they are; but on this occasion,\nthe glare reflected from the snow threw the whole interior of the\ncharnel-house into full view, and the revulsion of feeling was too\nmuch for the poor girl, who had so narrowly escaped a similar fate.\nShe was borne into the hospice, and soon recovered; and on the\nfollowing morning, both were able to resume their journey, though it\nwas feared by the monks, who had had large experience of frostbites,\nthat one of the man's fingers would be sacrificed. They were profuse\nin their gratitude, and left, determined that the superiority of the\ninhabitants of the Val de Lys over all other Piedmontese, Italians,\nand Savoyards, was not best maintained by spending a night in a\nbergschrund.\n\n----\n\nFrom The Month.\n\nCONSTANCE SHERWOOD.\n\nAN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.\n\n\nBY LADY GEORGIANA FULLERTON.\n\n\nCHAPTER VI.\n\nI was to travel, as had been ordered for our mutual convenience and\nprotection, with Mistress Ward, a gentlewoman who resided some months\nin our vicinity, and had heard mass in our chapel on such rare\noccasions as of late had occurred, when a priest was at our house, and\nwe had commodity to give notice thereof to such as were Catholic in\nthe adjacent villages. We had with us on the journey two serving-men\nand a waiting-woman, who had been my mother's chambermaid; and so\naccompanied, we set out on our way, singing as we went, for greater\nsafety, the litanies of our Lady; to whom we did commend ourselves, as\nmy father had willed us to do, with many fervent prayers. The\ngentlewoman to whose charge I was committed was a lady of singular\nzeal and discretion, as well as great virtue; albeit, where religion\nwas not concerned, of an exceeding timid disposition; which, to my no\nsmall diversion then, and great shame since, I took particular notice\nof on this journey. Much talk had been ministered in the county\ntouching the number of rogues and vagabonds which infested the public\nroads, of which sundry had been taken up and whipped during the last\nmonths, in Lichfield, Stafford, and other places. I did perceive that\ngood Mistress Ward glanced uneasily as we rode along at every\nfoot-passenger or horseman that came in sight. Albeit my heart was\nheavy, and may be also that when the affections are inclined to tears\nthey be likewise prone to laughter, I scarce could restrain from\nsmiling at these her fears and the manner of her showing them.\n\n\"Mistress Constance,\" she said at last, as we came to the foot of a\nsteep {350} ascent, \"methinks you have a great heart concerning the\ndangers which may befall us on the road, and that the sight of a\nrobber would move you not one whit more than that of an honest pedler\nor hawker, such as I take those men to be who are mounting the hill in\nadvance of us. Doth it not seem to you that the box which they do\ncarry betokens them to be such worthy persons as I wish them to\nprove?\"\n\n\"Now surely,\" I answered, \"good Mistress Ward, 'tis my opinion that\nthey be not such honest knaves as you do suppose. I perceive somewhat\nI mislike in the shape of that box. What an if it be framed to entice\ntravellers to their ruin by such displays and shows of rare ribbons\nand gewgaws as may prove the means of detaining them on the road, and\na-robbing of them in the end?\"\n\nMistress Ward laughed, and commended my jesting, but was yet ill at\nease; and, as a mischievous and thoughtless creature, I did somewhat\nexcite and maintain her fears, in order to set her on asking questions\nof our attendants touching the perils of the road, which led them to\nrelate such fearful stories of what they had seen of this sort as\nserved to increase her apprehensions, and greatly to divert me, who\nhad not the like fears; but rather entertained myself with hers, in a\nmanner such as I have been since ashamed to think of, who should have\nkissed the ground on which she had trodden.\n\nThe fairness of the sky, the beauty of the fields and hedges, the\nmotion of the horse, stirred up my spirits; albeit my heart was at\nmoments so brimful of sorrow that I hated my tongue for its\nwantonness, my eyes for their curious gazing, and my fancy for its\neager thoughts anent London and the new scenes I should behold there.\nWhat mostly dwelt in them was the hope to see my Lady Surrey, of whom\nI had had of late but brief and scanty tidings. The last letter I had\nfrom her was writ at the time when the Duke of Norfolk was for the\nsecond time thrown in the Tower, which she said was the greatest\nsorrow that had befallen her since the death of my Lady Mounteagle,\nwhich had happened at his grace's house a few months back, with all\nthe assistance she desired touching her religion. She had been urged,\nmy Lady Surrey said, by the duke some time before to do something\ncontrary to her faith; but though she much esteemed and respected him,\nher answer was so round and resolute that he never mentioned the like\nto her any more. Since then I had no more tidings of her, who was\ndearer to me than our brief acquaintance and the slender tie of such\ncorrespondence as had taken place between us might in most cases\nwarrant; but whether owing to some congeniality of mind, or to a\npresentiment of future friendship, 'tis most certain my heart was\nbound to her in an extraordinary manner; so that she was the continual\ntheme of my thoughts and mirror of my fancy.\n\nThe first night of our journey we lay at a small inn, which was held\nby persons Mistress Ward was acquainted with, and by whom we were\nentertained in a decent chamber, looking on unto a little garden, and\nwith as much comfort as the fashion of the place might afford, and\ngreater cleanliness than is often to be found in larger hostelries.\nAfter supper, being somewhat weary with travel, but not yet inclined\nfor bed, and the evening fine, we sat out of doors in a bower of\neglantine near to some bee-hives, of which our hostess had a great\nstore; and methinks she took example from them, for we could see her\nthrough the window as busy in the kitchen amongst her maids as the\nqueen-bee amidst her subjects. Mistress Ward took occasion to observe,\nas we watched one of these little commonwealths of nature, that she\nadmired how they do live, laboring and swarming, and gathering honey\ntogether so neat and finely, that they abhor nothing so much as\nuncleanliness, drinking pure and clear water, even the dew-drops on\nthe leaves and flowers, {351} and delighting in sweet music, which if\nthey hear but once out of tune they fly out of sight.\n\n\"They live,\" she said, \"under a law, and use great reverence to their\nelders. Every one hath his office; some trimming the honey, another\nframing hives, another the combs. When they go forth to work, they\nmark the wind and the clouds, and whatsoever doth threaten their ruin;\nand having gathered, out of every flower, honey, they return loaded in\ntheir mouths and on their wings, whom they that tarried at home\nreceive readily, easing their backs of their great burthens with as\ngreat care as can be thought of.\"\n\n\"Methinks,\" I answered, \"that if it be as you say, Mistress Ward, the\nbees be wiser than men.\"\n\nAt the which she smiled; but withal, sighing, made reply:\n\n\"One might have wished of late years rather to be a bee than such as\nwe see men sometimes to be. But, Mistress Constance, if they are\nindeed so wise and so happy, 'tis that they are fixed in a condition\nin which they must needs do the will of him who created them; and the\nlike wisdom and happiness in a far higher state we may ourselves\nenjoy, if we do but choose of our free will to live by the same rule.\"\n\nThen, after some further discourse on the habits of these little\ncitizens, I inquired of Mistress Ward if she were acquainted with mine\naunt, Mistress Congleton; at the which question she seemed surprised,\nand said,\n\n\"Methought, my dear, you had known my condition in your aunt's family,\nhaving been governess for many years to her three daughters, and only\nby reason of my sister's sickness having stayed away from them for\nsome time.\"\n\nAt the which intelligence I greatly rejoiced; for the few hours we had\nrode together, and our discourse that evening, had wrought in me a\nliking for this lady as great as could arise in so short a period. But\nI minded me then of my jests at her fears anent robbers, and also of\nhaving been less dutiful in my manners than I should have been toward\none who was like to be set over me; and I likewise bethought me this\nmight be the cause that she had spoken of the bees having a reverence\nfor their elders, and doubted if I should crave her pardon for my want\nof it. But, like many good thoughts which we give not entertainment to\nby reason that they be irksome, I changed that intent for one which\nhad in it more of pleasantness, though less of virtue. Kissing her, I\nsaid it was the best news I had heard for a long time that I should\nlive in the same house with her, and, as I hoped, under her care and\ngood government. And she answered, that she was well pleased with it\ntoo, and would be a good friend to me as long as she lived. Then I\nasked her touching my cousins, and of their sundry looks and\nqualities. She answered, that the eldest, Kate, was very fair, and\nsaid nothing further concerning her. Polly, she told me, was\nmarvellous witty and very pleasant, and could give a quick answer,\nfull of entertaining conceits.\n\n\"And is she, then, not fair?\" I asked.\n\n\"Neither fair nor foul,\" was her reply; \"but well favored enough, and\nhas an excellent head.\"\n\n\"Then,\" I cried, letting my words exceed good behavior, \"I shall like\nher better than the pretty fool her sister.\" For the which speech I\nreceived the first, but not the last, chiding I ever had from Mistress\nWard for foolish talking and pert behavior, which was what I very well\ndeserved. When she had done speaking, I put my arm round her neck--for\nit put me in mind of my mother to be so gravely yet so sweetly\ncorrected--and said, \"Forgive me, dear Mistress Ward, for my saucy\nwords, and tell me somewhat I beseech you touching my youngest cousin,\nwho must be nearest to mine own age.\"\n\n\"She is no pearl to hang at one's ear,\" quoth she, \"yet so gifted with\na well-disposed mind that in her grace {352} seems almost to supersede\nnature. Muriel is deformed in body, and slow in speech; but in\nbehavior so honest, in prayer so devout, so noble in all her dealings,\nthat I never heard her speak anything that either concerned not good\ninstruction or godly mirth.\"\n\n\"And doth she not care to be ugly?\" I asked.\n\n\"So little doth she value beauty,\" quoth Mistress Ward, \"save in the\nadmiring of it in others, that I have known her to look into a glass\nand smiling cry out, 'This face were fair if it were turned and every\nfeature the opposite to what it is;' and so jest pleasantly at her own\ndeformities, and would have others do so too. Oh, she is a rare\ntreasure of goodness and piety, and a true comfort to her friends!\"\n\nWith suchlike pleasant discourse we whiled away the time until going\nto rest; and next day were on horseback betimes on our way to\nCoventry, where we were to lie that night at the house of Mr. Page, a\nCatholic, albeit not openly, by reason of the times. This gentleman is\nfor his hospitality so much haunted, that no news stirs but comes to\nhis ears, and no gentlefolks pass his door but have a cheerful welcome\nto his house; and 'tis said no music is so sweet to his ears as\ndeserved thanks. He vouchsafed much favor to us, and by his merry\nspeeches procured us much entertainment, provoking me to laughter\nthereby more than I desired. He took us to see St. Mary's Hall, which\nis a building which has not its equal for magnificence in any town I\nhave seen, no, not even in London. As we walked through the streets he\nshowed us a window in which was an inscription, set up in the reign of\nKing Richard the Second, which did run thus:\n\n  \"I, Luriche, for the love of thee\n  Do make Coventry toll free.\"\n\nAnd further on, the figure of Peeping Tom of Coventry, that false\nknave I was so angry with when my father (ah, me! how sharp and sudden\nwas the pain which went through my heart as I called to mind the hours\nI was wont to sit on his knee hearkening to the like tales) told me\nthe story of the Lady Godiva, who won mercy for her townsfolk by a\nride which none had dared to take but one so holy as herself. And, as\nI said before, being then in a humor as prone to tears at one moment\nas laughter at another, I fell to weeping for the noble lady who had\nbeen in so sore a strait that she must needs have chosen between\ncomplying with her savage lord's conditions or the misery of her poor\nclients. When Mr. Page noticed my tears, which flowed partly for\nmyself and partly for one who had been long dead, but yet lived in the\nhearts of these citizens, he sought to cheer me by the recital of the\nfair and rare pageant which doth take place every year in Coventry,\nand is of the most admirable beauty, and such as is not witnessed in\nany other city in the world. He said I should not weep if I were to\nsee it, which he very much desired I should; and he hoped he might be\nthen alive, and ride by my side in the procession as my esquire; at\nthe which I smiled, for the good gentleman had a face and figure such\nas would not grace a pageant, and methought I might be ashamed some\nyears hence to have him for my knight; and I said, \"Good Mr. Page, be\nthe shutters closed on those days as when the Lady Godiva rode?\" at\nthe which he laughed, and answered,\n\n\"No; and that for one Tom who then peeped, there were a thousand eyes\nto gaze on the show as it passed.\"\n\n\"Then if it please you, sir, when the time comes,\" I said, \"I would\nlike to look on and not to ride;\" and he replied, it should be as I\npleased; and with such merry discourse we spent the time till supper\nwas ready. And afterward that good gentleman slackened not his efforts\nin entertaining us; but related so many laughable stories, and took so\ngreat notice of me, that I was moved to answer him sometimes in a\nmanner too forward for my years. He told us of the queen's visit to\nthat {353} city, and that the mayor, who had heard her grace's majesty\nconsidered poets, and herself wrote verses, thought to commend himself\nto her favor by such rare rhymes as these, wherewith he did greet her\nat her entrance into the town:\n\n  \"We, the men of Coventry,\n  Be pleased to see your majesty,\n  Good Lord! how fair you be!\"\n\nat the which her highness made but an instant's pause, and then\nstraightway replied,\n\n  \"It pleaseth well her majesty\n  To see the men of Coventry.\n  Good Lord! what fools you be!\"\n\n\"But,\" quoth Mr. Page, \"the good man was so well pleased that the\nQueen had answered his compliment, that 'tis said he has had her\nmajesty's speech framed, and hung up in his parlor.\"\n\n\"Pity 'tis not in the town-hall,\" I cried; and he laughing commended\nme for sharpness; but Mistress Ward said:\n\n\"A sharp tongue in a woman's head was always a stinging weapon; but in\na queen's she prayed God it might never prove a murtherous one.\" Which\nwords somewhat checked our merriment, for that they savored of rebuke\nto me for forward speech, and I ween awoke in Mr. Page thoughts of a\ngraver sort.\n\nWhen we rode through the town next day, he went with us for the space\nof some miles, and then bade us farewell with singular courtesy, and\nprofessions of good will and proffered service if we should do him the\ngood at any time to remember his poor house; which we told him he had\ngiven us sufficient reason not to forget. Toward evening, when the sun\nwas setting, we did see the towers of Warwick Castle; and I would fain\nhave discerned the one which doth bear the name of the great earl who\nin a poor pilgrim's garb slew the giant Colbrand, and the cave 'neath\nGuy's Cliff where he spent his last years in prayer. But the light was\ndeclining as we rode into Leamington, where we lay that night, and\ndarkness hid from us that fair country, which methought was a meet\nabode for such as would lead a hermit's life.\n\nThe next day we had the longest ride and the hottest sun we had yet\nmet with; and at noon we halted to rest in a thicket on the roadside,\nwhich we made our pavilion, and from which our eyes did feast\nthemselves on a delightful prospect. There were heights on one side\ngarnished with stately oaks, and a meadow betwixt the road and the\nhill enamelled with all sorts of pleasing flowers, and stored with\nsheep, which were feeding in sober security. Mistress Ward, who was\ngreatly tired with the journey, fell asleep with her head on her hand,\nand I pulled from my pocket a volume with which Mr. Page had gifted me\nat parting, and which contained sundry tales anent Amadis de Gaul,\nHuon de Bordeaux, Palmerin of England, and suchlike famous knights,\nwhich he said, as I knew how to read, for which he greatly commended\nmy parents' care, I should entertain myself with on the road. So,\none-half sitting, one-half lying on the grass, I reclined in an easy\nposture, with my head resting against the trunk of a tree, pleasing my\nfancy with the writers' conceits; but ever and anon lifting my eyes to\nthe blue sky above my head, seen through the green branches, or fixed\nthem on the quaint patterns the quivering light drew on the grass, or\nelse on the valley refreshed with a silver river, and the fair hills\nbeyond it. And as I read of knights and ladies, and the many perils\nwhich befel them, and passages of love betwixt them, which was new to\nme, and what I had not met with in any of the books I had yet read, I\nfell into a fit of musing, wondering if in London the folks I should\nsee would discourse in the same fashion, and the gentlemen have so\nmuch bravery and the ladies so great beauty as those my book treated\nof. And as I noticed it was chiefly on the high-roads they did come\ninto such dangerous adventures, {354} I gazed as far as I could\ndiscern on the one I had in view before me with a foolish kind of\ndesire for some robbers to come and assail us, and then a great\nnobleman or gallant esquire to ride up and fall on them, and to\ndeliver us from a great peril, and may be to be wounded in the\nencounter, and I to bind up those wounds as from my mother's teaching\nI knew how to do, and then give thanks to the noble gentleman in such\ncourteous and well-picked words as I could think of. But for all my\ngazing I could naught perceive save a wain slowly ascending the hill\nloaden with corn, midst clouds of dust, and some poorer sort of\npeople, who had been gleaning, and were carrying sheaves on their\nheads. After an hour Mistress Ward awoke from her nap; and methinks I\nhad been dozing also, for when she called to me, and said it was time\nto eat somewhat, and then get to horse, I cried out, \"Good sir, I wait\nyour pleasure;\" and rubbed my eyes to see her standing before me in\nher riding-habit, and not the gentleman whose wounds I had been\ntending.\n\nThat night we slept at Northampton, at Mistress Engerfield's house.\nShe was a cousin of Mr. Congleton's, and a lady whose sweet affability\nand gravity would have extorted reverence from those that least loved\nher. She was then very aged, and had been a nun in King Henry's reign;\nand, since her convent had been despoiled, and the religious driven\nout of it, having a large fortune of her own, which she inherited\nabout that time, she made her house a secret monastery, wherein God\nwas served in a religious manner by such persons as the circumstances\nof the time, and not their own desires, had forced back into the\nworld, and who as yet had found no commodity for passing beyond seas\ninto countries where that manner of life is allowed. They dressed in\nsober black, and kept stated hours of prayer, and went not abroad\nunless necessity compelled them thereunto. When we went into the\ndining-room, which I noticed Mistress Engerfield called the refectory,\ngrace was said in Latin; and whilst we did eat one lady read out loud\nout of a book, which methinks was the life of a saint; but the fatigue\nof the journey, and the darkness of the room, which was wainscotted\nwith oak-wood, so overpowered my senses with drowsiness, that before\nthe meal was ended I had fallen asleep, which was discovered, to my\ngreat confusion, when the company rose from table. But that good lady,\nin whose face was so great a kindliness that I never saw one to be\ncompared with it in that respect before or since, took me by the hand\nand said, \"Young eyes wax heavy for lack of rest, and travellers\nshould have repose. Come to thy chamber, sweet one, and, after\ncommending thyself by a brief prayer to him who sleepeth not nor\nslumbereth, and to her who is the Mother of the motherless, get thee\nto bed and take thy fill of the sleep thou hast so great need of, and\ngood angels will watch near thee.\"\n\nOh, how I did weep then, partly from fatigue, and partly from the dear\ncomfort her words did yield me, and, kneeling, asked her blessing, as\nI had been wont to do of my dear parents. And she, whose countenance\nwas full of majesty, and withal of most attractive gentleness, which\nmade me deem her to be more than an ordinary woman, and a great\nservant of God, as indeed she was, raised me from the ground, and\nherself assisted to get me to bed, having first said my prayers by her\nside, whose inflamed devotion, visible in her face, awakened in me a\ngreater fervor than I had hitherto experienced when performing this\nduty. After I had slept heavily for the space of two or three hours I\nawoke, as is the wont of those who be over-fatigued, and could not get\nto sleep again, so that I heard the clock of a church strike twelve;\nand as the last stroke fell on my ear, it was followed by a sound of\nchanting, as if close unto my chamber, which resembled what on rare\noccasions I had heard performed {355} by two or three persons in our\nchapel; but here, with so full a concord of voices, and so great\nmelody and sweetness, that methought, being at that time of night and\nevery one abed, it must be the angels that were singing. But the next\nday, questioning Mrs. Ward thereupon as of a strange thing which had\nhappened to me, she said, the ladies in that house rose always at\nmidnight, as they had been used to do in their several convents, to\nsing God's praises and give him thanks, which was what they did vow to\ndo when they became religious. Before we departed, Mistress Engerfield\ntook me into her own room, which was small and plainly furnished, with\nno other furniture in it but a bed, table, and kneeling-stool, and\nagainst the wall a large crucifix, and she bestowed upon me a small\nbook in French, titled \"The Spiritual Combat,\" which she said was a\ntreasury of pious riches, which she counselled me by frequent study to\nmake my own; and with many prayers and blessings she then bade us\nGod-speed, and took leave of us. Our last day's lodging on the road\nwas at Bedford; and there being no Catholics of note in that town wont\nto entertain travellers, we halted at a quiet hostelry, which was kept\nby very decent people, who showed us much civility; and the landlady,\nafter we had supped, the evening being rainy (for else she said we\nmight have walked through her means into the fair grounds of the Abbey\nof Woburn, which she thanked God was not now a hive for drones, as it\nhad once been, but the seat of a worthy nobleman; which did more\ncredit to the town, and drew customers to the inn), brought us for our\nentertainment a huge book, which she said had as much godliness in\neach of its pages as might serve to convert as many Papists--God save\nthe mark!--as there were leaves in the volume. My cheeks glowed like\nfire when she thus spoke, and I looked at Mistress Ward, wondering\nwhat she would say. But she only bowed her head, and made pretence to\nopen the book, which, when the good woman was gone,\n\n\"Mistress Constance,\" quoth she, \"this is a book writ by Mr. Fox, the\nDuke of Norfolk's old schoolmaster, touching those he doth call\nmartyrs, who suffered for treason and for heresy in the days of Queen\nMary,--God rest her soul!--and if it ever did convert a Papist, I do not\nsay on his deathbed, but at any time of his life, except it was\ngreatly for his own interest, I be ready. . .\"\n\n\"To be a martyr yourself, Mistress Ward,\" I cried, with my ever too\ngreat proneness to let my tongue loose from restraint. The color rose\nin her cheek, which was usually pale, and she said:\n\n\"Child, I was about to say, that in the case I have named, I be ready\nto forego the hope of that which I thank God I be wise enough to\ndesire, though unworthy to obtain; but for which I do pray each day\nthat I live.\"\n\n\"Then would you not be afraid to die on a scaffold,\" I asked, \"or to\nbe hanged, Mistress Ward?\"\n\n\"Not in a good cause,\" she said.\n\nBut before the words were out of her mouth our landlady knocked at the\ndoor, and said a gentleman was in the house with his two sons, who\nasked to pay their compliments to Mistress Ward and the young lady\nunder her care. The name of this gentleman was Rookwood, of Rookwood\nHall in Suffolk, and Mistress Ward desired the landlady presently to\nbring them in, for she had often met them at my aunt's house, as she\nafterward told me, and had great contentment we should have such good\ncompany under the same roof with us; whom when they came in she very\npleasantly received, and informed Mr. Rookwood of my name and\nrelationship to Mistress Congleton; which when he heard, he asked if I\nwas Mr. Henry Sherwood's daughter; which being certified of, he\nsaluted me, and said my father was at one time, when both were at\ncollege, the closest friend that ever he had, and his esteem for him\nwas so great that he would be better {356} pleased with the news that\nhe should see him but once again, than if any one was to give him a\nthousand pounds. I told him my father often spake of him with singular\naffection, and that the letter I should write to him from London would\nbe more welcome than anything else could make it, by the mention of\nthe honor I had had of his notice. Mistress Ward then asked him what\nwas the news in London, from whence he had come that morning. He\nanswered that the news was not so good as he would wish it to be; for\nthat the queen's marriage with monsieur was broke off, and the King of\nFrance greatly incensed at the favor M. de Montgomeri had experienced\nat her hands; and that when he had demanded he should be given up, she\nhad answered that she did not see why she should be the King of\nFrance's hangman; which was what his father had replied to her sister,\nwhen she had made the like request anent some of her traitors who had\nfled to France.\n\n\"Her majesty,\" he said, \"was greatly incensed against the Bishop of\nRoss, and had determined to put him to death; but that she was\ndissuaded from it by her council; and that he prayed God Catholics\nshould not fare worse now that Ridolfi's plot had been discovered to\ndeclare her highness illegitimate, and place the Queen of Scots on the\nthrone, which had moved her to greater anger than even the rising in\nthe north.\n\n\"And touching the Duke of Norfolk,\" Mistress Ward did ask, \"what is\nlike to befal him?\"\n\nMr. Rookwood said, \"His grace had been removed from the Tower to his\nown house on account of the plague; but it is reported the queen is\nmore urgent against him than ever, and will have his head in the end.\"\n\n\"If her majesty will not marry monsieur,\" Mistress Ward said, \"it will\nfare worse with recusants.\"\n\nUpon which one of the young gentlemen cried out, \"'Tis not her majesty\nwill not have him; but monsieur will not have her. My Lord of Oxford,\nwho is to marry my Lord Burleigh's daughter, said yesterday at the\ntennis court, that that matter of monsieur is grieviously taken on her\ngrace's part; but that my lord is of opinion that where amity is so\nneedful, her majesty should stomach it; and so she doth pretend to\nbreak it off herself by reason of her religious scruples.\"\n\nAt the which both brothers did laugh, but Mr. Rookwood bade them have\na care how they did suffer their tongues to wag anent her grace and\nsuch matters as her grace's marriage; which although in the present\ncompany might be without danger, was an ill habit, which in these\ntimes was like to bring divers persons into troubles.\n\n\"Hang it!\" cried the eldest of his sons, who was of a well-pleasing\nfavor and exceeding goodly figure; \"recusants be always in trouble,\nwhatsoever they do; both taxed for silence and checked for speech, as\nthe play hath it. For good Mr. Weston was racked for silence last week\ntill he fainted, for that he would not reveal what he had heard in\nconfession from one concerned in Ridolfi's plot; and as to my Lord\nMorley, he hath been examined before the council, touching his having\nsaid he would go abroad poorly and would return in glory, which he did\nspeak concerning his health; but they would have it meant treason.\"\n\n\"Methinks, Master Basil,\" said his father, \"thou art not like to be\ntaxed for silence; unless indeed on the rack, which the freedom of thy\nspeech may yet bring thee to, an thou hast not more care of thy words.\nSee now, thy brother keeps his lips closed in modest silence.\"\n\n\"Ay, as if butter would not melt in his mouth,\" cried Basil, laughing.\n\nAnd I then noticed the countenance of the younger brother, who was\nfairer and shorter by a head than Basil, and had the most beautiful\neyes imaginable, and a high forehead betokening thoughtfulness. Mr.\nRookwood drew his chair further from the table, and conversed in a low\nvoice with Mrs. Ward, {357} touching matters which I ween were of too\ngreat import to be lightly treated of. I heard the name of Mr. Felton\nmentioned in their discourse, and somewhat about the Pope's Bull, in\nthe affixing of which at the Bishop of London's gate he had lent a\nhand; but my ears were not free to listen to them, for the young\ngentlemen began to entertain me with divers accounts of the shows in\nLondon; which, as they were some years older than myself, who was then\nno better than a child, though tall of mine age, I took as a great\nfavor, and answered them in the best way I could. Basil spoke mostly\nof the sights he had seen, and a fight between a lion and three dogs,\nin which the dogs were victorious; and Hubert of books, which he said,\nfor his part, he had always a care to keep handsome and well bound.\n\n\"Ay,\" quoth his brother, \"gilding them and stringing them like the\nprayer-books of girls and gallants, which are carried to church but\nfor their outsides. I do hate a book with clasps, 'tis a trouble to\nopen them.\"\n\n\"A trouble thou dost seldom take,\" quoth Hubert. \"Thou art ready\nenough to unclasp the book of thy inward soul to whosoever will read\nin it, and thy purse to whosoever begs or borrows of thee; but with\nsuch clasps as shut in the various stores of thought which have issued\nforth from men's minds thou dost not often meddle.\"\n\n\"Beshrew me if I do! The best prayer-book I take to be a pair of\nbeads; and the most entertaining reading, the 'Rules for the Hunting\nof Deer;' which, by what I have heard from Sir Roger Ashlon, my Lord\nStafford hath grievously transgressed by assaulting Lord Lyttleton's\nkeepers in Teddesley Haye.\"\n\n\"What have you here?\" Hubert asked, glancing at Mr. Fox's _Book of\nMartyrs_, and another which the landlady had left on the table; _A\nprofitable New Year's Gift to all England._\n\n\"They are not mine,\" I answered, \"nor such as I do care to read; but\nthis,\" I said, holding out Mr. Page's gift, which I had in my pocket,\n\"is a rare fund of entertainment and very full of pleasant tales.\"\n\n\"But,\" quoth he, \"you should read the _Morte d'Arthur_ and the _Seven\nChampions of Christendom.\"_\n\nWhich I said I should be glad to do when I had the good chance to meet\nwith them. He said, \"My cousin Polly had a store of such pleasant\nvolumes, and would, no doubt, lend them to me. She has such a sharp\nwit,\" he added, \"that she is ever exercising it on herself or on\nothers; on herself by the bettering of her mind through reading; and\non others by such applications, of what she thus acquires as leaves\nthem no chance in discoursing with her but to yield to her superior\nknowledge.\"\n\n\"Methinks,\" I said, \"if that be her aim in reading, may be she will\nnot lend to others the means of sharpening their wits to encounter\nhers.\"\n\nAt the which both of them laughed, and Basil said he hoped I might\nprove a match for Mistress Polly, who carried herself too high, and\ndespised such as were slower of speech and less witty than herself.\n\"For my part,\" he cried, \"I am of opinion that too much reading doth\nlead to too much thinking, and too much thinking doth consume the\nspirits; and often it falls out that while one thinks too much of his\ndoing, he leaves to do the effect of his thinking.\"\n\nAt the which Hubert smiled, and I bethought myself that if Basil was\nno book-worm neither was he a fool. With such like discourse the\nevening sped away, and Mr. Rookwood and his sons took their leave with\nmany civilities and pleasant speeches, such as gentlemen are wont to\naddress to ladies, and hopes expressed to meet again in London, and\ngood wishes for the safe ending of our journey thither.\n\nAh, me! 'tis passing strange to sit here and write in this little\nchamber, after so many years, of that first meeting with those\nbrothers, Basil and Hubert; to call to mind how they did look and\nspeak, and of the pretty kind {358} of natural affection there was\nbetwixt them in their manner to each other. Ah, me! the old trick of\nsighing is coming over me again, which I had well-nigh corrected\nmyself of, who have more reason to give thanks than to complain. Good\nLord, what fools you be! sighing heart and watering eyes! As great\nfools, I ween, as the Mayor of Coventry, whose foolish rhymes do keep\nrunning in my head.\n\nThe day following we came to London, which being, as it were, the\nbeginning of a new life to me, I will defer to speak of until I find\nmyself, after a night's rest and special prayers unto that end, less\nheavy of heart than at present.\n\n\nCHAPTER VII.\n\nUpon a sultry evening which did follow an exceeding hot day, with no\nclouds in the sky, and a great store of dust on the road, we entered\nLondon, that great fair of the whole world, as some have titled it.\nWhen for many years we do think of a place we have not seen, a picture\nforms itself in the mind as distinct as if the eye had taken\ncognizance thereof, and a singular curiosity attends the actual vision\nof what the imagination hath so oft portrayed. On this occasion my\neyes were slow servants to my desires, which longed to embrace in the\ncompass of one glance the various objects they craved to behold.\nAlbeit the sky was cloudless above our heads, I feared it would rain\nin London, by reason of a dark vapor which did hang over it; but\nMistress Ward informed me that this appearance was owing to the smoke\nof sea-coal, of which so great a store is used in the houses that the\nair is filled with it. \"And do those in London always live in that\nsmoke?\" I inquired, not greatly contented to think it should be so;\nbut she said Mr. Congleton's house was not in the city, but in a very\npleasant suburb outside of it, close unto Holborn Hill and Ely Place,\nthe bishop's palace, in whose garden the roses were so plentiful that\nin June the air is perfumed with their odor. I troubled her not with\nfurther questions at that time, being soon wholly taken up with the\nnew sights which then did meet us at every step. So great a number of\ngay horsemen, and litters carried by footmen with fine liveries, and\ncoaches drawn by horses richly caparisoned and men running alongside\nof them, and withal so many carts, that I was constrained to give over\nthe guiding of mine own horse by reason of the confusion which the\nnoise of wheels and men's cries and the rapid motion of so many\nvehicles did cause in me, who had never rode before in so great a\ncrowd.\n\nAt about six o'clock of the afternoon we did reach Ely Place, and\npassing by the bishop's palace stopped at the gate of Mr. Congleton's\nhouse, which doth stand somewhat retired from the high-road, and the\nfirst sight of which did greatly content me. It is built of fair and\nstrong stone, not affecting fineness, but honorably representing a\nfirm stateliness, for it was handsome without curiosity, and homely\nwithout negligence. At the front of it was a well-arranged ground\ncunningly set with trees, through which we rode to the foot of the\nstairs, where we were met by a gentleman dressed in a coat of black\nsatin and a quilted waistcoat, with a white beaver in his hand, whom I\nguessed to be my good uncle. He shook Mistress Ward by the hand,\nsaluted me on both cheeks, and vowed I was the precise counterpart of\nmy mother, who at my age, he said, was the prettiest Lancashire witch\nthat ever he had looked upon. He seemed to me not so old as I did\nsuppose him to be, lean of body and something low of stature, with a\nlong visage and a little sharp beard upon the chin of a brown color; a\ncountenance not very grave, and, for his age, wanting the authority of\ngray hairs. He conducted me to mine aunt's chamber, who was seated in\nan easy-chair near unto the window, with a cat upon her knees and\n{359} a tambour-frame before her. She oped her arms and kissed me with\ngreat affection, and I, sliding down, knelt at her feet and prayed her\nto be a good mother to me, which was what my father had charged me to\ndo when I should come into her presence. She raised me with her hand\nand made me sit on a stool beside her, and stroking my face gently,\ngazed upon it, and said it put her in mind of both of my parents, for\nthat I had my father's brow and eyes, and my mother's mouth and\ndimpling smiles.\n\n\"Mr. Congleton,\" she cried, \"you do hear what this wench saith. I pray\nyou to bear it in mind, and how near in blood she is to me, so that\nyou may show her favor when I am gone, which may be sooner than you\nthink for.\"\n\nI looked up into her face greatly concerned that she was like so soon\nto die. Methought she had the semblance of one in good health and a\nreasonable good color in her cheeks, and I perceived Mr. Congleton did\nsmile as he answered:\n\n\"I will show favor to thy pretty niece, good Moll, I promise thee, be\nthou alive or be thou dead; but if the leeches are to be credited, who\ndo affirm thou hast the best strength and stomach of the twain, thou\nart more like to bury me than I thee.\"\n\nUpon which the good lady did sigh deeply and cast up her eyes and\nlifted up her hands as one grievously injured, and he cried:\n\n\"Prithee, sweetheart, take it not amiss, for beshrew me if I be not\nwilling to grant thee to be as diseased as will pleasure thee, so that\nthou wilt continue to eat and sleep as well as thou dost at the\npresent and so keep thyself from dying.\"\n\nUpon which she said that she did admire how a man could have so much\ncruelty as to jest and jeer at her ill-health, but that she would\nspend no more of her breath upon him; and turning toward me she asked\na store of questions anent my father, whom for many years she had not\nseen, and touching the manner of my mother's death, at the mention of\nwhich my tears flowed afresh, which caused her also to weep; and\ncalling for her women she bade one of them bring her some hartshorn,\nfor that sorrow, she said, would occasion the vapors to rise in her\nhead, and the other she sent for to fetch her case of trinkets, for\nthat she would wear the ring her brother had presented her with some\nyears back, in which was a stone which doth cure melancholy. When the\ncase was brought she displayed before my eyes its rich contents, and\ngifted me with a brooch set with turquoises, the wearing of which, she\nsaid, doth often keep persons from falling into divers sorts of peril.\nThen presently kissing me she said she felt fatigued, and would send\nfor her daughters to take charge of me; who, when they came, embraced\nme with exceeding great affection, and carried me to what had been\ntheir schoolroom and was now Mrs. Ward's chamber, who no longer was\ntheir governess, they said, but as a friend abode in the house for to\ngo abroad with them, their mother being of so delicate a constitution\nthat she seldom left her room. Next to this chamber was a closet,\nwherein Kate said I should lie, and as it is one I inhabited for a\nlong space of time, and the remembrance of which doth connect itself\nwith very many events which, as they did take place, I therein mused\non, and prayed or wept, or sometimes laughed over in solitude, I will\nhere set down what it was like when first I saw it.\n\nThe bed was in an alcove, closed in the day by fair curtains of\ntaffety; and the walls, which were in wood, had carvings above the\ndoor and over the chimney of very dainty workmanship. The floor was\nstrewn with dried neatly-cut rushes, and in the projecting space where\nthe window was, a table was set, and two chairs with backs and seats\ncunningly furnished with tapestry. In another recess betwixt the\nalcove and the chimney stood a praying stool and a desk with a cushion\nfor a book to lie on. Ah, me! how often has my head {360} rested on\nthat cushion and my knees on that stool when my heart has been too\nfull to utter other prayers than a \"God ha' mercy on me!\" which at\nsuch times broke as a cry from an overcharged breast. But, oh! what a\nvain pleasure I did take on that first day in the bravery of this\nlittle chamber, which Kate said was to be mine own! With what great\ncontentment I viewed each part of it, and looked out of the window on\nthe beds of flowers which did form a mosaical floor in the garden\naround the house, in the midst of which was a fair pond whose shaking\ncrystal mirrored the shrubs which grew about it, and a thicket beyond,\nwhich did appear to me a place for pleasantness and not unfit to\nflatter solitariness, albeit so close unto the city. Beyond were the\nbishop's grounds, and I could smell the scent of roses coming thence\nas the wind blew. I could have stood there many hours gazing on this\nnew scene, but that my cousins brought me down to sup with them in the\ngarden, which was not fairer in natural ornaments than in artificial\ninventions. The table was set in a small banqueting-house among\ncertain pleasant trees near to a pretty water-work; and now I had\nleisure to scan my cousins' faces and compare what I did notice in\nthem with what Mistress Ward had said the first night of our journey.\n\nKate, the eldest of the three, was in sooth a very fair creature,\nproportioned without any fault, and by nature endowed with the most\ndelightful colors; but there was a made countenance about her mouth,\nbetween simpering and smiling, and somewhat in her bowed-down head\nwhich seemed to languish with over-much idleness, and an inviting look\nin her eyes as if they would over-persuade those she spoke to, which\nbetokened a lack of those nobler powers of the mind which are the\nhighest gifts of womanhood. Polly's face fault-finding wits might\nscoff at as too little for the rest of the body, her features as not\nso well proportioned as Kate's, and her skin somewhat browner than\ndoth consist with beauty; but in her eyes there was a cheerfulness as\nif nature smiled in them, in her mouth so pretty a demureness, and in\nher countenance such a spark of wit that, if it struck not with\nadmiration, filled with delight. No indifferent soul there was which,\nif it resisted making her its princess, would not long to have such a\nplayfellow. Muriel, the youngest of these sisters, was deformed in\nshape, sallow in hue, in speech, as Mistress Ward had said, slow; but\nwithal in her eyes, which were deep-set, there was lacking neither the\nfire which betokens intelligence, nor the sweetness which commands\naffection, and somewhat in her plain face which, though it may not be\ncalled beauty, had some of its qualities. Methought it savored more of\nheaven than earth. The ill-shaped body seemed but a case for a soul\nthe fairness of which did shine through the foul lineaments which\nenclosed it. Albeit her lips opened but seldom that evening, only\ntwice or thrice, and they were common words she uttered and fraught\nwith hesitation, my heart did more incline toward her than to the\npretty Kate or the lively Polly.\n\nAn hour before we retired to rest, Mr. Congleton came into the garden,\nand brought with him Mr. Swithin Wells and Mr. Bryan Lacy, two\ngentlemen who lived also in Holborn; the latter of which, Polly\nwhispered in mine ear, was her sister Kate's suitor. Talk was\nministered among them touching the queen's marriage with Monsieur;\nwhich, as Mr. Rookwood had said, was broken off; but that day they had\nheard that M. de la Motte had proposed to her majesty the Due\nd'Alencon, who would be more complying, he promised, touching religion\nthan his brother. She inquired of the prince's age, and of his height;\nto the which he did answer, \"About your majesty's own height.\" But her\nhighness would not be so put off, and willed the ambassador to write\nfor the precise measurement of the prince's stature.\n\n\"She will never marry,\" quoth Mr. Wells, \"but only amuse the French\n{361} court and her council with further negotiations touching this\nnew suitor, as heretofore anent the archduke and Monsieur. But I would\nto God her majesty were well married, and to a Catholic prince; which\nwould do us more good than anything else which can be thought of.\"\n\n\"What news did you hear, sir, of Mr. Felton?\" Mistress Ward asked.\nUpon which their countenances fell; and one of them answered that that\ngentleman had been racked the day before, but steadily refused, though\nin the extremity of torture, to name his accomplices; and would give\nher majesty no title but that of the Pretender; which they said was\ngreatly to be regretted, and what no other Catholic had done. But when\nhis sentence was read to him, for that he was to die on Friday, he\ndrew from his finger a ring, which had diamonds in it, and was worth\nfour hundred pounds, and requested the Earl of Sussex to give it to\nthe queen, in token that he bore her no ill-will or malice, but rather\nthe contrary.\n\nMr. Wells said he was a gentleman of very great heart and noble\ndisposition, but for his part he would as lief this ring had been\nsold, and the money bestowed on the poorer sort of prisoners in\nNewgate, than see it grace her majesty's finger; who would thus play\nthe hangman's part, who inherits the spoils of such as he doth put to\ndeath. But the others affirmed it was done in a Christian manner, and\nso greatly to be commended; and that Mr. Felton, albeit he was\nsomewhat rash in his actions, and by some titled Don Magnifico, by\nreason of a certain bravery in his style of dress and fashion of\nspeaking, which smacked of Monsieur Traveller, was a right worthy\ngentleman, and his death a blow to his friends, amongst whom there\nwere some, nevertheless, to be found who did blame him for the act\nwhich had brought him into trouble. Mistress Ward cried, that such as\nfell into trouble, be the cause ever so good, did always find those\nwho would blame them. Mr. Lacy said, one should not cast himself into\ndanger wilfully, but when occasion offered take it with patience.\nPolly replied, that some were so prudent, occasions never came to\nthem. And then those two fell to disputing, in a merry but withal\nsharp fashion. As he did pick his words, and used new-fangled terms,\nand she spoke roundly and to the point, methinks she was the nimblest\nin this encounter of wit.\n\nMeanwhile Mr. Wells asked Mr. Congleton if he had had news from the\nnorth, where much blood was spilt since the rising; and he apprehended\nthat his kinsmen in Richmondshire should suffer under the last orders\nsent to Sir George Bowes by my Lord Sussex. But Mr. Congleton did\nminister to him this comfort, that if they were noted wealthy, and had\nfreeholds, it was the queen's special commandment they should not be\nexecuted, but two hundred of the commoner sort to lose their lives in\neach town; which was about one to each five.\n\n\"But none of note?\" quoth Mr. Wells.\n\n\"None which can pay the worth of their heads,\" Mr. Congleton replied.\n\n\"And who, then, doth price them?\" asked Kate, in a languishing voice.\n\n\"Nay, sister,\" quoth Polly, \"I warrant thee they do price themselves;\nfor he that will not pay well for his head must needs opine he hath a\nworthless one.\"\n\nUpon which Mr. Lacy said to Kate, \"One hundred angels would not pay\nfor thine, sweet Kate.\"\n\n\"Then she must needs be an archangel, sir,\" quoth Polly, \"if she be of\ngreater worth than one hundred angels.\"\n\n\"Ah, me!\" cried Kate, very earnestly, \"I would I had but half one\nhundred gold-pieces to buy me a gown with!\"\n\n\"Hast thou not gowns enough, wench?\" asked her father. \"Methought thou\nwert indifferently well provided in that respect.\"\n\n\"Ah, but I would have, sir, such a {362} velvet suit as I did see some\nweeks back at the Italian house in Cheapside, where the ladies of the\ncourt do buy their vestures. It had a border the daintiest I ever\nbeheld, all powdered with gold and pearls. Ruffiano said it was the\nrarest suit he had ever made; and he is the Queen of France's tailor,\nwhich Sir Nicholas Throgmorton did secretly entice away, by the\nqueen's desire, from that court to her own.\"\n\n\"And what fair nymph owns this rare suit, sweetest Kate?\" Mr. Lacy\nasked. \"I'll warrant none so fair that it should become her, or rather\nthat she should become it, more than her who doth covet it.\"\n\n\"I know not if she be fair or foul,\" quoth Kate, \"but she is the Lady\nMary Howard, one of the maids of honor of her majesty, and so may wear\nwhat pleaseth her.\"\n\n\"By that token of the gold and pearls,\" cried Mr. Wells, \"I doubt not\nbut 'tis the very suit anent which the court have been wagging their\ntongues for the last week; and if it be so, indeed, Mistress Kate, you\nhave no need to envy the poor lady that doth own it.\"\n\nKate protested she had not envied her, and taxed Mr. Wells with\nunkindness that he did charge her with it; and for all he could say\nwould not be pacified, but kept casting up her eyes, and the tears\nstreaming down her lovely cheeks. Upon which Mr. Lacy cried:\n\n\"Sweet one, thou hast indeed no cause to envy her or any one else,\nhowsoever rare or dainty their suits may be; for thy teeth are more\nbeauteous than pearls, and thine hair more bright than the purest\ngold, and thine eyes more black and soft than the finest velvet, which\nnature so made that we might bear their wonderful shining, which else\nhad dazzled us:\" and so went on till her weeping was stayed, and then\nMr. Wells said:\n\n\"The lady who owned that rich suit, which I did falsely and\nfeloniously advance Mistress Kate did envy, had not great or long\ncomfort in its possession; for it is very well known at court, and\nhence bruited in the city, what passed at Richmond last week\nconcerning this rare vesture. It pleased not the queen, who thought it\ndid exceed her own. And one day her majesty did send privately for it,\nand put it on herself, and came forth into the chamber among the\nladies. The kirtle and border was far too short for her majesty's\nheight, and she asked every one how they liked her new fancied suit.\nAt length she asked the owner herself if it was not made too short and\nill-becoming; which the poor lady did presently consent to. Upon which\nher highness cried: 'Why, then, if it become me not as being too\nshort, I am minded it shall never become thee as being too fine, so it\nfitteth neither well.' This sharp rebuke so abashed the poor lady that\nshe never adorned her herewith any more.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" cried Mr. Congleton, laughing, \"her majesty's bishops do come by\nreproofs as well as her maids. Have you heard how one Sunday, last\nApril, my Lord of London preached to the queen's majesty, and seemed\nto touch on the vanity of decking the body too finely. Her grace told\nthe ladies after the sermon, that if the bishop held more discourse on\nsuch matters she would fit him for heaven, but he should walk thither\nwithout a staff and leave his mantle behind him.\"\n\n\"Nay,\" quoth Mr. Wells, \"but if she makes such as be Catholics taste\nof the sharpness of the rack, and the edge of the axe, she doth then\ntreat those of her own way of thinking with the edge of her wit and\nthe sharpness of her tongue. 'Tis reported, Mr. Congleton, I know not\nwith what truth, that a near neighbor of yours has been served with a\nletter, by which a new sheep is let into his pastures.\"\n\n\"What,\" cried Polly, \"is Pecora Campi to roam amidst the roses, and go\nin and out at his pleasure through the bishop's gate? The 'sweet lids'\nhave then danced away a large slice of the Church's acres. But what, I\npray you, sir, did her majesty write?\"\n\n\"Even this,\" quoth her father, \"I {363} had it from Sir Robert\nArundell: 'Proud Prelate! you know what you were before I made you,\nand what you are now. If you do not immediately comply with my\nrequest, I will unfrock you, by God!--ELIZABETH R.'\"\n\n\"Our good neighbor,\" saith Polly, \"must show a like patience with Job,\nand cry out touching his bishopric, 'The queen did give it; the queen\ndoth take it away; the will of the queen be done.'\"\n\n\"He is like to be encroached upon yet further by yon cunning Sir\nChristopher,\" Mr. Wells said; \"I'll warrant Ely Place will soon be\nHatton Garden.\"\n\n\"Well, for a neighbor,\" answered Polly, \"I'd as soon have the queen's\nlids as her hedge-bishop, and her sheep as her shepherd. 'Tis not all\nfor love of her sweet dancer her majesty doth despoil him. She never,\n'tis said, hath forgiven him that he did remonstrate with her for\nkeeping a crucifix and lighted tapers in her own chapel, and that her\nfool, set on by such as were of the same mind with him, did one day\nput them out.\"\n\nIn suchlike talk the time was spent; and when the gentlemen had taken\nleave, we retired to rest; and being greatly tired, I slept heavily,\nand had many quaint dreams, in which past scenes and present objects\nwere curiously blended with the tales I had read on the journey, and\nthe discourse I had heard that evening. When I awoke in the morning,\nmy thoughts first flew to my father, of whom I had a very passionate\ndesire to receive tidings. When my waiting-woman entered, with a\nletter in her hand, I foolishly did fancy it came from him, which\ncould scarcely be, so soon after our coming to town; but I quickly\ndiscerned, by the rose-colored string which it was bounden with, and\nthen the handwriting, that it was not from him, but from her whom,\nnext to him, I most desired to hear from, to wit, the Countess of\nSurrey. That sweet lady wrote that she had an exceeding great desire\nto see me, and would be more beholden to my aunt than she could well\nexpress, if she would confer on her so great a benefit as to permit me\nto spend the day with her at the Charter House, and she would send her\ncoach for to convey me there, which should never have done her so much\ngood pleasure before as in that service. And more to that effect, with\nmany kind and gracious words touching our previous meeting and\ncorrespondence.\n\nWhen I was dressed, I took her ladyship's letter to Mrs. Ward, who was\npleased to say she would herself ask permission for me to wait upon\nthat noble lady; but that her ladyship might not be at the charge of\nsending for me, she would herself, if my aunt gave her license, carry\nme to the Charter House, for that she was to spend some hours that day\nwith friends in the city, and \"it would greatly content her,\" she\nadded, \"to further the expressed wish of the young countess, whose\ngrandmother, Lady Mounteagle, and so many of her kinsfolk, were\nCatholics, or at the least, good friends to such as were so.\" My aunt\ndid give leave for me to go, as she mostly did to whatsoever Mrs. Ward\nproposed, whom she trusted entirely, with a singular great affection,\nonly bidding her to pray that she might not die in her absence, for\nthat she feared some peaches she had eaten the day before had\ndisordered her, and that she had heard of one who had died of the\nplague some weeks before in the Tower. Mrs. Ward exhorted her to be of\ngood cheer, and to comfort herself both ways, for that the air of\nHolborn was so good, the plague was not likely to come into it, and\nthat the kernels of peaches being medicinal, would rather prove an\nantidote to pestilence than an occasion to it; and left her better\nsatisfied, insomuch that she sent for another dish of peaches for to\nsecure the benefit. Before I left, Kate bade me note the fashion of\nthe suit my Lady Surrey did wear, and if she had on her own hair, and\nif she dyed it, and if she covered her bosom, or wore plaits, and if\nher stomacher was straight {364} and broad, or formed a long waist,\nextending downward, and many more points touching her attire, which I\ncannot now call to mind. As I went through the hall to the steps where\nMistress Ward was already standing, Muriel came hurrying toward me,\nwith a faint color coming and going in her sallow cheek, and twice she\ntried to speak and failed. But when I kissed her she put her lips\nclose to my ear and whispered,\n\n\"Sweet little cousin, there be in London prisoners in a very bad\nplight, in filthy dungeons, because of their religion. The noble young\nLady Surrey hath a tender heart toward such if she do but hear of\nthem. Prithee, sweet coz, move her to send them relief in food, money,\nor clothing.\"\n\nThen Mistress Ward called to me to hasten, and I ran away, but Muriel\nstood at the window, and as we passed she kissed her hand, in which\nwas a gold angel, which my father had gifted me with at parting.\n\n\"Mrs. Ward,\" I said, as we went along, \"my cousin Muriel is not fair,\nand yet her face doth commend itself to my fancy more than many fair\nones I have seen; it is so kindly.\"\n\n\"I have even from her infancy loved her,\" she answered, \"and thus much\nI will say of her, that many have been titled saints who had not,\nmethinks, more virtue than I have noticed in Muriel.\"\n\n\"Doth she herself visit the prisoners she spoke of?\"\n\n\"She and I do visit them and carry them relief when we can by any\nmeans prevail with the gaolers from compassion or through bribing of\nthem to admit us. But it is not always convenient to let this be\nknown, not even at home, but I ween, Constance, as thou wilt have me\nto call thee so, that Muriel saw in thee--for she has a wonderful\npenetrative spirit--that thou dost know when to speak and when to keep\nsilence.\"\n\n\"And may I go with you to the prisons?\" I asked with a hot feeling in\nmy heart, which I had not felt since I had left home.\n\n\"Thou art far too young,\" she answered. \"But I will tell thee what\nthou canst do. Thou mayst work and beg for these good men, and not be\nashamed of so doing. None may visit them who have not made up their\nminds to die, if they should be denounced for their charity.\"\n\n\"But Muriel is young,\" I answered. \"Hath she so resolved?\"\n\n\"Muriel is young,\" was the reply; \"but she is one in whom wisdom and\nholiness have forestalled age. For two years that she hath been my\ncompanion on such occasions, she has each day prepared for martyrdom\nby such devout exercises as strengthen the soul at the approach of\ndeath.\"\n\n\"And Kate and Polly,\" I asked, \"are they privy to the dangers that you\ndo run, and have they no like ambition?\"\n\n\"Rather the contrary,\" she answered; \"but neither they nor any one\nelse in the house is fully acquainted with these secret errands save\nMr. Congleton, and he did for a long time refuse his daughter license\nto go with me, until at last, by prayers and tears, she won him over\nto suffer it. But he will never permit thee to do the like, for that\nthy father hath intrusted thee to his care for greater safety in these\ntroublesome times.\"\n\n\"Pish!\" I cried pettishly, \"safety has a dull mean sound in it which I\nmislike. I would I were mine own mistress.\"\n\n\"Wish no such thing, Constance Sherwood,\" was her grave answer.\n\"Wilfulness was never nurse to virtue, but rather her foe; nor ever\ndid a rebellious spirit prove the herald of true greatness. And now,\nmark my words. Almighty God hath given thee a friend far above thee in\nrank, and I doubt not in merit also, but whose faith, if report saith\ntrue, doth run great dangers, and with few to advise her in these evil\ndays in which we live. Peradventure he hath appointed thee a work in a\npalace as weighty as that of {365} others in a dungeon. Set thyself to\nit with thy whole heart, and such prayers as draw down blessings from\nabove. There be great need in these times to bear in remembrance what\nthe Lord says, that he will be ashamed in heaven before his angels of\nsuch as be ashamed of him on earth. And many there are, I greatly\nfear, who though they be Catholics, do assist the heretics by their\ncowardice to suppress the true religion in this land; and I pray to\nGod this may never be our case. Yet I would not have thee to be rash\nin speech, using harsh words, or needlessly rebuking others, which\nwould not become thy age, or be fitting and modest in one of inferior\nrank, but only where faith and conscience be in question not to be\nafraid to speak. And now God bless thee, who should be an Esther in\nthis house, wherein so many true confessors of Christ some years ago\nsurrendered their lives in great misery and torments, rather than\nyield up their faith.\"\n\nThis she said as we stopped at the gate of the Charter House, where\none of the serving-men of the Countess of Surrey was waiting to\nconduct me to her lodgings, having had orders to that effect. She left\nme in his charge, and I followed him across the square, and through\nthe cloisters and passages which led to the gallery, where my lady's\nchamber was situated. My heart fluttered like a frightened caged bird\nduring that walk, for there was a solemnity about the place such as I\nhad not been used to, and which filled me with apprehension lest I\nshould be wanting in due respect where so much state was carried on.\nBut when the door was opened at one end of the gallery, and my sweet\nlady ran out to meet me with a cry of joy, the silly heart, like a\ncaught bird, nestled in her embrace, and my lips joined themselves to\nhers in a fond manner, as if not willing to part again, but by fervent\nkisses supplying the place of words, which were lacking, to express\nthe great mutual joy of that meeting, until at last my lady raised her\nhead, and still holding my hands, cried out as she gazed on my face:\n\n\"You are more welcome, sweet one, than my poor words can say. I pray\nyou, doff your hat and mantle, and come and sit by me, for 'tis a\nweary while since we have met, and those are gone from us who loved us\nthen, and for their sakes we must needs love one another dearly, if\nour hearts did not of themselves move us unto it, which indeed they\ndo, if I may judge of yours, Mistress Constance, by mine own.\"\n\nThen we kissed again, and she passed her arm around my neck with so\nmany graceful endearments, in which were blended girlish simplicity\nand a youthful yet matronly dignity, that I felt that day the love\nwhich, methinks, up to that time had had its seat mostly in the fancy,\ntake such root in mine heart, that it never lost its hold on it.\n\nAt the first our tongues were somewhat tied by joy and lack of\nknowledge how to begin to converse on the many subjects whereon both\ndesired to hear the other speak, and the disuse of such intercourse as\nmaketh it easy to discourse on what the heart is full of. Howsoever,\nLady Surrey questioned me touching my father, and what had befallen us\nsince my mother's death. I told her that he had left his home, and\nsent me to London by reason of the present troubles; but without\nmention of what I did apprehend to be his further intent. And she then\nsaid that the concern she was in anent her good father the Duke of\nNorfolk did cause her to pity those who were also in trouble.\n\n\"But his grace,\" I answered, \"is, I hope, in safety at present, and in\nhis own house?\"\n\n\"In this house, indeed,\" she did reply, \"but a strait prisoner in Sir\nHenry Neville's custody, and not suffered to see his friends without\nher majesty's especial permission. He did send for his son and me last\nevening, having obtained leave for to see us, which he had not done\nsince the day my lord and I were married again, by {366} his order,\nfrom the Tower, out of fear lest our first marriage, being made before\nPhil was quite twelve years old, it should have been annulled by order\nof the queen, or by some other means. It grieved me much to notice how\ngray his hair had grown, and that his eyes lacked their wonted fire.\nWhen we entered he was sitting in a chair, leaning backward, with his\nhead almost over the back of it, looking at a candle which burnt\nbefore him, and a letter in his hand. He smiled when he saw us, and\nsaid the greatest comfort he had in the world was that we were now so\njoined together that nothing could ever part us. You see, Mistress\nConstance,\" she said, with a pretty blush and smile, \"I now do wear my\nwedding-ring below the middle joint.\"\n\n\"And do you live alone with my lord now in these grand chambers?\" I\nsaid, looking round at the walls, which were hung with rare tapestry\nand fine pictures.\n\n\"Bess is with me,\" she answered, \"and so will remain I hope until she\nis fourteen, when she will be married to my Lord William, my lord's\nbrother. Our Moll is likewise here, and was to have wedded my Lord\nThomas when she did grow up; but she is not like to live, the\nphysicians do say.\"\n\nThe sweet lady's eyes filled with tears, but, as if unwilling to\nentertain me with her griefs, she quickly changed discourse, and spoke\nof my coming unto London, and inquired if my aunt's house were a\npleasant one, and if she was like to prove a good kinswoman to me. I\ntold her how comfortable had been the manner of my reception, and of\nmy cousins' goodness to me; at the which she did express great\ncontentment, and would not be satisfied until I had described each of\nthem in turn, and what good looks or what good qualities they had;\nwhich I could the more easily do that the first could be discerned\neven at first sight, and touching the last, I had warrant from Mrs.\nWard's commendations, which had more weight than my own speerings,\neven if I had been a year and not solely a day in their company. She\nwas vastly taken with what I related to her of Muriel, and that she\ndid visit and relieve poor persons and prisoners, and wished she had\nliberty to do the like; and with a lovely blush and a modest\nconfusion, as of one who doth not willingly disclose her good deeds,\nshe told me all the time she could spare she did employ in making\nclothes for such as she could hear of, and also salves and cordials\n(such as she had learnt to compound from her dear grandmother), and\nprivately sent them by her waiting-maid, who was a young gentlewoman\nof good family, who had lost her parents, and was most excellently\nendowed with virtue and piety.\n\n\"Come to my closet, Miss Constance,\" she said, \"and I doubt not but we\nshall find Milicent at work, if so be she has not gone abroad to-day\non some such errand of charity.\" Upon which she led the way through a\nsecond chamber, still more richly fitted up than the first, into a\nsmaller one, wherein, when she opened the door, I saw a pretty living\npicture of two girls at a table, busily engaged with a store of\nbottles and herbs and ointments, which were strewn upon it in great\nabundance. One of them was a young maid, who was measuring drops into\na phial, with a look so attentive upon it as if that little bottle had\nbeen the circle of her thoughts. She was very fair and slim, and had a\ndelicate appearance, which minded me of a snow-drop; and indeed, by\nwhat my lady said, she was a floweret which had blossomed amidst the\nfrosts and cold winds of adversity. By her side was the most gleesome\nwench, of not more than eight years, I ever did set eyes on; of a\nfatness that at her age was comely, and a face so full of waggery and\nsaucy mirth, that but to look upon it drove away melancholy. She was\ncompounding in a cup a store of various liquids, which she said did\ncure shrewishness, and said she would pour some into her nurse's\nnight-draught, to mend her of that disorder.\n\n{367}\n\n\"Ah, Nan,\" she cried, as we entered, \"I'll help thee to a taste of\nthis rare medicine, for methinks thou art somewhat shrewish also and\nnot so conformable to thy husband's will, my lady, as a good wife\nshould be. By that same token that my lord willed to take me behind\nhim on his horse a gay ride round the square, and, forsooth, because I\nhad not learnt my lesson, thou didst shut me up to die of melancholy.\nAh, me! My mother had a maid called Barbara--\n\n  'Sing willow, willow, willow.'\n\nThat is one of Phil's favorite songs. Milicent, methinks I will call\nthee Barbara, and thou shalt sing with me--\n\n  'The poor soul sat sighing by a sycamore tree,--\n  Sing all a green willow;\n  Her hand on her bosom,'--\n\nThere, put thy hand in that fashion--\n\n  'her head on her knee,'--\n\nNay, prithee, thou must bend thy head lower--\n\n  'Sing willow, willow, willow.'\"\n\n\"My lady,\" said the gentlewoman, smiling, \"I promise you I dare not\ntake upon me to fulfil my tasks with credit to myself or your\nladyship, if Mistress Bess hath the run of this room, and doth prepare\ncordials after her fashion from your ladyship's stores.\"\n\n\"Ah, Bess!\" quoth my lady, shaking her finger at the saucy one; \"I'll\ndeliver thee up to Mrs. Fawcett, who will give thee a taste of the\nplace of correction; and Phil is not here to-day to beg thee off. And\nnow, good Milicent, prithee make a bundle of such clothes as we have\nin hand, and such comforts as be suitable to such as are sick and in\nprison, for this sweet young lady hath need of them for some who be in\nthat sad plight.\"\n\n\"And, my lady,\" quoth the gentlewoman, \"I would fain learn how to\ndress wounds when the flesh is galled; for I do sometimes meet with\npoor men who do suffer in that way, and would relieve them if I\ncould.\"\n\n\"I know,\" I cried, \"of a rare ointment my mother used to make for that\nsort of hurt; and if my Lady Surrey gives me license, I will remember\nyou, mistress, with the receipt of it.\"\n\nMy lady, with a kindly smile and expressed thanks, assented; and when\nwe left the closet, I greatly commending the young gentlewoman's\nbeauty, she said that beauty in her was the worst half of her merit.\n\n\"But, Mistress Constance,\" she said, when we had returned to the\nsaloon, \"I may not send her to such poor men, and above all, priests,\nwho be in prison for their faith, as I hear, to my great sorrow, there\nbe so many at this time, and who suffer great hardships, more than can\nbe easily believed, for she is Protestant, and not through conforming\nto the times, but so settled in her way of thinking, and earnest\ntherein, having been brought up to it, that she would not so much as\nopen a Catholic book or listen to a word in defence of papists.\"\n\n\"But how, then, doth she serve a Catholic lady?\" I asked, with a\nbeating heart; and oh, with what a sad one did hear her answer, for it\nwas as follows:\n\n\"Dear Constance, I must needs obey those who have a right to command\nme, such as his grace my good father and my husband; and they are both\nvery urgent and resolved that by all means I shall conform to the\ntimes. So I do go to Protestant service; but I use at home my prayers,\nas my grandmother did teach me; and Phil says them too, when I can get\nhim to say any.\"\n\n\"Then you do not hear mass,\" I said, sorrowfully, \"or confess your\nsins to a priest?\"\n\n\"No,\" she answered, in a sad manner; \"I once asked my Lady Lumley, who\nis a good Catholic, if she could procure I should see a priest with\nthat intent at Arundel House; but she turned pale as a sheet, and said\nthat to get any one to be reconciled who had {368} once conformed to\nthe Protestant religion, was to run danger of death; and albeit for\nher own part she would not refuse to die for so good a cause, she\ndared not bring her father's gray hairs to the block.\"\n\nAs we were holding this discourse--and she so intent in speaking, and\nI in listening, that we had not heard the door open--Lord Surrey\nsuddenly stood before us. His height made him more than a boy, and his\nface would not allow him a man; for the rest, he was\nwell-proportioned, and did all things with so notable a grace, that\nnature had stamped him with the mark of true nobility. He made a\nslight obeisance to me, and I noticed that his cheek was flushed, and\nthat he grasped the handle of his sword with an anger which took not\naway the sweetness of his countenance, but gave it an amiable sort of\nfierceness. Then, as if unable to restrain himself, he burst forth,\n\n\"Nan, an order is come for his grace to be forthwith removed to the\nTower, and I'll warrant that was the cause he was suffered to see us\nyesterday. God send it prove not a final parting!\"\n\n\"Is his grace gone?\" cried the countess, starting to her feet, and\nclasping her hands with a sorrowful gesture.\n\n\"He goes even now,\" answered the earl; and both went to the window,\nwhence they could see the coach in which the duke was for the third\ntime carried from his home to the last lodging he was to have on this\nearth. Oh, what a sorrowful sight it was for those young eyes which\ngazed on the sad removal of the sole parent both had left! How her\ntears did flow silently like a stream from a deep fount, and his with\nwild bursts of grief, like the gushings of a torrent over rocks! His\nhead fell on her shoulder, and as she threw her arms round him, her\ntears wetted his hair. Methought then that in the pensive tenderness\nof her downcast face there was somewhat of motherly as well as of\nwifely affection. She put her arm in his, and led him from the room;\nand I remained alone for a short time entertaining myself with sad\nthoughts anent these two young noble creatures, who at so early an age\nhad become acquainted with so much sorrow, and hoping that the\ndarkness which did beset the morning of their lives might prove but as\nthe clouds which at times deface the sky before a brilliant sunshine\ndoth take possession of it, and dislodge these deceitful harbingers,\nwhich do but heighten in the end by contrast the resplendency they did\nthreaten to obscure.\n\n\n[TO BE CONTINUED.]\n\n\n{369}\n\n\nFrom Temple Bar.\n\n\nFRENCH COCHIN CHINA.\n\n\nBetween India and the Chinese empire lies the peninsula of Indo-China,\njutting out far into the Indian Ocean. The south-eastern portion of\nthis peninsula is occupied by the empire of Anam, of which the chief\nmaritime province is known to Europeans as Cochin China, but to the\nnatives as Dang-trong, or the outer kingdom. It is in lower Cochin\nChina that the French have succeeded in recently establishing a\nmilitary settlement. In extent these new territorial acquisitions of\nour somewhat ambitious neighbors may be compared to Brittany, though\nin no other respect can any resemblance be detected. The country is,\nin fact, a strictly alluvial formation. Not only is it watered by the\nDong-nai and Saigon rivers, but it also embraces the delta of the\nMekong, at the mouth of which noble stream the Portuguese poet Camoens\nwas ship-wrecked in the year 1556, swimming to the shore with his left\nhand, while in his right he held above the waters his manuscript copy\nof the _Lusiad_. It is almost needless to add that a level plain\nspreads far and wide, except quite in the north, and that fevers and\ndysentery prevail throughout the greater part of the year. The climate\nis certainly not a healthy one for Europeans. The rainy season lasts\nfrom April to December, during which the inhabitants live in a\nvapor-bath. The consequence is, that the French soldiers die off with\nsuch frightful rapidity that it has been urgently recommended that\nevery regiment should be relieved after two years' service. The\nauthorities, however, have lost no time in improving the sanitary\ncondition of the new settlement. By means of native labor large tracts\nof marsh-land have been drained, and good roads made in lieu of the\nshallow tidal canals which previously constituted the sole channels of\ntraffic and mutual intercourse. Formerly every villager owned a small\nboat, in which he moved about from place to place, taking with him his\nsmall merchandise, or conveying home to his family the proceeds of his\nmarketing. The town of Saigon itself is estimated to contain one\nhundred thousand inhabitants. The houses are exceedingly mean, being\nconstructed either of wood or of palm-leaves fastened together. Though\nsituated seventy miles inland, Ghia-din, as it is called by the\nnatives, is a very flourishing port, and exhibits a very active\nmovement at all seasons of the year. It is frequented by a large\nnumber of Chinese vessels, and is now rising into importance as the\nhead of the French possessions in the East. So far back, indeed, as\nthe ninth century Saigon was noted for its muslin manufactures, the\nfineness of which was such that an entire dress could be drawn through\nthe circumference of a signet-ring. Owing to the comparative absence\nof noxious insects it is regarded by Europeans as a not altogether\nunpleasant residence.\n\nThe population of the empire of Anam has been estimated at thirty\nmillions; but on this point there are not sufficient data to form a\nvery accurate opinion. But whatever may be their exact number, the\ninhabitants are derived from three sources. The Anamites proper--that\nis, the Cochin Chinese and the Tonkinese--are of a Chinese origin;\nwhile the people of Camboge are descended from Hindoo ancestors; and\nthose in the interior--such as the Lao, Moi, and others--claim to be\nthe sons of the soil, with Malay blood flowing in their veins. Of the\nearly history of the Anamites few authentic details have reached us,\nnor {370} are these of a nature to interest the general reader.\nAlthough from an early date European missionaries appear to have\nlabored in their self-denying task of converting these disciples of\nBuddhism to the purer tenets of Christianity, it was not until the\nlatter part of the eighteenth century that their influence was\nsensibly appreciated. Even then they were indebted to an accident for\nthe increased importance they have since continued to possess. Fleeing\nfrom a formidable and partially successful insurrection, the only\nsurvivor of the royal family and heir to the throne--afterward the\ncelebrated Ghia-loung--took refuge in the house of Father Pigneau, a\nFrench missionary of unblemished life and reputation. That worthy man\nbravely afforded shelter not only to the fugitive, but also to his\nwife, his sister, and his son, and even encouraged him to make a\nstrenuous effort to recover his rights. Foiled, however, for a time by\nthe superior forces of the rebels, the prince and his faithful\ncounsellor were compelled to flee for their lives to a small island in\nthe Gulf of Siam. Yielding to the advice of the missionary, Ghia-loung\nnow resolved to despatch an embassy to France, in the hope of\nobtaining sufficient assistance to place himself on the throne of his\nancestors. Accordingly, in the year 1787, Father Pigneau, accompanied\nby the youthful son of the unfortunate prince, proceeded to\nVersailles, and actually prevailed upon Louis XVI. to conclude an\nalliance, offensive and defensive, with his royal client. The terms of\nthis treaty are so far curious that they illustrate the practical and\nrealistic notion of an \"idea\" which characterized the old French\nmonarchy quite as much as it does the second Napoleonic empire.\nConvinced of the justice of the Anamite prince's claim to the crown,\nand moved by a desire to afford him a signal mark of his friendship,\nas well as of his love of justice, his most Christian majesty agreed\nto despatch immediately to the coasts of Cochin China a squadron\nconsisting of four frigates, conveying a land force of 1,200\nfoot-soldiers, 200 artillerymen, and 250 Caffres, thoroughly equipped\nfor service, and supported by an efficient field-battery. In return\nfor--or rather in expectation of receiving--this succor, the king of\nCochin China surrendered the absolute ownership and sovereignty of the\nislands of Hoi-nan and Pulo Condor, together with a half-share in the\nport of Touron, where the French were authorized to establish whatever\nworks and factories they might deem requisite for their safety and\ncommercial advantage. They were further to enjoy the exclusive\nprivilege of trading with the Cochin Chinese, and of introducing their\nmerchandise free of all charges and imposts. Neither was any trading\nvessel or ship of war to be permitted to enter any port on the Cochin\nChina coast save only under the French flag. And in the event of his\nmost Christian majesty becoming involved in hostilities with any other\npower, whether Asiatic or European, his faithful ally undertook to fit\nout at his own expense both naval and land forces to co-operate with\nthe French troops anywhere in the Indian seas, but not beyond the\nMoluccas or the Straits of Malacca. In consideration of his services\nin negotiating this treaty, the ratifications of which were to be\nexchanged within twelve months at the latest, Father Pigneau was\nraised to the dignity of Bishop of Adran, and appointed ambassador\nextraordinary from the court of Versailles to that of Cochin China.\nThe next step was to select a commander for the projected expedition;\nand on the new prelate's urgent solicitation the king consented,\nthough with marked reluctance, to confer that distinction upon the\nCount de Conway, at that time governor of the French establishments in\nIndia. The selection proved an unfortunate one. Bishop Pigneau had\nomitted one very important element from his calculation. He had made\nno allowance for the disturbing influences of an improper {371}\nconnection with a \"lovely woman.\" He may even have been ignorant of M.\nde Conway's misplaced devotion to Mdme. de Vienne. Be this as it may,\non his arrival at Pondicherry he refused to wait upon that all-potent\nlady, and offered her such slights that she became his avowed and\nbitter enemy. It was through her, indeed, that the expedition was\nnever organized, and that the king of Cochin China was left to his own\nresources to bring about his restoration. This he at length\naccomplished, and in some small degree by the aid of a handful of\nvolunteers whom the Bishop of Adran had induced to accompany him to\nSaigon. A sincere friendship appears to have existed between the\nFrench prelate and the Anamite prince, which terminated only with the\ndeath of the former in the last year of the eighteenth century. But\nthough Ghia-loung was fully sensible of the advantages to be derived\nfrom maintaining a friendly intercourse with European nations, he was\nnot blind to the inconveniences likely to arise from allowing the\nsubjects of a foreign power to form independent settlements within his\ndominions. Feeling that his end was at hand, the aged monarch\nemphatically warned his son not to allow the French to possess a\nsingle inch of land in his territories; but at the same time advised\nhim to cultivate amicable relations with that people. His successor\nobeyed the paternal counsels only in part. He took care, indeed, to\nprevent the French from settling permanently in his country; but he\nwent very much further, for he actively persecuted the Christian\nconverts, and exerted himself to the utmost to oppose the introduction\nof western ideas and civilization. In the year 1825 Min-mang--for so\nwas this emperor called--refused even to receive a letter and presents\nforwarded by Louis XVIII., and expressed his determination to keep\naloof from all intercourse with European powers.\n\nAs Captain de Bougainville was provided neither with instructions how\nto act under such circumstances, nor \"with a sufficient force to\ncompel the acceptance of what was declined to be taken with a good\ngrace\"--we quote from M. Leon de Rosny's _Tableau de Cochinchine_, to\nwhich we are indebted for the matter of this article he formed the\nwise resolution of withdrawing from those inhospitable shores. But\nbefore he did so, he succeeded in landing Father Regereau, a French\npriest who had devoted himself to the work of making Christians of the\nAnamites, whether they would or not. No sooner did this unwelcome news\nreach the ears of the monarch, than it caused an edict to appear\nenjoining the mandarins to exercise the utmost vigilance in preventing\nthe ingress of the teachers of \"the perverse religion of the\nEuropeans,\" which is described as prejudicial to the rectitude and\nright-mindedness of mankind. The doctrine of the missionaries was\nfurther represented, in a petition said to have been inspired by the\nemperor himself, as of a nature to corrupt and seduce the common\npeople by abusing their credulity. They employ, it was said, the fear\nof hell and eternal punishment to terrify the timid; while, to attract\nindividuals of a different temperament, they promise the enjoyment of\nheavenly bliss as the reward of virtue. By degrees the ill-feeling\nentertained by the emperor toward the missionaries grew in intensity,\nuntil they became the object of his bitter aversion; and as his\nsubordinates, according to custom, were anxious to recommend\nthemselves to favor by their demonstrative zeal, it was not long\nbefore \"the church of Cochin China was enriched by the crown of\nnumerous martyrs.\" The first of these martyrs was the Abbe Gagelin,\nwho was strangled on the 17th October, 1833; but then his offence was\ntwofold, for he had not only preached the forbidden doctrines, but, in\ncontravention of the king's commands, had quitted the town of Dong-nai\nto do so. A very naive letter from a missionary named Jacquard\nconveyed to the abbe the tidings of his forthcoming martyrdom. \"Your\nsentence,\" {372} he wrote, \"has been irrevocably pronounced. As soon\nas you have undergone the punishment of the cord, your head will be\ncut off and sent into the provinces in which you have preached\nChristianity. Behold you, then, a martyr! How fortunate you are!\" To\nthis pious effusion the abbe replied in a similar strain: \"The news\nyou announce of my being irrevocably condemned to death penetrates my\nvery heart's core with joy. No; I do not hesitate to avow it, never\ndid any news give me so much pleasure.\"\n\nIn the following year another missionary was tortured to death, not\nmerely as a teacher of the new religion, but because he was found in\nthe company of some rebels who had seized upon a fort. No other\nmartyrdom occurred after this until 1837, in which year the Abbe\nCornay was beheaded and quartered, after being imprisoned for three\nmonths; and, in 1838, M. Jacquard himself escaped by strangulation\nfrom the insults and outrages to which he had been for some time\nsubjected. Nor was it the missionaries alone who shared the fate and\nemulated the calm heroism of the early apostles. The native neophytes\nwere not a whit less zealous to suffer in their Master's cause, and to\nbear witness to the truth, in death as in life. The common people\neagerly flocked to behold their execution, not indeed to taunt and\nrevile the patient victims, but to secure some relic, however trifling\nor otherwise disgusting, and to dip their garments in the\nstill-flowing blood. Pagans and Christians alike yielded to this\nsuperstition or veneration, while the soldiers on duty drove a\nlucrative trade in selling to the scrambling crowd fragments of the\ndress and person of the yet-quivering martyr. Even the executioners\nare reported to have affirmed that at the moment the head was severed\nfrom the body a certain perfume exhaled from the gushing blood, as if\nanticipating glorification in heaven. M. de Rosny, however, frankly\nadmits that Min-mang was chiefly moved by political considerations to\npersecute the followers of the new religion, whom he believed to be in\nleague with his worst enemies, especially after the capture of a\nmissionary in one of the rebel forts. His policy, whatever may have\nbeen its real springs, was adopted by his son Thieou-tri, one of whose\nfirst public acts was to command the governors of provinces to track\nout the Christians to their most secret asylums. These orders were\nonly too faithfully obeyed. The French missionaries were ferreted out\nof their lurking-places, thrown into prison, and otherwise\nill-treated, throughout this reign, which did not terminate before the\nend of 1847.\n\nThe new monarch, commonly known as Tu-Duk, walked in the footsteps of\nhis father. An edict was issued almost immediately after his accession\nto the throne, commanding that every European missionary found in Anam\nshould be thrown into the sea with a rope round his neck. And when the\nmandarins hesitated to execute such sanguinary orders, a second edict\nappeared enjoining that whosoever concealed in his house a propagator\nof the Christian faith should be cut in two and thrown into the river.\nThe fiendish work then began in earnest. The sword of the executioner\nwas again called into request, and several most estimable men suffered\ndeath on the scaffold. At last even a bishop, Monseigneur Diaz,\nexperienced the fate of his humbler brethren, on the 20th July, 1857;\nand as this prelate happened to be a Spaniard, his death was avenged\nby an allied Franco-Spanish expedition, which resulted in the conquest\nof Lower Cochin China, and the cession of the provinces of Saigon,\nBien-hoa, and Myt-ho to the French. Let us now see what manner of men\nwere these Anamites whom the French, failing to convert, were\ncompelled, by their sense of spiritual duty, to conquer and subjugate.\nM. de Rosny shall continue to be our guide.\n\nThe people of Anam Proper are evidently of Mongol extraction. Their\ncomplexion is of a dark sallow hue, varying from a dirty white to a\nyellowish {373} olive color. In stature they are short, but thickset,\nand remarkably active. Their features are by no means beautiful\naccording to the European idea of beauty. They have short square\nnoses, prominent cheek-bones, thin lips, an small black eyes--the\neyeball being rather yellow than white. Their teeth, which are\nnaturally of a pure white, are stained almost black and otherwise\ndisfigured by the excessive use of betel-nut. Their countenances are\nchiefly marked by the breadth and height of the cheek-bones, and are\nnearly of the shape of a lozenge. The women are better-looking, and\ndecidedly more graceful, than the men, even in the lower classes, but\nboth sexes are particularly cheerful and vivacious. The upper classes,\nhowever, affect the solemn air and grave deportment of the Chinese,\nand are consequently much less agreeable to strangers than are the\nless-dignified orders. Corpulence is considered a great beauty--a fat\nface and a protuberant stomach constituting the ideal of an Adonis.\nBoth men and women wear their hair long, but gathered up at the back\nof the head in a knot. It is never cut save in early youth, when it is\nall shaved off with the exception of a small tuft on the top of the\ncrown. A close-cropped head of hair, indeed, is looked upon as a badge\nof infamy, and is one of the distinguishing marks of a convicted\ncriminal. The beard is allowed to grow naturally, but consists of\nlittle more than a few scattered hairs at the end of the chin; the\nupper lip being as scantily furnished. The nails should be very long,\nthin, and sharp-pointed, and by the women are usually stained of a red\ncolor.\n\nThe Anamites dress themselves in silk or cotton according to their\nmeans; but whatever the material, the form of their garb is always the\nsame. In addition to wide trousers fastened round the waist by a\nsilken girdle, they wear a robe descending to the knees, and\noccasionally a shorter one over that; both equally opening on the\nright side, but closed by five or six buttons. The men's sleeves are\nvery wide, and so long that they descend considerably lower than the\nends of the fingers. The women, however, who in other respects dress\nprecisely as do the men, have their sleeves somewhat shorter, in order\nto display their metal or pearl bracelets. The under-garment is\ngenerally made of country cotton, but the upper one, as worn by the\nhigher classes, is invariably of silk or flowered muslin, of Chinese\nmanufacture. Cotton trousers are often dyed brown, but even the\nlaboring population make use of silk as much as possible. For mourning\ngarments cotton alone is employed, white being the funereal color.\n\nOut of doors men and women alike wear varnished straw hats, upward of\ntwo feet in diameter, fastened under the chin, and very useful as a\nprotection against sun and rain, though somewhat grotesque in\nappearance. Within doors the women go bareheaded, not unfrequently\nallowing their fine black tresses to hang loose down their backs\nalmost to the ground. Ear-rings, bracelets, and rings on their fingers\nare favorite objects of female vanity; but a modest demeanor is a\nthing unknown; a bold, dashing manner being most admired by the men.\nThey are certainly not good-looking; but their natural gaiety and\nliveliness amply compensate for the absence of personal charms.\n\nOld men and persons of distinction alone wear sandals, the people\ngenerally preferring to go barefooted. A pair of silken purses, or\nbags, to carry betel, money, and tobacco, may be seen in the hand, or\nhanging over the shoulder, of every man and woman not actually\nemployed in hard labor. They are, for the most part, of blue satin,\nand sometimes richly embroidered. Like their neighbors the Chinese,\nthe Anamites are scrupulous observers of the distinctive insignia of\nrank, but pay no regard to personal cleanliness. Notwithstanding their\nfrequent ablutions, their clothes, their hair, their fingers and\nnails, are disgustingly filthy. Even wealthy persons wear dirty cotton\ndresses within doors, over which {374} they throw their smart silken\nrobes when they go out.\n\nTaste is proverbially a matter beyond dispute; but it would be very\nhard for any European to agree with an Anamite as to what constituted\na delicacy and what an abomination. A Cochin Chinese epicure delights,\nfor instance, in rotten eggs, and is especially fond of them after\nthey have been under a hen for ten or twelve days. From stale fish,\nagain, he extracts his choicest sauce, and feasts greedily upon meat\nin a state of putrefaction. Vermin of all sorts is highly appreciated.\nCrocodile's flesh is also greatly prized; though boiled rice and a\nlittle fish fresh,--smoked, or salted--are the ordinary food of the\npoor. Among delicacies may be mentioned silk-worms fried in fat, ants\nand ants' eggs, bees, insects, swallows'-nests, and a large white worm\nfound in decayed wood; but no dainty is more dearly relished than a\nstill-born calf served up whole in its skin and almost raw. In the way\nof pastry the women greatly affect _beignets_ made of herbs, sugar,\nand clay. Among the rich the dishes are placed on low tables a foot or\ntwo in height, round which the diners seat themselves on the ground in\nthe attitude of tailors. Forks and spoons are equally unknown, but\nchop-sticks are used after the Chinese fashion. The dinner usually\nbegins, instead of ending, with fruit and pastry. During the meal\nnothing liquid is taken, but before sitting down it is customary to\ntake a gulp or two of strong spirits distilled from fermented rice,\nand after dinner several small cups of tea are drunk by those who can\nafford to do so. Cold or unadulterated water is thought unwholesome,\nand is therefore never taken by itself. Betel-nut mixed with quicklime\nis constantly chewed by both men and women, and of late years the use\nof opium has partially crept in.\n\nThe houses of the Anamites are only one story high, and very low in\nthe roof. They are, in fact, mere halls, the roof of which is usually\nsupported on bamboo pillars, on which are pasted strips of\nmany-colored paper inscribed with Chinese proverbs. The roof slopes\nrather sharply, and consists of reed or straw. Neither windows nor\nchimneys are seen. The smoke escapes and the light enters by the door.\nThe walls are made of palm leaves, though rich people often employ\nwood for that purpose. In either case they are filthily dirty and\nswarm with insects. At the further end of the house is a raised\nplatform, which serves as a bed for the entire family. The floor is of\nearth, not unfrequently traversed by channels hollowed out by the rain\nwhich descends through the roof. In every household one member remains\nawake all night, to give the alarm in case of thieves attempting to\ncome in.\n\nIt is usual for the men to marry as soon as they have the means to\npurchase a wife. The price of such an article varies, according to\ncircumstances, from two to ten shillings, though rich people will give\nas much as twice or three times that sum for anything out of the\ncommon run. Polygamy is permitted by the laws; but practically it is a\nluxury confined to the wealthy, and even with them the first wife\nreigns supreme over the household. The privilege of divorce is\nreserved exclusively for the husbands, who can put away a disagreeable\npartner by breaking in twain a copper coin or a piece of wood, in the\npresence of a witness. Parents cannot dispose of their daughters in\nmarriage without their free consent. Previous to marriage the Cochin\nChinese are perfectly unrestrained; but as chastity is nothing thought\nof, this is not a matter of much moment. Infanticide is punished as a\ncrime, but not so abortion. Adultery is a capital offense. The guilty\nwoman is trampled to death under the feet of an elephant, while her\nlover is strangled or beheaded; but these sentences are frequently\ncommuted into exile. Wives are not locked up as in Mohammedan\ncountries, but with that exception they are quite as badly treated,\nbeing altogether at the mercy of their husbands. They are, in truth,\nlittle better than slaves or {375} beasts of burden. It is they who\nbuild the houses, who cultivate the ground, who manufacture the\nclothes, who prepare the food, who, in short, do everything. They have\nnine lives, say their ungrateful husbands, and can afford to lose one\nwithout being the worse for it. They are described as being less timid\nthan the men, more intelligent, more gay, and quite ready to adapt\nthemselves to the manners and customs of their French rulers. The men,\nthough by no means destitute of strength and courage, are lazy,\nindolent, and averse to bodily exercise, and chiefly at home in the\npetty intrigues of an almost retail commerce.\n\nGreat importance is attached to the funeral ceremonies. The dead are\ninterred--not burnt, according to the custom of neighboring nations--\nand much taste is displayed in their burial-places. There is no more\nacceptable present than a coffin, and thus it usually happens that one\nis provided years before it can be turned to a proper account. The\ndeceased is clothed in his choicest apparel, and in his coffin is\nplaced an abundant supply of whatever he is likely to want in the new\nlife upon which he has entered through the portals of death. The\nobsequies are generally deferred for six months, or for even a whole\nyear, in order to give more time for the necessary preparations. On\nsuch occasions friends and relatives flock from afar to the \"funeral\nbaked meats;\" for a handsome banquet forms an essential part of the\notherwise melancholy details. From twenty to thirty bearers convey the\ncorpse to its last abode, amid the deafening discord of drums,\ncymbals, and tom-toms. The procession moves with slow and measured\nstep, and on the coffin is placed a shell filled with water, which\nenables the master of the ceremonies to ascertain that the coffin is\nborne with becoming steadiness. Mourning is worn for twenty-seven\nmonths for a father, mother, or husband; but only twelve months for a\nwife. During this period it is forbidden to be present at any\nspectacle, to attend any meeting, or to marry. At various intervals\nafter the interment, offerings of eatables are presented to the dead,\nbut which are scrupulously consumed by the offerers themselves.\nRespect, bordering on reverence, is shown to old age; but then old\npeople are a rarity, few individuals attaining to half a century.\nSickness of all kinds is rife, including \"the whole cohort of fevers.\"\nThe want of cleanliness is undoubtedly at the bottom of most of the\ncomplaints from which the natives suffer. The system of medicine most\nin vogue is borrowed from the Chinese. Every well-to-do family\nmaintains its own physician, who physics all its members to their\nheart's content. Doctors, however, agree no more in Cochin China than\nin any other region of the globe. There are two schools of\nmedicine--the one employing nothing but stimulants, the other adhering\nsolely to refrigerants, and both citing in favor of their respective\nsystems the most astounding and well-nigh miraculous cures.\n\nThe rules of politeness and etiquette are distinctly drawn and rigidly\nobserved. An inferior meeting a superior prostrates himself at full\nlength upon the ground, and repeats the act again and again according\nto the amount of deference he wishes to exhibit. To address one by the\ntitle of great-grand-father is to show the highest possible respect,\nwhile grandfather, father, uncle, and elder brother mark the downward\ngradations from that supreme point. There is, in truth, somewhat too\nmuch of veneering visible in all that pertains to the private life and\ncharacter of the Anamites. Their moral code, based on the precepts of\nConfucius, is irreproachable, but they seldom pause to regulate their\nconduct after its wholesome doctrines. Pleasure, indeed, is more\nthought of than morality, and gambling is a raging passion with all\nclasses. Cock-fighting, and even the combats of red-fishes, fill them\nwith especial delight; and when thoroughly excited they will stake on\nany chance their wives and children, and even {376} themselves. Music,\ndancing, and theatrical exhibitions are likewise much to their taste,\nthough the dancers are invariably women hired for the purpose.\n\nThe laws and police regulations are for the most part wise and\nsensible, but are more frequently neglected than observed. Here, as in\nother Asiatic countries, a gift in the hand perverteth the wisdom of\nthe wise, and thus only the poor and the stingy need suffer for their\nsins. For most offences the bastinado is inflicted, but for heinous\ncrimes capital punishments are enforced. There is a sufficient variety\nin the modes of execution. Sometimes the criminal is sentenced to be\nstrangled; at other time's he is decapitated, or  trampled to death by\nan elephant, or even hacked to pieces if his crime has been in any way\nextraordinary. For minor delinquencies recourse is had to\ntransportation in irons to a distant province, or to hard labor, such\nas cutting grass for the emperor's elephants.\n\nSociety is divided into two classes--the people and the mandarins.\nNobility is hereditary, but the son of a mandarin of the first order\nranks only with the second until he has done something to merit\npromotion to his father's rank. In like manner the son of a\nsecond-class mandarin belongs to the third rank, and so on to the\nlowest grade; and there are nine of these--the highest two sitting in\nthe imperial council. But the most exalted honors are open to the most\nhumble. No man is so low born as to despair of becoming one of the\npillars of the empire. The competition system prevails here in its\nfull vigor. Everything depends upon the passing certain examinations;\nbut for all that the mandarins are described as oppressors of the\npoor, evil advisers of the sovereign, addicted to fraud, given up to\ntheir appetites, wasting their time in sensual and frivolous pursuits,\ncorrupt and venal in the administration of justice.\n\nThe patrimony is distributed equally among all the sons, whether\nlegitimate or otherwise, except that the eldest receives one-tenth of\nthe entire property in addition to his own share; in return for which\nhe is expected to guard the interests of the family, and above all to\nlook after his sisters, who cannot marry without his consent. The\ndaughters have no part in the inheritance save in the absence of male\nheirs, but in that case they are treated as if they were sons. Through\nextreme poverty children are often sold as slaves by their parents. An\ninsolvent debtor likewise becomes the bondsman of his creditor; and as\nthe legal rate of interest is thirty per cent., a debt rapidly\naccumulates.\n\nAn Anamite hour is twice the length of a European one, and the night\nis divided into five watches. A year consists of twelve lunar months;\nso that every two or three years it becomes necessary to add another\nmonth: in nineteen years there are seventeen of these intercalated\nmonths. The lapse of time is marked by periods of twelve years, five\nof which constitute a \"grand cycle;\" but in historical narratives the\ndates are calculated from the accession of the reigning monarch. The\nyear begins with the month of February. The decimal system of\nenumeration is the one adopted by the Cochin Chinese.\n\nThe religion of the people is a superstitious Buddhism; that of the\nlettered classes a dormant belief in the moral teachings of Confucius.\nWhatever temples there are, are of a mean order, and are served by an\nignorant and ill-paid priesthood. The malignant spirits are\npropitiated by offerings of burnt paper inscribed with prayers, of\nbundles of sweet-scented wood, and of other articles of trifling\nvalue; the good spirits are mostly neglected. Sincere veneration,\nhowever, is shown to the manes of deceased ancestors. The priests take\na vow of celibacy, to which they occasionally adhere. They abstain\nentirely from animal food, and affect a yellow or red hue in their\napparel. After death their bodies are burned, and not buried as is the\ncase with the laity.\n\n{377}\n\nThe inhabitants of Cochin China are naturally industrious, and possess\nconsiderable skill as carpenters and upholsterers. They also work in\niron with some success, and display no mean taste in their pottery.\nTheir cotton and silk manufactures are, however, coarse and greatly\ninferior to the Chinese. Their lackered boxes are famous throughout\nthe world, nor are their filigree ornaments unworthy of admiration.\nBut though skilful and intelligent as artisans, and abundantly endowed\nwith the faculty of imitation, they are wretchedly deficient in\nimagination, and have no idea of invention. This defect is perhaps of\nless consequence now that they have the benefit of receiving their\nimpulses from the most inventive nation in the world. Without doubt,\ntheir material prosperity will be largely augmented by the French\ndomination, nor have they anything to lose in moral and social\nrespects. The conquest of Cochin China may therefore be regarded as an\nadvantage to the people themselves; but how far it is likely to yield\nany profit to the French is altogether another question, and one which\nat present we are not called upon to discuss. Sufficient for the day\nis the evil thereof.\n\n\n\n------\n\nFrom The Dublin Review.\n\n\nCONSALVI'S MEMOIRS.\n\n\n_Memoires du Cardinal Consalvi, Secretaire d'Etat du Pape Pie VII.,\navec une Introduction et des Notes._ Par J. CRETINEAU-JOLY. 2 vols.\n8vo. Paris: Plon. 1864.\n\nM. Cretineau-Joly is a Vendean, and there seems to be in his blood\nsomething of that pugnacious and warlike quality which so\ndistinguished his forefathers. Each of his former publications betrays\nthis combative propensity, and the introduction which accompanies\nCardinal Consalvi's Memoirs is worthy of its predecessors. M.\nCretineau-Joly is well known on the continent by his \"History of the\nJesuits\"--a work containing a considerable amount of valuable\ninformation concerning that celebrated and much maligned order; but,\nat the same time, it may be considered in the light of an Armstrong\ngun, which batters and reduces to dust the bastions of an enemy.\nIndeed, it was ushered forth at the very height of the warfare which\nraged against the Church in France, a few years previous to the\ndownfall of Louis Philippe. In 1858 the same writer produced a\nbrochure bearing the following title, \"The Church versus the\nRevolution,\" another broadside fired against crowned revolutionists,\nno less than against the sectarian hordes of a Mazzini and a\nGaribaldi. Hardly a year had elapsed when the French emperor invaded\nLombardy, with what result the whole world is aware. So M.\nCretineau-Joly had taken time by the forelock. And now, again, he\ncomes forth with these highly interesting and authentic memoirs,\nwritten by the cardinal and prime minister of Pius VII. In every\nrespect they may be proclaimed the most important, if not the most\nvoluminous, of the editor's publications. No one, at the same time,\nwill fail to perceive that between the actual situation of the Holy\nSee and that which marked its history in the eventful years between\n1799 and 1811, there underlies a startling similarity. Singularly\nenough, the second half of the nineteenth {378} century begins with\nthe same picture of violence, the same hypocrisy, the same contempt of\nright by might, that characterized the dawn of the present age. On the\none side, an all-powerful ruler, intoxicated by success, backed by a\nhost of servile demagogues, and hardly less servile, though royal\ninfidels; on the other, a weak old man, backed by a calm, deliberate,\ntruly Christian genius--both wielding no other weapons but faith,\nhope, and charity--both torn from their home and judgment-seat by the\niron hand of revolutionary despotism--and yet both riding triumphant\nover the seething waves, whilst the grim corpses of their enemies are\nwashed to the shore, or startle the traveller as he comes suddenly\nupon them in his wanderings through Russian wilds. Ay, there she goes,\nthat tiny ship of Peter's, with a Pius at her helm; now, as in bygone\ndays, with an Antonelli as a commander--much about the same man as a\nConsalvi.\n\n  \"Blow fair, thou breeze! She anchors ere the dark.\n  Already doubled is the cape--our bay\n  Receives that prow which proudly spurns the spray.\n  How gloriously her gallant course she goes!\n  Her white wings flying--never from her foes--\n  She walks the waters like a thing of life,\n  And seems to dare the elements to strife.\"\n\nSetting aside metaphors and poetry, these memoirs are certainly one of\nthe most remarkable instances of calm self-possession and confidence\nin a just cause that are to be met with in any time or country. Here\nis a man, and prime minister of a captive sovereign, himself a\nprisoner, who undertakes to write the history of the important events\nin which he had played a most conspicuous part. He is closely watched,\nand consequently obliged to write by fits and starts; he is deprived\nof every source of documentary information, and consequently must\ntrust to his own memory. Will these hasty yet truthful sheets escape\nhis jailer's eye? He cannot tell. Will he ever recover his liberty, be\nrestored to his dear master's bosom and confidence? He cannot tell:\nbut nevertheless the great cardinal--for great he was universally\nacknowledged--goes on bringing forth certain facts, known to himself\nalone, and which throw more light on the true character of the first\nNapoleon than the ponderous and garbled evidence of a Thiers, or even\nthe more trustworthy pages of M. Artaud, in his \"Life of Pius VII.\"\nIndeed, there are few comparisons of higher interest than to open\nthose two works at the parts which refer to the events narrated in\nthese memoirs. A labor of this kind, first originating in a spirit of\nfair play, soon becomes a labor of love, so strong is the contrast\nbetween the worldly, scheming, truckling, infidel historian of the\nfirst empire, and the unassuming and conscientious, though bold and\nresolute cardinal. One may safely say, that M. Thiers would have never\ndreamt of bearding the headstrong Bonaparte, as Consalvi did on a\nmemorable occasion, which reminds us of those legates of old, who\ndaunted by their steady looks and unruffled patience the burly\nviolence of a Richard, or unveiled the cunning of a Frederic\nHohenstaufen.\n\nAt the very outset of these memoirs, the cardinal gives us their true\nand solemn character. His last will, which accompanies them, and may\nbe considered as a sort of preface, contains the following lines:\n\n\"My heir and trustee, as well as those who may hereafter take charge\nof my inheritance, are bound to bestow the greatest care on my\npersonal writings relative to the conclave held at Venice in 1799 and\n1800; to the concordat of 1801; to the marriage of the Emperor\nNapoleon with the Archduchess Maria Louisa of Austria; and, lastly, to\nthe papers on different periods of my life and ministry. These five\npapers, some of which are nearly finished, and the others in course of\npreparation, are not to be published before the death of those eminent\npersonages who are mentioned therein. In this way many disputes may be\navoided, for, though utterly unfounded, as my own writings rest on\ntruth alone, still {379} they might injure that very truth, and the\ninterests of the Holy See, to which I am desirous of leaving the means\nof repelling any false attack published hereafter on these matters.\nThese memoirs on the conclave, the concordat of 1801, the marriage,\nand the ministry, belonging more especially to the Holy Sec, and to\nthe pontifical government, my heir and trustee shall present them to\nthe reigning pontiff, and beseech the Holy Father to preserve them\ncarefully within the archives of the Vatican. They may be of use to\nthe Holy See on many occasions, but more particularly if any future\nhistory be published of the events which form the object of the\npresent writings, or if it should become necessary to refute any false\nstatement. In regard to the memoirs concerning the different periods\nof my own life, as the extinction of my family will leave behind me no\none directly interested in the following pages, they are to remain in\nthe hands of my heir and trustee, or in those of the successive\nadministrators of my fortune; or, again, they may be likewise handed\nover to the archives of the Vatican, if they be deemed worthy of\npreservation. My only desire is, that in case of the biography of the\ncardinals being continued, my heir and executors shall cause these\nmemoirs to be known, so that nothing may be published contrary to\ntruth about myself; for I am ambitious of maintaining immaculate my\nown reputation--a wish grounded on the prescriptions of Scripture. As\nfor the truth of the facts brought forward in my writings, I may make\nbold to say, _Deus scit quia non mentior._\"\n\nCardinal Consalvi was born at Rome, of a noble family, in 1757, and\nwas the eldest of five children, two of whom died at an early age. His\nfather bore the title of marquess, and his mother, the Marchioness\nClaudia Carandini, was of Modenese origin.\n\nThe family itself, on the father's side, had sprung up in Tuscany at\nPisa, though not under the same name; but emigrated about a century\nand a half ago to the Roman States, where it expanded, and gradually\ngrew into political, or rather ecclesiastical importance. Consalvi's\nforefathers still, however, held in Tuscany some property, to which he\nwould have been entitled had he felt disposed to dispute the equity of\ncertain Leopoldine laws concerning trustees. But, with characteristic\ndisinterestedness the future cardinal never gave the matter a second\nthought.\n\n\"I never felt (says he) a passion for riches; beside, my resources,\nthough far from opulent, were sufficient for a modest way of living,\nthanks to the income arising out of the different offices which I held\nsuccessively. And thus being lifted, by Divine Providence, above\nvanity and ambition, I never was tempted to prove that I was descended\nfrom the Brunaccis and not from the Consalvis, whenever envy or\nignorance represented me as belonging to a stock unblessed with old\nnobility. It would have been an easy matter to dispel these\nimputations or errors. Being fully convinced that the best nobility\nsprings from the heart and from good deeds; knowing, likewise, that I\nwas a genuine Brunacci and not a Consalvi, I despised all such rumors.\n. . . Nor did I alter my views when the high position which I\nafterward attained afforded so many opportunities for putting an end\nto those idle reports.\"\n\nIn the above passage we have already the whole man. During his long\nand chequered life he never once exposed himself to the charge of\nmaking his own fortune out of the numerous and even honorable\noccasions which would have tempted a less exalted soul. It would be\nuseless to follow the young Consalvi through his course of studies,\nwhich were brilliant, and partly gone through under the eye of\nCardinal York, the last of a fated race, who entertained for the\nfuture minister an affectionate friendship that never cooled until his\ndeath.\n\nHercules Consalvi had hardly finished his academical curriculum at\n{380} Rome when he was called to the prelature, in 1783, as reporter\nto the tribunal of the Curia. His talents and deep knowledge, though\nso young, in canon and civil law, soon made him conspicuous among his\ncompetitors. In 1786, the Pope Pius VI. appointed him _Ponente del\nbuono govemo_, a board, or congregation, charged with giving its\nopinion on all municipal questions. This promotion was due to his\nmerit, but the cardinal himself confesses that it was a tardy one, not\non account of any neglect on the part of the pontifical government,\nbut merely because he did not avail himself of favorable\nopportunities. \"On the one hand,\" observes he, \"my own disposition\nnever inclined to ask for favor, and still less to court the patronage\nof those placed in high positions; whilst, on the other hand, I had\nbefore my eyes, in such respects, the fine example of my own guardian,\nthe Cardinal Negroni. . . . He was wont to say, 'We never ought to ask\nfor anything; we must never flatter to obtain preferment; but manage\nin such a way as to overcome every obstacle, through a most punctual\nfulfilment of our duties, and the enjoyment of a sound reputation.' To\nthis piece of advice I strictly adhered through life.\" To those who\nare so prone to malign the pomp and splendor of the Roman prelature,\nit will be a matter of surprise to learn that at this very time the\nonly benefice conferred upon Consalvi amounted to the paltry stipend\nof L12 a year.\n\nThe Pope, however, who seems to have been an excellent judge of true\nmerit, soon placed the young prelate at the head of the hospital of\nSan Michele, the largest and most important in Rome. The establishment\nrequired a thorough reform; and Consalvi soon worked wonders, being\nled on by his own innate ardor, and by a strong predilection for the\nmanagement of charitable institutions. But he had hardly realized his\nintended labor of reformation, when he was superseded by another\nprelate. Pius VI., in fact, did not wish Consalvi to wear out his\nenergies in the routine of administrative bureaucracy. The incident\nwhich led to his promotion is so truly characteristic of both\npersonages, that we cannot refrain from a copious quotation:\n\n  \"The sudden death of one of the _votanti di segnatura_, or Supreme\n  Court of Cassation, made a vacancy in that court. All my friends\n  engaged me not to lose a moment in applying for it. I did not yield\n  to their entreaties, nor, indeed, did the Pope allow me time for\n  that purpose. The above death had taken place on Maunday Thursday.\n  The very next morning, though it was Good Friday, and the sacred\n  services of the day were about to be solemnized; though all the\n  public offices were closed, according to custom, the Pope sent to\n  the Secretary of State an order to forward my immediate appointment\n  as _votanti di segnatura_. As soon as it arrived, I hastened to the\n  Pope to thank him. His Holiness was not in the habit of receiving\n  any one merely for the sake of hearing expressions of gratitude;\n  still less did I expect to be introduced on such a day, when the\n  Pope, after attending at the holy function, had retired to his\n  apartments, with a view of coming back for  _Tenebra_, and was in\n  the very act of reciting Complin, which was to be followed by his\n  dinner.\n\n  \"On learning that I was in the antechamber, where he had previously\n  given orders that I should not be sent away in case I should come,\n  he admitted me at once. After finishing Complin in my presence, he\n  addressed me so kindly that I shall remember his words as long as I\n  live. 'My dear Monsignor,' said he, 'you are well aware that we\n  receive no one merely to hear thanksgivings; and yet we have gone\n  against our usual custom, notwithstanding this busy day, and though\n  our dinner has just been served up, in order that we may have the\n  pleasure of making you the present communication. If you were not\n  included in the last promotion, it was {381} because we were obliged\n  to hand over to another the post really destined to yourself; and in\n  doing so we felt as much aggrieved as we are now delighted to offer\n  you immediately the vacant charge of _votanti di segnatura_. We do\n  it to show you the satisfaction which you afford us by your conduct,\n  We took you away from an administrative station merely to place you\n  on higher ground.'\n\n  \"The Holy Father then added a few words concerning the opinion which\n  his kindness, and by no means my own merit, suggested to him\n  relatively to my future career. Indeed, the knowledge which I have\n  of myself would not allow me to transcribe those words. He then\n  continued as follows: 'What we now bestow upon you is really not\n  worth much, but I have nothing else for the present. Take it,\n  however, as a positive pledge of what I am disposed to do as soon as\n  an opportunity offers.'\n\n  \"It is easy to understand that after such a speech, uttered in that\n  easy, affable, and yet majestic manner so peculiar to Pius VI., I\n  was at a loss for expressions to answer him. I could hardly stammer\n  out, that after the language he had just used about my\n  promotion--language showing that I had not incurred his disapproval\n  by my conduct at San Michele--my mind was quite at ease as to the\n  future. Indeed, I had no other ambition but to please him, and to\n  fulfil my duty in any station he might think fit to confer upon me.\n\n  \"Here I was interrupted. 'I am satisfied--nay, highly\n  satisfied'--said the Pope, 'by your behavior at San Michele; but I\n  again say that I destine you to other purposes. What I promised\n  formerly was sincere, but still it was but empty words. This is\n  something matter of fact; not much, indeed, but yet better than\n  words. So don't refuse it; and now be off, for, you see, our dinner\n  is getting cold, and we must soon go back to chapel.'\"\n\nIt would be doubtless congenial to our feelings to dwell upon these\ntouching details; but we are already in the year 1790, and the knell\nof the old French monarchy is tolling. Let us plunge, therefore, at\nonce _in medias res_, and skip over the eight intervening years\nbetween the time which saw Rome invaded by a revolutionary army, the\nPope torn from his throne, and led a prisoner, first to Florence, then\nto Valence, where he was to die a martyr. On reading this part of the\nmemoirs, one is particularly struck with the similarity which it\npresents with the history of Piedmontese invasion--the same hypocrisy,\nthe same attempts at provoking to insurrection the inhabitants at\nRome, and, these failing, the same recourse to violence. The\naccidental death of General Duphot at last appears in its true colors,\nbut of course it supplied the Directory with a pretence for seizing\nthe Papal States, an act of spoliation it had been long preparing.\n[Footnote 77] Thanks to the energy of Consalvi, to whom had been\nentrusted the maintenance of public order, previous to the entry of\nthe French troops into the capital, no insurrection took place; but\nfor that very reason he was obnoxious to the government of the\ninvaders. After the Pope's departure he was thrown into prison, with\nthe prospect of being transported, together with many Roman\necclesiastical and pontifical officers, to the fatal colony of\nCayenne. {382} To the honor of the French commander it must be said,\nthat he did all in his power to defend the energetic prelate against\nhis contemptible enemies, and to alleviate his captivity. The Paris\nDirectory had first banished him to Civita Vecchia, and then altered\nhis destination to Naples. But the Roman demagogues were determined\nupon wreaking their vengeance on Consalvi:\n\n  [Footnote 77: As a proof of this, we may produce the secret\n  instructions forwarded, two months and a half before the general's\n  death and the Roman insurrection, by the French government to Joseph\n  Bonaparte, their plenipotentiary at Rome: \"You have two things to\n  bear in mind: (1) To prevent the King of Naples from coming to Rome;\n  (2) To help, instead of opposing, the favorable dispositions of\n  those who believe that it is time for the Papal dominion to come to\n  an end. In short, you must encourage the impulse toward freedom by\n  which the people of Rome seems to be animated.\" Instructions like\n  these (observes, very justly, M. Cretineau-Joly) could have no other\n  object but to lay a diplomatical snare, or to provoke an\n  insurrection. The fact is so clear that Cacault, who succeeded to\n  Joseph Bonaparte at Rome, wrote in 1801 to the First Consul--\"You\n  know, quite as well as I do, the details of this melancholy event.\n  Nobody in Rome ordered either to fire or to kill any one. General\n  Duphot was imprudent; nay, more--let us out with the word--he was\n  guilty. There is a law of nations at Rome not a whit less than\n  elsewhere.\" The admission does credit to the honest man who\n  contributed so largely to bring about the concordat of 1801.]\n\n\n\"I had been detained (says he) about four or five and twenty days,\nwhen I was visited in my prison by my dear brother Andrea, as well as\nby my two friends, the Princes Chigi and Teano. This piece of good\nfortune I owed to the kind commander of the fortress. They informed me\nthat they were bearers of both good and bad news. I was at last to be\ntransported, not, indeed, to Tuscany, but to Naples, so that I might\nnot join the Pope. At the same time, it had been ordained that I was\nto ride through the streets of the city mounted on an ass, escorted by\npolicemen, and lashed all along with a horsewhip. Many a window under\nwhich I was to pass by was already hired; and our Jacobins, as well as\nthe wives of our consuls, promised themselves much pleasure at the\nsight of this execution. My friends were quite amazed at my\nindifference on receiving this last piece of news, which, indeed,\ncaused me but little pain; for I really considered it rather as a\nsource of triumph and glory. On the contrary, I was deeply vexed at\nnot being able to proceed to Tuscany, where I was so desirous of\nmeeting the Pope.\"\n\nThe humanity of the French general prevented the Roman demagogues from\ncarrying into execution the latter part of the sentence; but he\nremained inflexible as to Consalvi's removal to Naples. The latter\nhad, therefore, but to obey; and started for his destination, in\ncompany with a band of eighteen convicts, and several political\nprisoners like himself. After many difficulties, arising out of\nActon's tortuous policy, he succeeded at length in reaching Leghorn,\nwhere he had to encounter obstacles of a different nature. His very\nfirst step was to proceed to Florence, in hopes that the Duke of\nTuscany would facilitate his access to the captive Pontiff, who was\ndetained in a neighboring Carthusian monastery. But the jealous\nwatchfulness of the French plenipotentiary struck terror into the\nheart of the Tuscan minister, who peremptorily refused to have\nanything to do with the matter. Consalvi was not, however, to be\ndaunted when on the path of duty; he consequently set out on foot for\nthe Chartreuse, situated at about three miles from Florence, and\ncontrived his visit so secretly that he baffled detection. On\napproaching the foot of the hill, the faithful servant could hardly\nrepress his emotions. But let us hear him in his own words:\n\n  \"Every step which brought me nearer to the Holy Father increased the\n  strong feelings that welled up from my soul. The poverty and\n  solitude of the place, the sight of the two or three unfortunates\n  who attended him, brought tears to my eyes. At last I was introduced\n  into his presence. O God! what were my emotions at that moment; my\n  heart throbbed almost to breaking!\n\n  \"Pius VI. was seated before a table, a posture which concealed his\n  weakness, for he had almost lost the use of his legs, and he could\n  not move without the help of two strong men. The beauty and majesty\n  of his features were still the same as at Rome; he still inspired a\n  deep veneration and a most ardent attachment. I fell prostrate at\n  his feet, which I bathed with my tears; I told him the difficulties\n  I had to encounter, and how ardently I desired to remain with him,\n  in order to serve him, assist him--in fact, share his fate. I\n  promised not to spare any effort for the furtherance of this\n  object.\"\n\nA full hour quickly fled in thus communing with each other, and\nConsalvi was obliged to take his leave. The aged Pope foresaw that\nthis prop of {383} his declining and martyred life would not be\nallowed him; but still he clung fondly to the idea, and when his\nfaithful adherent, on a second and last visit, admitted that he had\nfailed in every endeavor to gain his end, and had even been ordered\nout of the country, Pius evinced a strong feeling of regret, though no\nsurprise. This farewell visit is related in terms no less touching\nthan the former:\n\n  \"During this audience, which lasted also a full hour, he bestowed\n  upon me the greatest marks of kindness, exhorting me successively to\n  practise resignation, wisdom, and those acts of firmness of which\n  his own life and his whole demeanor set such a fine example. He\n  appeared to me quite as great, and even far greater, than when he\n  reigned at Rome. I besought him to give me his blessing. He laid his\n  hands on my head, and, like the most venerable among the patriarchs\n  of old, raising his eyes toward heaven, he prayed unto the Lord, and\n  blessed me, with an attitude so resigned, so august, so holy, so\n  full of real tenderness, that to the last day of my life the\n  remembrance will remain graven on my heart in indelible characters.\n\n  \"When I retired, my eyes were swimming with tears; I was beside\n  myself with grief; and yet I felt both encouraged and re-assured by\n  the inexpressible calmness of my sovereign, and the sweet serenity\n  of his features. It was indeed the greatness of a good man\n  struggling against misfortune.\"\n\nFour-and-twenty hours afterward, Consalvi was obliged to leave\nFlorence for Venice; the Pope was hurried through Alpine snows to\nValence, in Dauphine, where he died of his sufferings on the 29th of\nAugust, 1799.\n\nAnd what a time for the election of a new pope! Italy overrun by the\nFrench revolutionary armies, Rome in their possession, and ruled by a\nhorde of incendiary demagogues; the Russians, headed by Suwarow,\npouring into the Peninsula to oppose the French; whilst Austria,\ngoverned by a Thugut, was watching her opportunity to get hold of the\nnew Pope--if there should be a Pope--and make him the pliant tool of her\nambition. Nor let us forget that Bonaparte was on his way back from\nEgypt, preparing to swoop down, eagle-like, on those very Austrian\npossessions wherein the conclave was to meet. And yet the conclave _did_\nmeet at Venice, on an island of that famous republic, which had so\noften defied the bans and interdicts of the Roman pontiffs;--the\ncardinals hurried from their neighboring cities or secret abodes,\nthough with views and intentions not perhaps exactly in accordance\nwith the solemnity and urgency of the occasion. It is, indeed, a\ncurious picture of human passions, though blended with higher motives\nand purposes,--that truthful memoir drawn up by Consalvi on the\nconclave of 1800, wherein he was unanimously elected secretary to the\nassembly. The election lasted more than three long months, on account\nof the two contending factions, headed by Cardinal Herzan, on the part\nof Austria, and by the celebrated Maury, then Bishop of Montefiascone\nin the Papal States. Consalvi, notwithstanding his wonted moderation,\nboldly proclaims these divisions to have been _scandalous_ in such\ncircumstances, and animadverts severely on the intrigues of the\nimperial court. And yet he cannot help observing that, on such\noccasions, the Sacred College seem led on, little by little, as it\nwere, by some higher power, to sacrifice their own private views and\ninterests to the common weal of Christendom. So it was, indeed, in the\npresent juncture, thanks to the extraordinary ability, to the\nself-renouncement, prudence, and true Catholic spirit displayed\nthroughout by the youthful secretary. The votes were gradually won\nover to Cardinal Chiaramonti, so well known afterward by the name of\nPius VII. Consalvi had truly displayed a master-mind; and the new\npontiff immediately showed how highly he appreciated his merit, by\nappointing him Secretary of State. We can easily believe the surprise\nand {384} alarm of the new minister; for doubtless his was no easy\ntask. The Austrians possessed nearly all the Papal States, whilst the\nKing of Naples held Rome itself. The court of Vienna, intent upon\nkeeping at least the three legations, which had recently been wrested\nfrom the French, offered at the same time to restore to the Pope the\nremaining parts of his dominions. To such a proposal the latter could\nbut oppose a flat denial, accompanied by a firm resolution to return\nto Rome without delay. The imperial negotiator, Ghislieri, then\nreduced his demands to the two legations of Bologna and Ferrara; but\nhe met with no better success. The spoliation of the Holy See, as the\nreader may now perceive, is after all an old story. The Pope, indeed,\nwent so far as to write to the emperor a letter, in which he formally\ndemanded the restitution of all his provinces. No notice whatsoever\nwas taken of the Papal missive. At last, utterly worn out by Austrian\nduplicity, Pius one day addressed Ghislieri in the following terms:\n\"Since the emperor refuses obstinately a restitution, which both\nreligion and equity require, I really do not see what new argument I\ncan produce to convince him. Let his majesty take care, however, not\nto lay by in his wardrobe any clothes belonging, not to himself, but\nto the Church. For not only will his majesty be unable to wear them,\nbut most probably they will pester with the grub his own hereditary\ndominions, which may be worm-eaten in a short time.\"\n\nThe Marquess Ghislieri hurried out of the Papal presence in a rage,\nwhich found vent when he met Consalvi. \"The new Pope,\" he exclaimed,\n\"has hardly donned his own clothes; he is not yet accustomed to his\nown craft, and he talks of the Austrian wardrobe being worm-eaten! He\nknows but little of our power; it would require thousands of moths to\nnibble it to dust.\" Two months after, the battle of Marengo had been\nfought and won: the legations, Lombardy, Venetia, the hereditary\nGerman states, the capital itself, had fallen a prey to the Corsican\nconqueror! Pius VII. had scarcely set his foot on the shore of his own\ndominions when the news of the famous defeat arrived: \"Ah!\" exclaimed\nGhislieri, a religious man, after all, \"I now see fulfilled the Pope's\nprediction: our wardrobe has truly been worm-eaten to tatters.\"\n\nPius VII. had but just returned to Rome, in the midst of a delighted\nand grateful population, when he received the astounding news that the\nconqueror of the Austrians was desirous of negotiating with the Holy\nSee for the restoration of religion in France. Whilst at Vercelli,\nBonaparte had met with Cardinal Martiniana, who was returning from the\nconclave at Venice; and he expressed himself so clearly, so pointedly,\nas to his future plans, that both Consalvi and the Pope were taken by\nsurprise. Their approbation was immediately given, and the Pope\nhimself wrote to Martiniana: \"You may tell the First Consul that we\nwill readily enter into a negotiation tending to an object so truly\nhonorable, so congenial to our apostolical administration, and so\nthoroughly conformable to our own views.\"\n\nThe history of this celebrated treaty, on which so much hangs in\nFrance even in our own time, has been often related, and yet many a\ndetail of the intricate negotiations which preceded its conclusion had\nremained secret until the publication of the present memoirs. Three\npersonages stand out in strong relief on that occasion, each with his\nindividual character: Cacault, the French ambassador at Rome,\nBonaparte, and Consalvi himself. Of the second, little need be said;\nbut M. Cacault is, we believe, hardly known in England. He was a\nBreton by birth, and, as such, had imbibed those religious feelings\nwhich stamp so strongly the most western province of France. As a\nrepublican representative of the Directory, he did all in his power to\navert from the Papal See those evils and that invasion which {385}\nended in the captivity of Pius VI. When Napoleon's star was in the\nascendant, M. Cacault quickly discovered the depth and extent of his\ngenius, and thenceforward abetted his plans. At the same time, he was\nby no means a flatterer, but ever plain-spoken to bluntness. A time\ncame, indeed, when the greatest conqueror of modern times found the\nnoble-hearted Breton rather too sincere, and consigned him to the\npeaceful life of a seat in his new-fangled senate. But that day was\nyet to come. In 1801, M. Cacault enjoyed the whole confidence of the\nFirst Consul.\n\nOn leaving Bonaparte, the ambassador heard him utter those famous\nwords, which have been so often quoted: \"Mind you treat the Pope as if\nhe had 200,000 men at his back. Remember, also, that in October, 1796,\nI wrote to you how much I wished to save the Holy See, not to\noverthrow it, and that both you and I entertained the same feelings in\nthis respect.\" With credentials like these, M. Cacault should have\nfound it an easy matter to negotiate with Rome; but, singularly\nenough, the conservative government of Austria threw many an obstacle\nin the way. The very idea of a reconciliation between revolutionary\nFrance and the Papacy seems to have disquieted M. de Thugut, and he\ndid all in his power to breed a feeling of distrust, on the part of\nRome at least. The court of Naples was animated by the same policy;\nand even Bonaparte himself, at one time, appeared to waver between the\nimpulse of his own good sense and the suggestions of his infidel\nadvisers. In the eyes of M. Cacault, the Pope stood too much on\ntheological tenets and opinions, when dealing with a victorious\nadventurer. At any rate, matters soon grew from bad to worse. In a fit\nof impatience, the consul ordered his ambassador to leave Rome in five\ndays, if the concordat sent from Paris was not signed at the\nexpiration of that short time.\n\nAt this critical juncture, the Breton came to a determination so truly\ncharacteristic of the man, that we must allow him to speak for\nhimself. We borrow the following narrative from his secretary, M.\nArtaud:\n\n\"We are bound to obey our government,\" said he, addressing himself to\nme; \"but then a government must be guided by a head capable of\nunderstanding negotiations, by ministers capable of advising him\nproperly, and lastly, all must agree together. Every government ought\nto have a plan, a will, an aim of its own. But this is no easy matter\nwith a new government. Now, though in a secondary station, I am really\nmaster of this business; but if we go on in Rome as they are going on\nin Paris, nothing can come out of it but a sort of chaos. .... It is\nfully understood that the head of the state wished for a concordat; he\nwished for it so far back as Tolentino, and even before, when he\ncalled himself _the best friend of the Pope_.... In fact, he has sent\nme here to negotiate a concordat, and for that purpose has given me in\nyourself the prop I myself desired. But then his ministers probably\ndon't wish for a concordat, and they have constant access to his ear.\nNow the character most easy to irritate and to deceive, is that of a\nwarrior, who as yet understands nothing about politics, and is ever\nreturning to military orders and to the sword.... Shall we, like two\nfools, leave Rome in this way because the despatch orders us to do so,\nand give up France to _irreligiosity_--a word no less barbarous than\nthe thing itself? Shall we leave her to a sort of spurious\nCatholicism, or that hybrid system which advises the establishment of\na patriarch? God knows, then, that the future destinies of the First\nConsul will probably never be fulfilled....\n\n\"I am fond of Bonaparte, fond of the general; but this patch-work name\nof a First Consul is in itself ridiculous; he borrowed it from Rome,\nwhere he has never set his foot. But in my eyes he is still nothing\nmore than an {386} Italian general. As for the fate of this terrible\ngeneral, it is now in my hands more than in his own; he is turning\ninto a sort of Henry the Eighth, flattering and scaring the Holy See\nby turns; but how many sources of true glory will be dried up for him,\nif he merely mimics Henry the Eighth! The measure is full; nations\nnow-a-days will not allow their rulers to dispose of them in regard to\nreligious matters. With concordats, on the contrary, miracles may be\nwrought, more especially by him, or if not by him, supposing him to be\nunwise, by France herself. Be sure, my dear sir, that great deeds\nbrought about at the proper moment, and bearing fruitful results, no\nmatter by what genius they are accomplished, are a wealthy dowry for\nany country. In case of embarrassments, that country may ward off many\nan attack by pointing to its history. France, with all her faults,\nrequires true grandeur. Our consul jeopardizes all by this pistol-shot\nfired in time of peace, merely for the sake of pleasing his generals\nwhom he loves, but whose soldierlike jokes he fears, because he\nhimself now and then gives way to them. He thus breaks off a\nnegotiation which he wishes to succeed, and goes on casting rotten\nseed. What can really be a religious concordat, that most solemn of\nall human undertakings, if it is to be signed in five days? It reminds\none of the twelve hours granted by a general to a besieged town, which\ncan hope for no succor.\"\n\nThe result of the above conversation on the part of M. Cacault was a\ndetermination to quit Rome, but to leave his secretary in that city,\nwhilst Consalvi himself was to set out immediately for Paris, as the\nonly means of preventing a positive rupture between the two courts,\nfor Bonaparte had already both a court and courtiers. The French\nminister was by no means blind to the consequences of his boldness in\nundertaking to correct the false steps of his own government; but, to\nhis credit be it said, the fear of those consequences did not make him\nswerve one minute from his purpose. His very first step was,\ntherefore, to request an interview with Consalvi, and an audience from\nthe Pope. On meeting the cardinal, he began by reading_ in extenso_\nthe angry despatch which he had received, not even omitting the\nepithets _\"turbulent and guilty priest\"_ which the Consul applied to\nhis eminence. M. Cacault then resumed as follows:\n\n  \"There must be some misunderstanding; the First Consul is\n  unacquainted with your person, and still more with your talents,\n  your ability, your precedents, your adroitness, and your anxiety to\n  terminate this business. So you must start for Paris.\" \"When?\"\n  \"To-morrow: you will please him; you are fit to understand each\n  other; he will then learn to know a statesmanlike cardinal, and you\n  will draw up the concordat together. But if you don't go to Paris, I\n  shall be obliged to break off all intercourse with you; and there\n  are yonder certain ministers, who advised the Directory to transport\n  Pius VI. to Guyana....\n\n  \"I again repeat it, you must go to Paris, you will draw up the\n  concordat yourself--nay more, you will dictate a part of it,\n  obtaining at the same time far better conditions than I could ever\n  do, fettered as I am by so many shackles.... One word more: In a\n  place like this, where there is so much gossipping, I can't allow\n  you to bear alone the responsibility of this action. I consider it\n  as something truly grand; but as it may turn out a false step,\n  to-morrow I must see the Pope, and take the whole upon my shoulders.\n  I shall not bore the Pope, having but a few words to tell him, in\n  order to fulfil the Consul's former instructions.\"\n\nConsalvi, fired at the boldness of the plan, hurried to the Pope,\nrather to prepare him for this unforeseen separation than to ask for\npermission. When, on the other hand, the French diplomatist was\nadmitted to his presence, {387} he showed so much candor, such a true\nspirit of Christian feeling, such a total forgetfulness of self, that\nthe pontiff could not refrain from shedding tears, and ended by\nbreaking out into these words: \"Indeed, indeed, you are a true friend,\nand we love you as we loved our own mother. At this very moment, we\nwill retire to our oratory, in order to implore God's blessing on this\njourney, as well as for the successful issue of an undertaking, which\nmay afford us some consolation in the midst of so much affliction.\"\n\nIt was indeed a bereavement for the Pope, who, having hardly ascended\nthe throne, was accustomed to consider Consalvi as his main prop and\nright hand in every affair of any importance. He, however, readily\nconsented to the separation, and on the following day the cardinal\nleft Rome, accompanied by M. Cacault, in an open carriage, to show the\ngossipping Romans that no real coolness existed between the two\ngovernments. This, in fact, strengthened the hands of the Papal\nadministration, as reports were already rife that a French army was\nabout to march once more into Rome, with a view of restoring the\nrepublic.\n\nAt the distance of more than half a century Consalvi's determination\nscarcely seems an act of daring; but, at that period, it was\nconsidered in a different light. We must remember that France had been\nfor ten long years the scene of anarchy and bloodshed within, while\nshe had proved the terror of Europe on the field of battle. She was\nbut just emerging from that anarchy, thanks to the iron grasp of a\nfortunate soldier, who might yet, for aught the world knew, turn out\nto be a bloody tyrant quite as well as a sagacious ruler. For a\npriest, and still more for a cardinal, to venture alone of his own\naccord into the lair of those beasts of prey, as they were then\ntermed, certainly showed an extraordinary degree of moral courage,\nhowever M. Thiers may taunt Consalvi with his fears. Those fears the\nPapal minister _did_ really entertain, as is proved by a few unwary\nlines which he addressed before his departure to Acton at Naples, and\nwhich were betrayed to Bonaparte in Paris. But then the cardinal,\nprompted by a strong feeling of duty, overcame these apprehensions,\nwhich is more perhaps than M. Thiers would vouch to have done on a\nsimilar occasion, if we may judge from the infidel spirit and\nintriguing disposition that are conspicuous alike throughout his own\ncareer and writings. Success, not principle, ever appears to be his\nleading star.\n\nOnce in Paris, Consalvi was not long in conquering that position which\nthe keenness of his friend Cacault foresaw that he was destined to\nassume. Bonaparte approved in every respect the conduct of his\nambassador at Rome, appeared even flattered at being feared, at first\nreceived the cardinal with affected coolness, but little by little\nyielded to better feelings, and ended by turning into ridicule \"that\nfool Acton, who thought that he could stop the rush of a torrent with\ncobwebs.\" To these friendly dispositions soon succeeded on both sides\na sincere confidence, and on one occasion the First Consul laughingly\ninquired of Consalvi whether he was not considered as a _priest-eater_\nin Italy; and then suddenly launched into one of those splendid\nexpositions of his future plans, by which he endeavored to fascinate\nand charm those he aimed at winning over to his own views. In this\nsparkling conversation the concordat held a foremost place. Napoleon\ndeveloped, just as he pleased, opinions half Protestant, half\nJansenist--in other words, exactly what he wanted the concordat to be,\nand exactly what Consalvi could not allow. The contest between those\ntwo rival spirits may well detain us a few moments longer. And why not\nsay at once that by degrees the master-genius of the age was obliged\nto modify his own views, yielding, _nolens volens_, as he himself\nadmitted, to the graceful bearing and sound good sense of the man\nwhose countrymen had named him the Roman Syren?\n\n{388}\n\nWe may gather from M. Thiers' work that Consalvi had undertaken a most\narduous task. Paris itself must have offered a strange sight to a\nRoman cardinal in the very first year of the present century. The\nchurches were still shut, and bore upon their porches such\ninscriptions as savored more of heathenism than of Christianity.\nWherever the legate's eye fell he was sure to meet with a temple of\nplenty, of fraternity, of liberty, of trade, of abundance, and so\nforth. And then when he went to court he found a ruler disposed to\nbreak out into the most violent fits of anger if his will was\ndisputed, whilst on every hand he had to encounter a host of scoffers\nand infidels, belonging to every hue and grade. The army, the bench,\nthe schools, the _savants_, and the very clergy, all vied in showing off\nRome as the hotbed of an obsolete superstition which it was high time\nto do away with altogether. And when we mention the clergy, we mean\nthe remains of that schismatic body which had hailed the civil\nconstitution so formally condemned by the Holy See in 1791. They were\nactive, intriguing, influential, and had the ear of Bonaparte himself.\nHe was intent upon distributing among them a portion of the new sees\nabout to be erected, and it required all the firmness of Consalvi to\nward off this impending danger. If we may believe M. Thiers, many\namong them were by no means of dissolute lives; yet he cannot disguise\nthe fact that they were ambitious, servile, and disposed to bend to\nevery caprice of the ruling power. But that power was fully aware that\nthe French population had no confidence whatever in their\nministrations; the non-jurors, or priests who had unflinchingly\nremained faithful to their duty, were, on the contrary, sought out and\nheld in high esteem. In this strange society the functions of\nCatholicism and the rites of our religion were openly resumed by\nbelievers, who attended them in back streets, in by-ways, in dark\nwarehouses, whither some aged priest repaired at dawn, after escaping\nbut shortly before from the dungeons of the Directory or the scaffolds\nof the Revolutionary Committee. The writer of these lines has known\nmore than one man who was baptized at that period in a miserable\ngarret by some ecclesiastic disguised as a common laborer, before the\neyes of his parents, though without any sponsors, for fear of\ndetection. That such men should turn round in the streets of Paris and\nstare with wonder at the sight of a cardinal publicly making for the\nTuileries in one of the Consul's carriages is by no means surprising;\nbut the fact increases our admiration for the two eminent statesmen\nwho both cast such a firm glance into the depths of futurity.\n\nConsalvi had only been a few hours in Paris when he was summoned\nbefore the First Consul, who sent him word that \"he was to show off as\nmuch of a cardinal as possible.\" The able diplomatist was, however,\nnot in the least disposed to \"show off,\" and contented himself with\nwearing the indispensable insignia of his dignity. It will be well to\nremember that, at the time we are speaking of, no priest would have\nventured to put on the clerical costume in the French capital. This\nfirst audience took place in public, in the midst of all the high\nfunctionaries of the state. On the cardinal approaching, Bonaparte\nrose and said abruptly: \"I am aware of the object of your journey to\nFrance. My will is, that the conferences shall begin immediately. I\ngive you five days for the purpose, and tell you beforehand that, if\non the fifth day the negotiations have not come to a conclusion, you\nmay return to Rome; for, within my own mind, I have come to a\ndetermination should such an event take place.\"\n\n\"By sending his prime minister to Paris (replied coolly the cardinal)\nHis Holiness proves at any rate the interest he takes in the\nconclusion of a concordat with the French government, and I fully hope\nto terminate this business in the time you have marked.\" {389}\nApparently satisfied with this answer, Bonaparte immediately broke\nforth into one of those eloquent displays for which he was\nremarkable--the concordat, the Holy See, the interests of religion,\nthe articles which had been rejected by the Pope, all became, on his\npart, the subject of a most vehement and exhaustive speech, which was\nsilently listened to by the surrounding audience.\n\nOne of the most amusing and almost ludicrous instances of the Consul's\nignorance in regard to religious matters took place on this occasion.\nHe bore a bitter hatred to the Jesuits, and was constantly harping on\nthe subject. \"I am quite astounded and scandalized (said he all of a\nsudden) that the Pope should be allied to a non-Catholic power like\nRussia, as is evident by the restoration of the Jesuits in that\ncountry. Such a union ought surely to wound and irritate a Catholic\nsovereign, since it contributes to please a schismatical monarch.\"\n\n\"I must answer candidly (resumed the cardinal) that your informations\nare incorrect on this matter. Doubtless the Pope has deemed it\nadvisable not to refuse the request of the Russian emperor for the\nrestoration of the Jesuits in his own states, but, at the same time,\nHis Holiness has shown no less fatherly affection and deference for\nthe King of Spain, since an interval of several months has elapsed\nbetween Paul's request and the bull, which was not sent before the\ncourt of Spain had expressly stated that it would in no way complain\nof the act.\"\n\nWhen Bonaparte had fixed such a short term for the conclusion of the\nconcordat, he fully intended that not a single jot of his own plan\nshould be rejected by Rome. That plan, as we have already observed,\nwas half schismatic, and would have bound over the French Church to\nthe supreme will and power of the ruling government. But Consalvi\nshowed himself equally firm as to essentials, whilst he gracefully\nyielded to every demand of minor importance. As to the wisdom of this\nconduct, the present circumstances bear ample testimony; for, had the\ncardinal been less firm, what might not be in 1865 the painful\nsituation of the French episcopacy? But the negotiations, instead of\nending in five days, were prolonged for more than three weeks, during\nwhich the Abbe Bernier, who represented his government, was constantly\nstarting new difficulties, and threatening Consalvi with some new\noutbreak of violence on the part of the First Consul.\n\nAt last, toward the middle of July, every difficulty being overcome,\nand Bonaparte having formally promised to accept every article of the\nconcordat as it had been agreed to at Rome, nothing remained but to\ncopy and sign that famous treaty. The First Consul was to give a grand\ndinner on the 14th of July to foreigners of distinction, and to men of\nhigh standing in the country. His intention was to inform publicly his\nguests of this happy event, and on the 13th the _Moniteur_ published\nthe following laconic piece of news: \"Cardinal Consalvi has succeeded\nin the object which brought him to Paris.\" Bonaparte had selected his\nbrother Joseph, a councillor of state, and Bernier to sign the deed,\nwhilst on the other side were Consalvi, Monsignor Spina, and a\ntheologian named Father Caselli. But at the last moment there occurred\none of the most astounding incidents contained in the history of\ndiplomacy. As it has never been mentioned in any memoirs or documents\nof those times, we cannot do better than let the cardinal relate it in\nhis own words:\n\n\"Toward four o'clock in the afternoon, Bernier arrived with a roll of\npaper, which he did not unfold, but stated to be a copy of the\nconcordat that we were about to sign. We took our own with us, and set\nout all together for the house of citizen Joseph, as was the slang of\nthe day, the brother to the First Consul. He received me with the\nutmost politeness. Though he had been ambassador at Rome, I had not\nbeen introduced to him, being yet but {390} a prelate. During the few\ndays I passed in Paris, I had not met him on a formal visit which I\npaid him, for he often resided in the country. This was, therefore,\nthe first time we saw each other. After the usual compliments, he bade\nus to sit down round a table, adding: 'We shall have soon done, having\nbut to sign the compact, as all is concluded.'\n\n\"On being seated round the table, the question arose who should sign\nfirst. Joseph Bonaparte claimed the right as brother to the head of\nthe government. I observed with great mildness and firmness, that both\nas a cardinal and a legate of the Holy See, I could not consent to\nassume the second rank in signing; beside, under the old _regime_ in\nFrance, as well as everywhere else, the cardinals enjoyed a right of\nprecedence, which I could not give up, not indeed from any personal\nmotive, but on account of the dignity with which I was invested. It is\nbut due to Joseph to state, that after a momentary hesitation, he\nyielded with very good grace, and begged of me to sign first. He\nhimself was to come after, followed by the prelate Spina, Councillor\nCretet, Father Caselli, and the Abbe Bernier.\n\n\"We set to work at once, and I had taken up the pen, when to my great\nsurprise the Abbe Bernier presented to me his copy, with the view of\nmaking me sign it without examining its contents. On casting my eyes\nupon it in order to ascertain its identity with my own copy, I\nperceived that this ecclesiastical treaty was not the one agreed to by\nthe respective commissioners, not the one adopted by the First Consul\nhimself, but another totally different! The difference existing at the\nvery first outset induced me to examine the whole with the most\nscrupulous attention, and I soon found out that this copy contained\nthe draught which the Pope had refused to accept without his\ncorrection, the very refusal that had provoked an order to the French\nagent to leave Rome; nay more, that this self-same draught was\nmodified in many respects by the insertion of certain clauses,\npreviously declared to be inacceptable even before it had been sent to\nRome.\n\n\"A proceeding of this character, so truly incredible, and yet so real,\nwhich I shall not venture to qualify--for the fact speaks sufficiently\nfor itself--a proceeding of this kind literally paralyzed my hand. I\nexpressed my astonishment, declaring positively that on no condition\ncould I give my approval to such a deed. The First Consul's brother\ndid not appear less surprised than myself, pretending not to\nunderstand the matter. The First Consul, he added, had assured him\nthat, everything being agreed to, nothing remained but to sign. As for\nhimself, he had just come up from the country, where he was busy with\nCount Cobenzel about the affairs of Austria, being called upon merely\nfor the formality of signing the treaty. Concerning the matter itself,\nhe absolutely knew nothing about it.\"\n\nCardinal Consalvi, even when writing the above lines, does not seem to\ndoubt Joseph's sincerity, nor that of Councillor Cretet, who affirmed\nhis own innocence in terms equally strong. The latter could hardly\nbelieve his own eyes, when the legate pointed out to him the glaring\ndiscrepancies between both copies. The Pope's minister then turning\nsuddenly to Bernier: \"Nobody better than yourself,\" said he, \"can\nattest the truth of what I affirm; I am highly astonished at the\nstudied silence which you maintain, and I must therefore call upon you\npositively to communicate to us what you must know so pertinently.\"\n\n\"Then, with an air of confusion and an embarrassed countenance, he\nfaltered out that doubtless my language was but too true, and that he\nwould not deny the difference of the documents now proposed for our\nsignatures. 'But the First Consul has so ordained,' continued he,\n'telling me that as long as no signature has been given, one is always\nat liberty to make any alteration. So he requires these alterations,\n{391} after duly considering the whole matter, he is not satisfied\nwith the previous stipulations.'\"\n\nThe doctrine was so contrary to all precedents, that Consalvi had no\ndifficulty in convincing his auditors of its futility. He moreover\nmaintained his ground steadfastly, and refused to make any further\nconcession contrary to his duties. They cajoled him, they threatened\nhim with the violence and \"fury\" of the omnipotent Consul; he remained\nunshaken. Joseph entreated him at least to go over the same ground\nonce more, following the Papal copy, and to this the cardinal\nconsented, firmly resolved not to give up one single point of\nimportance, but to modify such expressions as might induce Bonaparte\nto accept the original treaty. So these six men sat down again at five\no'clock in the afternoon to discuss the whole question. The discussion\nwas laborious, precise, searching, and heated on both sides. It lasted\nnineteen long hours, without interruption, without rest, without food,\nwithout even sending away the servants or the carriages, as will often\nhappen when people hope to conclude at every minute some important\nbusiness. On one article alone they could never agree, and it was\nspecially reserved to the Pope's own decision. It was twelve o'clock\nthe next day before they came to a conclusion. But would the First\nConsul adopt this plan? Would he not break all bounds, on finding his\nduplicity discovered, and himself balked by the cardinal's firmness?\nJoseph hurried to the Tuileries, in order to lay the whole before his\nimperious brother, and in less than one hour came back, his features\nevidently showing the grief of his soul. Says Consalvi:\n\n\"He told us that the First Consul had broken forth into the greatest\nfury on being apprised of what had taken place. In his fit of anger he\nhad torn to pieces the concordat we had drawn up among us; but at\nlast, yielding to Joseph's entreaties and arguments, he had promised,\nthough with the most extreme repugnance, to accept every article we\nhad agreed to, except the one we had reserved, and about which he was\nno less inflexible than irritated. The First Consul, added Joseph, had\nclosed the interview by telling him to inform me that he (Bonaparte)\nwas decided upon maintaining this article as it was expressed in\nBernier's copy:--consequently I had but two ways before me: either to\nadopt this article just as it was in the concordat, or to give up the\nnegotiations. As for him, he had made up his mind to announce either\nthe signature or the rupture of the affair at the grand dinner he was\nto give on that day.\n\n\"The reader will easily imagine our consternation at this message. We\nhad yet three hours until five o'clock, the time appointed for the\ndinner, at which we were all to attend. I really am unable to repeat\nall the Consul's brother and the two other commissioners said, to\nconquer my resistance. The picture of the consequences likely to ensue\nupon the rupture was indeed of the darkest color; they gave me to\nunderstand that I alone should become responsible for those evils in\nthe face of France and Europe, as well as to my own sovereign and\nRome. I should be accused of an unreasonable stiffness, and of having\nbrought on the results of such a refusal. I felt a death-like anguish,\non conjuring up before my eyes the realization of these prophecies,\nand I was--if I may be allowed such words--like unto the man of\nsorrow. But my duty won the victory: thanks to heaven, I did not\nbetray it. I persisted in my refusal during the two hours of this\ncontest, and the negotiation was broken off.\n\n\"Such was the ending of this sad debate, which had lasted\nfour-and-twenty hours, having begun at four o'clock on the preceding\nday, and closed toward the same hour of this unfortunate one. Our\nbodily sufferings were doubtless very great, but they were nothing\nwhen compared to our moral anxiety, which rose to such a pitch that\none must really have undergone {392} such tortures to form an idea of\nthem.\n\n\"I was condemned--and this was indeed a most cruel circumstance at\nsuch a moment--to appear in an hour after at the famous banquet. I was\nbound to front in public the very first shock of that headstrong anger\nwhich the General Bonaparte would feel on being apprised by his\nbrother of the rupture.\n\n\"We hastened back to our hotel, in order to make a few rapid\npreparations, and then hurried all three to the Tuileries. We had\nhardly entered the saloon where the First Consul was standing--a\nsaloon filled with a crowd of magistrates, officers, state grandees,\nministers, ambassadors, and illustrious foreigners, who had been\ninvited to the dinner--when we were greeted in a way which may easily\nbe imagined, as he had already seen his brother. As soon as he\nperceived me, he exclaimed, his face flushed with anger, and in a loud\nand indignant tone:\n\n\"'Well, Monsieur le Cardinal, you have had your fling; you have broken\noff: be it so! I don't stand in need of Rome. I will act for myself. I\ndon't stand in need of the Pope. If Henry the Eighth, who had not\none-twentieth part of my power, was enabled to change the religion of\nhis country, and to succeed in his plans, far better shall I know how\nto do it, and to will it. By changing the religion in France, I shall\nchange it throughout the best part of Europe--everywhere, in fact,\nwhere my power is felt. Rome will soon perceive her own faults; she\nwill rue them, but it will then be too late. You may take your leave;\nit is the best thing you can do. You have willed a rupture: be it so!\nWhen do you intend setting out?'\n\n\"'After dinner, general,' replied I, with the greatest calmness.\n\n\"These few words acted as an electric shock on the First Consul. He\nstared at me for a few minutes; and, taking advantage of his surprise,\nI replied to his vehement outbreak, that I neither could nor would go\nbeyond my instructions on matters which were positively opposed to the\nmaxims of the Holy See.\"\n\nHere the Consul interrupted Consalvi, though in a milder tone, to tell\nhim that he insisted upon having the concordat signed according to his\nown views, or not at all. \"Well, then,\" retorted the cardinal, \"in\nthat form I neither shall nor will ever subscribe to it; no--never.\"\n\"And that is the very reason,\" cried out Bonaparte, \"why I tell you\nthat you are bent upon breaking off, and why Rome will shed tears of\nblood on this rupture.\"\n\nWhat a scene! and how finely the bold, calm demeanor of the Pope's\nlegate shows in strong relief against that dark, passionate, and\nominous, though intelligent face of Napoleon Bonaparte! What a\nsplendid subject for a painter, and how it calls up at once to our\nmind those barbaric chieftains of old, fit enough to wield the\nsword--fit enough even to lay the snares of a savage, but unable to\ncope with the spiritual strength of a Christian bishop, and utterly\ncowed by the meek sedateness of some missionary monk, just wafted over\nfrom the shores of Ireland! Write the seventh, or the thirteenth,\ninstead of the nineteenth century, and say if the incident would be\nclothed in different colors; for, in fact, what was Bonaparte himself\nbut the Hohenstaufen of his age--a strange mixture of real grandeur,\nof seething passions, and of mean, crafty, fox-like cunning?\n\nThe French editor of these memoirs very justly observes that some\nvestige of the above scene must still exist in the documents of the\nImperial archives, and expresses the wish that the charge of duplicity\nso terribly brought home to the first Bonaparte may be properly sifted\nand repelled. Of the existence of such information we have scarcely\nany doubt, but we hardly believe that the select committee, headed by\nPrince Napoleon, who have already so unscrupulously tampered with\n{393} the correspondence of the great founder of the present dynasty,\nwill ever rebut the accusation, or even take notice of the narrative.\nAnd yet it bears the stamp of truth in every line, so prone was\nNapoleon to those fits of anger, which he sometimes used, Thiers\nhimself admits it, as tools for his policy, and to serve his end.\n\nAfter all, the First Consul was glad to escape from the consequences\nof his own violence, since, on the personal interference of the\nAustrian ambassador, he again consented that the conferences should be\nrenewed. The two cardinal points on which, in the eyes of Rome, the\nwhole fabric of the concordat rested, were the freedom and publicity\nof the Catholic worship. Without these two essential conditions, the\nPope and his ministers deemed that the Church obtained no compensation\nfor the numerous sacrifices which she consented to undergo in other\nrespects. The French government, on the contrary, admitted that\nfreedom and publicity, only so far as they were allowed to other forms\nof worship, and saddled the article with the following rider: \"The\npublic worship shall be free, as long as it conforms to the police\nregulations.\" Such was the final difficulty against which Consalvi\nmaintained a most obstinate opposition, and it must be admitted that\nhis grounds were of a very serious nature. Taught by the experience of\nother times and countries, he considered the obnoxious condition as a\nbold attempt to enslave the Church by subjecting her to the secular\npower. On the flimsy pretext of acting as the protector and defender\nof the Church, a government was enabled to lord it over her, and\ncripple her best endeavors for the fulfilment of her divine mission.\nIf such had been the case, even under the old French monarchy,\nnotwithstanding the strong Catholic dispositions of the Bourbon\nsovereigns in general, as well as in the times of a Joseph II. and a\nLeopold of Tuscany, what greater changes were to be feared on the part\nof the revolutionary powers, which now swayed over France? The\ncardinal readily admitted that, in the present state of the country,\nit might be proper for the government to restrict on certain occasions\nthe publicity of the Catholic worship, for the very sake of protecting\nits followers against the outbreaks of popular frenzy; but why lay\ndown such a sweeping and such an elastic rule? \"With a clause of this\nkind,\" said the legate, \"the police, or rather the government, will be\nenabled to lay their hands on everything, and may subject all to their\nown will and discretion, whilst the Church, constantly fettered by the\nwords, 'As long as it conforms,' will have no right even to complain.\"\nTo these arguments the Consul constantly replied, \"Well, if the Pope\ncan't accept such an indefinite and mild restriction, let him omit the\narticle, and give up publicity of worship altogether.\" As a curious\nspecimen of sincerity and candor, we must observe that Consalvi was\nnot even allowed to consult with his own court, nor to send a courier,\nthe French government refusing to supply him with the necessary\npassports. So much for the international privileges of ambassadors.\nWho can be astonished that the Papal minister should feel but little\nconfidence in the good faith of those he had to deal with?\n\nTheir attitude, indeed, seems to have strengthened his own unbending\nfirmness. In the course of these everlasting debates, he clenched the\nsubject in the following terms: \"Either you are sincere in maintaining\nthat the government is obliged to impose a restriction upon the\npublicity of the religious worship, being impelled thereunto by the\nnecessity of upholding the public peace and order, and in that case\nthe government cannot and ought not to hesitate as to asserting the\nfact in the article itself; or the government does not wish it to be\nso expressed; and in that case they show their bad faith, as also that\nthe only object of the aforesaid restriction is {394} the enslavement\nof the Church to their own will.\"\n\nThe commissioners found nothing to reply to this dilemma; for, in\nfact, Consalvi only asked that the reserve itself should be laid down\nas a temporary restriction. At last they yielded, despairing of ever\novercoming, on this subject, their unflinching and powerful\nantagonist. The concordat, duly signed and authenticated, was sent up\nfor approval to the First Consul, who, after another fit of anger,\ngave his consent; but, as Consalvi himself presumes, from that hour he\nresolved to annul the intrinsic and most beneficial effects of the\nconcordat by those celebrated organic articles which are even at this\nmoment a bone of contention between the French clergy and the Imperial\ngovernment.\n\nIt is, indeed, a most remarkable fact that the same man who\nimperiously prescribed that the concordat should be drawn up and\nsigned in the course of five days, allowed a full year to elapse\nbefore he published it and sent the official ratifications to Rome.\nWhen he did fulfil these formalities, he coupled them with the\npromulgation of those famous laws which, in reality, tended to cut off\nall free communication between the Holy See and the Gallican clergy,\nand to spread throughout Europe the false belief that the Pope himself\nhad concurred in the adoption of these obnoxious measures. In vain did\nPius VII. protest against them--in vain, at a later period, was he\ninduced to crown the emperor in Paris, in hopes of obtaining the\nfulfilment of his own promises. Napoleon turned a deaf ear to the most\ntouching importunities. On considering the whole of his conduct, it is\nhardly possible to refrain from concluding that Bonaparte ever looked\nupon the Pope's supremacy and power as an appendage and satellite of\nhis own paramount omnipotence. Viewed by this light, many of his acts\nin latter years will appear at least consistent, though by no means\njustifiable on any principle whatsoever. Is there not often a certain\nconsistency in madness? And if so in ordinary life, why not in the\nfreaks and starts of despotism? And again, is not despotism itself\nmadness in disguise?\n\nBut why indulge in our own speculations and surmises, when we have\nbefore us positive evidence that in 1801, as well as ten years\nafterward, Napoleon entertained and maintained a plan for arrogating\nto himself both the spiritual and temporal power? The examples set by\nHenry VIII., Albert of Brandenburg, and Peter I. of Russia, were ever\nbefore his eyes, blinding his own innate good sense, and exerting a\nsort of ominous fascination over his best impulses. The reader has\ndoubtless heard of, if not perused, those wonderful pages in which the\nfallen giant whiled away his tedious hours at St. Helena, pretending\nto write his own history, but in reality veiling truth under fiction,\nand endeavoring to palm upon the world certain far-fetched views of\nbenevolence or civilization, which he never dreamt of whilst he was on\nthe throne. Still, that strange _Memorial of St. Helena_ often\ncontains many a startling proof of candor, as if the mask suddenly\nfell, and revealed to our astonished gaze the inner man. Among such\npassages, none perhaps are so remarkable as those referring to the\nconcordat and to the religious difficulties of later years. One day\nNapoleon dictated to General Montholon these lines, which so strongly\njustify Consalvi's fears and opposition:\n\n\"When I seized the helm, I already held the most precise and definite\nideas on all those principles which cement together the social body. I\nfully weighed the importance of religion--on that head I was\nconvinced--and had resolved to restore it. But one can hardly realize\nthe difficulties I had to contend with when about to bring back\nCatholicism. I should have been readily supported had I unfurled the\nProtestant standard. This feeling went so far that, in the {395}\ncouncil of state, where I met with the strongest opposition against\nthe concordat, many a man tacitly determined to plot its destruction.\n'Well,' used they to say, 'let us turn Protestants at once, and then\nwe may wash our hands of the business.' It is, indeed, quite true\nthat, in the midst of so much confusion and so many errors, I was at\nliberty to choose between Catholicism and Protestantism; and still\ntruer that everything favored the latter. But, _beside_ my own personal\nbias inclining toward my national religion, I had most weighty reasons\nto decide otherwise. I should thus have created in France two great\nparties of equal strength, though I was determined to do away with\nevery party whatsoever; I should have conjured up all the frenzy of\nreligious warfare, whilst the enlightenment of the age and my own will\naimed at crushing it altogether. By their mutual strife these two\nparties would have torn France asunder, and made her a slave to\nEurope, whilst my ambition was to make her its mistress. Through\nCatholicism I was far surer of attaining all my great objects. At\nhome, the majority absorbed the minority, which I was disposed to\ntreat with so much equity that any difference between both would soon\ndisappear; abroad, Catholicism kept me on good terms with the Pope.\nBeside, thanks to my own influence and to our forces in Italy, I did\nnot despair, sooner or later, by some means or other, _to obtain the\ndirection and guidance of the Pope; and then what a new source of\ninfluence! what a lever to act upon public opinion, and to govern the\nworld!\"_\n\nA few moments after the emperor resumed:\n\n\"Francis I. had a capital opportunity to embrace Protestantism, and to\nbecome its acknowledged head throughout Europe. His rival, Charles V.,\nresolutely sided with Rome, because he considered this the best way to\nsubject Europe. This alone should have induced Francis to defend\nEuropean independence. Instead of that, he left a reality to run after\na shadow, following up his pitiful quarrels in Italy, allying himself\nwith the Pope, and burning the reformers in Paris.\n\n\"Had Francis I. embraced Lutheranism, which is so favorable to the\nroyal supremacy, he would have spared France those dreadful\nconvulsions which were afterward brought on by the Calvinists, whose\nrepublican organization was so near ruining both the throne and our\nfine monarchy. Unfortunately, Francis was unable to understand\nanything of the kind. As to his scruples, they are quite out of the\nquestion, since this self-same man made an alliance with the Turks,\nwhom he introduced among us. Oh, those stupid times! Oh, that feudal\nintellect! After all, Francis I. was but a tilting king--a\ndrawing-room dandy--a would-be giant, but a real pigmy.\"\n\nIt is scarce necessary to add, that at the time Napoleon is speaking\nof he was an unbeliever, though a lurking respect for his national\nreligion still lingered at the bottom of his heart. But then, how\nfully does he admit that religion was but a tool of his ambition! How\nopenly does he confess his plan to get hold of the Pope _by some means\nor other!_ How glaringly true must now appear in our eyes that\nnarrative of Consalvi's in which he exposes the mean trick that\nNapoleon endeavored to play upon his vigilance! Lastly, how faithfully\ndoes the emperor adhere to the plans secretly laid within the dark\nmind of the First Consul! For, as if to leave no doubt as to the\nfulfilment of those plans, he related to Montholon the most minute\ndetails of what took place during the Pope's captivity at\nFontainebleau:\n\n\"The English,\" said Napoleon, \"plotted an escape for him from Savona;\nthe very thing I could have wished for. I had him brought to\nFontainebleau, where his misfortunes were to end, and his splendor to\nbe restored. All my grand views had been thus fulfilled under disguise\nand in secrecy. I had so managed that {396} success was infallible,\neven without an effort. Indeed, the Pope adopted the famous concordat\nof Fontainebleau, notwithstanding my reverses in Russia. But how far\ndifferent had I returned triumphant and victorious! So at last I had\nobtained the long-wished-for separation of the spiritual and temporal\npowers; whilst their confusion is so fatal to the former, by causing\ntrouble and disorder within society in the name of him who ought to\nbecome a centre of union and harmony. Henceforward I intended to place\nthe Pope on a pinnacle; we would not even have regretted his temporal\npower, for I would have made an idol of him, and he would have dwelt\nclose to me. Paris should have become the capital of the Christian\nworld, and _I would have governed the spiritual as well as the\npolitical world._ By this means I should have been enabled to\nstrengthen the federative portions of the empire, and to maintain\npeace in such parts as were beyond its limits. I should have had my\nreligious sessions, just the same as my legislative sessions: my\ncouncils would have represented, all Christendom, and the popes would\nhave merely acted as their presidents. I should myself have opened\ntheir assemblies, approved and promulgated their decrees, as was the\ncase under Constantine and Charlemagne. In fact, if the emperors lost\nthis kind of supremacy, it was because they allowed the spiritual\nruler to reside at a distance from them; and those rulers took\nadvantage of this act of weakness, or this result of the times, to\nescape from the prince's government, and even to overrule it.\"\n\nWhat words of ours could add to the bold significance of these? How\nthe proud spirit of the despot towers even within his prison! and how\nlittle had he profited by the bitter lessons of experience! Never\nbefore, do we believe, since the advent of Christianity, did any king\nor conqueror profess such a barefaced contempt for the deepest\nfeelings of a Christian soul--the freedom of his spiritual being!\nThis pretended liberation from the court of Rome, this religious\ngovernment concentrated within the hands of the sovereign, became,\nindeed, at one time, the constant object of Napoleon's thoughts and\nmeditations:\n\n\"England, Russia, Sweden, a large part of Germany (was he wont to\nsay), are in possession of it; Venice and Naples enjoyed it in former\ntimes. Indeed, there is no doing without it, for otherwise a nation is\never and anon wounded in its peace, in its dignity, in its\nindependence. But then such an undertaking is most arduous; at every\nattempt I was beset with new dangers; and, once thoroughly embarked in\nit, the nation would have abandoned me. More than once I tried to\nawaken public opinion; but all was in vain, and I was obliged to\nacknowledge that the people would not follow me.\"\n\nOn reading these last words, who will not remember Cacault's apothegm,\nuttered in 1801: \"Nations now-a-days will not allow their rulers to\ndispose of them in regard to religious matters.\"\n\nWe hope that the reader will not accuse us of prolixity for having\nrelated rather fully the negotiations which proceeded the concordat of\n1801. Hitherto the main facts of this important event have been\ngleaned from French sources of information. No voice had been raised,\nwe believe, on the part of Rome, and no one, it must be admitted, had\na better right to speak of that celebrated treaty than the man who\ncontributed so largely, so exclusively, we might almost say, to its\nfinal adoption. And then, throughout the whole of his simple and\nunpretending, yet clear and spirited memoirs, the great cardinal reads\nus a grand lesson, which may be felt and understood by every human\nsoul. During the perusal of these two volumes, we have ever before our\neyes the struggle of right against might, of duty against tyranny, of\na true Christian soul against the truckling, shuffling, intriguing\nspirit of the world. Ever {397} and anon, this able, firm, and yet\namiable diplomatist allows some expression to escape him which shows\nthat his heart and soul are elsewhere, that his beacon is on high, and\nthat he views everything and all things in this nether world from the\nlight of the gospel. And this, perhaps, is the very reason why,\nthroughout a long career of such numerous difficulties and dangers, he\nmoved serene, undaunted, unblemished in his honor, proclaimed wisest\namongst the wise, until kings, princes, warriors, and statesmen,\nProtestants and Catholics, counted his friendship and esteem of\npriceless value.\n\n\n\n----\n\nFrom Once a Week.\n\nHYMN BY MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS.\n\n  O Domine Deus, speravi in te!\n  O care mi Jesu, nunc libera me!\n  In dura catena, in misera pcena,\n  Desidero te;\n  Languendo, gemendo et genuflectendo,\n  Adoro, imploro, ut liberes me!\n\n\n(TRANSLATION.)\n\n\n  O Lord, O my God, I have hoped but in thee;\n  Jesu, my dearest, now liberate me:\n  In hard chains, in fierce pains,\n  I am longing for thee:\n  Languishing, groaning and bending the knee,\n  I adore, I implore thou wouldst liberate me!\n\n      ASTLEY H. BALDWIN.\n\n\n----\n\n{398}\n\n\nFrom The Lamp.\n\n\nMANY YEARS AGO AT UPFIELD.\n\n\nIn the last decade of the last century, Upfield was a very healthy,\npretty, prosperous town in Suffolk. Its centre was a green;\nundulating, irregular, and from four to five acres in area. Round it\nwere laborers' cottages, a forge, the inn, the veterinary surgeon's\nhouse, the doctor's, the vicarage, and the Grey House, each with land\nproportioned to its character. A little, very little way off, was the\nchurch; belonging anciently to a Carthusian monastery, of which some\nruins still existed; and beyond that, but within a quarter of a mile\nof Upfield, was Edward's Hall, the fine baronial residence of the\nScharderlowes, who had owned it since the reign of Henry IV., and\nnever forsaken the Catholic faith. Upfield was eloquent about the\npast, as well as actually charming. The church, early English, was\nlittle injured exteriorly. Inside it reminded one of a nun compelled\nto wear a masquerade dress. The beautiful arches and lofty roof had\ndefied time and the vulgar rage of vicious fanaticism; so had the\npavement, rich in slabs imploring humbly prayers for the repose of the\ndead who lay under it; but devotion and taste mourned over the changed\nuse of the sacred building, and the characteristics thereof; for\ninstance, a singing-gallery in the western end, with the royal arms\ndone in red and gilded plaster, fastened to it; high deal pews for the\nmass of the congregation, and the squire's praying-made-comfortable\none within the carved oak screen in the south transept, where had been\nthe chapel of the Blessed Sacrament.\n\nThe Grey House was low, rambling, picturesque; the _beau-ideal _of a\nhappy, hospitable old English home. It had been built by instalments,\nat distant intervals; and had derived its name from a Lord Grey, of\nCodnoure, who had formerly possessed lands in the neighborhood. At the\ntime whence this story starts, it had been for a hundred years or more\nin the family of the Wickhams, who claimed to be descended\ncollaterally from William of Wykeham--whether they were or not, had\nnever been discussed, and therefore never formally established; nor\ndid any one in the neighborhood, except Mr. Scharderlowe and his\nfamily, know that a former Wickham had bartered his religion for a\nwealthy Protestant wife, and allowed her to bring up their children in\nher own way. In January, 1790, George Wickham, the head of the family,\ndied at the Grey House, of inflammation of the lungs, in his\nforty-second year, and no one was ever more regretted. A\nkinder-hearted man had never breathed. His attachments had been warm\nand numerous; he had helped every one whom he could help, been\npeculiarly gentle to the poor and his dependents, hated nothing but\nwickedness, and believed in that only when it was impossible to be\nblind to it. \"Poor dear Mr. Wickham,\" said Mrs. Scharderlowe, when her\nhusband told her the news; \"I'm heartily sorry. I always thought he\nwould become a Catholic--he was so liberal in all his feelings; only\nthe last time we met, conversation taking that turn--I forget why--he\nsaid it was too bad that we could not worship God as we pleased,\nwithout suffering for it; and that he was ashamed of Englishmen who\nforgot that their noblest laws were made, and their most glorious\nvictories won, in Catholic times. What a loss he will be to Upfield\nand his family!\" \"Yes,\" returned her husband, \"that poor pretty little\nwidow is about as helpless and ignorant of the world as possible; she\nnever had occasion to think of anything but how to make {399} home\nhappy, which I believe she did; they were a particularly united\nfamily. I hope he made a will; but I think it is likely he did not;\nhis illness was short and painful, and previously to it no one ever\nhad a fairer prospect of long life than he had.\"\n\nMr. Wickham's funeral was talked of in Upfield and the neighborhood\nmany years afterward. Mr. Scharderlowe sent his carriage; the county\nmember, and persons of every class, attended. The clergyman from an\nadjacent parish, who had been requested to perform the burial-service,\nbecause the vicar, Mr. Wickham's nephew, felt unequal to it, burst\ninto tears, and had to pause some minutes to recover himself. The\nwidow fainted; and her eldest son Robert, a youth in his nineteenth\nyear, tried to jump into the vault when his father's coffin was\nlowered.\n\nThere was a will, made during Mr. Wickham's last illness, and the\nvicar was sole executor and trustee, with a legacy of L500. There was\nample provision for the younger children; and Robert was, when of age,\nto succeed to a brewery, which his father had started many years\npreviously, and which was the most lucrative in the county. He was to\nlearn its management from James Deane, the confidential clerk, whose\nsalary was to be raised, and to whom L100 was left in token of Mr.\nWickham's appreciation of his services. The Grey House, and everything\nin it, with L200 a year, was to be Mrs. Wickham's, and at her disposal\nat death.\n\nThe brewery was half a mile from Upfield; Mr. Wickham had built it\nwhere it would not injure the prospect, and Deane had a pretty cottage\nattached to it, where he, a widower, lived with his sister and only\nchild, a daughter. He was a Catholic, son of a former steward of Mr.\nScharderlowe's, and extremely attached to Mr. Wickham, who had taken\nhim when a boy into the brewery, and advanced him steadily. He was a\nwell-principled, intelligent man, who had improved himself by taking\nlessons in geography, grammar, and algebra, as the opportunities\noffered; and he was, from his position, well-known in the\nneighborhood. He told his sister that he feared that Mr. Wickham's\ndeath was only the beginning of trouble for his family; for he\ndistrusted Mr. William, the vicar. \"It isn't that he's a dishonorable\nman, Lizzy; but it isn't likely that a crack shot, a bold rider after\nthe hounds, a gentleman who is as fond of a ball as anyone, and who\ntakes no trouble about his own affairs, will do justice to a dead\nman's, though I don't doubt he means it now.\"\n\n\"But what harm can he do, James?\"\n\n\"Why, he can ruin the younger children. Everything except the brewery\nand what is left to Mrs. Wickham is as much in his power as it was in\nhis uncle's. I doubt if the poor dear gentleman wouldn't have arranged\ndifferently if he'd had longer time: it's an awful lesson to be always\nprepared for death; I'm sure I thought Mr. Wickham might live to be a\nhundred. No doubt pain and sorrow confused his mind, and anyhow it was\nnatural that he should trust his own relations.\"\n\n\"He had better have trusted you, James.\"\n\n\"That was not to be expected, Lizzy, and I mightn't have been fit for\nit. There's plenty on my hands. It is a large, increasing business,\nand I have to teach it to Mr. Robert; and one can't tell how he'll\ntake to it; I've been afraid he would be unsteady, but he has taken\nhis father's death to heart uncommonly, and I hope he'll try to be as\ngood a man.\"\n\nAbout this time people had begun to remark that Polly Deane, then in\nher fifteenth year, was growing up a remarkably pretty girl; she was\nan old established pet of the Wickhams; her mother had been the\ndaughter of a tenant, and so great a favorite that when she married\nDeane, the wedding was celebrated at the Grey House. When, two years\nlater, she was dying of fever, Mr. and Mrs. Wickham promised to watch\nover her child. All that {400} they undertook they carried out\ngenerously, and Polly lived as much with them as with Aunt Lizzie, who\ndid her part toward her well--loving her fondly, keeping her fresh,\nhealthy, and merry, checking her quick temper, teaching her her\nprayers, and taking her often to Mr. Scharderlowe's, to get his\nchaplain's--Father Armand's--blessing; and when she was old enough,\nto mass and the sacraments. The fact of the Wickhams having no\ndaughter increased their tenderness for her, and her father was\ndelighted and flattered by Mrs. Wickham's watchfulness over her dress\nand manner, and Mr. Wickham's care for her education; it was the best\nthat could be had in Upfield, and good enough to make her as charming\nas she need be. She did plain sewing extremely well, and some quaint\nembroidery of hideous designs in wool and floss silks; she had worked\na cat in tent-stitch, and a parrot of unknown species in cross; her\nsampler was believed to be the finest in the county; she could read\naloud very pleasantly, spell wonderfully, write a clear, stiff hand,\nwhich one might decipher without glasses at eighty; she could not have\ngone up for honors in grammar, but she talked very prettily; she had\nnever had occasion to write a letter; as to geography, she believed\nthat the world was round, for her father and Mr. Wickham said so, and\nshe had heard that Captain Cook had been round it; but only that she\nwas ashamed, she would have liked to ask some one how it could be, and\nhow it was found out; it was such a contradiction of observation, if\nonly because of the sea; she had never seen the sea, but she believed\nin it, and could understand water remaining on level ground; there was\nthe horse-pond, for instance, but that thousands of miles of roaring,\nangry, deep water should hold on to a round world was too much for\nher. You could not puzzle her in the multiplication table, but she did\nnot take kindly to weights and measures. She had learned no history,\nher father could not get a Catholic to teach her, and would trust no\none else, but she had picked up a few facts and notions; for instance,\nshe had heard of Alfred the Great and his lanterns; of St. Edward the\nConfessor, and that he made good laws; of King Charles I., and those\nwicked men--she fancied Guy Fawkes was one of them--had cut his head\noff; when he lived she was not sure, and she hoped Mr. Wickham would\nnever ask her, for she should not like to say that she did not know,\nand she was sometimes afraid that he would when he talked of Carlo's\nbeing a King Charles spaniel. It was puzzling, because she remembered\nCarlo a puppy, and she was sure that the king's name had been George\never since she was born. She had an exquisite ear for music, and a\nvoice of great promise. Mr. Wickham was passionately fond of music,\nand therefore, appreciating peculiarly this talent of Polly's, had\nengaged a good master from the county-town to teach her to play on the\npiano. She had profited well by his instructions, and only a few days\nbefore Mr. Wickham was taken ill, she had played the accompaniment\nwhen he sang \"From the white-blossomed thorn my dear Chloe requested,\"\n\"O lady fair,\" and \"Oh life is a river, and man is the boat;\" and he\nhad patted her head and kissed her, and asked her for the \"Slow\nmovement in Artaxerxes\" and \"The harmonious Blacksmith,\" and--she was\nso glad--she had played them without one mistake. Of course she\ndanced, and made cakes and pastry, beauty-washes, elder-wine, and\nvarious preserves and salves; knitted her father's stockings and her\naunt's mittens, and read a romance whenever she could get one, but\nthat was very rarely.\n\nThe vicar made, at any rate, a good start, fulfilling his uncle's\ninstructions exactly; apprenticed his second son, Alfred, to the\nCollege of Surgeons--that was the most liberal way in those days of\nentering the medical profession--and placed him {401} to board with an\nold family friend, an opulent practitioner. The third son was articled\nto an eminent attorney; the others were sent to school. The void made\nby the death of those even most important and most fondly loved is\nsoon filled up externally; how otherwise could justice be done to the\nliving? The widow acquiesced in the separation from her children; it\nwas her husband's plan, and for their advantage. She was sure she\ncould not long survive him; she might even be sinful enough to wish to\ndie, but for her sons' sakes, she was so utterly lonely. They loved\nher truly, the darlings; but they could not understand her, never\nwould, unless--which God in his great mercy forbid--they ever came to\nsuffer as she suffered. To lose such a husband! so manly, yet so\ntender and thoughtful. She had always looked forward to his nursing\nher in her last illness, and receiving her last breath. He would have\ngrieved for her truly, she was sure of that; but he could have borne\nit better; he would have been of more use to the boys. Thus she mused\noften, weeping plentifully; but she never denied that she had many\nconsolations. No one could have suited her better than Polly, and she\nwas never more than a day or two absent from her. They were alike in\ncharacter--simple, self-sacrificing, and affectionate in an uncommon\ndegree. Polly's caresses seldom failed to arouse her; the gentle girl\nfelt how much more she could have done had Mrs. Wickham been\naccessible to the comfort in which her own, the dear old faith,\nabounded; and prayed daily that it might soon be hers, and did her\nbest. She never attempted direct consolation, but interested the\nmourner in some trifle, or coaxed her into conversation or employment.\nSometimes she really could not arrange some obstinate flowers;\nsometimes her work was all wrong, and no one but Mrs. Wickham could\nshow her how to put it right, and Mary Hodge's baby ought to have the\ngarment that evening. Once, when all her ingenuity failed, she was\nactually delighted by Betty's running in with her darling kitten, wet\nto the skin, just saved out of the water-butt; Mrs. Wickham dried her\neyes, and pitied it, and watched Polly wiping it, and arranging a\ncushion inside the fender for it; and at last smiled at the endearing\nnonsense she talked, and told her she was more than a mother to it.\n\nRobert was quite steady; regular at the brewery, pleasant at home. Of\ncourse it would have been dull for him without Polly: her youth,\nbeauty, and sisterly at-homeness made a glow in the dear old house.\nDid he or his mother ever calculate on what was likely to come of that\nnear companionship? No: their actual life engrossed them. He first\ndrew his mother to look on while he and Polly played cribbage or\nbackgammon, and then to play herself a little. He took in the\n_Gentleman's Magazine_, and showed her the curious old prints, and read\nthe odds and ends of news aloud. Music was unendurable to her for some\nmonths; but she conquered herself by degrees, and came to enjoy it.\nThen Robert and Polly sang every evening, she playing the\naccompaniments. Summer brought the boys home for holidays, and that\ndid good. When the anniversary of the father's death came round, its\nmelancholy associations pressed evidently on the widow, and she spent\nthe greater portion of the day in her room; but she was resigned, and\nbetter than those who watched her lovingly expected her to be.\n\nThe great feature of those Christmas holidays was Alfred's return in\nan altered character. He had left Upfield a lout--the despair of his\nmother and the maids; who were the more provoked, because he was\nundeniably the handsomest of the family. To keep him clean, or make\nhim put on his clothes properly, had been impossible. He had credit\nfor talent; for, when sufficiently excited, he wrote what were deemed\nwonderfully pretty {402} verses, and he was quick at repartee and\nsarcasm; but he had been in perpetual disgrace at school, and silent\nand awkward--sulky as a bear, his brothers called him at home. He made\na great sensation on the first evening of his return from London: he\nwas fluent in conversation, perfectly well dressed, and--chief\nmarvel--had clean, carefully-shaped nails. Polly smiled, wondered,\nand said to herself that he was really very handsome, and sang\nbeautifully. All the Wickhams sang, but none of them, she thought,\ncould be compared to him. The change was not agreeable to Robert, and\nhe showed it; grumbled in an undertone about fops; and asked his\nbrother if he could play cricket or quoits, or skate, or take a\nfive-barred gate, or shoot snipe.\n\nAlfred yawned, and replied:\n\n\"My dear Bob, don't you remember that I was never fond of trouble?\nThose rough amusements are very well for country gentlemen and\nfarmers; and I give them up to them with all my heart. As to skating,\nyou none of you know anything about it; you should see the gentlemen,\nand elegant ladies too, cutting out flowers, and other complicated\nfigures, on the Serpentine.\"\n\nThen addressing himself to his mother and Polly--Robert's countenance\nlowering as he observed the innocent girl's natural interest in\nsuch-topics--he talked about the last drawing-room and the fashionable\nplays. He had seen _The School for Scandal_ and _The Haunted Tower,_\nat Drury Lane; _Othello_ and _The Conscious Lovers_, at Covent Garden,\nand he recited--really well--some of the tender passages in _Othello_.\nNext he described the lying-in-state of the Duke of Cumberland; the\ntrial and execution of Jobbins and Lowe for arson; the recent storms,\nwhich had not touched Upfield, but had been terrible\nelsewhere--chimneys killing people in their beds, the lightning\nflowing like a stream of fluid from a glasshouse. And no one\ninterrupted him, till Robert said, savagely:\n\n\"That fellow will talk us all deaf.\"\n\n\"Not this time, Bob: you and I will sing 'Love in thine eyes' now. I\nknow Polly will play for us.\"\n\nThey did it; Alfred directing the sentiment to her, so as to make her\nfeel shy and uncomfortable, and his brother vowing inwardly that \"he'd\ngive that puppy a good thrashing before he went back to London, if he\ndidn't mind what he was about.\"\n\nAlfred had seen a good deal of what country folk call \"finery\" in\nLondon; but he declared that breakfast at home was unrivalled,\nparticularly in winter. There was the superb fire of coal and oak\nblocks, throwing a glow on the massive family plate and fine, spotless\ndamask: such a silver urn and teapot were not often seen. Further, the\nyoung gentleman inherited a family predilection for an abundant show\nof viands; liked to see--as was usual at an everyday breakfast\nthere--a ham just cut, a cold turkey, round of beef, and delicate\nclear honey, with other sweet things, for which his mother's\nhousekeeping was famed. This was not all. The room formed one side of\na light angle in the picturesque old house, and from two sides of the\ntable one could see a magnificent pyrocanthus, the contrast between\nits scarlet berries and the table-cloth positively delicious.\n\nRobert and Alfred lingered one morning after the rest of the family\nhad left this room. Alfred was considering that it might be possible\nto enjoy life in the country; Robert was watching him, half-curiously,\nhalf-jealously: he did not believe that his brother was handsomer than\nhimself; but he detested the ease of manner and ready wit that gave\nhim ascendancy disproportioned to his years. He threw himself back in\na large armchair, stretched his legs, and said: \"I'm not sure that I\ndon't envy you, Bob, after all.\"\n\n\"Your condescension is great certainly. Have you been all this time\nfinding out that it is a good thing to be George Wickham's eldest\nson?\"\n\n{403}\n\n\"Ah, yes!--eldest son. Well, it's a comfort for the younger ones that\nthere's no superior merit in being born first. But I'm not going to\nphilosophize; it's too much trouble, and not your line. But, really,\nto breakfast here every morning in all this splendid comfort, the\nprettiest and gentlest of mothers pressing you to eat and drink more\nthan is good for you; and that lovely fairy, Polly--that perfect Hebe\n--flitting about--is more than even an eldest son ought to enjoy. How\nsorry you will be next year, when you come of age, unless\"--and he\nlooked searchingly, through half-closed eyes, at Bob.\n\n\"Why, pray? And unless what?\"\n\n\"Only that I conclude you will then set up a house of your own, unless--\nas it is evident my mother could not part from pretty Polly--unless you\narrange to live here, and marry our pet.\"\n\nStrange flushings and palenesses passed over Robert's face, and he had\nto master a choking in his throat and heaving of his chest before he\nspoke. He had never had his hidden feelings put into words before--he\nhad not even any definite intention about the young girl whom his eye\nfollowed stealthily every where, and whose voice, the rustling of\nwhose dress even, was music to him. He only knew that he should\nthrottle any one who laid a finger on her. He had not guessed that any\none connected him with her, even in thought; and now here was all that\nwas most secret and sacred in his heart dragged out, and held\nmockingly before him by a boy two years younger than himself. It\nseemed to him hours instead of seconds before he spoke, and his voice\nhad the passionate tremulousness which betrays great interior tumult;\nhe was sure that he should say something he would rather not say, but\nconscious every moment's delay gave an advantage to his abhorred\ntormentor. Without raising his eyes, he said hoarsely, \"The Wickhams\nare proud--they don't make low marriages.\"\n\n\"Upon my word, Bob,\" returned his brother patronizingly, \"I respect\nyou; I did not give you credit for so much good sense. The girl's a\nperfect beauty, no doubt. What a sensation she'd make in London! But,\nafter all, she's our servant's daughter, and old Molly Brown's\ngrandchild. Then, again, that unlucky religion of hers! The\nScharderlowes throw a respectability over it here, for they are\nwell-born and wealthy, but anywhere else it would be extremely awkward\nfor you. I confess I had a motive for sounding you. Farmer Briggs's\neldest son hinted to me yesterday that he should be happy to lay West\nHill at Polly's feet.\"\n\n\"He 's an insolent rascal!\" said Robert furiously.\n\n\"My dearest Bob, why? The poor fellow has eyes, and uses them; and one\nwould not wish our Hebe to be an old maid.\"\n\n\"I say,\" reiterated Robert, deadly pale, and stamping, \"he's an\ninsolent rascal; and if I catch him coming to this house I'll tell him\nso. A rustic boor like that to hint at marrying a girl who has always\nbeen my parents' pet, and is my mother's favorite companion--\"\n\nHe stopped abruptly; and his brother, who was a perfect mimic,\ncontinued in precisely his tone, \"And is so dear to Robert Wickham,\nthat he will not hear her name coupled with another man's--\"\n\nHe had gone too far; Robert's indignation boiled over--he sprang at\nhim--and before he had time to stir, struck him a blow between the\neyes, which brought sparks from them, and blood from his nose. A crash\nand struggle followed, which Polly heard. She ran to the room,\nanticipating nothing more than that some of the large dogs, privileged\nto roam about the house, were quarrelling over the cold meat. Amazed,\nbeyond all power of words, she stood silent and very pale. Then,\nfeeling, young as she was, instinctive womanly power over the\ndisgraced young men, and holding herself {404} so erect that she\nlooked a head taller than usual, she said, coldly and firmly, \"I am\nashamed of you!\"\n\nBy that time they were ashamed of themselves. Alfred, covering his\ndisfigured face with his handkerchief, left the room slowly. Robert,\nwho had received no visible hurt, threw up a sash, jumped out, and\nwhen he turned to shut the window, looked earnestly and sadly at\nPolly, so as to bring a strange unwelcome sensation to her heart.\n\nThere was an awkwardness at dinner that day. Polly had removed the\ntraces of the fray, and kept her counsel; but Alfred's features defied\nconcealment. He stayed in his room with raw beef on them, and\nmutton-broth and barley-water for his regimen. His mother and Betty\ncould get nothing out of him but that Bob was a fool, and had licked\nhim for teasing him. He was by no means given to repentance; but his\nbruises, and a message from the vicar, desiring to see him early next\nmorning, led him to the conclusion that he had better have \"kept his\ntongue within his teeth.\" He was sufficiently humbled to receive\nsilently unusually severe reproofs from his guardian, who had informed\nhim that he had sent for him in order to avoid the risk of paining his\nexcellent mother. It was not only that he knew all that Betty could\ntell of \"the row\" between the brothers, and that he denounced the\n\"ruffianliness\" of \"brawling in a widowed mother's house,\" but that\nMr. Kemp, in whose house in London he lived, had inclosed bills of\ndisgraceful amount, in a letter complaining that Alfred's taste for\npleasure threatened to be his ruin; and regretting that justice to his\nown family compelled him to decline retaining him as an inmate after\nthe approaching midsummer. The young man's unusual power of pleasing,\nhe said, made his example peculiarly dangerous.\n\n\"And now,\" said the vicar, \"I ask you if your heart is not touched by\nthe thought of the pain that this letter would give your dead father,\nwere he living; and if you could bear your mother to know it? It is\nonly for her sake that I spare you. I will beg Mr. Kemp to retract his\nresolution to dismiss you, if you become steadier, and I shall charge\nhim to let it be known that I will not pay any bills that exceed the\nlimit of your very handsome allowance: and I warn you that my natural\neasiness and indolence shall not prevent my being severe if you\nrequire it. As to the affair yesterday, I shall not inquire into it;\nbut I warn you that the recurrence of anything so disgraceful shall\nprevent your spending your vacations at home; and I am sorry to say to\none of my good uncle's sons, that I am glad he must return to town the\nday after to-morrow.\"\n\nAlfred was surprised and alarmed, and made professions of penitence,\nand promises of amendment.\n\n\n\nThere was a visible change thenceforward in Robert. He became more\nmanly in his bearing; and variable in his manner to Polly, saying even\nat times very sharp things to her. The sweet-tempered girl gave no\nprovocation, and felt no resentment; but hid sometimes a tear. She did\nnot like to displease any one whom Mrs. Wickham loved. Robert attended\nto business, took his proper place in society, and was popular; and\nshe felt it a relief when he was out, and she had not to play for him.\nIt was within three months of his twenty-first birthday, when, on\none of the frequent occasions of his dining with the vicar, that\ngentleman asked him what were his plans. He replied that he hadn't\nany.\n\n\"But, my dear boy, my authority over you is near its end, and so is\nyour enforced residence with your mother. It is time to think where\nyou will live.\"\n\n\"I don't think my mother will turn me out.\"\n\n\"No; but as her allowance for you ceases with your minority, you must,\nin fairness to her, either contribute to {405} the household income,\nor get a home of your own.\"\n\n\"I don't anticipate any difficulty about it.\"\n\n\"Merton Paddocks is to be let,\" continued William. \"It is a nice\nlittle place, and suitable to you in many ways. If you let it slip,\nyou may regret it. Your marrying is to be calculated on, and in that\nevent your living with your mother might not be agreeable to all\nparties.\"\n\n\"I don't think of marrying.\"\n\n\"Oh, nonsense! every man's turn comes; and why should you escape?\"\n\n\"As you escaped, perhaps.\"\n\n\"Me!--one old bachelor in a family is enough in two generations; and my\ncase may not be obstinate. I'm not actually too old.\"\n\n\"May I ask whom you think of elevating to the vicarage?\" asked Robert,\nlaughing; but there was a pause which, he could not imagine why, made\nhim uncomfortable, before his cousin said:\n\n\"I have thought of Polly--do you forbid the banns?\"\n\nThe room seemed turning round with Robert; but he swallowed a glass of\nwine hastily, and said, as carelessly as he could, \"That child!\"\n\n\"Child! I don't know--she's seventeen, and I'm thirty-two--the\ndifference there was between your parents' ages when they married; and\nPolly is two years older than your mother was then.\"\n\n\"Perhaps I'm no judge of the matter, William, but as you have broached\nthe subject, excuse me if I ask if you have any notion that Polly is\nattached to you.\"\n\n\"None whatever; but any man can marry any woman provided he have a\nfair field and no favor. What has really kept me doubtful has been a\ndistinct difficulty about pretty Polly's birth. It is awkward; and the\nWickhams have always been sensitive on such points; but I've nearly\nresolved to sacrifice pride to Polly's charms. Her beauty and grace\nwould adorn any position; and as soon as my guardianship, and\nconsequent business relations with her father, ceases, I shall\nprobably ask my aunt's consent and blessing. It will be great\npromotion for her pet, and insure her having her near her for life.\nMeanwhile, Bob, I rely on your silence.\"\n\n\"Certainly.\"\n\nPoor Robert! Here was one of his own family seeing no difficulty about\nmarrying the girl of whom he had spoken as beneath himself! another\nman talking with assurance of being Polly's husband as soon as he\nthought fit! while he, who had been domesticated with her from her\ninfancy--had never dared to give her a playful kiss since they had\nceased to be children--had never ventured on the least demonstration\nof the fondness that tormented him for expression. He made an excuse\nto go home early; walked in the shrubbery, wretched and irresolute,\ntill midnight; went to his room, threw himself undressed on the bed,\nhad some uneasy sleep, rose early, walked again, and appeared at\nbreakfast haggard and irritable. His mother observed it, and was\ndistressed. He had sat up too late, he said; and, for once, William's\nwine was bad. He would not go to the brewery that day; but, if she\nliked, he would drive her and Polly in the phaeton to Larchton, and\nthey could give Betty a treat by taking her. She was always glad to\nvisit her native place, and he knew she had not been there for a long\ntime. His mother was willing. Larchton was a two hours' drive; and\nthey put up the horses there.\n\nMrs. Wickham and Betty went to see some old people; and Robert\nproposed to Polly to take a walk. She remembered afterward that she\nhad had an unusual feeling about that walk. They had often walked\ntogether before, as a brother and sister might.\n\nFor the first time, however, Robert said, \"Take my arm, Polly.\"\n\nShe took it; and they proceeded in silence in the fields for some\nminutes.\n\nThen he said abruptly, \"Do you {406} ever think of getting married,\nPolly?\"\n\n\"No,\" she replied with an innocent laugh; \"what would Mrs. Wickham do\nwithout me?\"\n\n\"And do you expect never to love any one better than my mother?\"\n\n\"I really don't think it would be possible.\"\n\n\"But, Polly, you're not a child. You know there's a different--love\nthe love my father had for my mother.\"\n\n\"I have never thought about it,\" she said carelessly.\n\nHer manner gave him courage; it was so easy and unconscious. Taking\nthe little hand that was on his arm, and holding it so firmly that he\ncould not feel her effort to withdraw it, he went on: \"Polly, I made\nan excuse to come here that I might talk to you without interruption.\nThe love that my father had for my mother, I have for you. I cannot\ntell when it began; but I first knew how strong it was when Alfred\ncame home first from London. I was madly jealous of him because he was\nforward and I was bashful. Do you remember the morning you found us\nfighting in the breakfast-parlor? He had provoked me so much by\nsomething that he said about you, that I could not help striking him.\nI don't know what I might have done if you hadn't come in then; and\nI've never been happy since. I've been irritable, and sometimes, I\nknow, cross and disagreeable. Something occurred last night which I\ncan't tell you now--I may another time--which made me wretched; and I\nmade up my mind this morning to put myself out of suspense, and ask\nyou, Polly, to be my wife.\"\n\nHe had been too full of his story to look at her while he was\nspeaking, but he looked then eagerly for her answer. He could not read\nthe lovely countenance which new and various feelings made different\nfrom anything he had ever seen. The soft eyelids down, the lashes\nmoist, the lips trembling, the flush so deep that it would have\nspoiled a less delicate skin. She was surprised to find how much he\nloved her; grateful to him; sorry she had made him unhappy, and\nbelieved him ill-tempered. Then came a rapid thought of how handsome\nhe was; but, sweeping everything away, perplexity followed. What would\nMrs. Wickham and her father wish her to do? What would Father Armand\nsay?\n\nRobert could not guess all this; and there was almost agony in his\nvoice as he said, \"Oh, Polly, Polly, do speak to me!\"\n\nShe made a great effort, and replied, \"I don't know what to say, or\nwhat I ought to do!\"\n\n\"Say, at any rate, that you don't dislike me.\"\n\n\"Oh, no!\" she said readily, almost laughing to think that he could\nsuppose that possible.\n\n\"One thing more, Polly; do you prefer any one else?\"\n\nShe hesitated a minute, for her quick wit told her that the question\ninvolved a great deal; but she answered firmly, though shyly, \"No; I\ndo not.\"\n\nDistrustful as he had been of his power to please her, this was enough\nfor the time to make him almost beside himself with delight.\n\nHe said \"God bless you!\" heartily; and was silent awhile because he\ncould not command his voice. He resumed, \"As to your 'ought to do,'\ndon't say anything to any one till I've spoken to my mother. We'll go\nand look for her now.\" He talked a great deal of nonsense on the way,\nand Polly said very little then, or during the drive. She was ashamed\nto look at Mrs. Wickham, and was glad that her attention was drawn\nfrom her to Robert. He \"touched up\" the young horses so wildly, that\nshe declared he should never drive her again, if he did not behave\nbetter. Directly they got home, he told her that he wanted to speak to\nher that moment alone; and he poured out his story. Such an old, old\nstory! So like what her own dead and buried George had told her long,\nlong ago. _She_ stand in the way of an innocent love, and between two\nof the creatures dearest to her on earth! She would be very glad {407}\nto have Polly as a daughter--she loved her as one. As to pride and\nsuch nonsense, people who had loved and lost, as she had, knew all its\nprofound folly. Polly's beauty and goodness might make any husband\nproud, any home happy. As to William, there was no injustice done him.\nIn the first place, she was sure that Polly could never be brought to\nthink of him as a husband. She looked on him as quite an old man--he\n_was_ getting very bald; and in the next place, if he had had any real\nlove for her, he could not have spoken so coolly and confidently of\nwinning her. Robert said that the last observation was corroborated by\nhis own experience, and that his mother was a remarkably sensible\nwoman. Thereupon she smiled, and kissed and blessed him, and advised\nhim to go directly and tell the simple truth to the vicar.\n\nPolly, meanwhile, sat alone in her pretty bedroom--her face buried in\nher hands, her rich golden hair unbound and falling loosely over her\nshoulders, dreading to go down to dinner. Not that she was ashamed of\ndear, dear Mrs. Wickham. No; she could throw her arms around her neck\nand hide her face there, and make her a confidante without any fear of\nbeing repulsed; but how could she look at Robert, much less speak to\nhim? and of course the servant would see and understand all about it.\nShe wished she might stay in her room. If she had but a headache! but\nshe was really perfectly well; and false excuses she never dreamed of\nmaking. Robert would be talking to her again as he had talked in the\nfields. Really, really she did not know what to say to him. Indeed she\nhad never thought of getting married. She had looked forward to living\nbetween the Grey House and her father's, beloved and welcome in both;\nadding to his and Mrs. Wickham's happiness more and more as they grew\nolder and wanted greater care. Why could not this go on, with only the\ndifference that Robert should never be displeased with her? That _had_\nmade her unhappy. She did like him very much; better than any one,\nnext to her father and Mrs. Wickham; better than good old Aunt Lizzy.\nHe was very handsome, and sang well, and so attentive to his mother;\nand ever since his father's death he had been quite fond of home. How\ncould he ever have supposed that she preferred any one else? But as to\nbeing his wife--he was a Protestant. How she should feel his never\ngoing to mass with her, his thinking confession useless, his not\nbelieving in the dear Lord in the Blessed Sacrament! She had often\nfelt it hard that conversation about these things must be avoided in\nthe dear Grey House, and that her friends there, fond as they were of\nher, wished her religion different. If she married Robert, it would be\nworse, for she should love him better than any one on earth then; her\nanxiety about his salvation would be so great as to make her quite\nwretched, and he might not like her to talk to him about it. From her\nearliest childhood, she prayed for the conversion of the Wickhams. She\nbegan by saying one Hail Mary daily for the intention; and since she\nhad been older, she had said many novenas, and offered many communions\nfor it. She really did not think her father would give his consent;\nand Father Armand would at any rate look grave and sad. She had heard\nhim tell pitiful stories of the unhappiness that had come of mixed\nmarriages among persons whom he knew. She did feel truly unhappy. She\nwalked to her window; she could see thence dear venerable Edward's\nHall, and knew exactly where the chapel was. She knelt down, fixing\nher eyes there, and her heart on her divine Lord in the tabernacle,\nand asked him that, for the love of his blessed mother, he would help\nand direct her, and convert her friends.\n\nRobert had not expected to feel it formidable to tell his story to his\ncousin, and he was equally grieved and surprised by the way in which\nhe received it. He changed countenance so that he looked ten years\nolder; walked rapidly up and down the room; {408} threw himself into a\ngreat chair, and buried his face in his hands; asked Robert to ring;\nordered sherry, and drank several glasses. Robert, utterly mystified,\nwas trying to say something soothing, when he interrupted him.\n\n\"My dear fellow, I'm not simply love-sick; but circumstances, which I\nwill explain another time, do make this a terrible shock to me. I have\nbeen such a fool! To any one but myself, your falling in love with\nPolly would have seemed the most natural thing in the world; but I was\nblinded, stultified, as men who have--never mind now--go away--I'm not\nfit to talk--I will call or write to you tomorrow. Blame you!\nCertainly not. Give my love to your mother and Polly. God bless you\nall!\"\n\nNext morning early came a note stating that he was going from home for\na few days; and that if he did not return, he would explain himself\nfully in the following week.\n\nWorthy of a peerage as Polly Deane seemed to Robert, he could not be\nignorant that to marry him was great promotion for her; and though\ndelicacy in her regard, and real respect for her father, made him ask\nhis consent with the utmost deference, he felt that this was a mere\nmatter of good manners.\n\nMr. Deane was visibly gratified; said that he could never have\nexpected a proposal so complimentary to his child, though he might be\npardoned for saying that he thought any one might be proud of her. His\nobligations to the Wickham family were of many years' standing; in\nfact, he owed everything to Mr. Wickham. He could never, making all\ndue allowance for Polly's beauty and goodness, express how honored he\nfelt himself and her on that occasion; but--and he made a long pause\nin evident difficulty how to express himself; and Robert was mute with\nsurprise and alarm.\n\n\"But is it possible, Mr. Robert, that Mrs. Wickham and you don't see\none very great objection?\"\n\n\"In the name of heaven, what is it?\" gasped Robert.\n\n\"Why, surely, sir, the dear child's religion.\"\n\n\"Now is it possible, Deane, that you think we would ever interfere\nwith that? Have we ever done so by word, or look, or deed, in all the\nyears we've known you? Have not you, ever since you came into this\nbusiness, been free to observe your holy days in your own way? Have we\nnot always been ready--even when my mother's spirits were at the\nlowest--to spare Polly to go to mass or confession? I am really hurt,\nand feel that we don't deserve this?\"\n\n\"It is all true, Mr. Robert, and the Lord reward you, as he will; but\ndon't you see it might be different--I don't say that it would; but\nI'm bound to do my best for my girl's soul no less than her body--if\nshe was your wife, and so completely in your power? There's no doubt\nthat a young man in love will promise anything, and mean to keep his\nword too; but ours is a despised religion (God be praised for it!');\nit is one among many signs that it is the true one; and you might come\nto be ashamed that one so near and dear to you belonged to it, and\nthat would breed great unhappiness. Then, again, you might have\nchildren, and I should not dare give my consent to their being reared\nProtestants. Perhaps, if some ancestor of yours had been firm in such\na case as this, you and yours might be still of the old faith.\"\n\n\"I'm sure, as far as I'm concerned, Deane, I wish we were. No one will\ngo to heaven, if Polly doesn't; and the religion that would take her\nthere can't be bad for any one. She might make a Catholic of me.\"\n\n\"God grant it, sir; but don't you see that I must not act on chance?\nIf the child was breaking her heart for you, and\"--smiling--\"it's not\ncome to that yet, I could not let her risk her soul, and perhaps her\nchildren's souls.\"\n\n\"Look here, Mr. Deane: I'm quite ready to give you a written promise\n{409} that I will never interfere in any way with Polly's practising\nher religion, and that all her children--boys as well as girls--shall\nbe brought up in it; and I'm sure my mother will make no difficulty.\"\n\n\"You cannot say more, Mr. Robert; but still, if you please, I will\ntake a week to think the matter over, and talk about it to Father\nArmand and Polly, and for that time I think she'd better come home.\nShe must feel awkward in the same house with you under present\ncircumstances. Will you give my respects to Mrs. Wickham, and say that\nI will call for the child this evening?\"\n\nNumerous, and all wide of the truth, were Mrs. Wickham's and Robert's\nconjectures respecting the vicar. They began even to consider whether\nhe had ever shown any symptoms of insanity, and were thankful to know\nthat it was not hereditary in the family.\n\nThe week stipulated for by Mr. Deane passed; and after consulting\nFather Armand and Mr. Scharderlowe, he agreed to give his consent to\nPolly's marrying Robert at the end of a year, if he were then equally\nwilling to bind himself by a written promise to respect her faith, and\nhave his children brought up in it. They said they thought that the\nkind, liberal, honorable character of the Wickhams being considered,\nand having been proved in all their conduct to the Deanes, and the\ndifficulty of Catholic marrying Catholic (which was far, _far_ greater\nin England then than it is now) being weighed, the case was as hopeful\nas a mixed marriage could be.\n\nRobert grumbled about the delay, every one else approved of it. His\nmother thought a man young to even at twenty-two; and the time seemed\nto Polly none too long for becoming accustomed to new feelings and new\nprospects.\n\nTwo days after all this was arranged came the vicar's\nanxiously-expected letter, dated Scarborough. It said:\n\n  \"MY DEAR ROBERT,--The punishment of my youthful sins and follies,\n  which has been pursuing me for years, has at last fallen so heavily\n  upon me, that I feel inclined to cry out, like Cain, that it is\n  greater than I can bear. Try to believe, as you read my humiliating\n  confession, that the bitterest portion of my suffering is the fact\n  that I have injured my uncle's family; and that I shall regret my\n  pangs less if they prove a useful warning to you and your brothers.\n  I can hardly remember when I was not in debt. Before I was eight\n  years old I owed pence continually for fruits, sweets, toys. I\n  suffered torture for fear of detection while these trifles were\n  owing, but directly they were paid, I began a fresh score. At school\n  I borrowed money of every one who would lend it, and had a bill at\n  every shop to which a boy would be attracted. The misery I continued\n  to endure while I could not pay was always forgotten directly I had\n  paid; and I was in the same difficulty over and over again. I must\n  own, moreover, that I was absolutely without excuse. I had as much\n  money and indulgence of every kind as any boy of my age and\n  position. I went to the university. My allowance was liberal, but my\n  debts became tremendous. I gave endless wine-parties; drove to\n  London frequently; entered into all its pleasures, made expensive\n  presents, bought horses, and betted; and was of course done;\n  finally, I got into the hands of Jews. It is singular that my father\n  never suspected my delinquencies, and that I was wonderfully helped\n  by circumstances. I was young when I succeeded to the living and a\n  large amount of ready money. All was swallowed up in the dreadful\n  gulf that my unprincipled extravagance had made. Year after year the\n  greater portion of my income has gone in payment of exorbitant\n  interest. Your dear father's legacy went that way; and my infamous\n  creditors, having ascertained that his will placed a great deal in\n  my power, threatened me with exposure--which would have {410} been\n  fatal to a man in my position--till I had pacified them with\n  thousands not my own--with, in fact, a considerable portion of your\n  brothers' inheritance.\n\n  \"At first I stifled my conscience by representing to myself that\n  being released from pressure which had worried me for years, I\n  should have a clear head for business; and recover, by judicious\n  speculation, the sums that I had appropriated--as I hoped--but for a\n  time. I have speculated unfortunately, and made matters infinitely\n  worse; for whereas my previous creditors were rapacious rascals to\n  whom, in justice, nothing was due, my present ones are the helpless\n  children of my warm-hearted, trustful, dead uncle.\n\n  \"By this time old Smith is, I suppose, dead, and you are aware of\n  his will--as singular as all we know of his life--but he is\n  necessary to my story. A day or two before I told you that I thought\n  of marrying Polly he sent for me, said that he felt himself\n  breaking, and wished me to witness his will, and be aware of its\n  purport, that it might not be said, when he was gone, that he had\n  acted at the priest's instigation. He said that at that moment no\n  one knew he was a Catholic, that he had led a godless life for\n  years, but he meant to make his peace with God before he died. He\n  had no relations who had any claim on him; he had left L100 to Mr.\n  Armand for religious uses, and the rest of his money--nearly\n  L20,000--to Polly. I thought the man mad, and humored him. He\n  understood me, and said so; told me that existence had ceased to be\n  more than endurable when, twenty years ago, he entered Upfield a\n  stranger; and that therefore he had confined himself to the\n  necessaries of life, and been glad to be believed poor. That he had\n  thought of leaving his money to a hospital; but that Polly had\n  become so like the only woman he had ever loved--and whom he had\n  lost by death--that he had grown to feel very fatherly toward her;\n  and his intention to make her his heiress had been decided by a\n  little fact very characteristic of Polly. She was walking with your\n  mother one very windy day, when he was out for nearly the last time,\n  and his hat blew off. He was too infirm to follow it, and every one\n  but Polly was too lazy or too much amused to do so. She ran for it,\n  and brought it to him with a kindness which seems to have thoroughly\n  melted him. If he be still living, this must not be mentioned; but,\n  as I said before, I think it is impossible. It is an old saying that\n  'drowning men catch at straws.' Oppressed as I was by hopeless\n  remorse, I caught at the notion that I would marry Polly. Her\n  father, I thought, would be pleased with her elevation. I did not\n  anticipate any difficulty in making such a gentle creature love me.\n  I intended to do my utmost to make her life happy; and I knew that\n  she would give up anything to do good to your family. I calculated\n  that, living moderately, my income would be ample, and that I could\n  appropriate Polly's fortune to repaying what I had misused, and\n  still without wronging her--for that, as my wife, she would have\n  advantages far beyond her father's expectations. How all this\n  scheming is defeated, you know. The only reparation now in my power,\n  I make willingly. Deducting a curate's stipend and eighty pounds a\n  year for myself, I will furnish you with full powers to receive the\n  residue of my income, and apply it to your brothers' use. I will\n  appoint Deane guardian in my stead, and furnish him with all\n  necessary documents. If I live--and I pray that I may live for that\n  object--your brothers will not suffer ultimately. I have made my\n  will, and left them whatever property I may possess when I die. I\n  have, you know, expectations from the Heathcotes.\n\n  \"There is, I hope, some guarantee for my reform in the willingness\n  with which I accept my punishment. I am glad that, with luxurious\n  tastes, I must exist on very narrow means for years; {411} that with\n  sturdy English prejudices I must live among foreigners. I had not\n  courage to make my shameful confession verbally, or to see any of\n  you afterward. I cross hence to Hamburg to-morrow. My further course\n  is undecided, but I will write to you; and Hangham and Hunt, Fleet\n  street, will forward letters to me. Think of all I have lost, of all\n  I have suffered secretly, for years, of my dreary prospects, and try\n  to be merciful to your miserable cousin,--WILLIAM WICKHAM.\"\n\nPolly had returned to the Grey House. Mrs. Wickham fretted, and\nRobert--to be candid--was disagreeable in her absence. Shy and\nconscious though she felt, she was quite willing to go back. Her\nfather was never at home till the evening--not always then. Aunt\nLizzie wanted no help or cheering up, and Polly's happiness depended\nmainly on her being necessary to some one. There is, moreover, no\ndenying that, differently educated as she had been, her aunt's habits\nand notions were not hers; and I could not say positively that she did\nnot miss Robert, and admit to herself that it was pleasant to expect\nhim at certain times, and to spend a good deal of time in his society.\nWhen the vicar's letter arrived, she was at the breakfast-table, doing\nthe duties of president deftly and satisfactorily, as she did\neverything--housewifely genius as she was.\n\n\"What a long affair!\" exclaimed Robert, as he glanced at the letter.\n\"What can he have to say? I can't wait to read it now; I must be off\nto the brewery. Here, my mother, you take it, and tell me all about it\nwhen I come back.\"\n\nShe put it in her pocket, remembering that Polly was concerned in it,\nand not liking to read it before her without mentioning its purport.\nThe thoughtful, methodical damsel soon departed for an hour's duty\namong birds and flowers, and then the thunderbolt fell on poor Mrs.\nWickham. Her darling younger sons were not only fatherless, but almost\ndependent on their brother. She was no woman of business; but she\nguessed that there would not be more than L300 a year to come from the\nvicar, when the deductions he mentioned had been made. She could of\ncourse spare L100. What did she want with money? This would meet all\nthe expenses of education, supposing the vicar lived--and if he died!\nIn any case there was no capital to start her sons in their\nprofessions; and, unluckily, Alfred, who would want it first, had\nnever been a favorite of Robert's. His assumption of superiority and\nhis sarcasm had nettled him extremely; and he dropped expressions\noccasionally which showed he had not forgiven him. But Robert would be\nvery well able to help. Even supposing that--as she hoped he would--\nhe did marry Polly, and have a family, his brothers would be off his\nhands before his children became expensive. If the story about poor\nold Mr. Smith proved true, he would be a rich man. Polly would of\ncourse do something handsome for her father and aunt, and yet have a\nlarge fortune. That incident about the hat Mrs. Wickham remembered\nperfectly; the poor old man looked enraptured when, lovelier even than\nusual, glowing from her running and good-nature, she gave it to him.\nIt was, however, very wonderful. How much had happened in quiet\nUpfield during the last two years! Then she began to pity the vicar\nheartily; to make excuses for him, and forgive him. The sacrifices he\nmade proved the sincerity of his repentance: how miserable he would be\nfor years, poor and lonely in a foreign land! In those days anywhere\n\"abroad\" seemed to simple inland folk something terrible. He might get\nyellow fever, or the plague. She believed them to be imminent anywhere\nout of the British Isles. She must talk to Polly, and have her for a\nstaunch ally before Robert came home. He had not his father's noble\nimpulsiveness, but he was just and honorable, and she and Polly could\ndo a great deal with him. Of {412} course she should omit telling her\nabout the vicar's having thought of marrying her, and the story about\nold Smith. One fact would be painful to her; the other might be\nuntrue.\n\nThe two guileless creatures agreed fully that Robert must be worked\nupon to forgive his cousin, and do all that was necessary for his\nbrothers. They were so radiant with hope and charity that their\ncountenances struck Robert peculiarly when he returned, and he said he\nsaw plainly that they had good news to tell him. It was an awkward\nbeginning: his mother feared that the contrary character of her\nintelligence would displease him the more, and said timidly, \"You had\nreally better read William's letter yourself, my dear boy; he tells\nhis story much better than I can.\"\n\nThe rush of events at Upfield seemed, for a few days, overpowering to\nthose whom it concerned; and those whom it concerned not were very\nmuch excited. There was the vicar gone--no one knew wherefore or\nwhither, or for how long; and a curate with a wife and seven children\nhad taken possession of his trim bachelor's hall. Then there was Mr.\nSmith, not very old, probably not more than fifty, dead. And he had\nturned out to be a rich man! why who could have guessed it? He had\nappeared one day at the inn, as suddenly as if he had dropped from the\nclouds--had evidently come a long way afoot--had no luggage but a\nvalise; and was altogether so equivocal-looking that Mr. Mogg, the\nveterinary surgeon, would not take him as a lodger without his paying\nsix months' rent in advance. He had paid his way regularly, certainly;\nbut no one could have supposed that he had anything to spare. He would\nnever talk of his affairs except to say that he had out-lived all his\nnear relations, and been a great deal in foreign parts. People had\nsuggested that he might be an escaped felon, a man resuscitated after\nhanging, a deserter, a Jew. On the strength of the last notion Mr.\nMogg tested him with roast pig; and he liked it.\n\nThen he never went to church. To be sure he was not the only person in\nUpfield of whom that might be said; but no one guessed that he was a\npapist. They had, at last, no proof that he was; but it was\nunderstood, though not formally acknowledged, that the librarian at\nEdward's Hall was a Catholic priest, and that persons of his communion\ncould and did benefit by his ministrations. Such things were winked\nat, in spite of penal enactments, in the case of some Catholics of\nhigh social standing, like Mr. Scharderlowe.\n\nNow this librarian, Mr. Armand, had been sent for by Mr. Smith when he\nwas taken ill, had visited him frequently, and been with him when he\ndied. No doubt he was a papist. That might be the reason he left his\nmoney to Polly Deane. Well, well! what luck some people had! Upfield\nwouldn't be surprised if Robert Wickham married her; and the\nneighborhood supposed it must call upon her, whether he did or not. It\nwondered if Mr. and Mrs. Wickham had known all along of Mr. Smith's\nintention; it wouldn't be surprised; there was something odd in the\nway they had educated the girl, and taken her out of her sphere. But,\nafter all, Mrs. Pogram said, she mightn't like Robert Wickham; and\nwith such a fortune as hers, she could afford to please herself. Mrs.\nPogram's own sons were decidedly finer young men, had more dash, and\nwere in the army--every one knew that girls liked red coats.\nLancaster would be coming home soon, on leave. She would call at once;\nlet others do as they pleased. Deane was a highly-respectable man, and\nno one could be ashamed of his daughter.\n\n\nA year later there was a large family-gathering at the Grey House at\ndinner, and Mrs. Wickham presided. Her grief had settled into a\nplacid, subdued character, which, with the weeds, gave a kind of\nmoonlight tone to her appearance, and became her so {413} well that no\none could wish to see her ever otherwise.\n\nRobert and Polly, man and wife, had returned that day from a bridal\nexcursion to the English lakes. The younger brothers were assembled to\nmeet them. Aunt Heathcote was there with her ear-trumpet; and\nqueer-tempered Mrs. Trumball, all smiles. Mr. Deane, of the firm of\nWickham and Deane, urbane in shorts, black-silk stockings, and silver\nknee and shoe buckles, was a father of whom the lovely bride felt\nproud, as she did too of Aunt Lizzie; who looked as if she had worn\nsilks and laces, and kept her soft white large hands in mittens all\nher life. Deep in every one's heart was the memory of warm-hearted,\ngenerous George Wickham, gone for ever from those whose meeting there,\nand in their mutual relations, he would have made more joyous; but no\none named him, for no one could have done it then and there in a voice\nwhich would not have been thick with emotion. Tears must have followed\nany mention of him; and who would have caused their flow at such a\nhappy gathering? Every one knew what every one was feeling and what a\nlong pause meant, which Robert broke by saying with a sigh, \"Well, I\ndo wish that poor dear William were here; I am so happy that I wish\nevery one else was; and I hate to think of him, hospitable,\naffectionate creature, dragging out his days among fat phlegmatic\nDutch boors, without a single soul to speak to.\" Polly, at his side,\ncontrived to give him, under the table, a little squeeze expressive of\nthe fullest approbation.\n\n\"I'm glad you have forgiven him, Bob,\" said his mother.\n\n\"Well, really, mother, it was but natural that I should be savage at\nfirst. Men can't be quite as tender-hearted as women, I suppose; and\nthey see the consequences of pecuniary frailties more clearly, and\nsuffer more from them, than they do; but I must be a brute if, happy\nas I am, I didn't wish well to everybody, especially to that good\nfellow. Now don't cry,  Polly.\"\n\nHer father observed that there were great excuses for the vicar, and\nthat every one must admit that he had done his utmost to make\nreparation.\n\n\"Yes,\" said Alfred, with mock gravity. It was his delight to puzzle\nAunt Lizzie; she never could make out whether he were joking or\noracular. \"I have learned wisdom through the rudiments of a painful\nexperience; and, steady reformed man of mature years as I find myself,\nI pronounce that William might have done much worse.\"\n\n\"Shall I write and urge him to come back?\" asked Robert.\n\n\"Do! do! do!\" resounded in various voices all around the table.\n\n\"Very well; I'm more than willing. Polly told me confidentially a few\ndays ago that she had no turn for extravagance; and I feel so domestic\nand moderate, that I fancy we may manage to provide for the fine young\nfamily that William's indiscretions have thrown on our hands, though\nhe will be able to give less help than if he remained at Rotterdam.\"\n\n\"Mr. Ridlem's stipend would be saved, you know, Bob.\"\n\n\"Not exactly, mother. William couldn't live at home as he lives now;\nthat would be painful to us and impossible for him.\"\n\n\"True; I forgot that.\"\n\n\"It is difficult for me to put in a word,\" said Alfred, \"because I've\nbeen a great expense to Bob, and he hasn't done with me yet; in fact\nI've no right to make a suggestion; but it is my full intention to\nreimburse him one of these days. I shouldn't have said so, only the\nchance of helping to bring William back--\"\n\n\"You're a good fellow, Alfred; I believe you; and must confess that I\nhave found you less trouble than I expected.\"\n\n\n\nThe result of the consultation was a letter to the vicar, signed by\nevery one present, entreating him to return forthwith; a letter over\nwhich he cried like {414} a girl. It brought him back speedily, a\nwiser and not a sadder man. He said indeed that, though down among the\ndykes, he had never been so happy as since he made all square with his\nconscience.\n\nTo follow the affairs of Upfield and the Wickhams further would\ninvolve a series of stories. It must suffice to say that Robert's\nmarriage turned out really well; and that from the day of her\nbetrothal, the dearest wish of Polly's heart was gratified; for he,\nunasked, joined her and the other stragglers who--the laws\nnotwithstanding--made their way on Sundays and holidays to a\nside-entrance in venerable old Edward's Hall, and were admitted to\nmass in the little well-loved chapel; Mr. Armand the librarian,\nidentical with Father Armand the priest, thanking God devoutly for the\naddition to the fold.\n\n\n\n------\n\nFrom The Month.\n\n\nA LOST CHAPTER OF CHURCH HISTORY RECOVERED.\n\nBY JAMES SPENCER NORTHCOTE, D.D.\n\n\nIf we set before a skilful professor of comparative anatomy a few\nbones dug out of the bowels of the earth, he will re-construct for us\nthe whole form of the animal to which they belonged; and it sometimes\nhappens that these theoretical constructions are singularly justified\nby later discoveries. It is the province of an archaeologian to\nattempt something of the same kind. A historian transcribes for our\nuse annals more or less fully composed and faithfully transmitted by\nhis predecessors. He may have to gather his materials from various\nsources; he must distinguish the true from the false; and he gives\nshape, consistency, and life to the whole; but, for the most part at\nleast, he has little to supply that is new from any resources of his\nown. The archaeologian, on the contrary, if he be really a man of\nlearning and science, and not a mere collector of old curiosities,\naims at discovering and restoring annals that are lost, by means of a\ncareful and intelligent use of every fragment of most heterogeneous\nmaterials that happens to come across him. And there is certainly\nnobody in the present age whose talent and industry in this branch of\nlearning, so far at least as _Christian_ archaeology is concerned, can\nat all compare with that of Cavaliere G. B. de Rossi. For more than\ntwenty years he has devoted himself to the study of the Roman\ncatacombs, and at length we begin to enter upon the fruit of his\nlabors. He has just published (by order of the Pope, and at the\nexpense, we believe, of the Commission of Sacred Archaeology,\ninstituted by his Holiness in 1851) the first volume of _Roma\nSotteranea_; a magnificent volume, splendidly illustrated, and full of\nnew and varied information. An abstract of its contents would hardly\nbe suitable to our pages; but none, we think, can fail to be\ninterested in what we may venture to call _the first chapter_ of the\nHistory of the Catacombs--a chapter that had certainly never before\nbeen written, even if it had been attempted.\n\nAll earlier authors upon subterranean Rome, so far as our experience\ngoes, whilst describing fully, and it may be illustrating with\nconsiderable learning, the catacombs as they now exist, and all the\nmonuments they {415} contain, have been content to pass over with a\nfew words of apology and conjecture the question of their origin and\nearly history. They have told us that the Jewish residents in Rome had\nburial-places of a similar character; and they have shown how natural\nand probable it was that the first Roman Christians, unwilling to burn\ntheir dead in pagan fashion, should have imitated the practices of the\nancient people of God. When pressed to explain how so gigantic a work,\nas the Roman catacombs undoubtedly are, could have been carried on by\nthe Christians under the very feet of their bitter persecutors, yet\nwithout their knowledge, they have pointed to the rare instance of a\ncemetery entered by a staircase hidden within the recesses of a\nsand-pit; they have guessed that here or there some Christian\npatrician, some senator or his wife, may have given up a garden or a\nvineyard for use as a burial-ground; and then they have passed on to\nthe much easier task of enumerating the subterranean chapels, tracing\nthe intricacies of the galleries, or describing the paintings,\nsculptures, and inscriptions. The work of De Rossi is of a very\ndifferent character. It begins _ab ovo_, and proceeds scientifically.\nIt shows not only how these wonderful cemeteries _may_ have been made,\nbut also--as far as is practicable, and a great deal further than\nnine-tenths even of the most learned archaeologians ever supposed to\nbe practicable--how and when each cemetery really _was_ made. From the\nfew scattered bones, so to speak, which lay buried, and for the most\npart _broken_, partly in the depths of the catacombs themselves,\npartly in the Acts of the Martyrs, the Liber Pontificalis, and a few\nother records of ecclesiastical history, he has reconstructed with\nconsummate skill the complete skeleton, if we should not rather say\nhas reproduced the whole body, and set it full of life and vigor\nbefore us. Not that he has indulged in hasty conjectures, or given\nunlimited scope to a lively imagination; far from it. On the contrary,\nwe fear many of his less learned readers will be disposed to find\nfault with the slow and deliberate, almost ponderous, method of his\nprogress, and to grow impatient under the mass of minute criticisms\nwith which some of his pages are filled, and by which he insists upon\njustifying each step that he takes. Indeed, we have some scruple at\npresenting our readers with the sum and substance of his argument,\ndivested of all these _pieces justificatives_, as our neighbors would\ncall them, lest they should suspect us of inventing rather than\ndescribing. However, we think it is too precious a page of Church\nhistory to be lost, and we therefore proceed to publish it, only\npremising that nobody must pretend to judge of its truth merely from\nthe naked abstract of it which we propose to give, but that all who\nare really interested in the study should examine for themselves in\ndetail the whole mass of evidence by which, in De Rossi's pages, it is\nsupported, most of which is new, and all newly applied.\n\nTo tell our story correctly, it is necessary we should step back into\npagan times, and first take a peep at their laws and usages in the\nmatter of burials. No classical scholar need be told how strictly\nprohibited by old Roman law was all intra-mural interment. Indeed\nevery traveller knows that all the great roads leading into Rome were\nonce lined on either side with sepulchral monuments, many of which\nstill remain; and the letters inscribed upon them tell us how many\nfeet of frontage, and how many feet at the back (into the field),\nbelonged to each monument, [IN. FR. P. so many. IN. AG. P. so many.\n_In fronte, pedum--. In agro, pedum--_.] M. de Rossi (the brother of\nour author) has published a very interesting plan of one of these\nmonuments with all its dependencies, as represented on an ancient\nmarble slab dug up on the Via Lavicana. On this slab, not only are the\nusual measurements of frontage and depth carefully recorded, but also\nthe private or public roads which crossed the {416} property, the\ngardens and vineyards of which it consisted, the swampy land on which\ngrew nothing but reeds (it is called _Harundinetum_), and the ditch by\nwhich, on one side at least, it was bounded. Unfortunately the slab is\nnot perfect, so that we cannot tell the exact measurement of the\nwhole. Enough, however, remains to show that the property altogether\nwas not less than twelve Roman _jugera_, or nearly 350,000 square\nfeet; and other inscriptions are extant, specifying an amount of\nproperty almost equal to this as belonging to a single monument (e.g.\n_Huic monumento cedunt agri puri jugera decem_). The necessity for so\nlarge an assignment of property to a single tomb was not so much the\nvastness of the mausoleum to be erected, as because certain funeral\nrites were to be celebrated there year by year, on the anniversary of\nthe death, and at other times; sacrifices to be offered, feasts to be\ngiven, etc.; and for these purposes _exedrae_ were provided, or\nsemi-circular recesses, furnished with sofas and all things necessary\nfor the convenience of guests. A house also (_custodia_) was often\nadded, in which a person should always live to look after the\nmonument, for whose support these gardens, vineyards, or other\nhereditaments were set apart as a perpetual endowment. It only remains\nto add, that upon all these ancient monuments may be found these\nletters, or something equivalent to them, H.M.H.EX.T.N.S. (_Hoc\nmonumentum haeredes ex testamento ne sequatur_); in other words, \"This\ntomb and all that belongs to it is sacred; henceforth it can neither\nbe bought nor sold; it does not descend to my heirs with the rest of\nmy property; but must ever be retained inviolate for the purpose to\nwhich I have destined it, viz., as a place of sepulchre for myself and\nmy family,\" or certain specified members only of the family; or, in\nsome rare instances, others also external to the family. The same\nsacred character which attached to the monuments themselves belonged\nalso to the _area_ in which they stood, the _hypogeum_ or subterranean\nchamber, which not unfrequently was formed beneath them; but it is a\nquestion whether it extended to the houses or other possessions\nattached to them.\n\nNor were these monuments confined to the noblest and wealthiest\ncitizens. Even in the absence of all direct evidence upon the subject,\nwe should have found it hard to believe that any but the very meanest\nof the slaves were buried (or rather were thrown without any burial at\nall) into those open pits (_puticoli_) of which Horace and others have\ntold us. And in fact, a multitude of testimonies have come down to us\nof the existence, both in republican and imperial Rome, of a number of\ncolleges, as they were called, or corporations (clubs or\nconfraternities, as we should more probably call them), whose members\nwere associated, partly in honor of some particular deity, but far\nmore with a view to mutual assistance for the performance of the just\nfuneral rites. Inscriptions which are still extant testify to nearly\nfourscore of these _collegia_, each consisting of the members of a\ndifferent trade or profession. There are the masons and carpenters,\nsoldiers and sailors, bakers and cooks, corn-merchants and\nwine-merchants, hunters and fishermen, goldsmiths and blacksmiths,\ndealers in drugs and carders of wool, boatmen and divers, doctors and\nbankers, scribes and musicians--in a word, it would be hard to say\nwhat trade or employment is not here represented. Not, however, that\nthis is the only bond of fellowship upon which such confraternities\nwere built; sometimes, indeed generally, the members were united, as\nwe have already said, in the worship of some deity; they were\n_cultores Jovis_, or _Herculis_, or _Apollinis et Diana_; sometimes\nthey merely took the title of some deceased benefactor whose memory\nthey desired to honor; e. g. _cultores statuarum et clipeorum L.\nAbulli Dextri;_ and sometimes the only bond of union seems to have\nbeen service in the same house or family. A long {417} and curious\ninscription belonging to one of these colleges, consisting mainly of\nslaves, and erected in honor of Diana and Antinous, _and for the\nburial of the dead_, in the year 133 of our era, reveals a number of\nmost interesting particulars as to its internal organization, which\nare worth repeating in this place. So much was to be paid at entrance,\nand a keg of good wine beside, and then so much a month afterward; for\nevery member who has regularly paid up his contribution, so much to be\nallowed for his funeral, of which a certain proportion to be\ndistributed amongst those who assist; if a member dies at a distance\nof more than twenty miles from Rome, three members are to be sent to\nfetch the body, and so much is to be allowed them for travelling\nexpenses; if the master (of the slave) will not give up the body, he\nis nevertheless to receive all the funeral rites; he is to be buried\nin effigy; if any of the members, being a slave, receives his freedom,\nhe owes the college an amphora of good wine; he who is elected\npresident (_magister_), must inaugurate his accession to office by\ngiving a supper to all the members; six times a year the members dine\ntogether in honor of Diana, Antinous, and the patron of the college,\nand the allowance of bread and of wine on these occasions is\nspecified; so much to every _mess_ of four; no complaints or disputed\nquestions may be mooted at these festivals, \"to the end that our\nfeasts may be merry and glad;\" finally, whoever wishes to enter this\nconfraternity is requested to study all the rules first before he\nenters, lest he afterward grumble or leave a dispute as a legacy to\nhis heir.\n\nWe are afraid we have gone into the details of this ancient burial\nclub more than was strictly necessary for our purpose; but we have\nbeen insensibly drawn on by their extremely interesting character,\nreminding us (as the Count de Champagny, from whom we have taken them,\nmost justly remarks) both of the ancient Christian _Agapae_, or\nlove-feasts, and (we may add) the mediaeval guilds. This, however,\nsuggests a train of thought which we must not be tempted to pursue. De\nRossi has been more self-denying on the subject; he confines himself\nto a brief mention of the existence of the clubs, refers us to other\nauthors for an account of them, and then calls our attention to this\nvery singular, and for our purpose most important fact concerning\nthem: viz., that at a time when institutions of this kind had been\nmade a cover for political combinations and conspiracies, or at least\nwhen the emperors suspected and feared such an abuse of them, and\ntherefore rigorously suppressed them, nevertheless an exception was\nexpressly made in favor of those which consisted of \"poorer members of\nsociety, who met together _every month_ to make a small contribution\ntoward the expenses of their _funeral_;\" and then he puts side by side\nwith this law the words of Tertullian in his _Apology_, written about\nthe very same time, where he speaks of the Christians contributing\n_every month_, or when and as each can and chooses, a certain sum to\nbe spent on feeding and _burying_ the poor. The identity of language\nin the two passages, when thus brought into juxtaposition, is very\nstriking; and we suppose that most of our readers will now recognize\nthe bearing of all we have hitherto been saying upon the history of\nthe Christian catacombs, from which we have seemed to be wandering so,\nfar.\n\nWe have already said that one of the first questions which persons are\ninclined to ask when they either visit, or begin to study, the\ncatacombs, is this: How was so vast a work ever accomplished without\nthe knowledge and against the will of the local authorities? And we\nanswer (in part at least), as the Royal Scientific Society _should_\nhave answered King Charles the Second's famous question about the live\nfish and the dead fish in the tub of water, \"Are you quite sure of\nyour facts? Don't call upon us to {418} find the reason of a problem\nwhich, after all, only exists perhaps in your own imagination.\" And so\nin truth it is. The arguments of the Cavaliere de Rossi have satisfied\nus that the Christians of the first ages were under no necessity of\nhaving recourse to extraordinary means of secrecy with reference to\nthe burial of their dead; it was quite possible for them to have\ncemeteries on every side of Rome, under the protection of the ordinary\nlaws and practices of their pagan neighbors.\n\nBut is not this to revolutionize the whole history of these wonderful\nexcavations? We cannot help it, if it be so; it is at least one of\nthose revolutions which are generally accepted as justifiable, and\ncertainly are approved in their consequences; for when it is complete,\neverything finds its proper place; books and grave-stones, the\ncemeteries and their ancient historians, every witness concerned gives\nits own independent testimony, all in harmony with one another, and\nwith the presumed facts of the case. Let us see how the early history\nof the catacombs runs, when reconstructed according to this new\ntheory. The first Christian cemeteries were made in ground given for\nthat very purpose by some wealthier member of the community, and\nsecured to it in perpetuity in accordance with the laws of the\ncountry. There was nothing to prevent the erection of a public\nmonument in the area thus secured, and the excavation of chambers and\ngalleries beneath. And history tells us of several of the most ancient\ncatacombs that they had their origin from this very circumstance, that\nsome pious Christian, generally a Roman matron of noble rank, buried\nthe relics of some famous martyr on her own property (_in praedio\nsuo_.)\n\nThe oldest memorial we have about the tomb of St. Peter himself is\nthis, that Anacletus \"_memoriam construxit B. Petri_, and places where\nthe bishops (of Rome) should be buried;\" and this language is far more\nintelligible and correct, if spoken of some public tomb, than of an\nobscure subterranean grave; _memoria_, or _cella memoriae_, being the\nclassical designation of such tombs. How much more appropriate also\ndoes the language of Caius the presbyter, preserved to us by Eusebius,\nnow appear, wherein he speaks (in the days of Zephyrinus) of the\n_trophies_ of the apostles being _to be seen_ at the Vatican and on\nthe Ostian way? Tertullian, too, speaks of the bodies of the martyrs\nlying in _mausoleums and monuments_, awaiting the general\nresurrection. From the same writer we learn that the _areae_ of the\nChristian burials were known to and were sacrilegiously attacked by\nthe enraged heathens in the very first years of the third century; and\nquite recently there has reached us from this same writer's country a\nmost valuable inscription, discovered among the ruins of a Roman\nbuilding, not far from the walls of the ancient Caesarea of\nMauritania, which runs in this wise: \"Euelpius, a worshipper of the\nword (_cultor Verbi_; mark the word, and call to mind the _cultores\nJovis_, etc.), has given this area for sepulchres, and has built a\n_cella_ at his own cost. He left this _memoria_ to the holy church.\nHail, brethren: Euelpius, with a pure and simple heart, salutes you,\nborn of the Holy Spirit.\" It is true that this inscription, as we now\nhave it, is not the original stone; it is expressly added at the foot\nof the tablet, that _Ecclesia fratrum_ has restored this _titulus_ at\na period subsequent to the persecution during which the original had\nbeen destroyed; but both the sense and the words forbid us to suppose\nthat any change had been made in the language of the epitaph, to which\nwe cannot assign a date later than the middle of the third century.\nBut, finally, and above all, let us descend into the catacombs\nthemselves, and put them to the question. Michael Stephen de Rossi,\nthe constant companion of his brother's studies, having invented some\nnew mechanical contrivance for taking plans of subterranean\nexcavations,  [Footnote 78] has made exact {419} plans of several\ncatacombs, not only of each level (or _floor_, so to speak) within\nitself, but also in its relations to the superficial soil, and in the\nrelations of the several floors one with another. A specimen of these\nis set before us by means of different colors or tints, representing\nthe galleries of the different levels, in the map of the cemetery of\nSt. Callixtus, which accompanies this volume; and a careful study of\nthis map is sufficient to demonstrate that the vast net-work of paths\nin this famous cemetery originally consisted of several smaller\ncemeteries, confined each within strict and narrow limits, and that\nthey were only united at some later, though still very ancient period.\nFor it cannot have been without reason that the subterranean galleries\nshould have doubled and re-doubled upon themselves within the limits\nof a certain well-defined area; that they should never have\noverstepped a certain boundary-line in this or that direction, though\nthe nature of the soil and every other consideration would have seemed\nto invite them to proceed; that they should have been suddenly\ninterrupted by a flight of steps, penetrating more deeply into the\nbowels of the earth, and there been reproduced exactly upon the same\nscale and within the same limits. These facts can only be fully\nappreciated by an actual examination of the map, where they speak for\nthemselves; but even those who have not this advantage will scarcely\ncall in question the conclusion that is drawn from them, when they\ncall to mind how exactly it coincides with all the ancient testimonies\nwe have already adduced on the subject, and when they learn the\nsingular and most interesting fact, that the Cav. de Rossi has been\nable in more than one instance, by means of the sepulchral\ninscriptions, to identify the noble family by whom the site of the\ncemetery was originally granted.\n\n  [Footnote 78: It was highly commended and received a prize at the\n  International Exhibition of 1862.]\n\nIt will be of course understood that we have been speaking of the\nearliest ages of the Church's history, and that we are far from\ndenying that there were other periods during which secrecy was an\nessential condition of the Christian cemeteries; on the contrary, did\nour space allow, we could show what parts of the catacombs belonged to\nthe one period, and what to the other, and what are the essential\ncharacteristics of each. We might unfold also, with considerable\nminuteness, the _economy_ of these cemeteries, even during the ages of\npersecution; under whose management they were administered, whether\nthey were parochial or otherwise, together with many other highly\ninteresting particulars. But we have already exceeded the limits\nassigned us, and we hope that those of our readers who wish to know\nmore on the subject will take care to possess themselves of the book\nfrom which we have drawn our information, that so funds may not be\nwanting for the completion of so useful a work. Nothing but a\ndeficiency of funds, in the present condition of the pontifical\ntreasury, hinders the immediate issue of other volumes of this and its\nkindred work, the _Inscriptiones Christianae,_ by the same author. He\nannounces his intention to bring out the volumes of _Roma Sotterranea_\nand of the _Inscriptions_ alternately, for they mutually explain and\nillustrate one another, and are in fact parts of the same whole; and\nthe public has been long impatient for the volume which is promised\nnext, viz., the ancient inscriptions which illustrate Christian dogma.\n\n------\n\n{420}\n\n\nMISCELLANY.\n\n\nART.\n\n_Domestic._--The fortieth annual exhibition of the National Academy of\nDesign was opened to the public on the evening of April 27th, under\ncircumstances which may well mark an era in the history of that\ninstitution. After drifting from place to place through forty long\nyears, now deficient in funds, and now in danger of losing public\nsympathy or support, sometimes unable to carry out its specific\npurposes, and almost always cramped for space, or otherwise perplexed\nin the details of its public exhibitions, the Academy, like Noah's\nark, long buffetted by waves and driven by tempests, finds a resting\nplace, not on Mount Ararat, but at the corner of Fourth avenue and\nTwenty-third street. And as the \"world's gray fathers,\" after their\ntroubled voyage, regarded with infinite satisfaction _terra firma_ and\nthe blue sky, so doubtless the older of the academicians, those who\nhave accompanied the institution in all its wanderings, are doubtless\nboth pleased and amazed to find themselves arrived at a goodly haven\nwith secure anchorage. To drop the figure, the Academy is now\npermanently established in an attractive and convenient building, well\nsituated in a central locality, and bids fair to enter upon a career\nof usefulness far beyond the results of its previous experience.\n\nThe new building has been for so long a time completed externally,\nthat its merits have been canvassed with every shade of opinion, from\nenthusiastic commendation to quite as decided disapprobation. The\nmajority of critics, having their reputation at stake, are afraid to\nhazard an opinion, and prudently remain neutral, until some\nauthoritative decision shall be made. As an architectural effort it\nmay be called an experiment, on which account it presents perhaps as\nmany claims to critical notice as the works of art which adorn its\nwalls. The style, singularly enough, is assigned to no special era or\ncountry, but is described to be of \"that revived Gothic, now the\ndominant style in England, which combines those features of the\ndifferent schools of architecture of the Middle Ages which are most\nappropriate to our nineteenth-century buildings,\" which means probably\nthat the building is of an eclectic Gothic pattern. All modern styles\nsince the renaissance may be said to be eclectic, whether founded on\nantique or mediaeval models, and the building in question differs from\nother Gothic edifices, of more familiar aspect to us, chiefly in form,\nexternal decoration, and the arrangement of its component parts. In\nthe American mind Gothic architecture is associated chiefly with\necclesiastical structures and is popularly supposed to be subject to\nno fixed laws, beyond an adherence to the irregular and picturesque.\nGiven a cruciform ground-plan, a pointed spire, steep roof, narrow\narched windows, buttresses, and pinnacles _ad libitum_, and you have\nas good a Gothic building as the public taste can appreciate. Here,\nhowever, is a nearly square building, covering an area of eighty by\nabout a hundred feet, which is neither a church nor a college, and is\nwithout steep roof, spire, buttresses, or pinnacles. The public\nevidently do not fathom the mystery at present, and those whose praise\nof the new Academy borders on the extravagant, are perhaps as much\nastray in their adherence to the _omne ignotum pro magnifico_\nprinciple as those wiseacres who tell you knowingly that the architect\nhas tried to palm off upon us a palpable imitation of the doge's\npalace in Venice. If the latter class of critics will refresh their\nmemory a little, or consult any good print of Venetian architecture,\nthey will find about as much resemblance between the two buildings as\nexists between the old Custom House in Wall street and the Parthenon.\nThe plain fact is that we are so unused to Gothic architecture,\napplied to secular purposes, and to any other forms of it than the\necclesiastical, as to be without sufficient data to form a correct\nidea of the present edifice. And yet, such is the conceit of\ncriticism, that thousands of persons pronounce their judgment upon it\nwith as much confidence as they would upon a trivial matter perfectly\n{421} familiar to them. These may yet find that hasty opinions are\ndangerous.\n\nThe Academy, as has been hinted above, is of rectangular shape, having\nthree stories, of which the first is devoted to the life school and\nthe school of design, the second to the library, reception rooms,\ncouncil room, and similar apartments, and the third to the exhibition\ngalleries, five in number, with which at present we have specially to\ndeal. The main entrance to the building is on Twenty-third street.\nPassing up a double flight of marble steps and through a magnificent\nGothic portal into a vestibule, the visitor next enters the great\nhall, in the centre of which commences a broad stairway, consisting at\nfirst of a double flight of steps, and ultimately of a single flight,\nleading to the level of the exhibition floor. Running all around the\nopen space on this story caused by the stairway is a corridor, two\nsides of which, parallel with the stairway, comprise a double arcade,\nsupported on columns of variegated and polished marble, the capitals\nof which, of white marble, are hereafter to be sculptured in delicate\nleaf-and-flower work from nature. Opening from this corridor are the\nexhibition rooms, which also communicate with each other, and of which\nthe largest is thirty by seventy-six feet, and the smallest, used as a\ngallery of sculpture, is twenty-one feet square. These are all lighted\nby sky-lights, and are intended for the purposes of the annual\nexhibitions. In the corridor surrounding the stairway are to be hung\nthe works of art belonging to the Academy, although at present its\nwalls are covered with pictures contributed to this year's exhibition.\nThe several rooms described are well-lighted, and though smaller\nperhaps than the large outlay upon the building might have led the\npublic to expect, seem excellently adapted for their purposes. The\nlargest of them is a model exhibition gallery in respect to\nproportions and light, and all are tastefully finished and pannelled\nwith walnut from floor to ceiling. Throughout the building the same\ncostly and durable style prevails, the wood-work being of oak and\nwalnut, and the vestibules floored with mosaic of tiles.\n\nSo much for the interior, against which no serious complaint has been\nuttered. Externally the walls of the basement story are of gray marble\nrelieved by bands of graywacke, those of the story above of white\nmarble with similar bands, while the uppermost story is of white\nmarble with checker-work pattern of oblong gray blocks, laid\nstair-fashion. The whole is surmounted by a rich arcaded cornice of\nwhite marble. The double flight of white marble steps on Twenty-third\nstreet, leading to the main entrance, is, perhaps, the most marked\nfeature of the building, at once graceful, rich, and substantial, and\nmay fairly challenge comparison with any similar structure of like\npattern in the country. Under the platform is a triple arcade,\ninclosing a drinking-fountain, and profusely decorated with sculpture,\nand from the upper landing springs the great arched Gothic portal,\nlarge enough almost for the entrance to a cathedral. On either side of\nthis are two columns of red Vermont marble with white marble capitals\nand bases, on which rests a broad archivolt enriched with sculpture\nand varied by voussoirs, alternately white and gray. The tympanum\nabove the door is to be filled with an elaborate mosaic of colored\ntile work. The basement windows, on Fourth avenue, are double, with\nsegmental arches, each pair of which is supported in the middle on a\nclustered column with rich carved capital and base. All the other\nwindows in the building have pointed arches, and the archivolts of\nthose in the first story are decorated like that of the doorway. In\nthe place of windows on the gallery floor are circular openings for\nventilation, filled with elaborate tracery. The building was designed\nby Mr. P. B. Wight, and erected at a cost of over two hundred thousand\ndollars.\n\nWithout attempting to inquire whether this or that portion of the\nbuilding is correctly designed, or even whether the whole is entirely\nsatisfactory, or the reverse, we may say that in the opinion of most\npersons the external flight of steps and the entrance are too large\nand elaborate for the building, reminding one of those remarkable\nedifices for banking or other public purposes occasionally to be seen\nin this city, which are all portico, as if the main structure had\nwalked away, or had not been considered of sufficient importance to be\nadded to the entrance. It is partly owing to this defect, and partly\nto the insufficient area on which it is built, {422} that the Academy\nseems wanting in height and depth, and therefore devoid of just\nproportions--has in fact an unmistakable _dumpy look_. Many an\narchitect before Mr. Wight has been prevented by want of space from\neffectively developing ideas intrinsically good, and perhaps the\nseverest criticism that can be pronounced against him in the present\ninstance is that ambition has led him to attempt what his better\njudgment might have taught him was impossible. \"Cut your coat\naccording to your cloth,\" is a maxim of which the applicability is not\nyet exhausted. Again, the obtrusive ugliness of the skylights, rising\nclear above the sculptured cornices, can hardly fail to offend the\neye, and suggests the idea of an encumbered or even an overloaded\nroof. If to these defects be added the curious optical delusion by\nwhich the gray marble checker-work on the upper story appears uneven\nand awry, and which denotes a radical error in design, we believe we\nhave mentioned the chief features of the building which even those who\nprofess to admire it unite in condemning. The objection that the\nbuilding is of unusual form and appearance, and out of keeping with\nthe styles of architecture in vogue with us, is not worthy of serious\nconsideration.\n\nHaving said so much in depreciation of the Academy, we must also say\nthat it conveys on the whole an elegant, artistic, and even cheerful\nimpression to the mind, relieving, with its beautiful contrasts of\nwhite and gray and slate, the sombre blocks of red or brown buildings\nwhich surround it, and actually lightening up the rather prosaic\nquarter in which it stands. Too much praise cannot be accorded to the\narchitect for the combinations of color which he has infused into his\ndesign; and, granting that in this respect he has committed some\nerrors of detail, they are trifling in comparison with the good\neffects which will probably result from the future employment of this\nmeans of embellishment. What if the idea, imperfectly embodied in this\nexperimental building, should in the end compass the overthrow of that\ntaste which leads us to build gloomy piles of brown houses, overlaid\nwith tawdry ornamentation, and pronounce them beautiful? When such an\ninnovation is attempted and finds even a moderate degree of favor,\nthere is hope that the era of architectural coldness and poverty may\nyet pass away. The carving profusely distributed on both the exterior\nand interior of the building, and of which, we are told, \"the flowers\nand leaves of our woods have furnished the models,\" is for the most\npart exquisite in design and execution. Here, at least, is\nnaturalistic art, against which the sticklers for idealism can offer\nno objection, so beautiful and appropriate are the designs, and so\nsuggestive of the necessity of going back to nature for inspiration.\nIf the new Academy possessed no other merit than this, it would\nnevertheless subserve a useful purpose in the development of taste.\n\nHaving devoted so much space to the building, we can only allude\ngenerally to the contents of its galleries, of which we propose to\nspeak more at length in a future notice. The exhibition, though\ninferior to those of some years in the number, exceeds them all in the\nquality of its pictures, and presents on the whole a creditable and\nencouraging view of the progress of American art. If the capacity of\nthe galleries is not so great as was expected, there is on the other\nhand less danger that the eye will be offended by a long array of\nunsightly works, and we may probably bid good-bye to the monstrosities\nof composition and color which the Academy was formerly compelled to\nreceive, in order to eke out its annual exhibitions. Such has been the\nincrease in the number of our resident artists of late years, that but\na limited number of pictures, and those consequently their best\nefforts, can henceforth be contributed by each. This fact alone will\nensure a constantly increasing improvement to succeeding exhibitions.\nAs usual, landscape predominates, with every variety of treatment and\nmotive, from Academic generalization and pure naturalism down to\nPre-Raphaelitism and hopeful though somewhat imperfect attempts at\nideal sentiment. Portraiture and genre are also well represented, with\na fair proportion of animal, flower, and still-life pieces, and of the\nnumerous family of miscellaneous subjects which defy classification.\nHistory is even less affected than usual, the dramatic episodes of the\ngreat rebellion failing to suggest subjects to our painters other than\nthose of an indirect or merely probable character. So far as the\npresent exhibition may be supposed to afford an {423} indication,\n\"high art,\" and particularly that branch of it which illustrates\nsacred history, is defunct among--us a circumstance which those who\nhave witnessed previous efforts by contemporary American painters in\nthat department will not perhaps regret. The pictures are generally\nhung with judgment, and in a spirit of fairness which ought to\nsatisfy, though it will not probably in every instance, the demands of\nexhibitors. And it may be added that they appear to good effect, and\nare daily admired, using the word in its derived as well as its more\ncommon sense, by throngs of visitors.\n\n\n\nChurch, the landscape painter, has recently gone to the West Indies,\nwith the intention of passing the summer in the mountain region of\nJamaica, where he will doubtless find abundant materials for study. He\nleaves behind a large unfinished work of great promise, \"The Rainbow\nin the Tropics,\" and some completed ones of less dimensions.\n\nAugero, an Italian artist, has recently completed for a church in\nBoston a picture of St. Andrew bearing the cross, of which a\ncontemporary says: \"Mr. Augero has departed from the traditional types\nthat have descended to him, and has treated the picture in a manner\nentirely his own. The head of the saint is finely handled, and,\nwithout being too much spiritualized, has sufficient of the ideal to\ngive it value both as a church picture and a work of art. In general\narrangement and color the work is especially to be admired.\" This\nartist is said to have received quite a number of commissions for\necclesiastical decoration.\n\nPalmer is completing a bust of Washington Irving, which has been\npronounced by the friends of the latter a successful likeness.\n\nAn essay on Gustave Dore, by B. P. G. Hamilton, will soon be published\nby Leypoldt of Philadelphia.\n\nThe spring exhibition of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts is now\nopen in Philadelphia. The collections are said to be large and to\nrepresent all departments of painting.\n\n\n\n_Foreign_.--The Exhibition of the Society of British Artists and the\nGeneral Exhibition of Water Color Drawings opened in London in the\nlatter part of April. The former contains more than a thousand\npictures, few of which, it is said, rise above the most common average\nof picture-making, while the greater part fall below it. \"There is\nsomething very depressing,\" says the _Reader_, \"about such a large\ndisplay of commonplace art. It is almost painful to have the fact\nforced upon one's mind, that the thought and labor represented in all\nthese pictures is misapplied, if not wasted; for to this conclusion we\nmust come, if we bring the display in Suffolk street to the test of\ncomparison with any real work of art. A fine picture by Landseer or\nMillais would outweigh, in intrinsic value, the whole collection.\nDenude the Royal Academy exhibition of the works of Landseer, Millais,\nPhilip, and other of its most accomplished contributors, and subtract\nfrom it at the same time the works of promise which lend to it so\ngreat an interest, and we should have a second Suffolk street\nexhibition, characterized by a similar dead level of mediocrity and\ninsipidity; for neither highly accomplished work nor sign of promise\nis to be seen in this the forty-second annual exhibition of the\nSociety of British Artists.\" From which it would appear that\ncontemporary art in England gives no remarkable promise.\n\nA large collection of the late John Leech's sketches, etc., was lately\nsold in London. It comprised the original designs for the political\ncartoons and pictures of life and character which have appeared in\nPunch during the last twenty years; the designs for the \"Ingoldsby\nLegends,\" \"Jorrock's Hunt,\" \"Ask Mamma,\" \"Mr. Facey Romford's Hounds,\"\nand other sporting novels, and several pictures in oil. The prices ran\nvery high, the net result being L4,089.\n\nThe collection of paintings and water color drawings by the best\nmodern British artists, formed by Mr. John Knowles, of Manchester, was\nrecently disposed of in London at very handsome prices. The chief\nattraction was Rosa Bonheur's \"Muleteers Crossing the Pyrenees,\" which\nbrought 2,000 guineas. The collection realized L21,750.\n\nPreparations are making to remove the cartoons of Raphael from Hampton\nCourt to the new north fire-proof gallery in the South Kensington\nMuseum, formerly occupied by the British pictures of the National\nGallery.\n\nThe Great Pourtales sale has closed {424} after lasting upward of a\nmonth and realizing a sum total of nearly three millions of francs. A\nParis paper states that, considering the interest of the sums expended\nin forming the collection as money lost, the sale will give a profit\non the outlay of a million and a half of francs, or about a hundred\nper cent.--a notable illustration of the mania for picture buying now\nprevailing in Europe. The owner died ten years ago, leaving directions\nthat the collection should not be sold until 1864, for which his heirs\nand representatives are doubtless properly grateful. The following\nwill give an idea of the prices fetched by the best pictures:\nCampagne, Ph. de: The Marriage of the Virgin, formerly the altar-piece\nof the chapel of the Palais Royal, sold for 43,500f. Hals, Francis: An\nunknown portrait of a man; his left hand leaning on his hip and\ntouching the handle of his sword, 51,000f. Rembrandt: Portrait of a\nBurgomaster, 34,500f. By the same: Portrait of a veteran soldier\nseated at a table, 27,000f. Murillo: The Triumph of the Eucharist;\nwith the words _\"In finem dilexit eos,\"_ 67,500f.; bought for the\nLouvre. By the same: The Virgin bending over the infant Christ, whom\nshe presses to her bosom, 18,000f. By the same: St. Joseph holding the\ninfant Christ by the hand, 15,000f. Velasquez: The Orlando Muerto, a\nbare-headed warrior, in a black cuirass, lying dead in a grotto strewn\nwith human bones, his right hand on his breast, his left on the guard\nof his sword; from the roof of the grotto hangs a lamp, in which the\nflame is flickering, 37,000f. Albert Durer: A pen drawing,\nrepresenting Samson, of colossal size, routing the Philistines with\nthe jaw-bone of an ass, 4,500f. A portrait by Antonelli di Messina,\nbought years ago in Florence by Pourtales for 1,500f., and appraised\nin his inventory at 20,000f., was sold to the Louvre, where it now\nhangs in the _salon carre_, for 113,000f.\n\nGustave Dore is announced to have undertaken to illustrate Shakespeare\nand the Bible.\n\nThe sale of the Due de Moray's gallery of paintings will take place in\nJune. It contains six Meissoniers, which cost, at the utmost, not\nabove 60,000 francs, but which will now probably fetch more than\ndouble that price.\n\nA picture by Ribera, representing St. Luke taking the likeness of the\nVirgin, was sold recently in Paris for 21,000f.\n\nFrench landscape art has lost one of its chief illustrators in the\nperson of Constant Troyon, who died in the latter part of March, aged\nabout fifty-two. He has been called the creator of the modern French\nschool of landscape, and delighted in cheerful aspects of nature,\nwhich he rendered with masterly skill. Rural life, with its pleasing\naccessories of winding streams, picturesque low banks, groups of\ncattle, and shady hamlets, formed the favorite subjects of his pencil;\nand though his style was not always exact, he succeeded in infusing an\nunusual degree of physical life into his pictures, without ever\ndegenerating into mere naturalism. As a colorist he excelled all\ncontemporary animal and landscape painters, and used his brush with a\nfreedom rivalling that of Delacroix. He died insane, and is said to\nhave left a fortune of 1,200,000 francs. Some of his pictures are\nowned in New York.\n\nA painting by Murillo, from the collection of the late Marquis Aguado,\nrepresenting the death of Santa Clara, has been sold to the Royal\nGallery of Madrid for 75,000 francs.\n\n\n----\n\n{425}\n\n\nNEW PUBLICATIONS.\n\n\nTHE CORRELATION AND CONSERVATION OF FORCES:\nA SERIES OF EXPOSITIONS,\nby Prof. Grove, Prof. Helmholtz, Dr. Mayer, Dr. Faraday, Prof. Liebig,\nand Dr. Carpenter. With an Introduction and brief Biographical Notices\nof the chief Promoters of the new views. By Edward L. Youmans, M.D.\n12mo., pp. xlii., 438. New York: D. Appleton & Company.\n\nReligious writers have repeatedly deplored the materialistic tendency\nof modern scientific research, and in many cases, no doubt, the\ncomplaint is a just one. But we must not forget that the bad tendency\nis in the philosophical system which is sought to be built upon the\nfacts of discovery, not in the facts themselves. Every development, of\ntruth, every fresh unveiling of the mechanism of the universe, must of\nnecessity redound to the greater glory of God. And it seems to us that\nno scientific theory which has been broached for many years speaks\nmore gloriously of the disposing and over-ruling hand of an all-wise\nCreator than the one to which the volume now before us is devoted. If\nthere could be any place for comparison in speaking of the exercise of\nomnipotence, we might say that the new view of the nature and mode of\naction of the physical forces represents creation as a far more\nmarvellous act than the old one did.\n\nWe speak of the correlation and conservation of force as a \"new\"\ntheory because it is only lately that it has attracted much attention\nbeyond the higher scientific circles, and indeed it would perhaps be\ngoing too far to say that it is yet firmly established. It has been\ndeveloping however for a number of years, and the most distinguished\nexperts in physical science have for some time accepted it with\nremarkable unanimity. In the book whose title we have given above, Dr.\nYournans has brought together eight of the most valuable essays in\nwhich the theory has been maintained or explained by its founders and\nchief supporters. He has made his selection with excellent judgment,\nand prefixed to the whole a clear and well-written introduction, by\nthe aid of which any reader of ordinary education will be able to\nappreciate what follows. The longest and most important essay is that\nby Professor Grove on \"The Correlation of Physical Forces.\"\n\nForce is defined by Professor Grove as that active principle\ninseparable from matter which induces its various changes. In other\nwords, it is the agent or producer of change or motion. The\nmodifications of this general agent--heat, light, electricity,\nmagnetism, chemical affinity, gravity, cohesive attraction, etc.--are\ncalled the physical forces. In many cases, where one of these is\nexcited all the others are set in motion: thus when sulphuret of\nantimony is _electrified_, at the moment of electrization it becomes\n_magnetic_; at the same time it is _heated_; if the heat is raised to\na certain intensity, _light_ is produced; the compound is decomposed,\nand _chemical action_ is thereby brought into play; and so on.\nMoreover, we cannot magnetize a body without electrizing it, and\nvice-versa. This necessary reciprocal production is what is understood\nby the term \"correlation of forces\"--or in other words, we may say\nthat any one of the natural forces may be converted into another mode\nof force, and may be reproduced by the same force. A striking example\nof the conversion of heat into electricity is furnished by an\nexperiment of Seebeck's. Two dissimilar metals are brought together\nand heated at the point of contact. A current of electricity flows\nthrough the metals, having a definite direction according to the\nmetals employed; continues as long as an increasing temperature is\npervading the metals; ceases when the temperature is stationary; and\nflows backward when the heat begins to decrease. The immediate\nconvertibility of heat into light is not yet established beyond\nquestion, although these two forces exhibit many curious analogies\nwith each other. But heat through the medium of electricity may easily\nbe turned into light, chemical affinity, magnetism, etc. Electricity\ndirectly produces heat, as in the ignited wire, the electric spark,\nand the {426} voltaic arc. The last-named phenomenon--the flame which\nplays between the terminal points of a powerful voltaic battery\nproduces the most intense heat with which we are acquainted; so\nintense, in fact, that it cannot be measured, as every sort of matter\nis dissipated by it. For instance, it actually _distils_ or\nvolatilizes iron, a metal which by ordinary means is fusible only at a\nvery high temperature. The voltaic arc also produces the most intense\nlight that we know of. Instances of the conversion of electricity into\nmagnetism and chemical action are familiar to everybody. The\nreciprocal relations of light with other modes of force are thus far\nvery imperfectly known. Professor Grove however describes an\nexperiment by which light is made to produce simultaneously chemical\naction, electricity, magnetism, heat, and motion. The conversion of\nlight into chemical force in photography is another exemplification of\nthe law of correlation, and Bunsen and Roscoe have experimentally\nshown that certain rays of light are extinguished or absorbed in doing\nchemical work. A familiar example of the change of light into heat is\nseen in the phenomena of what is termed the absorption of light. Place\ndifferent colored pieces of cloth on snow exposed to sunshine: black\nwill absorb the most light, and will also develop the most heat, as\nmay be seen by its sinking deepest in the snow; white, which absorbs\nlittle or no light, will not sink at all.\n\nThe evolution of one force or mode of force into another has naturally\ninduced many to regard all the different natural agencies as reducible\nto unity, and much ingenuity has been expended on the question which\nforce is the efficient cause of all the others. One says electricity,\nanother chemical action, another gravity. Professor Grove believes\nthat all are wrong: each mode of force may produce the others, and\nnone can be produced except by some other as an anterior force. We can\nno more determine which is the efficient cause than we can determine\nwhether the chicken is the cause of the egg, or the egg the cause of\nthe chicken. The tendency of recent researches however is toward the\nconclusion that all the physical forces are simply modes of motion;\nthat as, in the case of friction, the gross or palpable motion which\nis arrested by the contact of another body, is subdivided into\nmolecular motions or vibrations (or as Helmholtz expresses it,\npeculiar shivering motions of the ultimate particles of bodies), which\nmotions are only heat or electricity, as the case may be; so the other\naffections are only matter moved or molecularly agitated in certain\ndefinite directions. The identity of motion with heat was established\nin the last century by our countryman, Count Rumford, and has lately\nbeen beautifully illustrated by Professor Tyndall in his charming\nlectures on \"Heat considered as a Mode of Motion.\" Dr. Mayer, of\nHeilbronn, and Mr. Joule, of Manchester, independently of each other,\nestablished the exact ratio between heat and motive power, showing\nthat a quantity of heat sufficient to raise one pound of water one\ndegree Fahrenheit in temperature is able to raise to the height of one\nfoot a weight of 772 pounds; and conversely, that a weight of 772\npounds falling from a height of one foot evolves enough heat to raise\nthe temperature of a pound of water one degree. That is, this quantity\nof force, expressed as 772 \"foot-pounds,\" is to be regarded as the\nmechanical equivalent of 1 deg. of temperature. Professor Grove considers\nat some length the identity of motion with other forms of force,\nespecially electricity and magnetism, and alludes briefly to the\ninevitable consequence of this theory, that the different forces must\nbear an exact _quantitative_ relation to each other. \"The great\nproblem which remains to be solved,\" he says, \"in regard to the\ncorrelation of physical forces, is this establishment of their\nequivalents of power, or their measurable relation to a given\nstandard.\"\n\nThe doctrine of the conservation or persistence of force seems to flow\nnaturally from what has been said above. It means simply that force is\nnever destroyed: when it ceases to exist in one form it only passes\ninto another. Power or energy, like matter, is neither created nor\nannihilated: \"Though ever changing form, its total quantity in the\nuniverse remains constant and unalterable. Every manifestation of\nforce must have come from a pre-existing equivalent force, and must\ngive rise to a subsequent and equal amount of some other force. When,\ntherefore, a force or effect appears, we are not at liberty to assume\nthat it was self-originated, or {427} came from nothing; when it\ndisappears we are forbidden to conclude that it is annihilated: we\nmust search and find whence it came and whither it has gone; that is,\nwhat produced it, and what effect it has itself produced.\"\n(_Introduction_, p. xiii.) This branch of the subject will be found\nclearly and concisely treated in Professor Faraday's paper on \"The\nConservation of Force\" (pp. 359-383).\n\nDr. Carpenter carries the new theory into the higher realms of nature,\nand shows the applicability of the principle of correlation and\nconservation to the vital phenomena of growth and development. \"These\nforces,\" he says, \"are generated in living bodies by the\ntransformation of the light, heat, and chemical action supplied by the\nworld around, and are given back to it again, either during their\nlife, or after its cessation, chiefly in motion and heat, but also, to\na less degree, in light and electricity.\" Vital force is that power by\nvirtue of which a germ endowed with life is developed into an\norganization of a type resembling that of its parents, and which\nsubsequently maintains that organism in its integrity. The prevalent\nopinion until lately has been that this force is inherent in the germ,\nwhich has been supposed to derive from its parent not merely its\nmaterial substance, but a _germ-force_, in virtue of which it develops\nand maintains itself, beside imparting a fraction of the same force to\neach of its descendants. In this view of the question, the aggregate\nof all the germ-forces appertaining to the descendants, however\nnumerous, of a common parentage, must have existed in the original\nprogenitors. Take the case of the successive viviparous broods of\n_Aphides_, which (it has been calculated) would amount in the tenth\nbrood to the bulk of _five hundred millions_ of stout men: a\ngerm-force capable of organizing this vast mass of living structure\nmust have been shut up in the single individual, weighing perhaps the\n1-1000th of a grain, from which the first brood was evolved! So, too,\nin Adam must have been concentrated the germ-force of every individual\nof the human race, from the creation to the end of the world. This,\nsays Dr. Carpenter, is a complete _reductio ad absurdum_. According to\nhis theory, the germ supplies not the force, but the directive agency.\nThe vital force of an animal or a plant is supplied by the same\nphysical agencies which we have considered above.\n\nDr. Youmans in his introduction is disposed to push this part of the\nsubject yet further, and to identify physical with intellectual force;\nbut into this dangerous region it is unnecessary to follow him.\n\nSome of the explanations of natural phenomena which are drawn as\ncorollaries from the new theory of forces are in the highest degree\ncurious and beautiful. Many of our readers will find Dr. Mayer's paper\n\"On Celestial Dynamics\" one of the most interesting portions of the\nbook. He applies the principle of the convertibility of heat and\nmotion to the question of the origin of the sun's heat, which he\nascribes to the fall of asteroids upon the sun's surface. That an\nimmense number of cosmical bodies are moving through the heavens and\nstreaming toward the solar surface, is well known to all physicists.\nNow it is calculated that a single asteroid falling into the sun\ngenerates from 4,600 to 9,200 times as much heat as would be generated\nby the combustion of an equal mass of coal, and the mass of matter\nwhich in the form of asteroids falls into the sun every minute is from\ntwo to four hundred thousand billions of pounds! The enormous heat\nwhich must be evolved by such a bombardment is almost inconceivable.\n\n\n\nREAL AND IDEAL. By John W. Montclair. 12mo., pp. 119. Philadelphia:\nFrederick Leypoldt. New York: Hurd & Houghton.\n\nThis is a dainty little volume of poems, partly translated from the\nGerman, partly the offspring of the native muse. They are simple,\nunpretending, and as a general thing melodious. The author probably\nhas not aspired to a very high place in the temple of fame; without\nthe ambition to produce anything very striking or very original, he\nhas been satisfied with the endeavor which he pithily expresses in his\n\"Prologue:\"\n\n  \"Clearer to think what others thought before--\n  Keenly to feel th' afflictions of our race--\n  Better to say what others oft have said--\"\n\nand if he does not always think clearer and speak better than those in\nwhose footsteps he treads, there is at all events that in his verse\nwhich promises better {428} things after more practice. His faults are\nchiefly those of carelessness and inexperience. His metaphors are\nsuperabundant, and sometimes incongruous. He has a good ear for\nrhythm; but we often find him tripping in his prosody. Often too the\nrequirements of the metre lead him to eke out a line with expletives,\nor weaken it with unnecessary epithets.\n\nBut we can commend the book for its healthy tone. Mr. Montclair has no\ntendency toward the morbid psychological school of poetry. He delights\nrather in the contemplation of nature, and in moralizing on the life\nand aspirations of man. In neither does he discover much that is new;\nbut the natural beauties which he sings are those of which we do not\neasily tire, and his moral reflections are just though they may not be\nprofound. For the matter of his translations he has chosen some of the\nsimplest and shortest of the German legendary ballads. Several of them\nare rendered with considerable neatness and delicacy. The following\nversion of a ballad to which attention has been particularly called of\nlate, is a favorable specimen of Mr. Montclair's powers:\n\n\n    \"LENORE.\n\n  \"Above the stars are twinkling--\n  The moon is shining bright--\n  And the dead they ride by night.\n\n  \"'My love, wilt ope thy window?\n  I cannot long remain,\n  And may not come again.\n\n  \"'The cock already crows--\n  Tells of the dawning day,\n  And warns me far away.\n\n  \"'My journey distant lies;\n  Afar with thee, my bride,\n  A hundred leagues we'll ride.\n\n  \"'In Hungary's fair land\n  I've found a tranquil spot,\n  A little garden plot.\n\n  \"'And there, within the green,\n  A little cottage rests,\n  Befitting bridal guests.'\n\n  \"'Oh, thou hast lingered long;\n  Beloved, welcome here--\n  Lead on, I'll never fear.'\n\n  \"'So, wrap my mantle 'round;\n  The moon will be our guide,\n  And quick by night we'll ride.'\n\n  \"'When will our journey end?\n  For heavy grows my sight,\n  And lonely is the night.'\n\n  \"'Yon gate leads to our home:\n  Our bridal tour is done--\n  My purpose now is won.\n\n  \"'Dismount we from our steed;\n  Here lay thy aching head--\n  This tomb's our bridal bed.\n\n  \"'Now art thou truly mine:\n  I rode away thy breath--\n  Thou art the bride of death!'\"\n\n\nFAITH, THE VICTORY; ON A COMPREHENSIVE VIEW OF\nTHE PRINCIPAL DOCTRINES OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.\nBy Rt. Rev. John McGill, D.D.,\nBishop of Richmond. 12mo., pp. viii.,\n336. Richmond: J. W. Randolph.\n\nThis work is a curiosity as a specimen of the literature of the late\n\"Confederate States of America,\" and of course its typography and\ngeneral execution are plain and unpretending. The work itself is the\nproduction of a prelate of high character and reputation for his\nthorough theological erudition and ability as a writer, and as a clear\nlogical expounder of Catholic doctrine. It is written in a very\nsystematic and exact manner; the style is terse, the treatment of\ntopics brief but comprehensive; and yet, so lucid are the statements\nand so simple the language, that it is throughout intelligible to the\nordinary reader, and in great part so to any one of good common sense\nwho can read English and is able to understand a plain, simple\ntreatise on religious doctrine. It may be characterized as an\nelementary treatise on theology for the laity, and as such is adapted\nto be very useful to Catholics, and also to those non-Catholics who\nretain the doctrine of the old orthodox Protestant tradition. The\nright reverend author is throughout careful to discriminate between\nthe defined doctrine of the Church and the teaching of theologians,\nand is extremely cautious in expounding his opinion on those topics\nwhich are controverted between the different schools. The authority of\nthe Catholic Church is established by the usual plain and irresistible\ndeductions from the premises admitted by those who fully accept\nChristianity as a divine revelation and the Scripture as the\ninfallible word of God. The dogmas of the {429} Catholic faith are\nstated in the plain ordinary language of the Church, with some account\nof the principal methods of explaining difficulties in vogue among\ntheologians, and with proofs derived from Scriptures and tradition.\nThe stress of the entire argument rests principally on the evidence\nthat the Catholic dogmas have been revealed by God and clearly deduced\nby the infallible authority of the Church, consequently must be\nbelieved as certain truths. The line of fracture, where that fragment\nof Christianity called orthodox Protestantism was broken off from the\nintegral system of Christian doctrine at the Reformation, is\ndistinctly traced, and orthodox Protestants are shown that they are\nlogically compelled to complete their own belief by becoming\nCatholics. The old Protestant tradition has a far more extensive sway\nin the southern states than among ourselves, and this excellent\ntreatise will no doubt be the means of bringing numbers of those who\nare well-disposed, and need only to be taught what the revealed\ndoctrines of Christianity really are, into the bosom of the Church. In\nthis section of the United States, the greater portion of those who\nare willing to examine the evidences of the Catholic religion have\nfloated far away from their old land-marks. In order to reach their\nminds, it is necessary to present the rational arguments which will\nsolve their difficulties much more fully than is done in this\ntreatise, and to interpret for them ecclesiastical and theological\nformulas in which divine truths are embodied in language which is\nintelligible to their intellect in its present state. They are either\nextreme rationalists or moderate rationalists; that is, they either\nreject the supernatural revelation entirely, or admit only so much of\nit as can be proved to them to be true on grounds of pure reason.\nHence, we are obliged to begin with the intrinsic evidence of the\ntruth and reasonableness of the Catholic faith, before we can bring\nthe force of extrinsic revelation by the authority of the Church to\nbear upon their mind.\n\nWe welcome the present of this treatise from the Bishop of Richmond\nfor another reason, as well as for its intrinsic value. It is a sign\nof the renewal of that ecclesiastical intercourse with our brethren of\nthe southern states which has so long been interrupted.\n\nAnd, in conclusion, we desire to call particular attention to the\nensuing extract, as an evidence of the falsehood of the charge which\nour enemies are at present disposed to make against the Catholic\nChurch of \"sanctioning some of the worst enormities of slavery:\"\n\n\"And here we would take occasion to deplore the conduct of the civil\ngovernment in this country, regarding the matrimonial contract of\nslaves, which, though the rulers profess Christianity, is completely\nignored even as a civil contract, and left entirely to the caprice of\nowners, who frequently without scruple or hesitation, and for the sake\nof interest or gain, part man and wife,  separate parents from their\nchildren, and treat the matrimonial union among them as if it were\nreally no more than the chance association of unreasoning animals.\nOften, also, some of these marriages are indissoluble by the\nsacramental bond, as well as by the original design of the Creator,\nand by the action of Christian proprietors and the neglect of a\nChristian government, these separated parties are subjected to the\ntemptation to form criminal and forbidden alliances, from which\nfrequency, custom, and the condition of servitude have removed, in the\npublic view, the shame and stigma which they possess before God, and\naccording to the maxims of the gospel. Christian proprietors will know\nand tolerate these alliances in their slaves, even when made without\nany formality, and where they are aware that one or both is under the\nobligation of other ties.\n\n\"It is not certain that the present dreadful calamities which afflict\nthe country are not the scourge of God, chiefly for this sin, among\nthe many that provoke his anger, in our people. He is not likely to\nleave long unpunished in a nation the palpable and flagrant contempt\nof his holy laws, such as is evinced in this neglect or refusal to\nrespect in slaves the holiness, the unity, and the indissolubility of\nmarriage. It would appear that by the present convulsions his\nprovidence is preparing for them at least a recognition of those\nrights as immortal beings which are required for the observance of the\nparamount laws of God. And if citizens desire to see the nation\nprosper and enjoy the blessing of God, let all unite to procure from\nthe civil government, for the slaves, that their marriages be esteemed\nas God intends, and not be dealt with in future as they have been\nhitherto.\"\n\n----\n\n{430}\n\nMATER ADMIRABLIS; OR, FIRST FIFTEEN YEARS OF MARY IMMACULATE.\nBy Rev. Alfred Monnin, author of \"The Life of the Cure d'Ars.\"\nTranslated from the French by the Sisters of Charity, Mount St.\nVincent, KY. 12mo., pp. 535. New York: James B. Kirker.\n\nOn the wall of a corridor in the convent of _Trinita del Monti_, at\nRome, there is a fresco representing the Blessed Virgin, _Mater\nadmirabilis_, at the age of fifteen. She is depicted spinning flax\nwithin the precincts of the temple, with her work-basket and an open\nbook beside her. The picture was painted some twenty years ago by a\nyoung postulant of the community of Ladies of the Sacred Heart, to\nwhom the _Trinita_ belongs. It is not said that it is in any way\nremarkable as a work of art; but it has acquired a celebrity among\npious Catholics second to that of hardly any picture in the world.\nSince the year 1846, when the Holy Father gave his solemn blessing to\nthe picture, remarking that \"it was a pious thought to represent the\nmost Holy Virgin at an age when she seemed to have been forgotten,\"\nsignal favors have repeatedly been bestowed upon persons who have\nprayed before it. The Rev. Mr. Blampin, a missionary from Oceanica,\nrecovered his voice at the feet of the _Mater admirabilis_, in 1846,\nafter having been deprived of it for twenty-one months. In a transport\nof gratitude he obtained permission to say mass before the fresco, and\nfrom that day the corridor became a real sanctuary. A great number of\nmiraculous cures were reported as having been wrought there, and\nmultitudes of sinners who came out of mere curiosity to gaze upon a\npicture of which so much had been said, were converted by an\ninstantaneous infusion of divine grace. In 1849 Pope Pius IX., by an\napostolic brief, granted permission for the celebration of the\nfestival of the _Mater admirabilis_ on the 20th of October, and\nenriched the sanctuary with indulgences. In 1854, by a second\nrescript, he confirmed an indulgence of three hundred days, which he\nhad previously granted verbally to all the faithful who should recite\nthree Hail Maries before this holy painting, adding the invocation,\n_Mater admirabilis, ora pro nobis;_ and in the following year the\nindulgences were extended to the entire order of the Sacred Heart. The\ndevotion to the \"Mother most admirable\" spread rapidly, and copies of\nthe painting at the _Trinita_ were soon to be found in various parts\nof Europe and America. There is one in the Convent of the Sacred Heart\nat Manhattanville, N. Y., from which the frontispiece to the volume\nbefore us has been engraved. \"I admit,\" says Father Monnin, speaking\nof the original, \"that of all the different ways by which art has\nrepresented this Virgin by excellence, there is not one which better\ncorresponds with the _beau ideal_ which, as a priest, I had loved to\nform in my mind. Like the chaste Madonnas of the most fervent\nages--those of _Beato_ in particular--this Madonna of the Lily makes\none feel and understand that its designer had prayed before painting\nit, and that her imagination, fed by faith and the love of God, has\ndelineated the most holy virgin child by interior lights derived from\nher meditations. By means of a constant communion with things divine,\nthe disciples of Fiesole have succeeded in placing themselves as so\nmany mediums between the Creator and the creature, by transmitting a\nray of that eternal light amidst which they live; we may say that\n_Mater admirabilis_ is of the school of Fra Angelico, although several\ncenturies have elapsed since his time. There is, as it were, the image\nof a pure soul preserved ever from all stain, sent into the world to\nbe joined to a perfect and immaculate body, and to become, in this\ntwofold perfection and purity, the ineffable instrument of our\nsalvation! It is thus the prophet deserved to see her, brilliantly\nresplendent with grace and innocence, with the clearness of eternal\nlight, and the splendor of eternal or perpetual virginity. The\nineffable peace which took possession of me, made me understand that\nbeauty of which St. Thomas speaks, the sight whereof purifies the\nsenses. . . . There in the wall, within a niche contiguous to the\ngreat church of the monastery, is the most holy Virgin, painted in\nfresco at full size. . . . The pilgrim looks in surprise, and very\nsoon feels as if the air around this fair flower of the field and lily\nof the valley were embalmed with the perfumes of silence and\nrecollection. He sees her occupied in simply spinning flax; near her,\non the right, is a distaff resting upon a slender standard, and on the\nleft a lily rising out of a crystal vase, and bending its flexible\nstalk toward Mary. .... Absorbed in her meditation, the most holy\nchild has suspended her work; her shuttle, become motionless, falls\nfrom her hand, while her left hand still holds {431} a light thread\nwhich remains joined to the flax in the distaff; one foot of this most\nholy spinner rests upon a stool, near which lies an open book, spread\nout on a work-basket, filled with shuttles and skeins. The features of\nthe youthful Mary express a purity in which there is nothing of earth;\nher countenance is modestly tinged, the ringlets of her golden hair\nare just perceptible through the wavings of a transparent veil which\ncovers her neck; her pure virginal brow, slender figure, and delicate\nlimbs give her a youthful appearance, full of grace and truthfulness.\nIt is truly the Virgin of virgins; it is truly Mary,--and Mary at an\nage when but few works of art have sought to represent her.\"\n\nThe little chapel was soon decorated with votive offerings from all\nparts of the world. It became a venerated shrine, and few devout\ntravellers now leave Rome without having prayed at it. The \"archives\nof _Mater admirabilis_,\" preserved at the _Trinita_, contain records\nof the conversions, vocations, and cures effected at this consecrated\nspot; and these, together with some devotional writings composed by\nthe pupils of the convent, form the groundwork of Father Monnin's\nbook. The matter is arranged in such a way that the work may be used\nfor the devotions of the month of May. It is divided into thirty-one\nchapters, or \"days,\" each of which contains a meditation having\nspecial reference either to some virtue indicated by the picture, or\nto Mary's childhood; this is followed by an appropriate prayer, and a\nnarrative taken from the archives.\n\nHaving explained the purpose of Father Monnin's book, we do not know\nthat we need say more by way of recommending it. Whatever tends to\nfoster love and veneration for the Blessed Virgin must commend itself\nstrongly to every pious Catholic; and in the new devotion, which is\nhere explained and illustrated, there is something so beautiful and\ntouching, that we believe it has only to be known in this country to\nbe embraced with the same eager affection as in Europe.\n\nThe external appearance of the volume is very attractive. We hail with\ngreat pleasure the improvement in taste and liberality evinced by the\nmanufacture of such books as Kirker's \"Mater Admirabilis\" and O'Shea's\nedition of Dr. Curnmings's \"Spiritual Progress.\"\n\nThere is no sufficient reason why Catholics should not print and bind\nbooks as well as other people.\n\n\nTHE LOVE Of RELIGIOUS PERFECTION; ON, HOW TO AWAKEN, INCREASE,\nAND PRESERVE IT IN THE RELIGIOUS SOUL.\nBy Father Joseph Bayma, of the Society of Jesus. Translated from the\nLatin by a Member of the same Society. 24mo., pp. 254. Baltimore: John\nMurphy & Company.\n\nThe style and method of this little treatise are modelled upon those\nof \"The Imitation of Christ.\" The style is clear and severely simple,\nnot above the plainest comprehension, and not without attraction for\nthose who are somewhat fastidious in literary matters. Father Bayma\nprofesses in his preface to have disregarded all ornaments of\ncomposition, having written his little book not so much for the\nedification of others as for the profit of his own soul. Our readers\ncan readily understand that it is for that very reason all the more\nsearching in its mental examinations and practical in its precepts.\nFather Bayma divides his work into three books. The first treats of\nthe motives which should urge us toward religious perfection; the\nsecond, of the means by which perfection is most easily obtained; and\nthe third, of the virtues in which it consists. The chapters are\nshort, and broken up into verses, and open where we will, we find\nsomething to turn our thoughts toward God. Nor must it be supposed\nthat, because the book was written by a religious for his own\ninstruction, it contains only those more difficult counsels of\nperfection which few people in the world are found strong enough to\nfollow. Like its prototype, \"The Imitation of Christ\" is a work for\nall classes--for the easy-going Christian no less than for the saint.\nHere is an extract from the chapter on \"The Choice and Perfection of\nVirtues;\" we choose it because it illustrates how well even those\npassages which are directly addressed to religious persons are adapted\nto the use of persons in the world:\n\n\"1. So long as we are weighed down by our mortal flesh, we cannot\nacquire the perfection of all virtues; and therefore, we have need of\nselection that we may not labor in vain.\n\n\"Choose then a virtue to practise, until, {432} by the assistance of\nGod, thou become most perfect in it.\n\n\"Some virtues are continually called for in our daily actions, and are\nnecessary for all; and therefore, should be acquired with particular\nindustry.\n\n\"The more thou shalt make progress in meekness, patience, modesty,\ntemperance, humility, and others, that come into more frequent use,\nthe sooner wilt thou become holy.\n\n\"2. Some seek after virtues which have a greater appearance of\nnobility, and are reckoned amongst men to be more glorious.\n\n\"They instruct with pleasure, but it must be in famous churches, and\nto a large assembly of noble and learned men.\n\n\"They visit the sick with pleasure, and hear confessions, but only of\nthose that are conspicuous for riches or honors.\n\n\"See that thou set not a high value upon these things: it is more\nperfect and safer to imitate Christ our Lord, and to go about\nvillages, than to hunt for the praise of eloquence and learning in\ncities.\n\n\"It is more useful to thee to visit and console the poor and the rude,\nthan the rich and noble, who, moreover, are less prepared to listen to\nand obey thy words.\n\n\"3. Some are content with the virtues that agree with their natural\ninclinations; because they seem easier, and require not any, or a less\nviolent struggle.\n\n\"But when they have need of self-denial and mortification, they have\nnot the courage to practise virtue; but they lose heart, turn\nfaint-hearted, and think it is best to spare themselves.\n\n\"Do thou follow them not, for they that are such make no progress, but\nrather fall away from the way of perfection, because they follow not\nthe teaching and example of Christ.\n\n\"For it was not those who spare themselves, and fear the hardship of\nthe struggle, whom Christ declared blessed, but those that mourn, and\nfight manfully for justice sake.\"\n\n----\n\nLA MERE DE DIEU. From the Italian of Father Alphonse Capecelatro, of\nthe Oratory of Naples. 24mo., pp. 180. Philadelphia: Peter F.\nCunningham. New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Company.\n\nWhy not say \"The Mother of God?\" And why should Father Capecelatro,\nbeing an Italian, figure with the French name of _Alphonse_? If we\ncannot have the title of the book in English, at least let us have it\nin Italian--the language in which it was written--not in French.\n\nBut despite the bad taste displayed on the title-page, this is a very\ngood little book. It exhales a genuine aroma of piety; it is written\nwith great simplicity; and it is devoted to a subject which is dear to\nall of us. It is supposed to be addressed by a Tuscan priest to his\nsister. The first part treats of the respect to which the Blessed\nVirgin is entitled; the second traces her life, principally in the\npages of the Holy Scriptures; and the third is devoted to an\nexhibition of the marks of veneration which she has received from the\nChurch since the very beginning of Christianity. \"It is charmingly,\nalmost plaintively sweet,\" says Father Gratry, of the Oratory of\nParis. \"It is written as a prayer, not as a book; it is learned and\naffectionate, religious and instructive.\"\n\n\nCOUNT LESLIE; OR, THE TRIUMPH OF FILIAL PIETY.\nA Catholic Tale. From the French. 24mo., pp. 108.\n\nPHILIP HARTLEY; OR, A BOY'S TRIALS AND TRIUMPHS.\nA Tale for Young People. By the author of \"The Confessors of\nConnaught.\" 24mo., pp. 122.\n\nTHE CHILDREN OF THE VALLEY; OR, THE GHOST OF THE RUINS.\nTranslated from the French. 24mo., pp. 123.\n\nMAY CARLETON'S STORY; OR, THE CATHOLIC MAIDEN'S CROSS.\nTHE MILLER'S DAUGHTER.\nCatholic Tales. 24mo., pp. 115.\n\nCOTTAGE EVENING TALES FOR YOUNG PEOPLE.\nCompiled by the author of \"Grace Morton.\" 24mo., pp. 126.\nPhiladelphia: Peter F. Cunningham. New York: D. & J. Sadlier &\nCompany.\n\nThe above five volumes are portions of Cunningham's \"Young Catholic's\nLibrary.\" They seem to have an excellent moral tendency, and as a\ngeneral thing are well written--better written, we believe, than the\nmajority of tales intended, as these are, for sodality and\nSunday-school libraries. The first mentioned, however, \"Count Leslie,\"\nis not rendered into irreproachable English. What respect can we\nexpect children to entertain for the English grammar if our school\nlibraries give them such cruel sentences to read as the following: \"It\nwas this young man, and _him_, only, who knew the cause of his mother's\nsadness?\" With this exception we can honestly recommend so much as we\nhave seen of the Young Catholic's Library to public favor. Mr.\nCunningham has other volumes in preparation.\n\n----------\n\n{433}\n\nTHE CATHOLIC WORLD\n\n\n\nVOL. I., NO. 4. JULY, 1865.\n\n\n\nTHE TRUTH OF SUPPOSED LEGENDS AND FABLES.\n\n\nBY H. E. CARDINAL WISEMAN.   [Footnote 79 ]\n\n  [Footnote 79: From \"Essays on Religion and Literature. By Various\n  Writers.\" Edited by H. E. Manning, D.D. London; Longman, Green & Co.\n  1865.]\n\nThe subject of the address which I am about to deliver is as follows:\nEvents and things which have been considered legendary, or even\nfabulous, have been proved by further research to be historical and\ntrue.\n\nBefore coming directly to the subject upon which I wish to occupy your\nattention, I will give a little account of a very extraordinary\ndiscovery which may throw some light upon the general character and\ntendency of our investigation. In the year 1775 Pius VI. laid the\nfoundation of the sacristy of St. Peter's. Of course, as is the case\nwhenever the ground is turned up in Rome, a number of inscriptions\ncame to light; these were carefully put aside, and formed the lining,\nif I may so say, of the corridor which unites the sacristy with the\nchurch. It was observed, however, that a great many of these\ninscriptions referred to the same subject, and a subject which was\ntotally unknown to antiquarians: they all spoke of certain Arval\nBrethren--_Fratres Arvales_. Some were mere fragments, others were\nentire inscriptions.\n\nThese, to the number of sixty-seven, were carefully put together and\nillustrated by the then librarian of the Vatican, Mgr. Marini. It was\nan age when in Rome antiquarian learning abounded. There were many,\nperhaps, who could have undertaken the task, but it naturally belonged\nto him as being attached to the church near which the inscriptions\nwere found. He put the fragments together, collated them one with\nanother, and with the entire inscriptions. He procured copies at\nleast, when he could not examine the originals, of such other slight\nfragments as seemed to have reference to the subject, the key having\nnow been found, and the result was two quarto volumes,  [Footnote 80]\ngiving us the entire history, constitution, and ritual of this\nsingular fraternity. Before this period two brief notices in Varro,\none passage in Pliny, and allusions in two later writers, Minutius\nFelix and Fulgentius, were all that was known concerning it. One\nmerely told the origin of it from the time of the kings, and the\nothers only stated that it had something to do with questions about\nland; and there the matter ended. Now, out of this ignorance, out of\nthis darkness, there springs, through the researches of Mgr. Marini,\nperhaps the most {434} complete account or history that we have of any\ninstitution of antiquity. So complete was the work, in fact, that only\ntwo inscriptions relating to this subject have been found since; one\nby Melchiorri, who undertook to write an appendix to the work; and the\nother in 1855 in excavating the Dominican garden at Santa Sabina,\nwhich indeed threw great light upon the subject. From these\ninscriptions we learn that this was one of the most powerful bodies of\naugurs or priests in Rome. Yet neither Pliny, nor Livy, nor Cicero,\nwhen expressly enumerating all the classes of augurs, ever alludes to\nthem. Now, we know how they were elected. On one tablet is an order of\nClaudius to elect a new member, so to fill up their number of twelve,\nin consequence of the death of one. They wrote every year, and\npublished, at least put up in their gardens, a full and minute account\nof all the sacrifices and the feasts celebrated by them. They were\nallied to the imperial family, and all the great families in Rome took\npart in their assemblies. They had a sacred grove, the site of which\nwas perfectly unknown until the last inscription, found in 1855,\nrevealed it. It was out of Porta Portese, on the road to the English\nvineyard at La Magliana. There they had sacrifices to the _Dea Dia_,\nwhose name occurs nowhere else among all the writers on ancient\nmythology. It is supposed to be Ceres. They had magnificent sacrifices\nat the beginning of the year. There are tablets which say where the\nmeetings will be held, whether at the house of the rector or\npro-rector, leaving the date in blank, to be filled in the course of\nthe year. We are told who were at the meetings, especially who among\nthe youths from the first families--four of whom acted somewhat as\nacolytes; and we are told how they were dressed, which of their two\ndresses they wore. Then there is a most minute ritual given. We are\ntold how each victim was slain; how the brethren took off the toga\npraetexta, their crowns and golden ears of corn, then put them on\nagain, and examined the entrails of the sacrifices; all as minutely\ndetailed as the rubrics of any office of unction and coronation could\npossibly be. Then we are told how many baskets of fruit they carried\naway, and what distribution there was of sweetmeats at the end, every\none taking a certain quantity. All this is recorded, and with it their\nsong in barbarous Oscan or early Etruscan, perfectly unintelligible,\nin which their acclamations were made. So that now we know perfectly\neverything about them. I may mention as an interesting fact, that\nMarini's own copy of his work on the Arval Brethren, two quarto\nvolumes, having their margins covered with notes for a second edition,\nwhich was never published, and filled with slips of paper with\nannotations and new inscriptions of other sorts, which he subsequently\nfound, is now in the library at Oscott.\n\n  [Footnote 80: _Atti e Monumenti dei Fratelli Arvali_. Da Mgr.\n  Marini. 2 tom. Roma, 1795. ]\n\nWhat do I wish to draw from this account? It is that history may have\nremained silent upon points which it seems impossible, in the\nmultiplicity of writers that have been preserved to us, should not\nhave cropped out, not have been mentioned in some way, not even have\nbeen made known to us through innumerable anterior discoveries. One\nfortunate circumstance brought to light the whole history of this\nbody. How unfair, then, is it, on the reticence of history, at once to\ncondemn anything, or to say, \"We should have heard of it; writers who\nought to have told us would not have concealed it from us.\" For a\ncircumstance may arise which will bring out the whole history of a\nthing, and make that plain and clear before us which has been scouted\ncompletely by others, or of which we have been kept in the completest\nignorance.\n\nI could illustrate this by several other examples which I have\ncollected together, but I foresee that I shall not get anything like\nthrough the subject I propose to myself. But here is one such instance\nbearing on Scripture truth. It was said by infidel writers {435} of\nthe last century, \"How is it that there could have been such a\nremarkable occurrence as the massacre of the Innocents without a\nsingle profane historian ever mentioning it--Josephus, if no one\nelse?\" Of course the answer was, \"We do not know why, except that we\nmight give plausible reasons why it should not have been noticed.\"\nThat is all we need say. It is our duty to accept the fact. We must\nnot reject things because we cannot find corroboration of them all at\nonce. We may have to wait with patience; the world has had to wait\ncenturies even before some doubted truth has come out clearly.\n\nI. The subject which I wish to bring before you is one of those which,\nperhaps beyond any other, may be said to be considered thoroughly\nlegendary, and even perhaps worse:--it is the history of St. Ursula\nand her eleven thousand companions, virgins and martyrs. At first\nsight it may appear bold to undertake a vindication of that narrative,\nor to bring it within the compass of history by detaching from it what\nhas been embellishment, what has been perhaps even wilful invention,\nand bringing out in its perfect completeness a history corroborated on\nall sides by every variety of research. Such, however, is the object\nat which I aim to-day; other instances may occupy us afterward.\n\nIt has, in fact, been treated as fabulous by Protestants, beginning\nwith the Centuriators of Magdeburg down to the present time. There is\nhardly any story more sneered at than this, that an English lady, with\neleven thousand companions, all virgins, should have met with\nmartyrdom at Cologne, and should have even gone to Rome on their\njourney by some route which is very difficult to comprehend; for they\nare always represented in ships. Hence the whole thing has been\ntreated as a fable. But the more refined Germanism of later times\ntakes what is perhaps meant to be a mitigated view, and treats it as a\nmyth, that is, a sort of mythological tale. Thus the writer of a late\nwork, [Footnote 81] entitled the History, or fable, of St. Ursula and\nthe Eleven Thousand Virgins, printed in Hanover, in 1854, considers\nthat St. Ursula is the ancient German goddess Rehalennia, and explains\nthe history by the mythology of that ancient divinity.\n\n  [Footnote 81: _Die Sage von der heilige Ursula und den, 11,000\n  Jungfrauen._ Von Oskar Schade. Hanover, 1854. ]\n\nBut let us come to Catholics. A great number have been staggered\ncompletely by this history, and have said, \"It is incredible; it is\nimpossible to believe it; we must reject it: what foundation is there\nfor it?\" Some have tried to search one out; and perhaps one of the\nmost ingenious explanations, though the most devoid of any foundation,\nis that which Sirmondus and Valesius   [Footnote 82] and several other\nCatholics have brought forward--that there were only two saints, St.\nUrsula and St. Undecimilla, and that this last has been turned into\nthe eleven thousand. This name Undecimilla has nowhere been found;\nthere have been some like it, but that name is not known. The\nexplanation is the purest conjecture, and has now been completely\nrejected. But still many find it very difficult to accept the history.\nIf they were interrogated, and required to answer distinctly the\nquestion, \"What do you think about St. Ursula?\" there are very few who\nwould venture to face the question and say, \"I believe there is a\nfoundation for it in truth.\"--For that is all one might be expected\nto say about a matter which has come down to us through ages, probably\nwith additions.--\"I believe the substance of it; it has been so\naltered by time as to reach us clogged with difficulties; still I\nbelieve there were martyrs in great number who had come from England\nthat were martyred at Cologne.\" But there are few who like to talk\nabout it: most say it is a legendary story. Even Butler only gives\nabout two pages of history. He rejects the explanation which I have\n{436} just mentioned; but he throws the whole narrative into the\nshade, and passes it over with one of those little sermons which he\ngives us, to make up for not knowing much about a saint; so that his\nreaders are left quite in the dark.\n\n  [Footnote 82: _Acta Sanct._ Bolland, Oct. tom. ix. p. 144. ]\n\nThen unfortunately while many Catholics have been inclined to look at\nit as more legendary than historical, they have been badly served by\nthose who have undertaken the defence or explanation of the event.\nThere may be many here who have gone into what is called the golden\nchamber in the church of St. Ursula at Cologne, and have seen that\nmultitude of skulls and bones that line the walls, and have been\ninclined to give an incredulous shrug and to say, \"How could these\nmartyrs have been got together? where did they come from? how do we\nknow they were martyrs?\"\n\nWe generally content ourselves with looking at such things through the\neyes of Mr. Murray's traveller who tells us about them. Accordingly we\nlook round at these startling objects, and say, \"It is very singular;\nit is very extraordinary.\" But there is very little awe, very little\ndevotion felt by us; while, to a good native of Cologne, it is the\nmost venerable, sacred, and holy place almost in Christendom. He prays\nearnestly to the virgins of Cologne, and considers that they are his\npowerful patrons and intercessors.\n\nHowever, little has been done to help us. Works have been published in\nfavor of the truth of this history, but then they have run into\nexcess. The most celebrated of all is one by a Jesuit named Crombach,\nwho was led to compose it by Bebius, another learned Jesuit, whose\npapers were unfortunately burned in a conflagration at the college in\nCologne. Crombach in 1647 published two large volumes entitled _\"St.\nUrsula vindicata.\"_ In them he has included an immense variety of\nthings. He has accepted with scarce any discrimination works that are\nentitled to little or no credit--contradictory works; he has mingled\nthem all up; and he insists upon the story or the history being true\nwith all details. The consequence is that the work has been very much\nthrown aside, or severely attacked.\n\nYet it is acknowledged that it contains a great deal of valuable\ninformation, together with an immense quantity of documents which may\nbe made good use of when properly examined, when the chaff is\nseparated from the wheat. On the whole, however, it has not been\nfavorable to the cause of the martyrs.\n\nNow, however, there has appeared such a vindication, such a wonderful\nre-examination of the whole history, as it is impossible to resist. It\nis impossible to read the account of St. Ursula given in the 9th\nvolume for October of the Bollandists, published in 1858, without\nbeing perfectly amazed at the quantity of real knowledge that has been\ngained upon the subject, and still more at the powerful manner in\nwhich this knowledge has been handled;--an erudition which, merely\nglancing over the pages and notes, reminds us of the scholars of three\nhundred years ago, in whom we have often wondered at the learning\nwhich they brought to bear on any one point.\n\nThis treatise occupies from page 73 to 303, 230 pages of closely\nprinted folio in two columns. I acknowledge that it is not quite a\nrecreation to read it, but still it is very well worth reading. All\ndocuments are printed at full length. Now, it so happened, that just\nafter the volume had come out, I was at Brussels, and called at the\nlibrary of the Bollandists, and had a most interesting conversation\nwith Father Victor de Buck, the author of this history. He gave me an\ninteresting outline of what he had been enabled to do. He told me that\nwhen they came to October 21, and he had to write a life of St. Ursula\nand her companions, his provincial wrote to him from Cologne and said,\n\"Take care what you say, for the people are tremendously alarmed lest\nyou should knock down all their traditions, and I {437} do not know\nwhat will be the case if you do.\" He replied, \"Don't be at all afraid;\nI shall confirm every point, and I am sure they will be pleased with\nwhat I have to say.\" He was kind enough to put down in a letter the\nchief points of his vindication for me; but I have lost it, and so\nthere was nothing left but to read through the whole of this great\nwork. But, beside, a very excellent compendium has appeared, which\ntakes pretty nearly the same view on every point, and approves of\neverything the author has said; indeed some points are perhaps put\nmore popularly in it, though the history is reduced to a much smaller\ncompass. I have the work before me. It is entitled, \"St. Ursula and\nher Companions: A Critical, Historical Monograph. By John Hubert\nKessel. Cologne, 1863.\" It is a work which is not too long to be\ntranslated and made known. What I have to say, after having gone\nthrough this preliminary matter, is, that I lay claim to nothing\nwhatever beyond having been diligent, and having endeavored to grasp\nall the points in question, and reduce them to a moderate compass. I\nhave changed the order altogether, taking that which seems to me most\nsuitable to the subject, and co-ordinating the different parts and\nfacts so as to make it popularly intelligible. In this I have the\nsatisfaction to find that in a chapter at the end of the book, in\nwhich the history is summed up, exactly the same order is taken which\nI have adopted here. It will not be necessary to give a reference for\nevery assertion that I shall have occasion to make; but I may say that\nI have the page carefully noted where the subject is fully drawn out\nand illustrated.\n\nNow, let me first of all give, in a brief sketch, what Father de Buck\nconsiders the real history, which has been wrapt up in such a quantity\nof legendary matter--that which comes out from the different documents\nlaid before us, as the kernel or the nucleus of the history, as Kessel\ncalls it. He supposes that this army of martyrs, as we may well call\nthem, was composed of two different bodies: a body of virgins who\nhappened, under circumstances which I shall describe to you, to be at\nCologne, and a body of the inhabitants, citizens of Cologne, and\nothers, very probably many English and other virgins who had there\nsought safety. It may be asked how came these English to be there?\nAbout the year 446 the Britons began to be immensely annoyed by the\nincursions of the Picts and Scots, which led to their calling in\n(after the manner of the old fable, about the man calling in the dogs\nto hunt the hare in his garden) the Anglo-Saxons, who in return took\npossession of the country; and the inhabitants that they did not\nexterminate they made serfs. At this period we know the English were\nput to sad straits. Having so long lain quiet and undisturbed under\nthe Roman dominion, they had almost lost their natural valor, and were\nunable to defend themselves. There was, therefore, a natural tendency\nto emigrate and get away. They had already done this before; for as De\nBuck shows, with extraordinary erudition, the occupation of Brittany\nor Armorica was a quiet emigration from England, which sought the\ncontinent, and also established colonies in Holland and Batavia, and\nby that means obtained a peace which they could not have at home. We\nhave a very interesting document upon this subject. The celebrated\nsenator Aetius was at that time governor of Gaul; the Britons sent to\nhim for help, and this is one passage of a most touching letter which\nhas been preserved by Gildas: \"Repellunt nos barbari ad mare, repellit\nnos mare ad barbaros; oriuntur duo genera funerum; aut jugulamur aut\nmergimur.\"  [Footnote 83] They were tossed backward and forward by the\nsea to the barbarians, and by the barbarians to the sea; when they\nfell upon the barbarians they were cut to pieces, and when they were\ndriven into the {438} sea \"mergimur\"--we go to the bottom. It does not\nmean that they ran into the sea, but that they went to their ships,\nand many of them perished in the sea by shipwreck or by sinking--\"aut\njugulamur aut mergimur.\" That shows that the English were leaving\nEngland to go to the continent. I am only giving you the web of the\nhistory, without its proofs; but I quote this passage to show it is\nnot at all unlikely that at that moment, when they were in a manner\nstraitened between the barbarians of the north and those coming upon\nthem in the south, a great many of them went out of the country, and\nthat especially being Christians they would wend their way to Catholic\ncountries. Religious and other persons of a like character, we know,\nin every invasion of barbarians, were the first to suffer a double\nmartyrdom. This is a supposition, therefore, about which there is no\nimprobability, that a certain number, I do not say how many, of\nChristian ladies of good family, some of them, perhaps, royal, got\nover to Batavia or Holland (where there have been always traditions\nand names of places in confirmation of this), and made their way to\nCologne, which was a capital and a seat of the Roman government, a\nChristian city, and in every probability considered a stronghold, both\non account of its immense fortifications, and on account of the river.\n\n  [Footnote 83: _Gildas de Excidio Britanniae_, pars i., cap. xvii.\n  Ed. Migne: _Patrologia_, tom. lxix., p. 342.]\n\nWell, then comes the history, very difficult indeed to reconcile, of a\npilgrimage to Rome, which it is said they made; but let us suppose\nthat instead of the whole of them a certain number of them might go\nthere. It is not at all improbable that at that time, as De Buck\nobserves, a deputation, or a certain number of citizens and others,\ndid go to Rome to obtain assistance there, as their only hope against\nthe invasion, which I shall describe just now. There is no great\ndifficulty in supposing this; and assuming that some of the English\nvirgins also went, that would be a foundation for the great legendary\nhistory, I might say the fabulous history, which has been built upon\nit. Now, there is a strong confirmation of such a thing being done.\nSt. Gregory of Tours  [Footnote 84] mentions that at this very time\nBishop Servatius did go to Rome to pray the Apostles Sts. Peter and\nPaul to protect his country and city against the coming invasion, and\nhe saw no other hope of safety. He must have passed through Cologne\nexactly at that time, and, therefore, there is nothing absurd or\nimprobable in supposing that some inhabitants of Cologne went with him\nas a deputation to Rome, and that some of the English virgins may have\naccompanied them. In the year following, Attila, the scourge of God,\nthe most cruel of all the leaders of barbaric tribes who invaded the\nRoman empire, was marching along the Rhine with the known view of\ninvading Gaul, and not only invading it, but, as he said, of\ncompletely conquering and destroying it; for his maxim was, \"Where\nAttila sets his foot no more grass shall ever grow\"--nothing but\ndestruction and devastation. I will say a little more about the Huns\nlater. In the meantime we leave them, in 450, on their way to cross\nthe Rhine, with the intention of invading and occupying France. Attila\nunited great cunning with his barbarity; he pretended to the Goths\nthat he was coming to help them against the Romans, and to the Romans\nthat he was going to help them to expel the Goths. By that means he\nparalyzed both for a time, until it was too well seen that he was the\nenemy of all. It is most probable, knowing the character as we shall\nsee just now of the Huns, that the inhabitants of the neighboring\ntowns would seek refuge in the capital, and that all living in the\ncountry would get within the strong walls of cities. We have important\nconfirmation, at this very time, in the history of St. Genevieve,\n[Footnote 65] who was {439} a virgin living out in the country, but\nwho, upon the approach of the Huns, hastened, we are told, immediately\nto seek safety in Paris, and was there the means of saving the city,\nby exhorting the inhabitants to build up walls, to close their gates,\nand to fight. This they did, and so saved themselves. That is just an\nexample. When it is known that throughout his march Attila destroyed\nevery city, committing incredible barbarities (ruins of some of the\nplaces remaining to this day), not sparing man, woman, or child, it is\nmore than probable that there would be a great conflux and influx to\nthe city of Cologne, where the Roman government still kept its seat,\nand where, of course, there was something like order, although we have\nunfortunate proofs, in the works of Salvianus,  [Footnote 86] that the\nmorality of the city had become so very corrupt that it deserved great\nchastisement. However, so far all is coherent. In 451, after Attila\nhad gone to France, and had been completely defeated, he made his way\nback, greatly exasperated, burning and destroying everything in his\nway, sparing no one. Then he appeared before Cologne; and this is the\ninvasion in which it is supposed the martyrdom took place.\n\n  [Footnote 84: S. Greg. Turon., _Hist. Franc_., lib. ii., cap. v. Ed.\n  Migne: _Patrologia_. tom. lxviii., pp. 197, 576.]\n\n  [Footnote 85: Vid. Tillemont, _Hist. des Emp.,_ vi. p. 151. _Acta\n  Sanct. Boll.,_ Jan. tom. i. in vit. S. Genovevae.]\n\n  [Footnote 86: _De Gubernatione Dei_, Ed. Baluzii, Paris, 1864, pp.\n  140, 141. ]\n\nHaving given you what the Bollandist considers the historical thread,\nevery part of which can be confirmed and made most probable, I will\nnow, before going into proofs of the narrative, direct your attention\nfor a few minutes to what we may call the legendary parts of the\nhistory. When we speak of legends we must not confound them with\nfables, that is, with pure inventions. We must not suppose that people\nsat down to write a lie under the idea that they were edifying the\nChurch or anybody. There have been such cases, no doubt; for\nTertullian mentions the delinquency of a person's writing false acts\nof St. Paul, and being suspended from his office of priest in\nconsequence. Such follies have happened in all times. We have had many\ninstances in our own day of attempts at forging documents, and\ncommitting the worst of social crimes; but old legends as we have\nthem, and even the false acts as they were called, were no doubt\nwritten without any intention of actually deceiving, or of passing off\nwhat was spurious for genuine. The person who first suggested this was\na man certainly no friend of Catholics, Le Clerc, better known by his\nliterary name of Clericus; who observes that school exercises were\nsometimes drawn from martyrdoms, as in our day from a classical\nsubject, as Juvenal says of Hannibal:\n\n      \"I demens et saevas curre per Alpes\n  Ut pueris placeas et declamatio flas.\"\n\nNot that students professed to write a real history, but they gave\nwonderful descriptions of deeds of valor and marvellous events which\nhad never occurred, and were never intended to be believed. In the\nsame way, at a time when nothing but a religious subject could create\ninterest, that sort of composition came to be applied to acts of\nsaints and martyrs; so that many books and narratives which we have of\nthat description may be thus accounted for. It is much like our\nhistorical novels, or the historical plays of Shakespeare, for\ninstance. Nobody imagines that their authors wished to pass them off\nfor history, but they did not contradict history; they kept to\nhistory, so that you may find it in them; and you might almost write a\nhistory from some of those books which are called historical works of\nfiction. In early times such compositions were of a religious\ncharacter. Then came times of greater ignorance, and those works came\nto be regarded as true historical accounts. But, are we to reject them\non that ground altogether? Are we to say, any more than we should with\nregard to the fictitious works of which I have just spoken, that there\nis no truth in them? We should proceed in the same way as people do\nwho seek for gold. A {440} man goes to a gold-field, and tries to\nobtain gold from auriferous sand. Now suppose he took a sieve full,\nand said at once, \"It's all rubbish,\" and threw it away; he might go\non for a long time and never get a grain of gold. But if he knows how\nto set to work, if he washes what he obtains, picks out grain by\ngrain, and puts by, he gets a small hoard of real genuine gold; and\nnobody denies that when, many such supplies are put together they make\na treasure of sterling metal. So it is with these legendary accounts.\nThey are never altogether falsehoods--I will not say never, but\nrarely. Whenever they have an air of history about them, the chances\nare that, by examining and sifting them well, we may get out a certain\namount of real and solid material for history.\n\nThe legendary works upon these virgins are numerous and begin early.\nThe first is one which I shall call, as all our writers do, by its\nfirst words, \"Regnante Domino.\" This is an account of traditions,\nevidently written between the ninth and eleventh centuries. It is\nimpossible to determine more closely than this. But we know that it\ncannot have been written earlier than the ninth century, nor later\nthan the eleventh. It contains a long history of these virgins while\nin England, who they were, and what they were; of a certain marriage\ncontract that was made with the father of St. Ursula, a very powerful\nking; how it was arranged that she should have eleven companions, and\neach of these a thousand followers; how they should embark for three\nyears and amuse themselves with nautical exercises; how the ships went\nto the other side of the channel. It is an absurd story and full of\nfable, but there are three or four most important points in it.\nGeoffrey of Monmouth comes next. He gives another history, totally\ndifferent from that of the \"Regnante Domino;\" but retains two or three\npoints of identity. His is evidently a British tradition, which, of\ncourse, it is most important to compare with the German one; and we\nshall find how singularly they agree. Then, after these, come a number\nof legends called _Passiones_, long accounts filled with a variety of\nincongruous particulars which may be safely put aside; but in the same\nway germs or remnants of something good, which have been thus\npreserved, are found in them all, and when brought together may give\nus some valuable results. We next meet with what is more difficult to\nexplain--the supposed revelations of St. Elizabeth of Schoenau, and of\nBlessed Hermann of Steinfeld. It is not for us to enter into the\ndiscussion, which is a very subtle one, of how persons who are saints\nreally canonized and field in immense veneration--one of them,\nHermann, singularly so--can be supposed to have been allowed to follow\ntheir own imaginations on some points, while at the same time there\nseems no doubt that they lived in an almost ecstatic state. This\nquestion is gone into fully; and the best authorities are quoted by\nthe Bollandist. It would require a long discussion, and it would not\nbe to our purpose, to pursue it further. These supposed revelations\nare rejected altogether. Now we come to positive forgeries, consisting\nof inscriptions, or of engraved stones with legends carved upon them.\nOne of these mentions a pope who never existed, and also a bishop of\nMilan who never lived, beside a number of other imaginary people. From\nthe texture and state of these inscriptions there can be no doubt\nwhatever that they are absolute forgeries, and the author of them is\npretty well discovered. He was a sacristan of the name of Theodorus.\nIn order to enhance the glory of these virgins, they are represented,\nas you see in legendary pictures, as being in a ship accompanied by a\npope, bishops, abbots, and persons of high dignity, who are supposed\nto have come from Rome with them. All this we discard, making out what\nwe can from the sounder traditions.\n\nAnd this is the result. There are {441} two or three points on which,\nwhether we take the English or the German traditions, all are agreed.\nFirst, we have that a great many of these virgins were English: that\nthe Germans all agree upon; the earliest historical documents say the\nsame. Secondly, that they were martyred by the Huns: that we are told\nboth by the English and the German writers. It is singular that they\nshould agree on such a point as this; and you will see how--I do not\nsay corroborated, but absolutely proved it is. The third fact is, that\nthere was a tremendous slaughter at the time, a singular slaughter of\npeople committed at Cologne by these Huns. This comes out from all the\nlegendary histories, which agree upon this point, and we can hardly\nknow how they should do so except through separate traditions; for\nthey evidently have nothing else in common. Their separate narratives\nwe may reject as legendary.\n\nThus we come to an investigation of the true history, and see how it\nis proved. And first I must put before you what I may call the\nfoundation-stone of the whole history on which it is based--the\ninscription now kept in the church of St. Ursula. It had remained very\nmuch neglected, though it had been given by different authors, until,\nwhen the Bollandists were going to write their history, they took\nthree casts of it; one they gave to the archbishop of Cologne, another\nthey kept for themselves; the third--I cannot say what became of it,\nbut I think it went to Rome, having been taken by De Rossi. I could\nnot afford to have a cast brought here, but I have had a most accurate\ntracing made of it. Those of you who are judges of graphic character\nwill see the nature of the letters; they are capital, or uncial\nletters. First, you may ask what is the age of this inscription? It is\npretty well agreed that it cannot be later than the year 500--that\nwould be fifty years after that assigned to the martyrdom of the\nvirgins. De Buck, who is really almost hypercritical in rejecting,\nsays he does not see a single objection to the genuineness of this\ninscription. There is not a trace of Lombard or later character about\nit; it is purely Roman. The union of some of the letters is just what\nwe find about that time in Roman inscriptions. It is then, as nearly\nas one can judge, of the age I have mentioned--about the year 500. De\nRossi, passing through Cologne three or four years ago, examined it\nand pronounced it to be genuine, and said it could not be of a later\nperiod than that. Dr. Enner, a layman of Cologne, when writing his\n\"History of Cologne,\" could not bring himself to believe that the\ninscription was so old, and he sent an exact copy in plaster (perhaps\nthat was the third) to Professor Ritschl, the well-known editor of\nPlautus, and a Protestant, at Bonn. I have a copy of the Professor's\nletter here, in which he says that he has minutely examined the\ninscription, and that he cannot see anything in it to make it more\nmodern than the date assigned to it, and that it contains\npeculiarities which no forger would ever hit upon, such as the double\n_i,_ and other forms. He says, \"I am not sufficiently acquainted with\nthe history of St. Ursula to connect it in any way; but I have no\nhesitation in saying that the inscription cannot be later than the\nbeginning of the sixth century;\" which, you see, takes us back very\nnearly to the time when the martyrdom is supposed to have occurred.\nThen I may mention that the very inscription is copied in the next\nhistorical document that we have, as being already in the church. This\nis the translation of the inscription, of which I present an exact\ncopy:\n\n\"Clematius came from the East; he was terrified by fiery visions, and\nby the great majesty and the holiness of these virgins, and, according\nto a vow that he made, he rebuilt at his own expense, on his own land,\nthis basilica.\" Then follows a commination at the end, which is not\nunusual in such cases. Now, every expression here is to be found in\ninscriptions of the time.\n\n{442}\n\n[Illustration: ]\n\n{443}\n\nFor instance, \"de proprio;\" \"votum;\" \"loco suo\" (sometimes it is \"loco\nempto\"), meaning of course land which one made his own, or which was\nhis own before. There had been then a basilica--not the church that\nnow exists, but a basilica--at the tombs where these saints were\nburied, which we shall have to describe later. He rebuilt the basilica\nfifty years after the martyrdom, destroyed no doubt during the\nconstant incursions of barbarians. It was probably a very small one;\nfor we know that at Rome every entrance to the tombs of martyrs had\nits basilica. De Rossi has been successful in finding one or two. One\nwas built by St. Damasus, who wrote: \"Not daring to put my ashes among\nso many martyrs, I have built this basilica for myself, my mother and\nsister;\" and there are three niches at the end for three sarcophagi.\nIt is universally allowed that there never was a catacomb without its\nbasilica. In fact, in that of Pope St. Alexander, and Sts. Evantius\nand Theodulus, found lately, there is a basilica completely standing,\nand the bodies of these saints were found--one under the altar--and\nthe others near it. Then from the basilica you go into the catacomb.\nSo that nothing is more natural than that in the place where these\nmartyrs were buried, Clematius should rebuild their basilica. After\nthis monument we proceed to the next genuine document, though one of a\nlater date, and by an unknown author--the \"Sermo in Natali.\" This,\nthere is no doubt, was written between the years 751 and 839; and I\nwill give the ingenious argument by which this date is proved. But\nfirst it quotes the inscription I have read, with the exception of the\nthreat at the end; in the second place it mentions that the virgins\nwere probably Britons--that it was not certain, but the general\nopinion was that they had come from Britain; thirdly, it attributes\nthe martyrdom to the Huns; fourthly, it insinuates what is of great\nimportance in filling up the history, that it is by no means to be\nsupposed that they were all virgins, but that many were widows and\nmarried people. The reason for fixing the earliest date at 751 is,\nthat it quotes Bede's Ecclesiastical History, which was written in\nthat year, giving apparently his account of the conversion of Lucius;\nthough one cannot say that it is certainly a copy from Bede, because\nBede himself copied from more ancient books, and both may have drawn\nfrom the same source. Then it could not have been written after 839\nfor two reasons. In 834 there was a tremendous incursion of other\nbarbarians--of Normans; and it is plain from our book that there had\nbeen no such invasion when it was written; nothing was known of it,\nbecause the writer speaks of countries, particularly Holland, as being\nflourishing, which were completely destroyed by them. There is also\nthis singular circumstance. In speaking of the great devotion to the\nvirgins in Batavia, the writer states that this happened at a time\nwhen Batavia was an island formed by the two branches of the Rhine.\nNow in 839 an inundation completely destroyed it, one of the horns or\narms being entirely obliterated. Therefore that gives us a certain\ncompass within which the book was written. The author himself was a\nnative of Cologne--for in referring to the inhabitants he once or\ntwice speaks of \"us\"--and he would therefore be familiar with the\ntraditions of the people. He says there was no written history at that\ntime; he defends the traditions, and shows how natural it was that the\npeople should have kept them. I ought to mention that he calls the\nhead of the band of martyrs Pinnosa. He says, \"She is called in her\nown country Vinosa, in ours Pinnosa;\" and there is evidence that this\nwas the name first given to the leader; how, by what transformation,\nit came to be St. Ursula, we cannot tell; it is certain that up to\nthat time hers was not the name of the leader. Afterward Pinnosa\nappears on the list, but not as the chief, St. Ursula being the\nprominent name.\n\n{444}\n\nAfter that period there comes a mass of historical proofs that one can\nhave no difficulty about. From 852 there are an immense number of\ndiplomas giving grants of land to the nuns of the monastery of St.\nUrsula, at her place of burial. There is no doubt of the existence of\nthat church, from other documents. Then the martyrologies repeat the\nwhole tradition again and again. Thus, then, we fill up that gap of\nfour hundred years (from A.D. 400 to A.D. 800). There is the\ninscription; there is the \"Sermo in Natali,\" which quotes it, and\ngives old traditions; and afterward there are diplomas and other\ntestimonies which are abundant.\n\nWe now proceed to compare the whole tradition with history, with known\nhistory, for after all this is our chief business. When we possess a\ntradition of a country and people, we ask, \"What confirmation, what\ncorroboration, have we? what does history tell us?\" Let us then see\nwhat history does tell. It tells us, in the first place, that in the\nyear 450 Attila was known to be coming to invade and take possession\nof Gaul, having been ejected from Italy. His army is said by\ncontemporary writers to have been composed of 700,000 men. It was a\nhostile emigration. They brought their women and children in carts, as\nthe Huns always used to do, and they of course marched but slowly.\nThey went along both sides of the Danube, and got at length into\nFrance. De Buck, by a most interesting series of proofs, makes it\nalmost as evident as anything can be that they crossed over at\nCoblentz, therefore not coming near Cologne. They entered, as I have\nsaid, into Gaul, destroying everything in their march. Some of their\nbarbarities and massacres are almost incredible. After devastating\nnearly the whole of the country, they besieged Orleans. The\ninhabitants having been encouraged to resist, at last succeeded in\nobtaining certain terms; that is, Attila and his chiefs went into the\ncity and took what they liked, but left the city standing. After this\nthey were pursued by the general whom I have mentioned--Aetius, a\nGaul, but who got together all the troops he could, Goths, Visigoths,\nFranks, and others, who saw what the design of these horrible\nbarbarians was.\n\nA most tremendous battle was now fought, that of Catalaunia\n(Chalons-sur-Marne), in which contemporary historians tell us 300,000\nmen were left on the field; but that number has been reduced to\n200,000. Such battles, thank God! we seldom hear of now-a-days.\nAttila, routed, immediately took to flight, and got clear away from\nhis pursuers. He went through Belgium, destroying city after city,\nleaving nothing standing, and massacring the people in the most\nbarbarous way.\n\nHere comes the most difficult knot of the whole history. Authors agree\nthat Attila now made his way into Thuringia, that is to the heart of\nGermany; he must therefore be supposed to have got clear over the\nRhine, and marched a long way through the country. On this subject De\nBuck has one of the most exquisite and beautiful geographical\ninvestigations, I should think, that have ever appeared. He proves, so\nthat you can no more doubt it than you can doubt my having this paper\nbefore me, that there was Thuringia which lay on this side of the\nRhine; he proves it by a series documents taken from mediaeval\nwriters, and from inscriptions, that there was a Thuringia which\nstretched from Louvain to the Rhine. Indeed, it is impossible to\nconceive how Attila could have got, as by a leap, into the very midst\nof Germany. He traces the natural course of march (which you can\nfollow by any map), taking the cities destroyed as landmarks, and\nbrings him to this province; and when there, there was no possible way\nof crossing the Rhine but by Cologne; there was the only bridge, the\nonly military pass of any sort. So there can be no doubt that the\nHuns, exasperated by their tremendous losses, and by being driven\n{445} out of Gaul, which they intended to occupy, having revenged\nthemselves as they went on, were obliged to go through Cologne; and if\nyou calculate the date of the victory, and consider the country\nthrough which Attila passed, destroying everything as he went, you\nbring him almost to a certainty to Cologne about the 21st of October,\nnearly the day of the martyrdom. The \"Regnante Domino,\" which\nattributes the martyrdom to the Huns, corroborates all this account,\nwhich is the result of a most painstaking examination, extending over\nmany pages.\n\nNext we come to another important point. Why attribute this massacre\nto the Huns? Because there was no other invasion and passage of\nsavages except that one. It accords, then, both with geographical and\nchronological facts. We have the martyrs at Cologne at the very time\nwhen these barbarians came.\n\nBut we must needs say something about the Huns. There is no question\nthat the Huns were the most frightful, cruel, and licentious\nbarbarians that ever invaded the Roman empire. They were not of a\nnorthern race, Germans or Scandinavians; they were, no doubt, Mongols\nor Tartars; they came from Tartary, from Scythia, and settled on the\nCaspian sea; they then moved on to the mouths of the Danube, and again\nto Hungary, and rolled on in this way toward the richer countries of\nthe west. There are several authors of that period--Jornandes,\nProcopius, and others--who describe them to us.  [Footnote 87] They\ntell us that when they were infants their mothers bound down their\nnoses, and flattened them in such a way that they should not come\nbeyond the cheek-bones; that their eyes were so sunk that they looked\nlike two caverns; that they scarified all the lower part of the face\nwith hot irons when young, so that no hair could grow; that they had\nno beard, and were more hideous than demons; that they wore no dress\nexcept a shirt fabricated by the women in the carts in which they\nentirely lived; it was never changed, but was worn till it dropped\noff, under a mantle made entirely of wild-rat skins. Their chaussure\nconsisted of kid skins round their legs, with most extraordinary shoes\nor sandals, which had no shape whatever, and did not adapt themselves\nto the form; the consequence was that they could not walk, and they\nfought entirely on their wretched horses. They had no _cuisine_ except\nbetween the saddle and the back of the horse, where they put their\nsteaks and softened them a little before eating; but as to drink, they\ncould take any amount of it. With regard to their morality it cannot\nbe described. The writers of that age tell us that no Roman woman\nwould allow herself to be seen by a Hun. They were licentious to a\ndegree, and they carried off all the women they could into captivity;\nprobably they destroyed a great many; which was their custom when they\nbecame a burden to them. These, then, were the sort of savages that\nreached Cologne.\n\n  [Footnote 87: Ammianua Marcellinus, lib. xxxi., cap. ii. ]\n\nThey had another peculiarity; of all the hordes of savages that\ninvaded the Roman empire, they are the only ones that used the bow and\narrow. The Germans hardly made any use of the bow, except a few men\nwho mixed in the ranks; as a body their execution was with the sword,\nthe lance, and the pike. The use of the bow was distinctly Tartar, or\nScythian. Then we are told that their aim from horseback was\ninfallible; that when flying from a foe they could turn round and\nshoot with perfect facility; that they rode equally well astride or\nseated sideways like a woman; in fact that they flew and turned just\nlike the Parthians and Scythians from whom they were descended. In\nthis great battle of Catalaunia they either lost heart or steadiness,\nand they could not fire upon their enemies, so that they were pursued\nand tremendously routed. That their mode of fighting was by the bow\nand arrow, you {446} will see in the representations given in the\nbeautiful shrine at Hamelink, where the martyrs are fired into by the\nbarbarians with bows and arrows. Let us see what this has to do with\nour question. The \"Regnante Domino,\" which we have mentioned as\nlegendary, gives a most beautiful description of the mode of dealing\nwith the bodies. The writer says that when the inhabitants saw that\nthe enemy were gone they came out, and in a field they found this\ngreat number of virgins lying on the ground. They collected their\nblood, got sarcophagi, or made graves, and put them in; \"and there\nthey lay, as they were placed,\" the writer says, \"as any one can tell\nwho has seen them,\" evidently suggesting that he had seen them. Now,\nin the year 1640, on July 2, Papebroch, an authority beyond all\nquestion, and Crombach, whose word may be relied on as that of a most\nexcellent and holy man, were at the opening of the tombs. From all\ntradition this was no doubt the place of the stone of Clematius; there\nhas always been a convent there; and you remember that part of the\ninscription which threatens eternal punishment to those who should\nbury any but virgins there. It is now called \"St. Ursula's Acker,\" a\nsort of sacred field where the basilica was. Here they were buried,\nand so they remained undisturbed except by some translations of the\nmiddle ages, which do not concern us. In 1640 there was a formal\nexhumation, and eye-witnesses tell us what they saw. A nuncio came\nafterward to verify the facts.\n\nI will give you the account of how these bodies were found. Many of\nthem were in graves, in rows, but each body separate, there being a\nspace of a foot between them. In other places there were stone\nsarcophagi in which they were laid separately. Then Crombach describes\nthat there were some large fosses, sixty feet long, eight feet deep,\nand sixteen wide, containing a large number of bodies. They were\nplaced in a row with a space between them; at their feet was another\nrow; then a quantity of earth was thrown on, and another row was\nplaced, and so on, until you came to the fourth. Every skeleton in the\nthree rows was entire, and they all looked toward the east. They had\ntheir arms crossed upon their bosoms, and almost every one had a\nvessel containing blood, or sand tinged with blood. The fourth, or\nupper stratum, consisted of disjointed bones, and with these also\nthere were vessels containing blood or colored sand. In this way, the\nwriter says, he saw a hundred bodies. Then there was this remarkable\ncircumstance about their clothes. Eutychianus,  [Footnote 88] the\npope, had published a decree that no body of a martyr was ever to be\nburied without having a dalmatic put upon it; and clothes in abundance\nwere found upon these bodies.\n\n  [Footnote 88: _Acta SS._ Bolland. Octob., tom, ix., p. 139.\n  _Constant. Rom. Pont. Epist._ Paris, 1721, p. 299. ]\n\nAnother important discovery was, that immense quantities of arrows\nwere found mingled with the bones; some sticking in the skull, others\nin the breast, others in the arms--right in the bones. So it was clear\nthat all these bodies had been put to death by means of arrows, and\nthere was no other tribe but the Huns which made use of the arrow as\nits instrument of death. I may add that there were no signs of\nburning, or of any heathen burial about them. This also is most\nimportant. I have said that there had been other exhumations in the\neleventh and twelfth centuries. There are pictures of these, and there\nare sarcophagi preserved in which bodies were found. These are laid in\nexactly the same manner as others were found in 1640. Crombach says\nthe whole had been done most scientifically, that the distances were\nall arranged by measure, so that there was not a quarter of a foot\ndifference anywhere.\n\nNow, I ask, could these bodies have been put there in consequence of a\nplague, or an earthquake, or any event of that kind? Putting aside the\narrows found in immense quantities, and the {447} vessels containing\nblood, we know that when people die in a plague to the number of\nhundreds, a foss is made, and they are thrown in, and there is an end\nof them. This could not have been a common cemetery. It contained\nnothing but the bodies of these women (I will speak of their physical\ncharacteristics later), all laid in studied order, with great care,\nand with such peculiarities, and all evidently buried at the same\ntime. After reading all this, may we not exclaim with St. Ambrose, \"We\nhave found the signs of martyrdom,\" and with St. Gaudentius, \"What can\nyou desire more to show that they were all martyred?\"   [Footnote 89]\nAnd who does not see here confirmed the history of Clematius?\nComparing the whole with traditions, both English and German, it seems\nto me that you have as much proof as you can reasonably require.\n\n  [Footnote 89: S. Ambros., class, i., epist. xxii Ed Ben., tom, iii.,\n  p. 927. S. Gaud., _Serm. in Dedic. SS. XL. Martyr_, ap. Migne, tom,\n  xx., col. 963.]\n\nHaving given you concisely the facts and corroborations of history,\nlet me now proceed to answer objections.\n\nAnd, first there is the question, Were all these martyrs? Well, if\nthey were to be tried by the rules established very justly in the\nmodern Church, it would no doubt be difficult to say; because how can\nyou prove that each of these women laid down her life voluntarily for\nChrist? The tradition of Cologne is that they would not sacrifice\ntheir virtue to those heathens, and that they were surrounded and\nshot. But in those times a wider meaning was sometimes attached to the\nword \"martyr.\" There were what are called _martyres improprie dicti_,\nwhere there could not be the same kind of evidence as in the case of\nothers; or _martyres latiore sensu_. A person was called a martyr when\nhe was put to death without his will being consulted, as in the case\nof our own St. Edmund, and in the case of St. Wenceslaus, who was put\nto death without being interrogated as to whether he would remain a\nChristian or not, and many others. De Buck shows that there was\nnothing more common. We have the remarkable case of the Theban\nlegion--another instance of a large number of men being surrounded and\ncut down by soldiers without being questioned as to whether they were\nin a state of grace, or whether they were prepared to die. The deed\nwas done _in odium religionis_, by people who merely looked to the\ngratification of their own passions and their desire for revenge. In\nthose days the question of such persons being martyrs would be a very\nsimple one, if it were known that they were killed by the Huns in\nhatred, as was supposed, of their virginity and because of their\nresistance. We have in martyrologies the account of Nicomedia and its\ntwelve thousand martyrs. De Buck supposes that the number included all\nthe martyrs of the persecution. And the 6,700 of the Theban legion are\nexplained in the same way.\n\nThe next question is, Were these persons all virgins? Who can know? It\nis quite certain that even married persons, when martyred, had\nsometimes the title of virgins given to them. Many instances are\nsupplied by the martyrologies and offices. St. Sabina,  [Footnote\n90]for instance, is called a virgin martyr, though she was a married\nperson. It was considered that martyrdom raised all women to a higher\ndegree of excellence. There are some curious questions, too, arising,\nwhich would not very well do for a discussion here. It is, however,\nsufficiently proved that when there was a great number of virgins, and\nothers were mixed with them, the nobler title was given to all. Just\nas, if you have a great many martyrs and some confessors united, the\ntitle of martyrs is applied to all, as they are included in one\noffice, each sharing in the glory of martyrdom. The \"Sermo in Natali\"\nexpressly tells us that it was not supposed at its early period that\nall were virgins, but that there were ladies of all ranks and children\namongst them. Indeed, some remains of children were found.\n\n  [Footnote 90: _Acta SS._ Bolland. Octob., tom, ix., p. 143.]\n\n{448}\n\nThen comes the question, Were there eleven thousand? Certainly not as\nall one company. It is supposed, and there appears nothing\nunreasonable in it, that when once the rage of the Huns was excited\nthey would give way to an indiscriminate massacre, and that the eleven\nthousand most probably included persons who had sought refuge, perhaps\ntheir own captives, and probably a great number of the inhabitants of\nthe city.\n\nBut does it not seem a frightful number of persons to be massacred?\nNot by the Huns. In the year 436 these same Huns slaughtered at once\nin Burgundy 30,000 men. They were of the same race, the same family of\nmen, as Tamerlane, who had 70,000 heads cut off in Ispahan. And the\nTurks, when they took the island of Chios, reduced the population of\n120,000 to 8,000. So that those slaughters, which to us seem so\nfearful, are not to be considered in the same light when occurring in\nthose times. We have a frightful example in the case of Theodosius and\nthe inhabitants of Thessalonica. It is said that 15,000 persons were\nput to death in the theatre for a simple insult. The most moderate\ncalculation is that by St. Ambrose, who gives the number as 7,000.\nHuman life, of course, was not then regarded as by us, especially by\nmen who devastated whole cities and burned them to the ground. Hence\nthe difficulty as to the number of persons, including among them not\nmerely the followers of St. Ursula, but the bulk of the female\ninhabitants, is explained.\n\nAnother question arises, Were they English, or were there English\namongst them? That is answered unhesitatingly, Yes. All the\ntraditions, English and German, agree that these ladies had come from\nEngland and sought refuge.\n\nI have mentioned the facilities for emigration, and the way in which\nmany went out of the country; so that there would be nothing wonderful\nin a certain number of British women being at Cologne at that time.\nNow there is this curious fact illustrating the subject. Very lately\nthe Golden Chamber, as it is called, adjoining the church, where the\nchief remains are deposited, was visited by Dr. Braubach and Dr. Gortz\nof Cologne, Dr. Buschhausen of Ratingen, and others, who examined the\nskulls and pronounced them to be Celtic, not German. The Celtic\ncharacteristics, as given by Blumenbach and other writers, are quite\ndistinct--the chin falls back considerably, the skull is very long,\nand the vertex of the head goes far behind--quite distinct from the\nRomans or Germans. Moreover, with the exception of ten or fifteen out\nof from eighty to a hundred, they were all the bodies of females. Now\nall the writers--all that I have seen at least--say that there could\nnot have been an emigration of some hundreds of women without some\nmen, some persons to guard them, and these would be with them and\nwould share their martyrdom. Then, in the next place, they were all\nyoung people, there was no sign of their having died of a plague or\nany other casualty, but they appeared to be strong, healthy young\nwomen; which of course, as far as we can judge, verifies the narrative\nto the utmost.\n\nI now leave you to judge how very different historical research has\nmade this legend, as it is called, appear, and how much we have a\nright to regard it in a devotional spirit, as the inhabitants of\nGermany certainly do. I do not say that there have not been many\nexaggerations, false relics, and stories; but critical investigation\nenables us to put all these aside, and to sift their evidence. But\ncertainly we have a strong historical verification of what has been\nconsidered until within the last few years as legendary, not only by\nreal discoveries which have come to light, but also by a right use of\nevidence which before had been overlooked and neglected.\n\nThe whole of what I have said relates to events. But my subject\nembraces \"events and things.\" The latter part remains untouched, and I\nhave {449} yet to show how things or objects which have been looked\nupon as fabulous have been proved to be real and genuine.\n\nII. I proceed, therefore, to objects which have been, or may be,\neasily misrepresented, as if asserted to be what they are not, and\ninvolving an imputation of imposture on the part of those who propose\nthem to the notice or veneration of Catholics.\n\nI will begin with a rather singular example, but one which, I trust,\nwill verify the assertion which I have made; and if time permits, I\nwill multiply the examples by giving two or three other instances.\n\nI do not know whether any of you in your foreign travels have visited\nthe cathedral of Chartres; I have not seen it myself, but I believe\nthat it is one of the most noble, most majestic, and most inspiring of\nall Gothic buildings on the continent. The French always speak of it\nas combining the great effects of a mediaeval church, more perhaps\nthan any other in their country; and as my address will relate to that\ncathedral, I think it is necessary to give a little preliminary\naccount of it; at the same time warning you that I do not by any means\nintend to plunge into the depths of the singular mystery in which the\norigin of that cathedral is involved. It takes its rise from a\nDruidical cavern which was for some time the only church or cathedral.\nOver that the Christians--for the town was early converted to\nChristianity--built a church, of course modest, and simple, and poor,\nas the early churches of the Christians were; but in this was\npreserved, with the greatest jealousy, and with the deepest devotion,\nwhat was called a Druidical image of Our Lady, which was always kept\nin the crypt, for it was over the crypt that the church was built. It\nwas said to have existed there before the building of the church; but\ninto that part of the history it is not necessary to enter. In the\nyear 1020 this poor old church was struck by lightning, was set on\nfire, and entirely consumed. The bishop at that time was one of the\nmost remarkable men in the French Church--Fulbert, who has left us a\nfull account of what was done in his time there. He immediately set to\nwork to build another church, proposing that it should be perfectly\nmagnificent according to all the ideas of the age; and to enable him\nto do so, he had recourse to our modern practice of collecting money\non all sides. Among others Canute, king of England and Denmark, and\nRichard, duke of Normandy, and almost all the sovereigns of the north\ncontributed largely. The result was the beginning of a very\nmagnificent church. The singularity of the building was this, that\neverybody labored with his hands, not only men, but women, not only\nthe poor, but the noble. These furnished with their own hands\nprovisions or whatever was necessary for the workmen. However, after\nFulbert's death, like most undertakings of that class, the work became\nmore languid; and before it was completed (that was in 1094), the\nbuilding, in which there was a great quantity of wood used, was again\nburnt to the ground. Well, this time it was determined that there\nshould be a splendid church, such as had never been seen before; and\nhere, again, that same plan of working with their hands was adopted to\nan extent which, as stated in an account given us by Haymon and one or\ntwo others, seems incredible. The laborers relieved one another day\nand night, lighting up the whole place with torches; provisions were\nabundantly furnished to all the workmen without their having to move\nfrom their places. In fact, the writer says that you might see\nnoblemen, not a few, but hundreds and thousands, dragging carts or\ndrawing materials and provisions; in fact, not resting until, in 1160,\nseventy years after the destruction, the church was consecrated; and\nthere it remains, the grand cathedral church of Chartres at this day.\n\nNow, it may be asked, what was {450} there which most particularly\nmade Chartres a place of such great devotion, and so attached the\ninhabitants to its cathedral that they thus sacrificed their ease and\ncomfort so many years to build a church worthy of their object? It was\na relic--a relic which had existed for several hundred years at that\ntime in the church, which made it a place of pilgrimage, and which was\nconsidered most venerable. What was this relic? The name which it has\nalways borne in the mouths of the simple, honest, and devoted people\nof Chartres and its neighborhood, and in fact of all France, is _La\nChemise de la Sainte Vierge_--that is, a tunic which was supposed and\nbelieved to have been worn by the Blessed Virgin, her under-clothing,\nand was of course considered most venerable from having been in\ncontact with her pure virginal flesh. However, you may suppose that\nyou require strong proof of such a relic at all, and you will remember\nthat my object is to show how things which may have been doubtful, and\nperhaps considered almost incredible, have received great proof and\nelucidation by research. I do not pretend to say that in all respects\nyou can prove the relic: the research to which I allude is modern, but\nit may guide us back, may confirm a tradition, may give us strong\nreasons in its favor, showing that it has not been received without\ngood ground, though it may not be able to penetrate the darkness which\nsometimes surrounds the beginning of anything in very remote\nantiquity. I am not going, then, to prove the relic, but I am going to\nshow you the grounds on which it had been accepted, and then come to\nthe modern verification of it.\n\nThe history is this. A Byzantine writer of the fourteenth century,\nNicephorus Calixtus,  [Footnote 91] tells us that this very relic was\nin the possession of persons in Judaea, to whom it was left by our\nBlessed Lady before her death; that it fell, in the course of time,\ninto the hands of a Jew in Galilee; that two patricians of\nConstantinople, Galbius and Candidus, traced it, purchased it, and\ntook it to Constantinople, where, considering themselves in possession\nof a great treasure, they concealed it, and would not let it be known\n(this was in the middle of the fifth century); that the Emperor Leo,\nin consequence of the miracles which were wrought, and by which this\nrelic was discovered, in spite of those who possessed it, immediately\nentered into negotiations, obtained it, and built a splendid church in\nConstantinople expressly to keep it; and that the church so built was\nconsidered as the safety, the palladium as it were, of the city of\nConstantinople. He mentions another fact which is important; that is,\nthat there were at that time in Constantinople three other churches,\neach built expressly for the preservation of one relic of our Lady. I\nmention these facts for this purpose: there is a very prevalent idea,\nI believe among Catholics as well as certainly among Protestants, that\nwhat may be called the great tide of relics came into Europe through\nthe crusades; that the poor ignorant crusaders, who were more able to\nhandle a sword than to use their discretion, were imposed upon, and\nbought anything that was offered to them at any price, and so deluged\nEurope with spurious and false relics. Now, you will observe, that all\nthat I have been relating is referred to an age quite anterior to the\ncrusades, or to any movement of the west into the east. It is true\nthat Nicephorus Calixtus is a comparatively modern writer, but he\ncould bear testimony to churches that were existing, and tell by whom\nthey were built. The mere writer of a hand-book can trace out the\nhistory of a church or any other public monument which is before the\neyes of all: but he was not of that character: he was a historian, and\nhe tells us that there were  [Footnote 92] three churches in\nConstantinople, just as we might say that {451} in Rome there is the\nchurch of Santa Croce, built by Constantine to preserve the relics of\nthe cross. Nobody can doubt that the church was built for the relic,\nthat the relic was deposited there, and that earth from the Holy Land\nwas put into its chapel. Monuments like that preserve their own\nhistory. Therefore, when this writer tells us that these churches\nexisted from that period, we can hardly doubt that he could arrive at\na knowledge of such facts; and at any rate it removes the impression\nthat these wonderful relics were merely the sweepings, as it were, of\nPalestine during a fervent and pious but at the same time ignorant and\nunenlightened age.\n\n  [Footnote 91:  _Hist. Eccles._, lib. xv., cap. xxiv.]\n\n  [Footnote 92:  _Hist. Eccles._, lib. xv., cap. xxv., xxvi.]\n\nThus, we get the history so far. Now, we know that there was no one\nwho valued relics to such an extent as Charlemagne. We see, by\nAix-la-Chapelle and other places, what exceedingly curious relics he\ncollected. I am not here to defend them individually, because I do not\nknow their history; nor is it to our purpose. He was in close\ncorrespondence with the east, from which he received large presents;\nfor it was very well known what he valued most. There was a particular\nreason for this. The Empress Irene at that time (Charlemagne died in\n814) wished to have his daughter Rothrude in marriage for her son\nPorphyrogenitus, and later offered her own hand to himself.\n\nMany relics existed at the time of this correspondence; and as\npresents are now made of Arab horses and China services, so were they\nthen made of relics, which, if true, monarchs preferred to anything\nelse. Now, there is every reason to suppose that among the presents\nsent by Irene to Charlemagne was this veil or tunic.  [Footnote 93]\nThere is in the cathedral of Chartres a window expressly commemorating\nthe passage of this relic from the east to Chartres. Secondly, the\nrelic, as you will see later, was, up to a few years ago, wrapped in a\nveil of gauze, which was entirely covered with Byzantine work in gold\nand in silk, which had never been taken off; and it was wrapped up in\nit till the last time it was verified. We have every reason to suppose\nthat it had come from Constantinople, and that it was delivered at\nChartres in that covering. In the third place, it is historical--there\nis no question about it, for all chronicles and authorities agree upon\nthe point--that Charles the Bald, the grandson of Charlemagne, being\nobliged to leave Aix-la-Chapelle, in consequence of going to settle in\nFrance, which was the portion of the empire allotted to him, took the\nrelic away, and deposited it in the cathedral of Chartres. So that, as\nfar as we can trace a transaction of this sort, there seems to be as\nmuch evidence as would be accepted in respect to the transmission of\nany object of a profane character from one country to another. There\nis the correspondence of the workmanship; there are the records of the\nplace; and there is the fact that the relics were brought from\nAix-la-Chapelle, where Charlemagne had collected so many relics that\nhe had received from Constantinople. Mabillon, who certainly is an\nauthority in matters of ecclesiastical history, says it would be the\ngreatest rashness to deny the genuineness of this relic. \"Who will\npresume to deny that it is real and genuine?\" This is in a letter to\nthe bishop of Blois, in which he is expressly treating the subject of\ndiscerning true relics. Everything so far, therefore, helps to give\nauthenticity to this extraordinary relic which made Chartres a place\nof immense pilgrimage.\n\n  [Footnote 93: See note at p. 455.]\n\nBringing it down so far, we may ask, what was the common, and we may\nsay the vulgar, opinion of the people regarding it? It had never been\nopened, and was never seen until the end of the last century. The\nconsequence was, that it was called by the name I have mentioned. It\nwas represented as a sort of tunic. It was the custom to make tunics\nof that form, which were laid upon the shrine and {452} worn in\ndevotion; they were sent specially to ladies of great rank, and were\nso held in veneration that it was the rule, that if any person going\nto fight a duel had on one of these chemisettes, as they were called,\nhe must take it off; as it was supposed his rival had not fair play so\nlong as he carried it upon him. In giving an account of the building I\nforgot to mention the wonderful miracles in connection with the relic\nthere, which are believed by everybody to have taken place. It is even\non record that the _Chevalier sans peur et sans reproche_ went to\nChartres _pour se faire enchemiser_ before he went to war.\n\nIn 1712, we find that the relic was in a cedar case richly ornamented\nwith gold and jewels--the original case in which it had arrived. The\nwood being worm-eaten and crumbling, it was thought proper to remove\nand clean it, and put it in some better place. The cedar case had no\nopening by which it could in any way be examined, and the bishop of\nthe time, Mgr. de Merinville, proposed to open it. He chose a jury of\nthe most respectable inhabitants of the town, clergy and laity, to\nassist. The box was unclosed, and the relic was found wrapped up, as I\nhave said, in the veil of Byzantine work. The veil was not unclosed,\nso that they did not see the relic itself. The debris of the box was\nswept away, and the relic, as it was, was put into a silver case that\nhad been prepared; this was locked up, and then deposited in a larger\nshrine distinct from all the other relics. The _proces verbal_ still\nexists in the archives of Chartres giving an account of all that took\nplace, from which the account I have given you is taken.\n\nInfidelity was then spreading in France, and, as you may know, a great\ndeal of ridicule was thrown on this relic. It was said that such a\ngarment was not worn in those days, that the system of dress was quite\ndifferent, and that it was absurd to imagine any article like this.\nNow, as no one had seen the relic, there was no way of answering these\nreproaches. In 1793, three commissioners came from the French\ngovernment, went into the sacristy, and imperiously desired to look at\nthe relic; it was very richly enshrined, and they intended to carry it\noff. The shrine was brought to them, as the _proces verbal_ of the\nsecond examination relates, when they seemed to be seized with a\ncertain awe, and said, \"We will not touch it; let it be opened by\npriests.\" Two priests were ordered to open the box, and they did so.\nThese men had come prepared to have a good laugh, and scoffing at this\nwonderful relic. For antiquarians had been saying that such inward\nclothing was not known so early as the first century, but that instead\na long veil used to be wrapped round the body.\n\nWell, they found a long piece of cloth four and a half ells in\nlength--exactly what had been said should be the proper garment. The\ncommissioners were startled and amazed, and said, \"It is clear that\nthis is not the relic the people have imagined; perhaps it is all an\nimposture.\" They then cut off a considerable piece and sent it to the\nAbbe Barthelemy, author of the \"Travels of Anacharsis\" and member of\nthe Institute--a man who had made the customs and usages of antiquity\nhis study; they did not tell him where it came from, but desired him\nto give an opinion of what it might be. He returned this answer: that\nit must be about 2,000 years old, and that from the description given\nhim it appeared to be exactly like what the ladies in the East wear at\nthis day, and always have worn--that is, a veil which went over the\nhead, across the chest, and then involved the whole body, being the\nfirst dress worn. I ask, could a verification be more complete than\nthis? And, recollect, it comes entirely from enemies. It was not the\nbishop or clergy that sought it. The relic was in the hands of those\nthree infidel commissioners, who sent a portion to Paris without\nsaying or giving any hint of what it was (they {453} wanted to make\nout that the whole was an imposture), and the answer was returned\nwhich I have mentioned, and which is contained in the _proces_ in the\narchives of the episcopal palace at Chartres. If any one wants to read\nthe whole history, I refer him to a most interesting book just\npublished by the cure of St. Sulpice (Abbe Hamon), entitled \"Notre\nDame de France, ou Histoire du Culte de la Sainte Vierge en France.\"\nThe first volume, the only one out, contains the history of the\ndioceses of the province of Paris.\n\nI will proceed to a second popular charge, and it is one the\nopportunity of easily verifying which may never occur again. It refers\nto the head of St. John the Baptist, or, shall I say, to the three\nheads of St. John the Baptist? Because, if you read English travellers\nof the old stamp, like Forsyth, you will find that they make coarse\njokes about it. Forsyth, I think, says something about Cerberus; but\nmore gravely it has been said, that St. John must have had three\nheads--one being at Amiens, one at Genoa, and another at Rome; that\nat each place they are equally positive in their claims; and that\nthere is no way of explaining this but by supposing that St. John was\na triceps.\n\nWhen we speak of a body you can easily imagine that one piece may be\nin one place, another in another, a third elsewhere, and so on. That\nis the common way in which we say that the bodies of saints are\nmultiplied; because the Church considers that the place which contains\nthe head or one of the larger limbs of a saint, or the part in which,\nif a martyr, he was killed or received his death-wound, has the right\nof keeping his festival and honoring him just as if it had the whole\nbody. Therefore, in cathedrals and places where festivals are held in\nhonor of a particular saint, where they have relics, which have\nperhaps been sealed up for years, and never examined, they often speak\nas if they have the entire body. This is a common practice, and if I\nhad time I might give you an interesting exemplification of it.\n[Footnote 94] Suffice it to say, that according to travellers there\nare three heads of St. John. Now as I have said, a body can be\ndivided, but you can hardly imagine this to be the case with a head.\n\n  [Footnote 94: Since published in _The Month_, \"Story of a French\n  Officer.\" (See CATH. WORLD, No. 1.)]\n\nA very interesting old English traveller--Sir John Mandeville--went\ninto the East very early, and returned in 1366; soon after which,\nalmost as soon as any books were published, his travels appeared. He\nis a very well-known writer. Of course you must not expect that\naccuracy in his works which a person would now exhibit who has books\nat his command and all the conveniences for travelling. He was not a\nprofound scholar: he believes almost whatever is told him, so what we\nmust do is to let him guide us as well as he can, and endeavor to\njudge how far he is right. I will read you an extract, then, from Sir\nJohn Mandeville:  [Footnote 95]\n\n  [Footnote 95: \"Travels,\" chap, ix., p. 182. Ed. Bohn.]\n\n\"From thence we go up to Samaria, which is now called Sebaste; it is\nthe chief city of that country. There was wont to be the head of St.\nJohn the Baptist inclosed in the wall; but the Emperor Theodosius had\nit drawn out, and found it wrapped in a little cloth, all bloody; and\nso he carried it to Constantinople; and the hinder part of the head is\nstill at Constantinople; and the fore part of the head to under the\nchin, under the church of St. Silvester, where are nuns; and it is yet\nall broiled, as though it were half burnt; for the Emperor Julian\nabove mentioned, of his wickedness and malice, burned that part with\nthe other bones, as may still be seen; and this thing hath been proved\nboth by popes and emperors. And the jaws beneath which hold to the\nchin, and a part of the ashes, and the platter on which the head was\nlaid when it was smitten off, are at Genoa; and the Genoese make a\ngreat feast in honor of it, and so do the Saracens also. And some men\nsay that the {454} head of St. John is at Amiens in Picardy; and other\nmen say that it is the head of St. John the bishop. I know not which\nis correct, but God knows; but however men worship it, the blessed St.\nJohn is satisfied.\"\n\nThis is a true Catholic sentiment. Right or wrong, all mean to honor\nSt. John, and there is an end of it. We could not expect a traveller\ngoing through the country like Sir John, not visiting every place, but\nhearing one thing from one and another from another, to tell us the\nexact full truth. But we have here two very important points gained.\nFirst, we have the singular fact of the division of the head at all.\nWe occasionally hear of the head of a saint being at a particular\nplace, but seldom of a part of a head being in one place and a part in\nanother. Here we have an unprejudiced traveller going into the East;\nhe comes to the place where the head of St. John used to be kept, and\nhe finds there the tradition that it was divided into three parts, one\nof which was at Constantinople, one at Genoa, and another at Rome.\nThen he adds, \"Other people say that the head is at Amiens.\" So much\nSir John Mandeville further informs us: he mentions the places where\nit was reported the head was, telling us that it was divided into\nthree.\n\nThis is a statement worthy of being verified. It was made a long time\nago, and yet the tradition remains the same. It was as well believed\nin the thirteenth century in the East, at Sebaste, as it is in Europe\nat the present moment.\n\nThe church of S. Silvestro in Capite, which many of you remember, is a\nsmall church on the east side of the Corso, entered by a sort of\nvestibule: it has an atrium or court, with arches round, and dwellings\nfor the chaplains; the outer gates can be shut at night so as to\nprevent completely any access to the church. The rest is an immense\nbuilding, belonging to the nuns, running out toward the Propaganda.\nWhen the republicans in the late invasion got hold of Rome, the first\nthing, of course, which they did was to turn out the monks and nuns\nright and left, to make barracks; and the poor nuns of S. Silvestro\nwere ordered to move. The head of St. John is in a shrine which looks\nvery brilliant, but is poor in reality. I think it is exposed high\nbeyond the altar, and the nuns kept it in jealous custody in their\nhouse. The republicans sent away the nuns in the middle of the night,\nat ten or eleven o'clock, just as they were, with what clothes they\ncould get made into bundles: there were carriages at the door to send\nthem off to some other convent, without the slightest warning or\nnotice. The poor creatures were ordered to take up their abode in the\nconvent of St. Pudentiana. The only thing they thought of was their\nrelic, and that they carried with them. The good nuns received them\nthough late at night, and did what they could to give them good cheer;\nthey gave up one of their dormitories to them, putting themselves to\nimmense inconvenience.\n\nWhen the French came to Rome, they found S. Silvestro so useful a\nbuilding for public purposes that they continued to hold it, but\npermitted the nuns to occupy some rooms near the church. I was in Rome\nwhile they were still at my titular church, and went to visit the nuns\nattached to it. Their guests asked, \"Would you not like to see our\nrelic of St. John?\" I said, \"Certainly I should; perhaps I shall never\nhave another opportunity.\" I do not suppose it had been out of their\nhouse for hundreds of years. There is a chapel within the convent\nwhich the nuns of St. Pudentiana consider a sacred oratory, having a\nmiraculous picture there, to which they are much attached; and in this\nthey kept the shrine. On examination I found that there was no part of\nthe head except the back. It is said in the extract I have read to you\nthat the front part of the head is at Rome; but it is the back of the\nskull merely; the rest is filled up with some stuffing {455} and silk\nover it. The nuns have but a third of the head; and the assertion that\nthey pretend to possess the head, which travellers make, is clearly\nfalse. I can say from my own ocular inspection that it is but the\nthird part--the back part, which is the most interesting, because\nthere the stroke of martyrdom fell. I was certainly glad of this\nfortunate opportunity of verifying the relic.\n\nSome time afterward I was at Amiens. I was very intimate with the late\nbishop, and spent some days with him. One day he said to me, \"Would\nyou wish to see our head of St. John?\" \"Yes,\" I replied, \"I should\nmuch desire it.\" \"Well,\" he said, \"we will wait till the afternoon;\nthen I will have the gates of the cathedral closed, that we may\nexamine it at leisure.\"\n\nWe dined early, and went into the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament,\nwhere the relic was exposed, with candles. After saying prayers, it\nwas brought, and I had it in my hands; it was nothing but the mask,\nthe middle and back portions being totally wanting. You could almost\ntrace the expression and character of the countenance in the bony\nstructure. It was of the same size and color as the portion which I\nhad seen at St. Pudentiana; but the remarkable thing about it is that\nthere are stiletto marks in the face. We are told by Fathers, that\nHerodias stabbed the head with a bodkin when she got it into her hand,\nand here are the marks of such an operation visible. You could almost\nsay that you had seen him as he was alive. I have not seen the third\nfragment, but I can hardly doubt that it is a portion of the same\nhead, and that it would comprise the parts, the chin and the jaw,\nbecause there is no lower jaw in the front part, which is a mere mask.\nThe only other claimant is Genoa, and its relic I have not seen. But\nthis is exactly the portion allotted by Mandeville to that city. I\nhave, however, had the satisfaction of personally verifying two of the\nrelics, each of which comprises a third part of the head, leaving for\nthe other remainder exactly the place which our old traveller allots\nto it.\n\n\n\n  Mr. Cashel Hoey, one of our learned contributors, has kindly\n  furnished me with a most interesting corroboration of this account.\n  It is an extract from the _Revue Archeologique_, new series, Jan.\n  1861, p. 36, in a paper by M. Louis Moland, entitled \"Charlemagne a\n  Constantinople,\" etc., giving an account of a MS. in the library of\n  the Arsenal, anterior to the thirteenth century.\n\n  The following is the account of the relic which the emperor is\n  stated to have brought from Constantinople to Aix-la-Chapelle:\n\n  \"Li empereres prist les saintuaires tot en disant ses orisons, si\n  les mist en eskerpes (_echarpes_) totes de drap de soie et si les\n  enporta molt saintement avoec lui trosqu Ais la Capele en l'eglise\n  Nostre Dame qu'il avoit ediflie. La fu establis par l'apostolie (_Le\n  Pape_) et par les archevesques et les evesques as pelerins li grans\n  pardons, qui por Deu i venoient. Oies une partie des reliques, que\n  li empereres ot aportees: il i fu la moities de la corone dont\n  Nostre Sires fu corones des poignans espines. Et si i ot des claus\n  dont Nostre Sires fu atachies en la crois al jor que li Jui le\n  crucifierent. Et si i ot de la vraie crois une pieche et del suaire\n  Nostre Segnor, _O le chemise Nostre Dame._\"\n\n----\n\n{456}\n\nFrom The Month.\n\nMADAME SWETCHINE AND HER SALON.\n\n\nThe _salons_ of Paris form a distinctive feature of French society.\nNowhere else is the same thing exactly to be found. Frenchwomen have a\npeculiar gift for conversation, due in a great measure to their\ngraceful language, with its delicate shades of expression. We are\nprone to smile at French sentimentality, or to apply their own word\n_verbiage_, prefacing it with _unmeaning_. But when the epithet does\ntruly fit, it is because the real thing has been abused, not because\nit does not exist. Conversation in France is cultivated as an art,\njust the same as epistolary style: both form an important branch of\nfemale education. When the soil is bad, the attempt at culture only\nbetrays more clearly native poverty; in other words, a mind of little\nthought or taste becomes ridiculous in straining after the expression\nof what it can neither conceive nor feel. But when a well-informed and\ncultivated intelligence blossoms into keen appreciation of the\nbeautiful, no language so delicately as French conveys minute shades\nof thought and feeling. 'Tis not repetition, then, but variety; and\nwhen such an instrument is handled with feminine tact, perfection in\nits kind is achieved.\n\nNo wonder that _salons_ are exclusively French from the days of Julie\nde Rambouillet down to Madame Recamier. No wonder at the influence\nexercised by a woman who really has a _salon_. Few, very few, arrive\nat this result. Thousands may receive; hundreds glitter in the gay\nworld of fashion, renowned for beauty, wit, good dressing, or good\nparties; two or three at most in a century are the presiding spirits\nof their social circles, and that is what constitutes having a\n_salon_. No one quality alone will do it; a combination is required;\nnot always the same, but one or two together, whichsoever, attracting\nsympathy and producing influence. Influence--the effect, not the\nquality itself--can never be absent.\n\nStrangers settling in Paris have had their _salon_; but we do not know\nthat they could transport it with them to any other atmosphere. Beside\nMadame Recamier--whose rare beauty, joined to her goodness and her\ntact, helped to form her _salon_--two other women in our day, or just\nbefore it, have been the leading stars of their circles. Others, no\ndoubt, there are; but the names of these three have escaped beyond\nParis. Strange to say, two are foreigners, and both of these Russians.\nExcept, however, as regards country and influence, no comparison can\nof course be established between the Princess Lieven and Madame\nSwetchine. One sought and gained a political object; the other\naccepted circumstances, and found them fame.\n\nMadame Swetchine was already thirty-four years of age when she arrived\nin Paris. She had no beauty, and no pretensions to wit; indeed, her\ntimidity was such that her expressions were always obscure when she\nbegan to speak; and it was only by degrees, as she went on, that she\ngathered confidence, and then her language flowed with ease,\nbetraying, rather than fully revealing, the deep current of thought\nbeneath. Still her advantages were many. As regards outward\ncircumstances, she possessed good birth and high position; her manners\nwere such as the early culture of a polished court bestows; she was\naccustomed to wield a large fortune, and to hold a prominent place in\nthe social world. These were advantages that might be fairly set\nagainst the absence of beauty, wondrous as is that charm: beside, her\nperson was not unpleasing. Though {457} small, she was graceful in her\nmotions; despite little blue eyes, rather irregular, and a nose of\nCalmuck form, her face wore a soft kindly expression that attracted\nsympathy. Her complexion was remarkably fresh and clear.\n\nBut Madame Swetchine possessed innate qualities of heart and mind of\nthe rarest description, that only unfolded themselves gradually the\nmore closely she could be observed. Unlike mankind in general, the\nbetter she was known, the more was she beloved and admired. Her\nintelligence of richly-varied powers had been carefully cultivated;\nwhat she acquired in youth, with the aid of masters, had been since\nmatured by her own unceasing study, and by reading of the most\nwidely-discursive character. Not only was she familiar with ancient\nand modern literatures, perusing them in their originals, but she also\nconversed fluently in all the languages of Europe. Her imagination,\nenthusiastic and wild almost, as belongs to the north, successfully\nsought for outpourings, both in music and painting. By a strange\ncombination, no natural quality of mind was more remarkable in Madame\nSwetchine than her good sense: the only feature that shone above it\nwas her eminent gift of piety.\n\nBut virtues, and particularly religious virtues, proceed from the\nheart quite as much as from the intelligence; often, indeed, far more\nespecially. Madame Swetchine possessed the warmest feelings, a nature\nboth loving and expansive. As daughter, wife, and friend she evinced\nrare devotion; but the sentiment and thought that most filled heart\nand mind was undoubtedly her love for God.\n\nWhat a rich assemblage of qualities is here! how strange that they\nshould go to make up a Parisian woman of fashion! Such, however, in\nits most usual acceptation, Madame Swetchine never was: she never\nmingled in the light brilliant world; but she did form the centre of\nattraction to a large circle she had her _salon_.\n\nGeneral Swetchine, deeply wounded by the emperor, who lent too ready\ncredence to unfounded reports whispered against so faithful a subject,\nwould not stoop to justify himself, but quitted Russia in disgust,\naccompanied by his wife. When they reached Paris, in the spring of\n1816, Louis XVIII. was on the throne of France. Madame Swetchine found\nnow restored to their high positions those friends of her youth whom\nas exiles she had known and loved at St. Petersburg. Her place was\nnaturally amongst them; new intimacies were soon added to the old. The\nDuchesse de Duras, authoress of _Ourika_, and friend of Madame de\nStael, gained a strong hold on her affections. Yet it did not seem at\nfirst as if Madame Swetchine were destined to so much influence in\nFrench society. Modesty made her reserved. Madame de Stael had been\ninvited to meet her at a small dinner-party; and Madame Swetchine,\nthough seated opposite, was intimidated, and allowed the meal to pass\nover without speaking or scarcely raising her eyes. Afterward Madame\nde Stael came up and said, \"I had been told that you desired my\nacquaintance; was I misinformed?\" \"By no means,\" was the reply; \"but\nit is customary for royalty to speak first.\" Such was the homage she\npaid to genius.\n\nAt first it had seemed uncertain how long General and Madame Swetchine\nmight remain absent from Russia; but after the lapse of a few years\nthey took up their definite residence in Paris. Their hotel, Rue St.\nDominique, was hired on a long lease, and fitted up as a permanent\nabode. They sent for their pictures and other articles from St.\nPetersburg. The general occupied the ground-floor; Madame Swetchine\ntook the rooms above. Her apartments consisted of a _salon_ and a\nlibrary commanding an extensive view of gardens. Here it was that her\nfriends used to assemble; not many at a time, but successively. She\nnever gave _soirees_, and her dinner-parties consisted of a few\nintimates round a small table. Her hours for {458} reception were\nevery day from three till six, and then from nine till midnight.\nDebarred by her health from paying visits, she contented herself with\nreceiving in this manner; and for thirty years a continuous stream of\npersons was for ever passing on through her rooms. She had not sought\nto form it; but there was her _salon_, and one of a peculiar\ncharacter.\n\nTwo features distinguished it: the religious tone that prevailed, and\nthe absence of party spirit. Madame Swetchine herself was eminently\nreligious, and she had a large way of viewing all things. Her\ninfluence, though partly moral and intellectual, was ever chiefly\nreligious; and she gave that presiding characteristic to the\natmosphere around. So long as faith and morality were not attacked,\nall other points she considered secondary, and admitted the widest\ndiversity of opinion on them. Her own views on all subjects were\nfirmly held, and she expressed them with freedom. There could be no\nmistake about it. In religion she was a strict Catholic, and in\nphilosophy Christian; in politics she preferred a liberal monarchy;\nbut far from seeking to give that color to her salon, she would not\nallow any friend holding the same views to try to impose them on\nothers. This was equally the case in matters of art and taste; she\ntolerated nothing exclusive; but the principle is much more difficult\nto be followed out when applied to politics, which involve interests\nof such magnitude, appealing to all the passions, and especially in\nsuch an excitable atmosphere as that of Paris. Nothing better shows\nMadame Swetchine's tact and gentleness of temper than her intimacies\nwith men of such different stamps, and the way in which she made them\nto a certain extent amalgamate. But the above qualities would have\nfailed to do it, had their spring been a worldly one; hers flowed\ntruly from the Christian charity with which her whole soul was full.\nIn this she and her _salon_ were unique.\n\nShe lived to see two great revolutions in France: the one of 1830, and\nthat which substituted the republic for Louis Philippe, ending with\nthe empire. Members of all these _regimes_ were among her visitors.\nMinisters of state under the Restoration, those who embraced the\nOrleans cause, men belonging to the republican government, ambassadors\nfrom most of the foreign courts in Europe; all these in turn enjoyed\nher conversation, some her esteem or affection, according to the\ndegrees of intimacy and sympathy. Her own feelings, as well as\nconvictions, lay with legitimists; but others were no less welcomed,\nand some of various parties were highly valued. True, however, to\nreligion, she never gave her friendship to men not devoted to the\ninterests of the Church. Her great object was to do good to souls, but\nin a quiet, unostentatious, womanly way; gently leading to virtue,\nnever inculcating it. This of course became more exclusively her\nprovince as she grew older.\n\nShe was truly liberal in all her sentiments; not assuredly from\nindifference, but through a large philosophy of spirit that allowed\nfor diversities of opinion in all things not essential. At the same\ntime her own convictions were unflinchingly avowed, as well as her\nideas and tastes in smaller matters.\n\nThe men with whom she was most intimate have all more or less been\nknown to fame, and are eminent also for their religious spirit. We\nmight begin a list with Monsieur de Maistre at St. Petersburg, when\nshe was but twenty-five; then following her to Paris, see her make\nacquaintance with his friend Monsieur de Bonald; exercise maternal\ninfluence over MM. de Falloux, de Montalembert, and Lacordaire; and\nfinally wind up with Donoso Cortes, the Marquis de Valdegamas, Prince\nAlbert de Broglie, and Alexis de Tocqueville.\n\nEach one of the distinguished personages above has figured prominently\non the great stage, more or less renowned in politics and letters, and\n{459} always holding a high moral character. It may seem fastidious to\nrecall their titles to fame. In our day, when all are acquainted with\ncontinental literature, who is not familiar with the witty author of\nthe _Soirees de St. Petersbourg_, although it be permitted somewhat to\nignore the rather dry philosophical works of his friend de Bonald?\nMonsieur de Falloux, with filial love, has raised a monument to Madame\nSwetchine that will endure beside his life of Pope Pius V., and\njointly with the remembrance of his political integrity. Who that has\nfollowed the late history of Europe does not know Donoso Cortes, the\ngreat orator, whose famous three discourses in the Spanish chambers\ninstantaneously reached so far and wide, whose written style is the\nvery music of that rich Castilian idiom, and whose liberal political\nviews kept pace with his large Catholic heart? Soeur Rosalie and\nMadame Swetchine together soothed his dying hours. The author of _La\nDemocratic en Amerique_ has been indiscreetly praised, but none can\ndeny his ability, Prince Albert de Broglie, _doctrinaire_ in his\nviews, still advocates with talent the cause of religion and of\nconstitutional monarchy. These two latter were among the latest\nacquisitions to Madame Swetchine's salon.\n\nMM. de Montalembert and de Falloux were like her sons; she knew them\nfrom their early manhood, called them by their Christian names, loved\nand counselled them as any mother might. But if her influence over\nthem was so salutary, we cannot help admiring most the unswerving\nattachment of these young men to her; Madame Swetchine's letters show\nher expostulating with Comte de Montalembert, then little past twenty,\nand endeavoring to convince him he is wrong. He will not yield; but\nacknowledges afterward the justness of her views, and allows now these\nletters to be published. Alfred de Falloux is _the son_ sent for when\ndanger seems impending; he tends her dying couch in that same _salon_\nwhere he had so often and for so many years _walked_ with her\nconversing; to him she confides her papers and last wishes.\n\nThe celebrated Pere Lacordaire was very dear to her; and she certainly\nacted the part of a mother toward him. Monsieur de Montalembert\npresented him to her when Abbe Lacordaire was but twenty-eight, and\nquite unknown. His genius--which she immediately discerned--and his\nardent soul interested her wonderfully. Soon after he became\nconnected, through Abbe de Lamennais, with the journal _L'Avenir;_ by\nhis own generous and oft-repeated avowal she kept him from any\ndeviation at this trying moment. \"You appeared to me as the angel of\nthe Lord,\" writes he, \"to a soul floating between life and death,\nbetween earth and heaven.\"\n\nNor was this the only time. Her letters show her following him with\nbreathless interest through his chequered career, and assuring him of\nher warm undying friendship, \"so long as he remains faithful to God\nand his Church.\"\n\nAnd this was a beautiful affection, whichever side we view it. For\nmore than twenty years it lasted; that is, for the rest of her life.\nThe ardent young man is seen with the erratic impulses of his glowing\nintellect, yet docile to the motherly admonitions of his old friend;\nand by degrees, as time mellows him somewhat--though it never could\nsubdue nature altogether--he sinks into a calmer strain, still asking\nadvice, and taking it, with language more respectful, though not a\nwhit less tender. Madame Swetchine brought to bear on him a species of\nidolatry; she admired his genius to excess, and loved his fine nature\nas any doting parent might; but these sentiments never rendered her\nblind to his faults; and she constantly blended reproof with\nadmiration, while strenuously endeavoring to keep him ever in the most\nperfect path. She had the satisfaction of seeing him, ere she departed\nthis life, safely anchored in a religious order, and the Dominicans\nfairly re-established in France; one of her pre-occupations on her\ndeath-bed, after bidding him adieu, was to secure {460} that his\nletters should be one day given to the public. For thus she knew he\nwould be better appreciated.\n\nOther names of men well-known in the Parisian world of letters, or for\ntheir deeds of charity, might here be added as having adorned her\n_salon_. There was the Vicomte de Melun, connected with every good\nwork (literary or other) in the French capital; and her two relatives,\nPrince Augustin Galitzin and Prince (afterward Pere) Gagarin. The\nformer still writes; the latter, erst a gay man of fashion and then\nmetamorphosed into a zealous Jesuit, is now devoting his missionary\nlabors to Syria.\n\nAnd lastly may be named one who, though he never mingled in the world\nof her _salon_, yet visited Madame Swetchine and esteemed her greatly.\nPere de Ravignan presided at one time in her house over meetings of\ncharitable ladies, who were afterward united with the Enfants de Marie\nat the convent of the Sacre Coeur.\n\nNor were her friendships exclusively confined to men. Madame Swetchine\nhad not that foible into which many superior women fall of affecting\nto despise their own sex; and which always shows that they innately,\nunconsciously often, separate their individual selves from all the\nrest of womankind as alone superior to it. Hers was a larger view: she\nloved _souls_; and \"souls,\" says one of her aphorisms, \"have neither\nage nor sex.\" When shall we in general begin to live here as we are to\ndo for ever hereafter?\n\nShe had had her early friendships in Russia, and most passionate they\nwere; too girlish in their romantic enthusiasm, too wordily tender in\nexpression; but time mellowed these affections, without wearing them\nout. The two principal women-friends of her youth in Russia, after her\nsister, were Roxandre Stourdja, a Greek by birth, afterward Comtesse\nEdlinz, and the Comtesse de Nesselrode. Both of these in later years\nvisited her Paris salon. But she also formed several new French\nintimacies. Her grief for the loss of Madame de Duras, when death\ndeprived her of that friend, was a little softened by her warm\nsympathy for the two daughters left, Mesdames de Rauzan and de la\nRochejacquelain. If she saw most of the former, the latter had for\nMadame Swetchine a second tie through her early marriage with a\ngrandson of the Princesse de Tarente, whom Madame Swetchine had so\nrevered in her girlish days at St. Petersburg. Both the Duchesse de\nRauzan and Comtesse de la Rochejacquelain were very beautiful; and\nMadame Swetchine dearly loved beauty, especially when combined, as in\nthem, with grace and elegance, cleverness and piety. For both the\nsisters were remarkable: one had more fascinating softness united with\ngood sense; the other was more witty and brilliant. The last\ncountry-house visited by Madame Swetchine shortly before her death was\nthe chateau de Fleury, belonging to Madame de la Rochejacquelain,\nwhere we read that she loved to find still mementos of the Princesse\nde Tarente.\n\nMadame Swetchine was very intimate with Madame Recamier, her\nfellow-star as leader of a contemporary _salon_. She greatly prized\nher worth. Another friend much loved was the Comtesse de Gontant\nBiron, in youth eminent for her beauty, and always for her many\nvirtues. Among younger women distinguished by Madame Swetchine were\nMrs. Craven, nee la Ferronaye; the Princess Wittgenstein, lovely as\nclever, a Russian by birth, and a convert to the Catholic Church; and\nquite at the last period, the Duchess of Hamilton.\n\nShe was always partial to youth, taking a warm interest in anything\nthat might minister to the welfare or pleasures of that age. Thus she\nliked the young women of her acquaintance to be well dressed, and\nwould admire their taste or try to improve it, even in that respect,\nwith perfectly motherly solicitude. Those going to balls frequently\nstopped on their way to show their toilettes to Madame Swetchine; and\nnot seldom, too, they would {461} return in the morning to ask advice\non graver matters, or to display the progress of their children. The\ngood Madame Swetchine did to persons of the world by quiet friendly\ncounsel is incalculable; she never spared the truth when she thought\nit could be of use, and as she had great perspicacity, she was not\noften deceived. Beside, her natural penetration became yet keener, not\nonly by long experience, but also by the numerous confidences she\nreceived from the many souls in a measure laid bare before her. M. de\nFalloux has well said that she \"possessed the science of souls, as\n_savants_ do that of bodies.\" However one might be pained at what she\nsaid, it was impossible to feel wounded; her manner was so kind, and\nher rectitude of intention so evident. And thus did she render her\n_salon_ useful: living in public, as it might appear, surrounded\nchiefly by the great ones of earth, her thought was yet ever with God,\nand she positively worked for him day by day without even quitting\nthose few rooms. Nay, so completely is Madame Swetchine identified\nwith her _salon_ for those who knew her through any part of the thirty\nyears spent in Paris, that it is difficult for our idea to separate\nher from it.\n\nEven materially speaking she seldom left it. With a simplicity that\nseems strange indeed to our English notions, she caused her little\niron bedstead to be set up every night in one of her reception-rooms;\neach morning it was doubled up again and consigned to a closet. During\nher last illness it was just the same; she lay in her _salon_, the\nonly difference being that then the bed remained permanently. Not an\niota else was changed in the aspect of her apartment; no table was\nnear the sick-couch with glass or cup ready to hand; what she wanted\nin this way she signed for to a deaf-and-dumb attendant, Parisse,\nwhose grateful eyes were ever fixed upon her benefactress, to divine\nor anticipate what might be wished. And there, too, she died.\n\nTo us with our exclusive family feelings, or indeed to the general\nhuman sentiment that courts the utmost privacy for that solemn closing\nscene, there is something which jars in the account of Madame\nSwetchine's last days on earth. Doubtless all the consolations of\nreligion were there to hallow her dying moments; she continued to the\nlast to devote long hours to prayer; and by an enviable privilege she\npossessed a domestic chapel blessed with the perpetual presence of the\nBlessed Sacrament; but what strikes us strangely is, that her _salon_\nhad chanced to remain open while extreme unction was being\nadministered; and so, as it was her usual reception hour, the few\nfriends in Paris at that season (September) continued to drop in one\nby one, and kneeling, each new-comer behind the other, prayed with and\nfor her. Those last visitors were Pere Chocarn, prior of the\nDominicans; Pere Gagarin; Mesdames Fredro, de Meyendorf, and Craven;\nMessieurs de Broglie, de Falloux, de Melun, and Zermolof. But the\n_strange_ feeling we cannot help experiencing must be reasoned with.\nHer _salon_ and her friends were to Madame Swetchine home and family.\n\nAnd now it might seem that nothing more could be said of her; but, in\ntruth, a very small portion has yet been expressed. Beside the six\nhours devoted to reception, the day counted eighteen more. There were\nreligious duties to be performed, and home duties no less imperative;\nthere were the poor to be visited, and there were the claims of study,\nwhich Madame Swetchine never neglected up to the latest period of\nexistence. All these calls upon her time were recognized by\nconscience, and therefore duly responded to. Madame Swetchine was, of\ncourse, an early riser; by eight or nine o'clock she had heard mass,\nvisited her poor, and was ready to commence the business of the day.\n\nAfter breakfast, an hour or two were devoted to General Swetchine, who\nliked her to read to him. During the {462} last fifteen years of his\nlife, and his death only preceded hers seven years, he had become so\ndeaf as to enjoy general society but little; but he would not allow\nher to give up her receptions on that account, as she wished to do.\nThe rest of the morning was employed in study with strictly closed\ndoors, only opened to cases of misfortune, and these Madame Swetchine\nnever considered as intrusions. Her confidential servant knew it well,\nand did not scruple to disturb her when real want or sorrow begged for\nadmittance. Her persevering love of study is well illustrated by her\nown assurance, but a few months before her death, that even then she\nnever sat down to her writing-table without \"feeling her heart beat\nwith joy.\" She advised Mrs. Craven always to reserve a few morning\nhours for study, saying the quality of time was different at that\nperiod of day.\n\nSeveral hours in the evening were again spent with the general. At\nmidnight, when all visitors departed, Madame Swetchine retired to\nrest; but her repose never lasted much beyond two in the morning.\nPainful infirmities made her suffer all day long, and at night\ndebarred her from sleep. Motion alone brought comparative ease, and\ntherefore it was that, with intimate friends, she carried on\nconversation walking up and down her rooms. At night, suffocation\nincreased, as also a nervous kind of excitement. It was at these\nhours, during the intervals snatched from pain, that she mostly\ncomposed the writings which M. de Falloux has given to the world. No\nwonder that they bear the impress of the cross; nor can we marvel that\nshe speaks feelingly and scientifically of resignation, for good need\nhad she to practise that. Such were usually her twenty-four hours in\nParis.\n\nIf we look back to the past, religion had not always been the guiding\nprinciple with Madame Swetchine. Her father, M. Soymonof, was a\ndisciple of Voltaire, and he brought her up without any pious\ntraining. She never even repeated morning or evening prayers; simply\nattended the imperial chapel as a matter of course. But Voltaire did\nnot excite her admiration; his infidelity was too cold, his immorality\ntoo coarse; it was Rousseau who charmed her. His passionate language\npleased her imagination, and the pages of _La Nouvelle Heloise_ were\nalmost entirely transcribed, to be again and again dwelt on. She could\nnot detect the sophistry beneath. But the first deep sorrow of her\nyouth taught her prayer, and brought her to the feet of God, never to\nabandon him. M. Soymonof was suddenly snatched from his children by\ndeath, and Madame Swetchine, the anguish of this bereavement, turned\nto heaven for help and consolation. Another sorrow, the nature of\nwhich we ignore, overtook her at this period; and, to use her own\nexpression, she \"threw herself then into the arms of God with such\nenthusiasm as naught else ever awakened.\"\n\nThe first effect was to render her a fervent adherent of Russian\northodoxy; but her mind was too philosophic to rest long satisfied\nwith half conclusions. She was struck with the piety of French\nCatholics at St. Petersburg; especially the modest merit of the\nChevalier d'Augard won her highest esteem. Finally, after much\nvoluminous study, and despite the resistance her rebellious spirit\nloved to oppose to what she at first called M. de Maistre's \"dogmatic\nabsolutism,\" she entered the Catholic Church.\n\nThe absurd idea that religion renders the heart cold has been too\noften refuted to need any comment here. But it may be said that Madame\nSwetchine affords another example of how much devotion, by purifying\nhuman feeling, intensifies it also. God had given her a loving nature;\nand as her piety deepens with years, so does her tender affection for\nfamily ties, for friends, country, and finally for all the poor,\nsuffering, helpless ones of earth. Her first great attachment was for\nher father, and so her first great sorrow was at his loss; for thus\nintimately {463} are love and pain ever conjoined in this world.\nAnother deep affection of childhood and early youth, extending through\nlife, was for her sister. Madame Swetchine was quite a mother to this\nchild, ten years her junior. When she married, she still kept her with\nher; and when the young sister also married, becoming the wife of\nPrince Gagarin, Madame Swetchine became a mother also to the five boys\nwho were successively brought into the world. \"They are all my\nnephews,\" would she say; \"but the two eldest are especially my\nchildren.\" And well did they respond to the feelings of their aunt,\nscarcely separating her from their own parent. When she shut herself\nup for study, it was their amusement to try and get her out to play\nwith them; if she remained deaf to entreaties, the little boys would\nbesiege her door, making deafening noises with their playthings, until\nshe mostly yielded and let them in. A very short time before her\ndeath, when Madame Swetchine could hardly sit or speak, she assembled\na large family party of young nephews and nieces, with their\npreceptors and governesses, to dine at her house, and was greatly\ndiverted with their innocent mirth.\n\nThere is something disappointing in Madame Swetchine's marriage. The\nfavor enjoyed by Monsieur Soymonof at court, her own position as\nmaid-of-honor to the Empress Marie, her birth, fortune, extreme youth,\nand many individual qualifications, all alike rendered her a fitting\nmatch for any man in the empire. She certainly could have chosen.\nSeveral asked her hand. Amongst them was Count Strogonof, young, rich,\nnoble, and talented. But Monsieur Soymonof preferred his own friend\nGeneral Swetchine; and Sophie, we are told, accepted with affectionate\ndeference her father's choice. The general was twenty-five years her\nsenior, and though a fine military-looking man, with noble\nsoldier-like feelings, scrupulously honorable, and with much to win\nesteem, yet he does not appear the sort of person suited to her ardent\nenthusiastic temperament. He possessed qualities fitted to command the\nrespect of a young wife; but not exactly those that win her to\nadmiration and love. Wherever honor was not concerned, he lapsed into\nhis natural apathy: neither intellect nor imagination were by any\nmeans on a par with hers. And the girl of seventeen who prematurely\nlinked her fate with his was full of romance: nurtured as she had been\nby a fond ill-judging father, with Rousseau to guide her opening\nthought, her early dreams probably had fed on some chivalrous St.\nPreux with whom to course the stream of life. Perhaps she was dreaming\nof wedding some stern military personification of the same. What an\nawakening there must have been! Was this the second deep sorrow that\nclouded her nineteenth summer? Was there a struggle then? Then did she\n\"fling herself into the arms of God\" victorious.\n\nThere is no clue to trace aught of this save that which guides to the\nusual windings of the human heart. Madame Swetchine was far too nice\nin her sense of duty, and far too delicate in feeling, to allow any\nsuch admissions to escape.\n\nThe devotion of a life-time was given unreservedly to General\nSwetchine. She never knew the happiness of becoming a mother, the tie\nthat would of all others have been dearest to her heart. But the\ngeneral had bestowed paternal affection on a young girl called Nadine\nStaeline, and Madame Swetchine also generously insisted on adopting\nher. Nadine, welcomed to their roof, was treated by Madame Swetchine\nlike her own child.\n\nHer attentions to the general continued unremitting. When he quitted\nRussia, she accompanied him to Paris; when he was summoned to return,\nthough condemned to banishment from St. Petersburg and Moscow, she\nprofited by the respite gained to go alone in her old age and\ninfirmity to plead his cause herself with the emperor. Nor did she\ncomplain of the illness in Russia that followed such fatigue, for\n{464} her suit was granted. Still less did she regret the yet more\nserious malady that overtook her on returning to Paris with the glad\ntidings that brought such relief to his declining years. He lived to\nthe age of ninety-two, and her grief at his loss was intense. Then\nindeed it was the long companion of a life-time that was taken from\nher; and we all know the tender attachment that strengthens with years\nbetween two persons who pass them together, and mutually esteem each\nother.\n\nThe general, on his part, always showed Madame Swetchine affection\nthat had gradually become mixed up with a species of veneration.\nThough he never thwarted her religious views, he did not himself\nembrace them; he liked to see her Catholic friends, even priests, and\nespecially Pere de Ravignan; but remained satisfied with the Greek\nChurch. Beside her duties as a wife, we have seen Madame Swetchine\nembrace those of a mother toward young Nadine. She never slackened in\nthem until Nadine by her marriage ceased to require their exercise.\nThen she contrived to gratify her maternal instincts by undertaking\nthe charge of Helene de Nesselrode, the daughter of her friend, just\naged fourteen, and whose health demanded a warmer climate than that of\nRussia. Nor did she give her up till Helene married.\n\nFaithful to all the sentiments she experienced, and warm in her\nfriendships, Madame Swetchine's most enthusiastic attachment appears\nto have been for Mademoiselle Stourdja. It dated from her early\nmarried life, and continued through the whole of existence. At first\nit well-nigh provokes a smile to see how, scarcely parted for a few\nhours from her friend, she rushes to her pen, that it may express the\npangs of separation. But girlhood has not passed over, ere thought,\nreason, duty, figure largely in the letters of Madame Swetchine. Her\ncorrespondence was extensive, and portrays herself just as she\nappeared in daily life--a wise, gentle, and affectionate friend or\ncounsellor, as circumstances might dictate. Nowhere does this show her\nto greater advantage than in the letters--too few, unfortunately--that\nwe possess from Madame Swetchine to Pere Lacordaire. The difference\nbetween the two minds is striking. Her good sense and exquisite\njudgment contrast with his fiery impetuosity of thought and feeling;\nit is evident that her soul moves in the serene atmosphere of near\nunion with God; while he, the religious of already some years'\nstanding, is yet battling with strong human torrents. How gently she\ncalls him up a higher path, never forgetting her womanhood nor his\npriestly character. His tone becomes much more religious; with rare\ncandor and simplicity he sees and owns past imperfections.\n\nPatriotism was one of her ardent sentiments, and she considered the\nfeeling as a duty incumbent on women no less than men: of course,\nconduct was to be in accordance. Like many Russians, love of country\ncentred for her in devotion to the sovereign; and of this her letters\nafford curious exemplification. She calls Alexander \"the hero of\nhumanity,\" and, after enumerating his many perfections, rejoices that\nthis young sage is our emperor! When her husband was harshly summoned\nback to Russia, that the disgrace of exile from court might be\ninflicted, she exclaims: \"God knows that I have never uttered a word\nof complaint against my sovereigns, nor so much as blamed them in\nheart!\" Strange loyalty this to our modern western notions!\n\nHer tender charity toward the poor began to show itself at an early\nage. At twenty-five in St. Petersburg she was already the soul of all\ngood works there: nor did she content herself with merely giving alms,\nnor even with seeking to promote moral improvement; her ingenious\nkindness displayed itself also in endeavouring to procure pleasure or\ninnocent amusements. She took flowers to those she visited, or tried\nto adorn their rooms with pictures. The {465} friendless deaf-and-dumb\ngirl whom she had adopted became her constant attendant; and Madame\nSwetchine bore with her violence of temper until the defect was partly\novercome.\n\nShe undertook the charge of a poor boy at Vichy, because his many\nmaladies and their repulsive nature rendered him an object almost of\ndisgust. Each summer that she returned there, he was among the first\nto greet her, sure of the kindest welcome. For years all his wants\nwere supplied at her expense; and when he died, she said he had now\nbecome her benefactor.\n\nTo know Madame Swetchine thoroughly, her writings must be read. They\nwere never meant for publication, but are either self-communings, or\nthoughts poured out before God. Some of her aphorisms are touchingly\ndelicate in sentiment.\n\n\"Loving hearts are like paupers; they live on what is given them.\"\n\n\"Our alms form our sole riches, and what we withhold constitutes our\nreal poverty.\"\n\nHer prayers and meditations may be used with advantage for spiritual\nreading. Her unfinished treatise on Old Age is very beautiful; but\nmore exquisite still is that more complete one on Resignation. Any\npassage chosen at random would show elevated thought.\n\n\"The first degree of submission produces respectful acquiescence to\nGod's will; then this sentiment becomes transformed into a pious and\nsincere acceptation full of confidence; until confidence itself\ngradually acquires a filial character.\"\n\n\"Faith,\" she says, \"makes resignation reasonable, and hope renders it\neasy.\"\n\n\"The love of God draws us away from our long love of self.\"\n\n\"Patience is so near to resignation, that it often seems one and the\nsame thing.\"\n\nShe acknowledges that the hardest trials of resignation are found in\nthose misfortunes irreparable here on earth. Such are death, old age,\nphysical infirmity, loss of worldly honor, final impenitence. But the\ndeath of those we love, she says, may be deeply mourned in the midst\nof resignation; and our own certain death affords not only a\ncounterbalance to such affliction, but also to the other evils of\nlife. Old age is a halt between the world overcome, and eternity about\nto begin. Physical infirmities make us live in the atmosphere of the\ngospel beatitudes; we are then truly the poor ones of Christ, or\nrather poverty itself. The world sometimes forgets, but never pardons;\nwhat matters, provided virtue remain unscathed, or that it be restored\nthrough repentance?\n\n\"Suffering teaches us how to suffer; suffering teaches us how to live;\nsuffering teaches us how to die.\"\n\nAnd here we take our leave of this remarkable woman, who offers such a\nbright example to our generation.\n\n----\n\n{466}\n\nFrom The Dublin Review.\n\nRECENT IRISH POETRY.\n\n_Lays of the Western Gael and other Poems_. By SAMUEL FERGUSON.\nLondon: Bell & Daldy. 1865.\n\n\n\n_Poems_. By SPERANZA (LADY WILDE). Dublin: Duffy. 1864.\n\n\n_Laurence Bloomfield in Ireland_. A modern Poem. By WILLIAM ALLINGHAM.\nLondon: Macmillan &Co. 1864.\n\n\n_Inisfail, a Lyrical Chronicle of Ireland_. By AUBREY DE VERE. Dublin:\nDuffy. 1864.\n\n\nIn the palmy days of Young Ireland, its writers and speakers were\nparticularly prone to the quotation of that strange saying of Fletcher\nof Saltoun: \"If a man were permitted to make all the ballads, he need\nnot care who should make the laws of a country.\" It has been the\ndestiny of Young Ireland to make and to administer the laws of other\ncountries than that for which its hot youth hoped to legislate. But it\nhas certainly left Ireland a legacy of excellent ballads. A glance at\nthe fortunes of some of the more prominent members of this brilliant\nbut ill-fated party, as they present themselves to view at this\nmoment, suggests curious contrasts and strange reflections. Mr. Gavan\nDuffy, who was assuredly the source of its noblest and wisest\ninspirations, after having within ten years occupied high office in\nthree Victorian ministries, and laid the impress of his organizing\ngenius deep on the constitutional foundations of that most rising of\nthe Australian states, is on his way home from Melbourne for a brief\nEuropean vacation. Mr. John Mitchel,  [Footnote 96] who represented\nthe more violent and revolutionary section of Young Ireland, was,\nbefore the American war commenced, editor of the _Richmond Enquirer_,\none of the most extreme organs of secession, and afterward visited\nParis with the hope of inducing the Emperor Napoleon to invade\nIreland; but since the war was declared, he has resumed his post at\nRichmond--sometimes writing articles that are supposed more\nparticularly to forecast President Davis's policy; sometimes serving\nin the ranks of General Lee's army as the driver of an ambulance\nwagon. His eldest son fired the first shot that struck Fort Sumter,\nand afterward was himself struck at the heart in its command by a\nnorthern bullet. Mitchel's favorite lieutenant, Devin Reilly, on the\nother hand, died in office at Washington, and his illness was\nattributed at the time to over-fatigue in one of the earliest of those\ngreat electioneering contests in which the supremacy of Mr. Lincoln\nfinally came to be established over Mr. Stephen Douglas, \"the little\ngiant of the west,\" and the only man, in Mr. Reilly's ardent\nconviction, who could have saved the American Union. Mr. D'Arcy McGee,\nwhose character bore to that of Devin Reilly about the same relation\nas Mr. Duffy's did to that of Mr. Mitchel, is at present a leading\nmember of the executive council of Canada, and (the Duke of Newcastle\nwas of opinion) the ablest statesman of British America; in proof of\nwhich it may suffice to say, that the project of the Canadian\nconfederation was in a great degree originated and elaborated by him.\nThe handsome young orator, whose fiery eloquence surpassed in its\ninfluence on an Irish audience in the Rotunda even the most brilliant\neffects of Sheil at the old Catholic Association, is now to be\nrecognized in a bronzed and war-worn soldier, under {467} the style\nand title of Major-General Thomas Francis Meagher, of the United\nStates army, commanding a division, which, after Sherman commenced his\nmarvellous march on Savannah, was sent forward to hold the southern\nsection of Tennessee, and was last heard of in camp at Chattanooga.\nOne of this orator's favorite disciples, Eugene O'Reilly, holds an\nequivalent rank; but his line of service has lain not in America, but\nin Asia--his allegiance is not to the President Abraham Lincoln, but\nto the Sultan Abdul Aziz; he is known to all true believers under the\nstyle of O'Reilly Bey, one of the earliest of the Christian officers\nwho took rank under the Hatti Hamayoun; and his sword's avenging\njustice was freely felt among the Mohammedan mob who horrified\nChristendom five years ago by the massacres of Syria. What region of\nthe earth is not full of the labors of this party, sect, and school of\nall the Irish talents, of whom may well be sung the antique Milesian\nelegy, to which their prophet and guide gave words that complain \"they\nhave left but few heirs of their company?\"  [Footnote 97] The rabid\nviolence and the underbred vulgarity of style which belong to so many\nof the Irish Nationalist party of the present day, are all unlike even\nthe errors of Young Ireland. That party, though it tragically failed\nin fulfilling its hopes at home, has at all events justified its\nambition abroad; and it was always and everywhere singularly true to\nits ideas. Scattered as it is, broken, and often apparently divided\nagainst itself, its members have not failed to yield loyal, valiant,\nand signal service to whatever cause they espoused or country they\nadopted. Its poets have had a principal hand in framing the\nconstitutions of states manifestly destined to future greatness. Its\norators have led forlorn hopes against fearful odds; and, whether in\nthe marshes of the Chickahominy or in Syrian defiles, have not known\nhow to show their backs to the enemy. It would be easy to trace over a\nfar wider range the fortunes of its members since the great emigration\nthat scattered them in the years that followed their catastrophe in\n'48. It is possible any day to find a Young Irelander, who at a more\nor less brief period after Ballingarry _abiit, evasit, erupit_, in the\nred baggy breeches of the Zouave, or in judicial crimson and ermine at\nthe antipodes; in the black robe of a Passionist father or the silk\ngown of a queen's counsel; surveying a railroad in Dakotah, or\norganizing brigands in Sicily; helping in some subordinate way the\nEmperor Maximilian to found the Mexican empire, or on the high road to\nmake himself a Yellow Button at Peking. As for American generals north\nand south, and colonial law-givers east and west, their names are\nlegion and the legion's name very much begins with Mac or O'. May they\nmake war and law to good advantage! It was not given to them to make\neither for Ireland; but, if Fletcher of Saltoun was a wise man in his\ngeneration, they in theirs have left their country a far more precious\nheritage.\n\n  [Footnote 96: Our American readers need hardly be reminded that some\n  of the biographical statements which follow are very wide of the\n  truth.--Ed. C. W.]\n\n  [Footnote 97: _As truagh gan oidir 'n-a bh-farradk_--literally,\n  \"What a pity that there is no heir of their company.\" See the\n  \"Lament for the Milesians,\" in \"The Poems of Thomas Davis.\" Dublin:\n  Duffy.]\n\nIrish poetry certainly existed before Young Ireland, and was even\nconsidered, like oratory, to be a quality naturally and easily\nindigenous to the Irish genius. Moore had not unworthily sustained the\nreputation of his country in an age of great poets; and it was Moore's\nown avowed belief that his \"Irish Melodies\" were the very flowering of\nhis inspiration, and were indeed alone warranted to preserve his fame\nto future ages. But neither Moore, nor any other poet of Irish birth,\nhad attempted to give to the Irish that poetry \"racy of the soil,\"\nwherein every image and syllable smacks of their own native\nnationality, which Burns and Scott, and a host of minor poets, had\ncreated for the Scotch. This is the work which Young Ireland\ndeliberately and avowedly attempted, and in which it has assuredly\nsucceeded. When the effort was first made, it is {468} told that\nseveral of the writers who afterward wrote what, in its order of\nballad poetry, is unexcelled in the language--and notably Mr. Davis--\nwere quite unaware of any possession of the poetic faculty, and took\nto the task as a boy takes to his tale of Latin spondees and dactyls\nat college. But the stream was in the rock, and when the rock was\ntapped the stream flowed. In the course of less than a year \"The\nSpirit of the _Nation_\" was published, in which, with much undeniable\nrubbish, there appeared a number of ballads and songs that won the\nadmiration of all good critics; and to which the far more important\ntestimony of their popular acceptance is still given in the form of\ncontinuously recurring and increasing editions. A Scotch publisher--\nMr. Griffin, of Glasgow--ten years ago had heard such accounts of this\ncurious flood-tide of Irish verse, that he thought it might be a safe\nspeculation to try whether, despite its politics, it might not make\nits way in the British market. The edition was very soon exhausted,\nand the book is now, we believe, out of print. These facts are of even\nmore value than the high opinion which so experienced and accomplished\na critic as Lord Jeffrey expressed about the same time of the poetic\ngifts of Davis and Duffy; for by universal consent the test of sale\nloses all its vulgarity when applied to that most ethereal compound of\nthe human intellect, poetry. The poet is born, and not made, according\nto Horace; but in so far as he is made anything by man, it is by\nprocess of universal suffrage over the counter. Gradual, growing,\ngeneral recognition, testified by many editions, at last, in the\ncourse of thirty years, establishes the irrefragable position of a\nTennyson; against which a Tupper, long struggling, in the end finds\nhis level, and lines trunks.\n\nMuch of the poetry of this time was, consciously or unconsciously,\nmimetic--mainly of Sir Walter Scott and of Lord Macaulay, whose \"Lays\nof Ancient Rome\" had recently been published. Scott, indeed, more\ndistinctly suggested the elements out of which the Young Ireland\npoetry grew. Burns wrote in a peculiar provincial dialect, and with\nthe exception of a few glorious lyrics, which will occur to every\nreader's recollection, he wrote for a district and for a class. But in\nScott's mind all the elements of the Scottish nationality were equally\nconfluent and homogeneous--the Highlander, the Lowlander, and the\nIslander; the Celt, the Saxon, and the Dane; the laird, the presbyter,\nand the peasant; and his imagination equally vivified all times--from\nthose of the Varangians at Constantinople to those of the Jacobites at\nCulloden. But in Ireland there was no formed dialect like the Lowland\nScotch, with a settled vocabulary and a concrete form. The language of\nthe peasantry in many parts of the country was the same sort of base\nEnglish that a foreigner speaks--scanty in its range of words,\nill-articulated and aspirated, loose in the use of the liquid letters,\nformed according to alien idioms, and flavored with alien expletives.\nThe language of the best of the ballads of the peasantry was that of a\nperiod in which the people still thought in Irish, and expressed\nthemselves in broken English, uttered with the deep and somewhat\nguttural tones of the Celt, and garnished now and then with the more\nracy epithets, or endearments, or shibboleths, of their native speech.\nFor a time the example of Lord Macaulay's ballad poetry prevailed,\nwith its long rolling metre, its picturesque nomenclature, its\ncontrasts rather rhetorical than poetical. It was possible to describe\nthat decisive charge of the Irish brigade at Fontenoy, which Mr.\nCarlyle treats as a mere myth, in strains which instantly suggest\nthose of the \"Battle of Ivry.\" And so did Davis in a very memorable\nballad; but the likeness was mainly in the measure, and Lord Macaulay\nhad no copyright in lines of fourteen feet. The poem itself was Irish\nto the manor born; and, it might be pleaded, was only as like the\nverse of Lord Macaulay as the prose of Lord Macaulay is like the prose\nof Edmund Burke. {469} Beyond this task-work, however, which, although\nvery ingeniously and fluently done, was still as much task-work as\ncollege themes, there arose a difficulty and a hope. Was it possible\nto transfuse the peculiar spirit of the Irish native poetry into the\nEnglish tongue? The researches of the Archaeological Society were at\nthis time rapidly disentombing the long-hidden historical and poetical\ntreasures of the Irish language. Many of these had been translated by\nClarence Mangan, in a style which did not pretend to be literally\nfaithful, but which so expanded, illustrated, and harmonized the\noriginal that the poem, while losing none of its idiosyncrasy, gained\nin every quality of grace, freedom, and force. The rich, the sometimes\nredundant array of epithets, the mobile, passionate transitions, the\ntender and melancholy spirit of veneration for a vanishing\ncivilization, for perishing houses, scattering clans, and a persecuted\nChurch--some even of the more graceful of the idioms and more musical\nof the metres--might surely be naturalized in the English language;\nand so an Irish poetical dialect be absolutely invented in the middle\nof the nineteenth century. It was known how an Irish peasant spoke\nbroken English, and put it into rhyme that did not want a strange wild\nmelody, that was to more finished and scholarly verse as the flavor of\n_poteen_ is to the flavor of Burgundy. But how would an Irish bard,\ndrawing his inspiration from the primeval Ossianic sources, and\nthinking in the true ecstatic spirit of the Irish muse, speak, if he\nwere condemned to speak, in the speech of the Saxon? This was the bold\nconception; and no one who is familiar with the poetry of Ireland\nduring the last twenty years, will deny that it has been in great part\nfulfilled.\n\nThe poet to whom its execution is especially due can hardly be called\na Young Irelander in the political sense of the word. But Young\nIreland was a literary school as well as a political sect; and any one\nwho remembers, or may read, Mr. Ferguson's wonderful \"Lament for\nThomas Davis,\" which it is to be greatly regretted he has not included\nin the present edition of his poems, will recognize the strong\nelective affinities which attached him to their action and influence.\nAs it is, this volume is by far the most remarkable recent\ncontribution of the Irish poetical genius to English literature. Mr.\nFerguson has accomplished the problem of conveying the absolute spirit\nof Irish poetry into English verse, and he has done so under the most\ndifficult conceivable conditions--for he prefers a certain simple and\nunluxuriant structure in the plan of his poems, and he uses in their\ncomposition the most strictly Saxon words he can find. But all the\naccessories and figures, and still more a certain weird melody in the\nrhythm that reminds the ear of the wild grace of the native music,\nindicate at every turn what Mr. Froude has half-reproachfully called\n\"the subtle spell of the Irish mind.\" It is not surprising to find\neven careful and accomplished English critics unable to reach to the\nessential meaning of this poetry, which, to many, evidently appears as\nbald as the style of Burns first seemed to southron eyes when he\nbecame the fashion at Edinburgh eighty years ago. And yet to master\nthe dialect of Burns is at least as difficult as to master the dialect\nof Chaucer, while Mr. Ferguson rarely uses a word that would not be\npassed by Swift or Defoe. Before one of the most beautiful, simple,\nand graceful of his later poems a recent critic paused, evidently\ndismayed by the introduction, of which, however, not willing to\ndispute the beauty, he quoted a few lines. It was an old Irish legend,\nversified with surpassing grace and spirit, of which this is the\nargument. Fergus MacRoy, king of Ulster in the old pagan times, was a\nvery good king of his kind. He loved his people and they loved him. He\nwas handsome, and strong, and tall. He bore himself well in war and in\nthe chase. He drank with discretion. {470} Nevertheless his life had\ntwo troubles. He did not love the law; and he did love a widow. To\nlisten as chief justiciary to the causes, of which a constant crop\nsprang up at Emania, tares and corn thickly set together, troubled him\nsorely. To make verses to the widow, on the other hand, came as easy\nas sipping usquebaugh or metheglin. He proposed, and though a king was\nrefused; but not discouraged, pressed his suit again and again. And at\nlast Nessa the fair yielded, but she made a condition that her son\nConor should sit on the judgment-seat daily by his stepfather's side..\nThis easily agreed, Nessa became queen, while, as Fergus tells the\ntale:\n\n  While in council and debate\n  Conor daily by me sate;\n  Modest was his mien in sooth,\n  Beautiful the studious youth,\n\n  Questioning with eager gaze,\n  All the reasons and the ways\n  In the which, and why because,\n  Kings administer the laws.\n\nIn this wise a year passed, the youth diligently observant, with\nfaculties ripening and brightening as his majesty's grew more\nconsciously rusty and slow; and then a crisis came, which Mr. Ferguson\ndescribes in verses of which it is hard to say whether they best\ndeserve the coif or the laurel, for in every line there is the sharp\nwit of the lawyer as well as the vivid fancy of the poet:\n\n  Till upon a day in court\n  Rose a plea of weightier sort,\n  Tangled as a briery thicket\n  Were the rights and wrongs intricate\n\n  Which the litigants disputed,\n  Challenged, mooted, and confuted,\n  Till when all the plea was ended\n  Naught at all I comprehended.\n\n  Scorning an affected show\n  Of the thing I did not know,\n  Yet my own defect to hide,\n  I said, \"Boy judge, thou decide.\"\n\n  Conor with unalter'd mien,\n  In a clear sweet voice serene,\n  Took in hand the tangled skein,\n  And began to make it plain.\n\n  As a sheep-dog sorts his cattle,\n  As a king arrays his battle,\n  So the facts on either side\n  He did marshal and divide.\n\n  Every branching side-dispute\n  Traced he downward to the root\n  Of the strife's main stem, and there\n  Laid the ground of difference bare.\n\n  Then to scope of either cause,\n  Set the compass of the laws,\n  This adopting, that rejecting,--\n  Reasons to a head collecting,--\n\n  As a charging cohort goes\n  Through and over scatter'd foes,\n  So, from point to point he brought\n  Onward still the weight of thought\n\n  Through all error and confusion,\n  Till he set the clear conclusion,\n  Standing like a king alone,\n  All things adverse overthrown,\n\n  And gave judgment clear and sound:--\n  Praises filled the hall around;\n  Yea, the man that lost the cause\n  Hardly could withhold applause.\n\nIn these exquisite verses, the language is as strict to the point as\nif it were taken from Mr. Smith's \"Action at Law;\" but the reader will\nremark how every figure reminds him, and yet not in any mere mimetic\nfashion, of the spirit and illustrations of the Ossianic poetry.\nNevertheless each word taken by itself is simple Saxon. Its Celtic\ncharacter only runs like a vein through the poem, but it colors and\nsaturates it through and through.\n\nThe greatest of Mr. Ferguson's poems, however, is undoubtedly \"The\nWelshmen of Tirawley,\" a ballad which, we do not fear to say, is\nunsurpassed in the English language, or perhaps in even the Spanish.\nIts epic proportion and integrity, the vivid picturesqueness of its\nphraseology, its wild and original metre, its extraordinary\nrealization of the laws and customs of an Irish clan's daily life, the\nstern brevity of its general narrative, and the richness of its\nfigures, though all barbaric pearl and gold, give it a pre-eminent\nplace among ballads. Scott would have devoted three volumes to the\nstory, were it not for the difficulty of telling some of its\nincidents. Mr. Ferguson exhibits no little skill in the way that he\nhurries his readers past what he could not altogether omit. For the\nfacts upon which the ballad is founded are simply horrible, and they\nare historically true.\n\nAfter the time of Strongbow, several Welsh families who had followed\nhis flag settled in Connaught. Among {471} these \"kindly Britons\" of\nTirawley, were the Walshes or Wallises, the Heils (_a quibus_ MacHale,\nand, possibly, that most perfect instance of the _Hibernis ipsis\nHibemior_, the archbishop of Tuam); also the Lynotts and the Barretts,\nwith whom we are at present more particularly concerned. These last\nclaimed descent from the high steward of the manor of Camelot, and\ntheir end is a story fit for the Round Table. The great toparch of the\nterritory was the MacWilliam Burke, as the Irish called the head of\nthe de Burgos, descended from William FitzAdelm de Burgo, conqueror of\nConnaught, and therein commonly called William Conquer--of whom the\nMarquis of Clanricarde is the present lineal representative; being to\nConnaught even still somewhat as the MacCallummore is to Argyle, more\nespecially when he happens to be in the cabinet, and to have the\npatronage of the post-office. Now the Lynotts were subject to the\nBarretts, and the Barretts were subject to the Burkes. But when the\nBarretts' bailiff, Scorna Boy, came to collect the Lynotts' taxes, he\nso demeaned himself that the whole clan rose as one man, even as Jack\nCade, and slew him. Whereupon the vengeful Barretts gave to all\nmankind among the Lynott clan a terrible choice--of which one\nalternative was blindness; and the bearded men were all of their own\npreference blinded, and led to the river Duvowen, and told to walk\nover the stepping stones of Clochan-na-n'all; and they all stumbled\ninto the flood and were drowned, except old Emon Lynott, of\nGarranard--whom accordingly the Barretts brought back and blinded\nover again, by running needles through his eyeballs.\n\n  But with prompt-projected footsteps, sure as ever,\n  Emon Lynott again crossed the river,\n  Though Duvowen was rising fast,\n  And the shaking stones o'ercast,\n  By cold floods boiling past;\n      Yet you never,\n      Emon Lynott,\n  Faltered once before your foemen of Tirawley.\n\n  But turning on Ballintubber bank, you stood\n  And the Barretts thus bespoke o'er the flood--\n  \"Oh, ye foolish sons of Wattin,\n  Small amends are these you've gotten,\n  For, while Scorna Boy lies rotten,\n      I am good\n      For vengeance!\"\n  Sing the vengeance of the Welshmen of Tirawley.\n\n  For 'tis neither in eye nor eyesight that a man.\n  Bears the fortunes of himself and his clan,\n  But in the manly mind\n  These darken'd orbs behind,\n  That your needles could never find,\n      Though they ran\n      Through my heartstrings.\n  Sing the vengeance of the Welshmen of Tirawley.\n\n  But little your women's needles do I reck,\n  For the night from heaven never fell so black,\n  But Tirawley and abroad\n  From the Moy to Cuan-an-fod,\n  I could walk it, every sod,\n      Path and track,\n      Ford and togher,\n  Seeking vengeance on you, Barretts of Tirawley!\n\nAnd so leaving \"loud-shriek-echoing Garranard,\" the Lynott, with his\nwife and seven children, abandons his home, and takes refuge in Glen\nNephin, where, in the course of a year, a son is born to him, whom he\ndedicates from the first breath to his vengeance. He trains this boy\nwith assiduous care to all the accomplishments of a Celtic cavalier;\n\n  And, as ever the bright boy grew in strength and size,\n  Made him perfect in each manly exercise,\n  The salmon in the flood,\n  The dun deer in the wood,\n  The eagle in the cloud,\n      To surprise,\n      On Ben Nephin,\n  Far above the foggy fields of Tirawley.\n\n  With the yellow-knotted spear-shaft, with the bow,\n  With the steel, prompt to deal shot and blow,\n  He taught him from year to year,\n  And trained him, without a peer,\n  For a perfect cavalier,\n      Hoping so--\n      Far his forethought--\n  For vengeance on the Barretts of Tirawley.\n\n  And when mounted on his proud-bounding steed,\n  Emon Oge sat a cavalier indeed;\n  Like the ear upon the wheat,\n  When the winds in autumn beat\n  On the bending stems his seat;\n      And the speed\n      Of his courser\n  Was the wind from Barna-na-gee o'er Tirawley!\n\nFifteen years have passed and the youth is perfected in all the\naccomplishments of sport and war, and the Lynott thinks it is time to\nreturn to the world and work out the scheme of his vengeance. So the\nfather and son quit their mountain solitude, and journey southward to\nthe bailey of Castlebar; and in a few fine touches the picture of Mac\nWilliam's grandeur, as it strikes {472} the boy's wondering eyes,\nrises before us; the stone house, strong and great, and the horse-host\nat the gate and their captain in armor, and the beautiful _Bantierna_\nby his side with her little pearl of a daughter. Who should this be\nbut the mighty MacWilliam! Into his presence ride the Lynotts; and,\nafter salutations, the old man declares his business. He has come to\nclaim, as gossip-law allows, the fosterage of MacWilliam's son. Ever\nsince William Conquer's time, his race were wont to place a MacWilliam\nOge in the charge of a Briton of Tirawley; and the young Lynott was a\npledge for his father's capacity in such tutelage. When MacWilliam saw\nthe young Lynott ride, run, and shoot, he said he would give the spoil\nof a county to have his son so accomplished. When Lady MacWilliam\nheard him speak, and scanned his fresh and hardy air, she said she\nwould give a purse of red gold that her Tibbot had such a nurse as had\nreared the young Briton. The custom was allowed. The young MacWilliam\nwas sent under the guidance of old Lynott into Tirawley, and Emon Oge\nremained as a hostage in Castlebar. So back to Garranard, no longer\nthe \"loud-shriek-echoing,\" old Lynott returns--\n\n  So back to strong-throng-gathering Garranard,\n  Like a lord of the country with his guard,\n  Came the Lynott before them all,\n  Once again o'er Clochan-ua-n'all,\n  Steady-striding, erect, and tall,\n      And his ward\n      On his shoulders;\n  To the wonder of the Welshmen of Tirawley.\n\nAnd then the young Tibbot was taught all manner of feats of body, to\nswim, to shoot, to gallop, to wrestle, to fence, and to run, until he\ngrew up as deft and as tough as Emon Oge. But he was taught other\nlessons as well, which were not in the bond of his foster-father.\n\n  The lesson of hell he taught him in heart and mind;\n  For to what desire soever he inclined,\n  Of anger, lust, or pride,\n  He had it gratified,\n  Till he ranged the circle wide\n      Of a blind\n      Self-indulgence,\n  Ere he came to youthful manhood in Tirawley.\n\nShame and rage track his passage, till one night the young Barretts of\nthe Bac fell upon him at Cornassack and slew him. His body was borne\nto Castlebar. The Brehons were summoned to judgment; and over the bier\nof MacWilliam Oge began the plea for an eric to be imposed upon the\nBarretts for their crime; and the Brehons decreed the mulct, and\nLynott's share of it was nine ploughlands and nine score of cattle.\nAnd now the ultimate hour of the blind old man's vengeance had come,\nnot to be sated with land and kine. \"Rejoice,\" he cried, \"in your\nploughlands and your cattle, which I renounce throughout Tirawley.\"\nBut, expert in all the rules and customs of the clans, he asks the\nBrehons, Is it not the law that the foster-father may, if he please,\napplot the short eric? And they say it is so. Whereupon, formally\nrejecting his own share of the mulct, he makes his award--that the land\nof the Barretts shall be equally divided on every side with the\nBurkes, and that MacWilliam shall have a seat in every Barrett's hall,\na stall in every Barrett's stable, and needful grooming from every\nhosteler for every Burke who shall ride throughout Tirawley for ever.\nAnd then, in a speech full of barbaric sublimity and tragic\nconcentration of passion, he confesses \"the patient search and vigil\nlong\" of his vengeance. It is almost unjust to break the\nclosely-wrought chain of this speech by a single quotation, and we\nhave been already unduly tempted to extract from this extraordinary\npoem; but, perhaps, this one verse may be separated from the rest as\ncontaining the very culmination of the old man's hideous rage.\n\n  I take not your eyesight from you as you took\n  Mine and ours: I would have you daily look\n  On one another's eyes,\n  When the strangers tyrannize\n  By your hearths, and blushes rise\n      That ye brook\n      Without vengeance\n  The insults of troops of Tibbots throughout Tirawley.\n\nAnother moment and he has done. \"Father and son,\" says MacWilliam,\n{473} \"hang them high!\" and old Lynott they hanged forthwith; but\nyoung Lynott had eloped with MacWilliam's daughter to Scotland, and\nthere changed his name to Edmund Lindsay. The judgment of the short\neric was, however, held good; and the Burkes rode rough-shod over the\nBarretts, until, as Mr. Ferguson, almost verbally versifying the\nChronicle of Duald Mac Firbis, says:\n\n  Till the Saxon Oliver Cromwell,\n  And his valiant Bible-guided\n  Free heretics of Clan London\n  Coming in, in their succession,\n  Rooted out both Burke and Barrett;\n\na process of eviction which Mr. Ferguson, not merely for the sake of\npoetical justice, but out of the invincible ignorance of pure\npuritanical Protestantism, appears on the whole very highly to\napprove.\n\nThis ballad is indeed unique in its order: no Irish ballad approaches\nits wild sublimity and the thoroughness of detail with which it is\nconceived and executed. The only Irish narrative ballad which can bear\na general comparison with it is Mr. Florence MacCarthy's \"Foray of Con\nO'Donnell,\" a poem as perfect in its historical reality, in the\naptness of all its figures, illustrations, and feats of phrase to a\npurely Celtic ideal, and which even surpasses \"The Welshmen\" in a\ncertain easy and lissome grace of melody, that falls on the ear like\nthe delicately drawn notes of Carolan's music. But this grace is\ndisdained by the grim and compressed character which animates every\nline of Mr. Ferguson's ballad. His other works, fine of fancy and ripe\nof phrase as they are, fall far below it, \"The Tain-Quest\" does not on\nthe whole enthral the reader, or magnetize the memory. \"The Healing of\nConall Carnach,\" and \"The Burial of King Cormac\" are poems that will\nhold their place in many future Books of Irish Ballads; they are\nunusually spirited versifications of passages from the more heroic\nperiod of early Irish history; but excepting occasional lines, they\nonly appear to be the versifications of already written legends. The\nballad of Grace O'Malley, commonly called _Grana Uaile_, may be\nadvantageously contrasted with these, and it contains some verses of\nsingular power--as, for example, where the poet denies the imputation\nof piracy against this lady who loved to roam the high seas under her\nown commission--\n\n  But no: 'twas not for sordid spoil\n  Of barque or sea-board borough,\n  She plough'd with unfatiguing toil\n  The fluent-rolling furrow;\n  Delighting on the broad-back'd deep\n  To feel the quivering galley and sweep\n  Strain up the opposing hill, and sweep\n  Down the withdrawing valley.\n\n\"Aideen's Grave\" is a poem of a different kind, full of an exquisite\nmelancholy grace; and where Ossian is supposed to apostrophise his\nfuture imitator, it is as if he thought after the manner of the\nFenians, but was withal master of every symphony of the English\ntongue:\n\n  Imperfect in an alien speech\n  When wandering here some child of chance,\n  Through pangs of keen delight shall reach.\n  The gift of utterance,--\n  To speak the air, the sky to speak,\n  The freshness of the hill to tell,\n  Who roaming bare Ben Edar's peak,\n  And Aideen's briery dell,\n  And gazing on the Cromlech vast,\n  And on the mountain and the sea,\n  Shall catch communion with the past,\n  And mix himself with me.\n\nThere are lines in this poem that a little remind us of Gray, as--\n\n  At Gavra, when by Oscar's side\n  She rode _the ridge of war;_\n\nand again in the \"Farewell to Deirdre\" there is something in the cast\nand rhythm of the poem, rather than in any individual word or line,\nthat recalls Scott's \"Farewell to North Maven.\" But to say so is not\nto hit blots. Mr. Ferguson's is beyond question the most thoroughly\noriginal vein of poetry that any Irish bard of late days has wrought\nout; and in laying down this volume we can only regret that the\nspecimens he has thought worthy of collection are so few in comparison\nnot merely with what he might have done, but with what he actually has\ndone. For {474} this modesty, let us hope that the prompt penance of a\nsecond and enlarged edition may atone.\n\nWe have said that though Mr. Ferguson could hardly be called a Young\nIrelander in politics, all the elective affinities of his genius\ntended toward that school of thought. But Lady Wilde, then known if\nshe wrote prose as Mr. John Fanshawe Ellis, and if she wrote verse as\nSperanza, had an extraordinary influence on all the intellectual and\npolitical activities of Young Ireland. It was a favorite phantasy of\nthat time, when Lamartine's book was intoxicating all Young Europe\nwith the idea of a grand coming revolutionary epopoeia, and the\natrocities of socialism in France and Mazzinianism in Italy had not\nyet horrified all Christendom, to find the model men for a modern\nPlutarch in the ranks of the Girondists. Notably Meagher was supposed\nto be gifted with all the qualities of Vergniaud, and Speranza to have\nmore than the genius of Madame Roland. But when we come to real\ncomparisons of character, the parallel easily gives way. If Smith\nO'Brien was like any Frenchman of the first revolution, it was\nLafayette. Mitchel had in certain respects a suspicious resemblance to\nthe earlier and milder phases of Robespierre's peculiar intellectual\nidiosyncrasy. The base of Carnot's character was that faculty for\norganization which was the mainspring of Gavan Duffy's various and\npowerful genius. The parallel was, even so far as it went,\nintrinsically unjust. Lamartine's glowing imagination gave to the\nGirondists a grandeur largely ideal. It is fair to say that Meagher's\noratory was on the whole of a higher order than Vergniaud's; and\ncertainly Madame Roland, great as may have been the influence of her\ncharacter and her conversation, has left us no example of her talent\nthat will bear comparison with Lady Wilde's poems or prose.\n\nThese poems, however, if full justice is to be done to them, ought to\nbe read from first to last with a running commentary in the memory\nfrom the history of those few tragic years whose episodes they in a\nmanner mark. One poem is a mournfully passionate appeal to O'Connell\nagainst the alliance with the Whigs, which was charged as one of the\ncauses of the secession. Another is a ballad of the famine, with\nlights as ghastly as ever glowed in the imagination of Euripides or\nDante, and founded on horrors such as Greek or Italian never\nwitnessed. There is then a picture of \"the young patriot leader\"--\nwhich an artist would characterize as a decidedly idealized portrait\nof Meagher--that American general who has since proved his title to be\ncalled \"of the sword.\" Again, a gloomy series of images recalls to us\nthe awful state of the country--the corpses that were buried without\ncoffins, and the men and women that walked the roads more like corpses\nthan living creatures, spectres and skeletons at once; the little\nchildren out of whose sunken eyes the very tears were dried, and over\nwhose bare little bones the hideous fur of famine had begun to grow;\nthe cholera cart, with its load of helpless huddled humanity, on its\nway to the hospital; the emigrant ship sending back its woeful wail of\nfarewell from swarming poop to stern in the offing; and, far as the\neye could search the land, the blackened potato-fields, filling all\nthe air with the fetid odors of decay. Again and again such pictures\nare contrasted with passionate lyrics full of rebellious fire, urging\nthe people to die, if die they must, by the sword rather than by\nhunger--and sometimes, too, with an angry, unreasonable,\nreadily-forgiven reproach to the priesthood, who bore with such noble\nfortitude and self-immolating charity the very cross of all the\ncrosses of that terrible time.\n\nIt is a curious fact, and reminds one of the myth of Achilles' heel,\nthat O'Connell, who marched among his myriad foes like one clad in\npanoply of mail from head to foot, with a sort of inexpugnable vigor\nand endurance, not to be wounded, not to be stunned, with his buckler\nready for every {475} thrust, and a blow for every blow that rained on\nhis casque, was weak as a child under the influence of verse. Any one\nwho may count over the number of times his favorite quotations, such\nas the lines beginning \"Hereditary bondsmen\" from \"Childe Harold\" for\nexample, crop up in the course of his speeches, will be inclined to\nsay that his fondness for poetry was almost preposterous. It was\nalways tempting him, indeed, into dangerous ways--for while his prose\npreached \"the ethereal principles of moral force,\" and the tenet that\n\"no political amelioration is worth the shedding of a single drop of\nhuman blood,\" his favorite quotations were strictly in favor of\nfighting. The \"hereditary bondsmen\" were to \"strike the blow;\" and the\nIrish are a nation only too well disposed to interpret such a precept\nliterally. Moore's melodies were always at the tip of his tongue; and\nMoore's \"Slave so lowly\" is indignantly urged not to pine in his\nchains, but to raise the green flag forthwith, and do or die. Some\nverses of O'Connell's own, of which he was at least equally fond,\nbegan:\n\n  Oh Erin! shall it e'er be mine\n  To see thy sons in battle line?\n\nIt was not altogether politic, especially when Young Ireland was\ngaining the ascendant, to use such quotations habitually; but the\ntemptation seems to have been irresistible. So, on the other hand, may\nbe conceived his excessive sensitiveness to anything sounding like a\nreproach that reached him through the vehicle of verse. When Brougham\nor Stanley or Peel struck their hardest, they got in return rather\nmore than they gave--when the whole House of Commons tried to stifle\nhis voice, over all the din Mr. Speaker heard himself with horror\ncalled upon to stop this \"beastly bellowing.\" But when Moore wrote\nthose lines--so cruelly touching, so terribly caustic--\"The dream of\nthose days,\" which appeared in the last number of the Melodies, the\nLiberator was, it is said, so deeply affected that he shed tears. So\nagain, these lines of Speranza, which appeared in the _Nation_ at the\ntime of the secession, stung him to the very heart:\n\n  Gone from us--dead to us--he whom we worshipped so!\n    Low lies the altar we raised to his name;\n  Madly his own hand hath shattered and laid it low--\n    Madly his own breath hath blasted his fame.\n  He whose proud bosom once raged with humanity.\n    He whose broad forehead was circled with might;\n  Sunk to a time-serving, driveling inanity--\n    God! why not spare our loved country the sight?\n\n  Was it the gold of the stranger that tempted him?\n    Ah! we'd have pledged to him body and soul--\n  Toiled for him--fought for him--starved for him--died for him--\n    Smiled though our graves were the steps to hi s goal.\n  Breathed he one word in his deep, earnest whispering?\n    Wealth, crown, and kingdom were laid at his feet;\n  Raised he his right hand, the millions would round him cling--\n    Hush! 'tis the Sassenach ally you greet.\n\nIt is a curious and, indeed, a very touching trait in O'Connell's\ncharacter that an imputation conveyed in this form had a power to\nwound him which all the articles of the morning papers and all the\nspeeches of the evening debates had not. This redoubtable master of\nevery weapon of invective, whose weighty words sometimes fell on his\nadversary like one of Ossian's Titans hurling boulders, or again burst\ninto a motley cascade of quip, and crank, and chaff, and wild, rampant\nridicule, that (sometimes rather coarse and personal) was at its best,\nto other rhetoric, as the music of an Irish jig is to all other music,\nnevertheless had his Achilles' tendon. The man who loved to call\nhimself \"the best abused man in the universe\" was as weak before the\nenemy who attacked him according to the rules of prosody as if he\nlived in the age when every Celt in Kerry piously believed that a man,\nif the metre were only made sufficiently acrid, might be rhymed to\ndeath, in the same manner {476} as an ancestor of Lord Derby was,\naccording to the Four Masters.  [Footnote 98]\n\n  [Footnote 98: \"John Stanley came to Ireland as the king of England's\n  viceroy--a man who gave neither toleration nor sanctuary to\n  ecclesiastics, laymen, or literary men; but all with whom he came in\n  contact he subjected to cold, hardship, and famine; and he it was\n  who plundered Niall, the son of Hugh O'Higgin, at Uisneach of Meath;\n  but Henry D'Alton plundered James Tuite and the king's people, and\n  gave to the O'Higgins a cow in lieu of each cow of which they had\n  been plundered, and afterward escorted them into Connaught. The\n  O'Higgins, on account of Niall, then satirized John Stanley, who\n  only lived live weeks after the satirizing, having died from the\n  venom of their satires. This was the second instance of the poetical\n  influence of Niall O'Higgin's satires, the first having been the\n  Clan Conway turning gray the night they plundered Niall at Clodoin,\n  and the second the death of John Stanley.\"--_Annals of the Four\n  Masters._ A.D. 1414.]\n\nLady Wilde's verse has not at all the same distinctively Celtic\ncharacter as Mr. Ferguson's. He aspires to be\n\n  Kindly Irish of the Irish,\n  Neither Saxon nor Italian;\n\nand his choice inspirations come from the life of the clans.\nSperanza's verse, so far as it has a specially Irish character, is of\nthe most ancient type of that character. It is full of oriental\nfigures and illustrations. It is, when it is most Irish, rather\ncognate to Persian and Hebrew ways of thinking, forms of metaphor,\nredundance of expression--in its tendency to adjuration, in its habit\nof apostrophe, in its very peculiar and powerful but monotonous\nrhythm, which seems to pulsate on the ear with the even, strident\nstroke of a Hindoo drum. Where this peculiar poetry at all adapts\nitself to the vogue of the modern muse, it is easy to see that Miss\nBarrett had very great influence in determining the mere manner of\nLady Wilde's genius. When in the midst of one very powerful poem, \"The\nVoice of the Poor,\" these lines come in--\n\n  When the human rests upon the human,\n    All grief is light;\n  But who lends one kind glance to illumine\n    Our life-long night?\n  The air around is ringing with their laughter--\n    God has only made the rich to smile,\n  But we--in our rags, and want, and woe--we follow after,\n    Weeping the while.\n\n--we are tempted to note an unconscious homage to the author of\n\"Aurora Leigh.\" But the character of Lady Wilde's verse is far more\ncolored by the range of her studies than by the influence of any\nspecial style. The general reader, who may not breathe at ease the\npolitical atmosphere of the earlier part of this volume, will pause\nwith pleasure to observe the spirit, grace, and fidelity of the\ntranslations which succeed. They are from almost every language in\nEurope, whether of Latin or Teutonic origin, French, Spanish,\nPortuguese, Italian, German, Swedish, Danish, and Russian. Among these\nmay be mentioned in particular two hymns of Savonarola, which are\nrendered so exquisitely that one is tempted to suggest that the\n_\"Carmina Sedulii,\"_ with much more of the ancient Irish hymnology,\nare as yet untranslated into the tongue now used in Ireland. It is a\nwork peculiarly adapted to her genius. The first quality of Lady\nWilde's poetry is that lyrical power of which the hymn is the finest\ndevelopment; and her most striking poems are those which assume the\ncharacter of the older and more regular form of ode.\n\nThe readers of Mr. William Allingham's early writings were in general\ngratefully surprised when it was announced that he was the author of a\nvery remarkable poem, of the order of eclogue, which appeared by parts\nin _Fraser's Magazine_ in 1863. His earlier poems, chiefly songs and\nverse of society, were pleasing from a certain airy grace and\nlightness; but on the whole their style was thin and jejune. Of late,\nhis faculties have evidently mellowed very rapidly, and his language\nhas become more animated, more concentrated, and more sustained.\n\"Laurence Bloomfield in Ireland\" has had, as it were, a triple\nsuccess--the success of a pamphlet, the success of a novel of Irish\nlife, and its own more proper and legitimate success, as a regular\npastoral, skilfully conceived, carefully executed, in which the flow\nof thought is sustained at a very even, if not a very lofty level\nthroughout, {477} and whose language is on the whole admirably\nharmonized, full of happy allusional effects, of quaint, minute,\npicturesque delineation, and of a certain graceful and easy energy.\nMr. Gladstone has quoted some of its lines in a speech on the budget\nas an excuse for maintaining the duty on whisky; and he is not the\nonly Englishman who has derived from its perusal an unexpected insight\ninto some of the more perplexing problems of Irish life. Certainly,\nMr. Allingham's views of Irish society, when he touches on questions\nof religion and politics, are not our views. He is an Ulster\nProtestant by religion, and an advanced liberal (we take it) in\npolitics. But making those allowances, it must be admitted that he\nshows the poet's many-sided sympathetic mind in every page of this\nvery remarkable poem. \"It is,\" as he fairly says, \"free from\npersonalities, and neither of an orange nor a green complexion; but it\nis Irish in phraseology, character, and local color--with as little\nuse as might be of a corrupt dialect, and with no deference at all to\nthe stage traditions of Paddyism.\" It is divided into twelve chapters,\nand it is written in pleasantly modulated pentameters.\n\nThe story is of the life of a young squire, who was on the point of\ndeclaring himself a Young Irelander in his youth. His guardian, to cut\nthe folly short, sent him incontinently to Cambridge, thence to the\ncontinent. He returns to Ireland in his twenty-sixth year, and finds\nthe population decimated by the famine, and agitated by agrarian\nconspiracy. The neighboring gentry are bent, as conacre has ceased to\npay, on supplanting the population by cattle. The population\nsuppurates into secret societies. Laurence Bloomfield, long revolving\nthe difficulties of his lot, and abhorring pretty equally the crimes\nof each class against the other--determined, moreover, to be neither\nexterminator, demagogue, nor absentee--resolves to live among the\npeople of his estate like a modern patriarch, and see what patience,\nkindness, a good understanding, and enlightened management may be able\nto effect. He extinguishes the Ribbon lodge, fastens his tenantry by\nequitable leases to the glebe, and gradually finds in the management\nof his estate a career of easy, pleasant, and even prosperous power.\nIn the course of ten years, Lisnamoy has become an Irish Arcadia, and\nMr. Allingham's honest muse rises accordingly to sing a hero even more\nmemorable in his way than the Man of Ross.\n\nBloomfield first promulgates his peculiar views of territorial\nadministration at a dinner of his landlord neighbors in Lisnamoy\nHouse, where the wholesale eviction of the tenantry of a large\nneighboring district is proposed on the plea that--\n\n      \"This country sorely needs\n  A quicker clearance of its human weeds;\n  But still the proper system is begun,\n  And forty holdings we shall change to one.\"\n\n  Bloomfield his inexperience much confessed,\n  Doubts if the large dispeopled farms be best,--\n  Best in a wide sense, best for all the world\n  (At this expression sundry lips were curl'd),--\n  \"I wish but know not how each peasant's hand\n  Might work, nay, hope to win, a share of land;\n  For ownership, however small it be,\n  Breeds diligence, content, and loyalty,\n  And tirelessly compels the rudest field,\n  Inch after inch, its very most to yield.\n  Wealth might its true prerogatives retain;\n  And no man lose, and all men greatly gain.\"\n\nIt is from the ill-concealed contempt of his class for such thoughts\nas these, that Bloomfield's resolution to remain in Ireland and\nadminister his own estate arises.\n\nThe story, as it is evolved, presents some charming sketches of\ncharacter. Hardly even Carleton has delineated so admirably the nature\nand habits of the Irish peasant family as Mr. Allingham has done in\nhis picture of the Dorans. How easy and natural, for example, is the\nportrait of Bridget Doran:\n\n  Mild oval face, a freckle here and there,\n  Clear eyes, broad forehead, dark abundant hair,\n  Pure placid look that show'd a gentle nature,\n  Firm, unperplex'd, were hers; the maiden's stature\n  Graceful arose, and strong, to middle height,\n  With fair round arms, and footstep free and light;\n  She was not showy, she was always neat\n  In every gesture, native and complete,\n  Disliking noise, yet neither dull nor slack,\n  Could throw a rustic banter briskly back,\n  Reserved but ready, innocently shrewd,--\n  In brief, a charming flower of womanhood.\n\n{478}\n\nThe occasional sketches of Irish scenery are also very vividly\noutlined. This of Lough Braccan is not perhaps the best, but it is the\nmost easily detached from the text:\n\n  Among those mountain skirts a league away,\n  Lough Braccan spread, with many a silver bay\n  And islet green; a dark cliff, tall and bold,\n  Half-muffled in its cloak of ivy old,\n  Bastioned the southern brink, beside a glen,\n  Where birch and hazel hid the badger's den,\n  And through the moist ferns and firm hollies play'd\n  A rapid rivulet, from light to shade.\n  Above the glen, and wood, and cliff, was seen,\n  Majestically simple and serene,\n  Like some great soul above the various crowd,\n  A purple mountain-top, at times in cloud\n  Or mist, as in celestial veils of thought,\n  Abstracted heavenward.\n\nWe may give another specimen of Mr. Allingham's power of delineation,\nwhich shows that he has studied Irish country life as well as Irish\nscenery and Irish physiognomy.\n\n  Mud hovels fringe the \"fair green\" of this town,\n  A spot misnamed, at every season brown,\n  O'erspread with countless man and beast to-day,\n  Which bellow, squeak, and shout, bleat, bray, and neigh.\n  The \"jobbers\" there each more or less a rogue,\n  Noisy or smooth, with each his various brogue,\n  Cool, wiry Dublin, Connaught's golden mouth,\n  Blunt northern, plaintive sing-song of the south,\n  Feel cattle's ribs, or jaws of horses try.\n  For truth, since men's are very sure to lie,\n  And shun, with parrying blow and practised heed,\n  The rushing horns, the wildly prancing steed.\n  The moistened penny greets with sounding smack\n  The rugged palm, which smites the greeting back;\n  Oaths fly, the bargain like a quarrel burns,\n  And oft the buyer turns, and oft returns:\n  Now mingle Sassenach and Gaelic tongue;\n  On either side are slow concessions wrung;\n  An anxious audience interfere; at last\n  The sale is closed, and whisky binds it fast,\n  In case of quilting upon oziers bent,\n  With many an ancient patch and breezy rent.\n\nThis is as true a picture in its way as Mdlle. Rosa Bonheur's\n\"Horse-fair.\"\n\nMr. Aubrey de Vere's \"Inisfail\" comes last on our list, but certainly\nnot least in our estimation. No poet of Young Ireland has like him\nseized and breathed the spirit of his country's Catholic nationality,\nits virginal purity of faith, its invincible patience of hope, and all\nthe gentle sweetness of its charity. Young Ireland rather studied the\nmartial muse, and that with an avowed purpose. \"The Irish harp,\" said\nDavis, \"too much loves to weep. Let us, while our strength is great\nand our hopes high, cultivate its bolder strains, its raging and\nrejoicing; or if we weep, let it be like men whose eyes are lifted\nthough their tears fall.\" Mr. de Vere has tried every mood of the\nnative lyre, and proved himself master of all. His \"Inisfail\" is a\nballad chronicle of Ireland, such as Young Ireland would have thought\nto be a worthy result of all its talents, and such as, in fact, Mr.\nDuffy at one time proposed. But it must be said that its heroic\nballads are not equal to those of Young Ireland. Some one said of a\nvery finished, but occasionally frigid, Irish speaker, fifteen years\nago, that he spoke like \"Sheil with the chill on.\" A few of Mr. de\nVere's ballads have the same effect of \"Young Ireland with the chill\non.\" They want the verve, the glow, the energy, the resonance, which\nbelong to the best ballads of \"The Spirit of the _Nation_.\" Of the\nwriters of that time, Mr. D'Arcy McGee is perhaps, on the whole, the\nmost kindred genius to his. Mr. de Vere has an insight into all the\nperiods of Irish history in their most poetical expression which Mr.\nMcGee alone of his comrades seems to have equally possessed. Indeed,\nif Mr. Me Gee's poems were all collected and chronologically\narranged--as it is to be hoped they may be some day soon--it would be\nfound that he had unconsciously and desultorily traversed very nearly\nthe same complete extent of ground that Mr. de Vere has systematically\nand deliberately gone over. But though no one has written more nobly\nof the dimly glorious Celtic ages, and many of his battle-ballads are\ninstinct with life, and wonderfully picturesque, it is easy to see\nthat Mr. McGee's best desire was to follow the footsteps of the early\nsaints, and the _Via Dolorosa_ of the period of the penal laws. These,\n{479} too, are the passages over which Mr. de Vere's genius most loves\nto brood, and his prevailing view of Ireland is the supernatural view\nof her destiny to carry the cross and spread the faith. Young Ireland\nwrote its bold, brilliant ballads as a part of the education of the\nnew nationality that it believed was growing up, and destined to take\npossession of the island--\"a nationality that,\" to use Davis's words\nagain, \"must contain and represent all the races of Ireland. It must\nnot be Celtic; it must not be Saxon; it must be Irish. The Brehon law\nand the maxims of Westminster, the cloudy and lightning genius of the\nGael, the placid strength of the Saxon, the marshalling insight of the\nNorman; a literature which shall exhibit in combination the passions\nand idioms of all, and which shall equally express our mind, in its\nromantic, its religious, its forensic, and its practical tendencies.\nFinally, a native government, which shall know and rule by the might\nand right of all, yet yield to the arrogance of none;--these are the\ncomponents of such a nationality.\" And such was the dream that seemed\nan easy eventuality twenty years ago. But Mr. de Vere writes after the\nfamine and in view of the exodus. His mind goes from the present to\nthe past by ages of sorrow--of sorrow, nevertheless, illumined,\nnurtured, and sustained by divine faith and the living presence of the\nChurch. So in the most beautiful poem of this volume, he sees the\nwhole Irish race carrying an inner spiritual life through all their\ntribulation in the guise of a great religious order of which England\nis the foundress, and the rules are written in the statute-book. We\ncannot select a better specimen of the thorough Catholic tone of Mr.\nde Vere's genius, and of the vivid power and finished grace of his\npoetry, than this:\n\n  There is an order by a northern sea\n    Far in the west, of rule and life more strict\n  Than that which Basil rear'd in Galilee,\n    In Egypt Paul, in Umbria Benedict.\n\n  Discalced it walks; a stony land of tombs,\n    A strange Petraea of late days, it treads!\n  Within its court no high-tossed censer fumes;\n    The night-rain beats its cells, the wind its beds.\n\n  Before its eyes no brass-bound, blazon'd tome\n    Reflects the splendor of a lamp high hung:\n  Knowledge is banish'd from her earliest home\n    Like wealth: it whispers psalms that once it sung.\n\n  It is not bound by the vow celibate,\n    Lest, through its ceasing, anguish too might cease;\n  In sorrow it brings forth; and death and fate\n    Watch at life's gate, and tithe the unripe increase.\n\n  It wears not the Franciscan's sheltering gown;\n    The cord that binds it is the strangers chain;\n  Scarce seen for scorn, in fields of old renown\n    It breaks the clod; another reaps the grain.\n\n  Year after year it fasts; each third or fourth\n    So fasts that common fasts to it are feast;\n  Then of its brethren many in the earth\n    Are laid unrequiem'd like the mountain beast.\n\n  Where are its cloisters? Where the felon sleeps!\n    Where its novitiate? Where the last wolf died!\n  From sea to sea its vigil long it keeps--\n    Stern foundress! is its rule not mortified?\n\n  Thou that hast laid so many an order waste,\n    A nation is thine order! It was thine\n  Wide as a realm that order's seed to cast,\n    And undispensed sustain its discipline!\n\nIt is another curious illustration of the _Hibernis ipsis Hibernior_\nthat a de Vere, who is, moreover, \"of the caste of Vere de Vere,\"\nshould have so intimate a comprehension of the Celtic spirit as is\noften shown in these poems, especially in the use of those allegories\nwhich are so characteristic of the period of persecution, and in some\nof his metres that appear to be instinct with the very melody of the\noldest Irish music. Here, indeed, we seem to taste, in a certain vague\nand dreamy sensation, which the mere murmur of such verses even\nwithout strict reference to the words produces, all the charm of which\nthat ancient poetry might have been capable, if it were still\ncultivated in a language of living civilization. Several of these\npoems, if translated into Irish verse, would probably pass back\nwithout the change of an idiom--so completely Celtic is the whole\nconception of the language. The dirges, for example, appear on a first\nreading to be only English versions of Irish poems belonging to the\ntime of the Jacobites and the Brigade--until, as we examine more\ncarefully, we observe that the allegory is {480} wrought out with all\nthe finish of more modern art, and that the metaphors are brought into\na more just inter-dependence than the native bard usually thought\nnecessary.\n\nThe tenderness that approaches to a sort of worship of Ireland under\nthe poetical personification of a mother wailing for her children,\nagain and again breaks out in Mr. de Vere's verse; and in all the\nrange of Irish poetry it is nowhere more exquisitely expressed. The\nsolemn beauty of the following verses is like that of some of those\nearliest of the melodies, whose long lines, with their curious\nrippling rhythm, were evidently meant for recitation as well as for\nmusical effect:\n\n  In the night, in the night, O my country, the stream calls out from afar;\n    So swells thy voice through the ages, sonorous and vast;\n  In the night, in the night, O my country, clear flashes the star:\n    So flashes on me thy face through the gloom of the past.\n\n  I sleep not; I watch: in blows the wind ice-wing'd and ice-fingered:\n    My forehead it cools and slakes the fire in my breast;\n  Though it sighs o'er the plains where oft thine exiles look'd back, and long lingered,\n    And the graves where thy famish'd lie dumb and thine outcasts find rest.\n\nHardly less sad, but in so different a spirit as to afford a contrast\nthat brings us to a fair measure of the variety of Mr. de Vere's\npowers, is a poem of the days of the brigade. The wife of one of the\nsoldiers who followed Sarsfield to France after the capitulation of\nLimerick, and entered the Irish brigade of Louis XIV., is supposed,\nsitting by the banks of the Shannon, to speak:\n\n  River that through this purple plain\n  Toilest (once redder) to the main,\n  Go, kiss for me the banks of Seine!\n\n  Tell him I loved, and love for aye,\n  That his I am though far away--\n  More his than on the marriage-day.\n\n  Tell him thy flowers for him I twine\n  When first the slow sad mornings shine\n  In thy dim glass; for he is mine.\n\n  Tell him when evening's tearful light\n  Bathes those dark towers on Aughrim's height,\n  There where he fought, in heart, I fight.\n\n  A freeman's banner o'er him waves!\n  So be it! I but tend the graves\n  Where freemen sleep whose sons are slaves.\n\n  Tell him I nurse his noble race,\n  Nor weep save o'er one sleeping face\n  Wherein those looks of his I trace.\n\n  For him my beads I count when falls\n  Moonbeam or shower at intervals\n  Upon our burn'd and blacken'd walls:\n\n  And bless him! bless the bold brigade--\n  May God go with them, horse and blade,\n  For faith's defense, and Ireland's aid!\n\nHere the abrupt transition of tone in the last verse from the subdued\nmelancholy of those which precede it is very fine and very Irish. One\ncan fancy the widowed wife, in all her desolation, starting, even from\nher beads, as she thinks of Lord Clare's dragoons coming down on the\nenemy with their \"_Viva la_ for Ireland's wrong!\"\n\nTwenty years have now passed since \"The Spirit of the _Nation_\" gave\nsome glimpses of the mine of poetry then latent in the Irish mind. In\n1845 Mr. Gavan Duffy published his \"Ballad Poetry of Ireland\"--a book\nwhich had the largest sale of any published in Ireland since the union\nand probably the widest influence. Upon this common and neutral ground\nOrange-man and Ribbon-man, Tory, and Nationalist, were perforce\nbrought into harmonious contact; and \"The Boyne Water\" lost half its\nvirus as a political psalm when it was embalmed side by side with the\n\"Wild Geese\" or \"Willy Reilly.\" Behind the produce of his own\nimmediate period, Mr. Duffy, in arranging his materials, could only\nfind a few ballads by Moore, a few by Gerald Griffin, a few by Banim,\nCallanan, Furlong, and Drennan, that could be accounted legitimate\nballad poetry. The rest was fast cropping up while he was actually\ncompiling his collection, under the hot breath of the National\nmovement, in a lavish and luxuriant growth. This impulse seems to have\nspent itself some years ago. Anything of real merit in the way of\nIrish poetry does not now appear in periodical literature more than\nonce or twice in a year; and Mr. Thomas Irwin is the only recent\nwriter whose verse may fairly be named in the same breath with that\nwhich we have now noticed. A rich grace and finish of {481}\nexpression, a most quaint and delicate humor, and a fine-poised\naptness of phrase, distinguish his poetry, which is more according to\nthe taste that Mr. Tennyson has established in England than that of\nany Irish writer of the day.\n\nIrish poetry seems now, therefore, to have passed into a new and more\nadvanced stage of development. Here are four volumes, by four separate\nwriters, of poems, old and new--all published within a year; and all,\nwe believe, decidedly successful, and in satisfactory course of sale.\nMr. Florence MacCarthy's poems had previously gone through several\neditions, and won enduring fame--perhaps more widely spread in America\nthan even at home, on account of a quality somewhat kindred to the\npeculiar genius of the best American poets, and especially Longfellow,\nPoe, and Irving, that the reader will readily recognize in his\nfinely-finished and most melodious verse. Nor should we omit to\nmention, in cataloguing the library of recent Irish poets, \"The Monks\nof Kilcrea,\" a long romantic poem in the style of \"The Lady of the\nLake,\" which contains many a passage that Scott might own, but of\nwhich the writer remains unknown. Thus Irish national poetry is\naccumulating, as it were, in strata. Mr. Duffy set on the title-page\nof his \"Ballad Poetry\" the Irish motto, _Bolg an dana_, which not all\nhis readers clearly understood; but which, to all who did, seemed\nextremely appropriate at the time. \"This man,\" say the Four Masters,\nspeaking of a great bard of the fifteenth century, \"was called the\n_Bolg an dana_, which signifies that he was a common budget of poetry.\"\nAnd this was all that Mr. Duffy's Ballad Poetry professed to be. But\nwhat was only a budget of desultory jetsam and flotsam in 1845 is\ntaking the shape of a solid literature in 1865; and those twenty\ngolden years have at all events been well filled with ranks of rhyme.\n\n----\n\n{482}\n\nFrom The Month.\n\nCONSTANCE SHERWOOD.\n\n\nAN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.\n\n\nBY LADY GEORGIANA FULLERTON.\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII.\n\nAfter I had been musing a little while, Mistress Bess ran into the\nroom, and cried to some one behind her:\n\n\"Nan's friend is here, and she is mine too, for we all played in a\ngarden with her when I was little. Prithee, come and see her.\" Then\nturning to me, but yet holding the handle of the door, she said: \"Will\nis so unmannerly, I be ashamed of him. He will not so much as show\nhimself.\"\n\n\"Then, prithee, come alone,\" I answered. Upon which she came and sat\non my knee, with her arm round my neck, and whispered in mine ear:\n\n\"Moll is very sick to-day; will you not see her, Mistress Sherwood?\"\n\n\"Yea, if so be I have license,\" I answered; and she, taking me by the\nhand, offered to lead me up the stairs to the room where she lay. I,\nfollowing her, came to the door of the chamber, but would not enter\ntill Bess fetched the nurse, who was the same had been at Sherwood\nHall, and who, knowing my name, was glad to see me, and with a curtsey\ninvited me in. White as a lily was the little face resting on a\npillow, with its blue eyes half shut, and a store of golden hair about\nit, which minded me of the glories round angels' heads in my mother's\nmissal.\n\n\"Sweet lamb!\" quoth the nurse, as I stooped to kiss the pale forehead.\n\"She be too good for this world. Ofttimes she doth babble in her sleep\nof heaven, and angels, and saints, and a wreath of white roses\nwherewith a bright lady will crown her.\"\n\n\"Kiss my lips,\" the sick child softly whispered, as I bent over her\nbed. Which when I did, she asked, \"What is your name? I mind your\nface.\" When I answered, \"Constance Sherwood,\" she smiled, as if\nremembering where we had met. \"I heard my grandam calling me last\nnight,\" she said; \"I be going to her soon.\" Then a fit of pain came\non, and I had to leave her. She did go from this world a few days\nafter; and the nurse then told me her last words had been \"Jesu!\nMary!\"\n\nThat day I did converse again alone with my Lady Surrey after dinner,\nand walked in the garden; and when we came in, before I left, she gave\nme a purse with some gold pieces in it, which the earl her husband\nwilled to bestow on Catholics in prison for their faith. For she said\nhe had so tender and compassionate a spirit, that if he did but hear\nof one in distress he would never rest until he had relieved him; and\nout of the affection he had for Mr. Martin, who was one while his\ntutor, he was favorably inclined toward Catholics, albeit himself\nresolved to conform to the queen's religion. When Mistress Ward came\nfor me, the countess would have her shown into her chamber, and would\nnot be contented without she ordered her coach to carry us back to\nHolborn, that we might take with us the clothes and cordials which she\ndid bestow upon us for our poor clients. She begged Mrs. Ward's\nprayers for his grace, that he might soon be set at liberty; for she\nsaid in a pretty manner, \"It must needs be that Almighty God takes\nmost heed of the prayers of {483} such as visit him in his affliction\nin the person of poor prisoners; and she hoped one day to be free to\ndo so herself.\" Then she questioned of the wants of those Mistress\nWard had at that time knowledge of; and when she heard in what sore\nplight they stood, it did move her to so great compassion, that she\ndeclared it would be now one of her chiefest cares and pleasures in\nlife to provide conveniences for them. And she besought Mistress Ward\nto be a good friend to her with mine aunt, and procure her to permit\nof my frequent visits to Howard House, as the Charter House is now\noften called: which would be the greatest good she could do her; and\nthat she would be most glad also if she herself would likewise favor\nher sometimes with her company; which, \"if it be not for mine own\nsake, Mistress Ward,\" she sweetly said, \"let it be for his sake who,\nin the person of his afflicted priests, doth need assistance.\"\n\nWhen we reached home, we hid what we had brought under our mantles,\nand then in Mistress Ward's chamber, where Muriel followed us. When\nthe door was shut we displayed these jewelled stores before her\npleased eyes, which did beam with joy at the sight.\n\n\"Ah, Muriel,\" cried Mistress Ward, \"we have found an Esther in a\npalace; and I pray to God there may be other such in this town we ken\nnot of, who in secret do yet bear affection to the ancient faith.\"\n\nMuriel said in her slow way: \"We must needs go to the Clink to-morrow;\nfor there is there a priest whose flesh has fallen off his feet by\nreason of his long stay in a pestered and infected dungeon. Mr. Roper\ntold my father of him, and he says the gaoler will let us in if he be\nreasonably dealt with.\"\n\n\"We will essay your ointment, Mistress Sherwood,\" said Mistress Ward,\n\"if so be you can make it in time.\"\n\n\"I care not if I sit up all night,\" I cried, \"if any one will buy me\nthe herbs I have need of for the compounding thereof.\" Which Muriel\nsaid she would prevail on one of the servants to do.\n\nThe bell did then ring for supper; and when we were all seated, Kate\nwas urgent with me for to tell her how my Lady Surrey was dressed;\nwhich I declared to her as follows: \"She had on a brown juste au corps\nembroidered, with puffed sleeves, and petticoat braided of a deeper\nnuance; and on her head a lace cap, and a lace handkerchief on her\nbosom.\"\n\n\"And, prithee, what jewels had she on, sweet coz?\"\n\n\"A long double chain of gold and a brooch of pearls,\" I answered.\n\n\"And his grace of Norfolk is once more removed to the Tower,\" said Mr.\nCongleton sorrowfully. \"'Tis like to kill him soon, and so save her\nmajesty's ministers the pains to bring him to the block. His\nphysician, Dr. Rhuenbeck, says he is afflicted with the dropsy.\"\n\nPolly said she had been to visit the Countess of Northumberland, who\nwas so grievously afflicted at her husband's death, that it was feared\nshe would fall sick of grief if she had not company to divert her from\nher sad thoughts.\n\n\"Which I warrant none could effect so well as thee, wench,\" her father\nsaid; \"for, beshrew me, if thou wouldst not make a man laugh on his\nway to the scaffold with thy mad talk. And was the poor lady of better\ncheer for thy company?\"\n\n\"Yea, for mine,\" Polly answered; \"or else for M. de la Motte's, who\ncame in to pay his devoirs to her, for the first time, I take it,\nsince her lord's death. And after his first speech, which caused her\nto weep a little, he did carry on so brisk a discourse as I never\nnoticed any but a Frenchman able to do. And she was not the worst\npleased with it that the cunning gentleman did interweave it with\nanecdotes of the queen's majesty; which, albeit he related them with\ngravity, did carry somewhat of ridicule in them. Such as of her\ngrace's dancing on Sunday before last at Lord Northampton's wedding,\nand calling him to witness {484} her paces, so that he might let\nmonsieur know how high and disposedly she danced; so that he would not\nhave had cause to complain, in case he had married her, that she was a\nboiteuse, as had been maliciously reported of her by the friends of\nthe Queen of Scots. And also how, some days since, she had flamed out\nin great choler when he went to visit her at Hampton Court; and told\nhim, so loud that all her ladies and officers could hear her\ndiscourse, that Lord North had let her know the queen-mother and the\nDuke of Guise had dressed up a buffoon in an English fashion, and\ncalled him a Milor du Nord; and that two female dwarfs had been\nlikewise dressed up in that queen's chamber, and invited to mimic her,\nthe queen of England, with great derision and mockery. 'I did assure\nher,' M. de la Motte said, 'with my hand on my heart, and such an\naggrieved visage, that she must needs have accepted my words as true,\nthat Milor North had mistaken the whole intent of what he had\nwitnessed, from his great ignorance of the French tongue, which did\nrender him a bad interpreter between princes; for that the\nqueen-mother did never cease to praise her English majesty's beauty to\nher son, and all her good qualities, which greatly appeased her grace,\nwho desired to be excused if she, likewise out of ignorance of the\nFrench language, had said aught unbecoming touching the queen-mother.'\n'Tis a rare dish of fun, fit to set before a king, to hear this\nMonsieur Ambassador speak of the queen when none are present but such\nas make an idol of her, as some do.\"\n\n\"For my part,\" said her father, when she paused in her speech, \"I\nmislike men with double visages and double tongues; and methinks this\nmonseer hath both, and withal a rare art for what courtiers do call\ndiplomacy, and plain men lying. His speeches to her majesty be so\nfulsome in her praise, as I have heard some say who are at court, and\nhis flattery so palpable, that they have been ashamed to hear it; but\nbehind her back he doth disclose her failings with an admirable\nslyness.\"\n\n\"If he be sly,\" answered Polly, \"I'll warrant he finds his match in\nher majesty.\"\n\n\"Yea,\" cried Kate, \"even as poor Madge Arundell experienced to her\ncost.\"\n\n\"Ay,\" quoth Polly, \"she catcheth many poor fish, who little know what\nsnare is laid for them.\"\n\n\"And how did her highness catch Mistress Arundell?\" I asked.\n\n\"In this way, coz,\" quoth Polly: \"she doth often ask the ladies round\nher chamber, 'If they love to think of marriage?' and the wise ones do\nconceal well their liking thereunto, knowing the queen's judgment in\nthe matter. But pretty, simple Madge Arundell, not knowing so deeply\nas her fellows, was asked one day hereof, and said, 'She had thought\nmuch about marriage, if her father did consent to the man she loved.'\n'You seem honest, i' fait said the queen; 'I will sue for you your\nfather.' At which the dam was well pleased; and when father, Sir\nRobert Arundell, came court, the queen questioned him his daughter's\nmarriage, and pressed him to give consent if the match were discreet.\nSir Robert, much astonished, said, 'He never had heard his daughter\nhad liking to any man; but he would give his free consent to what was\nmost pleasing to her highness's will and consent.' Then I will do the\nrest,' saith the queen. Poor Madge was called in, and told by the\nqueen that her father had given his free consent. 'Then,' replied the\nsimple one, 'I shall be happy, an' it please your grace.' 'So thou\nshalt; but not to be a fool and marry,' said the queen. 'I have his\nconsent given to me, and I vow thou shalt never get it in thy\npossession. So go-to about thy business. I see thou art a bold one to\nown thy foolishness so readily.'\"\n\n\"Ah me!\" cried Kate, \"I be glad not to be a maid to her majesty; for I\nwould not know how to answer her {485} grace if she should ask me a\nlike question; for if it be bold to say one hath a reasonable desire\nto be married, I must needs be bold then, for I would not for two\nthousand pounds break Mr. Lacy's heart; and he saith he will die if I\ndo not marry him. But, Polly, thou wouldst never be at a loss to\nanswer her majesty.\"\n\n\"No more than Pace her fool,\" quoth Polly, \"who, when she said, as he\nentered the room, 'Now we shall hear of our faults,' cried out, 'Where\nis the use of speaking of what all the town doth talk of?'\"\n\n\"The fool should have been whipped,\" Mistress Ward said.\n\n\"For his wisdom, or for his folly, good Mistress Ward?\" asked Polly.\n\"If for wisdom, 'tis hard to beat a man for being wise. If for folly,\nto whip a fool for that he doth follow his calling, and as I be the\nlicensed fool in this house--which I do take to be the highest\nexercise of wit in these days, when all is turned upside down--I do\nwish you all good-night, and to be no wiser than is good for your\nhealths, and no more foolish than suffices to lighten the heart;\" and\nso laughing she ran away, and Kate said in a lamentable voice,\n\n\"I would I were foolish, if it lightens the heart.\"\n\n\"Content thee, good Kate,\" I said; but in so low a voice none did\nhear. And she went on,\n\n\"Mr. Lacy is gone to Yorkshire for three weeks, which doth make me\nmore sad than can be thought of.\"\n\nI smiled; but Muriel, who had not yet oped her lips whilst the others\nwere talking, rising, kissed her sister, and said, \"Thou wilt have,\nsweet one, so great a contentment in his letters as will give thee\npatience to bear the loss of his good company.\"\n\nAt the which Kate brightened a little. To live with Muriel was a\npreachment, as I have often had occasion since to find.\n\nOn the first Sunday I was at London, we heard mass at the Portuguese\nambassador's house, whither many Catholics of his acquaintance\nresorted for that purpose from our side of the city. In the afternoon\na gentleman, who had travelled day and night from Staffordshire on\nsome urgent business, brought me a letter from my father, writ only\nfour days before it came to hand, and about a week after my departure\nfrom home. It was as follows:\n\n  \"MINE OWN DEAR CHILD,--The bearer of this letter hath promised to do\n  me the good service to deliver it to thee as soon as he shall reach\n  London; which, as he did intend to travel day and night, I compute\n  will be no later than the end of this week, or on Sunday at the\n  furthest. And for this his civility I do stand greatly indebted to\n  him; for in these straitened times 'tis no easy matter to get\n  letters conveyed from one part of the kingdom to another without\n  danger of discovering that which for the present should rather be\n  concealed. I received notice two days ago from Mistress Ward's\n  sister of your good journey and arrival at London; and I thank God,\n  my very good child, that he has had thee in his holy keeping and\n  bestowed thee under the roof of my good sister and brother; so that,\n  with a mind at ease in respect to thee, my dear sole earthly\n  treasure, I may be free to follow whatever course his providence may\n  appoint to me, who, albeit unworthy, do aspire to leave all things\n  to follow him. And indeed he hath already, at the outset of my\n  wanderings, sweetly disposed events in such wise that chance hath\n  proved, as it were, the servant of his providence; and, when I did\n  least look for it, by a divine ordination furnished me, who so short\n  a time back parted from a dear child, with the company of one who\n  doth stand to me in lieu of her who, by reason of her tender sex and\n  age, I am compelled to send from me. For being necessitated, for the\n  preservation of my life, to make seldom any long stay in one place,\n  I had need of a youth to ride with me on those frequent journeys,\n  and keep me company in such places {486} as I may withdraw unto for\n  quietness and study. So being in Stafford some few days back, I\n  inquired of the master of the inn where I did lay for one night, if\n  it were not possible to get in that city a youth to serve me as a\n  page, whom I said I would maintain as a gentleman if he had\n  learning, nurture, and behavior becoming such a person. He said his\n  son, who was a schoolmaster, had a youth for a pupil who carried\n  virtue in his very countenance; but that he was the child of a\n  widow, who, he much feared, would not easily be persuaded to part\n  from him. Thereupon I expressed a great desire to have a sight of\n  this youth and charged him to deal with his master so that he should\n  be sent to my lodgings; which, when he came there, lo and behold, I\n  perceived with no small amazement that he was no other than Edmund\n  Genings, who straightway ran into my arms, and with much ado\n  restrained himself from weeping, so greatly was he moved with\n  conflicting passions of present joy and recollected sorrow at this\n  our unlooked-for meeting; and truly mine own contentment therein was\n  in no wise less than his. He told me that his mother's poverty\n  increasing, she had moved from Lichfield, where it was more bitter\n  to her, by reason of the affluence in which she had before lived in\n  that city, to Stafford, where none did know them; and she dwelt in a\n  mean lodging in a poor sort of manner. And whereas he had desired to\n  accept the offer of a stranger, with a view to relieve his mother\n  from the burden of his support, and maybe yield her some assistance\n  in her straits, he now passionately coveted to throw his fortune\n  with mine, and to be entered as a page in my service. But though she\n  had been willing before, from necessity, albeit averse by\n  inclination, to part with him, when she knew me it seemed awhile\n  impossible to gain her consent. Methinks she was privy to Edmund's\n  secret good opinion of Catholic religion, and feared, if he should\n  live with me, the effect thereof would follow. But her necessities\n  were so sharp, and likewise her regrets that he should lack\n  opportunities for his further advance in learning, which she herself\n  was unable to supply, that at length by long entreaty he prevailed\n  on her to give him license for that which his heart did prompt him\n  to desire for his own sake and hers. And when she had given this\n  consent, but not before, lest it should appear I did seek to bribe\n  her by such offers to so much condescension as she then evinced, I\n  proposed to assist her in any way she wished to the bettering of her\n  fortunes, and said I would do as much whether she suffered her son\n  to abide with me or no: which did greatly work with her to conceive\n  a more favorable opinion of me than she had heretofore held, and to\n  be contented he should remain in my service, as he himself so\n  greatly desired. After some further discourse, it was resolved that\n  I should furnish her with so much money as would pay her debts and\n  carry her to La Rochelle, where her youngest son was with her\n  brother, who albeit he had met with great losses, would\n  nevertheless, she felt assured, assist her in her need. Thus has\n  Edmund become to me less a page than a pupil, less a servant than a\n  son. I will keep a watchful eye over his actions, whom I already\n  perceive to be tractable, capable, willing to learn, and altogether\n  such as his early years did promise he should be. I thank God, who\n  has given me so great a comfort in the midst of so great trials, and\n  to this youth in me a father rather than a master, who will ever\n  deal with him in an honorable and loving manner, both in respect to\n  his own deserts and to her merits, whose prayers have, I doubt not,\n  procured this admirable result of what was in no wise designed, but\n  by God's providence fell out of the asking a simple question in an\n  inn and of a stranger.\n\n  \"And now, mine only and very dear child, I commend thee to God's\n  holy keeping; and I beseech thee to be as mindful of thy duty to him\n  as thou {487} hast been (and most especially of late) of thine to\n  me; and imprint in thy heart those words of holy writ, 'Not to fear\n  those that kill the body, but cannot destroy the soul;' but withal,\n  in whatever is just and reasonable, and not clearly against Catholic\n  religion, to observe a most exact obedience to such as stand to thee\n  at present in place of thy unworthy father, and who, moreover, are\n  of such virtue and piety as I doubt not would move them rather to\n  give thee an example how to suffer the loss of all things for Christ\n  his sake than to offend him by a contrary disposition. I do write to\n  my good brother by the same convenience to yield him and my sister\n  humble thanks for their great kindness to me in thee, and send this\n  written in haste; for I fear I shall not often have means hereafter.\n  Therefore I desire Almighty God to protect, bless, and establish\n  thee. So in haste, and _in visceribus Christi_, adieu.\"\n\n\nThe lively joy I received from this letter was greater than I can\nrehearse, for I had now no longer before my eyes the sorrowful vision\nof my dear father with none to tend and comfort him in his wanderings;\nand no less was my contentment that Edmund, my dearly-loved playmate,\nwas now within reach of his good instructions, and free to follow that\nwhich I was persuaded his conscience had been prompting him to seek\nsince he had attained the age of reason.\n\nI note not down in this history the many visits I paid to the Charter\nHouse that autumn, except to notice the growing care Lady Surrey did\ntake to supply the needs of prisoners and poor people, and how this\nbrought her into frequent occasions of discourse with Mistress Ward\nand Muriel, who nevertheless, as I also had care to observe, kept\nthese interviews secret, which might have caused suspicion in those\nwho, albeit Catholic, were ill-disposed to adventure the loss of\nworldly advantages by the profession of what Protestants do term\nperverse and open papistry. Kate and Polly were of this way of\nthinking--prudence was ever the word with them when talk of religion\nwas ministered in their presence; and they would not keep as much as a\nprayer-book in their chambers for fear of evil results. They were\nsometimes very urgent with their father for to suffer them to attend\nProtestant service, which they said would not hinder them from hearing\nmass at convenient times, and saying such prayers as they listed; and\nPolly the more so that a young gentleman of good birth and high\nbreeding, who conformed to the times, had become a suitor for her\nhand, and was very strenuous with her on the necessity of such\ncompliance, which nevertheless her father would not allow of. Much\ncompany came to the house, both Protestant and Catholic; for my aunt,\nwho was sick at other times, did greatly mend toward the evening. When\nI was first in London for some weeks, she kept me with her at such\ntimes in the parlor, and encouraged me to discourse with the visitors;\nfor she said I had a forwardness and vivacity of speech which, if\npractised in conversation, would in time obtain for me as great a\nreputation of wit as Polly ever enjoyed. I was nothing loth to study\nin this new school, and not slow to improve in it. At the same time I\ngave myself greatly to the reading of such books as I found in my\ncousins' chambers; amongst which were some M. de la Motte had lent to\nPolly, marvellous witty and entertaining, such as _Les Nouvelles de la\nReine de Navarre_ and the _Cents Histoires tragiques;_ and others done\nin English out of French by Mr. Thomas Fortescue; and a poem, writ by\none Mr. Edmund Spenser, very beautiful, and which did so much bewitch\nme, that I was wont to rise in the night to read it by the light of\nthe moon at my casement window; and the _Morte d' Arthur_, which Mr.\nHubert Rookwood had willed me to read, whom I met at Bedford, and\nwhich so filled my head with fantastic images and imagined scenes,\nthat I did, as it were, fall in love with {488} Sir Launcelot, and\nwould blush if his name were but mentioned, and wax as angry if his\nfame were questioned as if he had been a living man, and I in a\nfoolish manner fond of him.\n\nThis continued for some little time, and methinks, had it proceeded\nfurther, I should have received much damage from a mode of life with\nso little of discipline in it, and so great incitements to faults and\nfollies which my nature was prone to, but which my conscience secretly\nreproved. And among the many reasons I have to be thankful to Mistress\n\"Ward, that never-to-be-forgotten friend, whose care restrained me in\nthese dangerous courses, partly by compulsion through means of her\ninfluence with my aunt and her husband, and partly by such admonitions\nand counsel as she favored me with, I reckon amongst the greatest\nthat, at an age when the will is weak, albeit the impulses be good,\nshe lent a helping hand to the superior part of my soul to surmount\nthe evil tendencies which bad example on the one hand, and weak\nindulgence on the other, fostered in me, whose virtuous inclinations\nhad been, up to that time, hedged in by the strong safeguards of\nparental watchfulness. She procured that I should not tarry, save for\nbrief and scanty spaces of time, in my aunt's parlor when she had\nvisitors, and so contrived that it should be when she herself was\npresent, who, by wholesome checks and studied separation from the rest\nof the company, reduced my forwardness with just restraints such as\nbecame my age. And when she discovered what books I read, oh, with\nwhat fervent and strenuous speech she drove into my soul the edge of a\nsalutary remorse; with what tearful eyes and pleading voice she\nbrought before me the memory of my mother's care and my father's love,\nwhich had ever kept me from drinking such empoisoned draughts from the\nwell-springs of corruption which in our days books of entertainment\ntoo often prove, and if not altogether bad, yet be such as vitiate the\npalate and destroy the appetite for higher and purer kinds of mental\nsustenance. Sharp was her correction, but withal so seasoned with\ntenderness, and a grief the keenness of which I could discern was\nheightened by the thought that my two elder cousins (one time her\npupils) should be so drawn aside by the world and its pleasures as to\nforget their pious habits, and minister to others the means of such\ninjury as their own souls had sustained, that every word she uttered\nseemed to sink into my heart as if writ with a pen of fire; and mostly\nwhen she thus concluded her discourse:\n\n\"There hath been times, Constance, when men, yea and women also, might\nplay the fool for a while, without so great danger as now, and dally\nwith idle folly like children who do sport on a smooth lawn nigh to a\nrunning stream, under their parents' eyes, who, if their feet do but\nslip, are prompt to retrieve them. But such days are gone by for the\nCatholics of this land. I would have thee to bear in mind that 'tis no\ncommon virtue--no convenient religion--faces the rack, the dungeon, and\nthe rope; that wanton tales and light verses are no _viaticum_ for a\njourney beset with such perils. And thou--thou least of all--whose\ngentle mother, as thou well knowest, died of a broken heart from the\nfear to betray her faith--thou, whose father doth even now gird\nhimself for a fight, where to win is to die on a scaffold--shouldst\nscorn to omit such preparation as may befit thee to live, if it so\nplease God, or to die, if such be his will, a true member of his holy\nCatholic Church. O Constance, it doth grieve me to the heart that thou\nshouldst so much as once have risen from thy bed at night to feed thy\nmind with the vain words of profane writers, in place of nurturing thy\nsoul by such reasonable exercises and means as God, through the\nteaching of his Church, doth provide for the spiritual growth of his\nchildren, and by prayer and penance make ready for coming conflicts.\nBethink thee of the many holy priests, yea and laymen also, who be in\nuneasy {489} dungeons at this time, lying on filthy straw, with chains\non their bruised limbs, but lately racked and tormented for their\nreligion, whilst thou didst offend God by such wanton conduct. Count\nup the times thou hast thus offended; and so many times rise in the\nnight, my good child, and say the psalm 'Miserere,' through which we\ndo especially entreat forgiveness for our sins.\"\n\nI cast myself in her arms, and with many bitter tears lamented my\nfolly; and did promise her then, and, I thank God, ever after did keep\nthat promise, whilst I abode under the same roof with her, to read no\nbooks but such as she should warrant me to peruse. Some days after she\nprocured Mr. Congleton's consent, who also went with us, to carry me\nto the Marshalsea, whither she had free access at that time by reason\nof her acquaintanceship with the gaoler's wife, who, when a maid, had\nbeen a servant in her family, and who, having been once Catholic, did\nwillingly assist such prisoners as came there for their religion.\nThere we saw Mr. Hart, who hath been this long while confined in a\ndark cell, with nothing but boards to lie on till Mistress Ward gave\nhim a counterpane, which she concealed under her shawl, and the gaoler\nwas prevailed on by his wife not to take from him. He was cruelly\ntortured some time since, and condemned to die on the same day as Mr.\nLuke Kirby and some others on a like charge, that he did deny the\nqueen's supremacy in spiritual matters; but he was taken off the\nsledge and returned to prison. He did take it very quietly and\npatiently; and when Mr. Congleton expressed a hope he might soon be\nreleased from prison, he smiled and said:\n\n\"My good friend, my crosses are light and easy; and the being deprived\nof all earthly comfort affords a heavenly joy, which maketh my prison\nhappy, my confinement merciful, my solitude full of blessings. To God,\ntherefore, be all praise, honor, and glory, for so unspeakable a\nbenefit bestowed upon his poor, wretched, and unworthy servant.\"\n\nSo did he comfort those who were more grieved for him than he for\nhimself; and each in turn we did confess; and after I had disburdened\nmy conscience in such wise that he perceived the temper of my mind,\nand where to apply remedies to the dangers the nature of which his\nclearsightedness did foresee, he thus addressed me:\n\n\"The world, my dear daughter, soon begins to seem insipid, and all its\npleasures grow bitter as gall; all the fine shows and delights it\naffords appear empty and good for nothing to such as have tasted the\nhappiness of conversing with Christ, though it be amidst torments and\ntribulations, yea and in the near approach of death itself. This joy\nso penetrates the soul, so elevates the spirit, so changes the\naffections, that a prison seems not a prison but a paradise, death a\ngoal long time desired, and the torments which do accompany it jewels\nof great price. Take with thee these words, which be the greatest\ntreasure and the rarest lesson for these times: 'He that loveth his\nlife in this world shall lose it, and he that hateth it shall find\nit;' and remember the devil is always upon the watch. Be you also\nwatchful. Pray you for me. I have a great confidence that we shall see\none another in heaven, if you keep inviolable the word you have given\nto God to be true to his Catholic Church and obedient to its precepts,\nand he gives me the grace to attain unto that same blessed end.\"\n\nThese words, like the sower's seed, fell into a field where thorns\noftentimes threatened to choke their effect; but persecution, when it\narose, consumed the thorns as with fire, and the plant, which would\nhave withered in stony ground, bore fruit in a prepared soil.\n\nAs we left the prison, it did happen that, passing by the gaoler's\nlodge, I saw him sitting at a table drinking ale with one whose back\nwas to the door. A suspicion came over me, the most unlikely in the\nworld, for it was against all credibility, and I had not seen so much\nas that person's face; but in the shape of his head and the manner of\n{490} his sitting, but for a moment observed, there was a resemblance\nto Edmund Genings, the thought of which I could not shake off. When we\nwere walking home, Mr. Congleton said Mr. Hart had told him that a\nshort time back a gentleman had been seized, and committed to close\nconfinement, whom he believed, though he had not attained to the\ncertainty thereof, to be Mr. Willisden; and if it were so, that much\ntrouble might ensue to many recusants, by reason of that gentleman\nhaving dealt in matters of great importance to such persons touching\nlands and other affairs whereby their fortunes and maybe their lives\nmight be compromised. On hearing of this, I straightway conceived a\nsudden fear lest it should be my father and not Mr. Willisden was\nconfined in that prison; and the impression I had received touching\nthe youth who was at table with the gaoler grew so strong in\nconsequence, that all sorts of fears founded thereon ran through my\nmind, for I had often heard how persons did deceive recusants by\nfeigning themselves to be their friends, and then did denounce them to\nthe council, and procured their arrest and oftentimes their\ncondemnation by distorting and false swearing touching the speech they\nheld with them. One Eliot in particular, who was a man of great\nmodesty and ingenuity of countenance, so as to defy suspicion (but a\nvery wicked man in more ways than one, as has been since proved), who\npretended to be Catholic, and when he did suspect any to be a Jesuit,\nor a seminary priest, or only a recusant, he would straightway enter\ninto discourse with him, and in an artful manner cause him to betray\nhimself; whereupon he was not slow to throw off the mask, whereby\nseveral had been already brought to the rope. And albeit I would not\ncredit that Edmund should be such a one, the evil of the times was so\ngreat that my heart did misgive me concerning him, if indeed he was\nthe youth whom I had espied on such familiar terms with that ruffianly\ngaoler. I had no rest for some days, lacking the means to discover the\ntruth of that suspicion; for Mrs. Ward, to whom I did impart it, dared\nnot adventure again that week to the Marshalsea, by reason of the\ngaoler's wife having charged her not to come frequently, for that her\nhusband had suddenly suspected her to be a recusant, and would by no\nmeans allow of her visits to the prisoners; but that when he was drunk\nshe could sometimes herself get his keys and let her in, but not too\noften. Mr. Congleton would have it the prisoner must be Mr. Willisden\nand no other, and took no heed of my fears, which he said had no\nreasonable grounds, as I had not so much as seen the features of the\nyouth I took to be my father's page. But I could by no means be\nsatisfied, and wept very much; and I mind me how, in the midst of my\ntears that evening, my eyes fell on the frontispiece of a volume of\nthe _Morte d' Arthur_ which had been loosened when the book was in my\nchamber, and in which was picture of Sir Launcelot, the present mirror\nof my fancy. I had pinned it to my curtain, and jewelled it as a\ntreasure and fund of foolish musings, even after yielding up, with\npromise to read no more therein, the book which had once held it. And\nthus were kept alive the fantastic imaginings wherewith I clothed a\ncreature conceived in a writer's brain, whose nobility was the\noffspring of his thoughts and the continual entertainment of mine own.\nBut, oh, how just did I now find the words of a virtuous friend, and\nhow childish my folly, when the true sharp edge of present fear\ndispersed these vapory clouds, even as the keen blast of a north wind\ndoth drive away a noxious mist! The sight of the dismal dungeon that\nday visited, the pallid features of that true confessor therein\nimmured, his soul-piercing words, and the apprehensions which were\nwringing my heart--banished of a sudden an idle dream engendered by\nvain readings and vainer musings, and Sir Launcelot held henceforward\nno higher, or not so high, a {491} place in my esteem as the good Sir\nGuy of Warwick, or the brave Hector de Valence.\n\nA day or two after, my Lady Surrey sent her coach for me; and I found\nher in her dressing-room seated on a couch with her waiting-women and\nMistress Milicent around her, who were displaying a great store of\nrich suits and jewels and such-like gear drawn from wardrobes and\nclosets, the doors of which were thrown open, and little Mistress Bess\nwas on tiptoe on a stool afore a mirror with a diamond necklace on,\nribbons flaring about her head, and a fan of ostrich-feathers in her\nhand.\n\n\"Ah, sweet one,\" said my lady, when I came in, \"thou must needs be\nsurprised at this show of bravery, which ill consorts with the\nmourning of our present garb or the grief of our hearts; but, i'\nfaith, Constance, strange things do come to pass, and such as I would\nfain hinder if I could.\"\n\n\"Make ready thine ears for great news, good Constance,\" cried Bess,\nrunning toward me encumbered with her finery, and tumbling over sundry\npieces of head-gear in her way, to the waiting-woman's no small\ndiscomfiture. \"The queen's majesty doth visit upon next Sunday the\nEarl and Countess of Surrey; and as her highness cannot endure the\nsight of dool, they and their household must needs put it off and\narray themselves in their costliest suits; and Nan is to put on her\nchoicest jewels, and my Lady Bess must be grand too, to salute the\nqueen.\"\n\n\"Hush, Bessy,\" said my lady; and leading me into the adjoining\nchamber, \"'tis hard,\" quoth she, holding my hand in hers,--\"'tis hard\nwhen his grace is in the Tower and in disgrace with her majesty, and\nonly six weeks since our Moll died, that she must needs visit this\nhouse, where there be none to entertain her highness but his grace's\npoor children; 'tis hard, Constance, to be constrained to kiss the\nhand which threatens his life who gave my lord his, and mostly to\nsmile at the queen's jesting, which my Lord Arundel saith we must of\nall things take heed to observe, for that she as little can endure\ndool in the face as in the dress.\"\n\nA few tears fell from those sweet eyes upon my hand, which she still\nheld, and I said, \"Comfort you, my sweet lady. It must needs be that\nher majesty doth intend favor to his grace through this visit. Her\nhighness would never be minded to do so much honor to the children if\nshe did not purpose mercy to the father.\"\n\n\"I would fain believe it were so,\" said the countess, thoughtfully;\n\"but my Lord Arundel and my Lady Lumley hold not, I fear, the same\nopinion. And I do hear from them that his grace is much troubled\nthereat, and hath written to the Earl of Leicester and my Lord\nBurleigh to lament the queen's determination to visit his son, who is\nnot of age to receive her.\"  [Footnote 99]\n\n  [Footnote 99: Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, 1547 to\n  1580: \"Duke of Norfolk to the Earl of Leicester and Lord Burleigh;\n  laments the queen's determination to visit his son's house, who is\n  not of age to receive her.\"]\n\n\"And doth my Lord of Surrey take the matter to heart?\"\n\n\"My lord's disposition doth incline him to conceive hope where others\nsee reason to fear,\" she replied. \"He saith he is glad her majesty\nshould come to this house, and that he will take occasion to petition\nher grace to release his father from the Tower; and he hath drawn up\nan address to that effect, which is marvellous well expressed; and,\nsince 'tis written, he makes no more doubt that her majesty will\naccede to it than if the upshot was not yet to come, but already past.\nAnd he hath set himself with a skill beyond his years, and altogether\nwonderful in one so young, to prepare all things for the queen's\nreception; so that when his grandfather did depute my Lord Berkeley\nand my Lady Lumley to assist us (he himself being too sick to go out\nof his house) in the ordering of the collation in the banqueting-room,\nand the music wherewith to greet her highness on her arrival, as well\nas the ceremonial to be observed during her visit, they did find that\nmy lord had so {492} disposedly and with so great taste ordained the\nrules to be observed, and the proper setting forth of all things, that\nlittle remained for them to do. And he will have me to be richly\ndressed, and to put on the jewels which were his mother's, which,\nsince her death, have not been worn by the two Duchesses of Norfolk\nwhich did succeed her. Ah me, Mistress Constance, I often wish my lord\nand I had been born far from the court, in some quiet country place,\nwhere there are no queens to entertain, and no plots which do bring\nnobles into so great dangers.\"\n\n\"Alack,\" I cried, \"dear lady, 'tis not the highest in the land that be\nalone to suffer. Their troubles do stand forth in men's eyes; and when\na noble head is imperilled all the world doth know of it; but blood is\nspilt in this land, and torments endured, which no pen doth chronicle,\nand of which scant mention is made in palaces.\"\n\n\"There is a passion in thy speech,\" my lady said, \"which betrayeth a\nsecret uneasiness of heart. Hast thou had ill news, my Constance?\"\n\n\"No news,\" I answered, \"but that which my fears do invent and\nwhisper;\" and then I related to her the cause of my disturbance, which\nshe sought to allay by kind words, which nevertheless failed to\ncomfort me.\n\nBefore I left she did propose I should come to the Charter House on\nthe morning of the queen's visit, and bring Mistress Ward and my\ncousins also, as it would pleasure them to stand in the gallery and\nwitness the entertainment, and albeit my heart was heavy, methought it\nwas an occasion not to be overpast to feast my eyes with the sight of\nmajesty, and to behold that great queen who doth hold in her hands her\nsubjects' lives, and who, if she do but nod, like the god of the\nheathen which books do speak of, such terrible effects ensue, greater\nthan can be thought of; and so I gave my lady mine humble thanks, and\nalso for that she did gift me with a dainty hat and a well-embroidered\nsuit to wear on that day; which, when Kate saw, she fell into a\nwonderful admiration of the pattern, and did set about to get it\ncopied afore the day of the royal visit to Howard House. As I returned\nto Holborn in my lady's coach there was a great crowd in the Cornhill,\nand the passage for a while arrested by the number of persons on their\nway to what is now called the Royal Exchange, which her majesty was to\nvisit in the evening. I sat very quietly with mine eyes fixed on the\nfoot-passengers, not so much looking at their faces as watching their\npassage, which, like the running of a river, did seem endless. But at\nlast it somewhat slackened, and the coach moved on, when, at the\ncorner of a street, nigh unto a lamp over a shop, which did throw a\nlight on his face, I beheld Edmund Genings. Oh, how my heart did beat,\nand with what a loud cry I did call to the running footmen to stop!\nBut the noise of the street was so great they did not hear me, and I\nsaw him turn and pursue his way down another street toward the river.\nMy good uncle, when he heard I had verily seen my father's new page in\nthe city, gave more heed to my suspicions, and did promise to go\nhimself unto the Marshalsea on the next day, and seek to verify the\nname of the prisoner Mr. Hart had made mention of.\n\n[TO BE CONTINUED.]\n\n------\n\n{493}\n\nFrom The Cornhill Magazine.\n\nMODERN FALCONRY.\n\n\nHunting and hawking were, as every one knows, the great sports of our\nforefathers. Angling was but little understood before the time of\nWalton and Cotton, and not thoroughly even by those great masters\nthemselves. In the olden time, the bow and arrow, being scarcely\nadapted for fowling, were used almost exclusively against large game,\nsuch as deer; the crossbow was perhaps not a very efficient weapon;\nand the art of shooting flying with a fowling-piece may be said to be\nof recent invention. It is true that, a couple of hundred years ago,\nmen (the sportsmen of those days) might have been seen, armed with a\nmatch-lock, or some such wonderful contrivance, crawling toward a\ncovey of basking partridges, with the intention of shooting them on\nthe ground; and Dame Juliana Berners, who wrote upon falconry in the\nmiddle of the fifteenth century, invented a fly-rod of such excessive\nweight that the strongest salmon-fisher in these days would be\nunwilling to wield it. But this was sorry work, and we can well\nunderstand that, of itself, it was very far from satisfying a\nsport-loving people. They still held by the old sports. Hunting and\nhawking were in their glory when what we now call \"shooting\" and\n\"fishing\" were scarcely understood at all. Deer were in abundance, and\nso was other game, especially if we consider the few people privileged\nto kill it. In those days, though not in these, the most sportsmanlike\nway was the most profitable; and more quarry could be taken with dogs\nand hawks than in any other, and perhaps less legitimate, manner.\n\nHunting we retain, as our great and national sport, though\ncircumstances, rather than choice, have led to our exchanging the stag\nfor the fox. But falconry, the great sport of chivalry, once the\nnational sport of these islands, has been permitted so nearly to die\nout that but few people are aware of its existence amongst us. That it\ndoes still live, however, though under a cloud,--to what extent and in\nwhat manner it is carried out,--it is the purport of this paper to\nshow.\n\nThe causes of the decrease, and almost the loss, of this sport are\nobvious enough. Amongst the chief are, the present enclosed state of\nthe country; the perfection--or what is almost perfection--of modern\ngunnery, and of the marksman's skill, and the desire to make large\nbags. Add to these, perhaps, the trouble and expense attendant upon\nkeeping hawks. But the links have at no time absolutely been broken\nwhich, in England, unite falconry in the time of Ethelbert to falconry\nof the present day. Lord Orford and Colonel Thornton took them up and\nstrengthened them at the end of the last, and the beginning of the\npresent, century. Later still, the Loo Club in Holland saved falconry\nfrom extinction in England, because its English members brought their\nfalcons to this country, and flew them here. The Barrs, first-rate\nScotch falconers, and John Pells, of Norfolk, helped the course by\ntraining and selling hawks; and a work entitled \"Falconry in the\nBritish Isles,\" published in 1855, together with some chapters which\nappeared rather later in one of the leading sporting newspapers (and\nwere afterward collected in a volume), served to create or encourage a\nlove for falconry.\n\nIt was said that the present Duke of St. Albans, the grand falconer,\nwould take to the sport _con amore_, and not as a mere form; but this\nis very far indeed from being the case. {494} The Maharajah Dhuleep\nSingh was perhaps the most considerable falconer of the present day;\nand last season but one he killed 119 grouse with his young hawks; but\nhe has lately given up the greater part of his hawking establishment.\nIn Ireland there are some good falcons, flown occasionally at herons,\nand frequently, and with great success, at other quarry; many officers\nin the army are falconers; and, in the wilds of Cheshire, there lives\na poor gentleman who has flown hawks for fifteen years, and contrives,\nthrough the courtesy of his friends, to make a bag on the moors with\nhis famous grouse-hawk \"The Princess,\" and one or two others.\n\nThose who have been accustomed to regard falconry as entirely a thing\nof the past, and the secret of hawk-training as utterly lost as that\nof Stonehenge or the Pyramids, will be surprised to hear that there\nare, at the present time, hawks in England of such proved excellence,\nthat it is impossible to conceive even princes in the olden time,\nnotwithstanding the monstrous prices they are said to have paid for\nsome falcons, ever possessing better. When a peregrine falcon will\n\"wait on,\" as it is called, at the height of a hundred or a hundred\nand fifty yards above her master, as he beats the moors for her, and,\nwhen the birds rise, chase them with almost the speed of an arrow;\nwhen she is sure to kill, unless the grouse escapes in cover; when she\nwill not attempt to \"carry\" her game, even should a dog run by her,\nand when she is ready to fly two or three times in one morning--it can\neasily be imagined, even by those who know nothing of falconry, that\nshe has reached excellence.\n\nAnd so, in heron-hawking. If a cast of falcons, unhooded at a quarter\nof a mile from a passing heron (especially a \"light\" heron, i. e., a\nheron _going_ to feed, and therefore not weighted), capture him in a\nwind, and after a two-mile flight, it is difficult to suppose,\n_caeteris paribus_, that any hawks could possibly be superior to them.\nAnd, as such hawks as we have described exist, the inevitable\nconclusion is, that where falconry is really understood, it is\nunderstood as well as it ever was; or, in other words, that modern\nfalconry, as far as the perfection of individual hawks is concerned,\nis equal to ancient.\n\nOur forefathers, excellent falconers as they were, chose to make a\nwonderful mystery of their craft; and when they did publish a book on\nthe subject of their great sport, its directions could only avail the\ngentry of those exclusive times. In examining these books, one is\nsometimes almost tempted to doubt whether the writers really offered\nthe whole of their contents in a spirit of good faith; at any rate,\nsome of the advice is very startling to modern ears; and no sane man\nof the present day would dream of following it. Perhaps the reader\nwould like an extract. Here, then, is a recipe for a sick hawk,\nextracted from _The Gentleman's Recreation_, published 1677: \"Take\ngermander, pelamountain, basil, grummel-seed, and broom-flowers, of\neach half an ounce; hyssop, sassafras, polypodium, and horse-mints, of\neach a quarter of an ounce, and the like of nutmegs; cubebs, borage,\nmummy, mugwort, sage, and the four kinds of mirobolans, of each half\nan ounce; of aloes soccotrine the fifth part of an ounce, and of\nsaffron one whole ounce. To be put into a hen's gut, tied at both\nends.\" What was supposed to be the effect of this marvellous mixture,\nit is somewhat hard to divine; but our modern pharmacopoeia would be\ncontent with a little rhubarb and a few peppercorns. With regard to\nfood, we are told, in the same work, that cock's flesh is proper for\nfalcons that are \"melancholick;\" and that \"phlegmatick\" birds are to\nbe treated in a different way--possibly fed on pullets. Were this paper\nintended as a notice of ancient, instead of modern falconry, we might\nmultiply instances to show the extreme _faddiness_ of the old\nfalconers.\n\n{495}\n\nSimply to _tame_ a hawk is excessively easy. To train it, up to\na certain point, is not at all difficult. But it requires an old and\npractised hand to produce a bird of first-rate excellence.\n\nThe modern routine of training the peregrine falcon is shortly as\nfollows: Young birds are procured, generally from Scotland, either\njust before they can fly, or just after. They are placed in some\nstraw, on a platform, in an outhouse, which ought to open to the\nsoutheast. They are furnished each with a large bell (the size of a\nvery small walnut) for the leg; and each with a couple of jessies\n(short straps of leather) for both legs. If they are unable to fly,\nthe door of the coach-house (or whatever the outhouse may be) should\nbe left open; but if they have tolerable use of their wings, it will\nbe necessary to close it for the first few days. They are fed twice a\nday with beefsteak--changed, occasionally, for rabbit, rook, or\npigeon; and, if the birds are very young, the food must be cut up\nsmall; but it is improper to take them from the nest until the\nfeathers have shown themselves thoroughly through the white down. A\nlure is then used. This instrument need be nothing more than a forked\nand somewhat heavy piece of wood (sometimes covered with leather), to\nwhich is fastened a strap and a couple of pigeons' wings. To this meat\nis tied; and the young hawks are encouraged to fly down from their\nplatform, at the stated feeding times, to take their meals from it,\nthe falconer either loudly whistling or shouting to them the while.\nPresently, and as they become acquainted with the lures, they are\npermitted to fly at large for a fortnight or three weeks; and, if the\nfeeding-times be kept, the lures well furnished with food, and the\nshout or whistle employed, the hawks will certainly return when they\nare due; unless, indeed, they have been injured or destroyed when from\nhome, by accident or malice. This flying at liberty is termed \"flying\nat hack.\" When the young hawks show any disposition to prey for\nthemselves (though the heavy bells are intended slightly to delay\nthis), they are taken up from \"hack,\" either with a small net, or with\nthe hand. They are then taught to wear the hood, and are carried on\nthe fist. In a few days they are sufficiently tame to be trusted at\nlarge, and may be flown at young grouse or pigeons, the heavy bells\nhaving been changed for the lightest procurable. At this period great\npains are taken by the falconer to prevent his bird \"carrying\" her\ngame; for it is obvious that, were the hawk to move when he approached\nher, he would be subject constantly to the greatest trouble and\ndisappointment. The tales told in books about hawks _bringing_ quarry to\ntheir master are absurd; the falconer must go to his hawk. Such is a\nsketch of the training in modern times of the eyas or young bird.\nWild-caught hawks, however, called \"haggards,\" are occasionally used.\nThese, though excellent for herons and rooks, are not good for\ngame-hawking, as it is difficult to make them \"wait on\" about the\nfalconer, and all game must be flown from the air, and not from the\nhood; _i.e._, by a hawk from her pitch, and not from the fist of her\nmaster. Haggards, of course, are never flown at \"hack.\" The tiercel,\nor male peregrine, is excellent for partridges and pigeons; but the\nfemale bird only can have a chance with herons, and is to be preferred\nalso for grouse and rooks.\n\nWe have in this country several trained goshawks, which are flown at\nrabbits; also sometimes at hares and pheasants. The merlin, too, is\noccasionally trained: the present writer flew these beautiful little\nbirds at larks for years; but gave them up in 1857, and confined\nhimself entirely to peregrines and goshawks. The sparrow-hawk, the\nwildest of hawks, is sometimes used for small birds. The hobby is\nhardly to be procured. The Iceland and Greenland falcons are prized,\nbut are rarely met with.\n\nThese large birds are called gerfalcons; and, when very white, and\ngood in the field, fetched extravagant prices in the old times. They\nmay now sometimes be procured untrained for L5 or L6 each; but the\nperegrine is large enough for the game of this country.\n\n{496}\n\nIt may be interesting to know, in something like detail, what a flight\nat game, rooks, pigeons, or magpies is like how it is conducted, and\nto what extent the sagacity of hawks may be developed. To this end, we\nwill give a sketch or two of what is being done now, and what will be\ndone in the game season.\n\nAt this season of the year, and in this country, falconers are obliged\nto be content with rook, pigeon, or magpie flying. Such quarry is\nflown \"out of the hood,\" and not from the air; _i.e._ the hawk,\ninstead of \"waiting on\" over the falconer in expectation of quarry\nbeing sprung, is unhooded as it rises, and is cast off from the fist.\nAt least the only exception to this is when pigeons are thrown from\nthe hand in order to teach a hawk to \"wait on.\"\n\nIt will be understood that, in the following description, the\nperegrine is supposed to be used, for a long-winged hawk is necessary\nfor the flights about to be described, and the merlin is too small to\nbe depended upon for anything larger than a black-bird, or a young\npartridge; though the best females are good for pigeons.\n\nLet us go out to-day, then, and try to kill a rook or two on the\nneighboring common. The hawks are in good condition; not indeed as fat\nas though they were put up to moult, but with plenty of flesh and\nmuscle, and wind kept good by almost daily exercise. We have a haggard\ntiercel and a haggard falcon; also two eyas falcons; all are up to\ntheir work and have been well entered to rooks. We shall not trouble\nourselves to take out the cadge to-day, for our party is quite strong\nenough to carry the hawks on the fist. Only two of us are mounted, a\nlady and a gentleman; the rest will run. The lady would carry the\nlittle tiercel, but she is afraid lest she should make a blunder in\nunhooding him, as her mare is rather fresh this morning; but her\ncompanion, who has flown many a hawk, willingly takes charge of him.\n\nWe are well on the common now; and lo! a black mass on the ground\nthere, with a few black spots floating over. Hark to the distant\n\"caw!\" A clerical meeting. \"Let us give them a bishop, then,\" says the\nbearer of the tiercel, which is called by that name. The wind is from\nthem to us. The horseman and his companion canter onward; we follow at\na slow run. The horses approach the flock; the black mass becomes\ndisturbed and rises; the \"bishop\" is thrown off with a shout of \"Hoo,\nha! ha!\" and rushes amongst his clergy with even more than episcopal\nenergy. There is full enough wind; the rooks are soon into it, and\nringing up in a compact body with a pace which, for them, is very\ngood. His lordship, too, is mounting: he rose in a straight line the\nmoment he left the fist, but he is now making a large circle to get\nabove his quarry. He has reached them, but he does not grapple with\nthe first bird he comes near, though he seems exceedingly close to it.\nBut there is something so thoroughly systematic in his movements,\nsomething which so suggests a long and deadly experience, that even\nthe uninitiated of the party feel certain that he is doing the right\nthing. He is nearly above them. A rook has left the flock--the very\nworst thing he could possibly do for his own sake: he has saved the\nbishop the trouble of selection. He makes for some trees in the\ndistance, but it is inconceivable that he can reach them. There! and\nthere! Now again! He is clutched at the third stoop, and both birds,\nin a deadly embrace, flap and twist to the ground together. The rest\nare high in the air, and a long way off.\n\nIt must not be considered that this tiercel did not dash at once into\nthe whole flock because he was afraid to do so. He had no fear\nwhatever; but nature or experience taught him that a stoop from above\nwas worth half-a-dozen attempts to fly level and grapple.\n\n\"It's poor work after all,\" said one of the party, who had run for it\nnotwithstanding; \"these brutes can't fly, {497} and it's almost an\ninsult to a first-rate hawk to unhood him at such quarry. Even the\nhawks don't fly with the same dash that one sees when a strong pigeon\nis on the wing. Beside, it's spoiling the eyases for game-hawking;\nwhen they ought to be 'waiting on' over grouse, they will be starting\nafter the first rook that passes.\"\n\n\"My good fellow,\" answered another, \"you _must_ hawk rooks now, or be\ncontent with pigeons, unless you can find magpies (we will try that\npresently): there are no herons anywhere near (and I don't know that\nthe eyases would fly them if there were); and, as for flying a\nhouse-pigeon, which has been brought to the field in a basket, though\nI grant the goodness of the flight, I don't see the sport. If we could\nfind wood-pigeons far enough from trees, I should like that. As for\nthe game next season, there are not many rooks on the _moors_; and, as\nthese falcons would fly rooks even if they had not seen them for a\nyear, I don't think we are losing much by what we are doing. It is\nexercise at any rate; and, beside, I assure you that I have seen an\nold cock-rook, in a wind like this, live for a mile, before one of the\nbest falcons in the world, where there was not a single tree to\nshelter him.\"\n\nWe are compelled to go some distance before we can see a black\nfeather; for rooks, once frightened, are very careful; or rather, we\nshould have been so compelled had it not happened that an old\ncarrion-crow, perhaps led near the spot by curiosity, is seen passing\nat the distance of about two hundred yards. The passage-falcon is\ninstantly unhooded and cast off; and, as we are now in the\nneighborhood of a few scattered trees, it takes ten minutes to kill\nhim; and a short time, too, for he has \"treed\" himself some eight or\nten times in spite of our efforts to make him take the open.\n\nOur time is short to-day; but let us get a magpie, if possible, before\nwe go home. Our fair companion is fully as anxious for the sport as we\nare. Only a mile off there is a nice country; large grass fields,\nsmall fences, with a bush here and there. We have reached it. A magpie\nhas flown from the top of that single tree in the hedgerow, and is\nskimming down the field. Off with the young falcons: wait till the\nfirst sees him; now unhood the second. Ah! he sees _them_, and flies\nalong the side of the hedge. Let us ride and run! Get him out of cover\nas fast as possible, while the hawks \"wait on\" above. Pray, sir, jump\nthe fence a little lower down, and help to get him out from the other\nside. Hoo-ha-ha! there he goes. Well stooped, \"Vengeance,\" and nearly\nclutched, \"Guinevere,\" but he has reached the tree in the hedgerow,\nand is moving his long tail about in the most absurd manner. A good\nsmack of the whip, and he is off again. And so we go on for a quarter\nof an hour, riding, running, shouting, till \"Guinevere\" clutches him\njust as he is about to enter a clump of trees. Who-whoop!\n\nSuch is rook-hawking and magpie-hawking. In an open plain, and on a\ntolerably still day, a great number of rooks may be killed with good\nhawks. Either eyas or passage-falcons may be used. Last year, one\nhundred and fifty-two rooks and two carrion-crows were killed by some\nofficers, on the finest place for rook-flying in England, with some\npassage-hawks and two eyases. In 1863, ninety rooks were killed, near\nthe same spot, with eyases. Tiercels are better than falcons for\nmagpie-hawking, as they are unquestionably quicker amongst hedgerows,\nand can turn in a smaller compass. One tiercel has been known to kill\neight magpies in a day; but this is extraordinary work.\n\nTo prevent confusion, it may be as well to mention here that the term\n\"haggard\" and \"passage-hawk\" both mean a wild-caught hawk; while\n\"eyas\" signifies a bird taken from the nest or eyrie.\n\nHeron-hawking requires an open country, with a heronry in the\nneighborhood. The quarry is flown at generally by passage-hawks; but a\nfew {498} very good eyases have been found equal to the flight.\n\nGame-hawking is conducted in the following manner: Let us suppose, in\nthe first instance, that the falconer is living in the immediate\nneighborhood of grouse-moors, and that he wishes, on some fine morning\nat the end of October or the beginning of November, to show his friend\na flight or two at grouse, without going very far for the sport. The\nold pointer is summoned; \"The Princess,\" an eyas falcon in the second\nplumage, is hooded; and the walk is commenced.\n\nNow, very early in the season on the moors, and through the whole of\nSeptember with partridges, it is better to wait for a point before the\nhawk is cast oft, for this saves time, and you know that you have game\nunder you; but at that period of the season which we have named,\ngrouse rise the moment man or dog is seen, and you would have a bad\nchance indeed were you to fly your hawk out of the hood (_i.e._, from\nthe fist) at them. The best way is to keep your dog to heel, not to\ntalk, and, just before you show yourself in some likely place, to\nthrow up the falcon. When she has reached her pitch, which she will\nsoon do, hurry the dog on, run, clap your hands, and get the birds up\nas soon as may be.\n\nThe hill is ascended, \"The Princess\" is at her pitch--where she would\nremain, following her master and \"Shot\" the pointer, for ten minutes\nif necessary. Some minutes pass: an old cock-grouse, put up by a\nshepherd-dog, rises a couple of hundred yards off. Hoo-ha-ha-ha! \"The\nPrincess\" vanishes from her post, more rapidly than the knights in\n\"Ivanhoe\" left theirs. She does not droop or fly near the ground (she\nhas had too much experience for that),  but almost rises as she shoots\noff after him. Had he risen under her, she would have cut him over;\nbut this is a different affair. They are soon out of sight down the\nhill; but a marker has been placed that way. \"I think she has killed\nhim, sir,\" he shouts presently; \"but it's a long way. No, she's coming\nback; she must have put him into cover.\" Up and down hill, it would\ntake us twenty minutes to get there; and see! she is over our heads,\n\"waiting on\" again, and telling us, as well as she can, to spring\nanother. A point! how is that?--only that there are some more which\ndare not rise because they have seen _her_. \"Hi in, 'Shot!'\" Again the\nfalconer's shout startles his friend; again \"The Princess\" passes\nthrough the air like an arrow. \"All right this time, sir,\" cries the\nmarker; \"I see her with it under yon wall.\" She has scarcely begun to\neat the head as we reach her. One more flight. She is lifted on the\ngrouse; the leash is passed through the jesses, and then she is\nhooded. Let us rest for ten minutes. Again, she is \"waiting on,\" again\nshe flies; but this time, though we see the flight for three-quarters\nof a mile, the birds top a hill, and we are an hour in finding them.\nThe grouse, however, is fit for cooking even then; only the head,\nneck, and some of the back have vanished: it is plucked nearly as well\nas though it had been in the hands of a cook. That will do, and very\ngood sport, too, considering we had but one hawk. Let us now feed her\nup on beef, and hood her.\n\nIn the very early part of the season, with grouse, and commonly with\npartridges, it is usual (as we have hinted) to wait for a point; the\nhawk is then cast off, and the birds are sprung when she has reached\nher pitch.\n\nGoshawks, which may be occasionally procured from the Regent's Park\nZoological Gardens, or directly from Sweden or Germany, are considered\nby some falconers to be difficult birds to manage. That they are\nsulkily disposed is certain; but in hands _accustomed to them_, and\nwhen they are constantly at work, they are exceedingly trustworthy,\neven affectionate, and will take as many as eight or ten rabbits in a\nday. They are short-winged hawks, and have no chance with anything\nfaster than a rising pheasant; they are {499} excellent for rabbits,\nand a few large ones will sometimes hold a hare. In modern practice\nthey are never hooded, except in travelling, and are always flown from\nthe fist, or from some tree in which they may have perched after an\nunsuccessful flight.\n\nThere are probably, in these islands, about fifteen practical\nfalconers, three or four of whom are professional; of the latter, John\nPells and the Barrs are well worthy of mention.\n\nJohn Pells was born at Lowestoft in 1815, and went, when he was\nthirteen, with his father to Valkneswaard to take passage-hawks for\nthe Didlington Subscription Club; so that he was very soon in harness.\nThe elder Pells commenced his career at the age of eleven, and was in\nevery respect a perfect falconer; he was presented by Napoleon I. with\na falconer's bag, which is now in possession of the Duke of Leeds. He\ndied in 1838. The present John Pells has had all possible advantages\nin his calling, and has made every use of them. He was falconer to the\nDuke of Leeds, to Mr. O'Keeffe, to Mr. E. C. Newcome, to the late Duke\nof St. Albans, and now attends to the hawks which the present duke is\nbound, either by etiquette or necessity, to maintain. Pells also sells\ntrained hawks, and gives lessons in the art of falconry. He was at one\ntime an exceedingly active man, and spent six months in Iceland,\ncatching Iceland falcons. After enduring a good deal of cold and\nfatigue, he brought fifteen of these birds to Brandon, in Norfolk, in\nNovember, 1845. He is now too stout and too gouty for strong exercise,\nbut his experience is very valuable.\n\nToo much can hardly be said in raise of John and Robert Barr\n(brothers). Their father, a gamekeeper in Scotland, taught them, in a\nrough way, the rudiments of falconry, They are now, and have been for\na long time, most accomplished falconers, When in the employment of\nthe Indian prince Dhuleep Singh, John Barr was sent to India to learn\nthe Indian system of falconry. There is some notion now of his being\nplaced at the head of a hawking club about to be established in Paris;\nand English falconry might well be proud of such a representative.\nBeside the Pells and the Barrs, we have Paul Moellen, Gibbs, and\nBots--and one or two more--all good.\n\nIn consequence of the great rage for game-preserving which obtains in\nthe present day, it does not seem unlikely that the peregrine falcon\nmay, in time, be as thoroughly exterminated in Scotland and Ireland as\nthe goshawk has already been. At present, however, falconers find no\ndifficulty in procuring these birds, if they are willing to pay for\nthem. In a selfish point of view, therefore, they have nothing of\nwhich to complain. But it might become a question, at least of\nconscience, whether mankind have the right, though they possibly may\nhave the power, of blotting out from the face of creation--so long as\nthere is no danger to human life and limb--any conspicuous type of\nstrength or of beauty. The kingfisher is sought to be exterminated on\nour rivers, the eagle and the falcon on our hills; and it is brought\nforward in justification of this slaughter--at least it is brought\nforward in effect--that the sportsman's bag and the angler's creel are\nof much more importance than the wonderful works of God. To all that\nis selfish in these strict preservers of fish and of game it may be\nopposed that part of the food of the kingfisher consists in minnows;\nthat the fry of trout and salmon, when not confined in breeding-boxes,\nare rarely procured by this bird, which constantly feeds upon the\nlarvae of the _Dytiscce_ and _Libelluae_, the real foes of the fry;\nthat the peregrine falcon, though she undoubtedly kills very many\nhealthy grouse, purges the moors of diseased ones, and drives away the\negg-stealing birds. And to all that is generous in these martinets of\npreservation it may be submitted that true sport has other elements\nthan those of acquisition and slaughter; that the pleasure of a ramble\non the hills {500} or by the river is sadly dashed if you have struck\nout some of the beauty of the landscape; and that the incident of a\nflight made by a wild hawk, or the flash of a kingfisher near the\nangler's rod, is as lively and as well worth relating as the fall of\nan extra grouse to the gun, or the addition of another trout to the\nbasket.\n\n------\n\nFrom The Lamp.\n\nALL-HALLOW EVE; OR, THE TEST OF FUTURITY.\n\nBY ROBERT CURTIS.\n\n\nCHAPTER I.\n\n\nI could have wished that the incidents which I am about to describe in\nthe following tale had taken place in some locality with a less\nCeltic, and to English tongues a more pronounceable, name than\n_Boher-na-Milthiogue._ I had at first commenced the tale with the word\nitself, thus: \"Boher-na-Milthiogue, though in a wild and remote part\nof Ireland,\" etc. But I was afraid that, should an English reader take\nup and open the book, he would at the very first word slap it together\nagain between the palms of his hands, saying, \"Oh, that is quite\nenough for me!\" Now, as my English readers have done me vastly good\nservice on former occasions, I should be sorry to frighten them at the\noutset of this new tale; and I have therefore endeavored to lead them\nquietly into it. With my Irish friends no such circumlocution would\nhave been necessary. Perhaps, if I dissever and explain the word, it\nmay enable even my English readers in some degree to approach a\nsuccessful attempt at its pronunciation. I am aware, however, of the\ndifficulty they experience in this respect, and that their attempts at\nsome of our easiest names of Irish places are really\nlaughable--laughable, at least, to our Celtic familiarity with the\ncorrect sound.\n\n_Boher_ is the Irish for \"bridge,\" and _milthiogue_ for a \"midge;\"\nBoher-na-Milthiogue, \"the midge's bridge.\"\n\nThere now, if my English friends cannot yet pronounce the word\nproperly, which I still doubt, they can at least understand what it\nmeans. It were idle, I fear to hope, that they can see any _beauty_ in\nit; and yet that it is beautiful there can be no Celtic doubt\nwhatever.\n\nPerhaps it might have been well to have written thus far in the shape\nof a preface; but as nobody nowadays reads prefaces, the matter would\nhave been as bad as ever. I shall therefore continue now as I had\nintended to have commenced at first.\n\nBoher-na-Milthiogue, though in a wild and remote part of Ireland, is\nnot without a certain degree of natural and romantic beauty, suiting\nwell the features of the scene in which it lies.\n\nTowering above a fertile and well-cultivated plain frown and smile the\nbrother and sister mountains of Slieve-dhu and Slieve-bawn, the solid\nmasonry of whose massive and perpendicular precipices was built by no\nhuman architect. The ponderous and scowling rocks of Slieve-dhu, the\nbrother, are dark and indistinct; while, separated from it by a narrow\nand abrupt ravine, those of Slieve-bawn, the sister, are of a whitish\nspotted gray, contrasting cheerfully with those of her gloomy brother.\n\n{501}\n\nThere is generally a story in Ireland about mountains or rivers or old\nruins which present any peculiarity of shape or feature. Now it is an\nundoubted fact, which any tourist can satisfy himself of, that\nalthough from sixty to a hundred yards asunder, there are huge bumps\nupon the side of Slieve-bawn, corresponding to which in every respect\nas to size and shape are cavities precisely opposite them in the side\nof Slieve-dhu. The story in this case is, that although formerly the\nmountains were, like a loving brother and sister, clasped in each\nother's arms, they quarrelled one dark night (I believe about the\ncause of thunder), when Slieve-dhu in a passion struck his sister a\nblow in the face, and staggered her back to where she now stands, too\nfar for the possibility of reconciliation; and that she, knowing the\nsuperiority of her personal appearance, stands her ground, as a proud\ncontrast to her savage and unfeeling relative.\n\nDeep straight gullies, worn by the winter floods, mark the sides of\nboth mountains into compartments, the proportion and regularity of\nwhich might almost be a matter of surprise, looking like huge stripes\ndown the white dress of Slieve-bawn, while down that of Slieve-dhu\nthey might be compared to black and purple plaid.\n\n\"Far to the north,\" in the bosom of the minor hills, lies a glittering\nlake--glittering when the sun shines; dark, sombre, and almost\nimperceptible when the clouds prevail.\n\nThe origin of the beautiful name in which the spot itself rejoices I\nbelieve to be this; but why do I say \"believe?\" It is a self-evident\nand well-known fact.\n\nAlong the base of Slieve-bawn there runs a narrow _roadeen_, turning\nalmost at right angles through the ravine already mentioned, and\nleading to the flat and populous portion of the country on the other\nside of the mountains, and cutting the journey, for any person\nrequiring to go there, into the sixteenth of the distance by the main\nroad. In this instance the proverb would not be fulfilled, that \"the\nlongest way round was the shortest way home.\" Across one of the\nwinter-torrent beds which runs down the mountain side, almost at the\nentrance of the ravine, is a rough-built rustic bridge, at a\nconsiderable elevation from the road below. To those approaching it\nfrom the lower level, it forms a conspicuous and exceedingly\npicturesque object, looking not unlike a sort of castellated defence\nto the mouth of the narrow pass between the mountains.\n\nThis bridge, toward sunset upon a summer's evening, presents a very\ncurious and (except in that spot) an unusual sight. Whether it arises\nfrom any peculiarity of the herbage in the vicinity, or the fissures\nin the mountains, or the crevices in the bridge itself, as calculated\nto engender them, it would be hard to say; but it would be impossible\nfor any arithmetician to compute at the roughest guess the millions,\nthe billions of small midges which dance in the sunbeams immediately\nabove and around the bridge, but in no other spot for miles within\nview. The singularity of their movements, and the peculiarity of their\ndistribution in the air, cannot fail to attract the observation of the\nmost careless beholder. In separate and distinct batches of some\nhundreds of millions each, they rise in almost solid masses until they\nare lost sight of, as they attain the level of the heathered brow of\nthe mountain behind them, becoming visible again as they descend into\nthe bright sunshine that lies upon the white rocks of Slieve-bawn. In\nno instance can you perceive individual or scattered midges; each\nbatch is connected and distinct in itself, sometimes oval, sometimes\nalmost square, but most frequently in a perfectly round ball. No two\nof these batches rise or fall at the same moment. I was fortunate\nenough to see them myself upon more than one occasion in high\nperfection. They reminded me of large balls thrown up and caught\nsuccessively by some distinguished {502} acrobat. During the\nperformance, a tiny little sharp whir of music fills the atmosphere,\nwhich would almost set you to sleep as you sit on the battlement of\nthe bridge watching and wondering.\n\nBy what law of creation, or what instinct of nature, or, if by\nneither, by what union of sympathy the movements of these milthiogues\nare governed--for I am certain there are millions of them at the same\nwork in the same spot this fine summer's evening--would be a curious\nand proper study for an entomologist; but I have no time here to do\nmore than describe the facts, were I even competent to enter into the\ninquiry. Fancy say fifty millions of midges in a round ball, so\narranged that, under no suddenness or intricacy of movement, any one\ntouches another. There is no saying amongst them, \"Keep out of my way,\nand don't be _pushin'_ me,\" as Larry Doolan says.\n\nSo far, the thing in itself appears miraculous; but when we come to\nconsider that their motions, upward to a certain point, and downward\nto another, are simultaneous, that the slightest turn of their wings\nis collectively instantaneous, rendering them at one moment like a\nblack target, and another turn rendering them almost invisible, all\ntheir movements being as if guided by a single will--we are not only\nlost in wonder, but we are perfectly unable to account for or\ncomprehend it. I have often been surprised, and so, no doubt, may many\nof my readers have been, at the regularity of the evolutions of a\nflock of stares in the air, where every twist and turn of a few\nthousand pairs of wings seemed as if moved by some connecting wire;\nbut even this fact, surprising as it is, sinks into insignificance\nwhen compared with the movements of these milthiogues.\n\nBut putting all these inquiries and considerations aside, the simple\nfacts recorded have been the origin of the name with which this tale\ncommences.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II.\n\nWinifred Cavana was an only daughter, indeed an only child. Her\nfather, old Ned Cavana of Rathcash, had been always a thrifty and\nindustrious man. During the many years he had been able to attend to\nbusiness--and he was an experienced farmer--he had realized a sum of\nmoney, which, in his rank of life and by his less prosperous\nneighbors, would be called \"unbounded wealth,\" but which, divested of\nthat envious exaggeration, was really a comfortable independence for\nhis declining years, and would one of those days be a handsome\ninheritance for his handsome daughter. Not that Ned Cavana intended to\nhuxter the whole of it up, so that she should not enjoy any of it\nuntil its possession might serve to lighten her grief for his\ndeath--no; should Winny marry some \"likely boy,\" of whom her father\ncould in every respect approve, she should have six hundred pounds,\nR.M.D.; and at his death by which time Ned hoped some of his\ngrandchildren would make the residue more necessary--she should have\nall that he was able to demise, which was no paltry matter. In the\nmeantime they would live happily and comfortable, not niggardly.\n\nWith this view--a distant one, he still hoped--before him, and knowing\nthat he had already sown a good crop, and reaped a sufficient harvest\nto live liberally, die peacefully, and be _berrid dacently_, he had\nset a great portion of his land upon a lease during his own life, at\nthe termination of which it was to revert to his son-in-law, of whose\nexistence, long before that time, he could have no doubt, and for\nwhose name a blank had been left in his will, to be filled up in due\ntime before he died, or, failing that event--not his death, but a\nson-in-law--it was left solely to his daughter Winifred.\n\nWinny Cavana was, beyond doubt or question, a very handsome girl and\nshe knew it. She knew, too, {503} that she was \"a catch;\" the only one\nin that side of the country; and no person wondered at the many\nadmirers she could boast of, though it was a thing she was never known\nto do; nor did she wonder at it herself. Without her six hundred\npounds, Winny could have had scores of \"bachelors;\" and it was not\nvery surprising if she was hard to be pleased. Indeed, had Winny\nCavana been penniless, it is possible she would have had a greater\nnumber of open admirers, for her reputed wealth kept many a faint\nheart at a distance. It was not to be wondered at either, if a wealthy\ncountry beauty had the name of a coquette, whether she deserved it or\nnot; nor was it to be expected that she could give unmixed\nsatisfaction to each of her admirers; and we all know what\ncensoriousness unsuccessful admiration is likely to cause in a\ndisappointed heart.\n\nAmongst all those who were said to have entered for the prize of\nWinny's heart, Thomas Murdock was the favorite--not with herself, but\nthe neighbors. At all events he was the \"likely boy\" whom Winny's\nfather had in his eye as a husband for his daughter; and in writing\nhis will, he had lifted his pen from the paper at the blank already\nmentioned, and written the name Thomas Murdock in the air, so that, in\ncase matters turned out as he wished and anticipated, it would fit in\nto a nicety.\n\nThe townlands of Rathcash and Rathcashmore, upon which the Cavanas and\nMurdocks lived, was rather a thickly populated district, and they had\nsome well-to-do neighbors, beside many who were not quite so\nwell-to-do, but were yet decent and respectable. There were the Boyds,\nthe Beattys, and the Brennans, with the Cahils, the Cartys, and the\nClearys beyond them; the Doyles, the Dempseys, and the Dolans not far\noff; with the Mulveys, the Mooneys, and the Morans quite close. The\npeople seemed to live in alphabetical batches in that district, as if\nfor the convenience of the county cess-collector and his book. Many\nothers lived still further off, but not so far (in Ireland) as not to\nbe called neighbors.\n\nKate Mulvey, one of the nearest neighbors, was a great friend and\ncompanion of Winny's. If Kate had six hundred pounds she could easily\nhave rivalled Winny's good looks, but she had not six hundred pence;\nand notwithstanding her magnificent eyes, her white teeth, and her\nglossy brown hair, she could not look within miles as high into the\nclouds as Winny could. Still Kate had her admirers, some of whom even\nWinny's fondest glance, with all her money, could not betray into\ntreachery. But it so happened that the person at whom she had thrown\nher cap had not (as yet, at least) picked it up.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III.\n\nIt was toward the end of October, 1826. There had been an early\nspring, and the crops had been got in favorably, and in good time.\nThere had been \"a wet and a windy May;\" a warm, bright summer had\nsucceeded it; and the harvest had been now all gathered in, except the\npotatoes, which were in rapid progress of being dug and pitted. It was\na great day for Ireland, let the advocates for \"breadstuffs\" say what\nthey will, before the blight and yellow meal had either of them become\nfamiliar with the poor. There were the Cork reds and the cups, the\nbenefits and the Brown's fancies, for half nothing in every direction,\nbeside many other sorts of potatoes, bulging up the surface of the\nridges--there were no drills in those days; _mehils_ in almost every\nfield, with their coats off at the digging-in.\n\n\"Bill, don't lane on that boy on the ridge wid you; he's not much more\nnor a _gossoon_; give him a start of you.\"\n\n\"_Gossoon aniow_; be gorra, he's as smart a chap on the face of a\nridge as the best of us, Tom.\"\n\n{504}\n\n\"Ay; but don't take it out of him too soon, Bill.\"\n\n\"Work away, boys,\" said the _gossoon_ in question; \"I'll engage I'll\nshoulder my loy at the end of the ridge as soon as some of ye that's\nspaking.\"\n\n\"It was wan word for the _gossoon_, as he calls him, an' two for\nhimself, Bill,\" chimed in the man on the next ridge. \"Don't hurry Tom\nNolan; his feet's sore afther all he danced with Nelly Gaffeny last\nnight.\"\n\nHere there was a loud and general laugh at poor Tom Nolan's expense,\nand the pickers women and girls, with handkerchiefs tied over their\nheads looked up with one accord, annoyed that they were too far off to\nhear the joke. It was well for one of them that they had not heard it,\nfor Nelly Gaffeny was amongst them.\n\n\"It's many a day, Pat, since you seen the likes of them turned out of\na ridge.\"\n\n\"They bate the world.\"\n\n\"They bang Banagher; and Banagher, they say--\"\n\n\"Whist, Larry; don't be dhrawing that chap down at all.\"\n\n\"I seen but wan betther the year,\" said Tim Meaney.\n\n\"I say you didn't, nor the sorra take the betther, nor so good.\"\n\n\"Arra, didn't I? I say I did though.\"\n\n\"Where, _avic ma cree?_\"\n\n\"Beyant at Tony Kilroy's.\"\n\n\"Ay, ay; Tony always had a pet acre on the side of the hill toward the\nsun. He has the best bit of land in the parish.\"\n\n\"You may say that, Micky, with your own purty mouth. I led his\n_mehil_, come this hollintide will be three years; an' there wasn't a\nman of forty of us but turned out eight stone of cup off every ten\nyards a a' four-split ridge. Devil a the like of them I ever seen\nafore or since.\"\n\n\"Lumpers you mane, Andy; wasn't I there?\"\n\n\"Is it you, Darby? no, nor the sorra take the foot; we all know where\nyou were that same year.\"\n\n\"Down in the lower part of Cavan, Phil. In throth, it wasn't cup\npotatoes was throublin' him that time; but cups and saucers. He dhrank\na power of tay that harvest, boys.\"\n\nHere there was another loud laugh, and the women with the\nhandkerchiefs upon their heads looked up again.\n\n\"Well, I brought her home dacent, boys; an' what can ye say to her?\"\n\n\"Be gor, nothing, Darby avic, but that she's an iligant purty crathur,\nand a credit to them that owns her, an' them that reared her.\"\n\n\"The sorra word of lie in that,\" echoed every man in the _mehil_.\n\nThus the merry chat and laugh went on in every potato-field. The\nwomen, finding that they had too much to do to enable them to keep\nclose to the men, and that they were losing the fun, of course got up\na chat for themselves, and took good care to have some loud and hearty\nlaughs, which made the men in their turn look up, and lean upon their\nloys.\n\nEverything about Rathcash and Rathcashmore was prosperous and happy,\nand the farmers were cheerful and open-hearted.\n\n\"That's grand weather, glory be to God, Ned, for the time of year,\"\nsaid Mick Murdock to his neighbor Cavana, who was leaning, with his\narms folded, on a field-gate near the mearing of their two farms. The\nfarms lay alongside of each other one in the town-land of Rathcash,\nand the other in Rathcashmore.\n\n\"Couldn't be bet, Mick. I'm upward of forty years stannin' in this\nspot, an' I never seen the batin' of it.\"\n\n\"Be gorra, you have a right to be tired, Ned; that's a long stannin'.\"\n\n\"The sorra tired, Mick a _wochal_. You know very well what I mane, an'\nyou needn't be so sharp. I'd never be tired of the same spot.\"\n\n\"Them's a good score of calves, Ned; God bless you an' them!\" said\nMick, making up for his sharpness.\n\n\"An' you too, Mick. They are a fine lot of calves, an' all reared\nsince Candlemas.\"\n\n{505}\n\n\"There's no denying, Ned, but you med the most of that bit of land of\nyours.\"\n\n\"'Tis about the same as your own, Mick; an' I think you med as good a\nfist of yours.\"\n\n\"Well, maybe so, indeed; but I doubt it is going into worse hands than\nwhat yours will, Ned.\"\n\n\"Why that, Mick?\"\n\n\"Ah, that Tom of mine is a wild extravagant hero. He doesn't know much\nabout the value of money, and never paid any attention to farming\nbusiness, only what he was obliged to pick up from being with me. He\nthinks he'll be rich enough when I'm in my clay, without much work.\nAn' so he will, Ned, so far as that goes; but it's only of\nbook-larnin' an' horse-racin' an' coorsin' he's thinkin', by way of\nbeing a sort of gentleman one of those days; but he'll find to his\ncost, in the lather end, that there's more wantin' to grow good crops\nthan 'The Farmer's Calendar of Operations.'\"\n\n\"He's young, Mick, an' no doubt he'll mend. I hope you don't\ndiscourage him.\"\n\n\"Not at all, Ned. The book-larnin 's all well enough, as far as it\ngoes, if he'd put the practice along with it, an' be studdy.\"\n\n\"So he will, Mick. His wild-oats will soon be all sown, an' then\nyou'll see what a chap he'll be.\"\n\n\"Faix, I'd rather see him sowing a crop of yallow Aberdeens, Ned, next\nJune; an' maybe it's what it's at the Curragh of Kildare he'll be, as\nI can hear. My advice to him is to get married to some dacent nice\ngirl, that id take the wildness out of him, and lay himself down to\nbusiness. You know, Ned, he'll have every penny and stick I have in\nthe world; and the lease of my houlding in Rathcashmore is as good as\nan estate at the rent I pay. If he'd give up his meandherin', and take\na dacent liking to them that's fit for him, I'd set him up all at\nwanst, an' not be keeping him out of it until I was dead an' berrid.\"\n\nThe above was not a bad feeler, nor was it badly put by old Mick\nMurdock to his neighbor. \"Them that's fit for him\" could hardly be\nmistaken; yet there was a certain degree of disparagement of his own\nson calculated to conceal his object. It elicited nothing, however,\nbut a long thoughtful silence upon old Ned Cavana's part, which Mick\nwas not slow to interpret, and did not wish to interrupt. At last Ned\nstood up from the gate, and smoothing down the sleeves of his coat, as\nif he supposed they had contracted some dust, he observed, \"I'm\nafear'd, Mick, you're puttin' the cart before the horse; come until I\nshow you a few ridges of red apples I'm diggin' out to-day. You'd\nthink I actially got them carted in, an' threune them upon the ridges:\nthe like of them I never seen.\"\n\nAnd the two old men walked down the lane together.\n\nBut Mick Murdock's feeler was not forgotten by either of them. Mick\nwas as well pleased--perhaps better--that no further discussion took\nplace upon the subject at the time. He knew Ned Cavana was not a man\nto commit himself to a hasty opinion upon any matter, much less upon\none of such importance as was so plainly suggested by his\nobservations.\n\nNed Cavana, too, brooded over the conversation in silence, determined\nto throw out a feeler of his own to his daughter.\n\nNed had himself more than once contemplated the possibility as well as\nthe prudence of a match between Tom Murdock and his daughter. The\nunion, not of themselves alone, but of the two farms, would almost\nmake a gentleman of the person holding them. Both farms were held upon\nunusually long leases, and at less than one-third of their value. If\njoined, there could be no doubt but, with the careful and industrious\nmanagement of an experienced man, they would turn in a clear income of\nbetween five and six hundred a year; quite sufficient in that part of\nthe world to entitle {506} a person of even tolerably good education\nto look up to the grand-jury list and a \"justice of the pace.\"\n\nThe only question with Ned Cavana was, Did Tom Murdock possess the\nattributes required for success in all or any of the above respects?\nNed, although he had taken his part with his father, feared _not_. Ay,\nthere was another question, Was Winny inclined for him? He feared not\nalso.\n\nThe other old man had not forgotten the feeler he had thrown out\neither, nor the thoughtful silence with which it had been received;\nfor Mick Murdock could not believe that a man of Ned Cavana's\npenetration had misunderstood him. Indeed, he was inclined to think\nthat the same matter might have originated in Ned's own mind, from\nsome words he had once or twice dropped about poor Winny's prospects\nwhen he was gone, and the suspense it would be to him if she were not\nsettled in life before that day; \"snaffled perhaps by some\ngood-for-nothing, extravagant fortune-hunter, with a handsome face,\nwhen she had no one to look after her.\"\n\nThere was but one word in the above which Mick thought could be justly\napplied to Tom; \"extravagant\" he undoubtedly was, but he was neither\nhandsome--at least not handsome enough to be called so as a matter of\ncourse--nor was he good-for-nothing. He was a well-educated sharp\nfellow, if he would only lay himself down to business. He was not a\nfortune-hunter, for he did not require it; but idleness and\nextravagance might make him one in the end. Yet old Mick was by no\nmeans certain that the propriety of a match between these only and\nrich children had not suggested itself to his neighbor Ned as well as\nto himself. He hoped that if Tom had a \"dacent hankerrin' afther\" any\none, it was for Winny Cavana; but, like her father, he doubted if the\ngirl herself was inclined for him. He knew that she was proud and\nself-willed. He was determined, however, to follow the matter up, and\nthrow out another feeler upon the subject to his son.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV.\n\nIt was now the 25th of October, just six days from All-Hallow Eve.\nMick would ask a few of the neighbors to burn nuts and eat apples, and\nthen, perhaps, he might find out how the wind blew.\n\n\"Tom,\" said he to his son, \"I believe this is a good year for nuts.\"\n\n\"Well, father, I met a couple of chaps ere yesterday with their\npockets full of fine brown shellers, coming from Clonard Wood.\"\n\n\"I dare say they are not all gone yet, Tom; an' I wish you would set\nthem to get us a few pockets full, and we would ask a few of the\nneighbors here to burn them on All-Hallow Eve.\"\n\n\"That's easy done, father; I can get three or four quarts by to-morrow\nnight. Those two very chaps would be glad to earn a few pence for\nthem; they wanted me to buy what they had; and if I knew your\nintentions at the time, I should have done so; but it's not too late.\nWho do you intend to ask, father?\"\n\n\"Why, old Cavana and his daughter, of course, and the Mulveys; in\nshort, you know, all the neighbors. I won't leave any of them out,\nTom. The Cavanas, you know, are all as wan as ourselves, livin' at the\ndoore with us; and they're much like us too, Tom, in many respects.\nOld Ned is rich, an' has but one child--a very fine girl. I'm old, an'\nas rich as what Ned is, and I have but one child; I'll say though\nyou're to the fore, Tom--a very fine young man.\"\n\nOld Mick paused. He wanted to see if his son's intelligence was on the\nalert. It must have been very dull indeed had it failed to perceive\nwhat his father was driving at; but he was silent.\n\n\"That Winny Cavana is a very fine girl, Tom,\" he continued; \"and I\noften wonder that a handsome young fellow like you doesn't make more\nof her. She'll have six hundred pounds fortune, as round as a hoop;\nbeside, whoever gets her will fall in for that farm at her {507}\nfather's death. There's ninety-nine years of it, Tom, just like our\nown.\"\n\n\"She's a conceited proud piece of goods, father; and I suspect she\nwould rather give her six hundred pounds to some _skauhawn_ than to a\nman of substance like me.\"\n\n\"Maybe not now. Did you ever thry?\"\n\n\"No, father, I never did. People don't often hold their face up to the\nhail.\"\n\n\"_Na-bockleish_, Tom, she'd do a grate dale for her father, for you\nknow she must owe everything to him; an' if she vexes him he can cut\nher out of her six hundred pounds, and lave the interest in his farm\nto any one he likes; and I know what he thinks about you, Tom.\"\n\n\"Ay, and he's so fond of that one that she can twist him round her\nfinger. Wait now, father, until you see if I'm not up to every twist\nand turn of the pair of them.\"\n\n\"But you never seem to spake to her or mind her at all, Tom; and I\nknow, when I was your age, I always found that the girls liked the man\nbest that looked afther them most. I'm purty sure too, Tom, that\nthere's no one afore you there.\"\n\n\"I'm not so sure of that, father. But I'll tell you what it is: I have\nnot been either blind or idle on what you are talking about; but up to\nthis moment she seems to scorn me, father; there's the truth for you.\nAnd as for there being no one before me, all I can say is that she\nmanages, somehow or other, to come out of the chapel-door every Sunday\nat the same moment with that whelp, Edward Lennon, from the mountain;\n_Emon-a-knock_, as they call him, and as I have heard her call him\nherself. Rathcash chapel is not in his parish at all, and I don't know\nwhat brings him there.\"\n\n\"Is it that poor penniless pauper, depending on his day's labor? Ah,\nTom, she's too proud for that.\"\n\n\"Yes, that very fellow; and there's no getting a word with her where\nhe is.\"\n\n\"Well, Tom, all I can say is this, an' it's to my own son I'm sayin'\nit--that if you let that fellow pick up that fine girl with her six\nhundred pounds and fall into that rich farm, an' you livin' at the\ndoore with her, you're not worth staggering-bob broth, with all your\nbook-larnin' an' good looks, to say nothin' of your manners, Tom\navic.\" And he left him, saying to himself, \"He may put that in his\npocket to balance his knife.\"\n\nThus ended what old Murdock commenced as a feeler, but which became\nvery plain speaking in the end. But the All-Hallow Eve party was to\ncome off all the same.\n\nA word or two now of comparison, or perhaps, more properly speaking,\nof contrast, between these two aspirants to Winny Cavana's favor,\nthough young Lennon was still more hopeless than the other, from his\nposition.\n\nThomas Murdock was more conspicuous for the manliness of his person\nthan for the beauties of his mind or the amiability of his\ndisposition. Although manifestly well-looking in a group, take him\nsingly, and he could not be called very handsome. There was a\nsuspicious fidgetiness about his green-spotted eyes, as if he feared\nyou could read his thoughts; and at times, if vexed or opposed, a dark\nscowl upon his heavy brow indicated that these thoughts were not\nalways amiable. This unpleasing peculiarity of expression marred the\ngood looks which the shape of his face and the fit of his curly black\nwhiskers unquestionably gave him. In form he was fully six feet high,\nand beautifully made. At nineteen years of age he had mastered not\nonly all the learning which could be attained at a neighboring\nnational school, but had actually mastered the master himself in more\nways than one, and was considered by the eighty-four youngsters whom\nhe had outstripped as a prodigy of valor as well as learning. But Tom\nturned his schooling to a bad account; it was too superficial, and\nserved more to set his head astray than to correct his heart; and\nthere were some respectable {508} persons in the neighborhood who were\nnot free from doubts that he had already become a parish-patriot, and\njoined the Ribbon Society. He was high and overbearing toward his\nequals, harsh and unkind to his inferiors, while he was cringing and\nsycophantic toward his superiors. There was nothing manly or\nstraightforward, nothing ingenuous or affectionate, about him. In\nfact, if ever a man's temper and disposition justified the opinion\nthat he had \"the two ways\" in him, they were those of Thomas Murdock.\nHis father was a rich farmer, whose land joined that of old Ned\nCavana, of whom he was a contemporary in years, and with whom he had\nkept pace in industry and wealth.\n\nThomas Murdock was an only son, as Winny Cavana was an only daughter,\nand the two old men were of the same mind now as regarded the future\nlot of their children.\n\nA few words now of Edward Lennon, and we can get on.\n\nHe was the eldest of five in the family. They lived upon the\nmountain-side in the parish of Shanvilla, about two \"short miles\" from\nthe Cavanas and Murdocks. His father and mother were both alive. They\nwere respectable so far as character and conduct can make people\nrespectable who are unquestionably poor. Their marriage was what has\nbeen sarcastically, but perhaps not inaptly, called by an English\nnewspaper a \"_potato marriage;_\" that is--but no, it will not bear\nexplanation. The result, however, after many years' struggling, may be\nstated. The Lennons had lived, and were still living, in a small\nthatched house upon the side of a mountain, with about four acres of\nreclaimed ground. It had been reclaimed gradually by the father and\nhis two sons--for Emon had a younger brother--and they paid little or\nno rent for it. The second son and eldest daughter were now at\nservice, \"doin' for theirselves;\" and those at home consisted of the\nfather, the mother, the eldest son, and two younger daughters, mere\nchildren. For the house and garden they paid a small rent, which \"a\nslip of a pig\" was always ready to realize in sufficient time; while a\ncouple of goats, staggering through the furze, yoked together by the\nnecks, gave milk to the family.\n\nEdward, though not so well-looking as to the actual cut of his\nfeatures, nor so tall by an inch and a half, as our friend Murdock,\nwas far more agreeable to look upon. There was a confident good-nature\nin his countenance which assured you of its reality, and the honesty\nof his heart. His figure, from his well-shaped head, which was\nbeautifully set upon his shoulders, to his small, well-turned feet,\nwas faultless. In disposition and character young Lennon was a full\ndistance before the man to whom he was a secret rival, while in talent\nand learning he had nothing to fear by a comparison. He had commenced\nhis education when a mere gossoon at a poor-school with \"his turf an'\nhis read-a-ma-daisy,\" and as he progressed from A-b-e-l, bel, a man's\nname; A-b-l-e, ble, Able, powerful, strong, until finally he could\nspell Antitrinitarian pat, he then cut the concern, and was promoted\nby his parish-priest--\"of whom more anon,\" as they say to Rathcash\nnational school, where he soon stood in the class beside Tom Murdock,\nand ere a week had passed he \"took him down a peg.\" This, added to his\nsupposed presumptuous thoughts in the quarter which Tom had considered\nalmost his exclusive right, sowed the seed of hatred in Murdock's\nheart against Lennon, which one day might bear a heavy crop.\n\nThat young Lennon was devotedly but secretly attached to Winny Cavana\nthere was no doubt whatever in his own mind, and there were few who\ndid not agree with him, although he had \"never told his love;\" and as\nwe Irish have leave to say, there was still less that his love was\nmore disinterested than that of his richer rival. There was another\npoint upon which there was still less doubt than either, and that was\nthat Winny Cavana's heart secretly leaned to _\"Emon-a-knock,\"_ as\n{509} young Lennon was familiarly called by all those who knew and\nloved him. One exception existed to this cordial recognition of Emon's\ngood qualities, and that was, as may be anticipated, by Thomas\nMurdock, who always called him \"_that_ Lennon,\" and on one occasion,\nas we have seen, substituted the word \"whelp.\"\n\nWinny, however, kept her secret in this matter to herself. She knew\nher father would go \"tanterin' tearin' mad, if he suspected such a\nthing.\" She conscientiously endeavored to hide her preference from\nyoung Lennon himself, knowing that it would only get them both into\ntrouble. Beside, he had never (yet) shown a decided preference for her\nabove Kate Mulvey. Whether she succeeded in her endeavors is another\nquestion; women seldom fail where they are in earnest.\n\nIt is not considered amongst the class of Irish to which our _dramatis\npersona_ belong as any undue familiarity, upon even a very short\nacquaintance, for the young persons of both the sexes to call each\nother by their Christian names. It is the admitted custom of the\ncountry, and Winny Cavana, rich and proud as she was, made no\nexception to the general rule. She even went further, and sometimes\ncalled young Lennon by his pet name. As regarded Tom Murdock, although\nshe could have wished it otherwise, she would not make herself\nparticular by acting differently. The first three letters of his name,\ncoupled with the scowl she had more than once detected on his\ncountenance, sounded unpleasantly upon her ear, Mur-dock. She always\nthought people were going to say murder before the \"dock\" was out. She\nnever could think well of him; and although she called him Tom, it was\nmore to be in keeping with the habit of the country, and as a refuge\nfrom the other name, than from a friendly feeling.\n\nThese were the materials upon which the two old men had to work, to\nbring about a union of their landed interests and their only children.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V.\n\nThe invitations for All-Hallow Eve were forthwith issued in person by\nold Murdock, who went from house to house in his Sunday clothes, and\nasked all the respectable neighbors in the politest manner. Edward\nLennon, although he could scarcely be called a neighbor, and moreover\nwas not considered as \"belonging to their set,\" was nevertheless asked\nto be of the party. Old Murdock had his reasons for asking him;\nalthough, to tell the truth, he and his son had a difference of\nopinion upon the subject. Tom thought to \"put a spoke in his wheel,\"\nbut was overruled by the old man, who said it would look as if they\nwere afraid to bring him and Winny Cavana together; that it was much\nbetter to let the young fellow see at once that he had no chance,\nwhich would no doubt be an easy matter on that night: \"it was betther\nto _humiliate_ him at wanst.\"\n\nTom was ashamed not to acquiesce, but wished nevertheless that he\nmight have had his own way. Edward Lennon lived too far from the\nMurdocks for the old man to go there specifically upon the mission of\ninvitation; and the moment this difficulty was hinted by his father,\nTom, who was not in the habit of making such offers, was ready at once\nto \"go over to Shanvilla, and save his father the walk: he would\ndeliver the message.\"\n\nThere was an anxiety in Tom's manner which betrayed itself; and old\nMick was not the man to _miss_ a thing of the kind.\n\n\"No, Tom _a wochal_\" he observed, \"I won't put such a thramp upon you.\nSure I'll see him a Sunda'; he always comes to our chapel.\"\n\n\"Fitter for him stick to his own,\" said Tom.\n\n\"It answers well this turn, at all events,\" replied the old man.\n\nUpon the following Sunday he was as good as his word. He watched young\nLennon coming out of the chapel, and asked him, with more cordiality\nthan Tom, who happened to be by, approved of.\n\n{510}\n\nHad nothing else been necessary to secure an acceptance, the fact of\nTom Murdock being present would have been sufficient. The look which\nhe caught from under the rim of Tom's hat roused Lennon's pride, and\nhe accepted the old man's invitation with unhesitating civility.\nLennon on this, as on all Sunday occasions, \"was dressed in all his\nbest;\" and that look seemed to say, \"I wonder where that fellow got\nthem clothes, and if they're paid for:\" he understood the look very\nwell. But the clothed were paid for,--perhaps, too, more promptly\nthan Tom's own; and a better fitting suit, from top to toe, was not to\nbe met with in the whole parish. A \"Caroline hat,\" smooth and new, set\na wee taste jauntily upon his well-shaped head; a shirt like the\ndrifted snow, loose at the throat, but buttoned down the breast with\ntiny blue buttons round as sweet-pea seeds; a bright plaid waistcoat,\nwith ditto buttons to match, but a size larger; a pair of\n\"spic-an'-span\" knee-breeches of fine kersey-mere, with\nunexceptionable steel buttons and blue silk-ribbon strings, tied to\nperfection at the knee; while closely-fitting lamb's-wool long\nstockings showed off the shape of a pair of legs which, for symmetry,\nlooked as if they had been turned in a lathe. Of his feet I have\nalready spoken; and on this occasion they did not belie what I said.\n\nOld Mick desired Edward Lennon \"to bring Phil M'Dermot the smith's son\nwith him. He was a fine young man, a good dancer, and had mended a\ncouple of ploughs for him in first-rate style, an' very raisonable,\nfor the winther plowing.\"\n\nTom Murdock did not want for fine clothes, of course. Two or three\nsuits were at his command; and as this was Sunday, he had one of his\nbest on. It was \"given up to him\" by most of the girls that he was the\nhandsomest and best-dressed man in the parish of Rathcash, and some\nwould have added Shanvilla; yet he now felt, as he stole envious\nglances at young Lennon, that his case with Winny Cavana might not be\naltogether a \"walk over.\" All Tom's comparisons and metaphors had\nreference to horse-racing.\n\nThis little incident, however, cut young Lennon out of his usual few\nwords with Winny; for, as a girl with a well-regulated mind, she could\nnot venture to dawdle on the road until old Murdock had done speaking\nto Emon: she knew that would be remarked. She had never happened to\nsee old Murdock speaking to Emon before, and her secret wonder now was\n\"Could it be possible that he was asking Edward Lennon for All-Hallow\nEve?\"\n\nQuite possible, Winny; but you scarcely have time to find out before\nyou meet him there, for another Sunday will not intervene before the\nparty.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI.\n\nThe last day of October came round apace, and about six o'clock in the\nevening the company began to arrive at old Mick Murdock's. Winny\nCavana and her father took their time. They were near enough to make\ntheir entree at any moment; and Winny had some idea, like her betters,\nthat it was not genteel to be the first. She now delayed, however, to\nthe other extreme, and kept her father waiting, under the pretence\nthat she was finishing her toilet, until, on their arrival, they found\nall the guests assembled. Winny flaunted in, leaning upon her father's\narm, \"the admired of all admirers.\" Not being very learned in the\nmysteries of the toilet, I shall not attempt to describe the dresses\nof the girls upon this occasion, nor the elaborate manner in which\ntheir heads were set out, oiled, and bedizened to an amazing extent,\nwhile the roses above their left ears seemed to have been all culled\nfrom the same tree.\n\n{511}\n\nAltogether there were about sixteen young persons, pretty equally\ndivided as to boys and girls, beside some--and some only--of their\nfathers and mothers. Soon after the arrival of Ned Cavana and his\ndaughter, who were the guests of the evening, supper was announced,\nand there was a general move into the \"large parlor,\" where a long\ntable was set out with a snow-white cloth, where plates (if not\ncovers) were laid for at least twenty-four. In the middle of the table\nstood a smoking dish of _calcannon_, which appeared to defy them, and\nas many more; while at either end was a _raking_ pot of tea, surrounded\nwith cups and saucers innumerable, with pyramids of cut\nbread-and-butter nearly an inch thick.\n\nThe company having taken their seats, it was announced by the host\nthat there were \"two goold weddin'-rings in the _calcannon;_\" but\nwhereabouts, of course, no one could tell. He had borrowed them from\ntwo of the married women present, and was bound to restore them; so he\nbegged of his young friends, for his sake as well as their own, to be\ncareful not to swallow them. It was too well known what was to be the\nlot of the happy finders before that day twelvemonth for him to say\nanything upon that part of the subject. He would request of Mrs.\nMoran, who had seen more All-Hallow Eves than any woman there\npresent--he meant no offence--to help the calcannon.\n\nAfter this little introduction, Mrs. Moran, who by previous\narrangement was sitting opposite the savory volcano, distributed it\nwith unquestionable impartiality. It was a well-known rule on all such\noccasions that no one commenced until all were helped, when a signal\nwas given, and a simultaneous plunge of spoons took place.\n\nAnother rule was that all the married persons should content\nthemselves with tea and bread-and-butter, in order that none of them\nmight possibly rob the youngsters of their chance of the ring. Upon\nthis occasion, however, this restriction had been neatly obviated by\nMrs. Moran's experience in such matters; and there was a _knock-oge_\nof the same delicious food without any ring, which she called \"the\nmarried dish.\" The tea was handed up and down from each end of the\ntable until it met in the middle, and for some time there was a silent\nonslaught on the calcannon, washed down now and then by a copious\ndraught of tea.\n\n\"I have it! I have it!\" shouted Phil M'Dermott, taking it from between\nhis teeth and holding it up, while his cheeks deepened three shades\nnearer to the color of the rose in Kate Mulvey's hair, nearly\nopposite.\n\n\"A lucky man,\" observed Mrs. Moran, methodically, who seemed to be\nmistress of the mysteries. \"Now for the lucky girl; and lucky\neverybody will say she must be.\"\n\nThe words were scarcely finished when Kate Mulvey coughed as if she\nwere choking; but pulling the other ring from her mouth, she soon\nrecovered herself, declaring that she had nearly swallowed it.\n\nMatters, as Mrs. Moran thought, had so far gone quite right, and a\nhearty quizzing the young couple got; but, to tell the truth, one of\nthem did not seem to be particularly satisfied with the result. The\nattack upon the calcannon from this point waxed very weak, for the\ncharm was broken, and the tea and bread-and-butter came into play.\nApples and nuts were now laid down in abundance, and the young girls\nmight be seen picking a couple of pairs of nice nuts out of those on\nthe plate, as nearly as fancy might suggest, to match the figures of\nthose whom they were intended to represent upon the bar of the grate.\nAlmost as if by magic a regiment of nuts in pairs were seen smoking,\nand some of them stirring and purring on the flat bar at the bottom of\nthe grate, which had been swept, and the fire brightened up, for the\npurpose. Of course Mrs. Moran insisted upon openly putting down Phil\nM'Dermott and Kate Mulvey of the rings; for in general there is a\nsecrecy observed as to _who_ the _nuts_ are, in order to save {512} the\nconstant girl from a laugh at the fickleness of her bachelor, should\nhe go off in a shot from her side, and _vice versa_. And here the\nmistress of the mysteries was not at fault. Kate Mulvey, without\neither smoking or getting red at one end (which was a good sign), went\noff like the report of a pistol, and was actually heard striking\nagainst the door as if to get out. There was a general laugh at Mrs.\nMoran's expense, who was told that it was a strong proof in favor of\nputting the pairs down secretly.\n\nBut Mrs. Moran was too experienced a mistress of her position to be\ntaken aback, and quietly said, \"Not at all, my dears. I have three\ntimes to burn them, if he does not follow her; but he has three\nminutes to do so.\"\n\nAs she spoke there was another shot. Phil M'Dermott could not stand\nthe heat by himself, and was off to the door after Kate Mulvey.\n\nThis was a crowning triumph to Mrs. Moran, who quietly put back the\nsecond pair of nuts which she had just selected for another test of\nthe same couple, and remarked that \"it was all right now.\"\n\nThe couples, generally speaking, seemed to answer the expectations of\ntheir respective match-makers better than perhaps the results in real\nlife might subsequently justify. It is not to be supposed that on this\noccasion Tom Murdock and Winny Cavana did not find a place upon the\nbar of the grate. But as Winny had given no encouragement to any one\nto put her down with him, and as the mistress of the mysteries alone\ncould claim a right to do so openly, as in the case of the rings,\ntheir place, with the result, could be known only to those who put\nthem down, and perhaps a confidant.\n\nThere were a few pops occasionally, calling forth exclamations of \"The\ngood-for-nothing fellow!\" or \"The fickle lass!\" while some burned into\nbright balls--the admiration of all the true and constant lovers\npresent.\n\nThe next portion of the mysteries were three plates, placed in a row\nupon the table; one contained earth, another water, and the third a\ngold ring. This was, by some, considered rather a nervous test of\nfuturity, and some objections were whispered by the timid amongst\nthem. The fearless and enthusiastic, however, clamored that nothing\nshould be left out, and a handkerchief to blind the adventurers was\nproduced. The mystery was this: a young person was taken outside the\ndoor, and there blindfolded; he, or she, was then led in again, and\nplaced opposite to the plates, sufficiently near to touch them; when\ntold that \"all was right,\" he, with his fore-finger pointed, placed it\nupon one of the plates. That with the earth symbolled forth sudden, or\nperhaps violent, death; that with the water, emigration or ship-wreck;\nwhile that with the ring, of course a wedding and domestic happiness.\n\nYoung people were not generally averse to subject themselves to this\nordeal, as in nine cases out of ten they managed either to be\npreviously acquainted with the position of the plates, or, having been\nblindfolded by their own bachelor, to have a peep-hole down by the\ncorner of their nose, which enabled them to secure the most gratifying\nresult of the three.\n\nWith this usual course before his mind, Tom Murdock, as junior host,\npresented himself for the test, hoping that Winny Cavana, whom he had\nasked to do so, would blindfold him. But in this instance he had\npresumed too far; and while she hesitated to comply, the mistress of\nthe mysteries came to her relief.\n\n\"No, no, Tom,\" she said, folding the handkerchief; \"that is my\nbusiness, and I'll transfer it to no one; come outside with me.\"\n\nTom was ashamed to draw back, and retired with Mrs. Moran to the hall.\nHe soon returned, led in by her, with a handkerchief tied tightly over\nhis eyes; there was no peep-hole by the side of his nose, let him hold\nback {513} his head as he might, Mrs. Moran took care of that. Having\nbeen placed near the table, he was told that he was exactly opposite\nthe plates. He pointed out his fore-finger, and threw back his head as\nmuch as possible, as if considering, but in fact to try if he could\nget a peep at the plates; but it was no use. Mrs. Moran had rendered\nhis temporary blindness cruelly secure. At length his hand descended,\nand he placed his finger into the middle of the earth.\n\n\"Pshaw,\" said he, pulling the handkerchief off his eyes, \"it is all\nhumbug! Let Lennon try it.\"\n\n\"Certainly, certainly,\" ran from one to the other. It might have been\nremarked, however, if any one had been observing, that Winny Cavana\nhad not spoken.\n\nYoung Lennon then retired to the hall with Mrs. Moran, and was soon\nled in tightly blindfolded, for the young man was no more to her than\nthe other; beside, she was strictly honorable. The plates had been\nre-arranged by Tom Murdock himself, which most people remarked, as it\nwas some time before he was satisfied with their position. Lennon was\nthen placed, as Tom had been, and told that \"all was right.\" There was\nsome nervousness in more hearts than one as he pointed his finger and\nbrought down his hand. He also placed his finger in the centre of the\nplate with the earth, and pulled the handkerchief from his eyes.\n\n\"Now, you see,\" said Tom, \"others can fail as well as me;\" and he\nseemed greatly pleased that young Lennon had been as unsuccessful as\nhimself.\n\nA murmur of dissatisfaction now ran through the girls. The two\nfavorites had been unfortunate in their attempts at divination, and\nthere was one young girl there who, when she saw Emon-a-knock's finger\nfall on the plate with the earth, felt as if a weight had been tied\nround her heart. It was unanimously agreed by the elderly women\npresent, Mrs. Moran amongst the number, that these tests had turned\nout directly contrary to what the circumstances of the locality, and\nthe characters of the individuals, would indicate as probable, and the\nwhole process was ridiculed as false and unprophetic. \"Time will tell,\njewel,\" said one old croaking crone.\n\nA loud burst of laughter from the kitchen at this moment told that the\nservant-boys and girls, who had also been invited, were not idle. The\nmatches having been all either clenched or broken off in the parlor,\nand the test of the plates, as if by mutual consent, having been\ndeclared unsatisfactory, old Murdock thought it a good opportunity to\nmove an adjournment of the whole party, to see the fun in the kitchen,\nwhich was seconded by Mrs. Moran, and carried _nem. con._\n\n[TO BE CONTINUED.]\n\n----\n\n{514}\n\nTranslated from Etudes Religieusea, Historiques, et Litteraires, par\ndes Peres de la Compagnie de Jesus.\n\nA CITY OF WOMEN.\n\nTHE ANCIENT BEGUINAGE OF GHENT.\nBY THE REV. A. NAMPON, S.J.\n\n\nAccording to some authors, St. Begghe, daughter of Pepin, Duke of\nBrabant, and sister of St. Gertrude, must have given her name to those\npious assemblages of Christian virgins and widows called from very\nremote times _beguinages_.\n\nThese holy women, united under the protection and the rule of St.\nBegghe, had nothing in common except the name with those Beguines\nwhose errors were condemned by the council of Vienne.\n\nBeguinages exist at Ghent, Antwerp, Mechlin, Alost, Louvain, Bruges,\netc., etc. The rule is not in all places the same, but everywhere\nthese pious establishments are places of refuge open to devout women,\nwherein they may sanctify themselves by prayer, labor, and retirement\nfrom the distractions of the world.\n\nLet us transport ourselves to the capital of Flanders. From the centre\nof that tumultuous city, in which industry, commerce, activity, and\npleasure reign supreme, are separated two other smaller towns of\nvenerable aspect--closed to the world, destitute of shops, coaches,\npublic criers, and all modern inventions. These two towns are the\n_Great_ and the _Little Beguinage_.\n\nThese places are delightful oases, wherein you breathe a pure air,\nwhere, in the noonday of the nineteenth century, you find the\nsimplicity of the faith and customs of antiquity. They are surrounded,\nas they were five or six centuries ago, by a ditch and a wall; you\nenter them by a single gate carefully closed at night, and not less\ncarefully watched all day. This gate, surmounted by the cross, was\nformerly protected by a drawbridge.\n\nAs soon as you have passed through this gateway, you are forcibly\nstruck with the calm and pious atmosphere of this peaceful city, and\nwith the grave and edifying looks of its _female_ inhabitants. I say\nfemale inhabitants, for no man has ever dwelt in this enclosure. The\npriests who serve the beguinages only enter to fulfil their sacred\noffices, and have no place therein save the pulpit, the altar, and the\nconfessional. The dress of the inmates is not elegant, but it is in\nstrict conformity with the model traced in their thirteenth century\nrule.\n\nAll the streets, which are at right angles, are named after saints.\nThe houses are also distinguished by the names, and frequently by the\nstatue, of some saint, under whose protection they are placed; thus\nyou may read, gate of St. Martha, gate of St. Mary-Magdalen, etc.,\netc.\n\nThe houses, which are whitewashed annually, display in their\nfurniture, as in their construction, no other luxury but a charming\ncleanliness. They are of two kinds, _convents_ and _hermitages_. The\nconvents are inhabited by communities, each governed by a superior.\nThe hermitages, which resemble very much the dwellings of the\nCarthusians, consist of two or three bed-rooms, a parlor, a kitchen,\nand a small garden. Prominent among the convents is the dwelling of\nthe superior-general, called _Grande Dame_, who has charge of the\ninfirmary, and who is conservator of the documents, traditions and\npictures, which date from five or six centuries ago. Lastly, in the\nmidst of this peaceful city rises the house of God, a large church,\nvery commodious and clean, surrounded by a {515} cemetery, in\nconformity with an ancient custom, which all the beguinages, however,\nhave not been able to retain.\n\nThe object of these societies is very clearly stated in a paragraph of\nthe rule of the beguinage of Notre Dame du Pre', founded at Ghent in\n1234. We retain the old style:\n\n\"Louis, Count of Flanders, of Nevers, and of Rethel, etc., etc., to\nall present and to come makes known, that Dame Jane, and Margaret, her\nsister of happy memory, who were successively Countesses of Flanders\nand of Hainault (as we are,  [Footnote 100] by the grace of God),\nhaving remarked that in the Flemish territory there were a great\nnumber of women, who, from their condition in life and that of their\nparents, were unable to find a fitting match; observing that honorable\npersons, the daughters of nobles and burgesses, who desired to live in\na state of chastity, could not all enter into convents of women, by\nreason of their too great number, or for want of means; remarking,\nmoreover, that many young ladies of noble extraction and others had\nfallen into a state of decadence, so that they were reduced to\nmendicity, or to a painful existence, to the dishonor of their\nfamilies, unless they could be provided for in a discreet and becoming\nmanner; incited by God, and with the advice, knowledge, and consent of\nseveral bishops and other persons of probity, the aforesaid countesses\nfounded, in several cities of Flanders, establishments with spacious\ndwellings and lands, called beguinages, where noble young ladies and\nchildren of good families were received, to live therein chastely in\ncommunity, with or without vows, without humiliation to themselves or\ntheir families, and where they might, by applying themselves to\nreasonable labor, procure their food and clothing. They founded among\nothers a beguinage in our city of Ghent, called the beguinage of Notre\nDame du Pre, enclosed by the river Scheldt, and by walls. In the\ncentre is a church, a cemetery, and a hospital for infirm or invalid\nbeguines, the whole given by the before-mentioned princesses, etc.\"\n\n  [Footnote 100: This bull is in the original French: _\"Comteses de\n  Flandre et de Hainault, comme nous aussi, par la grace de Dieu.\"_]\n\nThose young persons who desire to be admitted to the beguinage must\nfirst become postulants, and afterward make their noviciate in the\nconvents or communities. They remain there even after their profession\nup to thirty years of age. Thus are they protected during the most\nstormy period of life by the watchfulness of their superior and their\ncompanions, by prayer and labor in common. Later they can enjoy\nwithout danger a larger measure of freedom. They then live two or\nthree together in one of the hermitages, where they pass their time in\nexercises of prayer and labor, to which the early years of their\ncenobitical life have accustomed them.\n\n\"The great beguinage at Ghent,\" says M. Chantrel, \"contains four\nhundred small houses, eighteen common halls, one large and one small\nchurch. There are sometimes as many as seven hundred beguines\nassembled in the church. The assembly of these pious women, in their\nancient Flemish black dresses, and white bonnets, is very solemn and\nimpressive. The novices are distinguished by their dress. Those who\nhave recently taken the veil have their heads encircled by a crown.\n\n\"The beguines admit within their enclosure, as boarders, persons of\nthe gentler sex, of every age and condition, who find in these\nestablishments an asylum for the inexperience of youth, or a calm and\npeaceful sojourn where those who are tired of the world may pass their\ndays without any other rule than that of a Christian life. In the\ngreat beguinage at Ghent there are nearly two hundred secular\nboarders, who live either privately or in community with the nuns.\"\n\nAmong the novices of the great beguinage at Ghent there lived, fifteen\nyears ago, a Mlle, de Soubiran, the niece of a former vicar of\nCarcassonne. For twenty years this worthy ecclesiastic had communed\nwith Almighty God, in incessant prayers, to obtain an {516} answer to\nthis question: \"Would it be a useful work to introduce, or rather to\nresuscitate, beguinages in France?\"\n\nMonseigneur de la Bouillerie, whose eloquence and zeal for good works\nhave made him famous, interpreted in a favorable sense the signs\nfurnished by a concurrence of providential circumstances; and a small\nestablishment was opened twelve years ago, in a suburb of\nCastelnaudary, under the direction of the Abbe de Soubiran. Since\n1856, it has had its postulants, novices, and professed sisters.\n\nThe buildings of the new beguinage were too small and poor. This\ndefect was remedied by a great fire which consumed them, and compelled\ntheir reconstruction on a larger plan, and with better materials than\nthe planks and bricks of the original buildings.\n\nThere is doubtless a vast distance between this feeble beginning and\nthe extensive beguinage in Belgium, which so many centuries have\nenlarged and brought to perfection. But Mlle, de Soubiran and her\nfirst companions brought with them from Flanders the old traditions,\nwith the spirit of fervor and of poverty and humble labor. The trials\nwhich they have undergone have only improved their work. They are\nhappy in the blessing of their bishop, and his alms would not be\nwanting in case of need.\n\nThe Castelnaudary beguinage is already fruitful. A second\nestablishment is forming at Toulouse, on the Calvary road. Those of\nour readers who are acquainted with the capital of Languedoc know the\nsituation of that road, but all Christians have long since learnt that\nthe road to Calvary is the way of salvation.\n\nSuffice it for the present that we notice the existence of these two\nestablishments. We shall have at a future time to narrate their\nprogress and development.\n\n----\n\n{517}\n\nFrom The Month.\n\nTHE DREAM OF GERONTIUS.\n\nBY JOHN HENRY NEWMAN, D.D.\n\nSec. 1.\n\nGERONTIUS.\n\n  JESU, MARIA--I am near to death,\n    And thou art calling me; I know it now.\n  Not by the token of this faltering breath,\n    This chill at heart, this dampness on my brow,--\n  (Jesu, have mercy! Mary, pray for me!)\n    'Tis this new feeling, never felt before,\n  (Be with me, Lord, in my extremity!)\n    That I am going, that I am no more.\n  'Tis this strange innermost abandonment,\n    (Lover of souls! great God! I look to thee,)\n  This emptying out of each constituent\n    And natural force, by which I come to be.\n  Pray for me, O my friends; a visitant\n    Is knocking his dire summons at my door,\n  The like of whom, to scare me and to daunt,\n    Has never, never come to me before.\n  'Tis death,--loving friends, your prayers!--'tis he! ....\n  As though my very being had given way,\n    As though I was no more a substance now,\n  And could fall back on naught to be my stay,\n    (Help, loving Lord! Thou my sole refuge, thou,)\n  And turn no whither, but must needs decay\n    And drop from out this universal frame\n  Into that shapeless, scopeless, blank abyss,\n    That utter nothingness, of which I came:\n  This is it that has come to pass in me;\n  O horror! this it is, my dearest, this;\n  So pray for me, my friends, who have not strength to pray.\n\n\n  ASSISTANTS.\n\n  Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, Kyrie eleison.\n  Holy Mary, pray for him.\n  All holy angels, pray for him.\n  Choirs of the righteous, pray for him.\n  Holy Abraham, pray for him.\n  St. John Baptist, St. Joseph, pray for him.\n  St. Peter, St. Paul, St. Andrew, St. John,\n  All apostles, all evangelists, pray for him.\n  All holy disciples of the Lord, pray for him.\n  All holy innocents, pray for him.\n  All holy martyrs, all holy confessors,\n  All holy hermits, all holy virgins,\n  All ye saints of God, pray for him.\n\n{518}\n\n  GERONTIUS.\n\n  Rouse thee, my fainting soul, and play the man;\n      And through such waning span\n  Of life and thought as still has to be trod,\n      Prepare to meet thy God.\n  And while the storm of that bewilderment\n      Is for a season spent,\n  And, ere afresh the ruin on thee fall,\n      Use well the interval.\n\n  ASSISTANTS.\n\n  Be merciful, be gracious; spare him, Lord.\n  Be merciful, be gracious; Lord, deliver him.\n  From the sins that are passed;\n      From thy frown and thine ire;\n            From the perils of dying;\n            From any complying\n            With sin, or denying\n            His God, or relying\n  On self, at the last;\n      From the nethermost fire;\n  From all that is evil;\n  From power of the devil;\n  Thy servant deliver,\n  For once and for ever.\n\n  By thy birth, and by thy cross,\n  Rescue him from endless loss;\n  By thy death and burial,\n  Save him from a final fall;\n  By thy rising from the tomb,\n            By thy mounting up above,\n            By the Spirit's gracious love,\n  Save him in the day of doom.\n\n  GERONTIUS.\n\n  Sanctus fortis, Sanctus Deus,\n      De profundis oro te,\n  Miserere, judex meus,\n      Parce mihi, Domine.\n  Firmly I believe and truly\n      God is Three, and God is One;\n  And I next acknowledge duly\n      Manhood taken by the Son.\n  And I trust and hope most fully\n      In that manhood crucified;\n  And each thought and deed unruly\n      Do to death, as he has died.\n  Simply to his grace and wholly\n      Light and life and strength belong,\n  And I love supremely, solely,\n      Him the holy, him the strong.\n\n{519}\n\n  Sanctus fortis, Sanctus Deus,\n      De profundis oro te,\n  Miserere, judex meus,\n      Parce mihi, Domine.\n  And I hold in veneration,\n      For the love of him alone,\n  Holy Church, as his creation.\n      And her teachings, as his own.\n  And I take with joy whatever\n      Now besets me, pain or fear,\n  And with a strong will I sever\n      All the ties which bind me here.\n  Adoration aye be given,\n      With and through the angelic host,\n  To the God of earth and heaven,\n      Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.\n  Sanctus fortis, Sanctus Deus,\n      De profundis oro te,\n  Miserere, judex meus,\n      Mortis in discrimine.\n\n  I can no more; for now it comes again,\n  That sense of ruin, which is worse than pain,\n  That masterful negation and collapse\n  Of all that makes me man; as though I bent\n  Over the dizzy brink\n  Of some sheer infinite descent;\n  Or worse, as though\n  Down, down for ever I was falling through\n  The solid framework of created things,\n  And needs must sink and sink\n  Into the vast abyss. And, crueller still,\n  A fierce and restless fright begins to fill\n  The mansion of my soul. And, worse and worse,\n  Some bodily form of ill\n  Floats on the wind, with many a loathsome curse\n  Tainting the hallowed air, and laughs and flaps\n  Its hideous wings,\n  And makes me wild with horror and dismay.\n  O Jesu, help! pray for me, Mary, pray!\n  Some angel, Jesu! such as came to thee\n  In thine own agony......\n  Mary, pray for me. Joseph, pray for me. Mary, pray for me.\n\n  ASSISTANTS.\n\n  Rescue him, O Lord, in this his evil hour,\n  As of old so many by thy gracious power:--Amen.\n  Enoch and Elias from the common doom; Amen.\n  Noe from the waters in a saving home; Amen.\n  Abraham from th' abounding guilt of heathenesse; Amen.\n  Job from all his multiform and fell distress; Amen.\n  Isaac, when his father's knife was raised to slay; Amen.\n  Lot from burning Sodom on its judgment-day; Amen.\n\n{520}\n\n  Moses from the land of bondage and despair; Amen.\n  Daniel from the hungry lions in their lair; Amen.\n  And the children three amid the furnace-flame; Amen.\n  Chaste Susanna from the slander and the shame; Amen.\n  David from Golia and the wrath of Saul; Amen.\n  And the two apostles from their prison-thrall; Amen.\n  Thecla from her torments; Amen:\n            --so, to show thy power,\n  Rescue this thy servant in his evil hour.\n\n  GERONTIUS.\n\n  Novissima hora est; and I fain would sleep.\n  The pain has wearied me. . . . Into thy hands,\n  Lord, into thy hands. . . . .\n\n  THE PRIEST.\n\n  Proficiscere, anima Christiana de hoc mundo!\n  Go forth upon thy journey, Christian soul!\n  Go from this world! Go, in the name of God,\n  The omnipotent Father, who created thee!\n  Go, in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord,\n  Son of the Living God, who bled for thee!\n  Go, in the name of th' Holy Spirit, who\n  Hath been poured out on thee! Go, in the name\n  Of angels and archangels; in the name\n  Of thrones and dominations; in the name\n  Of princedoms and of powers; and in the name\n  Of cherubim and seraphim, go forth!\n  Go, in the name of patriarchs and prophets;\n  And of apostles and evangelists,\n  Of martyrs and confessors; in the name\n  Of holy monks and hermits; in the name\n  Of holy virgins; and all saints of God,\n  Both men and women, go! Go on thy course;\n  And may thy place to-day be found in peace,\n  And may thy dwelling be the holy mount\n  Of Sion: through the same, through Christ, our Lord.\n\nSec. 2.\n\n  SOUL Of GERONTIUS.\n\n  I went to sleep; and now I am refreshed.\n  A strange refreshment: for I feel in me\n  An inexpressive lightness, and a sense\n  Of freedom, as I were at length myself,\n  And ne'er had been before. How still it is!\n  I hear no more the busy beat of time,\n  No, nor my fluttering breath, nor struggling pulse;\n  Nor does one moment differ from the next.\n  I had a dream; yes:--some one softly said\n  \"He's gone;\" and then a sigh went round the room.\n  And then I surely heard a priestly voice\n  Cry \"Subvenite;\" and they knelt in prayer.\n\n{521}\n\n  I seem to hear him still; but thin and low,\n  And fainter and more faint the accents come,\n  As at an ever-widening interval.\n  Ah! whence is this? What is this severance?\n  This silence pours a solitariness\n  Into the very essence of my soul;\n  And the deep rest, so soothing and so sweet,\n  Hath something too of sternness and of pain.\n  For it drives back my thoughts upon their spring\n  By a strange introversion, and perforce\n  I now begin to feed upon myself,\n  Because I have naught else to feed upon.\n\n  Am I alive or dead? I am not dead,\n  But in the body still; for I possess\n  A sort of confidence, which clings to me,\n  That each particular organ holds its place\n  As heretofore, combining with the rest\n  Into one symmetry, that wraps me round,\n  And makes me man; and surely I could move,\n  Did I but will it, every part of me.\n  And yet I cannot to my sense bring home,\n  By very trial, that I have the power.\n  'Tis strange; I cannot stir a hand or foot,\n  I cannot make my fingers or my lips\n  By mutual pressure witness each to each,\n  Nor by the eyelid's instantaneous stroke\n  Assure myself I have a body still.\n  Nor do I know my very attitude,\n  Nor if I stand, or lie, or sit, or kneel.\n\n  So much I know, not knowing how I know,\n  That the vast universe, where I have dwelt,\n  Is quitting me, or I am quitting it.\n  Or I or it is rushing on the wings\n  Of light or lightning on an onward course,\n  And we e'en now are million miles apart.\n  Yet . . is this peremptory severance\n  Wrought out in lengthy measurements of space,\n  Which grow and multiply by speed and time?\n  Or am I traversing infinity\n  By endless subdivision, hurrying back\n  From finite toward infinitesimal,\n  Thus dying out of the expanded world?\n\n  Another marvel; some one has me fast\n  Within his ample palm; 'tis not a grasp\n  Such as they use on earth, but all around\n  Over the surface of my subtle being,\n  As though I were a sphere, and capable\n  To be accosted thus, a uniform\n  And gentle pressure tells me I am not\n  Self-moving, but borne forward on my way.\n  And hark! I hear a singing; yet in sooth\n\n{522}\n\n  I cannot of that music rightly say\n  Whether I hear or touch or taste the tones.\n  Oh what a heart-subduing melody!\n\n  ANGEL.\n\n    My work is done,'\n        My task is o er,\n            And so I come,\n            Taking it home,\n    For the crown is won.\n            Alleluia,\n    For evermore.\n\n    My Father gave\n        In charge to me\n            This child of earth\n            E'en from its birth,\n    To serve and save,\n            Alleluia,\n    And saved is he.\n\n    This child of clay\n        To me was given,\n            To rear and train\n            By sorrow and pain\n    In the narrow way,\n            Alleluia,\n    From earth to heaven.\n\n  SOUL.\n\n  It is a member of that family\n  Of wondrous beings, who, ere the worlds were made,\n  Millions of ages back, have stood around\n  The throne of God:--he never has known sin;\n  But through those cycles all but infinite,\n  Has had a strong and pure celestial life,\n  And bore to gaze on th' unveiled face of God,\n  And drank from the eternal fount of truth,\n  And served him with a keen ecstatic love.\n  Hark! he begins again.\n\n  ANGEL.\n\n    Lord, how wonderful in depth and height,\n            But most in man, how wonderful thou art!\n    With what a love, what soft persuasive might,\n            Victorious o'er the stubborn fleshly heart,\n        Thy tale complete of saints thou dost provide,\n        To fill the throne which angels lost through pride!\n\n{523}\n\n    He lay a grovelling babe upon the ground,\n            Polluted in the blood of his first sire,\n    With his whole essence shattered and unsound,\n            And, coiled around his heart, a demon dire,\n        Which was not of his nature, but had skill\n        To bind and form his opening mind to ill.\n\n    Then was I sent from heaven to set right\n            The balance in his soul of truth and sin,\n    And I have waged a long relentless fight,\n            Resolved that death-environed spirit to win,\n    Which from its fallen state, when all was lost,\n    Had been repurchased at so dread a cost.\n\n    Oh what a shifting parti-colored scene\n            Of hope and fear, of triumph and dismay,\n    Of recklessness and penitence, has been\n            The history of that dreary, lifelong fray!\n        And oh the grace, to nerve him and to lead,\n        How patient, prompt, and lavish at his need!\n\n    O man, strange composite of heaven and earth!\n            Majesty dwarfed to baseness! fragrant flower\n    Running to poisonous seed! and seeming worth\n            Cloaking corruption! weakness mastering power!\n        Who never art so near to crime and shame,\n        As when thou hast achieved some deed of name;\n\n    How should ethereal natures comprehend\n            A thing made up of spirit and of clay,\n    Were we not tasked to nurse it and to tend,\n            Linked one to one throughout its mortal day?\n        More than the seraph in his height of place,\n        The angel-guardian knows and loves the ransomed race.\n\n  SOUL.\n\n  Now know I surely that I am at length\n  Out of the body: had I part with earth,\n  I never could have drunk those accents in,\n  And not have worshipped as a god the voice\n  That was so musical; but now I am\n  So whole of heart, so calm, so self-possessed,\n  With such a full content, and with a sense\n  So apprehensive and discriminant,\n  As no temptation can intoxicate.\n  Nor have I even terror at the thought\n  That I am clasped by such a saintliness.\n\n  ANGEL.\n\n    All praise to him, at whose sublime decree\n            The last are first, the first become the last;\n    By whom the suppliant prisoner is set free,\n            By whom proud first-borns from their thrones are cast;\n        Who raises Mary to be queen of heaven,\n        While Lucifer is left, condemned and unforgiven.\n\n{524}\n\nSec. 3.\n\n  SOUL.\n\n  I will address him. Mighty one, my Lord,\n  My guardian spirit, all hail!\n\n  ANGEL.\n\n            All hail, my child!\n    My child and brother, hail! what wouldest thou?\n\n  SOUL.\n\n  I would have nothing but to speak with thee\n  For speaking's sake. I wish to hold with thee\n  Conscious communion; though I fain would know\n  A maze of things, were it but meet to ask,\n  And not a curiousness.\n\n  ANGEL.\n\n            You cannot now\n    Cherish a wish which ought not to be wished.\n\n  SOUL.\n\n  Then I will speak. I ever had believed\n  That on the moment when the struggling soul\n  Quitted its mortal case, forthwith it fell\n  Under the awful presence of its God,\n  There to be judged and sent to its own place.\n  What lets me now from going to my Lord?\n\n  ANGEL.\n\n  Thou art not let; but with extremest speed\n  Art hurrying to the just and holy Judge:\n  For scarcely art thou disembodied yet.\n  Divide a moment, as men measure time,\n  Into its million-million-millionth part,\n  Yet even less than that the interval\n  Since thou didst leave the body; and the priest\n  Cried \"Subvenite,\" and they fell to prayer;\n  Nay, scarcely yet have they begun to pray.\n  For spirits and men by different standards mete\n  The less and greater in the flow of time.\n  By sun and moon, primeval ordinances--\n  By stars which rise and set harmoniously--\n  By the recurring seasons, and the swing,\n  This way and that, of the suspended rod\n  Precise and punctual, men divide the hours,\n  Equal, continuous, for their common use.\n  Not so with us in th' immaterial world;\n  But intervals in their succession\n\n{525}\n\n  Are measured by the living thought alone,\n  And grow or wane with its intensity.\n  And time is not a common property;\n  But what is long is short, and swift is slow,\n  And near is distant, as received and grasped\n  By this mind and by that, and every one\n  Is standard of his own chronology.\n  And memory lacks its natural resting-points,\n  Of years, and centuries, and periods.\n  It is thy very energy of thought\n  Which keeps thee from thy God.\n\n  SOUL.\n\n            Dear angel, say,\n  Why have I now no fear at meeting him?\n  Along my earthly life, the thought of death\n  And judgment was to me most terrible.\n  I had it aye before me, and I saw\n  The Judge severe e'en in the crucifix.\n  Now that the hour is come, my fear is fled;\n  And at this balance of my destiny,\n  Now close upon me, I can forward look\n  With a serenest joy.\n\n  ANGEL.\n\n            It is because\n  Then thou didst fear, that now thou dost not fear.\n  Thou hast forestalled the agony, and so\n  For thee the bitterness of death is passed\n  Also, because already in thy soul\n  The judgment is begun. That day of doom,\n  One and the same for the collected world--\n  That solemn consummation for all flesh,\n  Is, in the case of each, anticipate\n  Upon his death; and, as the last great day\n  In the particular judgment is rehearsed,\n  So now too, ere thou comest to the throne,\n  A presage falls upon thee, as a ray\n  Straight from the Judge, expressive of thy lot.\n  That calm and joy uprising in thy soul\n  Is first-fruit to thee of thy recompense,\n  And heaven begun.\n\nSec. 4.\n\n  SOUL.\n\n          But hark! upon my sense\n  Comes a fierce hubbub, which would make me fear,\n  Could I be frighted.\n\n(TO BE CONTINUED.)\n\n------\n\n{526}\n\nFrom The St. James Magazine\n\nEXTINCT SPECIES\n\nThe study of geology teaches us that our planet, has undergone many\nsuccessive physical revolutions, the crust of it being made up of\nlayer upon layer, after the manner of the successive peels of an\nonion. Each of these successive depositions constitutes the tomb of\nanimal forms that have lived and passed away. Now it is a fresh-water\nor a marine shell that the exploratory geologist discloses; now the\nskeleton, or parts of a skeleton, from the evidence of which a\ncomparative anatomist can reproduce, by model or picture, the exact\nforms. Occasionally science has to build up her presentment of animals\nthat were, from the scanty evidence of their mere footfalls. As the\npoacher is guided to the timid hare, crouching in her seat, by the\nvestiges of her footprints on the snow, so the geologist can in many\ncases arrive at tolerably certain conclusions relative to the size and\naspect of an extinct animal by the evidence of footsteps on now solid\nrock. And if it be demanded how it happens that now solid rocks can\nbear the traces of such soft impressions, the reply is simple. There\nevidently was a time when these rocks, now so hard and solid, were\nmere agglomerations of plastic matter, comparable for consistence to\nordinary clay. It needs not even the weight of a footfall to impress\nmaterial of temper so soft as this. The plashes of rain are distinctly\nvisible upon many rocks now hard, and which have only acquired their\nconsistence with the lapse of countless ages.\n\nThe geologist's notion of the word \"recent\" comprehends a span of time\nof beginning so remote that the oldest records of human history fade\nto insignificance by comparison. Since this world of ours acquired its\nfinal surface settlement, so to speak, numerous species have become\nextinct. The process of exhaustion has gone steadily on. It has been\ndetermined by various causes, some readily explicable, others involved\nin doubt. It is a matter well established, for example, that all\nnorthern Asia was at one time, not geologically remote, overrun by\nherds of mammoth creatures which, as to size, dwarf the largest\nelephants now existing; and which, among other points distinguishing\nthem from modern elephants, were, unlike these, covered by a crop of\nlong hair. Very much of the ivory manufactured in Russia consists of\nthe tusks of these now extinct mammoths, untombed from time to time.\n\nTilesius declares his belief that mammoth skeletons still left in\nnorthern Russia exceed in number all the elephants now existing upon\nthe globe. Doubtless the process of mammoth extinction was very\ngradual, and extended over an enormous space of time. This\ncircumstance is indicated by the varying condition in which the tusks\nand teeth are found. Whereas the gelatine, or soft animal matter, of\nmany specimens remains, imparting one of the characteristics necessary\nto the being of ivory, other specimens have lost this material, and\nmineral substances, infiltrating, have taken its place. The gem\nturquoise is pretty generally conceded to be nothing else than the\nfossilized tooth of some extinct animal--probably the mammoth.\n\nCuriosity of speculation prompts the mind to imagine to itself the\ntime when the last of these gigantic animals succumbed to influences\nthat were finally destined to sweep them all from the earth. Had men\ncome upon the scene when they roamed their native wilds? Were those\nwilds the same as now as to climate and vegetable growths? {527}\nTestimony is mute. Time silently unveils the sepulchred remains,\nleaving fancy to expatiate as she will on a topic wholly beyond the\nscope of mortal intelligence.\n\nInasmuch as bones and tusks of the mammoth are dug up in enormous\nquantities over tracts now almost bare of trees, and scanty as to\nother vegetation, certain naturalists have assumed that in times\ncoeval with mammoth or mastodonic life the vegetation of these regions\nmust have been richer than now, otherwise how could such troops of\nenormous beasts have gained their sustenance?\n\nOn this point Sir Charles Lyell bids us not to be too confident\naffirmatively. He remarks that luxuriance of vegetable growth is not\nseen at the time being to correspond with the prevalence of the\nassociated fauna. The northern island of the New Zealand group, at the\nperiod when Europeans first set foot there, was mostly covered by a\nluxuriant growth of forest trees, of shrubs and grasses. Admirably\nadapted to the being of herbivorous animals, the land was wholly\ndevoid of the same. Brazilian forests offer another case in\nillustration; a stronger case than the wilds of New Zealand, inasmuch\nas the climate may be assumed as more congenial to the development of\nanimal life. Nowhere on earth does nature teem with an equal amount of\nvegetable luxuriance; yet Brazilian forests are remarkable for almost\nthe total absence of large animals. Perhaps no present tract is so\ndensely endowed with animal life as that of South Africa, a region\nwhere sterility is the prevailing characteristic; where forest trees\nare rare and other vegetation scant; where water, too, is infrequent.\n\nPresent examples, such as these, should make a naturalist hesitate\nbefore coming to the conclusion that Siberian wilds, even as now, were\nwholly incompatible with the existence and support of troops of\nmammoths or mastodons. Speculating now as to the latest time of the\nexistence of mastodons in Siberia, a circumstance has to be noted that\nwould seem to countenance the belief in the existence of it up to a\nnot very remote period of historic times. In the year 1843, the season\nbeing warmer than usual, a mass of Siberian ice thawed, and, in\nthawing, untombed one of these animals, perfect in all respects, even\nto the skin and hair. The flesh of this creature furnished repast to\nwolves and bears, so little alteration had it undergone. Another\nmastodon was disentombed on the Tas, between the Obi and Yenesei, near\nthe arctic circle, about lat. 66 deg. 30' N., with some parts of its flesh\nin so perfect a state that the bulb of the eye now exists preserved in\nthe Moscow museum. Another adult carcass, accompanied by an individual\nof the same species, was found in 1843, in lat. 75 deg. 15' N., near the\nriver Taimyr, the flesh being decayed. Associated with it, Middendorf\nobserved the trunk of a larch tree (_Pinus larix_), the same wood that\nnow grows in the same neighborhood abundantly.\n\nIt is no part of our intention to discuss the causes of mammoth\nextinction. This result has assuredly not been caused by any onslaught\nof the destroyer man. The Siberian wilds are scantily populated now,\nand it has never been suggested that at any anterior period their\nhuman denizens were more plentiful. Nature often establishes the\nbalance of her organic life through a series of agencies so abstrusely\nrefined, and acting, beside, over so long a period, that they\naltogether escape man's cognizance. The believer in the God of\nnature's adaptation of means to ends will see no reason to make an\nexception in animal species to what is demonstrated by examples in so\nmany other cases to be a general law. The dogma, that no general law\nis without exceptions, though one to which implicit credence has been\ngiven, may nevertheless be devoid of the universality commonly\nimputed. On the contrary, the application of this dogma may extend\nover a very narrow field; may be only referable to the codifications,\nartificial and wholly {528} conventional, which mankind for their\nconvenience establish, and under a false impression elevate to the\nposition of laws. If logical proof in syllogistic form be demanded as\nto the proposition that laws established by nature have no exceptions,\nthe fulfilment of demand would not be possible; inasmuch as human\nreason is too impotent for grasping, and too restricted in its\nenergies for investigating, the multifarious issues which the\ndiscussion of such a thesis would involve. As coming events, however,\nare said by the poet to cast their shadows in advance, so, as heralds\nand harbingers of truths beyond logical proof, come beliefs, faiths,\neven moral convictions. Of this sort is the assurance of the balance\nestablished by nature at each passing epoch of being in the world.\n\nThe naturalist is impressed with the firm belief that the number of\nanimal species existing on the earth, and the number of individuals in\neach species, are balanced and apportioned in some way and by some\nmysterious co-relation to the needs of the universe.\n\nSome presumptive testimony in favor of this belief is afforded by the\ndiscussion, barely yet concluded, relative to the effect of small bird\ndestruction. Without any more elaborate reasoning on this topic than\nfollows necessarily as the result of newspaper reading, the general\nconcession will be made by any one of unbiased mind, that if small\nbird destruction could be enacted to its exhaustive limits--if every\nsmall bird could be destroyed--the aggregate of vitality thus\ndisposed of would be balanced through the increase of other organisms.\nInsect life would teem and multiply to an extent proportionate with\nthe removal of an anterior restraining cause.\n\nThe nature of the topic on which we are engaged does not force upon us\nthe question whether such proportionate increase of insect life be\nadvantageous or disadvantageous. What we are wholly concerned in\nplacing in evidence is the balance kept up between vital organisms of\ndifferent species by nature. Nor is the balance of vitality\nestablished between different animal species. It also may be traced,\nand even more distinctly, between the vegetable and animal kingdoms;\neach regarded in its entirety. Vegetables can only grow by the\nassimilation of an element (carbon) which animals evolve by\nrespiration, as being a poison. Consideration of this fact well-nigh\nforces the conclusion upon the mind--if, indeed, the conclusion be\nnot inevitable--that if through any vast cataclysm animated life were\nto become suddenly extinct throughout the world, vegetable life would\nlanguish until the last traces of atmospheric carbon had become\nexhausted, and then perish.\n\nIn maintenance of her vital balance through the operation of some\noccult law, it often happens that animals that have ceased to be\n\"obviously useful,\" as taking part in a general economy around them,\nare seen to die out. Whilst wolves and elks roamed over Ireland the\nmagnificent Irish wolf-dog was common. With the disappearance of\nwolves the breed of wolf-dogs languished, and has ultimately become\nextinct. As a matter of zoological curiosity many an Irish gentleman\nwould have desired to perpetuate this gigantic and interesting race of\ndogs; but the operation, the tendency to vital equilibrium has been\nover-strong to be contravened--the race of Irish wolf-dogs has fleeted\naway. Speaking now of the huge Siberian mammoths, from which we\ndiverged, of these faith in nature's balanced adaptation assures us\nthat they died out so soon as they ceased to be necessary as a\ncompensation to some unknown force in the vital economy.\n\nSpans and periods of time, such as those comprehended by the human\nmind, and compared with the normal period of individual human\nexistence, dwindle to nothingness when attempted to be made the units\nof measurement in calculations involving the duration of species.\nPerhaps the data are not available for enabling the most careful\ninvestigator to come to an approximate {529} conclusion as to the\nnumber of years that must elapse before the race of existing\nelephants, African and Indian, will become extinct, departing from the\nearth as mammoths have departed. The time, however, must inevitably\narrive for that consummation under the rule of the present course of\nthings.\n\nWithout forest for shade and sustenance the race of wild elephants\ncannot exist; and, inasmuch as elephants never breed in captivity,\neach tame elephant having been once reclaimed from the forests, it\nfollows, from the consideration of inevitable results, that sooner or\nlater, but some day, nevertheless, one of two possible issues must be\nconsummated--either that man shall cease to go on subduing the earth,\ncutting down forests and bringing the land into cultivation, or else\nelephants must become extinct. Who can entertain a doubt as to the\nalternative issue? Man has gone on conquering and to conquer from the\ntime he came upon the scene. Animals, save those he can domesticate,\nhave gone on fleeting and fleeting away. It is most probable,\nnevertheless, that one proportionate aggregate of vitality has at\nevery period been maintained.\n\nThe most marked examples of the passing away of animal species within\nperiods of time, in some cases not very remote, pronounced of even in\na historical sense, is seen in the record of certain gigantic birds.\nThe largest individuals of the feathered tribes now extant are\nostriches; but the time was when these plumed denizens of the Sahara\nwere small indeed by comparison with existing species. Some idea of\nthe bulk of the epiornis--an extinct species--may be gathered from a\ncomparison of the bulk of one of its eggs with that of other birds.\nAccording to M. Isidore Geoffroy, who some time since presented one of\nthese eggs to the French Academy of Sciences, the capacity of it was\nno less than eight litres and three-fourths. This would prove it to be\nabout six times the size of the ostrich's egg, 148 times that of an\nordinary fowl, and no less than 50,000 times the size of the egg of\nthe humming-bird. The egg exhibited was one of very few that have been\ndiscovered; hence nothing tends to the belief that it was one of the\nlargest. The first knowledge of the existence of this gigantic bird\nwas acquired in 1851. The sole remains of the species hitherto found\nare some egg-shells and a few bones. These suffice, however, for an\nideal reproduction of the creature under the synthetical treatment of\ncomparative anatomy. The epiornis inhabited Madagascar. The creature's\nheight could not have been less than from nine to twelve feet, and the\npreservation of its remains is such as to warrant the belief in its\ncomparatively recent existence.\n\nOf a structure as large as the epiornis, probably larger, though\ndiffering from the latter in certain anatomical particulars, according\nto the belief of Professor Owen, is a certain New Zealand giant bird,\ncalled by him the dinornis. As in the case of the Madagascar bird, the\nevidence relating to this is very recent. Some few years ago an\nEnglish gentleman received from a relative settled in New Zealand some\nfragments of large bones that had belonged to some creature of species\nundetermined. He sent them to Professor Owen for examination, and was\nnot a little surprised at the assurance that the bones in question,\nalthough seemingly having belonged to an animal as large as an ox,\nwere actually those of a bird. The comparative anatomist was guided in\ncoming to this conclusion by a certain cancellated structure possessed\nby the bony fragments, a characteristic of the bones of birds. For a\ntime Professor Owen's dictum was received with hesitation, not to say\ndisbelief, on the part of some people. The subsequent finding of more\nremains, eggs as well as bones, soon justified the naturalist's\nverdict, however. Not the slightest doubt remains now upon the mind of\nany zoologist relative to the past existence of the dinornis; nay, the\n{530} impression prevails that this feathered monster may be living in\nsome of the more inaccessible parts of the southern island of New\nZealand at the present time. Be that as it may, the dinornis can only\nhave become extinct recently, even using this word in a historical\nsense, as the following testimony will make manifest:--\n\nA sort of mummification prevailed amongst the Maories until\nChristianity had gained ground amongst them. The process was not\nexactly similar to that by which Egyptian mummies were formed, but\nresembled it, nevertheless, in the particular of desiccation. Smoking\nwas the exact process followed; and smoked Maori heads are common\nenough in naturalists' museums. In a general way Maori heads alone\nwere smoked, certain principles of food economy prompting a more\nutilitarian treatment for entire bodies. Nevertheless, as a mark of\nparticular respect to some important chief now and then, affectionate\nsurvivors exempted his corpse from the oven, and smoking it entire,\nset it up amongst the Maori lares and penates as an ornament. This\nexplanation is not altogether _par parenthese_, for it brings me to\nthe point of narrating some evidence favorable to the opinion that the\ndinornis cannot have been extinct in New Zealand even at a recent\nhistorical period. Not long ago the body of a Maori was found in a\ncertain remote crypt, and resting on one hand was an egg of this bird\ngiant. Contemplate now the bearings of the testimony. The Maori race\nis not indigenous to New Zealand, but arrived there by migration from\nHawai. Not alone do the records of the two groups of Pacific islands\nin question advert to such migration, but certain radical coincidences\nof language lend confirmation. It is further a matter of tradition\nthat the migration took place about three hundred years ago. Now, even\nif the recently discovered specimen of Maori mummy art had been\nexecuted on the very first advent of the race, the period elapsed\nwould be, historically speaking, recent. The laws of chance, however,\nare adverse to any such assumption; and, moreover, the degree of\ncivilization--if the expression may be used--implied by the dedication\nof an entire human body to an aesthetic purpose, instead of devoting\nit to one of common utility--could only have been achieved after a\ncertain lapse of time.\n\nAccording to Professor Owen, there must have been many species of\ndinornis. The largest individuals of one species, according to him,\ncould not have been less than four yards high. According to the same\nnaturalist, moreover, these birds were not remarkable by their size\nalone; they had, he avers, certain peculiarities of form establishing\na link between them and the cassowary and apteryx: the latter a\ncurious bird still found in New Zealand, but very rare nevertheless.\n\nOf colossal dimensions as were the dinornis and epiornis, the size of\nboth sinks into insignificance by comparison with another giant bird,\ntraces of which, and only traces, are discoverable in North America,\nat the epoch when the deposit of the conchylian stage of Massachusetts\nwas yet soft enough to yield under the feet of creatures stepping upon\nits surface. Footsteps, indeed, are the only traces left of these\ngiant birds, and they are found side by side with the imprints of\ndrops of rain which fell on the yielding surface in those early times.\nMostly the footmarks only correspond with three toes, but occasionally\nthere are traces of a fourth--a toe comparable to a thumb, only\ndirected forward, not backward. Marks of claws are occasionally found.\nEvery trace and lineament of the Massachusetts bird is marvellously\nexceptional. The feet must have been no less than fifteen inches long,\nwithout reckoning the hinder claw, the length of which alone is two\ninches. The width must have been ten inches. The intervals between\nthese footmarks correspond evidently with the stride of the monster,\nwhich got over the ground by covering successive stages of from {531}\nfour to five feet! When we consider that the stride of an ostrich is\nno more than from ten to twelve inches, the application of this record\nwill be obvious. Here closes the testimony already revealed in respect\nof this bird, except we also refer to it--which is apocryphal--certain\ncoprolites or excrementitious matters found in the same formation.\n\nFor the preceding facts naturalists are indebted to the investigations\nof Mr. Hitchcock. The evidence adduced leaves no place for doubt as to\nthe previous existence of a giant bird to which the traces are\nreferable. Naturalists, however, were slow to come to this conclusion;\nso extraordinary did it seem that a bird should have lived at a period\nso remote as that when these geological formations were deposited. To\ngain some idea of the antiquity of that formation, one has only to\nremember that the conchylian stage is only the fifth in the order of\ntime of the twenty-eight stages of which, according to Alcide\nD'Orbigny, the crust of the earth is made up, from the period of\nprimitive rocks to the present date. However, many recent facts have\ntended to prove that several animals, mammalians and saurians amongst\nothers, are far more ancient than had been imagined; after which\nevidence these giant bird footprints have lost much of the\nimprobability which once seemed to attach to them.\n\nPass we on now to the traces of another very curious bird, the\nexistence of which has been demonstrated by Professor Owen, according\nto whom the creature must have lived at the epoch of the schists of\nSobenhofen. The name given by Professor Owen to this curious extinct\nbird is _archeopterix_. Its peculiarities are so numerous that for\nsome time naturalists doubted whether it should be considered a\nreptile or a bird; between which two there exist numerous points of\nsimilarity. And now, whilst dealing with bird-giants, it would be\nwrong not to make some reference to a discovery made in 1855, at Bas\nMeudon, of certain osseous remains, referable to a bird that must have\nattained the dimensions of a horse; that floated on water like a swan,\nand poised itself at roost upon one leg. Monsieur Constant Prevost,\nthe naturalist who has most studied the bird, gave to it the name of\ngastornis Parisiensis. The bony remains of this creature were found in\nthe tertiary formation in a conglomerate associated with chalk, which\nrefers the gastornis to a date more remote than any yet accorded to\nany other bird.\n\nFrom a bare record of facts contemplate we now our planet as it must\nhave been when inhabited by the monstrous birds and reptiles and\nquadrupeds which preceded the advent of man. These were times when\nanimated forms attained dimensions which are now wholly exceptional.\nThat may be described as the age when physical and physiological\nforces were dominant, as the force of moral agency dominates over the\npresent, and is destined, as appearances tend to prove, to rule even\nmore fully hereafter. Might it not seem that in nature an economy is\nrecognizable similar to the economy of human existence? Can we not\nrecognize an antagonism between the development of brute force and of\nthe quality of mind? Would it not even seem that nature could not at\none and the same time develop mental and corporeal giants? The\nphysiological reign has only declined to prepare the advent of moral\nascendancy. Giant bodies seem fading from the earth, and giant spirits\ncommencing to rule. Humanity is progressive; is not its progression\nmade manifest by these zoological revelations? The first bone traces\nof human beings range back to an epoch posterior to the monstrous\nquadrupeds entombed in the diluvium. Hereafter giants, probably, will\nonly be seen in the moral world, grosser corporeal giant forms having\nbecome extinct. The physical gigantesque is not yet indeed banished\nfrom the earth, but the period of its {532} banishment would seem to\nbe at hand.\n\nThe probability is that all the great birds to which reference has\nbeen made were, like the ostrich, incapable of flight. This defect,\nwhen contemplated from the point of view suggested by modern\nclassifications, seems one of the most remarkable aberrations of\nnature of which we have cognizance. For a bird to be deprived of what\nseems the most essential characteristic of bird-life--to be banished\nfrom the region that we have come to regard as the special domain of\nbird-life--bound to the earth, forced to mingle with quadrupeds--seems\nto the mind the completest of all possible departures from established\ntype.\n\nThoughts such as these result from our artificial systems and\nclassifications. Apart from these, the conditions of giant walking\nbirds that were, and to a limited extent are, will be found to\nharmonize well with surrounding conditions. Suppose we take the case\nof the ostrich for example; this bird being the chief living\nrepresentative of giant bird-life remaining to us from the past. In\nthe ostrich, then, do we view a creature so perfectly adapted to\nconditions which surround it that no need falls short and no quality\nis in excess. A complete bird in most anatomical characteristics, it\nborrows others from another type. The sum of the vital elements which\nnormally, had the ostrich been like flying birds, should have gone to\nendow the wings, has been directed toward the legs and feet, and\nthereupon concentrated. Bird qualities and beast qualities have\nmingled, and, as we now perceive, have harmonized. If to the ostrich\nflying is denied--if it can only travel on foot, yet is it an\nexcellent pedestrian. A quality of which it has been deprived we now\nfind to have been transmuted into another quality--the ostrich has\nfound its equivalent.\n\nReflecting thus, we cease to pity the ostrich; we begin to see that\nnature has been supremely wise, our classifications only having led us\ninto error. A new thought dawns upon our apprehension; instead of\nlonger regarding the ostrich as furnishing an example of nature's\nbird-creative power gone astray, we come to look upon this creature as\ndesigned upon the type of ordinary walking animals, and having some\nbird characteristics added. Assuredly this point of view is better\nthan the other; for whereas the first reveals nature to us through the\ndistorting medium of an abstraction, the other shows us nature\nherself. It is not a matter of complete certainty that the bird-type,\nas naturalists explain and define it in their systems, exists; but\nthere can be no doubt as to the existence of the ostrich. In this mode\nof expression there is nothing paradoxical; and doubtless, when we\ncome to reflect upon it, the case will not fail to seem a little\nstrange that we are so commonly in the habit of testing the\ninequalities of beings by reference to systems, instead of following\nthe opposite course, viz., that of testing the value and completeness\nof systems by reference to the qualities of individuals they embrace.\nNaturalists invent a system and make it their touchstone of truth;\nwhereas the real touchstone would be the creature systematized. The\nostrich simply goes to prove that the zoological types imagined by\nnaturalists are endowed with less of the absolute than philosophers in\ntheir pride of science had imagined. Animal types are not the\nstrangers to each other that artificial classifications would make\nthem appear.\n\nNor is flexibility of bird-type only manifested by the examples\nwherein a bird acquires characteristics of quadrupeds and other\nwalking animals. Wings may even become metamorphosed into a sort of\nfins, thus establishing a connection between bird-life and fish-life.\nThis occurs in the manchot, a bird not less aquatic in its habits than\nthe seal--of flying and walking almost equally incapable--a bird the\nnatural locomotive condition of which is to be plunged {533} in water\nup to the neck. Assuredly nothing can be more absurd than the attempt\nto recognize, in these ambiguous organizations, so many attempts of\nnature to pass from one type to another.\n\nNo matter what religious system one may have adopted, or what\nphilosophical code: the interpretation of nature (according to which\nshe is represented as making essays--trying experiments) is alike\ninadmissible. Neither God omniscient, nor nature infallible, can be\nassumed by the philosopher as trying experiments. There are, indeed,\nno essays in nature but degrees--transitions. Wherefore these\ntransitions? is a question that brings philosophy to bay, and\ndemonstrates her weakness. It is a question that cannot be pondered\ntoo deeply. Therein lies the germ of some great mystery.\n\nReverting to bird-giants, past and present, it is assuredly incorrect\nto assume, as certain naturalists have assumed, that flying would have\nbeen incompatible with their bulk. There exist birds of prey, of whose\nbodies the specific gravity does not differ much from that of the\nostrich, and are powerful in flight nevertheless. Then another class\nof facts rises up in opposition to the hypothesis, that mere grandeur\nof dimensions is the limit to winged flying. Neither the apteryx nor\nthe manchot fly any more than the ostrich. Neither is a large bird,\nnor, relatively to size, a heavy bird. As regards the epiornis, the\nposition is not universally acceded to by naturalists that the\ncreature was like the ostrich, the apteryx, and cassowary, a mere\nwalking bird. An Italian naturalist, Signor Bianconi, has noted a\ncertain peculiarity in the metatarsal bones of the creature which\ninduces him to refer it to the category of winged birds of prey. If\nthis hypothesis be tenable, then a sort of giant vulture the epiornis\nwould have been: one in whose imposing presence the condor of the\nAndes would have dwindled to the dimensions of a buzzard. Further, if\nSignor Bianconi's assumption hold good, then may we not have done\namiss in banishing the \"roc\" to the realms of fiction? Old Marco Polo,\nwriting in the thirteenth century, described the roc circumstantially,\nand the account has been long considered as either a fiction or a\nmistake. Signor Bianconi, coming to the rescue of his\nfellow-countryman, thinks that the Italian traveller may have actually\ndescribed a giant bird of prey extant at the time when he wrote, but\nwhich has now become extinct.\n\nA notice of extinct birds would be incomplete without reference to the\ndodo, the very existence of which had been lately questioned; so\ncompletely has it fleeted away from the earth. Messrs. Broderip,\nStrickland, and Melville, however, have amply vindicated the dodo's\nclaim to be regarded a former denizen of the world we live in. The\ndodo was first seen by the Dutch when they landed on the Isle of\nFrance, at that time uninhabited, immediately subsequent to the\ndoubling of Cape Horn by the Portuguese. These birds were described as\nhaving no wings, but in the place of them three or four black\nfeathers. Where the tail should be, there grew instead four or five\ncurling plumes of a grayish color. In their stomachs they were said to\nhave commonly a stone as big as a fist, and hard as the gray Bentemer\nstone. The boat's crew of the _Jacob Van Neck_ called them\nWalgh-vogels (surfeit birds), because they could not cook them or make\nthem tender, or because they were able to get so many turtle-doves,\nwhich had a much more pleasant flavor, so that they took a disgust to\nthese birds. Likewise, it is said that three or four of these birds\nwere enough to afford a whole ship's company one full meal. Indeed,\nthe sailors salted down some of them, and carried them on the voyage.\n\nMany descriptions of the dodo were given by naturalists after the\ncommencement of the seventeenth century; and the British Museum\ncontains a painting said to have been copied {534} from a living\nindividual. Underneath the painting is a leg still finely preserved;\nand in respect of this leg naturalists are agreed that it cannot\nbelong to any existing species. The dodo must have been a curious\nbird, if Mr. Strickland's notion of him be correct; and Professor\nReinhardt, of Copenhagen, holds a similar opinion. The dodo, these\nnaturalists affirm, was a vulture-like dove--a sort of ugly giant\npigeon--but with beak and claws like a vulture. He had companions or\nneighbors, at least, not dissimilar in nature. Thus a bird called the\nsolitaire inhabited the small island of Roderigues, three hundred\nmiles east of the Mauritius. Man has exterminated the solitaire, as\nwell as other birds nearly allied, formerly denizens of the Isle of\nBourbon.\n\nThe dodo will be seen no more; the race has fleeted away. Among birds,\nthe emeu, the cassowary, and the apteryx are species rapidly\nvanishing; amongst quadrupeds, the kangaroo--the platypus: others\nslowly, but not less surely. After a while they will be gone from the\nearth wholly, as bears, wolves, mammoths, and hyenas have gone from\nour own island. The _Bos primigenius_, or great wild bull, was common\nin Germany when Julius Caesar flourished. The race has become wholly\nextinct, if, indeed, not incorporated with the breed of large tame\noxen of northern Europe. The urus would have become extinct but for\nthe care taken by Russian emperors to preserve a remnant in Lithuanian\nforests. The beaver built his mud huts along the Saone and Rhone up to\nthe last few generations of man; and when Hannibal passed through Gaul\non his way to Italy, beavers in Gaul were common. Thus have animals\nmigrated or died out, passed away, but the balance of life has been\npreserved. Man has gone on conquering: now exterminating, now\nsubjecting. Save the fishes of the sea and the birds of the air, the\ntime will perhaps come when creatures will have to choose between\nsubjection and death. Ostriches would seem to be reserved for the\nfirst alternative, seeing that in South Africa, in southern France,\nand Italy, these birds have lately been bred, domiciled into tame\nfowls, in behalf of their feathers. Very profitable would ostrich\nfarming seem to be. These giant birds want no food but grass, and the\nyearly feather yield of each adult ostrich realizes about twenty-five\npounds sterling.\n\n----\n\n{535}\n\nFrom Chambers's Journal.\n\nA DINNER BY MISTAKE.\n\n\"Only one poun'-ten a week, sir, and no extras; and I may say you\nwon't find such cheap airy lodgings anywhere else in the place; not to\nspeak of the sea-view;\" and the bustling landlady threw open the door\nof the tiny sitting-room with an air which would have become a\nBelgravian lackey. It certainly was a cosy, sunny little apartment,\nwith just such a view of the sea, and of nothing else whatsoever, as\nis the delight of an inland heart, I was revolving in my mind how to\nmake terms on one most important point, when she again broke forth: \"I\ncan assure you, sir, I could have let these same rooms again and again\nin the last two days, if I had not given my promise to Mrs. Johnson\nthat she should have them next Friday fortnight, and I would never go\nfrom my word, sir--never! though this month is our harvest, and it's\nhard for me to have the rooms standing empty. As I told my niece only\nyesterday, I won't let forward again, not to please anybody, for it\ndon't answer, and it worrits me out of my life. And I'm sure, sir, if\nyou like to come for the fortnight, I'll do my utmost to make you\ncomfortable; and I always have given satisfaction; and you could not\nget nicer rooms nowhere.\"\n\n\"No,\" said I, taking advantage of her pause for breath; \"these are\nvery nice. I--I suppose you don't object to smoking?\"\n\nThe good woman's face assumed a severe expression, though I detected a\ncomical twinkle in her eye. \"Why, sir, we always do say--but if it's\nonly a cigar, and not one of them nasty pipes\"--\n\nI smiled: \"To tell the truth, it generally is a pipe.\"\n\n\"Is it now? Well, sir, if _you_ please, we won't say anything about it\nnow. We have a lady-lodger upstairs, and if she should complain, I can\nbut say that it is against my rules, and that I'll mention it to you.\nAnd so, sir, if you please, I'll go now, and see to your portmanteau\nbeing taken up;\" and thereupon she vanished, leaving me in sole\npossession.\n\nI threw my bag and rug on to the sofa, pushed a slippery horsehair\narmchair up to the window, and sat down to rest and inhale the\nsea-breezes with a certain satisfaction at being in harbor. As I\nbefore remarked, the prospect was in the strictest sense of the words\na sea-view. Far away to east and west stretched the blue ocean; and\nbeside it, I could see only a steep grass-bank just beneath my window,\nwith a broad shingly path running at its base, evidently designed for\nan esplanade, though no human form was visible thereon. Away to the\nright, I just caught a glimpse of shelving beach, dotted with\nfishermen's boats; and of a long wooden jetty, with half-a-dozen\nfigures slowly pacing from end to end, while the dismal screeching of\na brass band told of an attempt at music more ambitious than\nsuccessful. It was not a lively look-out for a solitary man, and I\nhalf wished myself back in my mother's comfortable house at Brompton.\nHowever, I was in for it now; and I could but try how far a fortnight\nof open air and exercise would recruit my wasted strength. I had been\nreading really hard at Oxford through the last term, and my very\nunusual industry had been followed by a languor and weariness which so\nawakened my dear mother's solicitude that she never rested till she\nhad persuaded Dr. Busby to prescribe sea-air and a total separation\nfrom my books. She could not come {536} with me, as she longed to do,\nkind soul! but she packed my properties, and gave endless instructions\nas to diet, all of which I had forgotten before I had accomplished the\nfirst mile of my journey. I don't know why I came to that\nout-of-the-way watering-place, except that I was too languid to have a\nwill of my own, or to care for the noisy life of country-houses full\nof sportsmen. So, on the following morning, behold me in gray\ntravelling suit and wide-awake, strolling along the beach, watching\nthe pretty bathers as they dipped their heads under water, and then\nreappeared, shaking the dripping tresses from their eyes. Then there\nwere the fishermen, brawny, bare-legged Goliahs, setting forth on\ntheir day's toil, and launching their boats with such shouts and cries\nas, to the uninitiated, might indicate some direful calamity. The\nbeach was alive now, for the whole visiting population, such as it\nwas, seemed to have turned out this bright September morning, and were\nscattered about, sketching, working, and chattering. I scanned each\ngroup, envying them their merry laughter and gay talk, and half hoping\nto recognize some familiar face among those lazy lounging youths and\nsun-burned damsels; but my quest was fruitless, and I pursued my\nlonely way apart.\n\nReally, though, the little place improved upon acquaintance. There\nwere fine bold cliffs, just precipitous enough to make a scramble to\nthe top almost irresistible; there were long stretches of yellow sand\nand shallow pools glittering in the sunlight; and there was a breeze\ncoming straight from the north pole, which quickened my blood, and\nbrought the color into my sallow cheeks, even as I drank it in. I\nbathed, I walked, I climbed, I made friends with the boatmen, and got\nthem to take me out in their fishing-smacks; but still, with returning\nvigor, I began to crave not a little for some converse with more\ncongenial spirits than these honest tars and my loquacious landlady. I\ninscribed my name on the big board at the library; I did all that man\ncould do to make my existence known, but nearly a week passed away,\nand still my fellow-creatures held aloof. I had been out for the whole\nof one windy afternoon tossing on the waves, watching the\nlobster-fishing, and came in at sunset tolerably drenched with spray,\nand with a terrific appetite. As I opened the door of my little\nsitting-room, I beheld--most welcome sight--the white dinner-cloth,\nand lying upon it a card--a large, highly-glazed, most unmistakable\nvisiting-card. With eager curiosity, I snatched it up, but curiosity\nchanged to amazement when I read the name, \"Sir Philip Hetherton,\nGrantham Park.\" Sir Philip Hetherton! Why, in the name of all that's\nincomprehensible, should he call on me? I had never even heard his\nname; I knew no more of him than of the man in the moon. Could he be\nsome country magnate who made it a duty to cultivate the acquaintance\nof every visitor to Linbeach? If so, he must have a hard time of it,\neven in this little unfrequented region. My impatience could not be\nrestrained till Mrs. Plumb's natural arrival with the chops; and an\nenergetic pull at the bell brought her at once courtesying and\nsmiling.\n\n\"I suppose,\" began I, holding the card with assumed carelessness\nbetween my finger and thumb--\"I suppose this gentleman, Sir Philip\nHetherton, called here to-day?\"\n\n\"Oh yes, sir, this afternoon; not an hour ago.\"\n\n\"He inquired for me?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir; he asked particularly for young Mr. Olifant, and said he\nwas very sorry to miss you. He's a very pleasant-spoken gentleman, is\nSir Philip.\"\n\n\"Ah, I see. Is he often in Linbeach? Does he know many people living\nin the place?\"\n\n\"Well, I don't think he has many friends here, sir; at least, I never\nunderstood so; but he owns some of the {537} houses in the town, and\nhe is very kind to the poor. No one is ever turned away empty-handed\nfrom his door, and I've a right to say so, sir, for my brother's widow\nlives in one of the lodges at Grantham. He put her into it when her\nhusband was drowned at sea, and he's been a good friend to her ever\nsince.\"\n\nAll this was not what I wanted to find out, but I had learned by\nexperience that Mrs. Plumb's tongue must have its swing. I now mildly\nbrought her back to the point: \"Does he see anything of the visitors?\"\n\n\"Not to my knowledge, sir. He sometimes rides in of an afternoon, for\nGrantham is only four miles from Linbeach; but I don't think he ever\nstays long.\"\n\nSo it was not apparently an eccentric instance of universal\nfriendliness, but a special mark of honor paid to me. It grew more and\nmore mysterious. However, there was nothing to be gained by pumping\nMrs. Plumb further; and as I was discreetly minded to keep my own\ncounsel, I dismissed her. But meditating long and deeply over my\nsolitary dinner, I came at length to the unwelcome conclusion, that\nSir Philip Hetherton must have been laboring under some strange\ndelusion, and that I should see and hear no more of him. I was rather\nin the habit of priding myself on my judgment and discrimination; but\nin this instance they were certainly at fault, for within three days,\nI met him face to face. I was strolling slowly along one of the shady\ncountry lanes which led inland between cornfields and hedge-rows, when\nI encountered a portly, gray-haired gentleman, mounted on an iron-gray\ncob, and trotting soberly toward Linbeach. He surveyed me so\ninquisitively out of his merry blue eyes, that the thought crossed me,\ncould this be the veritable Sir Philip? I smiled at my own vivid\nimagination; but I must confess that before I had proceeded another\nhalf mile, I faced round, and returned to Linbeach for more briskly\nthan I had left it. I had scarcely stepped into Mrs. Plumb's passage,\nwhen that personage herself met me open-mouthed, with a pencil-note in\nher hand. \"Oh, Mr. Olifant, I wish you had come in rather sooner. Sir\nPhilip has been here again, and as he could not see you, he wrote this\nnote, for he had not time to wait. I was quite vexed that it should\nhappen so.\"\n\nEvidently the good woman was fully impressed with the dignity of the\nevent, and not a little flattered at the honor paid to her lodger. I\nopened the note, and it contained--oh marvel of marvels!--an\ninvitation to dinner for the following day, coupled with many warm\nexpressions of regard for my family, and regrets at having been\nhitherto unable to see me.\n\n\"I told Sir Philip that I thought you had only gone down to the beach,\nsir; but he laughed, and said he should not know you if he met you. I\nsuppose you don't know him, do you, sir?\" Mrs. Plumb added\ninsinuatingly.\n\n\"No.\" said I; thinking within myself that the baronet need not have\nbeen quite so communicative. However, this confession of his, at any\nrate, threw same light upon the subject, and suggested a solution. He\nmight have known my father or mother. Of course, indeed, he must have\nknown them, or somebody belonging to me. His own apparent confidence\nbegan to infect me, and I wrote off an elaborate and gracefully-worded\nacceptance; and then sat down to my pipe, and a complacent\ncontemplation of all the benefits that might accrue to me through his\nmost praiseworthy cordiality. \"After all,\" I reflected, \"'tis no\nmatter where one goes; friends are sure to turn up everywhere;\" and\nthereon arose visions of partridge-shooting in the dewy mornings, to\nbe followed by pleasant little dinners with my host and a bevy of\nlovely daughters. But on the morrow certain misgivings revisited me,\nand I came to the conclusion that it would only be the civil thing to\nride over to Grantham in the afternoon, and get through {538} the\nfirst introductions and explanations before appearing there as a\nguest. Accordingly, I hired a long-legged, broken-winded hack, the\nonly one to be got for love or money, and set forth upon my way. It\nwas a fruitless journey; the fatal \"not at home\" greeted my ears, and\nI could only drop a card, turn the Roman nose of my gallant steed\ntoward home, and resign myself to my fate.\n\nSeven o'clock was the hour named for dinner, and I had intended to be\nparticularly punctual, but misfortunes crowded thick upon me. The\nfirst white tie that came to hand was a miserable failure. My favorite\ncurl would not be adjusted becomingly upon my brow; and the wretched\ndonkey-boy who had solemnly promised to bring the basket-carriage\npunctually to the door, did not appear till ten minutes after the\ntime. Last of all, when I had descended \"got up\" to perfection, and\nwas on the point of starting, I discovered that I was minus gloves,\nand the little maid-of-all-work had to be sent fleeing off to the\ncorner shop, where haberdashery and grocery were picturesquely\ncombined. So it fell out that, despite hard driving, it was several\nminutes past the hour when we drew up under the portico at Grantham. I\nhad no time to compose my nerves or prepare my opening address. A\ngorgeously-arrayed flunkie appeared at the hall-door; a solemn butler,\nbehind, waved me on to the guidance of another beplushed and\nbepowdered individual; and before I fully realized my position, I\nstood in a brilliantly-lighted drawing-room, full of people, and heard\nmy name proclaimed in stentorian tones. The next moment, the florid\ngentleman whom I had encountered on the previous day came forward with\noutstretched hands and a beaming face, and a perfect torrent of\nwelcomes burst upon me.\n\n\"Glad to see you at last, Mr. Olifant, very glad to see you; I began\nto think there was a fate against our meeting. Let me introduce you.\nLady Hetherton--my daughter--my son Fred. Come this way, this way.\"\n\nAnd I was hurried along helpless as an infant in the jovial baronet's\nhands. How could I--I appeal to any reasonable being--how could I\nstand stock-still, and, under the eyes of all that company,\ncross-examine my host as to the why and wherefore of his hospitality?\nIt will be owned, I think, that in what afterward occurred I was not\nwholly to blame. Lady Hetherton was a quiet well-bred woman, with a\nmild face and soft voice; she greeted me with a certain sleepy warmth,\nand after a few placid commonplaces, resumed her conversation with the\nelderly lady by her side, and left me to the care of her son, a\nbright, frank young Harrovian, with whom I speedily made friends.\nReally it was very pleasant to drop in this way into the centre of a\ngenial circle, and I found my spirits rising fast as we talked\ntogether, _con amore_, of cricket, boating, hunting. A fresh arrival,\nhowever, soon disturbed the party, and, directly afterward, dinner was\nannounced. Sir Philip, who had been busily engaged in welcoming the\nlast comers, led off a stately dame upon his arm, and we followed in\nprocession, a demure young daughter of the house being assigned to me.\nWe were slowly making our way round the dining-room, when, just as we\npassed the end of the table, Sir Philip turned and laid his hand upon\nmy shoulder.\n\n\"I have scarcely had time for a word yet,\" he said; \"but how are they\nall in Yorkshire?\"\n\nI don't know what answer I gave; some one from behind begged leave to\npass, and I was borne on utterly bewildered. Yorkshire! what had I to\ndo with Yorkshire? And then, all at once, the appalling truth burst on\nme like a thunder-clap--I was the wrong man! Yes; _now_ I recalled a\ncertain Captain Olifant, whom I had once met at a mess-dinner, and\nwho, as I had then heard, belonged to an old Yorkshire family. We\ncould count no sort of kinship with them {539} but here I was, for\nsome inexplicable reason, assumed as one of them, perhaps as the\neldest son and heir of their broad acres, and regaled accordingly. My\nsituation was sufficiently unpleasant, and in the first impulse of\ndismay, I made a dash at a central seat where I might be as far as\npossible from both host and hostess. But my manoeuvre failed. Lady\nHetherton's soft tones were all too audible as she said: \"Mr. Olifant,\nperhaps you will come up here; the post of honor;\" and of danger too,\nin my case; but there was no help for it, and I went. As I unfolded my\nnapkin, striving hard for a cool and easy demeanor, I mentally\nsurveyed my position, and decided on my tactics. I could not and would\nnot there and then declare myself an embodied mistake; I must trust to\nchance and my own wits to carry me through the evening, and leave my\nexplanations for another season. Alas! my trials full soon began. \"We\nhad hardly been seated three minutes, when Lady Hetherton turned to\nme.\n\n\"We were so very glad you were able to come to-night, Mr. Olifant; Sir\nPhilip had quite set his heart upon seeing you here. It is such a\ngreat pleasure to him to revive an old friendship; and he was saying\nthat he had almost lost sight of your family.\"\n\nI murmured something not very coherent about distance and active life.\n\n\"Ah, yes, country gentlemen have so much to do that they really are\ngreatly tied at home. I think, though, that I once had the pleasure of\nmeeting a sister of yours in town--Margaret her name was, and she was\nsuffering from some affection of the spine. I hope she is better now?\"\n\n\"Much better, thank you.\" And then, in the faint hope of turning the\nconversation, I asked if they were often in town.\n\n\"Not so often as I should wish. Sir Philip has a great dislike to\nLondon; but I always enjoy it, for one meets everybody there.\nBy-the-by, Olifant, the Fordes must be near neighbors of yours. I am\nsure I have heard them speak of Calveston.\"\n\nI did not dare to say they were not, lest inquiries should follow\nwhich might betray my extreme ignorance of Yorkshire geography in\ngeneral, and the locality of Calveston in particular; so I chose the\nlesser peril, and answered cheerfully; \"Oh yes, quite near within an\neasy walk of us.\"\n\n\"What charming people they are!\" said Lady Hetherton, growing almost\nenthusiastic. \"The two eldest girls were staying here last spring, and\nwe all lost our hearts to them, they were so bright and pleasant; and\nKatie, too, is growing so very pretty. She isn't out yet, is she?\"\n\n\"No; I fancy she is to be presented next year,\" I responded,\nreflecting that while I was about it I might as well do it thoroughly.\n\"She ought to make a sensation.\"\n\n\"Ah, then,\" said Lady Hetherton eagerly, \"you agree with me about her\nbeauty.\"\n\n\"Oh, entirely. I expect she will be quite the belle of our country\nballs.\" And then, in the same breath, I turned to the shy Miss\nHetherton beside me, and startled her by an abrupt inquiry whether she\nliked balls. She must have thought, at any rate, that I liked talking,\nfor her timid, orthodox reply was scarcely uttered, before I plied her\nwith fresh questions, and deluged her with a flood of varied\neloquence. Races, archery, croquet, Switzerland, Paris, Garibaldi, the\nAmerican war, Mueller's capture, and Tennyson's new poem, all played\ntheir part in turn. For why? Was I not aware that Lady Hetherton's\nconversation with the solemn old archdeacon opposite flagged from time\nto time, and that, at every lull, she looked toward me, as though\nconcocting fresh means of torture. But I gained the day; and at\nlength, with secret exultation, watched the ladies slowly defiling\nfrom the room. Poor innocent! I little knew what was impending. The\nlast voluminous skirt had scarcely disappeared, when Sir Philip left\nhis chair, and advancing {540} up the table, glass in hand, seated\nhimself in his wife's place at my elbow. I tried to believe that he\nmight intend to devote himself to the arch-deacon, but that good\ngentleman was more than half inclined to nod, and my left-hand\nneighbor was deep in a geological discussion; so I sat on,\nspell-bound, like the sparrow beneath the awful shadow of the hawk.\nCertainly, there was not much outward resemblance between that bird of\nprey and Sir Philip's comely, smiling visage, as he leaned forward,\nand said cheerily: \"Well, now, I want to hear all about them.\"\n\nIt was not an encouraging beginning for me, but I had committed myself\nwith Lady Hetherton too far for a retreat. Like Cortes, I had burned\nmy ships. Before I had framed my answer, the baronet proceeded: \"I\ndon't know any of you young ones, but your father and I were fast\nfriends once upon a time. Many's the lark we've had together at\nHarrow, ay, and at Oxford too; for he was a wild-spirited fellow then,\nwas Harry Olifant, though, I daresay, he has settled down into a sober\ncountry squire long ago.\"\n\nIt was plain that Sir Philip liked to hear himself talk, and my\ncourage revived.\n\n\"Why, yes,\" I said; \"years and cares do work great changes in most\nmen; I daresay you would hardly know him now.\"\n\n\"I daresay not. But he is well, and as good a shot as in the old\nOxford days?\"\n\n\"Just as good. He is never happier than among his turnips.\" And then I\nshuddered at my own audacity, as I pictured my veritable parent, a\nhard-worked barrister, long since dead, and with about as much notion\nof firing a gun as one of his own briefs.\n\n\"Quite right, quite right,\" exclaimed Sir Philip energetically,  \"and\nwe can find you some fair sport here, my boy, though the birds are\nwild this year. Come over as often as you like while you are at\nLinbeach; or, better still, come and slay here.\"\n\nI thanked him, and explained that I was staying at Linbeach for the\nsea-air, and that I must be in town in a few days.\n\n\"I'm sorry for that. We ought to have found you out sooner; but I only\nchanced to see your name at the library last Friday. And so you are at\nMerton?\"\n\n\"Yes, I'm at Merton,\" said I, feeling it quite refreshing to speak the\ntruth.\n\n\"Ah, I'm glad your father's stuck to the old college; you could not be\nat a better one. That boy of mine is wild for soldiering, or I should\nhave sent him there.\"\n\nThe mystery stood revealed. I had recorded my name on the visitors'\nboard as H. Olifant, Merton College, Oxford; and by a strange\ncoincidence, Sir Philip's former friend had belonged to the same\ncollege, and owned the same initial. The coincidence was indeed so\ncomplete, that it had evidently never dawned upon the baronet that I\ncould be other than the son of his old chum. He sat now sipping his\nwine, with almost a sad expression on his honest face.\n\n\"Ah, my lad,\" he said presently, \"when you come to my age, you'll look\nback to your old college and your old friends as I do now. But what\nwas I going to ask you? Oh, I remember. Have you seen any of the\nFordes lately?\"\n\nI glanced round despairingly at the geologists, but they were lost to\neverything except blue lias and old red sandstone, and there was no\nhope of effecting a diversion in that quarter.\n\n\"Well, no--not very lately,\" I responded slowly, as though trying to\nrecall the exact date when I last had that felicity. \"To tell the\ntruth, I don't go down into those parts so often as I ought to do.\"\n\n\"There's a family for you!\" Sir Philip went on triumphantly; \"how well\nthey are doing. That young George Forde will distinguish himself one\nof these days, or I'm much mistaken; and Willie, too--do you know\n{541} whether he has passed for Woolwich yet?\"\n\nI could not say that I did, but the good baronet's confidence in Forde\ngenius was as satisfactory as certainty.\n\n\"He's sure to pass, quite sure; never knew such clever lads; and as\nfor beauty--that little Katie\"--But here the slumbering archdeacon\ncame to my aid by waking up with a terrific start and a loud \"Eh!--\nwhat! time to join the ladies.\"\n\nThere was a general stir, and I contrived to make my escape to the\ndrawing-room. If I could only have escaped altogether; but it was not\nyet half-past nine. The tall footmen and severe butler were lounging\nin the hall, and I felt convinced that if I pleaded illness, Sir\nPhilip would lay violent hands on me, and insist on my spending the\nnight there. After all, the worst was over, and in the crowded\ndrawing-room, I might with slight dexterity avoid all shoals and\nquicksands. So I ensconced myself in a low chair, guarded by a big\ntable on one side, and on the other by a comfortable motherly-looking\nwoman in crimson satin, to whom I made myself agreeable. We got on\nvery well together, and I breathed and chatted freely in the\ndelightful persuasion that she at least knew no more of the Fordes\nthan I did. But my malignant star was in the ascendant. I was in the\nmidst of a glowing description of the charms of a reading-party at the\nlakes, when Sir Philip again assailed me: \"Well, Mrs. Sullivan,\" he\nsaid, addressing my companion, \"have you been asking after your little\nfavorite?\"\n\n\"My little favorite?\" repeated Mrs. Sullivan inquiringly.\n\nShe did not know whom he meant, but I did; I knew quite well.\n\n\"Katie Forde, I mean; the little black-eyed girl who used to go into\nsuch ecstasies over your roses and ferns--you have not forgotten her\nyet, have you?\"\n\nNo, unluckily for me, Mrs. Sullivan had not forgotten her. I was\ncharged with a string of the fond, unmeaning messages which ladies\nlove to exchange; and it was only by emphatically declaring that I\nshould not be in Yorkshire for many months, that I escaped being made\nthe bearer of sundry curious roots and bulbs to the fair Katharine.\n\nBut Sir Philip soon interrupted us: \"There's a cousin of yours in the\nnext room, Mr. Olifant,\" he said, evidently thinking that he was\nmaking a most agreeable announcement: \"she would like to see you, if\nyou will let me take you to her.\"\n\nI heard and trembled. A cousin. Oh, the Fordes were nothing to this!\nWhy did people have cousins; and why, oh why, should every imaginable\nevil befal me on this disastrous evening! Such were my agonized\nreflections while with unwilling steps I followed my host to\nexecution. He led me to a young lady who was serenely examining some\nprints. \"I have brought him to you, Miss Hunter; here's your cousin,\nMr. Olifant.\"\n\nShe looked at me, but there was no recognition in her eyes. How could\nthere be, indeed, when we had never met before! What would she do\nnext? What she _did_ do was to hold out her hand with a good-humored\nsmile, and at the same time Sir Philip observed complacently: \"You\ndon't know one another, you know.\" Not know one another; of course we\ndidn't; but I could have hugged him for telling me so; and in the joy\nof my reprieve, I devoted myself readily to my supposed cousin, a\nbright, pleasant girl, happily as benighted regarding her real\nrelatives as I was about my imaginary ones. The minutes slipped fast\naway, the hands of the clock pointed at ten, the guests were beginning\nto depart, and I was congratulating myself that the ordeal was safely\npassed, when, happening to turn my head, I saw Sir Philip once more\nadvancing upon me, holding in his hand a photograph book. My doom was\nsealed! My relentless persecutor was resolved to expose me, and with\ndiabolical craft had planned the certain {542} means. Horrible visions\nof public disgrace, forcible ejection, nay, even of the pump itself,\nfloated before my dizzy brain, while on he came nearer and ever\nnearer. \"There!\" he exclaimed, stopping just in front of me, and\nholding out the ill-omened book--\"There! you can tell me who that is,\ncan't you?\"\n\nIt was a baby--a baby of a year old, sitting on a cushion, with a\nrattle in its hand, and it was of course unlike any creature I had\never beheld. \"Hm, haw,\" murmured I, contemplating it in utter\ndesperation; \"children are so much alike that really--but\"--as a\nbrilliant idea suddenly flashed on me: \"surely it must be a Forde!\"\n\n\"Of course it is,\" and Sir Philip clapped me on the back in a\ntransport of delight. \"I thought you would recognize it. Capital!\nisn't it? The little thing must be exactly like its mother; and I\nfancy I see a look of Willie in it too.\"\n\nI could endure no more. Another such victory would be almost worse\nthan a defeat; and while \"my cousin\" was rhapsodizing over the\ninfantine charms so touchingly portrayed, I started up, took an abrupt\nfarewell of my host, and despite his vehement remonstrances, went off\nin search of Lady Hetherton, and beat a successful retreat. As I\nstepped out into the portico, the pony-trap which I had ordered drove\nup to the door, and jumping in, I rattled away toward Linbeach,\nexhausted in body and mind, yet relieved to feel that each succeeding\nmoment found me further and further from the precincts of Grantham.\nNot till I was snugly seated in the arm-chair in Mrs. Plumb's parlor,\nwatching the blue smoke-wreaths wafted up from my best beloved pipe\n--not till then could I believe that I was thoroughly safe, and begin\nto review calmly the events of the evening. And now arose the very\nembarrassing inquiry: What was next to be done? Sir Philip's parting\nwords had been an energetic exhortation to come over and shoot, the\nnext day, or, in fact, whenever I pleased. \"We can't give you the\ngrouse of your native moors,\" he said as a final thrust, \"but we can\nfind you some partridges, I hope;\" and I had agreed with a\nhypocritical smile, while internally resolving that no mortal power\nshould take me to Grantham again. Of one thing there could be no\ndoubt--an explanation was due to the kind-hearted baronet, and it must\nbe given. Of course I might have stolen off from Linbeach still\nundiscovered, but I dismissed the notion instantly. I had gone far\nenough already--too far, Sir Philip might not unnaturally think. No; I\nmust write to him, and it had best be done at once. \"Heigh-ho,\" I\nsighed, as I rummaged out ink and paper, and sat down to the great\nwork; \"so ends my solitary friendship at Linbeach.\" It took me a long\ntime to concoct the epistle, but it was accomplished at last. In terms\nwhich I would fain hope were melting and persuasive, I described my\nbirth and parentage, related how I had only discovered my mistaken\nidentity after my arrival at Grantham, and made a full apology for\nhaving then, in my embarrassment, perpetuated the delusion. I wound up\nby the following eloquent and dignified words: \"Of course, I can have\nno claim whatever to continue an acquaintance so formed, and I can\nonly tender my grateful thanks for the warm hospitality of which I\nhave accidentally been the recipient.\" The letter was sealed and sent,\nand I was left to speculate how it might be received. Would Sir Philip\nvouchsafe a reply, or would he treat me with silent contempt? I could\nfancy him capable of a very tolerable degree of anger, in spite of his\n_bonhomie_, and I blushed up to my brows when I pictured quiet Lady\nHetherton recalling my remarks about Miss Katie Forde. The second\nday's post came in and brought me nothing; and now I began to be\nseized with a nervous dread of encountering any of the Grantham Park\nparty by chance, and this dread grew so {543} unpleasant that I\ndetermined to cut short my visit, and return to town at once. My\nresolution was no sooner made than acted on. I packed my portmanteau,\nsettled accounts with Mrs. Plumb, and went off to take my place by the\nnext morning's coach. Coming hastily out of the booking-office in the\ndusk, I almost ran against somebody standing by the door. It was Sir\nPhilip, and I stepped hastily back; but he recognized me at once, and\nheld out his hand with a hearty laugh. \"Ah, Mr. Olifant, is it you? I\nwas on my way to your lodgings, so we'll walk together;\" and not\nnoticing my confusion, he linked his arm in mine, and continued: \"I\ngot your letter last evening, when I came in from a long day's\nshooting, and very much amazed I was, that I must own. I did not\nanswer it at once, for I was half-dead with walking, and, beside, I\nalways like talking better than writing, So now I have come to tell\nyou that I think you've behaved like an honest man and a gentleman in\nwriting that letter; and I'm very glad to have made your acquaintance,\nthough you are not Harry Olifant's son. As for the mistake, why, 'twas\nmy own fault for taking it for granted you must be the man I fancied\nyou. My lady is just the least bit vexed that we should have made such\ngeese of ourselves; but come over and shoot to-morrow, and we'll give\nyou a quiet dinner and a bed in your own proper person; and she will\nbe very glad to see you. Mind I expect you.\"\n\nAfter all my resolutions, I did go to Grantham on the following day;\nand my dinner by mistake was the precursor of a most pleasant\nacquaintance, which became in time a warm and lasting friendship.\n\n------\n\nFrom All the Year Round.\n\nNOAH'S ARKS.\n\n\nIn Kew Gardens is a seldom-visited collection of all the kinds of wood\nwhich we have ever heard of, accompanied by specimens of various\narticles customarily made of those woods in the countries of their\ngrowth. Tools, implements, small articles of furniture, musical\ninstruments, sabots and wooden-shoes, boot-trees and shoe-lasts, bows\nand arrows, planes, saw-handles--all are here, and thousands of other\nthings which it would take a very long summer day indeed even to\nglance at. The fine display of colonial woods, which were built up\ninto fanciful trophies at the International Exhibition of eighteen\nhundred and sixty-two, has been transferred to one of these museums;\nand a noble collection it makes.\n\nWe know comparatively little in England of the minor uses of wood. We\nuse wood enough in building houses and railway structures; our\ncarriage-builders and wheelwrights cut up and fashion a great deal\nmore; and our cabinet-makers know how to stock our rooms with\nfurniture, from three-legged stools up to costly cabinets; but\nimplements and minor articles are less extensively made of wood in\nEngland than in foreign countries--partly because our forests are\nbecoming thinned, and partly because iron and iron-work are so\nabundant and cheap. In America, matters are very different. There are\nthousands of square miles of forest which belong to no one in\nparticular, and the wood of which may be claimed by those who are at\nthe trouble of felling the trees. {544} Nay, a backwoodsman would be\nvery glad to effect a clearing on such terms as these, seeing that the\ntrees encumber the ground on which he wishes to grow corn crops.\n\nThe wood, when the trees have been felled and converted into boards\nand planks, is applied to almost countless purposes of use. Of use, we\nsay; for the Americans are too bustling a people to devote much time\nto the fabricating of ornaments; they prefer to buy these ready made\nfrom Britishers and other Europeans. Pails, bowls, washing-machines,\nwringing-machines, knife-cleaning boards, neat light vehicles, neat\nlight furniture, dairy vessels, kitchen utensils, all are made by the\nAmericans of clean, tidy-looking wood, and are sold at very low\nprices. Machinery is used to a large extent in this turnery and\nwood-ware: the manufacturers not having the fear of strikes before\ntheir eyes, use machines just where they think this kind of aid is\nlikely to be most serviceable. The way in which they get a little bowl\nout of a big bowl, and this out of a bigger, and this out of a bigger\nstill, is a notable example of economy in workmanship. On the\ncontinent of Europe the wood-workers are mostly handicraftsmen, who\nniggle away at their little bits of wood without much aid from\nmachinery. Witness the briar-root pipes of St. Claude. Smart young\nfellows who sport this kind of smoking-bowl in England, neither know\nnor care for the fact that it comes from a secluded spot in the Jura\nmountains. Men and women, boys and girls, earn from threepence to four\nshillings a day in various little bits of carved and turned work; but\nthe crack wages are paid to the briar-root pipe-makers. England\nimports many more than she smokes, and sends off the rest to America.\nM. Audiganne says that \"in those monster armies which have sprung up\nso suddenly on the soil of the great republic, there is scarcely a\nsoldier but has his St. Claude briar-root pipe in his pocket.\" The\ntruth is, that, unlike cutties and meerschaums, and other clay and\nearthen pipes, these briar-root productions are very strong, and will\nbear a great deal of knocking about. The same French writer says that\nwhen his countrymen came here to see our International Exhibition,\nsome of them bought and carried home specimens of these pipes as\nEnglish curiosities: not aware that the little French town of St.\nClaude was the place of their production.\n\nIn Germany the wood-work, so far as English importers know anything of\nit, is mostly in the form of small trinkets and toys for children. The\nproduction of these is immense. In the Tyrol, and near the Thuringian\nForest, in the middle states of the ill-organized confederacy, and\nwherever forests abound, there the peasants spend much of their time\nin making toys. In the Tyrol, for example, there is a valley called\nthe Groednerthal, about twenty miles long, in which the rough climate\nand barren soil will not suffice to grow corn for the inhabitants, who\nare rather numerous. Shut out from the agricultural labor customary in\nother districts, the people earn their bread chiefly by wood carving.\nThey make toys of numberless kinds (in which Noah's Ark animals are\nvery predominant) of the soft wood of the Siberian pine--known to the\nGermans as ziebelnusskiefer. The tree is of slow growth, found on the\nhigher slopes of the valley, but now becoming scarce, owing to the\nimprovidence of the peasants in cutting down the forests without\nsaving or planting others to succeed them. For a hundred years and\nmore the peasants have been carvers. Nearly every cottage is a\nworkshop. All the occupants, male and female, down to very young\nchildren, seat themselves round a table, and fashion their little bits\nof wood. They use twenty or thirty different kinds of tools, under the\nmagic of which the wood is transformed into a dog, a lion, a man, or\nwhat not. Agents represent these carvers in various cities of Europe,\nto dispose of the wares; but they nearly all find their way back again\n{545} to their native valleys, to spend their earnings in peace.\n\nMany of the specimens shown at the Kew museums are more elaborate than\nthose which could be produced wholly by hand. A turning-lathe of some\npower must have been needed. Indeed, the manner in which these\nzoological productions are fabricated is exceedingly curious, and is\nlittle likely to be anticipated by ordinary observers. Who, for\ninstance, would imagine for a moment that a wooden horse, elephant, or\ntiger, or any other member of the Noah's Ark family, could be turned\nin a lathe, like a ball, bowl, or bedpost? How could the turner's\ncutting tool, while the piece of wood is rotating in the lathe, make\nthe head stick out in the front, and the ears at the top, and the tail\nin the rear, and the legs underneath? And how could the animal be made\nlonger than he is high, and higher than he is broad? And how could all\nthe ins and outs, the ups and downs, the swellings and sinkings, be\nproduced by a manipulation which only seems* suitable for circular\nobjects? These questions are all fair ones, and deserve a fair answer.\nThe articles, then, are not fully made in the lathe; they are brought\nto the state of flat pieces, the outline or contour of which bears an\napproximate resemblance to the profile of an animal. These flat pieces\nare in themselves a puzzle; for it is difficult to see how the lathe\ncan have had anything to do with their production. The truth is, the\nwood is first turned into _rings_. Say that a horse three inches long is\nto be fabricated. A block of soft pine wood is prepared, and cut into\na slab three inches thick, by perhaps fifteen inches in diameter; the\ngrain running in the direction of the thickness. Out of this circular\nslab a circular piece is cut from the center, possibly six inches in\ndiameter, leaving the slab in the form of a ring, like an extra thick\nindia-rubber elastic band. While this ring is in the lathe, the turner\napplies his chisels and gouges to it in every part, on the outer edge,\non the inner edge, and on both sides. All sorts of curves are made,\nnow deep, now shallow; now convex, now concave; now with single\ncurvature, now with double. A looker-on could hardly by any\npossibility guess what these curvings and twistings have to do with\neach other, for the ring is still a ring, and nothing else; but the\ncunning workman has got it all in his mind's eye. When the turning is\nfinished, the ring is bisected or cut across, not into two slices, but\ninto two segments or semicircular pieces. Looking at either end of\neither piece, lo! there is the profile of a horse--without a tail,\ncertainly, but a respectably good horse in other respects. The secret\nis now divulged. The turner, while the ring or annulus is in the\nlathe--a Saturn's ring without a Saturn--turns the outer edge into the\nprofile of the top of the head and the back of a horse, the one flat\nsurface into the profile of the chest and the fore legs, and the other\nflat surface into the profile of the hind quarters and hind legs, and\nthe inner edge of the ring into the profile of the belly, and the deep\nrecess between the fore and hind legs. The curvatures are really very\nwell done, for the workmen have good models to copy from, and long\npractice gives them accuracy of hand and eye.\n\nAn endless ring of tailless horses has been produced, doubtless the\nmost important part of the affair; but there is much ingenuity yet to\nbe shown in developing from this abstract ring a certain number of\nsingle, concrete, individual, proper Noah's Ark horses, with proper\nNoah's Ark tails. The ring is chopped or sawn up into a great many\npieces. Each piece is thicker at one end than the other, because the\nouter diameter of the ring was necessarily greater than the inner; but\nwith this allowance each piece may be considered flat. The thick end\nis the head of the horse, the thin end the hind quarter; one\nprojecting piece represents the position and profile of the fore legs,\nbut they are not separated; and similarly of the hind {546} legs. Now\nis the time for the carver to set to work. He takes the piece of wood\nin hand, equalizes the thickness where needful, and pares off the\nsharp edges. He separates into two ears the little projecting piece\nwhich juts out from the head, separates into two pairs of legs the two\nprojecting pieces which jut out from the body, and makes a respectable\npair of eyes, with nostrils and mouth of proper thorough-bred\ncharacter; he jags the back of the neck in the proper way to form a\nmane, and makes, not a tail, but a little recess to which a tail may\ncomfortably be glued. The tail is a separate affair. An endless ring\nof horses' tails is first turned in a lathe. A much smaller slab,\nsmaller in diameter and in thickness than the other, is cut into an\nannulus or ring; and this ring is turned by tools on both edges and\nboth sides. When bisected, each end of each half of the ring exhibits\nthe profile of a horse's tail; and when cut up into small bits, each\nbit has the wherewithal in it for fashioning one tail. After the\ncarver has done his work, each horse receives its proper tail; and\nthey are all proper long tails too, such as nature may be supposed to\nhave made, and not the clipped and cropped affairs which farriers and\ngrooms produce.\n\nThis continuous ring system is carried faithfully through the whole\nNoah's Ark family. One big slab is for an endless ring of elephants;\nanother of appropriate size for camels; others for lions, leopards,\nwolves, foxes, dogs, donkeys, ducks, and all the rest. Sometimes the\nears are so shaped as not very conveniently to be produced in the same\nring as the other part of the animal; in this case an endless ring of\nears is made, and chopped up into twice as many ears as there are\nanimals. Elephant's trunks stick out in a way that would perplex the\nturner somewhat; he therefore makes an endless ring of trunks, chops\nit up, and hands over the pieces to the carver to be fashioned into as\nmany trunks as there are elephants. In some instances, where the\nanimal is rather a bullet-headed sort of an individual, the head is\nturned in a lathe separately, and glued on to the headless body. If a\ncarnivorous animal has a tail very much like that of one of the\ngraminivorous sort, the carver says nothing about it, but makes the\nsame endless ring of tails serve both; or they may belong to the same\norder but different families--as, for instance, the camel and the cow,\nwhich are presented by these Noah's Ark people with tails cut from the\nsame endless ring. Other toys are made in the same way. Those eternal\nsoldiers which German boys are always supposed to love so much, as if\nthere were no end of Schleswig-Holsteins for them to conquer, are--if\nmade of wood (for tin soldiers are also immensely in request)--turned\nseparately in a lathe, so far as their martial frames admit of this\nmode of shaping; but the muskets and some other portions are made on\nthe endless ring system. All this may be seen very well at Kew; for\nthere are the blocks of soft pine, the slabs cut from them (with the\ngrain of the wood in the direction of the thickness), the rings turned\nfrom the slabs, the turnings and curvatures of the rings, the profile\nof an animal seen at each end, the slices cut from each ring, the\nanimal fashioned from each slice, the ring of tails, the separate\ntails for each ring, the animal properly tailed in all its glory, and\na painted specimen or two to show the finished form in which the\nloving couples go into the ark--pigs not so much smaller than\nelephants as they ought to be, but piggishly shaped nevertheless.\n\nAll the English toy-makers agree, with one accord, that we cannot for\nan instant compete with the Germans and Tyrolese in the fabrication of\nsuch articles, price for price. We have not made it a large and\nimportant branch of handicraft; and our workmen have not studied\nnatural history with sufficient assiduity to give the proper\ndistinctive forms to the animals. {547} The more elaborate\nproductions--such as the baby-dolls which can say \"mamma,\" and make\ntheir chests heave like any sentimental damsels--are of French, rather\nthan German manufacture, and are not so much wooden productions as\ncombinations of many different materials. Papier-mache, moulded into\nform, is becoming very useful in the doll and animal trade; while\nindia-rubber and gutta-percha are doing wonders. The real Noah's Ark\nwork, however, is thoroughly German, and is specially connected with\nwood-working. Some of the more delicate and elaborate specimens of\ncarving--such as the groups for chimney-piece ornaments, honored by\nthe protection of glass shades--are made of lime-tree or linden-wood,\nby the peasants of Oberammergau, in the mountain parts of Bavaria.\nThere were specimens of these kinds of work at our two exhibitions\nwhich could not have been produced in England at thrice the price; our\ngood carvers are few, and their services are in request at good wages\nfor mediaeval church-work. We should be curious to know what an\nEnglish carver would require to be paid for a half-guinea Bavarian\ngroup now before us--a Tyrolese mountaineer seated on a rock, his\nrifle resting on his arm, the studded nails in his climbing shoes, a\ndead chamois at his feet, his wife leaning her hand lightly on his\nshoulder, his thumb pointing over his shoulder to denote the quarter\nwhere he had shot the chamois, his wooden bowl of porridge held on his\nleft knee, the easy fit and flow of the garments of both man and woman--\nall artistically grouped and nicely cut, and looking clean and white\nin linden-wood. No English carver would dream of such a thing at such\na price. However, these are not the most important of the productions\nof the peasant carvers, commercially speaking; like as our Mintons and\nCopelands make more money by everyday crockery than by beautiful\nParian statuettes, so do the German toy-makers look to the Noah's Ark\nclass of productions as their main stay in the market, rather than to\nmore elegant and artistic works.\n\n------\n\n{548}\n\n\nWILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.\n\nBY CARDINAL WISEMAN.\n\n\n  [In the autumn of last year a communication was made to his eminence\n  the late Cardinal Wiseman by H. Bence Jones, Esq., M.D., as Secretary\n  of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, requesting him to deliver\n  a lecture before that society. The cardinal, with the prompt\n  kindness usual to him, at once assented. The Shakespeare\n  Tercentenary seemed to prescribe the subject, which his eminence\n  therefore selected.\n\n  The following pages were dictated by him in the last weeks of his\n  life. The latter part was taken down in the beginning of January;\n  the earlier part was dictated on Saturday the fourteenth of that\n  month. It was his last intellectual exertion, and it overtaxed his\n  failing strength.\n\n  The Rev. Dr. Clifford, chaplain to the Hospital of St. John and St.\n  Elizabeth, who acted as his amanuensis, states, from the lips of his\n  eminence, that the matter contained in these pages is the beginning\n  and the ending of what he intended to deliver. We have, therefore,\n  only a fragment of a whole which was never completed except in the\n  author's mind.]\n\nI.\n\nThere have been some men in the world's history--and they are\nnecessarily few--who by their deaths have deprived mankind of the\npower to do justice to their merits, in those particular spheres of\nexcellence in which they had been pre-eminent. When the \"immortal\"\nRaphael for the last time laid down his palette, still moist with the\nbrilliant colors which he had spread upon his unfinished masterpiece,\ndestined to be exposed to admiration above his bier, he left none\nbehind him who could worthily depict and transmit to us his beautiful\nlineaments: so that posterity has had to seek in his own paintings,\namong the guards at a sepulchre, or among the youthful disciples in an\nancient school, some figure which may be considered as representing\nhimself.\n\nWhen his mighty rival, Michelangelo, cast down that massive chisel\nwhich no one after him was worthy or able to wield, none survived him\nwho could venture to repeat in marble the rugged grandeur of his\ncountenance; but we imagine that we can trace in the head of some\nunfinished satyr, or in the sublime countenance of his Moses, the\nnatural or the idealized type from which he drew his stern and noble\ninspirations.\n\nAnd, to turn to another great art, when Mozart closed his last\nuncompleted score, and laid him down to pass from the regions of\nearthly to those of heavenly music, which none had so closely\napproached as he, the science over which he ruled could find no\nstrains in which worthily to mourn him except his own, and was\ncompelled to sing for the first time his own marvelous requiem at his\nfuneral.  [Footnote 101]\n\n  [Footnote 101: The same may be said of the celebrated Cimarosa.]\n\nNo less can it be said that when the pen dropped from Shakespeare's\nhand, when his last mortal illness mastered the strength of even his\ngenius, the world was left powerless to describe in writing his noble\nand unrivalled characteristics. Hence we turn back upon himself, and\nendeavor to draw from his own works the only true records of his\ngenius and his mind.  [Footnote 102]\n\n  [Footnote 102: Even in his lifetime this seems to have been\n  foreseen. In 1664, in an epigram addressed to \"Master William\n  Shakespeare,\" and first published by Mr. Halliwell, occurred the\n  following lines: \"Besides in places thy wit windes like Maeander.\n  When (_whence_) needy new composers borrow more Thence (_than_)\n  Terence doth from Plautus or Menander, But to praise thee aright I\n  want thy store. Then let thine owne words thine owne worth upraise\n  And help t' adorne thee with deserved baies.\" _Halliwell's Life of\n  Shakespeare_, p. 160.]\n\n{549}\n\nWe apply to him phrases which he has uttered of others; we believe\nthat he must have involuntarily described himself, when he says,\n\n          \"Take him all in all,\n  We shall not look upon his like again;\"\n\nor that he must even consciously have given a reflection of himself\nwhen he so richly represents to us \"the poet's eye in a fine phrenzy\nrolling.\" (\"Midsummer-Night's Dream,\" act v., scene 1.)\n\nBut in fact, considering that the character of a man is like that\nwhich he describes, \"as compounded of many simples extracted from many\nobjects\" (\"As You Like It,\" act iv., scene 1), we naturally seek for\nthose qualities which enter into his composition; we look for them in\nhis own pages; we endeavor to cull from every part of his works such\nattributions of great and noble qualities to his characters, and unite\nthem so as to form what we believe is his truest portrait. In truth,\nno other author has perhaps existed who has so completely reflected\nhimself in his works as Shakespeare. For, as artists will tell us that\nevery great master has more or less reproduced in his works\ncharacteristics to be found in himself, this is far more true of our\ngreatest dramatist, whose genius, whose mind, whose heart, and whose\nentire soul live and breathe in every page and every line of his\nimperishable works. Indeed, as in these there is infinitely greater\nvariety, and consequently greater versatility of power necessary to\nproduce it, so must the amount of elements which enter into is\ncomposition represent changeable yet blending qualities beyond what\nthe most finished master in any other art an be supposed to have\npossessed.\n\nThe positive and directly applicable materials which we possess for\nconstructing a biography of this our greatest writer, are more scanty\nthan have been collected to illustrate the life of many an inferior\nauthor. His contemporaries, his friends, perhaps admirers, have left\nus but few anecdotes of his life, and have recorded but few traits of\neither his appearance or his character. Those who immediately\nsucceeded him seem to have taken but little pains to collect early\ntraditions concerning him, while yet they must have been fresh in the\nrecollections of his fellow-countrymen, and still more of his\nfellow-townsmen.  [Footnote 103]\n\n  [Footnote 103: As evidence of this neglect we may cite the \"Journal\"\n  of the Rev. John Ward, Incumbent of Stratford-upon-Avon, to which he\n  was appointed in 1662. This diary, which has been published by\n  Doctor Severn, \"from the original MSS.,\" preserved in the library of\n  the Medical Society of London, contains but two pages relating to\n  Shakespeare, and those contain but scanty and unsatisfactory\n  notices. I will quote only two sentences: \"Remember to peruse\n  Shakespeare's Plays--bee much versed in them, that I may not bee\n  ignorant in that matter, whether Dr. Heylin does well, in reckoning\n  up the dramatick poets which have been famous in England, to omit\n  Shakespeare\" (p. 184). Shakespeare's daughter was still alive when\n  this was written, as appears from the sentence that immediately\n  follows: it seems to us wonderful that so soon after the poet's\n  death a shrewd and clever clergyman and physician (for Mr. Ward was\n  both) should have known so little about his celebrated townsman's\n  works or life. ]\n\nIt appears as though they were scarcely conscious of the great and\nbrilliant luminary of English literature which was shining still, or\nhad but lately passed away; and as though they could not anticipate\neither the admiration which was to succeed their duller perceptions of\nhis unapproachable grandeur, or the eager desire which this would\ngenerate of knowing even the smallest details of its rise, its\nappearance, its departure. For by the biography of Shakespeare one\ncannot understand the records of what he bought, of what he sold, or\nthe recital of those acts which only confound him with the common mass\nwhich surrounded him, and make him appear as the worthy burgess or the\nthrifty merchant; though even about the ordinary commonplace portions\nof his life such uncertainty exists, that doubts have been thrown on\nthe very genuineness of that house which he is supposed to have\ninhabited.\n\nNow, it is the characteristic individualizing quality, actions, and\nmode of executing his works, to whatever class of excellence he may\nbelong, that we long to be familiar with in order to say that we know\nthe man. What matters it to us that he paid so many marks or {550}\nshillings to purchase a homestead in Stratford-upon-Avon? The simple\nautograph of his name is now worth all the sums that he thus expended.\nOne single line of one of his dramas, written in his own hand, would\nbe worth to his admirers all the sums which are known to have passed\nbetween him and others. What has become of the goodly folios which\nmust have once existed written in his own hand? Where are the books\nannotated or even scratched by his pen, from which he drew the\nsubjects and sometimes the substance of his dramas? What vandalism\ndestroyed the first, or dispersed the second of these valuable\ntreasures? How is it that we know nothing of his method of\ncomposition? Was it in solitude and sacred seclusion, self-imprisoned\nfor hours beyond the reach of the turmoil of the street or the\ndomestic sounds of home? Or were his unrivalled works produced in\nscraps of time and fugitive moments, even perhaps in the waiting-room\nof the theatre, or the brawling or jovial sounds of the tavern?\n\nWas he silent, thoughtful, while his fertile brain was seething and\nheaving in the fermentation of his glorious conceptions; so that men\nshould have said--\"Hush! Shakespeare is at work with some new and\nmighty imaginings!\" or wore he always that light and careless spirit\nwhich often belongs to the spontaneous facility of genius; so that his\ncomrades may have wondered when, and where, and how his grave\ncharacters, his solemn scenes, his fearful catastrophes, and his\nsublime maxims of original wisdom, were conceived, planned, matured,\nand finally written down, to rule for ever the world of letters?\nAlmost the only fact connected with his literary life which has come\ndown to us is one which has been recorded, perhaps with jealousy,\ncertainly with ill-temper, by his friend Ben Jonson--that he wrote\nwith overhaste, and hardly ever erased a line, though it would have\nbeen better had he done so with many.\n\nThis almost total absence of all external information, this drying-up\nof the ordinary channels of personal history, forces us to seek for\nthe character and the very life of Shakespeare in his own works. But\nhow difficult, in analyzing the complex constitution of such a man's\nprinciples, motives, passions, and affections, to discriminate between\nwhat he has drawn for himself, and what he has created by the force of\nhis imagination. Dealing habitually with fictions, sometimes in their\nnoblest, sometimes in their vilest forms--here gross and even savage,\nthere refined and sometimes ethereal, how shall we discover what\nportions of them were copied from the glass which he held before\nhimself, what from the magic mirrors across which flitted illusive or\nfanciful imagery? The work seems hopeless. It is not like that of the\nprinter, who, from a chaotic heap of seemingly unmeaning lead, draws\nout letter after letter, and so disposes them that they shall make\nsenseful and even brilliant lines. It is more like the hopeless labor\nof one who, from the fragments of a tesselated pavement, should try to\ndraw the elegant and exquisitely tinted figure which once it bore.\n\nThis difficulty of appreciating, and still more of delineating, the\ncharacter of our great poet, makes him, without perhaps an exception,\nthe most difficult literary theme in English letters.\n\nHow to reduce the subject to a lecture seems indeed a literal paradox.\nBut when to this difficulty is added that of an impossible compression\ninto narrow limits of the widest and vastest compass ever embraced by\nany one man's genius, it must appear an excess of rashness in any-one\nto presume that he can do justice to the subject on which I am\naddressing you.\n\nIt seems, therefore, hardly wonderful that even the last year,\ndedicated naturally to the tercentenary commemoration of William\nShakespeare, should have passed over without any public eulogy of his\ngreatness in this our metropolis. It seemed, indeed, as if the\nmagnitude of that one man's genius was too oppressive for this\ngeneration. It was not, I believe, an undervaluing {551} of his merits\nwhich produced the frustration of efforts, and the disappointment of\nexpectations, that seemed to put to rout and confusion, or rather to\nparalyze, the exertions so strenuously commenced to mark the year as a\ngreat epoch in England's literary history. I believe, on the contrary,\nthat the dimensions of Shakespeare had grown so immeasurably in the\nestimation of his fellow-countrymen, that the proportions of his\ngenius to all that had followed him, and all that surround us, had\ngrown so enormously in the judgment and feeling of the country, from\nthe nobleman to the workman, that the genius of the man oppressed us,\nand made us feel that all our multiplied resources of art and speech\nwere unequal to his worthy commemoration. No plan proposed for this\npurpose seemed adequate to attain it. Nothing solid and permanent that\ncould either come up to his merits or to our aspirations seemed to be\nwithin the grasp either of the arts or of the wealth of our country.\nThe year has passed away, and Shakespeare remains without any\nmonument, except that which, by his wonderful writings, he has raised\nfor himself. Even the research after a site fit for the erection of a\nmonument to him, in the city of squares, of gardens, and of parks,\nseemed only to work perplexity and hopelessness.\n\nPresumptuous as it may appear, the claim to connect myself with that\nexpired and extinct movement is my only apology for my appearing\nbefore you. If, a year after its time, I take upon myself the eulogy\nof Shakespeare, if I appear to come forward as with a funeral oration,\nto give him, in a manner, posthumous glory, it is because my work has\ndropped out of its place, and not because I have inopportunely\nmisplaced it. In the course of the last year, it was proposed to me,\nboth directly and indirectly, to deliver a lecture on Shakespeare. I\nwas bold enough to yield my assent, and thus felt that I had\ncontracted an obligation to the memory of the bard, as well as to\nthose who thought that my sharing what was done for his honor would\npossess any value. A task undertaken becomes a duty unfulfilled. When,\ntherefore, it was proposed to me to perform my portion of the homage\nwhich I considered due to him, though it was to be a month too late, I\nfelt it would be cowardice to shrink from its performance.\n\nFor in truth the undertaking required some courage; and to retire\nbefore its difficulties might be stigmatized as a dastardly timidity.\nIt is a work of courage at any time and in any place to undertake a\nlecture upon Shakespeare, more in fact than to venture on the delivery\nof a series. The latter gives scope for the thousand things which one\nwould wish to say--it affords ample space for apposite\nillustration--and it enables one to enrich the subject with the\ninnumerable and inimitable beauties that are flung like gems or\nflowers over every page of his magnificent works. But in the midst of\npublic, or rather universal, celebration of a national and secular\nfestival in his honor, in the presence probably of the most finished\nliterary characters in this highly-educated country, still more\ncertainly before numbers of those whom the nation acknowledges as\ndeeply read in the works of our poet as the most accomplished critic\nof any age has been in the writings of the classics--men who have\nintroduced into our literature a class-name--that of \"Shakespearian\nscholars\"--to have ventured to speak on this great theme might seem to\nhave required, not courage, but temerity. Why, it might have been\njustly asked, do none of those who have consumed their lives in the\nstudy of him, not page by page, but line by line, who have pressed his\nsweet fruits between their lips till they have absorbed all their\nlusciousness, who have made his words their study, his thoughts their\nmeditation,--why does not one at least among them stand forward now,\nand leave for posterity the record of his matured observation? Perhaps\nI may assign the reason which I have before, that they {552} know,\ntoo, the unapproachable granduer of the theme, and the rare powers\nwhich are required to grasp and to hold it.\n\nBe it so; but at any rate, if in the presence of others so much more\ncapable it would have been rash to speak, to express one's thoughts,\nwhen there is no competition, may be pardonable at least.\n\nAnd yet, when everybody else is silent, it may be very naturally\nasked, Have I a single claim to put forward upon your attention and\nindulgence? I think I may have _one_; though I fear that when I\nmention it, it may be considered either a paradox or a refutation of\nmy pretensions. My claim, then, to be heard and borne with is\nthis--that I have never in my life seen Shakespeare acted; I have\nnever heard his eloquent speeches declaimed by gifted performers; I\nhave not listened to his noble poetry as uttered by the kings or\nqueens of tragedy; I have not witnessed his grand, richly-concerted\nscenes endowed with life by the graceful gestures, the classical\nattitudes, the contrasting emotions, and the pointed emphasis of those\nwho in modern times may be considered to have even added to that which\nhis genius produced; I know nothing of the original and striking\nreadings or renderings of particular passages by masters of mimic art;\nI know him only on his flat page, as he is represented in immovable,\nfeatureless, unemotional type.\n\nNor am I acquainted with him surrounded, perhaps sometimes sustained,\nbut, at any rate, worthily adorned and enhanced in accessory beauty,\nby the magic illusion of scenic decorations, the splendid pageantry\nwhich he simply hints at, but which, I believe, has been now realized\nto its most ideal exactness and richness--banquets, tournaments, and\nbattles, with the almost deceptive accuracy of costume and of\narchitecture. When I hear of all these additional ornaments hung\naround his noble works, the impression which they make upon my mind\ncreates a deeper sense of amazement and admiration, how dramas written\nfor the \"Globe\" Theatre, wretchedly lighted, incapable of grandeur\neven from want of space, and without those mechanical and artistical\nresources which belong to a later age, should be capable of bearing\nall this additional weight of lustre and magnificence without its\nbeing necessary to alter a word, still less a passage, from their\noriginal delivery.  [Footnote 104 ] This exhibits the nicely-balanced\npoint of excellence which is equally poised between simplicity and\ngorgeousness; which can retain its power and beauty, whether stript to\nits barest form or loaded with exuberant appurtenances.\n\n  [Footnote 104: The chorus which serves as a prologue to \"King Henry\n  V.,\" shows how Shakespeare's own mind keenly felt the deficiencies\n  of his time, and almost anticipatingly wrote for the effects which a\n  future age might supply:\n\n          \"But pardon, gentles all,\n    This flat unraised spirit that hath dar'd,\n    On this unworthy scaffold, to bring forth\n    So great an object. Can this cock-pit hold\n    The vasty fields of France? Or may we cram\n    Within this wooden O the very casques\n    That did affright the air at Agincourt.\n    . . . .\n    Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts;\n    Into a thousand parts divide one man,\n    And make imaginary puissance:\n    Think, when we talk of horses, that ye see them\n    Printing their proud hoofs i' the receiving earth;\n    For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings.\"]\n\nAfter having said thus much of my own probably unenvied position, I\nthink I shall not be wrong in assuming that none of Shakespeare's\nenthusiastic admirers, one of whom I profess myself to be, and that\nfew of my audience, are in this exceptional position. They will\nprobably consider this a disadvantage on my side; and to some extent I\nmust acknowledge it--for Shakespeare wrote to be acted, and not to be\nread.\n\nBut, on the other hand, is it not something to have approached this\nwonderful man, and to have communed with him in silence and in\nsolitude, face to face, alone with him alone; to have read and studied\nand meditated on him in early youth, without gloss or commentary, or\npreface or glossary? For such was my good or evil fortune; not during\nthe still hours of night, but during that stiller portion of an\nItalian {553} afternoon, when silence is deeper than in the night,\nunder a bright and sultry sun when all are at rest, all around you\nhushed to the very footsteps in a well-peopled house, except the\nunquelled murmuring of a fountain beneath orange trees, which mingled\nthus the most delicate of fragrance with the most soothing of sounds,\nboth stealing together through the half-closed windows of wide and\nlofty corridors. Is there not more of that reverence and that relish\nwhich constitute the classical taste to be derived from the\nconcentration of thought and feelings which the perusal of the simple\nunmarred and unoverlaid text produces; when you can ponder on a verse,\ncan linger over a word, can repeat mentally and even orally with your\nown deliberation and your own emphasis, whenever dignity, beauty, or\nwisdom invite you to pause, or compel you to ruminate?\n\nIn fact, were you desired to give your judgment on the refreshing\nwater of a pure fountain, you would not care to taste it from a\nrichly-jewelled and delicately-chased cup; you would not consent to\nhave it mingled with the choicest wine, nor flavored by a single drop\nof the most exquisite essence; you would not have it chilled with ice,\nor gently attempered by warmth. No, you would choose the most\ntransparent crystal vessel, however homely; you would fill at the very\ncleft of the rock from which it bubbles fresh and bright, and drink it\nyet sparkling, and beading with its own air-pearls the walls of the\ngoblet. Nay, is not an opposite course that which the poet himself\ncensures as \"wasteful, ridiculous excess?\"\n\n  \"To gild refined gold, to paint the lily;\n  To throw a perfume on the violet.\n  . . . .\n  Or with a taper light\n  To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to varnish.\"\n            (_\"King John\" act iv., scene 2._)\n\nYou will easily understand, from long and almost apologetic preamble,\nin the first place, that I take it for granted that I am addressing an\naudience which is not assembled to receive elementary or new\ninformation concerning England's greatest poet. On the contrary, I\nbelieve myself to stand before many who are able to judge, rather than\nmerely accept, my opinions, and in the presence of an assembly\nexclusively composed of his admirers, thoroughly conversant with his\nworks. A further consequence is this, that my lecture will not consist\nof extracts--still less of recitations of any of those beautiful\npassages which occur in every play of Shakespeare. The most celebrated\nof these are present to the mind of every English scholar, from his\nschool-boy days to his maturer studies.\n\n\n\nII.\n\nIt would be superfluous for a lecturer on Shakespeare to put to\nhimself the question, What place do you intend to give to the subject\nof your discourse in the literature of England or of Europe? Whatever\ndifference of opinion may exist elsewhere, I believe that in this\ncountry only one answer will be given. Among our native writers no one\nquestions that Shakespeare is supremely pre-eminent, and most of us\nwill probably assign him as lofty a position in the whole range of\nmodern European literature. Perhaps no other nation possesses among\nits writers any one name to which there is no rival claim, nor even an\napproximation of equality, to make a balance against it. Were we to\nimagine in England a Walhalla erected to contain the effigies of great\nmen, and were one especial hall to contain those of our most eminent\ndramatists, it must needs be so constructed as to have one central\nniche. Were a similar structure prepared in France, it would be\nnatural to place in equal prominence at least two figures, or, in\nclassical language, two different muses of Tragedy and of Comedy would\nhave to be separately represented. But in England, assign what place\nwe may to those who have excelled in either branch in mimic art, {554}\nthe highest excellence in both would be found centered in one man; and\nfrom him on either side would have to range the successful cultivators\nof the drama.\n\nBut this claim to so undisputed an elevation does not rest upon his\nmerits only in this field of our literature. Shakespeare has\nestablished his claim to the noblest position in English literature on\na wider and more solid basis than the mere composition of skilful\nplays could deserve. As the great master of our language, as almost\nits regenerator, quite its refiner--as the author whose use of a word\nstamps it with the mark of purest English coinage--whose employment\nof a phrase makes it household and proverbial--whose sententious\nsayings, flowing without effort from his mind, seem almost sacred, and\nare quoted as axioms or maxims indisputable--as the orator whose\nspeeches, not only apt, but natural to the lips from which they issue,\nare more eloquent than the discourses of senators or finished public\nspeakers--as the poet whose notes are richer, more wondrously varied\nthan those of the greatest professed bards--as the writer who has run\nthrough the most varied ways and to the greatest extent through every\ndepartment of literature and learning, through the history of many\nnations, their domestic manners, their characteristics, and even their\npersonal distinctives, and who seems to have visited every part of\nnature, to have intuitively studied the heavens and the earth--as the\nman, in fine, who has shown himself supreme in so many things,\nsuperiority in any one of which gains reputation in life and glory\nafter death, he is preeminent above all, and beyond the reach of envy\nor jealousy.\n\nAnd if no other nation can show us another man whose head rises above\nall their other men of letters, as Shakespeare does over ours, they\ncannot pretend, by the accumulation of separated excellences, to put\nin competition with him a type rather than a realization of possible\nworth.\n\nUntil, therefore, some other writer can be produced, no matter from\nwhat nation, who unites in himself personally these gifts of our bard\nin an equally sublime degree, his stature overtops them all, wherever\nborn and however celebrated.\n\nThe question, however, may be raised, Is he so securely placed upon\nhis pedestal that a rival may not one day thrust him from it?--is he so\nsecure upon his throne that a rebel may not usurp it? To these\ninterrogations I answer unhesitatingly, Yes.\n\nIn the first place, there have only been two poets in the world before\nShakespeare who have attained the same position with him. Each came at\nthe moment which closed the volume of the period past and opened that\nof a new epoch. Of what preceded Homer we can know but little; the\nsongs by bards or rhapsodists had, no doubt, preceded him, and\nprepared the way for the first and greatest epic. This, it is\nacknowledged, has never been surpassed; it became the standard of\nlanguage, the steadfast rule of versification, and the model of\npoetical composition. His supremacy, once attained, was shaken by no\ncompetition; it was as well assured after a hundred years as it has\nbeen by thousands. Dante again stood between the remnants of the old\nRoman civilization and the construction of a new and Christian system\nof arts and letters. He, too, consolidated the floating fragments of\nan indefinite language, and with them built and thence himself fitted\nand adorned that stately vessel which bears him through all the\nregions of life and of death, of glory, of trial, and of perdition.\n\nA word found in Dante is classical to the Italian ear; a form, however\nstrange in grammar, traced to him, is considered justifiable if used\nby any modern sonneteer.  [Footnote 105] He holds the place in his own\ncountry which Shakespeare does in ours; not only is his _terza rima_\nconsidered inimitable, {555} but the concentration of brilliant\nimagery in our words, the flashes of his great thoughts and the\ncopious variety of his learning, marvellous in his age, make his\nvolume be to this day the delight of every refined intelligence and\nevery polished mind in Italy.\n\n  [Footnote 105: Any one acquainted with Mastrofini's \"Dictionary of\n  Italian Verbs\" will understand this.]\n\nAnd he, too, like Homer, notwithstanding the magnificent poets who\nsucceeded him, has never for a moment lost that fascination which he\nalone exercises over the domain of Italian poetry. He was as much its\nruler in his own age as he is in the present.\n\nIn like manner, the two centuries and more which have elapsed since\nShakespeare's death have as completely confirmed him in his legitimate\ncommand as the same period did his two only real predecessors. No one\ncan possibly either be placed in a similar position or come up to his\ngreat qualities, except at the expense of the destruction of our\npresent civilization, the annihilation of its past traditions, the\nresolution of our language into jargon, and its regeneration, by a new\nbirth, into something \"more rich and strange\" than the powerful idiom\nwhich so splendidly combines the Saxon and the Norman elements. Should\nsuch a devastation and reconstruction take place, whether they come\nfrom New Zealand or from Siberia, then there may spring up the poet of\nthat time and condition who may be the fourth in that great series of\nunrivalled bards, but will no more interfere with his predecessor's\nrights than Dante or Shakespeare does with those of Homer.\n\nBut further, we may truly say that the legislator of a people can be\nbut one, and, as such, can have no rival beyond his own shores. Solon,\nLycurgus, and Numa are the only three men in profane history who have\nreached the dignity of this singular title. The first seized on the\ncharacter of the bland and polished Athenians, and framed his code in\nsuch harmony with it, that no subsequent laws, even in the periods of\nmost corrupt relaxation, could efface their primitive stamp, cease to\nmake the republic proud of their lawgiver's name.\n\nLycurgus understood the stern and almost savage hardihood and\nsimplicity of the Spartan disposition, and perpetuated it and\nregulated it by his harsh and unfeeling system, of which,\nnotwithstanding, the Lacedaemonian was proud. And so Numa Pompilius\ncomprehended the readiness of the infant republic, sprung from so\ndoubtful and discreditable a parentage, to discover a noble descent,\nand connect its birth and education with gods and heroes; took hold of\nthis weakness for the sanction of his legislation; and feigned his\nconferences with the nymph Egeria as the sources of his wisdom. No;\nwhatever may become of kings, legislators are never dethroned.\n\nAnd so is Shakespeare the unquestioned legislator of modern literary\nart. No one will contend that, without certain detriment, it would be\npossible for a modern writer, especially of dramatic fiction, to go\nback beyond him and endeavor to establish a pre-Shakespearian school\nof English literature, as we have the pre-Raphaelite in art. Struggle\nand writhe as any genius may--even if endowed with giant strength\nit--will be but as the battle of the Titans against Jove. Huge rocks\nwill be rolled down upon him, and the lightning from Shakespeare's\nhand will assuredly tear his laurels, if it do not strike his head.\nByron could not appreciate the dramatic genius of Shakespeare; perhaps\nhis sympathies ranged more freely among corsairs and Suliotes than\namong purer and nobler spirits. Certainly he speaks of him with a\nsuperciliousness which betrays his inability fully to comprehend him.\n[Footnote 106] And yet, would \"Manfred\" have existed if the romantic\ndrama and the spirit-agency of Shakespeare {556} had not given it life\nand rule? So in other nations. I shall probably quote to you the\nsentiments of foreign writers of highest eminence concerning\nShakespeare, not as authorities, but as illustrations of what I may\nsay.\n\n  [Footnote 106: Lord Byron thus writes to Mr. Murray, July 14, 1821:\n  \"I trust that Sardanapalus will not be mistaken for a political play\n  . . . . You will find all this very unlike Shakespeare; and so much\n  the better, in one sense, for I look upon him to be the worst of\n  models, though the most extraordinary of writers.\"--_Moore's Life of\n  Lord Byron._]\n\nSingularly enough, the greatest of German modern writers has nowhere\nrecorded a full and deliberate opinion on our poet. But who can doubt\nthat \"Goetz von Berlichingen with the Iron Hand,\" and even the grand\nand tender \"Faust,\" and no less Schiller's \"Wallenstein,\" belong to\nthe family of Shakespeare, are remotely offsprings of his genius, and\nhave to be placed as tributary garlands round his pedestal. To imagine\nShakespeare even in intention removed from his sovereignty would be a\ntreachery parallel only to that of Lear dethroned by his own\ndaughters.\n\nBut still more may we say that, in all such positions as that which we\nhave assigned to Shakespeare, there has always been a culminating\npoint to which succeeds decline--if not downfall. It is so in art.\nImmediately after the death of Raphael, and the dispersion of his\nschool, art took a downward direction, and has never risen again to\nthe same height. And while he marks the highest elevation ever reached\nin the arts of Europe, a similar observation will apply to their\nparticular schools. Leonardo and Luini in Lombardy; the Carracci in\nBologna; Fra Angelico in Umbria; Garofalo in Ferrara, not only take\nthe place of chiefs in their respective districts, but mark the period\nfrom which degeneracy has to date. And so surely is it in our case,\nwhatever may have been the course of literature which led up to\nShakespeare, without pronouncing judgment on Spenser, or \"rare Ben\nJonson,\" it is certain that after him, although England has possessed\ngreat poets, there stands not one forward among them as Shakespeare's\ncompetitor. Milton, and Dryden, and Addison, and Rowe have given us\nspecimens of high dramatic writing of no mean quality; others as well,\nand even these have written much and nobly, in lofty as in familiar\nverse; yet not one has the public judgment of the nation placed on a\nlevel with him. The intermediate space from them to our own times has\nleft only the traces of a weak and enervated school. It would be\nunbecoming to speak disparagingly of the poets of the present age; but\nno one, I believe, has ventured to consider them as superior to the\nnoble spirits of our Augustan age. The easy descent from the loftiest\neminence is not easily reclimbed.\n\nSurely, then, we may consider Shakespeare, as an ancient mythologist\nwould have done, as \"enskied\" among \"the invulnerable clouds,\" where\nno shaft, even of envy, can assail him. From this elevation we may\nsafely predict that he never can be plucked.\n\n\nIII.\n\nThe next point which seems to claim attention is the very root of all\nthat I have said or shall have still to say. To what does Shakespeare\nowe this supremacy, or whence flow all the extraordinary qualities\nwhich we attribute to him? You are all prepared with the answer in one\nsingle word his GENIUS.\n\nThe genius of Shakespeare is our familiar thought and ready expression\nwhen we study him, and when we characterize him. Nevertheless, simple\nand intelligible as is the word, it is extremely difficult to analyze\nor to define it. Yet everything that is great and beautiful in his\nwritings seems to require an explanation of the cause to which it owes\nits origin.\n\nOne great characteristic of genius, easily and universally admitted,\nis, that it is a gift, and not an acquisition. It belongs inherently\nto the person possessing it; it cannot be transmitted by heritage; it\ncannot be infused by parental affection; it cannot be bestowed by\nearliest care; neither can it be communicated by the most finished\n{557} culture or the most studied education. It must be congenital, or\nrather inborn to its possessor. It is as much a living, a natural\npower, as is reason to every man. As surely as the very first germ of\nthe plant contains in itself the faculty of one day evolving from\nitself leaves, flowers, and fruit, so does genius hold, however\nhidden, however unseen, the power to open, to bring forth, and to\nmature what other men cannot do, but what to it is instinctive and\nalmost spontaneous. It may begin to manifest itself with the very dawn\nof reason; it may remain asleep for years, till a spark, perhaps\naccidentally, kindles up into a sudden and irrepressible splendor that\nunseen intellectual fuel which has been almost unknown to its\nunambitious owner.\n\nIn our own minds we easily distinguish between the highest abilities\nor the most rare attainments, when the fruit of education and of\napplication, and what we habitually distinguish as the manifestation\nof genius. But still we do not find it so easy to reduce to words this\nmental distinction; the one, after all, however gracefully and however\nbrightly, walks upon the earth, adorning it by the good or fair things\nwhich it scatters on its way; the other has wings, and flies above the\nsurface--it is like the aurora of Homer or of Thorwaldsen, which, as\nit flies above the plane of mortal actions, sheds down its flowers\nalong its brilliant path upon those worthy to gaze upward toward it.\nWe connect in our minds with genius the ideas of flashing splendor and\neccentric movement. It is an intellectual meteor, the laws of which\ncannot be defined or reduced to any given theory. We regard it with a\ncertain awe, and leave it to soar or to droop, to shine or disappear,\nto dash irregularly first in one direction and then in another; no one\ndare curb it or direct it; but all feel sure that its course, however\ninexplicable, is subject to higher and controlling rule. But in order\nto define more closely what we in reality understand by genius, it may\nbe well to consider its action in divided and more restricted spheres\nof activity. For although we habitually attribute this singular\nquality to many, and often but on light grounds, it is seldom that we\ndo so seriously and deliberately without some qualifying epithet. We\nspeak of a military genius, of a mechanical genius, of a poetical\ngenius, of a musical genius, or of an artistic genius. All these\nexpressions contain a restrictive clause. We do not understand when we\nuse them that the person to whom they were attributed possessed any\npower beyond the limits of a particular sphere. We do not mean by the\nuse of the word genius that the soldier knew anything of poetry, or\nthe printer of mechanism. We understand that each in his own\nprofession or stage of excellence possessed a complete elevation over\nthe bulk of those who followed the same pursuits; a superiority so\nvisible, so acknowledged, and so clearly individual, that no one else\nconsidered it inferiority, still less felt shame at not being able to\nrise to the same level. They gather round them acknowledged disciples\nand admirers, who rather glory to have been guided by their teaching,\nand formed on their example.\n\nAnd in what consisted that complete though limited excellence? If I\nmight venture to express a judgment, I would say that genius in these\ndifferent courses of science or art may be defined a natural sympathy\nwith all that relates to each of them, with the power of giving full\nand certain execution to the mental conception. The military genius is\none who, either untrained by studious preparation, or else starting\nout of the lines in which many were ranged level with himself, seizes\nthe staff of command, and receives the homage of comrades and\nsuperiors. While others have been plodding through the long drill of\ntheory and of practice, he is found to have discovered a new system of\nthe science, bold, irregular, but successful. But to possess this\ngenius, there must be a universal sympathy with all that relates {558}\nto its own peculiar province. The military genius of which we are\nspeaking must embrace or acquire that which relates to the soldier's\nlife and duty, from the _dress_ of a single soldier, from his duties\nin the sentry-box, or on the picquet, to the practice of the regiment\nand the evolutions of a field-day; from the complete command of tens\nof thousands on the battle-field, with an eagle's eye and a lion's\nheart, to the scientific planning, on the chessboard of an empire, of\nthe campaign, which he meditates, move by move and check by check,\ntill the final victory is crowned in the capital city. He who has not\ngiven proof of his being equal to all this, has not made good his\nclaim to military genius. But such a one will find, wherever he puts\nhis hand, generals and marshals, each able to command a host, or to\ntake his place in his roughest of enterprises.\n\nI need not pass through other forms of genius to reach similar\nresults; Stephenson, from the labor of the mine, creating that system\nof mechanical motion, which may be said to have subdued the world, and\nbound the earth in iron links; Mozart giving concerts at the age of\nseven that astonished gray-headed musicians; Raphael, before the\nordinary age of finished pupilage, master of every known detail in art\nof oil or fresco, drawing, expression, and grand composition; Giotto,\ncaught in the field as a young shepherd by Cimabue, drawing his sheep\nupon a stone, and soon becoming the master of modern art.  [Footnote\n107] These and many others repeat to us what I have said of the\nmilitary genius--an inborn capacity, comprehensive and complete, with\nthe power of fully carrying out the suggestions of mind. Had there\nbeen a single portion of their pursuits in which they did not excel,\nif the result of their work had not exhibited the happy union and\nconcord of the many qualities requisite for its perfection, they never\nwould have attained the attribution of genius.\n\n  [Footnote 107: The early manifestation of artistic power is so\n  frequent and well known, that it would be superfluous to enumerate\n  other instances. The expression _\"anch' io son pittore\"_ is become\n  proverbial. One of the Carracci, on being translated from an\n  inferior profession to the family studio, was found at once to\n  possess the pictorial skill of his race. At the present, Mintropp at\n  Duesseldorf, and Ackermann at Berlin, are both instances of very high\n  artists, the one in drawing, the other in sculpture, both originally\n  shepherds.]\n\nIf this sympathy with one branch of higher pursuits passes beyond it\nand associates with it a similar facility of acquisition and execution\nin some other and distinct art or science, it is clear that the claim\nto genius is higher and more extensive. Raphael was before the world a\npainter, but he could scarcely have been so without embracing every\nother department of art. Before the science of perspective was matured\nor popularly known, when, in consequence, defects are to be found in\nthe disposition of figures, and in the adjustment of aerial distances,\n[Footnote 108] his architecture shows an instinctive familiarity with\nits rules and proportions; a proof that he possessed an architectural\neye. And consequently the one statue which he is supposed to have\ncarved, and the one palace which he is said to have built, show how\neasily he could have undertaken and executed beautiful works in either\nof those two classes of art. In Orcagna and Michelangelo we have the\nthree branches of art supremely united; and the second of these adds\npoetry and literature to his artistic excellence. In like manner,\nLeonardo has left proof of most varied and accurate mechanical as well\nas literary genius.\n\n  [Footnote 108: See Mr. Lloyd's article on \"Raphael's School of\n  Athens,\" in Mr. Woodward's _Fine Art Quarterly Review_, January,\n  1864, p. 67.]\n\nIt is evident, however, that while a genius has its point of\nconcentration, every remove from this, though wider, will be fainter\nand less complete. We may describe it as Shakespeare himself describes\nglory, and say:\n\n  \"Genius is like a circle in the water,\n  Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself,\n  Till, by broad spreading, it disperse to naught.\"\n        (_\"Henry VI.,\" act i., scene 3._)\n\nThe sympathies with more remote subjects and pursuits will be rather\nthe means of illustration, adornment, and {559} pleasing variety, than\nfor the essential requirements of the principal aim. But though less\nminute in their application, in the hand of genius they will be\nwonderfully accurate and apt.\n\n\n\nIV.\n\nAll that I have been saying is applicable in the most complete and\nmarvellous way to Shakespeare's genius. His sympathies are universal,\nperfect in their own immediate use, infinitely varied, and strikingly\nbeautiful, when they reach remoter objects. And hence, though at first\nsight he might be classified among those who have displayed a literary\ngenius, he stretches his mind and his feelings so beyond them on every\nside, that to him, almost, perhaps, beyond any other man, the simple\ndistinctive, without any qualification, belongs. No one need fear to\ncall Shakespeare simply a grand, a sublime genius.\n\nThe centre-point of his sympathies is clearly his dramatic art. From\nthis they expand, for many degrees, with scarce perceptible\ndiminution, till they lose themselves in far distant, and, to him,\nunexplored space. This nucleus of his genius has certainly never been\nequalled before or since. Its essence consists in what is the very\nsoul of the dramatic idea, the power to throw himself into the\nsituation, the circumstances, the nature, the acquired habits, the\nfeelings, true or fictitious, of every character which he introduces.\nThis forms, in fact, the most perfect of sympathies. We do not, of\ncourse, use the word in that more usual sense of harmony of affection,\nor consent of feeling. Shakespeare has sympathy as complete for\nShylock or Iago as he as for Arthur or King Lear. For a time he lives\nin the astute villain as in the innocent child; he works his entire\npower of thought into intricacies of the traitor's brain; he makes his\nheart beat in concord with the usurer's sanguinary spite, and then,\nlike some beautiful creature in the animal world, draws himself out of\nthe hateful evil, and is himself again; and able, even, often to hold\nhis own noble and gentle qualities as a mirror, or exhibit the\nloftiest, the most generous, and amiable examples of our nature. And\nthis is all done without study, and apparently without effort. His\ninfinitely varied characters come naturally into their places, never\nfor a moment lose their proprieties, their personality, and the exact\nflexibility which results from the necessary combination in every man\nof many qualities. From the beginning to the end each one is the same,\nyet reflecting in himself the lights and shadows which flit around\nhim.\n\nThis extraordinary versatility stands in striking contrast with the\ndramatic productions of other countries. The Greek tragedian is Greek\nthroughout--his subjects, his mythology, his sentences, play\nwonderfully indeed, but yet restrictedly, within a given sphere. And\nRome is but the imitator in all its literature of its great mistress\nand model.\n\n  \"Graiis eloquium, Gratis dedit ore rotundo, Musa loqui.\"\n\nEven through the French school, with the strict adhesion to the\nancient rule of the unities, seems to have descended the partiality\nfor what may be called the chastely classical subjects. Not so with\nShakespeare.\n\nWho, a stranger might ask, is the man, and where was he born, and\nwhere does he live, that not only his acts and scenes are placed in\nany age, or in any land, but that he can fill his stage with the very\nliving men of the time and place represented; make them move as easily\nas if he held them in strings; and make them speak not only with\ngeneral conformity to their common position, but with individual and\ndistinctive propriety, so that each is different from the rest? Did he\nlive in ancient Rome, strolling the Forum, or climbing the Capitol;\nhear ancient matrons converse with modest dignity; listen to\nconspirators among the columns of its porticos; mingle among senators\naround Pompey's {560} statue; or with plebeians crowding to hear\nBrutus or Anthony harangue? Was he one accustomed to idle in the\npiazza of St. Mark, or shoot his gondola under the Rialto? Or was he a\nknight or even archer in the fields of France or England during the\nperiod of the Plantagenets or Tudors, and witnessed and wrote down the\ngreat deeds of those times, and knew intimately and personally each\npuissant lord who distinguished himself by his valor, by his wisdom,\nor even by his crimes? Did he live in the courts of princes, perchance\nholding some office which enabled him to listen to the grave\nutterances of kings and their counsellors, or to the witty sayings of\ncourt jesters? Did he consort with banished princes, and partake of\ntheir sports or their sufferings? In fine, did he live in great\ncities, or in shepherds' cottages, or in fields and woods; and does he\ndate from John and live on to the eighth Henry--a thread connecting in\nhimself the different epochs of mediaeval England? One would almost\nsay so; or multiply one man into many, whose works have been united\nunder one man.\n\nThis ubiquity, if we may so call it, of Shakespeare's sympathies,\nconstitutes the unlimited extent and might of his dramatic genius. It\nwould be difficult to imagine where a boundary line could at length\nhave been drawn, beyond which nothing original, nothing new, and\nnothing beautiful, could be supposed to have come forth from his mind.\nWe are compelled to say that his genius was inexhaustible.\n\n\n\nV.\n\n\n\nThis rare and wonderful faculty becomes more interesting if we follow\nit into further details.\n\nI remember an anecdote of Garrick, who, in company with another\nperformer of some eminence, was walking in the country, and about to\nenter a village. \"Let us pass off,\" said the younger comedian to his\nmore distinguished companion, \"as two intoxicated fellows.\" They did\nso, apparently with perfect success, being saluted by the jeers and\nabuse of the inhabitants. When they came forth at the other end of the\nvillage, the younger performer asked Garrick how he had fulfilled his\npart. \"Very well,\" was the reply, \"except that you were not perfectly\ntipsy in your legs.\"\n\nNow, in Shakespeare there is no danger of a similar defect. Whatever\nhis character is intended to be it is carried out to its very\nextremities. Nothing is forgotten, nothing overlooked. Many of you, no\ndoubt, are aware that a controversy has long existed whether the\nmadness of Hamlet is intended by Shakespeare to be real or simulated.\nIf a dramatist wished to represent one of his persons as feigning\nmadness, that assumed condition would be naturally desired by the\nwriter to be as like as possible to the real affliction. If the other\npersons associated with him could at once discover that the madness\nwas put on, of course the entire action would be marred, and the\nobject for which the pretended madness was designed would be defeated\nby the discovery. How consummate must be the poet's art, who can have\nso skilfully described, to the minutest symptoms, the mental malady of\na great mind, as to leave it uncertain to the present day, even among\nlearned physicians versed in such maladies, whether Hamlet's madness\nwas real or assumed.\n\nThis controversy may be said to have been brought to a close by one of\nthe ablest among those in England who have every opportunity of\nstudying the almost innumerable shades through which alienation of\nmind can pass.  [Footnote 109] And so delicate are the changeful\ncharacteristics which Shakespeare describes, that Dr. Conolly\nconsiders that a twofold form of {561} disease is placed before us in\nthe Danish prince. He concludes that he was laboring under real\nmadness, yet able to put on a fictitious and artificial derangement\nfor the purposes which he kept in view. Passing through act by act and\nscene by scene, analyzing, with experienced eye, each new symptom as\nit occurs, dividing and anatomatizing, with the finest scalpel, every\nfibre of his brain, he exhibits, step by step, the transitionary\ncharacters of the natural disease in a mind naturally, and by\neducation, great and noble, but thrown off his pivot by the anguish of\nhis sufferings and the strain of aroused passion. And to this is\nsuperadded another and not genuine affection, which serves its turn\nwith that estranged mind when it suits it to act, more especially that\npart which the natural ailment did not suffice for. Now, Dr. Conolly\nconsiders these symptoms so accurately as well as minutely described,\nthat he throws out the conjecture that Shakespeare may have borrowed\nthe account of them from some unknown papers by his son-in-law, Dr.\nHall.\n\n  [Footnote 109: \"A Study of Hamlet,\" by John Conolly, M.D., London,\n  1863. In p. 52 the author quotes Mr. Coleridge and M. Killemain as\n  holding the opinion that Shakespeare has \"contrived to blend both\n  (feigned and real madness) in the extraordinary character of Hamlet;\n  and to join together the light of reason, the cunning of intentional\n  error, and the involuntary disorder of a soul.\"]\n\nBut let it be remembered that in those days mental phenomena were by\nno means accurately examined or generally known. There was but little\nattention paid to the peculiar forms of monomania, or to its\ntreatment, beyond restraint and often cruelty. The poor idiot was\nallowed, if harmless, to wander about the village or the country, to\ndrivel or gibber amidst the teasing or ill-natured treatment of boys\nor rustics. The poor maniac was chained or tied in some wretched\nout-house, at the mercy of some heartless guardian, with no protector\nbut the constable. Shakespeare could not be supposed, in the little\ntown of Stratford, nor indeed in London itself, to have had\nopportunities of studying the influence and the appearance of mental\nderangement of a high-minded and finely-cultivated prince. How then\ndid Shakespeare contrive to paint so highly-finished and yet so\ncomplex an image? Simply by the exercise of that strong sympathetic\nwill which enabled him to transport, or rather to transmute, himself\ninto another personality. While this character was strongly before him\nhe changed himself into a maniac; he felt intuitively what would be\nhis own thought, what his feelings, were he in that situation; he\nplayed with himself the part of the madman, with his own grand mind as\nthe basis of its action; he grasped on every side the imagery which he\nfelt would have come into his mind, beautiful even when dislorded,\nsublime even when it was grovelling, brilliant even when dulled, and\nclothed it in words of fire and of tenderness, with a varied rapidity\nwhich partakes of wildness and of sense. He needed not to look for a\nmodel out of himself, for it cost him no effort to change the angle of\nhis mirror and sketch his own countenance awry. It was but little for\nhim to pluck away the crown from reason and contemplate it dethroned.\n\nBefore taking leave of Dr. Conolly's most interesting monography, I\nwill allow myself to make only one remark. Having determined to\nrepresent Hamlet in this anomalous and perplexing condition, it was of\nthe utmost importance to the course and end of this sublime drama,\nthat one principal incident should be most decisively separated from\nHamlet's reverse of mind. Had it been possible to attribute the\nappearance of the Ghost, as the Queen, his mother, does attribute it\nin the fifth act, to the delusion of his bewildered phantasy, the\nwhole groundwork of the drama would have crumbled beneath its\nsuperincumbent weight. Had the spectre been seen by Hamlet, or by him\nfirst, we should have been perpetually troubled with the doubt whether\nor not it was the hallucination of a distracted, or the invention of a\ndeceitful brain. But Shakespeare felt the necessity of making this\napparition be held for a reality, and therefore he makes it the very\nfirst incident in his tragedy, antecedent to the slightest symptom\n{562} of either natural or affected derangement, and makes it first be\nseen by two witnesses together, and then conjointly by a third\nunbelieving and fearless witness. It is the testimony of these three\nwhich first brings to the knowledge of the incredulous prince this\nextraordinary occurrence. One may doubt whether any other writer has\never made a ghost appear successively to those whom we may call the\nwrong persons, before showing himself to the one whom alone he cared\nto visit. The extraordinary exigencies of Shakespeare's plot rendered\nnecessary this unusual fiction. And it serves, moreover, to give the\nonly color of justice to acts which otherwise must have appeared\nunqualified as mad freaks or frightful crimes.\n\nWhat Dr. Conolly has done for Hamlet and Ophelia, Dr. Bucknill had\npreviously performed on a more extensive scale. In his \"Psychology of\nShakespeare\"  [Footnote 110] he has minutely investigated the mental\ncondition of Macbeth, King Lear, Timon, and other characters. On\nHamlet he seems inclined to take a different view from Dr. Conolly;\ninasmuch as he considers the simulated madness the principal feature,\nand the natural unsoundness which it is impossible to overlook as\nsecondary. But this eminent physician, well known for his extensive\nstudies of insanity, bears similar testimony to the extraordinary\naccuracy of Shakespeare's delineations of mental diseases; the nicety\nwith which he traces their various steps in one individual, the\naccuracy with which he distinguishes these morbid affections in\ndifferent persons. He seems unable to account for the exact minuteness\nin any other way than by external observation. He acknowledges that\n\"indefinable possession of genius, call it spiritual tact or insight,\nor whatever term may suggest itself, by which the great lords of mind\nestimate all phases of mind with little aid from reflected light,\" as\nthe mental instrument through which Shakespeare looked upon others at\na distance or within reach of minute observation. Still he seems to\nthink that Shakespeare must have had many opportunities of observing\nmental phenomena. I own I am more inclined to think that the process\nby which the genius of Shakespeare reached this painful yet strange\naccuracy was rather that of introversion than of external observation.\nAt any rate, it is most interesting to see eminent physicians\nmaintaining by some means or other that Shakespeare arrived by some\nsort of intuition at the possession of a psychological or even medical\nknowledge, fully verified and proved to be exact by the researches two\ncenturies later of distinguished men in a science only recently\ndeveloped. Mrs. Jameson has well distinguished the different forms of\nmental aberration in Shakespeare's characters, when she says that\n\"Constance is frantic, Lear is mad, Ophelia is insane.\"   [Footnote\n111]\n\n  [Footnote 110: Pages 58 and 100.]\n\n  [Footnote 111: \"Characteristics of Women.\" New York 1833, p. 142.]\n\n\nVI.\n\nThis last quotation may serve to introduce a further and a more\ndelicate test of Shakespeare's insight into character. That a man\nshould be able to throw himself into a variety of mind and characters\namong his fellow-men, may be not unreasonably expected. He has\nnaturally a community of feelings, of passions, of temptations, and of\nmotives with them. He can understand what is courage, what ambition,\nwhat strength or feebleness of mind. Inward observation and matured\nexperience help much to guide him to a conception and delineation of\nthe character of his fellow-men. But of the stronger emotions, the\nwilder passions, the subdued gentleness and tenderness, the heroic\nendurance, the meek bearing, and the saintly patience of the woman, he\ncan have had no experience. Looking into himself for a reflection, he\nwill probably find a blank.\n\n{563}\n\nIt has often been said that in his female characters Shakespeare is\nnot equal to himself. The work to which I have just alluded meets, I\nthink completely, this objection, which, I believe, even Schlegel\nraises. It required a lady, with mind highly cultivated, with the\nnicest powers of discrimination, and with happiness of expression, to\nvindicate at once Shakespeare and her sex. The difficulty of this task\ncan hardly be appreciated without the study of its performance. Its\ngreat difficulty consists in the almost family resemblance of the\ndifferent portraits which make up Shakespeare's female gallery. There\nis scarcely any room for events, even for incident, still less for\nactions, say for bold and unfeminine deeds. Several of the heroines of\nShakespeare are subjected to similar persecutions, and almost the same\ntrials. In almost every one the affections and their expression have\nalone to interest us. From Miranda, the desert-nurtured child in the\nsimplicity of untempted innocence, to Isabella in her cloistered\nvirtue, or Hermione in her unyielding fortitude--there are such\nshades, such varying yet delicate tints, that not two of these\nnumerous conceptions can be said to resemble another. And whence did\nShakespeare derive his models? Some are lofty queens, others most\nnoble ladies, some foreigners, some native; different types in mind\nand heart, as in the lineament or complexion. Where did he find them?\nWhere did he meet them? In the cottages of Stratford, or in the\npurlieus of Blackfriars? Among the ladies of the court, or in the\naudience in his pit? No one can say--no one need say. They were the\nformations of his own quickened and fertile brain, which required but\none stroke, one line, to sketch him a portrait to which he would give\nimmortality. Far more difficult was this success, and not less\ncompletely was it achieved, in that character which medical writers\nseem hardly to believe could be but a conception. We may compare the\nmind of Shakespeare to a diamond pellucid, bright, and untinted, cut\ninto countless polished facets, which, in constant movement, at every\nsmallest change of direction or of angle caught a new reflection, so\nthat not one of its brilliant mirrors could be for a moment idle, but\nby a power beyond its control was ever busy with the reflection of\ninnumerable images, either distinct or running into one another, or\nrepeated each so clearly as to allow him, when he chose, to fix it in\nhis memory.\n\n\n\nVII.\n\nWe may safely conclude that, in whatever constitutes the dramatic art\nin its strictest sense, Shakespeare possessed matchless sympathies\nwith all its attributes. The next and most essential quality required\nfor true genius is the power to give outward life to the inward\nconception. Without this the poet is dumb. He may be a \"mute,\ninglorious Milton;\" he cannot be a speaking, noble Shakespeare. I\nshould think that I was almost insulting such an audience, were I to\ndescant upon Shakespeare's position among the bards and writers of\nEngland, and of the modern world. Upon this point there can scarcely\nbe a dissentient opinion. His language is the purest and best, his\nverses the most flowing and rich; and as for his sentiments, it would\nbe difficult without the command of his own language to characterize\nthem. No other writer has ever given such periods of sententious\nwisdom.\n\n. . . . .\n\nI have spoken of genius as a gift to an individual man. I will\nconclude by the reflection that that man becomes himself a gift; a\ngift to his nation; a gift to his age; a gift to the world of all\ntimes. That same Providence which bestows greatness, majesty,\nabundance, and grace, no less presents, from time to time, to a people\nor a race, these few transcendent men who mark for it {564} periods no\nless decisively, though more nobly, than victories or conquests. On\nEngland that supreme power has lavished the choicest blessings of this\nworldly life; it has made it vast in dominion, matchless in strength;\nit has made it the arbiter of the earth, and mistress of the sea; it\nhas made it able to stretch its arm for war to the savage antipodes,\nand, if it chose, its hand for peace to the utter civilized west; it\nhas brought the produce of north and south to its feet with skill and\npower, to transform and to refashion in forms graceful or useful, to\nsend them back, almost as new creations, to its very source. Industry\nhas clothed its most barren plains with luxuriant crops, and with\nTitan boldness hollowed its sternest rocks, to plunder them of their\never-hidden treasures. Its gigantic strength seems but to play with\nevery work of venturesome enterprise, till its cities seem to the\nstranger to overflow with riches, and its country to be overspread\nwith exuberant prosperity.\n\nWell, these are great and magnificent favors of an over-ruling, most\nbenignant Power; and yet there is a boast which belongs to our country\nthat may seem to be overlooked. Yet it is a double gift that that same\ncreating and directing rule has made this country the birthplace and\nthe seat of the two men who, within a short period, were made the\nrulers each of a great and separate intellectual dominion, never to be\ndeposed, never to be rivalled, never to be envied. To Newton was given\nthe sway over the science of the civilized world; to Shakespeare the\nsovereignty over its literature.\n\nThe one stands before us passionless and grave, embracing in his\nintellectual grandeur every portion of the universe, from the stars,\nto him invisible, to the rippling of the tiny waves which the tide\nbrought to his feet. The host of heaven, that seemed in causeless\ndispersion, he marshalled into order, and bound in safest discipline.\nHe made known to his fellow-men the secret laws of heaven, the springs\nof movement, and the chains of connection, which invariably and\nunchangeably impel and guide the course of its many worlds.\n\nIn this aspect one's imagination figures him as truly the director of\nwhat he only describes--as the leader of a complicated army, who, with\nhis staff, seems to draw or to send forward the wheeling battalions,\nintent on their own errands, combining or resolving movements far\nremote; or, under a more benign and pleasing form, we may contemplate\nhim, like a great master in musical science, standing in the midst of\na throng, in which are mingled together the elements of sublimest\nharmonies, confused to the eye, but sweetly attuned to the ear,\nmingling into orderly combination and flowing sequence, as they float\nthrough the air, which, though he elicit not nor produce, he seems by\nhis outstretched hand to direct, or, at least, he proves himself fully\nto understand. For what each one separately does, unconscious of what\neven his companion is doing, he from afar knows, and almost beholds,\nunderstanding from his centre the concerted and sure results of their\nunited action. And so Newton, from his chamber on this little earth,\nwithout being able more than the most helpless insect to add power or\ngive guidance to one single element in the composition of this\nuniverse, could trace the orbits of planet or satellite, and calculate\nthe oscillations and the reciprocal influences of celestial spheres.\n\nThen his directing wand seems to contract itself to a space within his\ngrasp. It becomes that magic prism with which he intercepts a ray from\nthe sun on his passage to earth; and as a bird seizes in its flight\nthe bee laden with its honey, and robs it of its sweet treasure--even\nso he compels the messenger of light to unfold itself before us, and\nlay bare to our sight the rich colors which the rainbow had exhibited\nto man since the deluge, and which had lain concealed since creation,\nin every sunbeam that had passed through our atmosphere. And further\nstill, he bequeathes that wonderful alembic of light {565} to\nsucceeding generations, till, in the hand of new discoverers, it has\nbecome the key of nature's laboratory, in which she has been surprised\nmelting and compounding, in crucibles huge as ocean, the rich hues\nwith which she overlays the surfaces of suns and stars, yet, at the\nsame time, breathes its delicate blush upon the tenderest petals of\nthe opening rose.\n\nAnd all the laws and all the rules which form his code of nature seem\nengraved, as with a diamond point, upon a granite surface of the\nprimitive rocks--inflexible, immovable, unchangeable as the system\nwhich they represent.\n\nBeside him stands the Ruler of that world, which, though even\nsublimely intellectual, is governed by him with laws in which the\naffections, even the passions, the moralities, and the anxieties of\nlife have their share; in which there is no severity but for vice, no\nslavery but for baseness, no unforgivingness but for calculating\nwickedness. In his hand is not the staff of authority, whether it take\nthe form of a royal sceptre or of a knightly lance, whether it be the\nshepherdess's crook or the fool's bauble, it is still the same, the\nmagician's wand. Whether it be the divining rod with which he draws up\nto light the most hidden streams of nature's emotions, or the\npotential instrument of Prospero's spells, which raises storms in the\ndeep or works spirit-music in the air, or the wicked implement with\nwhich the witches mingle their unholy charm, its cunning and its might\nhave no limit among created things. But it is not a world of stately\norder which he rules, nor are the laws of unvarying rigor by which it\nis commanded. The wildest paroxysms of passion; the softest delicacy\nof emotions; the most extravagant accident of fortune; the tenderest\nincidents of home; the king and the beggar, the sage and the jester,\nthe tyrant and his victim; the maiden from the cloister and the\npeasant from the mountains; the Italian school-child and the Roman\nmatron; the princes of Denmark and the lords of Troy--all these and\nmuch more are comprised in the vast embrace of his dominions. Scarcely\na rule can be drawn from them, yet each forms a model separately, a\nfinished group in combination. Unconsciously as he weaves his work,\napparently without pattern or design, he interlaces and combines in\nits surface and its depth images of the most charming variety and\nbeauty; now the stern mosaic, without coloring, of an ancient\npavement, now the flowing and intertwining arabesque of the fanciful\neast; now the rude scenes of ancient mediaeval tapestry like that of\nBeauvais, and then the finished and richly tinted production of the\nGobelins loom.\n\nAnd yet through this seeming chaos the light permeates, and that so\nclear and so brilliant as equally to define and to dazzle. Every\nportion, every fragment, every particle, stands forth separate and\nparticular, so as to be handled, measured, and weighed in the balance\nof critic and poet. Each has its own exact form and accurate place, so\nthat, while separately they are beautiful, united they are perfect.\nHence their combinations have become sacred rules, and have given\ninviolable maxims not only to English but to universal literature.\nGermany, as we have seen, studies with love and almost veneration\nevery page of Shakespeare; national sympathies and kindred speech make\nit not merely easy but natural to all people of the Teutonic family to\nassimilate their literature to that its highest standard. France has\ndeparted, or is fast departing, from its favorite classical type, and\nadopting, though with unequal power, the broader and more natural\nlines of the Shakespearian model. His practice is an example, his\ndeclarations are oracles.\n\nStill, as I have said, the wide region of intellectual enjoyment over\nwhich our great bard exerts dominion, is not one parcelled out or\ndivided into formal and state-like provinces. While the student of\nscience is reading in his {566} chamber the great \"Principia\" of\nNewton, he must keep before him the solution of only one problem. On\nthat his mind must undistractedly rest, on that his power of thought\nbe intensely concentrated. Woe to him if imagination leads his reason\ninto truant wanderings; woe if he drop the thread of finely-drawn\ndeductions! He will find his wearied intelligence drowsily floundering\nin a sea of swimming figures and evanescent quantities, or floating\namidst the fragments of a shipwrecked diagram. But over Shakespeare\none may dream no less than pore; we may drop the book from our hand\nand the contents remain equally before us. Stretched in the shade by a\nbrook in summer, or sunk in the reading chair by the hearth in winter,\nin the imaginative vigor of health, in the drooping spirits of\nindisposition, one may read, and allow the trains of fancy which\nspring up in any scene to pursue their own way, and minister their own\nvaried pleasure or relief; and when by degrees we have become familiar\nwith the inexhaustible resources of his genius, there is scarcely a\nwant in mind or the affections that needs no higher than human succor,\nwhich will not find in one or other of his works that which will\nsoothe suffering, comfort grief, strengthen good desires, and present\nsome majestic example to copy, or some fearful phantom. But when we\nendeavor to contemplate all his infinitely varied conceptions as\nblended together in one picture, so as to take in, if possible, at one\nglance the prodigious extent of his prolific genius, we thereby build\nup what he himself so beautifully called the \"fabric of a vision,\"\nmatchless in its architecture as in the airiness of its materials.\nThere are forms fantastically sketched in cloud-shapes, such as Hamlet\nshowed to Polonius, in the midst of others rounded and full, which\nopen and unfold ever-changing varieties, now gloomy and threatening,\nthen tipped with gold and tinted with azure, ever-rolling,\never-moving, melting the one into the other, or extricating each\nitself from the general mass. Dwelling upon this maze of things and\nimaginations, the most incongruous combinations come before the dreamy\nthought, fascinated, spell-bound, and entranced. The wild Ardennes and\nWindsor Park seem to run into one another, their firs and their oaks\nmingle together; the boisterous ocean boiling round \"the still vexed\nBermoothes\" runs smoothly into the lagoons of Venice; the old gray\nporticos of republican Rome, like the transition in a dissolving view,\nare confused and entangled with the slim and fluted pillars of a\nGothic hall; here the golden orb, dropped from the hand of a captive\nking, rolls on the ground side by side with a jester's mouldy\nskull--both emblems of a common fate in human things. Then the grave\nchief-justice seems incorporated in the bloated Falstaff; King John\nand his barons are wassailing with Poins and Bardolph at an inn door;\nCoriolanus and Shylock are contending for the right of human\nsensibilities; Macbeth and Jacques are moralizing together on\ntenderness even to the brute. And so of other more delicate creations\nof the poet's mind--Isabella and Ophelia, Desdemona and the Scotch\nThane's wife, produce respectively composite figures of inextricable\nconfusion. And around and above is that filmy world, Ariel and Titania\nand Peas-blossom and Cobweb and Moth, who weave as a gossamer cloud\naround the vision, dimming it gradually before our eyes, in the last\ndrooping of weariness, or the last hour of wakefulness.\n\n* * * * * * *\n\n{567}\n\nMISCELLANY.\n\n\nART.\n\n_Domestic._--The south gallery of the new academy is the largest and\nbest lighted of the several exhibition rooms, and contains some of the\nmost ambitious pictures of the year. As the visitor, pausing for a\nmoment to survey the paintings, drawings, studies, architectural\ndesigns, and miscellanea which are hung around the four sides of the\nopen corridor at the head of the grand staircase, turns naturally into\nthe great gallery, through whose wide entrance he catches glimpses of\nthe art treasures within, so do we propose to conduct the reader\nthither without further parley. Here confront us specimens of almost\nevery subject legitimate to the art, and of some not legitimate--great\npictures and little pictures, grave pictures and gay pictures,\nlandscape and _genre_, history and portraiture, beasts, birds, fishes,\nand flowers. At either end of the room hangs a full-length portrait of\na gentleman of note, which challenges the visitor's attention, be he\nnever so reluctant. No. 464, the late Governor Gamble, of Missouri, by\nF.T.L. Boyle, belongs to a family only too numerous among us (we speak\nof the picture only), and whose acquaintance one feels strongly\ninclined to cut in the present instance. But that is impossible. There\nstands the familiar lay-figure in the old conventional attitude, which\nwe feel sure the governor never assumed of his own accord. The marble\ncolumns, the draped curtain, the library table and the books--all the\nstock accessories in fine--are there; and either for the purpose of\npointing a moral, of instituting a personal comparison, or of calling\nattention to its workmanship, the governor blandly directs your\nattention to a bust of Washington. He might be intending to do any one\nor all of these things so far as the expression of his face affords an\nindication. The idea on which the portrait is painted is thoroughly\nfalse, and ought to be by this time discarded; but year after year\nartists continue to mint these modish, stiff, and ridiculous figures,\nwhen with a little regard to common sense they could produce portraits\nwhich all would recognize as natural and effective. Especially is this\nthe case with the present picture, which evinces considerable\nexecutive ability. The other portrait to which we alluded, No. 412, a\nfull length of Ex-Governor Morgan, painted by Huntington, for the\nGovernor's Room in the City Hall, is one of the least creditable works\never produced by that artist, cold and repulsive in color, awkward in\nattitude, and unsatisfactory as a likeness.\n\nOccupying a less prominent position than either of these pictures, but\nconspicuous enough to attract a large share of attention, is the\nfull-length portrait of Archbishop McCloskey, No. 438, by G.P.A.\nHealy. Mr. Healy, though never very happy as a colorist and often\ndisposed to sacrifice characteristic expression to a passion for\npainting brocades and draperies, has generally succeeded in imparting\na refined air to his portraits, however feeble they might be as\nlikenesses. The present work is coarse in expression, and untrue as a\nlikeness. It is a mistake to suppose that a free, rapid touch is\nadapted to every style of face. The small and delicate features of the\narchbishop, with their shrewd, yet refined and benevolent expression,\ncannot be dashed off with a few strokes of the brush, but require\ncareful painting, and, above all, patient painting. Mr. Healy's\nportrait of Dr. Brownson in last year's exhibition, though of little\nmerit as a painting, was much better than this. No. 448, a portrait of\nthe late Peletiah Perit, by Hicks, is one of the most creditable\nspecimens of that very unequal painter that we have recently seen. Mr.\nPerit is sitting easily and naturally in his library chair, and is not\nmade to assume the attitude of a posture-master for the time being, in\norder that posterity may know how he did _not_ look in life. The\nlikeness is not remarkable; but the accessories are carefully painted\nand agreeably colored. No. 423, portrait of a lady, by R.M. Staigg, is\nexactly what it assumes to be--a lady. In the refined air of the\ngentlewoman which the artist has so happily conveyed, he recalls some\nof the female heads of Stuart, though in the present instance he had\nno wide scope for the display {568} of Stuart's charming gift of\ncolor. The resemblance is more in the general sentiment than in any\ntechnical qualities. Almost adjoining this work is another portrait of\na lady, No. 425, by W.H. Furness, a forcible example of the\nnaturalistic school, of great solidity of texture and purity of color.\nThere is intelligence, earnestness, and strength in this face, and in\nthe attitude, though the latter, as well as the accessories, is\nstudiously simple. Baker and Stone contribute some attractive\nportraits to this room. No. 454, a lady, by the latter, is a good\nspecimen of a style neither strong nor founded on true principles, but\nwhich, on account of a certain conventional gracefulness, which amply\nsatisfies those who look no deeper than the surface of the canvas,\nwill always find admirers. No. 458, a portrait of Capt. Riblett, of\nthe New York 7th Regiment, by Baker, is a clever work, noticeable for\nthe easy pose of the figure, the clear fresh coloring, and the firm\nhandling.\n\nTwo other portrait pieces may be noticed in this room, of very\nopposite degrees of merit. They illustrate a method of treating this\nbranch of the art which has become popular of late years, and which\nseeks to combine portraiture with _genre_; that is to say, the figures\nrepresent real personages, but to the uninitiated seem merely the\nactors in some little domestic scene. Any subject verging on the\ndramatic is of course inappropriate to this method. Thus the stiffness\ntoo often inseparable from portraiture and its unsympathetic character\nto a stranger are avoided, and the \"gentlemen\" and \"ladies\" who have\nmonopolized so much space on the walls awaken an interest in a wider\ncircle than when appearing simply in their proper persons. No. 441, \"A\nPicnic in the Highlands,\" by Rossiter, presents us with portraits of\nsome twenty ladies and gentlemen, including a fair proportion of\ngenerals, who have been ruthlessly summoned from the pleasures of the\nrural banquet or of social intercourse to place themselves in\nattitudes which a travelling photographer would blush to copy, and be\nthus handed down to posterity. In submitting to this dreadful process\nGenerals Warren and Seymour afforded a new proof of courage under\nadverse circumstances; and one scarcely knows whether they deserve\nmost to be pitied, or the artist to be denounced for putting brave men\nin so ridiculous a position. The picture is simply disgraceful, and\nwould naturally be passed over in silence had it not been hung in a\nposition to challenge attention, while many works of merit are placed\nfar above the line. Thirty or forty years ago, when the academy was\nglad to enroll painters of the calibre of Mr. Rossiter among its\nmembers, such productions were perhaps acceptable on the line. But\nhave hanging committees no appreciation that there is such a thing as\nprogress? The other picture above alluded to is No. 435, \"Claiming the\nShot,\" by J.G. Brown. It represents a hunting scene in the\nAdirondacks, and though thinly painted, with no merit in the\nlandscape, and of a general commonplace character, tells its story\nwith humor and point. We have not the pleasure of knowing the party of\namateur hunters whose good-natured altercation forms the subject of\nMr. Brown's picture, but their faces are perfectly familiar to us, and\nmay be seen any day on Broadway, until the shooting season summons\nthem to a purer atmosphere than our civic rulers permit us to breathe.\nThat good-looking and well-dressed young man, with the incipient\naristocratic baldness, and the languid, gentleman-like air, reclining\nin a not ungraceful attitude on a stump, and whose incredulous shake\nof the head denotes that he will not resign his claim to the\nsuccessful shot--is he not a type of our _jeunesse doree?_ And who has\nnot met the portly, florid gentleman, his face beaming with good\nnature and good living, who claps our young friend on the back and\nadvises him to give it up? The earnest expression of the half-kneeling\nhunter, clinching the argument as he identifies his bullet-hole in the\nside of the slain buck, is well rendered, as is also that of another\nflorid gentleman who looks on, a quiet but highly amused witness of\nthe dispute. In the background are a party of guides and boatmen\nengaged in preparing supper for the disputants, over whose perplexity\nthey appear to be indulging in a little quiet \"chaff.\" We imagine that\nthe faces of the principal actors in this group are good likenesses,\nand we feel sure that to see them thus depicted amidst scenes\nsuggesting healthful out-door sports will be pleasant to their\nfriends.\n\n{569}\n\nFrom portraits we pass naturally to figure pieces, and first pause\nwith astonishment before No. 394, \"The Two Marys at the Sepulchre,\" by\nR.W. Weir. Here is a work which has doubtless cost much thought and\npatient labor, but which is so hopelessly beneath the dignity of the\nsubject as to seem almost like a caricature. When will modern painters\nrecognize that sacred history is a branch of their art not to be\nattempted except under very peculiar and favorable\ncircumstances?--that the artist must feel and believe what he paints,\nunless he wishes to degenerate into insipidity? We do not desire to\nimpugn Mr. Weir's sincerity, but a work so cold, lifeless, and void of\npropriety shows that he is either hiding his light under a bushel, or\nis incapable of feeling, perhaps we should say of reflecting, the\nreligious fervor which should be associated with so awful a scene. Had\nhe even stuck to the conventional forms and accessories which have\nsatisfied six centuries of Christian painters, he might have produced\nsomething of respectable mediocrity. But modern realism would not\npermit this, and therefore the Virgin is represented as a commonplace\nmiddle-aged woman, who might as well be Mr. Weir's housekeeper, and\nwhose mawkish expression is positively repulsive. Of St. Mary Magdalen\nthe attitude, figure, and expression are not less inappropriate.\nSurely these personages are raised above the level of ordinary\nwomen--no believer in Christianity will deny that--and cannot the\npainter so represent them? In other respects the picture has little\nmerit, being stiff and mannered in the drawing and of a mixture of\ndull gray and salmon in its local coloring.\n\nThe most conspicuous landscape in this room is Bierstadt's immense\nview of the Yo Semite Valley in California, No. 436, which occupies\nthe place of honor in the middle of the south wall. For months past\nthe artist has been announced as at work on this picture, and in view\nof the great merits recognized in his \"Rocky Mountains,\" public\nexpectation has been raised to a high pitch. But public expectation\nhas been doomed to disappointment this time, for the Yo Semite is much\ninferior to its predecessor, though, in several respects, both works\nshow the same characteristics in equal perfection. They have breadth\nof drawing, admirable perspective, and convey an idea of the solemn\ngrandeur of nature in the virgin solitudes of the west. But while in\nthe older work Mr. Bierstadt succeeded in forgetting for a time the\nacademic mannerisms which he brought with him from Germany, in the\npresent one he has, unconsciously, perhaps, lapsed into them again,\nand produced something of great mechanical excellence, and with about\nas much nature as can be seen through the atmosphere of a Duesseldorf\nstudio. Yellow appears to be his weakness, and the canvas is\naccordingly suffused with yellow tints of every gradation of tone; not\na luminous yellow which the eye may rest upon with pleasure, but a\nhard, dusty-looking pigment, without warmth, or transparency, or\ndepth; such a yellow as never tinged the skies of California or any\nother part of the world, but is begotten of men who derive their ideas\nof nature from copying _pictures_ of landscapes, instead of going\ndirectly to nature. The grass and the foliage which receive the\nsunlight are of a dirty, yellowish green, those in the shadow of the\ngreat mountain ridge on the right of the scene of a yellowish black,\nthe very rocks and water are yellow, and if Indians or emigrants had\nbeen introduced into the foreground, we feel convinced they would have\nreceived the prevailing hue. Only in the mountain peaks, checkered\nwith sunlight and shadow, does the artist seem to escape from this\nthraldom to one color, and paint with force and truthfulness. The\npicture is therefore a failure; and yet viewed from the head of the\ngreat stair-case, across the open space, and through the entrance to\nthe exhibition-room, it has a mellowness of tone and truthfulness of\nperspective which almost induce us to retract our criticism. Approach\nit, however, and the illusion vanishes. Another Californian scene by\nBierstadt, in this room, No. 472, \"the Golden Gate,\" shows the\nartist's predominant fault even more conspicuously, and is not only\nunworthy of him, but absolutely unpleasant to look at. No. 487, \"Among\nthe Alps,\" by Gignoux, is a solidly, though coarsely painted work, and\nnotwithstanding a prevalent cold, leaden tone, tolerably effective.\nThe idea of solemn repose is well conveyed, although scarcely one of\nthe details is truthfully rendered. The water of the mountain lake is\nnot water, but an opaque mass, the trees and rocks are so slurred in\nthe drawing as to be {570} unrecognizable by the naturalist, and the\nshadows are unnecessarily deep and sombre. Such painting, however,\npleases the multitude, who do not care much for absolute truth,\nprovided effect is obtained; and Mr. Gignoux's picture is considered\nvery fine indeed. No. 466, \"A Mountain Lake in the Blue Ridge,\" by\nSonntag, is a fine piece of scene painting, and, if properly enlarged,\nwould form an excellent design for a stage drop-curtain. As a\nrepresentation of nature it is false in nearly every detail. And yet\nno landscape painter deals more readily and dexterously with the\nexternal forms of American forest scenery, or perhaps has more\nneatness of touch; and none, it may be added, has wandered further\nfrom the true path.\n\nNo. 465, \"Greenwood Lake,\" by Cropsey, is a pleasanter picture than we\ncommonly see from this artist, who, to judge from his productions,\nscarcely ever saw a cloudy day, and has a very indifferent\nacquaintance with shadows. Here is a still, serene summer afternoon,\nin the foreground a newly-mown hayfield, with a group of mowers and\nrakers, just pausing from their labor, and beyond the placid bosom of\nthe lake. Despite its somewhat monotonous uniformity of tone, the\npicture is pervaded by an agreeable sentiment of repose,\ncharacteristic of midsummer; and as an honest attempt to portray a\npleasing phase of nature it is welcome. No. 493, \"Afternoon in the\nHousatonic Valley,\" by J.B. Bristol, represents the period of the day\nselected by Mr. Cropsey, but the tone of his picture is lower and\ncooler, and the coloring more harmonious. Its most noticeable feature\nis a noble mountain in the background, whose wooded sides afford fine\ncontrasts of light and shadow. No. 494, \"A Foggy Morning--Coast of\nFrance,\" by Dana, evinces more desire to catch the secret of rich\ncoloring than success. It is not by scattering warm pigments about,\nwithout regard to harmony or gradation, that Mr. Dana can attain his\nend; and so far as color is concerned he shows no improvement upon his\nwork of former years. In composition he wields, as usual, a graceful\npencil, and his children are pleasingly and naturally drawn.\n\n------\n\nNEW PUBLICATIONS.\n\n\nTHE ILIAD OF HOMER RENDERED INTO ENGLISH BLANK VERSE.\nBy Edward, Earl of Derby. 2 vols. 8vo., pp. 430 and 457. New York:\nCharles Scribner & Company.\n\nThere have been several translations of the Iliad into English verse,\nbut, practically, only three have hitherto been much in vogue. The\nfirst of these, by Chapman, is a work of considerable spirit, of a\nrude, fiery kind; but it is unfaithful, and has long been antiquated.\nPope's brilliant and thoroughly un-Homeric version will always be\npopular as a poem, though anything more widely different from the\noriginal was probably never published as a translation. Cowper is\nverbally accurate, but tame and tiresome. A translation in blank\nverse, by William Munford, of Richmond, Va., appeared in Boston some\ntwenty years ago, but does not seem to have attracted the attention it\ndeserved.\n\nLord Derby appears to have avoided nearly all the defects and combined\nnearly all the merits of his predecessors. He has aimed \"to produce a\ntranslation and not a paraphrase; not, indeed, such a translation as\nwould satisfy, with regard to each word, the rigid requirements of\naccurate scholarship, but such as would fairly and honestly give the\nsense and spirit of every passage and of every line, omitting nothing\nand expanding nothing, and adhering as closely as our language will\nallow, even to every epithet which is capable of being translated, and\nwhich has, in the particular passage, anything of a special and\ndistinctive character.\" The testimony of critics is almost unanimous\nas to the success with which he has carried out his design. His\ntranslation is incomparably more faithful than either of those we have\nmentioned. He almost invariably perceives the delicate shades of\nmeaning which Pope was {571} not scholar enough to notice, and he is\noften wonderfully happy in expressing them in English. His language is\ndignified and pure; his style animated and idiomatic; and his verse\nhas more of the majestic flow of Homer than that of any previous\ntranslator. He has produced by all odds the best version of the Iliad\nin the English language.\n\nThat a statesman should have succeeded in a task of this sort, where\nPope and Cowper failed, is strange indeed. But let our readers judge\nfor themselves: we give first a somewhat celebrated passage from\nPope--the bivouac of the Trojans, at the end of the eighth\nbook--premising that Pope prefixes to it four lines which have no\nequivalent in the Greek, and which are not only an interpolation but a\npositive injury to the sense:\n\n  \"The troops exulting sat in order round,\n  And beaming fires illumined all the ground.\n  As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night,\n  O'er heaven's clear azure spreads her sacred light,\n  When not a breath disturbs the deep serene,\n  And not a cloud o'ercasts the solemn scene;\n  Around her throne the vivid planets roll,\n  And stars unnumbered gild the glowing pole,\n  O'er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed,\n  And tip with silver every mountain's head;\n  Then shine the vales, the rocks in prospect rise,\n  A flood of glory bursts from all the skies;\n  The conscious swains, rejoicing in the sight,\n  Eye the blue vault, and bless the useful light.\n  So many flames before proud Ilion blaze,\n  And lighten glimmering Xanthus with their rays:\n  The long reflections of the distant fires\n  Gleam on the walls, and tremble on the spires;\n  A thousand piles the dusky horrors gild,\n  And shoot a shady lustre o'er the field,\n  Full fifty guards each flaming pile attend,\n  Whose umbered arms, by fits, thick flashes send,\n  Loud neigh the coursers o'er their heaps of corn,\n  And ardent warriors wait the rising morn.\"\n\nThis is not a faultless passage, but no one can help admiring the\nfelicitous imagery, the vivid word-painting, the wonderful harmony of\nthe versification. Yet what reader of Homer will hesitate to prefer\nLord Derby's simpler and almost strictly literal rendering?\n\n  \"Full of proud hopes, upon the pass of war,\n  All night they camped; and frequent blazed their fires.\n  As when in heaven, around the glittering moon\n  The stars shine bright amid the breathless air;\n  And every crag, and every jutting peak\n  Stands boldly forth, and every forest glade;\n  _Ev'n to the gates of heaven is opened wide\n  The boundless sky;_ shines each particular star\n  Distinct; joy fills the gazing shepherd's heart.\n  So bright, so thickly scattered o'er the plain,\n  Before the walls of Troy, between the ships\n  And Xanthus' stream, the Trojan watchfires blazed.\n  A thousand fires burnt brightly; and round each\n  Sat fifty warriors in the ruddy glare;\n  With store of provender before them laid,\n  Barley and rye, the tethered horses stood\n  Beside the cars, and waited for the morn.\"\n\nTake now the description of Vulcan serving the gods at a banquet, from\nthe conclusion of the first book. Cowper gives it as follows:\n\n  \"So he; then Juno smiled, goddess white-armed,\n  And smiling still, from his unwonted hand\n  Received the goblet. He from right to left  [Footnote 112]\n  Rich nectar from the beaker drawn, alert\n  Distributed to all the powers divine.\n  Heaven rang with laughter inextinguishable,\n  Peal after peal, such pleasure all conceived\n  At sight of Vulcan in his new employ.\n    So spent they in festivity the day,\n  And all were cheered; nor was Apollo's harp\n  Silent, nor did the muses spare to add\n  Responsive melody of vocal sweets.\n  But when the sun's bright orb had now declined,\n  Each to his mansion, wheresoever built\n  By the same matchless architect, withdrew.\n  Jove also, kindler of the fires of heaven,\n  His couch ascending as at other times\n  When gentle sleep approached him, slept serene,\n  With golden-sceptred Juno by his side.\"\n\n  [Footnote 112: Just the reverse,--_from left to right_, [Greek text]\n  Cowper's blunder is serious, because to proceed from right to left\n  was looked upon by the Greeks as unlucky.]\n\n{572}\n\nCowper is better than Pope here; but Lord Derby is the most literal\nand by far the best of the three. His lines have a dignified\nsimplicity not unworthy the father of poetry himself; yet the\ntranslation is nearly verbatim:\n\n  \"Thus as he spoke, the white-armed goddess smiled,\n  And smiling from his hand received the cup,\n  Then to th' immortals all in order due\n  He ministered, and from the flagon poured\n  The luscious nectar; while among the gods\n  Rose laughter irrepressible, at sight\n  Of Vulcan hobbling round the spacious hall.\n    Thus they till sunset passed the festive hours;\n  Nor lacked the banquet aught to please the sense,\n  Nor sound of tuneful lyre, by Phoebus touched,\n  Nor muses' voice, who in alternate strains\n  Responsive sang; but when the sun was set,\n  Each for his home departed, where for each\n  The cripple Vulcan, matchless architect,\n  With wondrous skill a noble house had reared.\n    To his own couch, where he was wont of old,\n  When overcome by gentle sleep, to rest,\n  Olympian Jove ascended; there he slept,\n  And by his side the golden-throned queen.\"\n\nIf our space permitted we might easily extend these comparisons, and\nshow that Lord Derby excels other translators in every phase of his\nundertaking--in the rude shock of war, the touching emotions of human\nsentiment, the debates of the gods, and the beauties and phenomena of\nnature. We cannot refrain, however, from quoting a few passages of\nconspicuous excellence.\n\nHector's assault on the ships in the fifteenth book is thus spiritedly\nrendered:\n\n  \"Fiercely he raged, as terrible as Mars\n  With brandished spear; or as a raging fire\n  'Mid the dense thickets on the mountain side.\n  The foam was on his lips; bright flashed his eyes\n  Beneath his awful brows, and terribly\n  Above his temples waved amid the fray\n  The helm of Hector; Jove himself from heaven\n  His guardian hand extending, him alone\n  With glory crowning 'mid the host of men,\n  But short his term of glory; for the day\n  Was fast approaching, when, with Pallas' aid\n  The might of Peleus' son should work his doom.\n  Oft he essayed to break the ranks, where'er\n  The densest throng and noblest arms he saw;\n  But strenuous though his efforts, all were vain;\n  They, massed in close array, his charge withstood;\n  Firm as a craggy rock, upstanding high\n  Close by the hoary sea, which meets unmoved\n  The boist'rous currents of the whistling winds,\n  And the big waves that bellow round its\n  So stood unmoved the Greeks, and undismayed.\n  At length, all blazing in his arms, he sprang\n  Upon the mass; so plunging down as when\n  On some tall vessel, from beneath the clouds\n  A giant billow, _tempest-nursed_, descends:\n  The deck is drenched in foam; the stormy wind\n  Howls in the shrouds; th' affrighted seamen quail\n  In fear, but little way from death removed;  [Footnote 113]\n  So quailed the spirit in every Grecian breast.\"\n\n  [Footnote 113: We are particularly struck with the\n  excellence of Lord Derby's translation of this\n  magnificent image when we contrast it with Mr.,\n  Munford's:\n\n  \"As on a ship a wat'ry mountain falls,\n  Driven from the clouds by all the furious winds;\n  With foam the deck is covered, pitiless\n  The deafening tempest roars among the shrouds;\n  The sailors, whirled along by raging waves.\n  Tremble, confused and faint; immediate death\n  Appears before them.\"\n\n  Yet, no less an authority than the late President\n  Felton, of Harvard, pronounced Munford's\n  the best of all English metrical versions of the\n  Iliad.]\n\nIn book sixth Hector is accosted by his mother on his return from the\nbattle-field. She offers him wine, wherewith to pour a libation to\nJove and then to refresh himself. Lord Darby's translation of his\nanswer is very neat and very close to the original:\n\n{573}\n\n  \"No, not for me, mine honored mother, pour\n  The luscious wine, lest thou unnerve my limbs\n  And make me all my wonted prowess lose.\n  The ruddy wine I dare not pour to Jove\n  With hands unwashed; nor to the cloud-girt son\n  Of Saturn may the voice of prayer ascend\n  From one with blood bespattered and defiled.\"\n\nWe close our extracts with a few lines from book third. Priam, sitting\nwith \"the sage chiefs and councillors of Troy\" at the Scaean gate\nwatching the hostile armies, thus addresses Helen:\n\n  \"'Come here, my child, and sitting by my side,\n  From whence thou canst discern thy former lord,\n  His kindred and his friends (not thee I blame,\n  But to the gods I owe this woful war),\n  Tell me the name of yonder mighty chief\n  Among the Greeks a warrior brave and strong:\n  Others in height surpass him; but my eyes\n  A form so noble never yet beheld,\n  Nor so august; he moves, a king indeed.'\n  To whom in answer, Helen, heav'nly fair:\n  'With rev'rence, dearest father, and with shame\n  I look on thee: oh, would that I had died\n  That day when hither with thy son I came,\n  And left my husband, friends, and darling child,\n  And all the loved companions of my youth:\n  That I died not, with grief I pine away.\n  But to thy question; I will tell thee true;\n  Yon chief is Agamemnon, Atreus' son,\n  Wide-reigning, mighty monarch, ruler good,\n  And valiant warrior; in my husband's name,\n  Lost as I am, I called him brother once.'\"\n\n----\n\nLIFE OF MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO.\nBy William Forsyth, M.A., Q.C., author of \"Hortensius,\" \"Napoleon at\nSt. Helena and Sir Hudson Lowe,\" \"History of Trial by Jury,\" etc., and\nlate fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. Two volumes, 8vo., pp. 364\nand 341. New York: Charles Scribner & Co.\n\nMr. Forsyth has a very correct notion of the business of a biographer.\nHis object has been not only to tell Cicero's history but to describe\nhis private life--to make us acquainted with minute details of his\ndomestic habits, and to represent him as far as possible in the same\nmanner as he would a man of the present generation. \"The more we\naccustom ourselves,\" he says, \"to regard the ancients as persons of\nlike passions as ourselves, and familiarize ourselves with the idea of\nthem as fathers, husbands, friends, and _gentlemen_, the better we\nshall understand them.\" He has therefore carefully gathered up from\nthe letters and other writings of the Roman orator those little bits\nof personal allusion, domestic history, and unconsidered trifles which\nindicate, more clearly sometimes than important actions, the bent of\none's mind or the inmost character of one's heart; and he has arranged\nthem with great skill, and a good eye for effect. He shows but slight\nliterary polish; his style is not elegant, nor always clear, nor even\ndignified; but he has a logical way of putting things, a happy knack\nof arrangement, and a habit of keeping to the point and throwing aside\nsuperfluous matter, for which we dare say he is indebted to his\ntraining as a pleader in the courts. As a lawyer, too, he is specially\nqualified to give the history of the causes in which Cicero's orations\nwere delivered; and this he does better than we have ever seen it done\nbefore, explaining the narrative by copious illustrations from modern\njurisprudence. But if in some respects he writes like a lawyer, in\nanother very important point his practice as an advocate seems not to\nhave affected him. He is thoroughly impartial. He sums up Cicero's\ncharacter more like a judge than a queen's counsel. He admires him but\nnot blindly; holding the safe middle path between the excessive\nveneration shown by Middleton and Niebuhr and the unreasonable\nanimosity of Drumann and Mommsen. He admits that Cicero was weak,\ntimid, and irresolute; but these defects were counter-balanced by the\ndisplay, at critical periods of his life, of the very opposite\nqualities. In the contest with Catiline and the final struggle with\nAntony he was as firm and brave as a man need be. One principal cause\nof his irresolution was an anxiety to do what was right. If he knew\nthat he had acted wrongly, he instantly felt all the agony of remorse.\nHis standard of morality was as high as it was perhaps possible to\nelevate it by the mere light of nature. The chief fault of his moral\ncharacter was a want of sincerity. In a different sense of the words\nfrom that expressed by St. Paul, he wished to become all things to all\nmen, if by any means he might win some. His private correspondence and\n{574} his public speeches were often in direct contradiction with each\nother as to the opinions he expressed of his contemporaries. His\nfoible was vanity. He was never tired of speaking of himself. As a\nphilosopher he had no pretensions to originality, but he was the first\nto make known to his countrymen the philosophy of Greece, which until\nhe appeared may be said to have spoken to the Romans in an unknown\ntongue. He adhered to no particular sect, but affected chiefly the\nschool of the new academy. He was a firm believer in a providence and\na future state. As an orator his faults are coarseness in invective,\nexaggeration in matter, and prolixity in style. \"Many of his sentences\nare intolerably long, and he dwells upon a topic with an exhaustive\nfulness which leaves nothing to the imagination. The pure gold of his\neloquence is beaten out too thin, and what is gained in surface is\nlost in solidity and depth.\"\n\nThe position of Cicero with respect to the political parties into\nwhich the republic was divided in his time is not so well described as\nhis personal character. While Mr. Forsyth displays industry and good\njudgment in collecting and arranging the little traits which go to\nmake up a life-like portrait, he lacks the comprehensive and\nphilosophical view with which Merivale has recently surveyed the same\nperiod of history. Forsyth writes as one who, having mingled with the\nbusy crowd in the forum, should come away and tell us what he had seen\nand heard, and describe the men with whom he had talked. Merivale\nsurveys the scene from a distance; and though his perception of\nindividual objects is less distinct than Forsyth's, his view is\nbroader and takes in better the relative situations and proportions of\nthe various features spread out before him. Both are excellent in\ntheir kind: the historian is the more instructive, the biographer the\nmore entertaining.\n\n\nBEATRICE.\nBy Julia Kavanagh, author of \"Nathalie,\" \"Adele,\" \"Queen Mab,\" etc.,\netc. Three volumes in one. 12mo., pp. 520. New York: D. Appleton &\nCompany.\n\nThe readers of \"Adele\" and \"Nathalie\" will hardly be prepared for what\nawaits them in the novel now upon our table. Miss Kavanagh has won a\nhigh reputation by her delicate pictures of quiet home life, and\nthorough analyses of female character. But lately the prevailing\nthirst for sensational stories appears to have enticed her away from\nthe old path, and led her to attempt a style of novel which will no\ndoubt please the majority of readers better than her earlier efforts,\nthough as a work of art it is inferior to them. It is by no means\nhowever a merely sensation story. The heroine is painted with all Miss\nKavanagh's accustomed clearness and skill; although the uninterrupted\nseries of plots and counterplots, the dramatic terseness of the\ndialogue, and the effectiveness of the situations, tempt one to forget\nsometimes, in the absorbing interest of the narrative, the higher\nmerit of vivid and truthful drawing of character. That of Beatrice is\ncharmingly conceived, and admirably worked out, recalling those\ndelightful heroines who first gave Miss Kavanagh a hold upon the\npopular heart. Beatrice is a spirited, proud, natural, warm-hearted\ngirl, born in poverty and fallen heiress unexpectedly to great wealth.\nHer guardian and step-father, Mr. Gervoise, subjects her to\ninnumerable wrongs in order that he may get possession of the\nproperty. Poison even and a mad-house are hinted at. The book is\nprincipally a narrative of battle between the defenceless girl and\nthis villain. Our readers who may wish to know how the struggle ends\nare referred to the book itself; they will have no reason to regret\nthe time they may spend in reading it.\n\n\nGRACE MORTON; OR, THE INHERITANCE.\nA Catholic Tale. By M.L.M. 12mo., pp. 324.\n\n\nTHE CONFESSORS OF CONNAUGHT; OR,\nTHE TENANTS OF A LORD BISHOP.\nA Tale of our Times. By M. L. M., author of Grace Morton, etc. 12mo.,\npp.319. Philadelphia: Peter F. Cunningham. New York: D. & J. Sadlier &\nCompany.\n\nThese are both religious stories. The first is inscribed to the\nCatholic youth of America, and the scene is laid in Pennsylvania. The\nsecond is founded upon the evictions in 1860, in the parish of Partry,\nIreland, of a number of tenants of the Protestant bishop of Tuam, who\nhad refused to send their children to proselytizing schools. The\nwell-known missionary, Father Lavelle, is a {575} prominent figure in\nthe book, slightly disguised under the name of Father Dillon.\n\n\nA GENERAL HISTORY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH:\nFROM THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE\nCHRISTIAN ERA UNTIL THE PRESENT TIME.\nBy M. l'Abbe J.E. Darras. First American from the last French edition.\nWith an Introduction and Notes, by the Most Rev. M.J. Spalding, D.D.,\nArchbishop of Baltimore. Numbers 6, 7, and 8. 8vo. pp. (each) 48. New\nYork: P. O'Shea.\n\nWe are pleased to learn that two valuable appendices are to be added\nto the American translation of this important work; one by an eminent\nJesuit on the history of the Church in Ireland, the other by the Rev.\nC.I. White, D.D., on the history of the Church in America. The English\nversion of the book ought thus to be far superior to the original\nFrench. The numbers appear with great promptness, and present the same\nneat and tasteful appearance which we took occasion to praise in\nnoticing some of the earlier parts.\n\n\nLIFE OF THE CURE D'ARS.\nFrom the French of the Abbe Alfred Monnin. 12mo., pp. 355. Baltimore:\nKelly & Piet.\n\nIt is only six years since Jean Baptist Marie Vianney, better known as\nthe Cure of Ars, closed his mortal life in that little village near\nLyons which will probably be henceforth for ever associated with his\nname. \"A common consent,\" says Dr. Manning, in a preface to the book\nbefore us, \"seems to have numbered him, even while living, among the\nservants of God; and an expectation prevails that the day is not far\noff when the Church will raise him to veneration upon her altars.\" He\nwas the son of a farmer of Dardilly, near Lyons, and appears to have\ninherited virtue from both his parents. God gave him neither graces of\nperson nor gifts of intellect. His face was pale and thin, his stature\nlow, his gait awkward, his manner shy and timid, his whole air common\nand unattractive. His education was so defective that his teachers\nhesitated to recommend him for ordination. But the want of human\nlearning seems to have been supplied by supernatural illumination.\nWhen he went to Ars, virtue was little known there. To say that he\nspeedily wrought an entire reformation is but a faint expression of\nthe extraordinary effect of his ministry. Drunkenness and quarreling\nwere soon unknown. At the sound of the midday _Angelus_ the laborers\nwould stop in their work to recite the _Ave Maria_ with uncovered\nhead. Men and women used to repair to the church after their work was\ndone, and often came again to pray at two or three o'clock in the\nmorning. The cure himself, it may be said, never left the church\nexcept to discharge some function of his ministry, to take one scanty\nmeal a day, of bread or potatoes, and to sleep two or three hours. In\nthe seventh year of his ministry he founded an asylum for orphan or\ndestitute girls which he called \"The Providence.\" It is believed that\nhe was miraculously assisted in providing food and clothing for these\npoor children. Once the stock of flour was exhausted, except enough to\nmake two loaves. \"Put your leaven into the little flour you have,\"\nsaid the cure to the baker, \"and to-morrow go on with your baking as\nusual.\" \"The next day,\" says this person, \"I know not how it happened,\nbut as I kneaded, the dough seemed to rise and rise under my fingers;\nI could not put in the water quick enough; the more I put in, the more\nit swelled and thickened, so that I was able to make, with a handful\nof flour, ten large loaves of from twenty to twenty-two pounds each,\nas much, in fact, as could have been made with a whole sack of flour.\"\n\nIt was in consequence partly of circumstances of this nature connected\nwith the Providence, and partly of the reputation of M. Vianney as a\nspiritual director, that a stream of pilgrims set in toward Ars that\nhas continued to flow ever since. Before the close of his life, as\nmany as eighty thousand persons are said to have visited him in a\nsingle year, by a single route. Most of them came to confess; many to\nbe cured of deformities or disease; others to ask advice in special\ndifficulties. The number of cures effected at his hands was\nprodigious. His labors in the confessional were almost beyond belief;\nfor thirty years he spent in this severest of all the duties of a\nparish priest sixteen or eighteen hours a day. Penitents were content\nto await their turn in the church all night, all the next day--even two\n{576} days. Devout persons were so eager to get relics of him during\nhis life, that whenever he laid aside his hat or his surplice the\ngarment was immediately appropriated. So after a time he never put on\na hat, and never took off his surplice.\n\nIt seemed at last that his humility could no longer endure the\nveneration that was paid him. He resolved to retire to a quiet place,\nand spend the rest of his life in prayer. He attempted to escape\nsecretly by night; but one of his assistant priests discovered his\npurpose, and contrived to delay him, until the alarm was sounded\nthrough the village. The inhabitants were roused at the first stroke.\nThe clangor of the bell was soon mingled with confused cries of \"M. le\ncure!\" The women crowded the market-place and prayed aloud in the\nchurch; the men armed themselves with whatever came first to hand;\nguns, forks, sticks, and axes. M. Vianney made his way with difficulty\nto the street door, but the villagers would not let him open it. \"He\nwent from one door to another,\" says his old servant, \"without getting\nangry; but I think he was weeping.\" At last he reached the street, and\nstood still for a moment, considering how to escape. His assistant\nmade a last effort to persuade him to remain. The populace fell at his\nfeet, and cried, with heart-rending sobs, \"Father, let us finish our\nconfession; do not go without hearing us!\" And thus saying, they\ncarried rather than led him to the church. He knelt before the altar\nand wept for a long time. Then he went quietly into his confessional\nas if nothing had happened.\n\nWe would gladly quote the whole of the beautiful scene of which we\nhave attempted to give an outline; but our space forbids. We must pass\nover also the graphic description of the abbe's death and funeral, as\nwell as the narrative of the extraordinary sufferings which made his\nlife one long purgatory. Let our readers get the book, and they will\nfind it as interesting as a romance.\n\n\nTHE LIFE OF JOHN MARY DECALOGNE,\nSTUDENT IN THE UNIVERSITY OF PARIS.\nTranslated from the French. 18mo., pp. 162. Baltimore: Kelly & Piet.\n\nThis edifying narrative of the short and almost angelic career of a\nschool-boy who died in the odor of sanctity, in his seventeenth year,\nwas a great favorite with our fathers and grandfathers, but we believe\nhas long been out of print. Its re-publication is a praiseworthy\nadventure, which we hope will have the success it deserves. The book\nis especially recommended to lads preparing for their first communion.\n\n\n\n_The New Path_, for June (New York: James Miller, publisher), is\ndevoted wholly to the fortieth annual exhibition of the National\nAcademy of Design. Our spicy little contemporary has no mercy on the\nartists.\n\n\n_Truebner's American and Oriental Literary Record_, the first number of\nwhich was published in London last March, is \"a monthly register of\nthe most important works published in North and South America, in\nIndia, China, and the British Colonies; with occasional notes on\nGerman, Dutch, Danish, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and\nRussian books.\" We believe it is the first systematic attempt to bring\nthe young literature of America and the East before the public of\nEurope. We commend it to the attention of our book-writing and\npublishing friends.\n\n\nThe American News Company issue a little pamphlet on _The Russo-Greek\nChurch, by a former resident of Russia_. Its aim is to expose the\nabsurdity of the attempts at union between the Russian and Protestant\nEpiscopal Churches.\n\n----\n\nBOOKS RECEIVED.\n\nHistory of England from the fall of Wolsey to the death of Elizabeth.\nBy James Anthony Froude, M.A. New York: Charles Scribner & Company.\n\nThe History of the Protestant Reformation, etc. By M.J. Spalding,\nD.D., Archbishop of Baltimore. Fourth revised edition. Baltimore: John\nMurphy & Company.\n\nCeremonial for the use of the Catholic Churches in the United States\nof America. Third edition, revised and enlarged. Baltimore: Kelly &\nPiet.\n\nMeditations and Considerations for a Retreat of One Day in each Month.\nCompiled from the writings of Fathers of the Society of Jesus.\nBaltimore: Kelly & Piet.\n\nThe Year of Mary. Translated from the French of the Rev. M. d'Arville,\nApostolic Prothonotary. Edited and in part translated by Mrs. J.\nSadlier. Philadelphia: Peter F. Cunningham.\n\n------\n\n{577}\n\nTHE CATHOLIC WORLD,\n\nVOL. I., NO. 5. AUGUST, 1865.\n\nTranslated from Etudes Religieuses, Historiques, et Litteraires,\npar des Peres de la Compagnie de Jesus.\n\nDRAMATIC MYSTERIES OF\nTHE FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURIES.\n\nBY A. CAHOUR, S. J.\n\n\nThe drama of the Middle Ages ends with a sort of theatrical explosion.\nEverything disappears at once, under all forms and on every side. It\nincluded, like that of earlier times, \"mysteries\" drawn from the Old\nand the New Testament; \"miracles\" and plays borrowed from legends,\ntragedies inspired by the acts of the martyrs and by chivalric\nromances, by ancient history and by modern history; \"moralities\" whose\nallegorical impersonations represent the vices and the virtues; pious\ncomedies like those of Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre, upon\nthe Nativity of Jesus Christ, upon the Adoration of the Magi, upon the\nHoly Family in the desert; profane comedies like those of the \"Two\nDaughters\" and the \"Two Wives\" by the same princess; ludicrous farces\nlike that of Patelin the Advocate; licentious farces _ad nauseam;_\nfinally, the _\"Soties,\"_ satirical plays in which the _Clercs de la\nBasoche_ and the _Enfants sans souci_ renewed the audacity of\nAristophanes without reviving his talent. There were representations\nfor all solemn occasions, for the patron-feasts of cities and\nparishes, for the assemblies of a whole country, for the \"joyous\nentry\" of kings and princes. There were also scenic _entremets_ for\nbanquets; and nearly all these displays were made with proportions so\ngigantic, with so much pomp and expense, that everybody must have\nparticipated in them, priests and magistrates, lords and citizens,\ncarpenters and minstrels. The representation of a \"mystery\" became the\naffair of a whole city, of a whole province. The hangings of the\ntheatre, the costume of the actors, exhibited the most beautiful\ntapestries, the richest dresses, the most precious jewels of the\nneighboring chateaux, and even the ornaments of the churches--copes\nfor the eternal Father, dalmatics for the angels.\n\nOne of our most ingenious and learned critics, whom it is impossible\nnot to cite frequently when writing upon the dramatic poetry of the\nsixteenth century, M. Sainte-Beuve, in speaking of this prodigious\nfecundity, has remarked, that \"when things are close to their end they\noften have a final season of remarkable brilliancy--it is their\nautumn--their vintage; {578} or it is like the last brilliant\ndischarge in a piece of fireworks.\" Perhaps there is no better\nillustration of this phenomenon than that of a pyrotechnic display,\nwhich multiplying its jets of light, and illuminating the entire\nhorizon at the very moment of its extinction, disappears into the\nnight and leaves naught behind but its smoke. What is there left, in\nfact, after all this theatrical effervescence? One natural and truly\nFrench inspiration alone--the immortal farce of Patelin, dating from\nthe second half of the fifteenth century, and revived at the\ncommencement of the eighteenth by Brueys and Palaprat.\n\nHowever, despite its poverty, this dramatic epoch merits our close\nattention. In giving us a picture of the public amusements of our\nforefathers, it will indicate, on the one hand, the nature of their\nmorality and their literary tastes, and on the other, the causes of\nthe decline of the old Christian drama at the verge of the revolution\nwhich delivered over the French stage to the ideas and the philosophy\nof paganism.\n\nIf we wished to give a catalogue of the productions of the fifteenth\nand the sixteenth centuries, we might easily compile it from the\nhistory of the brothers Parfait, the _\"Recherches\"_ of Beauchamps, and\nthe _\"Bibliotheque\"_ of the Duke de la Valliere. Such a task, however\nabridged, would require a long chapter, and we neither have time to\nundertake it nor are we sorry at being obliged to omit it. Passing\nstraight to our goal, let us occupy ourselves with the tragic dramas\nalone, and even here we must put bounds to our inquiry under penalty\nof losing ourselves in endless and uninteresting details. All that\nwhich characterizes the Melpomene of the fifteenth and the\ncommencement of the sixteenth centuries is found in the two great\nworks, \"The Mystery of the Passion,\" and \"The Mystery of the Acts of\nthe Apostles.\" In these, and we may almost say in these only, shall we\nstudy its power and its originality.\n\n\"The Mystery of the Passion\" is the work of two Angevin poets, named\nalike Jehan Michel. The first, born toward the end of the fourteenth\ncentury, after having been a canon and at the same time secretary of\nQueen Yolande of Aragon, mother of the good King Rene, Count of Anjou\nand of Provence, became bishop of Angers, February 19, 1438, and died\nin the odor of sanctity, September 12, 1447. The second Jehan Michel,\na very eloquent and scientific doctor, as la Croix du Maine informs\nus, was the chief physician of King Charles VIII., and died in\nPiedmont, August 22, 1493. He edited and printed, in 1486, the work of\nhis namesake.\n\nThis mystery was played at Metz and at Paris in 1437, and at Angers\nthree years afterward upon the commencement of the episcopacy of its\nfirst author. It is a gigantic trilogy, into which are fused and\nco-ordinated all the dramatic representations borrowed for three\ncenturies from the canonical and apocryphal gospels.\n\n\"It is,\" remarks M. Douhaire, in his eleventh lecture on the History\nof Christian Poetry before the Renaissance,--\"it is a great central\nsea into which flow all the streams of a common poetic region. From\nthe refreshing pictures of the patriarchal life of Joachim and Ann to\nthe sublime scenes of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the saints\nof the ancient law, all, or nearly all, that has caught our eyes\nbefore is here found anew, sometimes as a reminiscence, sometimes in\nthe lifelike and spirited form of a dialogue. The legend of the death\nof the Holy Virgin, the legends of the apostles, of Pilate, and of the\nWandering Jew, have alone been omitted; whether because they appeared\nto the authors of the mystery to break the theological unity of their\nwork, or because their length excluded them from a composition already\nswollen far beyond reasonable limits.\"\n\nThe mystery opens with a council held in heaven upon the redemption\n{579} of the human race. On the one side Mercy and Peace, in\nallegorical character, implore pardon for our first parents and their\nposterity. On the other, Justice and Truth demand the eternal\ncondemnation of the guilty. To conciliate them, there must be found a\nman without sin who will freely die for the salvation of all. They go\nforth to seek him on the earth. To the council of heaven succeeds that\nof hell. Lucifer in terror convokes his demons to oppose the\nredemption of the world. During their tumultuous deliberation the four\nvirtues return in despair to heaven. They have failed to find the\ngenerous and pure victim necessary for expiation. The Son of God\noffers himself, and the mystery of the incarnation is decreed.\n[Footnote 114] St. Joachim espouses St. Ann, and Mary is born of the\nunion so long sterile. Then follows the scenic display of all the\nlegendary and gospel narratives of her education, her marriage with\nSt. Joseph, the incarnation of the Word, the birth of Jesus Christ,\nand all the wonders of his infancy up to his dispute in the temple\nwith the doctors. It is at this point that the great drama completes\nits first part, which is entitled \"The Mystery of the Conception.\" It\nis adapted, after the style of the time, for ninety-seven persons.\n\n  [Footnote 114: This is the idea of St. Bernard dramatized. _In festo\n  Annunciationis B.M.V. Sermo primus_, No. 9; vol. i., p. 974.]\n\nThe second part, which has given its name to the entire drama, is the\n\"Mystery of the Passion of Jesus Christ.\" It is divided into four\n\"days,\" each of which has its appropriate actors. The first day, which\nis for eighty-seven persons, extends from the preaching of St. John\nthe Baptist, in the wilderness, to his beheading. The second requires\na hundred persons. It comprises the sermons and miracles of our\nSaviour, and ends with the resurrection of Lazarus. The third\ncommences with the triumphal entry of Jesus Christ into Jerusalem and\nends with Annas and Caiphas. This day is for eighty-seven persons,\nlike the first. The fourth requires five hundred. It is the\nrepresentation of all the scenes in the tribunal of Pilate and at the\ncourt of Herod, at Calvary and at the holy sepulchre.\n\nThe third part, entitled \"The Resurrection,\" represents Jesus Christ\nmanifesting himself to his disciples in different places after he has\nrisen from the tomb; then his ascension and entrance into heaven in\nthe midst of concerts of angels; and finally, the descent of the Holy\nSpirit upon the apostles assembled together in an upper chamber. We\nhave two different forms of this third part. One is in three days; the\nother in one. The former has only forty-five persons; one hundred and\nforty are needed for the latter.\n\nThese three dramas, of which the trilogy of the Passion is composed,\nwere played for a century and a half, sometimes together, sometimes\nseparately. When represented at Paris, in 1437, at the entrance of\nCharles VII., they closed with a spectacle of the final judgment.\n[Footnote 115] There are even found amplifiers who carry it back as\nfar as the origin of the world. It will be difficult to say how much\ntime the performance of this agglomeration of dramas required. Some\nidea, however, can be formed from a representation of the Old\nTestament, arranged about 1500, which set out with the creation of the\nangels and did not arrive at the nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ\nuntil after twenty-two days. Was the trilogy of the two Angevin poets\nsometimes preceded by this immense prelude? We cannot tell. But the\nlength of the spectacle would render this conjecture incredible, since\nthe \"Triumphant Mystery of the Acts of the Apostles,\" played at\nBruges, in 1536, lasted forty days, morning and afternoon. {580} These\nspectacles commenced ordinarily at nine in the morning. Then at eleven\no'clock the people went to dinner, and returned again two hours after.\n\n  [Footnote 115: \"All along the great Rue St. Denis,\" according to\n  Alain Chartier, \"to the distance of a stone's throw on both sides,\n  were erected scaffoldings of great and costly construction, where\n  were played The Annunciation of Our Lady, The Nativity of our Lord,\n  his Passion, his Resurrection, Pentecost, and the Last Judgment, the\n  whole passing off quite well.\" (Beauchamps' _Recherches sur les\n  theaters de France,_ t. i., p. 254-256).]\n\nThis drama, thirty or forty times longer than our longest classical\ntragedies, contains, at the least, sixty-six thousand verses. It was\nprinted for the first time, in 1537, in two volumes folio, and proved\nits popularity by three different editions within four years. The\nemphasis of its title attests, moreover, the immense success of its\nrepresentation at Bruges the year before. It was the composition of\ntwo brothers, Arnoul and Simon Greban, born at Compiegne. Arnoul, by\nwhom it was conceived and commenced about 1450, was a canon of Mans.\nHe died before he had finished versifying it. Simon, monk of St.\nRiquier, in Ponthieu, completed it during the reign of Charles VII.,\nand, consequently, before 1461. Their dramatic composition is divided\ninto nine books. They have left to the \"directors\" of the spectacle\nthe care of dividing it into more or fewer days, according to\ncircumstances.\n\nThe first book commences with the assembling of the disciples in the\nupper chamber, and represents the election of St. Matthias, the\ndescent of the Holy Spirit, and the earlier preaching of the apostles\nwhen braving the persecutions of the synagogue. The second book\nextends from the martyrdom of St. Stephen to the conversion of St.\nPaul. The third is filled with the legendary traditions concerning the\napostleship of St Thomas in India. The fourth brings back the\nspectacle to Jerusalem, where Herod dies after having cut off the head\nof St. James the Greater; then the scene is transferred to Antioch,\nwhere St. Peter, at the solicitation of Simon the Magician, is put\ninto prison, and obtains his liberty by restoring to life the son of\nthe prince of that city who had been dead ten years. The fifth book\ncontains, first, the preaching of St. Paul at Athens, where he\nconverts St. Denis, the future apostle of France; then, the death of\nthe Blessed Virgin, at which the apostles are present, brought\ntogether suddenly by a miracle. The sixth book is consecrated to the\napostleship and martyrdom of St. Matthew in Ethiopia, of St. Barnabas\nin the Isle of Cyprus, of St. Simon and St. Jude at Babylon, and,\nfinally, of St. Bartholomew, whom Prince Astyages flayed alive. In the\nseventh book, St. Thomas ends his apostleship in India, slain by the\nsword; St. Matthias is stoned to death by the Jews; St. Andrew is\ncrucified by the provost of Achaia; the Emperor Claudius dies and Nero\nsucceeds him. In the eighth book, St. Philip and St. James the Less\nsuffer martyrdom at Hierapolis. The two princes combine with the\napostles against Simon the Magician and bring his miracles to naught.\nSt Paul recalls Patroclus to life, who had fallen from a high window\nwhile sleeping over the apostolic sermon. In the ninth and last book,\nSimon the Magician, availing himself of his most powerful enchantments\nin order to deceive the Romans, having caused himself to be lifted\ninto the air by the demons, falls at the voice of St. Peter and is\nkilled. Nero avenges him by imprisoning St. Peter and St. Paul--puts\nto death Proces and Martinian, their gaolers, whom they had converted\nand by whom they were set at liberty--arrests the two apostles anew,\nand condemns one to be crucified, the other to be beheaded. Then,\nterrified by the successive apparitions of the two martyrs, who\nannounce to him the vengeance of heaven, he invokes the demons,\ndemands their counsel, kills himself, and the devils bear away his\nsoul to hell.\n\nWhen we add that each book is filled with striking conversions, that\nsome terminate with the baptism of a whole city or a whole people, and\nthat the apostles insure the triumph of the gospel even in death, a\nsufficient idea will have been given of the historic procession and\nthe moral unity of this drama, or rather of this epic worked up in\ndialogue and arranged for the {581} stage. But in order to get a\nclearer notion of its theatrical power and poetic features, it is\nnecessary to direct our attention, in the first place, to the interest\nof the legends which are here blended constantly with history; and, in\nthe second place, to the fairy art and the magnificence of the\nspectacle.\n\nHere, for instance, is an example of the legendary poetry interwoven\nin the piece. We borrow it from the third book. Gondoforus, king of\nIndia, wishes to build a magnificent palace; but he is in want of\narchitects, and therefore sends his provost Abanes to Rome in search\nof one. The messenger mounts at once on a dromedary: he is followed by\na servant leading a camel. In three and a half hours they are at\nCaesarea in Palestine, where the apostle St. James is dwelling. St.\nMichael had descended from heaven to anticipate the arrival of Abanes,\nand commands the apostle, in the name of our Lord, to offer himself as\narchitect. Directed by the archangel, he accosts Abanes and tells him\nthat he is the man he seeks. They breakfast together and set out, not\nthis time on a dromedary and a camel, but in a ship conducted by\nPalinurus, who had just arrived, bringing St. James, the son of\nZebedee, from Spain to Palestine. While they are making the voyage,\nthe king of Andrinopolis is holding counsel upon the manner of\ncelebrating the nuptials of his daughter Pelagia, who is espoused to\nthe young chevalier Denis; and the result of this deliberation is that\nhe must invite everybody who can come. The apostle and the Provost\ndisembark at Andrinopolis at very moment when the herald the\nproclamation, in the name of the king, summoning to the banquet\ncitizens of all conditions and even rangers--pilgrims and wayfarers.\nSt. Thomas consequently is present at the nuptial feast. A young\nJewess chants a roundelay:\n\n  There is a God of Hebrew story.\n  Dwelling in eternal glory\n  Who first of all things claims our love:\n  Who made the earth, sea, sky above,\n  And taught the morning stars to sing.\n  High would I laud this virtuous king,\n  And blaming naught, his praises ring\n  Through every hall, through every grove.\n  There is a God of Hebrew story,\n  Dwelling in eternal glory,\n  Who first of all things claims our love.  [Footnote 116]\n\n  [Footnote 116: She commences in Hebrew: A sarahel zadab aheboin, Aga\n  sela tanmeth thavehel Elyphaleth a der deaninin, etc. Then she\n  translates her roundelay into French.]\n\nSt. Thomas, charmed with this song, begs that it may be repeated, and\nthe king's butler boxes his ears.\n\n  Ere the morrow shall be through,\n  Thy hand its fault will sorely rue,\n\nsays the apostle, adding--\n\n  'Twere better for thy purgatory,\n  To suffer anguish transitory.\n\nThis prediction is not tardy of accomplishment. The butler is sent to\nthe fountain by the cup-bearer. A lion comes up, and with a snap of\nhis teeth bites off the guilty hand, while the poor man dies repentant\nand commending his soul to God. In the banquet hall all is gay\nconfusion, when presently a dog enters with the dissevered hand. The\nking, informed of the prophecy and its accomplishment, prostrates\nhimself with his whole family at the feet of the apostle, who blesses\nhim. All at once there appears a branch of palm covered with dates.\nThe wedded couple eat of it and then fall asleep. In their dreams\nangels counsel them to preserve their virginity. After having baptized\nthe king of Andrinopolis and all his household, St. Thomas renews his\njourney with his guide, and arrives in India.\n\nGondoforus and his brother Agatus salute the architect whom Abanes has\nbrought. \"Well, master, at what school did you study your art?\" \"My\nmaster surpasses all others in excellence.\" \"And of whom did he learn\nhis science?\"\n\n  \"Master and teacher had he none,\n  He learneth from himself alone.\"\n\n\"Where is he?\"\n\n  \"In a country far away,\n  He lives and ruleth regally:\n  The sons of men his servants be,\n  His twelve apprentices are we.\"\n\n{582}\n\nThe king, amazed at the knowledge of the stranger, gives him a vast\nsum of gold, for the construction of his palace. But it was not an\nearthly edifice that the apostle proposed to build--it was a heavenly\nand spiritual edifice whose materials were alms and good works. He\ntherefore distributes among the beggars whom he meets all the money\nwhich has been given him. At the end of two years, Gondoforus comes to\nsee the building, and not finding it, he thus addresses St. Thomas and\nAbanes:\n\n  \"Scoundrels without conscience born,\n  Where has all my money gone?\n  My trust in you has cost me dear.\n\nTHOMAS\n\n  Sire, therewith I did uprear\n  A palace fair, of rare device\n  For you--\n\nAGATUS.\n\n  Where is't?\n\nTHOMAS.\n\n  In Paradise.\"\n\nThe Indian king, who does not understand that style of architecture,\nthrows St. Thomas and Abanes into prison. Scarcely has he returned\nhome with his followers, when Agatus suddenly dies. The angels descend\nin haste to bear his soul to heaven.  [Footnote 117] \"What do I see?\"\nhe cries. \"The palace which Thomas has made for thy brother,\" replies\nRaphael. \"Great God, but I am not pure enough to be its porter!\" \"Thy\nbrother,\" said Uriel, \"has made himself unworthy of it. But if thou\ndesirest, we will supplicate our Lord to restore thee to earth, and\nthis palace shall be thine when thou hast repaid the king his money.\"\nThe soul of Agatus joyfully agreed to this, and was restored to its\nbody by Uriel. Then Agatus, as soon as life returned, arose and told\nGondoforus all that he had seen, proposing to reimburse him for all\nthe expenses of this heavenly palace the possession of which he\ndesired. The amazed king, wishing to secure the beautiful palace for\nhimself, goes and flings himself at the feet of St. Thomas, beseeching\nbaptism for himself and court.\n\n  [Footnote 117: \"Although the arts of the middle ages,\" says Father\n  Cahier, \"did not adopt an absolutely invariable form for the\n  representation of souls, the most ordinary symbol is that of a\n  small, nude figure escaping from the mouth, like a sword drawn from\n  the sheath.\" _Monagraphie de la Cathedrale de Bourges_, p. 158, note\n  2.]\n\nWhen the \"Mystery of the Acts of the Apostles\" was played at Bruges in\n1536, so perfect was the representation of this legend and the other\nmarvels of the piece, says the old historian Du Berry, that many of\nthe hearers thought it real and not feigned. They saw, among a\nthousand other wondrous sights, the provost of the king of the Indies\nenter riding on a huge dromedary, very well constructed, which moved\nits head, opened its mouth, and ran out its tongue. When the butler\nwas punished, they saw a lion steal up and bite off the hand, and a\ndog who bore it still bleeding into the midst of the feasters. These\nwere not the only animal prodigies that passed under the eyes of the\nspectators. In the representation of the sixteenth book, for example,\ntwo sorcerers, irritated against St. Matthew, caused a multitude of\nserpents to appear, and the apostle summoned forth from the earth a\nvery terrible dragon which devoured them. In another part of this same\nbook, St. Philip, having been led before the god Mars, makes a dragon\nleap forth from the mouth of the idol, which kills the son of the\npagan bishop, two tribunes, and two varlets. In the course of the\nseventh book, a still more extraordinary automaton appears. St. Andrew\ndelivers Greece from a monstrous serpent fifty cubits long. \"Here,\"\nsays the note introduced for the ordering of the mystery, \"an oak must\nbe planted, and a serpent must be coiled beneath the said oak,\nglaring, and must vomit forth a great quantity of blood and then die.\"\n\nThe marvels of the art multiply themselves infinitely and in all\ndirections. We see, for example, idols crumbling into powder at the\nvoice of the apostles, and temples crushing the pagans in their fall.\nWe see Saul {583} struck down from his horse by a great light out of\nheaven; St. Thomas walking over red-hot iron; St. Barnabas fast bound\nupon a cart-wheel over a pan of live coals, which burn him to cinders.\n[Footnote 118] We see, also, the apostles borne through the air to\nassist at the death of the Virgin. \"Here lightning must be made in a\nwhite cloud, and this cloud must float around St. John, who is\npreaching at Ephesus, and he must be borne in the cloud to the gates\nof Notre Dame.\" A moment after, \"thunder and lightning must burst\nforth from a white cloud which shall veil over the apostles as they\npreach in different countries, and bear them before the gates of Notre\nDame.\" While the apostles are carrying the body of the Holy Virgin to\nthe tomb, chanting _In exitu Israel de Egypto_, \"a rosy cloud in shape\nlike a coronet must descend, on which should be many holy saints\nholding naked swords and darts.\" A mob of Jews come to lay hands on\nthe shrine. \"As soon as they touch it, their hands must be glued to\nthe litter and become withered and black; and the angels in the cloud\nmust cast down fire upon them and a storm of darts.\" The sacrilegious\nJews are struck with blindness. Some of them are converted and recover\ntheir sight. Five remain obstinate. The devils come to torment them,\nand finally strangle them. \"Here their souls rise in the air and the\ndevils bear them away.\" Lastly, we have the Assumption of the Holy\nVirgin. \"Here Gabriel puts a soul into the body of Mary, after Michael\nhas rolled away the stone. And the Virgin Mary rises to her knees, a\nhalo of glory round her like the sun. Then a grand pause of the organ\nor anthem, while Mary is being placed in the cloud on which she will\nascend. The angels should sing as they disappear _Venite ascendamus_,\nand the angels ought to surround the Virgin and bear her above Gabriel\nand the other angels.\" Lifted thus above nine choirs of angels, she\nelicits vast admiration, and beholding from the height of heaven St.\nThomas, who could not arrive in time to assist at her death and\nreceive her last benediction, she throws him her girdle.\n\n  [Footnote 118: \"Daru will pretend to burn Barnabas, and will burn a\n  feigned body, and will lower Barnabas under the earth.\"]\n\nThus in this drama, requiring forty days and five hundred and thirty\npersons [Footnote 119] for its performance, heaven, air, earth, hell,\nall participated in the movement and the spectacle. What kind of a\ntheatre was required for such scenic action? In the sixteenth century\nmen saw theatres with two stages for the miracles of Notre Dame. The\nMysteries of the Acts of the Apostles and of the Passion required\nthree. Heaven was on high, hell below, earth in mid-space. Let us\nattempt to build anew these theatres before the eyes of our readers.\n\n  [Footnote 119: This is the number of actors employed in the\n  representation made at Bruges in 1536, according to the calculation\n  of M. Chevalier de Saint-Amand. Cahier, \"_Monographie de la\n  Cathedrale de Bourges,_\" p. 153. We find only 484 persons in the\n  \"_Repertoire, des noms contenus au jeu des actes des apotres_.\" See\n  the edition of this \"Mystery\" published at Paris in 1541 by Arnoul\n  and Charles les Angliers, under this title: \"_Les catholiques\n  OEuvres et Actes des Apotres_.\"]\n\nParadise was an amphitheatre in form. High above appeared the Deity,\nseated upon a golden throne and overlooking all--the stage and the\naudience. At the four corners of his throne sat four persons\nrepresenting Peace, Mercy, Justice, Truth. At their feet were nine\nchoirs of angels ranged by hierarchies upon the steps. There was space\nalso for the blessed spirits and for the organ which accompanied the\ncelestial chants. Everything flashed and glittered. The painter and\nthe carver were prodigal of their wonders. Of this we can form a\njudgment from a description of the paradise displayed at Bruges on the\nrepresentation of the \"Triumphant Mystery of the Acts of the\nApostles.\" According to a contemporary narrative, five hundred and odd\nactors, sallying forth from the abbey of St. Sulpice on Sunday\nafternoon, April 30, 1536, bore with them in great pomp the apparatus\nof a spectacle which they were about to give at the amphitheatre of\nthe _Arenes_. {584} They had a paradise twelve feet long, and eight\nfeet wide. \"It had all around it open thrones painted to resemble\npassing clouds, and both without and within were little angels as\ncherubim and seraphim, powers and dominations, in bas-relief, their\nhands joined and always moving. In the middle was a seat fashioned\nlike a rainbow, upon which was seated the Godhead--Father, Son, and\nHoly Ghost; and behind were two gold suns revolving continuously in\nopposing orbits. At the four corners were seats on which reposed\nJustice, Peace, Truth, and Mercy, richly clothed; and beside the said\nGodhead were two small angels chanting hymns and canticles to the\nmusic of the players on the flute, the harp, the lute, the rebec, and\nthe viol, who circled about the paradise.\"\n\nThe same account describes a hell fourteen feet in length and eight in\nwidth. \"It was made in the fashion of a rock, upon which was raised a\ntower always burning and sending forth flames. At the four corners of\nthe said rock were four small towers, within which appeared spirits\nundergoing diverse torments, and on the fore-edge of the rock writhed\na great serpent, hissing and emitting fire from his mouth and ears and\nnostrils; and along the passages of the said rock twined and crawled\nall kinds of serpents and great toads.\"\n\n\"The form and dimensions of this fiery cavern varied according to the\nexigencies of the dramatic action; but its place was invariably in the\nlower part of the theatre. In this were assembled all the _diablerie_,\nusually comprising a dozen principal personages; and from thence\nissued a terrible storm of howls and shrieks. Lucifer was there, and\nSatan, Belial, Cerberus, Astaroth, Burgibus, Leviathan, Proserpine,\nand other devils great and small. The gate through which they passed\nwhen coming to earth to torment mankind, appeared in shape like the\nenormous jaws of a dragon, and was called hell's mouth.\"   [Footnote\n120]\n\n  [Footnote 120: At the representation of the \"Mystery of the Passion\"\n  at Metz, in July, 1437. \"The mouth of hell was exceedingly well\n  made, for it opened and shut when the devils wished to enter or go\n  forth, and it had a great steel under-work.\" _Chronique de Metz_,\n  MS.; composed by a cure of St. Eustache, cited by Beauchamps, in the\n  _Recherches sur les theatres_.'']\n\nLimbo, when demanded by the peculiar features of the play, as in the\nMystery of the Resurrection, was placed below hell, and was symbolized\nby a huge tower with slits and gratings on all sides, in order that\nthe spectators might catch glimpses of the spirits confined there. As\nthese spirits were only statuettes, there was stationed behind the\ntower a body of men who howled and shrieked in concert, and when\nanything was to be said to the audience, a strong and lusty voice\nspoke in the name of all.  [Footnote 121] When a purgatory was needed,\nit was located and constructed after nearly the same manner.\n\n  [Footnote 121: \"_Mysteres inedits du XVe siecle_\" published by\n  Achille Jubinal, t.i., preface, p. xlii. (Paris, 1837). Let us\n  remark here in passing, that M. Jubinal, who is better acquainted\n  with the manuscripts of the middle ages than with his catechism, has\n  confounded limbo with purgatory. ]\n\nThe stage, properly so called, which was on a level with the audience,\nrepresented earth--that is, the different countries to which the\ndramatic action was successively transferred. It therefore required a\nvastly greater space than hell or paradise; the one symbolized by a\ncavern, and the other by an amphitheatre. It was divided into\ncompartments, and inscriptions indicated the countries and the cities.\nThis division was effected by scaffolds entirely separate, when there\nwas room enough. Thus at the \"Mystery of the Passion,\" represented at\nParis in 1437, at the entrance of King Charles VII., the scaffolds\noccupied the whole of the Rue St. Denis for a distance of a stone's\nthrow on either side, and the more remote stage, on which the last\njudgment was exhibited, was before Le Chatelet. The spectators were\nobliged to travel from one part to the other with the actors. But they\nremained seated, and could see the whole without change of place, at\nthe performance of the same mystery, given the same year at Metz, in\nthe {585} plain of Veximiel. For the vast semicircle destined for the\nassembly had nine rows of seats, and behind were the grand chairs for\nthe lords and dames assembled from all parts of the province, and even\nfrom Germany. It was the same at Bruges on the preceding year at the\nrepresentation of the \"Acts of the Apostles.\" The enclosure occupied\nthe whole space of the ancient amphitheatre, commonly called the Ditch\nof the Arenes. It had two stages, and vast pavilions protected the\nspectators from the inclemency of the weather and the heat of the sun.\n\nBut three years after, in 1541, when the burgesses of Paris played\nthat immense drama in the hall of l'Hotel de Flandre, or when the\nFraternity of the Passion gave their representations for a century and\na half, at their theatre of the Trinity, in a hall one hundred and\ntwenty-nine feet long and thirty-six feet deep, how were local\ndistinctions indicated? Then the stage, in default of space, was\ndivided by simple partitions, and inscriptions, indicating beyond\nmistake the houses, cities, and diverse countries, were more\nindispensable than ever. We may remark, finally, that in the great\nmysteries, divided by days, it was easy during the temporary\nsuspension of the play to give a new aspect to the stage by a change\nof scenery. Sometimes, also, as in the preceding century, the actors\nwere obliged to inform the audience that they were transported from\none place to another by saying, \"Here we come to Bethlehem--to\nJerusalem. We are making sail for Rome--for Athens, etc.\" And the\nillusion was kept up, as far as could be, by the cessation of the\nmusic, in the interval during which, to use an expression of M.\nSainte-Beuve, the mighty train swept on across space and time.\n\nPassing from the architecture of the theatre to the physiognomy of the\nactors, let us study the manner in which they were recruited. There\nwere stock companies, and extemporized companies. Of the first\ndescription were the \"Fraternity of the Passion,\" so celebrated in the\nhistory of the representations of the \"mysteries\" at the end of the\nmiddle ages. There were also the burgesses of Paris, artisans of all\nhandicrafts, who, at the end of the fourteenth century, assembled at\nthe village of St. Maur, near Vincennes, to give on festal days their\npious spectacles. Interdicted June 3, 1398, by ordinance of the\nprovost of Paris, who mistrusted this novelty, they obtained from King\nCharles VI., by letters patent of December 4, 1402, permission to play\neven at Paris, and at the same time their society was elevated into a\npermanent fraternity, under the title of _De la Passion de Notre\nSeigneur,_ and was installed near the gate St. Denis in the ancient\nhospital of the Trinity, then for some time disused.\n\nIt would appear that in certain provinces, cities, and even parishes,\nhad, like Paris, their association of miracle-players. But, most\ncommonly, these companies were improvised, and consisted of\nvolunteers. This was the case at the gigantic representations of the\nMystery of the Acts of the Apostles at Bruges and at Paris. We have\nstill \"the cry and public proclamation made at Paris, Thursday, the\nsixteenth of December, 1540, by the command of our lord the king,\nFrancis I. by name, and monsieur the provost of Paris, summoning the\npeople to fill the parts necessary for the playing of said mystery.\"\nAt eight o'clock of the morning there were assembled at the Hotel de\nFlandre, where the \"mystery\" was to be performed, all those who were\ncharged with its management, rhetoricians, gentlemen of the long robe\nand the short, lawyers and commoners, clergymen and laity, in vast\nnumbers. They paraded through the streets in fine apparel, all well\nmounted according to their estate and capacity, preceded by six\ntrumpeters and escorted by numerous sergeants of the provost, who kept\nthe crowd in check. They halted at every square, and, after a triple\nflourish of trumpets, a public crier made the proclamation, which was\nin bad rhyme. Ten days {586} after, on St. Stephen's day, the large\nhall of the Hotel de Flandre--the usual place, says the narrative, for\nmaking the records and holding the rehearsals of the mysteries, was\nfilled with a crowd of burgesses and merchants, clergy and laity, who\ncame to exhibit their talents in the presence of the commissioners and\nlawyers deputed to hear the voice of each person, retaining and\nremunerating them according to the measure of their excellence in the\nparts required. The selections having been made, the rehearsals\ncommenced and continued every day until the performance of the\nmystery, which was played at the beginning of the next year.\n\nWhoever deemed himself of any value responded generously to these\nappeals, not only among the _bourgeois_ and gentlemen--artisans and\nmagistrates--but also the cures and their vicars, the canons, and\nsometimes even the friars. Women alone were excluded, the female parts\nbeing always filled by men. The participation of the clergy in these\nscenic diversions is readily accounted for, when one considers the\nmoral aim and the religious character of the plays. All these dramas\nrepresent the mysteries and history of Christianity. All commence,\neither with readings from the Holy Scripture or by the chanting of the\nhymns of the Church, or by the recitation of the Ave Maria--the whole\nassemblage kneeling and joining in the services. All ended, moreover,\nas in preceding centuries, with the _Te Deum_. The spectacle was\nfrequently interrupted by preaching, and more than once, at the end of\na dramatic day, actors and spectators might be seen wending their way\nto church to offer up thanks to heaven. Beside, did not the clergy\nfind themselves on their own ground, in these plays, instituted in\norder to increase the solemnity of their sacred days, and evincing\nunquestionable traces of a liturgic origin? Let us add finally, with\nDom Piolin, that a distinction was rigorously maintained between\nprofane pieces and those whose aim was the edification and the\ninstruction of the faithful; that while zealously keeping in check all\nacting which could possibly be turned to license, the clergy furthered\nwith all their power the exhibiting of the \"mysteries.\" The learned\nBenedictin presents to us the chapter of St. Julien at Mans\npreventing, in 1539, the ringing of the cathedral bells in order not\nto interrupt a representation of the Miracle of Theophilus; and\nstopping them again, in 1556, and, in addition, hastening the morning\noffices and delaying those of evening, in order to accommodate them to\nthe time of the performance of the \"Mystery of the Conception of the\nmost Holy Virgin.\"\n\nAfter the distribution of parts, all the actors were obliged on the\nspot to pledge themselves by oath and under penalty of a fine never to\nbe absent from the rehearsals. A second appeal to the public good-will\nwas necessary to secure a wardrobe for the hundreds of players, who on\nthe day of exhibition wore sometimes the richest jewels and the most\nbeautiful stuffs of a whole province. The magnificence of the\nspectacle at Bruges, in 1536, would strike us as incredible, if the\nauthor of the narrative which has preserved us the details, had not\ntaken the precaution to forewarn his readers at the start that he kept\nwithin the truth. As illustrating its splendor, take the following\nexamples, gathered here and there from the volume.\n\nSt. James the Lesser wore a scarf estimated at 450 gold crowns. The\ngirdle of St. Matthew was valued at more than 500 crowns sterling.\nQueen Dampdeomopolis, who was mounted on an ambling pad which was\ncovered with a housing of black velvet and had a gold fringed harness,\nwore a petticoat of cloth of gold, beneath a robe of crimson damask\nbordered with gold chains, while down the front ran a rich beading of\nprecious stones, rubies and diamonds, of the value of more than 2,000\ncrowns. This is not all. From head to foot gold and jewels glittered\n{587} on her person. Her head-dress was surmounted by a white feather,\nand on her forehead hung by a little thread of black silk a huge\noriental pearl. The wife of Herod Agrippa had for her girdle a great\ngold chain of more than 1,000 crowns in value; from which hung\nchaplets carved in facets. She had on her neck another great chain and\na collar of pearls, whence hung a ring and sprig of four diamonds, and\non her stomacher was a _dorure_ which bore a gold dog having a great\nruby hanging from its neck, and a great pearl suspended to the tail.\n\nAll these princesses--and they could be counted by dozens--had with\nthem their maids, their squires, and their pages, handsomely clothed.\nThere were likewise princes, kings, and emperors, who came from all\nquarters of the world.\n\nNothing approaches to the magnificence of Nero. It would carry us too\nfar out of our way if we should mention in detail the numerous and\nbrilliant cortege which preceded the formidable emperor when the\nactors issued from the abbey of St. Sulpice, where they robed\nthemselves before entering the theatre. First came a troop of\nmusicians composed of a fifer, six trumpeters, and four players on the\ntamborine; next the grand provost of Rome, mounted on a splendid horse\ncaparisoned with violet-colored satin, fringed with white silk; then\nfour cavaliers attending the ensign-bearer of Nero; presently four\ncompanies of Moors crowned with laurels and bearing, some, masses of\ngilded silver, others, vases of silver and gold or _cornucopiae_\nfilled with _fleurs de lis_--or the armorial bearings of the empire\ninter-worked on triumphal hats. Lastly, a horse appeared covered to\nthe ground with flesh-colored velvet, bordered with tracery of gold,\ninto which were woven the devices of Nero. This horse, conducted by\ntwo lackeys clothed also with flesh-colored velvet, bore a cushion of\nsilk and cloth-of-gold in Turkish work, on which lay three crowns, the\nfirst, solid gold; the second, all pearls; the third, composed of\nevery kind of precious stone of marvellous beauty and richness--and\nthese three crowns formed the imperial head-gear.\n\nNext there came into sight another horse, whose harness and caparison\nwere of blue satin, fringed with gold and bestrewn with stars made of\nembroidery of gold stuff on a violet field. The two lackeys who led it\nby the bridle, had their heads uncovered and were clothed with velvet\nof a violet crimson, purfled with gold, slashed with broad slashes,\nthrough which the lining of white satin showed itself in folds. This\nwas the saddle-horse of the emperor.\n\nAfterward came six players on the hautboy clothed in sarcinet of a\nviolet crimson.\n\nNero appeared last, borne on a high tribunal eight feet wide and ten\nlong, and covered to the earth with cloth-of-gold, strewn with large\nembroidered eagles, \"copied as closely as possible from the life.\" The\nchair on which he was seated was entirely covered with another\ncloth-of-gold crimped. His _sagum_, or military cloak, was of blue\nvelvet all purfled with gold, with large flowers in needle-work after\nthe antique; the sleeves slashed, and displaying beneath the\nundulating folds of the lining, which was of gold stuff on a violet\nfield. His robe, a crimson velvet, adorned with flowers and interlaced\nwith gold thread, was lined with velvet of the same color. The cape\nwas serrated, the points interblending, and was bestrewn with a\nprofusion of great pearls, and at each point hung a great tassel of\nother pearls. His hat, of Persian velvet and of _a tyrannical\nfashion_, was bordered with chains of gold and strewn with a great\nquantity of rings. His gold crown, with its triple branches, was\nfilled with gems so numerous, so varied, and of so great a price that\nit is impossible to specify them. And his collar was not less\ngarnished. His buskins, of Persian velvet, with small slashes, were\nlaced with chains of gold, and some rings hung from his {588} garters.\nHe placed one of his feet upon a casket which enclosed the imperial\nseal and was covered with silver cloth sown with gems, thus\nsymbolizing that the power of the empire was his, and that all things\nwere submissive to him. In his hand was a battle-axe well gilded. His\nport was haughty and his mien very magnificent. The tribunal, with the\nmonarch upon it, was borne by eight captive kings, the drapery\nconcealing from the audience everything save their heads, on which\nrested crowns of gold. A troupe of musicians followed with trumpets,\nclarions, tamborines, and fifes. The procession was closed by\ntwenty-four cavaliers, captains, chevaliers, squires,\ncup-bearers--some wearing the imperial livery, others clad according\nto their pleasure; and by chariots which were loaded with the\nemperor's baggage and _vivanderie_, and were drawn by eighteen or\ntwenty horses.\n\nNero's sagum, with its splendid flower-work _after the antique_, his\nhat of _tyrannical fashion_, his battle-axe, the eagles embroidered on\nthe drapery which covered his tribunal, the laurel crowns which begirt\nthe brows of his Moorish guards, the _cornucopiae_, the vases of gold\nand silver which they carried, all indicate a tendency toward\nhistorical costume. This is also seen in the robes of the seventy-two\ndisciples _approaching the ancient manner_--the caps of the high priests,\nJosephus and Abiachar, made _according to the Jewish manner_--the\ndagger of Polemius, king of Armenia, the golden handle of which was\nprepared _after the antique_--the robe, _fashioned after the Hebrew\nmanner_, which was worn by the young Jew whom we saw singing at the\nmarriage of Pelagia and Denis. But apart from these examples and some\nothers which are found here and there in the pompous catalogue of the\nactors of Bruges, everybody used great liberty and much fancifulness\nin the choice of habiliments. Each person took the most beautiful\nthings he could lay hands on. The cortege of Nero closed, as we have\nseen, by cavaliers dressed _after their own pleasure_. The marechal of\nMigdeus, king of Greater Ynde, and his valet, had taffeta clothes\nwhile bearing on their shoulders bars of iron and mallets. The lord of\nQuantilly, author of the relation from which we have derived our\ndetails, after having spoken of a group of eighteen or twenty persons\nblind, halt, demoniac, lepers and vagabonds, confesses that they were\ntoo well clad to accord with their condition.\n\nThus far we have concerned ourselves with the history of the mysteries\nand their representation; we shall now proceed to a critical\nretrospect of the subject.\n\nThe trilogy of the \"Mystery of the Passion\" and the \"Triumphant\nMystery of the Acts of the Apostles,\" deserve an important place in\nthe history of French dramatic art, not only because they characterize\nthe epoch of which they were the two chief works, but also because\nthey have an intimate and an essential connection with the tragic\nmasterpieces of the eighteenth century--a connection also which has\nbeen little noticed. We propose to consider the literary value and the\ninfluence of those two plays, commencing with an estimate of the _mise\nen scene_ and the spectacle whose fairy-like pomp and immense\npopularity we have just taken in view.\n\nThe dramatic writers and the managers of the \"mysteries\" were well\naware that to move the multitude the eye is of greater power than the\near. We have seen that they directed all their energies to the marvels\nof stage effect. But they did not listen to the precept of the poet, a\nprecept founded on the very nature of art, which enjoins that only\nthose things should be interwoven into the composition which can be\nwitnessed without incredulity and without disgust. If the devils\nintervene, they must be introduced with their bat-shaped wings ever\nmoving, and fire issuing from their nostrils, their mouth, and their\nears, while they held in their hands {589} fiery distaffs shaped like\nserpents; that Cerberus, porter of hell, should have on his helmet\nthree heads emitting flame, and that the keys he carried in his hand\nshould seem to have just issued from a furnace, they sparkled so; that\nthe long and hideous breasts of Proserpine should drip incessantly\nwith blood, and with jets of fire at intervals; that Lucifer should\nhave a casque vomiting forth flames unceasingly, and should hold in\nhis grasp handfuls of vipers which moved in fiery twists. It was then\neverywhere fire, and, above all, real fire--for the contemporary\nauthority who furnishes us with the details is particular to tell us,\ntwo several times, that there were people employed to feed this fire.\n\nThe fire thus carried about by the devils in all their goings and\ncomings, and ever bursting from the mouth of hell when opened, became\nnaturally the occasion of numerous accidents. We have an example of\nthis nature which might have been tragical, but by good luck was only\nludicrous, in the performance of the \"Mystery of St. Martin\" at\nSeurre, in 1496. At the commencement of the spectacle, which lasted\nthree days, and opened with a scene of _diablerie_, the man who held\nthe role of Satan having wished, says an official report of this\nepoch, to ascend to earth, caught fire in his nether garments, and was\nseverely burnt. But he was so suddenly rescued and reclothed, that,\nwithout any one being aware of the accident, he went through with his\npart and then retired to his house. The affair had occurred in the\nmorning between seven and eight o'clock. When he returned at one in\nthe afternoon, the interval allowed, according to usage, for the\naudience to dine in being now over, he addressed to Lucifer, who was\nthe cause of his misadventure, four impromptu verses that the public\napplauded exceedingly, but their grossness prevents our reproducing\nthem.\n\nThese material imitations of physical nature and these exaggerations\nof the spectacle appear everywhere. When they wished, for example, to\nrepresent a martyr, it was necessary that the victim should be visibly\ntortured. We have even, in the representation of the \"Mystery of the\nActs of the Apostles,\" St. Barnabas disappearing adroitly and leaving\nhis counterfeit presentment in the hands of the executioner, who binds\nit upon a wheel and sets it revolving over a burning brazier before\nthe eyes of the spectators. When St. Paul was decapitated, it was\nrequisite that his head, as it fell to the ground, should leap three\ntimes, and that at each bound, in accordance with the tradition, a\nfountain should gush forth. When they represented the crucifixion of\nour Lord, and the despair of Judas, it was necessary that the Saviour\nof the world should be seen nailed to the cross for the space of three\nhours, and that the traitor be hung miserably from a tree. On the\nperformance of the \"Mystery of the Passion\" before the people of\nLorraine in 1437, God, according to a chronicler of the time, was\nimpersonated by \"Sir Nicole don Neuf-Chastel, who was cure of St.\nVictor at Metz, and would have nearly died on the cross, had he not\nbeen succored; and another priest had to be put in his place to\nperfect the representation of the crucifixion. The next day the said\ncure, after having reposed, played the resurrection and bore his part\nsuperbly. Another priest, who was called Messire Jehan de Nicey, and\nwho was chaplain of Metrange, acted Judas, and was almost killed by\nhanging, for his heart failed him, and he was right speedily cut\ndown.\"\n\nThe taste of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries for these\nmaterialistic representations was such that for the scenic features of\nthe longer mysteries they contented themselves sometimes with a simple\npantomime. Indeed, on September 8, 1424, at the solemn entry of the\nDuke of Bedford, the English Regent of France, the children of Paris,\nto adopt the expression of Sauval, played the Mystery of the Old and\nNew Testament without {590} speech or sign, as if they had been images\ncarved on a frieze.\n\nThe infancy of art, which appeared everywhere at this epoch in the\nrepresentation of the \"Mysteries,\" was especially visible in their\nstyle and in their composition. A rapid examination of its literary\nfaults will suffice to show that the French drama of the middle ages,\nprogressive, if not as regards its truthfulness, at least in the pomp\nof its spectacle, was in rapid decline in respect to poetry.\n\nThe first and gravest literary fault of this drama in its\ndecadence--that which includes all the others--is the absence of all\nthat makes the soul and life of the drama--of everything which\ndistinguishes it most essentially from history. There is neither plot,\nnor peripetia, nor characters, nor passions. In the thirteenth\ncentury, Ruteboeuf, in the Miracle of Theophilus, bestows on his hero\na passionate nature, and develops the action not by events in their\nordinary sequence, but by the stormy struggles of the heart and the\nagitations of conscience. One principal personage is put upon the\nstage, and a single incident carries the play rapidly forward to a\nunique denouement. Jean Bodel, in the \"Play of St. Nicholas,\" less\nskilled than his contemporaries in making his intrigue keep step to\nthe movements of passion, consoled himself with laying violent hands\non the legend, to which he gives an entirely new form. In the\nfourteenth century we find no longer, it is true, in the anonymous\nauthors of the \"Miracles of Notre Dame\" either that creating power, or\nthose passionate intrigues, or that simple and rapid movement, but at\nleast we meet with some true pathos in certain scenes, and in a great\nnumber of monologues there are pronounced and well-sustained\ncharacters in the female parts, especially while the dramatic interest\nconcentrates on one person. Open the two most celebrated works of the\nfifteenth and sixteenth centuries--the \"Mystery of the Passion\" of the\ntwo Jehan Michels, and the \"Triumphant Mystery of the Acts of the\nApostles\" of the brothers Greban--there is nothing more than a pure\nand simple _mise en scene_ of history or of legend, unrolling itself\nslowly as the events arrive in their chronological order. There is no\nunity either of time or of place, as in the past; nor is there unity\nof action. Personal interest has ceased; the passions have ceased;\nvigorous characterizations have ceased. Everybody speaks frigidly from\none end of the piece to the other, and for forty days, and one can\nscarcely find throughout the plays a terse or impassioned line. There\nis no progression in the movement; no advance in intrigue; no fresh\ncomplication; the tiresome dramatist jogs along without troubling\nhimself about denouement.\n\nThis drama, which has no longer a dramatic art save in its dialogue\nand its spectacle--is it then absolutely without poetry? Some critics\nseem to have thought so, since they dwelt only on its absurdities and\nits literary poverty. And it must be avowed that puerility,\ntriviality, indecency even, so dominate there, that it is easy, when\napproaching it, to give one's self over to a universal disgust.\nOthers, recognizing its poverty as a whole, have found some redeeming\nfeatures. Of this number are M. Onesime Le Roy, whose patriotic\nadmiration of the Artesian works has perhaps led him too far, and M.\nDouhaire, who has better controlled his enthusiasm. M. Douhaire is, in\nour opinion, the critic who was not only the first to study, but has\nalso most clearly comprehended the religious beauties of the later\nmediaeval \"mysteries.\" \"We appeal,\" he says in 1840, in his lectures\non the History of Christian Poetry,--\"we appeal to the memory and the\nemotions of the reader. Who is there that does not recall with the\nmost ineffable sentiments of joy those graceful scenes of the gospel\nof the Nativity of our Lady, the interior of the house of Joachim, his\nretirement among the shepherds, the triumphal song of St. Ann after\nthe birth of Mary, the life of the {591} Virgin in the temple? Who has\nnot present in his memory the grand pictures of the Gospel of\nNicodemus, the conversations of the patriarchs in limbo, the descent\nof Jesus Christ into hell, the silent apparition of Charinus and\nLeucius in the Sanhedrim, the terrible portrayal of the last days of\nPilate, and that personification of the Jew in Ahasuerus whose\ngrandeur surpasses the loftiest conceptions of profane poetry? But it\nis not alone for its depth, it is also for its form, or at least for\nthe arrangement and effect of its combinations, that our mysteries are\nremarkable. Doubtless in respect to theatrical art they are more than\ndefective. They have indeed, to speak truly, no art at all. The events\nare not co-ordinated with a preconceived idea, and distributed in a\nmanner to lead forward to a catastrophe or to a final peripetia. The\norder of facts is habitually that of time. They are historic dialogues\nand nothing more. But as in history the divine and the human, the\nsupernatural and the real, are almost always blended together, the\ncomposers of the 'mysteries' have diligently worked out this\ninterrelation. Aided by the construction of their theatres, which\npermitted them to move many scenes, they combined these actions in a\nmanner to elicit extraordinary effects, unfolding simultaneously to\nthe eye of the spectator heaven, earth, hell. They initiated him into\nthe secret of life, showed to him the mysterious warfare of souls, and\nby this spectacle made his spirit pass through terrors that any other\ndrama would be powerless to produce.\"\n\nSubscribing entirely, and it is an easy thing for us, to the judgment\nof the author of the \"Course upon Christian Poetry,\" let us guard\nourselves from going too far by extending the conclusion beyond the\npremises. Where does M. Douhaire find these poetical beauties which he\noffers for our admiration? In the trilogy of the \"Mystery of the\nPassion.\" Now this vast dramatic composition is nothing more, in fact,\nthan an agglomeration of the \"mysteries\" which preceded the work of\nthe two Jehan Michels. These charming scenes, these grand pictures,\nwhich are met with here and there, are only the fragments of a more\nancient poetry, that have been gathered up anew. When the dramatists\nof the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries enter upon original\ncomposition, the decline of poetry is seen everywhere, in the detail\nas well as in the whole, in the style as in the conception. We know of\nbut one merit which truly belongs to them--it is the happy development\nthey have given to stage effect by a simultaneous presentation of\nheaven, hell, and the earth--shadowing forth by this triple\ntheatrical action the incessant intervention of the supernatural\npowers in the destinies of humanity. But while this conception is\nmajestic, its literary execution is wretched. We have a proof in the\n\"Triumphant Mystery of the Acts of the Apostles,\" written from\nbeginning to end without verve, or coloring, or nobleness, by the two\nmost celebrated dramatic poets of their age, whom Marot calls--\n\n  \"The two Grebans of high-resounding line.\"\n\nHaving noticed the literary poverty of the dramatic poetry of this\nepoch, we will now point out the principal sources of its faults. They\nare two. The first is a misconception of the dramatists respecting the\nnature of the types proposed for the imitation of art. The second is a\nconsequence of the popularity and the indefinite length of their\nspectacles.\n\nIt is impossible to compare the meagreness, the languor, and the\nstupidity of the two brothers Greban with the bright and graceful\nvivacity of the writer who praises them, without being amazed at the\neulogies he bestows, and demanding what can be the reason of this\nmisjudgment on the part of a poet, the most spiritual and the most\ndelicate of the reign of Francis I. It comes from the false idea which\nthe fifteenth and sixteenth centuries formed of the dramatic style,\nor, to speak more {592} exactly, of the entire dramatic art. In place\nof seeking the ideal, they sought reality, and, what is worse, it was\nin the commonest realities that the dramatists of that time searched\nafter the type of their language and the morals of their heroes. We\nhave already remarked the same aberration of public taste in the far\ntoo materialistic imitations of the spectacle.\n\n\"Under a literary and dramatic point of view,\" says M. Sainte-Beuve,\n\"that which is the essential characteristic of the mysteries of the\nsixteenth century is its low vulgarity and its too minute triviality.\nThe authors had but one aim. They sought to portray in the men and\nevents of other times the scenes of the common life which went on\nunder their eyes. With them the whole art was reduced to this\nimitation, or rather to this faithful _facsimile_. If they exhibited a\npopulace, it was recognizable at once as that of the market-places or\nof the city. Every tribunal was a copy of the Chatelet or of the\nParliament. The headsmen of Nero, of Domitian, Daru, Pesart, Torneau,\nMollestin, seemed taken from the _Place du Palais de Justice_ or from\nMontfaucon. . . .  What the public above all admired, was the perfect\nconformity of the dialogue, and of the other features of the play,\nwith everyday realities. The good townsmen could not cease gazing at\nand listening to so natural an imitation of their daily customs and\ntheir domestic bickerings. All contemporary praise bears upon this\nexact resemblance. It is in this way that common and uncultured\nminds--strangers to the intimate and profound joys of art--readily\naccept false coin, and content themselves with pleasures at a low\nprice.\"\n\nThis habitual imitation of the common life and of everything trivial\nis found even in scenes of a wholly ideal nature in heaven and in\nhell. The language of God and of paradise is vulgar; that of the\ndevils is grotesque, sometimes even indecent. At the commencement of\nthe mysteries of the brothers Greban, while the apostles have\nassembled together in an upper chamber to elect St. Matthias, Lucifer\norders the demons to wander over the earth, and before going the evil\nspirits request his benediction. He replies to them:\n\n  \"Devils damned, in malediction\n  O'er you each, with power blighted,\n  My paw I stretch, of God accursed,\n  From sins and misdeeds all absolving,\n  Up! Set forth!\" etc.\n\nWhen Satan and Astaroth bring the souls of Ananias and Saphira to\nhell, Lucifer is so transported with joy that he bids the demon hosts\nexult:\n\n  \"Let the crowd of the damned,\n  Here, before my tribunal,\n  Sing an anthem infernal!\"\n\nBelial and Burgibus, he adds, will lead the treble: Berits, Cerberus,\nand some others, the tenor; Astaroth and Leviathan, the bass. At once\nthey all begin to chant in chorus:\n\n  \"The more he has, the more he asks for\n  Our grand devil, Lucifer.\n  Does he wish the sky to pour\n  Souls by thousands running o'er?\n  The more they come, he longs for more,\n  For his appetite is sore.\n  The more he has, the more he asks for,\n  Our grand devil, Lucifer.\"\n\nLucifer, deafened by their hubbub, stops his ears, and tries to\nsilence them. Impossible! \"On with the song!\" cries Belial, and the\nuproar continues.\n\nThe \"Mystery of the Passion\" also commences with a scene in hell, the\ntone of which appears still more singular. God is in consultation with\nthe heavenly court upon the redemption of the human race. Lucifer,\nalarmed, convokes his assembly.\n\n  \"Devils of hell-fire, horned and terrible,\n  Infamous dogs, why sit ye idle?\n  Start up, ye fat ones, young, old, and naked;\n  Serpents atrocious, hump-backed and twisted.\"\n\nThe devils hastily assemble. Satan is the first to respond to the\ngracious appeal.\n\n  \"What is't thou wishest, bull-dog outrageous--\n  Fetid, infected, abhorrent, mendacious?\n  For thee we have forfeited heaven and all,\n  To suffer such evils as no one can measure--\n  And now, is cursing your only pleasure?\"\n\nBelial calls Lucifer a _bag full of rottenness,_ whose only food is\ntoads, and {593} complains also that it is his nature to torment them.\n\n\"This constant habit with the mystery-makers of representing the\ndemons as insulting each other in their colloquies,\" says M. Douhaire,\n\"is born of a profound thought. We are told that the wicked despise\neach other. It is this which the Christian dramatists put into action.\nNothing can give a more terrible idea of hell than these disputes,\nwhere the demons mutually accuse each other of sufferings which cannot\nbe abated.\"\n\nHere is a reflection full of justice, and indispensable for a right\ninterpretation of the moral aim of the \"mysteries.\" But there still\nremains the literary and philosophical remark of M. Saint-Beuve upon\nthe general tendency of this epoch to a reproduction of the morals and\nlanguage of the most common and vulgar life. For the dramatists might\nhave represented the wickedness of the demons--the horror and disorder\nof hell--without seeking their phrases in a vocabulary of the lowest\nstamp.\n\nThe frequent change from seriousness to buffoonery, from the beautiful\nto the burlesque, has a similar origin in the tastes of our ancestors\nfor the actualities of ordinary life, where these transitions are\nhabitual. But it also rose out of the necessity of keeping up the\ninterest of a spectacle which continued many days, sometimes many\nweeks. Variety was a necessity. That popular assembly would consent to\nweep or even to be serious morning and evening for a month? Let us\ntake an example where triviality, liveliness, and morality are all\nunited together, We borrow it from M. Onesime Le Roy, who found it in\nan unedited \"Mystery of the Passion.\" and published it in 1837.\n\nThe anonymous dramatist, after having depicted in beautiful and\ntouching scenes the sweet virtues and good deeds of St. Joachim and\nSt. Ann, brings on the stage two knaves who wish to make experiments\non their pious simplicity. \"The fellow, who has more than one trick in\nhis bag,\" says the learned critic from whom we transcribe the\nanalysis, \"pretending that cold weather makes him insane, styles\nhimself Claquedent [chatterer]; and the other is called Babin, which\nword, according to the lexicographer Rouchi, signifies 'foolish,'\n'imbecile.' Babin, despite his name and simple air, is more artful\nthan even Claquedent, whom he persuades to imitate madness and to let\nhimself be bound, the better to excite compassion. Claquedent, tied up\nwith cords by Babin, begins to gnash his teeth and to utter piteous\ncries, which bring the wife of Joachim. This holy woman wishes to\nrelieve him. Babin shouts out not to touch him:\n\n  \"Ha, good dame! be wary,\n  Touch him not, I pray thee,\n  Lest, perchance, he slay thee!\"\n\nAfter a long scene of horrible contortions on one side, and of tender\ncompassion on the other, Babin says he is going to lead away\nClaquedent, and receives money from the charitable dame, who bids him\ntake good care of his friend, and to return _when the money is gone_.\nBabin, upon the latter part of this advice, replies pleasantly, \"O\nmadame, _without fail!_\" As soon as Ann has gone away, Claquedent says\nto Babin, \"Quick, untie me!\" But the latter, wishing to profit, like\nRaton, from the misfortune which another Bertrand has brought on\nhimself, says to him,\n\n  Wait awhile, I beg you, do;\n  You have what is best for you;\n  And since I am a trifle clever,\n  I will manage all this silver.\n\nClaquedent, who sees himself caught in a snare, fills the air with his\nshrieks, which have no sham in them now. Babin is not at all\nfrightened, and tells him, with a remarkable allusion to the fable of\nthe fox and the goat,\n\n  Adieu, good Claquedent. In the well\n  Till to-morrow you must dwell.\n\n\"Murder! a thief, a thief!\" cries the entrapped rogue, while the\nother, as he runs off, doubtless tells {594} everybody he meets on the\nway not to approach the infuriated man. \"Don't touch him. He will bite\nyou!\" Finally, they come to Claquedent's assistance, and when they\ninquire who put him in this condition, he replies:\n\n  _Un laroncheau, plein de malfalct_.\n  (A roguish fellow full of mischief).\n\n\"All the comedy of this scene,\" says M. Onesime Le Roy, \"lies in this\nsingle word, _un laroncheau_\" a diminutive of _larron_ (rogue), who\nhas taken in a triple scamp, who thinks himself past mastery! It is\nthus that Patelin says of another scamp, his younger brother, \"He has\ndeceived me, who have deceived so many others.\" \"Is there not,\" adds\nM. Douhaire,--\"is there not, moreover, in this burlesque and merry\nepisode, a lesson for those very foolish persons who from excess of\ngoodness are so easily victimized by the ruses of professional\nbeggars?\"\n\nThese gay scenes quite naturally turn to farce, and these moralities\ndegenerate into satires. This occurs, and in a deplorable manner, even\nin the representation of the gravest and most solemn \"mysteries.\" The\nFraternity of the Passion, perceiving that the people grew tired of\ntheir pious spectacles, called to their rescue a mischievous and merry\ntroupe, whose duty it was to attract the crowd to their hall at the\nHospital de la Trinite. It was the _Enfants sans souci_ company,\ncelebrated at the end of the fourteenth century, and composed of young\ngentlemen of family, who, having invented a kingdom founded on the\nfaults and vices of the human race, called it the Fool's Kingdom,\nnamed as its king the Prince of Fools, and styled their plays\n\"Fooleries\" (sotties)--plays which they made upon everybody, in a\nfantastic and allegorical form. At the court and among the subjects of\nthe prince figure his well-beloved son, the \"Prince of Jollity,\" the\n\"Mother Fool,\" the \"Affianced Fool,\" the \"Fool Occasion,\" the\n\"Dissolute Fool,\" the \"Boasting Fool,\" the \"Cheating Fool,\" the\n\"Ignorant Fool,\" the \"Corrupt Fool,\" and twenty other personages whose\nnames and qualities vary according to the requirements of the farce,\nand of a satire which spared none. In a _sottie_ played on Shrove\nTuesday, in 1511, and directed against Pope Julius II., then at war\nwith Louis XII., the \"Mother Fool\" represents the Church. In another\n_sottie_ where _l'ancien monde_ is introduced, the \"Dissolute Fool\" is\ndressed as a churchman, the \"Boasting Fool\" as a _gendarme_, and the\n\"Lying Fool\" as a merchant. It was the scandalous conduct of these\nyoung Aristophaneses, whose licentiousness equalled their boldness,\nwhich, in 1547, provoked the order of the Parliament against the\nrepresentation of \"mysteries.\" The Hospital de la Trinite reverted to\nits first destination, and the Fraternity of the Passion, driven from\ntheir theatre after a century and a half of popularity, could only\nobtain permission on the following year to construct a new stage at\nthe Hotel de Bourgogne, on the express condition that they would play\nonly profane subjects, which should also be lawful and proper. They\naccepted this new mode of existence; but their time was past, and\ntheir glory was constantly in a decline. However, they held out\nbravely till 1588, at which period they leased their theatre to a\ncompany of travelling comedians, who for some years had been trying to\nestablish themselves in Paris. The cleverest of them, we are told by\nthe brothers Parfait, attempted to preserve their fame by giving out\nthat the religious title of their fraternity did not permit them to\nplay profane pieces. They had realized this a trifle late in the day;\nsome forty years too late indeed!\n\nThe resuscitation of the Greek theatre, four years after the\nparliamentary decree, completed the ruin of the medieval spectacles.\nThey still played the miracles in the provinces, they even composed\nnew ones. But the pious representations went out, changing more and\nmore; and the {595} next century, which was that of Boileau, merely\namused itself with ridiculing them. However, in the very simplicity of\nthe miracles there was something too popular to be completely\nforgotten, in countries where the faith and the innocent manners of\nour good ancestors survived. On May 18, 1835, M. Guizot, then\nminister, recommended to the attention of his historical\ncorrespondents the still surviving traditions of the moralities and\nmysteries of the middle ages. \"There are yet preserved on festal days,\nin certain districts of France,\" said he, \"certain popular dramatic\nperformances. It will not be a useless labor to examine and note down\nthese relics of the past, before modern civilization and the usages of\nthe common language cause their disappearance.\"\n\nThe author of \"Researches into the Mysteries which have been\nrepresented in Maine,\" Dom Piolin, has traced these performances from\nthe end of the sixteenth century up to the present time. He finds the\nlast one at Laval, during the procession of Corpus Christi. \"At its\norigin,\" he says, \"one of the principal features of this fete, the\none, at least, which peculiarly attracted the attention of the mob,\nconsisted in scenes from the Old and New Testament which were\nrepresented on theatres erected along the route of the procession, but\nchiefly at the main court of the Convent des Cordeliers, they\nbelonged, unquestionably, to the miracles' proper, having retained\nthat characteristic simplicity and brevity which is found in the most\nancient pieces. We know that King Rene established a similar custom in\nthe city of Aix. Afterward, when the _marionettes_ were introduced\ninto France by Catharine de Medicis, puppets were substituted for the\nplayers. This theatre--a remnant of the ancient manners--continued\nuntil the end of the restoration, the last performance being in ??37.\"\n\nM. Douhaire closes his \"Course upon the History of Christian Poetry\"\nby account of a foreign performance, extending from the creation of\nthe world to the resurrection of the dead, of which he was an\neye-witness. It was in 1830, at a small town on the banks of the\nLoire. \"What I came to see,\" he adds, \"was the 'Mystery of the\nPassion' played by puppets. I did not suppose, before this curious\nadventure, that there could be any existing trace of the scenic plays\nof the middle ages; but I have since learnt that there still remain\nmany considerable vestiges in our western and southern provinces--where\nnot only professional actors and puppets represent the principal\nscenes of both Testaments, but even families amuse themselves with\nthis holy recreation on days of solemn feasts.\"\n\nPermit us to mention, in our turn, the performance of a mystery\nwitnessed by men still alive, and whose simplicity carries one quite\nback to the middle ages. We get the fact from the president of the\nmodern Bollandists. At the commencement of our century a good priest\nof French Hainaut took upon himself to bring out the \"Mystery of the\nPassion,\" for the welfare of his flock. An appeal was made to all\nwell-disposed people, and, as at Paris in 1437, for the \"Mystery of\nthe Acts of the Apostles,\" the parts were distributed to the burgesses\nand artisans of every description, according to the measure of their\ntalent in such case required. A Judas was wanting. The priest at once\nhit upon the apothecary of the place, whose modesty kept him in his\nlaboratory, and he went in search of him. \"My friend,\" said he, \"we\nare going, as you know, to represent a fine 'mystery,' and it is\nnecessary, for the common good, that you should do something. I have\nfound your place. Your role is Judas.\" \"But M. le cure, my memory is\nnot worth a sou, and you would never be able to stuff so many words\ninto my head.\" \"Exactly so, my friend. I have selected for you the\nshortest part, and I pledge myself to teach you it in no time.\"\nStraightway our man is enrolled in the {596} company. The solemn day\narrives. The parish and all the country round are there. The spectacle\ncommences, and the actors, duly costumed and seated on benches along\neach side of the stage, rise in turn to go through with what they have\nto say. The moment of the kiss of Judas is at hand. The poor\napothecary remains glued to his chair, pale with terror. The priest,\nwho is all eyes, hastens to him, and forces him to get up. Arrived\nbefore the person who represents Jesus Christ, he falls on his knees,\ntrembling in every limb, and crying with joined hands, \"Oh Lord! thou\nwell knowest it was not my fault! It is monsieur the cure who forces\nme.\"\n\nThis grand trilogy of the \"Mystery of the Passion\"--which history\nexhibits as closely connected with puppet shows and village\nperformances, naive even to the grotesque--has quite another\nimportance and quite another destiny in the eyes of philosophy, which\ndiscerns therein the principal features of the modern dramatic art.\nLet us not quit this subject before presenting a confirmation of the\nthesis which the readers of these essays have already seen maintained\nin an article where Corneille, Racine, and even Voltaire himself were\nshown to be unconsciously the lineal successors of our old dramatists\nfar more than of AEschylus, of Sophocles, and of Euripides. The father\nof French tragedy, who discoursed upon his art with so much philosophy\nand toiled night and day to make our poetry Aristotle's--Pierre\nCorneille, after having for half a century attempted himself, and seen\nattempted around him, every possible denouement, was led to recognize\nthe necessity in this particular of going contrary to the tragic art\nof the Greeks. \"The ancients,\" he wrote at the close of his career,\n\"very often content themselves in their tragedies with depicting vices\nin such a manner as to cause us to hate them, and virtues so as to\ncause us to love them, without troubling themselves with recompensing\ngood actions or punishing bad ones. Clytemnestra and her paramour slay\nAgamemnon, and go free. Medea does the same with her children, and\nAtreus with those of her brother. It is true that by carefully\nstudying the actions which were selected for the catastrophe of their\ntragedies, there were some criminals whom they punished, but by crimes\ngreater than their own. . . .  Our drama hardly tolerates such\nsubjects. . . . . It is the interest which we love to extend to the\nvirtuous that has obliged us to resort to this other mode of finishing\nthe dramatic poem by punishing the bad actions and by recompensing the\ngood. It is not a precept of art, but a custom, which we have\nobserved.\"\n\nWhence originated this custom Corneille gave his own century the\ncredit of it; but it is from the middle ages that it dates. What\ntragic drama was it which was the most important--the most popular--the\nlongest played--of that first epoch of the modern theatre? Was it not\nthe \"Mystery of the Passion,\" which we have seen commencing with a\nsimple dramatizing of the gospel--growing century by century--and\nending with an immense trilogy, extending from the fall of man to the\nbirth of our Saviour, from the passion and the death of the Saviour to\nhis resurrection, from the establishment of the Church to the last\njudgment--that solution of human doctrines which regulates all things\nretribution for the wicked and recompense for the good, and by making\nvirtue rise victorious from its battle with the passions? What the\nmiddle ages show us in the \"mystery\" which was its masterpiece,\nappears without exception in all those dramatic compositions which\nhave come down to us. We have already remarked, and it is moreover a\nfact recognized by all scholars, that there is not a tragic drama of\nthis epoch, whatever may be its subject, which does not close with the\n_Te Deum_ or with some other chant of joy, of triumph, or of\nforgiveness. Its denouement is always homage rendered by the justice\n{597} heaven avenging innocence, or by mercy bestowing on the guilty\nrepentance and pardon.\n\nIn speaking three years ago upon the liturgic origin of the modern\ntragedy, and the influence of Christianity on the dramatic passions,\nwe ended by saying that we need no longer seek, as has been too often\ndone, in Corneille or Racine for the restorers of the ancient tragedy;\nthat those great dramatists, it is true, received from Greece the\nscience of the pageant and the _mise en scene_; but that as much as\nthey approach the Greek art in their literary form, so much they\ndepart from it not only by their denouement but also by the moral\ncharacter of their intrigue. It was impossible, in fact, to change the\nnature of the tragic denouement without changing that of the passions\nand of the events which led to them. Let us develop this conclusion of\nour essay by showing what it is that prevents our comprehending French\ntragedy and defining it.\n\nVoltaire has said, \"To compress an illustrious and interesting event\ninto the space of two or three hours, to introduce the _personae_ only\nwhen they ought to appear, to never leave the stage empty, to\nconstruct an intrigue which shall be probable as well as striking, to\nsay nothing useless, to instruct the mind and to move the heart, to be\nalways eloquent in verse, and with an eloquence appropriate to each\ncharacter represented, to make the dialogue as pure as the choicest\nprose, without the constraint of the rhyme appearing to fetter the\nthoughts, and never to admit an obscure or harsh or declamatory\nverse--these are the conditions which are exacted from a tragedy of\n_our_ day, before it can pass to posterity with the approbation of\ncritics, without which it can never have a true reputation.\"\n\nThis definition, or rather this exposition, otherwise so clear and so\nelegant, of the demands of our Melpomene, are far from being complete.\nIn the time of Euripides, a Greek could have said almost as much. It\nis because Voltaire has only taken into account the style and the\n_mise en scene_, the laws of which were at Athens what they are at\nParis. The difference between the ancient tragedies and the modern\ntragic art consists essentially in their moral character and in that\nalone. Christianity, by modifying the passions of the human heart, has\nbeen able to modify them on the stage likewise. It is, then, from the\nphilosophy of the drama that we ought to set out with Aristotle to\nstudy its nature.\n\nThe French tragedy, such as our own great century has made it, is the\nrepresentation of an action more probable than real, more ideal than\nhistoric, wholly noble, serious, and becoming, restricted to one\nplace, accomplished in a few hours, without any interruption, except\nthe interval of the acts, constructed with the majestic simplicity of\nthe epic, drawing its startling changes from the play of passions\nrather from that of events, and leading forward the mind by admiration\nand enthusiasm to emotions of pity and of terror.\n\nIt is not the Greek tragedy--although the ancient Melpomene has\ntransmitted to our time its _cothurnus_, its _mise en scene_, its\ntriple unity, its heroes themselves, with their terrors and their\ntears. The poetic form is the same, the moral force is entirely\ndifferent. On the Athenian stage, the will was subjugated by a brutal\nfatality; upon ours, the will makes the destiny. Vice becomes more\nterrible, virtue more magnanimous, and the struggles of the soul hold\na larger place than the tricks of fortune. The heroes of the ancient\ntragedy, to become endurable with us, would have not only to take on\nsomething of our character, of our manners, of our sentiments, and,\nabove all, of our conscience, but it would be necessary to change\ntheir mode of action, and to lead them to a denouement by paths wholly\nnew.\n\nReturning to the trilogy of the Passion, let us conclude this essay\nwith a {598} reflection which appears to us of a nature to throw great\nlight upon the popularity and the gigantic proportions of this\n\"mystery.\" The middle age, so penetrated with Christian beliefs and\nideas, loved it only because it found there the supreme manifestation\nof Divine Providence, at once merciful and just. It had been induced\nto thus represent the whole history of the human race, only to give to\nthat manifestation all the development demanded by the religious\nconscience and the ethics of nations. There was needed the\nrepresentation of sin and the fall of the first man to explain the\njustice and the pardon of Cavalry: there was needed the spectacle of a\nuniversal judgment to solve the grand tragedy of human destinies.\n\nWe may blame the literary tastes of our good ancestors, but not their\nphilosophy. It has established on an immovable basis the fundamental\nlaws of our dramatic art. We may laugh at the puerile simplicity of\ntheir theatre, but let us laugh reverently, since we find in their\nliterary infancy the germ, the strength, the character of the manhood\nof the great century.\n\n------\n\nTranslated and Abridged from the Civilta Cattolica.\n\nANTONIO CANOVA.\n\n\n_Memorie di Antonio Canova, scritte da Antonio d'Este, e publicate per\ncura, di Alessandro d'Este_. Firenze: Felice Le Monnier. 1864.\n\n\"It must be known,\" says Signor Antonio d'Este, \"that when the learned\nMissirini undertook to publish the artist-life of Canova, he had\nrecourse to me as the only person living who could inform him\nthoroughly and truly of the principles of the Venetian artist, and\ninstruct him in some details of a life which I had known intimately\nfor the space of fifty years. . . . I put upon paper whatever might\nserve to illustrate not only the disposition and character of my\nfriend, but also the excellent qualities of his heart. . . . I was\ndisappointed when the illustrious writer, in sending back my\nmanuscript, said: 'I have made use of many things, and of some\nanecdotes, but not of all, since they appeared to me too familiar.' To\ntell the truth, such an answer hurt my self-love, and offended the\nunquenchable affection which I felt for Canova.\"\n\nHence the book before us. The author has apparently endeavored chiefly\nto exhibit Canova the artist as a model for the studious, but he has\nnot overlooked Canova the citizen and the Christian. He begins with\nhim in the humble Possagno, and shows us his life in Venice, where his\ngenius first displayed itself, even in the degenerate school with\nwhich alone he was then acquainted. It was in Rome that the young\nsculptor saw the ancient purity in its full splendor. It burst upon\nhim like a sudden revelation. For several days he was like one in a\ntrance. Then, with his conceptions enlightened, his manner fixed, and\nhis aim determined, he threw himself into his work. Yet he was never a\nservile copyist of Greek or Roman models. He imbibed the spirit of the\nclassical school, but his genius never was trammelled by imitation.\nThe last group which he carved under the inspiration drawn from the\nancient masterpieces,--his _Daedalus and Icarus_,--compared with his\n_Theseus_, the first work which he executed in Rome, shows in a marked\n{599} manner the change in his style--we might almost say his\nconversion to the true principles of art.\n\nFrom this time Canova, though endowed with rare modesty, and always\nready to take advice, showed a fixed resolution to free sculpture from\nthe mannerism then so common; and neither the advice of friends nor\nthe abuse of evil-minded critics could shake his purpose.\n\nNature undoubtedly lavished talents upon him with unsparing hand; but\nhe was without a parallel in the industry and care with which he\nfostered the divine flame. His whole time not passed in labor was\ndevoted to monuments and museums of art. With his friend d'Este he\noften paid a reverential visit to the famous horses at the Quirinal,\nbefore which he gave free vent to his fancy. He used to spend many\nhours in contemplating these masterpieces. Long before sunrise he\nwould spring from his bed and shut himself up in his studio. He took\nno relaxation--scarcely even food and rest. After hammering at the\nmarble all day, he examined it by candlelight, and dreamed about it at\nnight. He so consumed himself in work that his friends had to wrench\nthe tools from his hands by force. But if he laid down the chisel, it\nwas only to return to the study of ancient masterpieces. Not content\nwith contemplating the works themselves under every possible aspect,\nhe tried to study out what instruments the artists probably made use\nof. He would throw open his studio, and then hide or disguise himself\nin order to overhear the honest opinions of his visitors. Extravagant\npraise always made him suspicious. Once he was so much pained at a\nlavish eulogium upon one of his works that he ran, all trembling, to\nhis friend Hamilton, and begged him to point out some defect in it;\nand having obtained the criticism that he asked, he ran home again in\ngreat glee to correct the fault. He gladly accepted criticism from the\nignorant as well as the learned. One day, when he was quite old, and\nrecognized as the first sculptor of the time, he begged d'Este to move\nto a certain spot a beautiful group that he had finished. Several\nlaborers were called in to move it. When they had done their task, one\nof them, with that connoisseur-air which the Roman laborer knows so\nwell how to assume, shrugged his shoulders and exclaimed:\n\n\"Well, perhaps the marchese\" (Canova bore this title in his later\nyears) \"knows best; but to me this statue seems to have the goitre.\"\n\nThe pupils in the studio sprang up in a rage and loaded the poor man\nwith abuse, and in the midst of the noisy dispute Canova rushed into\nthe room, and with some difficulty learned what was the laborer's\noffence. He darted a glance of fire at the marble.\n\n\"Bravo!\" he exclaimed after a moment's pause. \"You are right. 'Take\nthis watch--it is yours--you have done me a great service.\"\n\nSo saying, he threw his watch and chain upon the man's neck; and\ntaking up a chisel began immediately to retouch the statue.\n\nAt the age of twenty-five, Canova was selected by Volpato to execute\nthe monument of Clement XIV., and it is not too much to say that the\nrestoration of the art of sculpture dates from this immortal work. The\ngovernments of Venice, Russia, Austria, and France invited him to take\nup his residence in their respective capitals; but he was never happy\nout of Rome; the ground seemed to burn under his feet whenever he was\naway from his beloved studio and the great works of the ancient\nsculptors. Few artists ever enjoyed so high a reputation in Europe\nduring their lifetime as Canova, and few certainly ever sought it\nless. He was wholly absorbed in love for his art. and eagerness for\nits advancement.\n\nBut the character of a great artist, according to the Italian ideal,\nis not complete without a touch of oddity, and Canova was not free\nfrom some amiable eccentricities. His love passage with the Signorina\nVolpato, and the {600} way he got out of it, will perhaps furnish the\nsubject for a poem by some future Goldoni; but we have no space to\ntell of it here.\n\nD'Este describes the moral character of Canova extremely well. He was\nupright, brave, and sincere, an ardent patriot, and a sensible,\npractical Christian. In the midst of his labors he was not insensible\nto the dark clouds which obscured the political horizon, and he felt\nso deeply the misfortunes which threatened his country that he took\nthe pains to retouch his _Dancing Girls_ because their expression was\ntoo joyful to accord with his own sadness of heart. He was still\nemployed on this work when the pope was carried into captivity. He\nfelt the misfortune as a personal affliction, and on the statue wrote\nthese words: \"Modelled in the most unhappy days of my life, June,\n1809.\"\n\nA few weeks after the establishment of the Roman republic, a National\nInstitute was erected, and Canova was chosen a member. He accepted the\nappointment willingly, in the hope of being useful to Rome and to her\nartists; but when, on the evening appointed for his formal admission,\nthe oath of membership was tendered to him, and he heard the words, \"I\nswear hatred to princes,\" etc., he sprang to his feet, cried out in\nhis Venetian dialect, _\"Mi non odio nessun!\"_ (I hate no one), and left\nthe hall.\n\n------\n\nFrom The Month.\n\nCONSTANCE SHERWOOD.\n\nAN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.\nBY LADY GEORGIANA FULLERTON.\n\n\nCHAPTER IX.\n\nOn the next morning Mr. Congleton called me into the library from the\ngarden, where I was gathering for Muriel a few of such hardy flowers\nas had survived the early frost. She was wont to carry them with her\nto the prisons; for it was one of her kindly apprehensions of the\nsufferings of others to divide the comfort wherewith things seemingly\nindifferent do affect those that be shut out of all kinds of\nenjoyments; and where a less tender nature should have been content to\nprovide necessaries, she, through a more delicate acquaintanceship and\nlight touch, as it were, on the strings of the human heart, ever\nbethought herself when it was possible to minister if but one minute's\npleasure to those who had often well-nigh forgotten the very taste of\nit. And she hath told me touching that point of flowers, how it had\nonce happened that the scent of some violets she had concealed in her\nbosom with a like intent did move to tears an aged man, who for many\nyears past had not seen, no not so much as one green leaf in his\nprison; which tears, he said, did him more good than anything else\nwhich could have happened to him.\n\nI threw down on a bench the chrysanthemums and other bold blossoms I\nhad gathered, and running into the house, opened the door of the\nlibrary, where, lo and behold, to my no small agitation and amaze, I\ndiscovered Edmund Genings, who cried out as I entered:\n\n\"O my dear master's daughter and well-remembered playmate, I do greet\nyou with all mine heart; and I thank God that I see you in so good a\ncondition, as I may with infinite gladness {601} make report of to\nyour good father, who through me doth impart to you his paternal\nblessing and most affectionate commendations.\"\n\n\"Edmund,\" I cried, scarce able to speak for haste, \"is he in London?\nis he in prison?\"\n\n\"No, forsooth,\" quoth Mr. Congleton.\n\n\"No, verily,\" quoth Edmund; both at the same time.\n\n\"Thy fears, silly wench,\" added the first, \"have run away with thy\nwits, and I do counsel thee another time to be at more pains to\nrestrain them; for when there be so many occasions to be afraid of\nveritable evils, 'tis but sorry waste to spend fears on present\nfancies.\"\n\nBy which I did conjecture my uncle not to be greatly pleased with\nEdmund's coming to his house, and noticed that he did fidget in his\nchair and ever and anon glanced at the windows which opened on the\ngarden in an uneasy manner.\n\n\"And wherefore art thou then in London?\" I asked of Edmund; who thus\nanswered:\n\n\"Because Mr. James Fenn, who is also called Williesden, was taken and\ncommitted close prisoner to the Marshalsea a short time back; which,\nwhen my dear master did hear of, he was greatly disturbed and\nturmoiled thereby, by reason of weighty matters having passed betwixt\nhim and that gentleman touching lands belonging to recusants, and that\nextraordinary damage was likely to ensue to several persons of great\nmerit, if he could not advertise him in time how to answer to those\naccusations which would be laid against him; and did seek if by any\nmeans he could have access to him; but could find no hope thereof\nwithout imminent danger not to himself only, but to many beside, if he\nhad come to London and been recognized.\"\n\n\"Wherein he did judge rightly,\" quoth my uncle; and then Edmund--\n\n\"So, seeing my master and others of a like faith with him in so great\nstraits touching their property and their lives also, I did most\nearnestly crave his licence, being unknown and of no account in the\nworld, and so least to be suspected, to undertake this enterprise,\nwhich he could not himself perform; which at last he did grant me,\nalbeit not without reluctance. And thus resolved I came to town.\"\n\n\"And has your hope been frustrated?\" Mr. Congleton asked. To whom\nEdmund--\"I thank God, the end hath answered my expectations. I\ncommitted the cause to him to whom nothing is impossible, and\ndetermined, like a trusty servant, to do all that in me did lie\nthereunto. And thinking on no other means, I took up my abode near to\nthe prison, hoping in time to get acquainted with the keeper; for\nwhich purpose I had to drink with him each day, standing the cost,\nbeside paying him well, which I was furnished with the means to do. At\nlast I did, by his means, procure to see Mr. Fenn, and not only come\nto speak to him, but to have access to his cell three or four times\nwith pen and ink and paper to write his mind. So I have furnished him\nwith the information he had need of, and likewise brought away with me\nsuch answers to my master's questions as should solve his doubts how\nto proceed in the aforesaid matters.\"\n\n\"God reward thee, my good youth,\" Mr. Congleton said, \"for this thing\nwhich thou hast done; for verily, under the laws lately set forth,\nrecusants be in such condition that, if not death, beggary doth stare\nthem in the face, and no remedy thereunto except by such assistance as\nwell-disposed Protestants be willing to yield to them.\"\n\n\"And where doth my father stay at this present time?\" I asked; and\nEdmund answered:\n\n\"Not so much as to you, Mistress Constance, am I free to reply to that\nquestion; for when I left, 'Edmund,' quoth my master, 'it is a part of\nprudence in these days to guard those that be dear to us from dangers\nensuing on what men do call our perversity; and as these new laws\nenact {602} that he which knoweth any one which doth hear mass, be it\never so privately, or suffers a priest to absolve him, or performs any\nother action appertaining to Catholic religion, and doth not discover\nhim before some public magistrate within the space of twenty days next\nfollowing, shall suffer the punishment of high treason, than which\nnothing can be more horrible; and that neither sex nor age be a cause\nof exemption from the like penalties, so that father must accuse son,\nand sister brother, and children their parents;--it is, I say, a\nmerciful part to hide from our friends where we do conceal ourselves,\nwhose consciences do charge us with these novel crimes, lest theirs be\nalso burdened with the choice either to denounce us if called upon to\ntestify thereon, or else to speak falsely. Therefore I do charge thee,\nmy son Edmund' (for thus indeed doth my master term me, his unworthy\nservant), 'that thou keep from my good child, and my dear sister, and\nher no less dear husband, the knowledge of my present, but indeed\never-shifting, abode; and solely inform them, by word of mouth, that I\nam in good health, and in very good heart also, and do most earnestly\npray for them, that their strength and patience be such as the times\ndo require.'\"\n\n\"And art thou reconciled, Edmund?\" I asked, ever speaking hastily and\nbeforehand with prudence. Mr. Congleton checked me sharply; whereupon,\nwith great confusion, I interrupted my speech; but Edmund, albeit not\nin words yet by signs, answered my question so as I should be\ncertified it was even as I hoped. He then asked if I should not be\nglad to write a letter to my father,--which he would carry to him, so\nthat it was neither signed nor addressed,--which letter I did sit down\nto compose in a hurried manner, my heart prompting my pen to utter\nwhat it listed, rather than weighing the words in which those\naffectionate sentiments were expressed. Mr. Congleton likewise did\nwrite to him, whilst Edmund took some food, which he greatly needed;\nfor he had scarce eaten so much as one comfortable meal since he had\nbeen in London, and was to ride day and night till he reached his\nmaster. I wept very bitterly when he went away; for the sight of him\nrecalled the dear mother I had lost, the sole parent whose company I\nwas likewise reft of, and the home I was never like to see again. But\nwhen those tears were stayed, that which at the time did cause sadness\nministered comfort in the retrospect, and relief from worse fears made\nthe present separation from my father more tolerable. And on the next\nSunday, when I went to the Charter House, with my cousins and Mistress\nWard, I was in such good cheer that Polly commended my prating; which\nshe said for some days had been so stayed that she had greatly feared\nI had caught the infectious plague of melancholy from Kate, whom she\nvowed did half kill her with the sound of her doleful sighing since\nMr. Lacy was gone, which she said was a dismal music brought into\nfashion by love-sick ladies, and such as she never did intend to\npractise; \"for,\" quoth she, \"I hold care to be the worst enemy in\nlife; and to be in love very dull sport, if it serve not to make one\nmerry.\" This she said turning to Sir Ralph Ingoldby, the\nafore-mentioned suitor for her hand, who went with us, and thereupon\ncried out, \"Mercy on us, fair mistress, if we must be merry when we be\nsad, and by merriment win a lady's love, the lack of which doth so\ntake away merriment that we must needs be sad, and so lose that which\nshould cure sadness;\" and much more he in that style, and she\nanswering and making sport of his discourse, as was her wont with all\ngentlemen.\n\nWhen we reached the house, Mrs. Milicent was awaiting us at the door\nof the gallery for to conduct us to the best place wherein we could\nsee her majesty's entrance. There were some seats there and other\npersons present, some of which were of Polly's acquaintance, with whom\nshe did keep up a {603} brisk conversation, in which I had occasion to\nnotice the sharpness of her wit, in which she did surpass any woman I\nhave since known, for she was never at a loss for an answer; as when\none said to her--\n\n\"Truly, you have no mean opinion of yourself, fair mistress.\"\n\n\"As one shall prize himself,\" quoth she, \"so let him look to be valued\nby others.\"\n\nAnd another: \"You think yourself to be Minerva.\"\n\nWhereupon she: \"No, sir, not when I be at your elbow;\" meaning he was\nno Ulysses.\n\nAnd when one gentleman asked her of a book, if she had read it:\n\n\"The epistle,\" she said, \"and no more.\"\n\n\"And wherefore no more,\" quoth he, \"since that hath wit in it?\"\n\n\"Because,\" she answered, \"an author who sets all his wit in his\nepistle is like to make his book resemble a bankrupt's doublet.\"\n\n\"How so?\" asked the gentleman.\n\n\"In this wise,\" saith she, \"that he sets the velvet before, though the\nback be but of buckram.\"\n\n\"For my part,\" quoth a foppish young man, \"I have thoughts in my mind\nshould fill many volumes.\"\n\n\"Alack, good sir,\" cries she, \"is there no type good enough to set\nthem in?\"\n\nHe, somewhat nettled, declares that she reads no books but of one\nsort, and doats on _Sir Bevis and Owlglass_, or _Fashion's Mirror_,\nand such like idle stuff, wherein he himself had never found so much\nas one word of profitable use or reasonable entertainment.\n\n\"I have read a fable,\" she said, \"which speaks of a pasture in which\noxen find fodder, hounds, hares, storks, lizards, and some animals\nnothing.\"\n\n\"To deliver you my opinion,\" said a lady who sat next to Polly's\ndisputant, \"I have no great esteem for letters in gentlewomen. The\ngreatest readers be oft the worst doers.\"\n\n\"Letters!\" cries Polly; \"why, surely they be the most weighty things\nin creation; for so much as the difference of one letter mistaken in\nthe order in which it should stand in a short sentence doth alter the\nexpression of a man's resolve in a matter of life and death.\"\n\n\"How prove you that, madam?\" quoth the lady.\n\n\"By the same token,\" answered Polly, \"that I once did hear a gentleman\nsay, 'I must go die a beggar,' who willed to say, 'I must go buy a\ndagger.'\"\n\nThey all did laugh, and then some one said, \"There was a witty book of\nemblems made on all the cardinals at Rome, in which these scarlet\nprinces were very roughly handled. Bellarmine, for instance, as a\ntiger fast chained to a post, and a scroll proceeding from the beast's\nmouth--'Give me my liberty; you shall see what I am.' I wish,\" quoth\nthe speaker, \"he were let loose in this island. The queen's judges\nwould soon constrain him to eat his words.\"\n\n\"Peradventure,\" answered Polly, \"his own words should be too good food\nfor a recusant in her majesty's prisons.\"\n\n\"Maybe, madam, you have tasted of that food,\" quoth the aforesaid\nlady, \"that you be so well acquainted with its qualities.\"\n\nThen I perceived that Mistress Ward did nudge Polly for to stay her\nfrom carrying on a further encounter of words on this subject; for, as\nshe did remind us afterward, many persons had been thrown into prison\nfor only so much as a word lightly spoken in conversation which should\nbe supposed even in a remote manner to infer a favorable opinion of\nCatholic religion; as, for instance, a bookseller in Oxford, for a\njest touching the queen's supremacy in ecclesiastical matters, had\nbeen a short time before arrested, pilloried, whipped, and his ears\nnailed to a counter, which with a knife he had himself to cut through\nto free himself; which maybe had not been taken much notice of, as\nnothing singular in these days, the man being a Catholic and of no\ngreat note, but that much talk had {604} been ministered concerning a\nterrible disease which broke out immediately after the passing of that\nsentence, by which the judge which had pronounced it, the jury, and\nmany other persons concerned in it, had died raving mad; to the no\nsmall affright of the whole city. I ween, howsoever, no nudging should\nhave stopped Polly from talking, which indeed was a passion with her,\nbut that a burst of music at that time did announce the queen's\napproach, and we did all stand up on the tiptoe of expectation to see\nher majesty enter.\n\nMy heart did beat as fast as the pendulum of a clock when the cries\noutside resounded, \"Long live Queen Elizabeth!\" and her majesty's\nvoice was distinctly heard answering, \"I thank you, my good people;\"\nand the ushers crying out, \"La Royne!\" as the great door was thrown\nopen; through which we did see her majesty alight from her coach,\nfollowed by many nobles and lords, and amongst them one of her\nbishops, and my Lord and my Lady Surrey, kneeling to receive her on\nthe steps, with a goodly company of kinsfolks and friends around them.\nOh, how I did note every lineament of that royal lady, of so great\npower and majesty, that it should seem as if she were not made of the\nsame mould as those of whom the Scriptures do say, that dust they are,\nand to dust must they return. Very majestic did she appear; her\nstature neither tall nor low, but her air exceedingly stately. Her\neyes small and black, her face fair, her nose a little hooked, and her\nlips narrow. Upon her head she had a small crown, her bosom was\nuncovered; she wore an oblong collar of gold and jewels, and on her\nneck an exceeding fine necklace. She was dressed in white silk\nbordered with pearls, and over it a mantle of black silk shot with\nsilver threads; her train, which was borne by her ladies, was very\nlong. When my lord knelt, she pulled off her glove, and gave him her\nright hand to kiss, sparkling with rings and jewels; but when my lady,\nin as sweet and modest a manner as can be thought of, advanced to pay\nher the same homage, she did withdraw it hastily and moved on. I can\neven now, at this distance of time, call to mind the look of that\nsweet lady's face as she rose to follow her majesty, who leant on my\nlord's arm with a show of singular favor, addressing herself to him in\na mild, playful, and obliging manner. How the young countess's cheek\ndid glow with a burning blush, as if doubting if she had offended in\nthe manner of her behavior, or had anyways merited the repulse she had\nmet with! How she stood for one moment irresolute, seeking to catch my\nlord's eye, so as to be directed by him; and failing to do so, with a\npretty smile, but with what I, who loved her, fancied to be a\nquivering lip, addressed herself to the ladies of the queen, and\nconducted them through the cloisters to the garden, whither her\nhighness and my lord had gone.\n\nIn a brief time Mistress Milicent came to fetch us to a window which\nlooked on the square, where a great open tent was set for a collation,\nand seats all round it for the concert which was to follow. As we went\nalong, I took occasion to ask of her the name of a waiting-gentleman,\nwho ordered about the servants with no small alacrity, and met her\nmajesty with many bows and quirks and a long compliment in verse.\n\n\"Tis Mr. Churchyard,\" she said; \"a retainer of his grace's, and a poet\nwithal.\"\n\n\"Not a _grave one_, I hope,\" said Polly.\n\n\"Nay,\" answered the simple gentlewoman, \"but one well versed in\npageants and tournaments and suchlike devices, as well as in writing\nof verses and epigrams very fine and witty. Her majesty doth sometimes\nsend for him when any pageant is on hand.\"\n\n\"Ah, then, I doubt not,\" quoth Polly, \"he doth take himself to be no\nmean personage in the state, and so behaves accordingly.\"\n\n{605}\n\nPretty Milicent left us to seek for Mistress Bess, whom she had charge\nof that day; and now our eyes were so intent on watching the spectacle\nbefore us that even Polly for a while was silent. The queen did sit at\ntable with a store of noblemen waiting on her; and a more goodly sight\nand a rarer one is not to be seen than a store of men famed for so\nmuch bravery and wit and arts of state, that none have been found to\nsurpass them in any age, who be so loyal to a queen and so reverent to\na woman as these to this lady, who doth wear the crown of so great a\nkingdom, so that all the world doth hold it in respect, and her hand\nsought by so many great princes. But all this time I could not\nperceive that she so much as once did look toward my Lady Surrey, or\nspoke one single word to her or to my Lady Lumley, or little Bess, and\ntook very scanty notice also of my Lady Berkeley, his grace's sister,\nwho was a lady of so great and haughty a stomach, and of speech so\neloquent and ready, that I have heard the queen did say, that albeit\nLady Berkeley bent her knee when she made obeisance to her, she could\nvery well see she bent not her will to love or serve her, and that she\nliked not such as have a man's heart in a woman's body. 'Tis said that\nparity breedeth not affection, or affinity respect, of which saying\nthis opinion of the queen's should seem a notable example. But to see\nmy Lady Surrey so treated in her own husband's father's house worked\nin me such effects of choler, mingled with sadness, that I could\nscarce restrain my tears. Methought there was a greater nobleness and\na more true queenly greatness in her meek and withal dignified\nendurance of these slights who was the subject, than in the sovereign\nwho did so insult one who least of all did deserve it. What the queen\ndid, others took pattern from; and neither my Lord Burleigh, nor my\nLord Leicester, or Sir Christopher Hatton, or young Lord Essex (albeit\nmy lord's own friend ), or little Sir John Harrington, her majesty's\ngodson, did so much as speak one civil word or show her the least\nattention; but she did bear herself with so much sweetness, and,\nthough I knew her heart was full almost to bursting, kept up so brave\nan appearance that none should see it except such as had their own\nhearts wounded through hers, that some were present that day who since\nhave told me that, for promise of future distinction and true nobility\nof aspect and behavior, they had not in their whole lives known one to\nbe compared with the young Countess of Surrey.\n\nPolly did point out to us the aforesaid noblemen and gentlemen, and\nalso Dr. Cheney, the bishop of Gloucester, who had accompanied her\nmajesty, and M. de la Motte, the French ambassador, whom she did seem\ngreatly to favor; but none that day so much as my Lord Surrey, on whom\nshe let fall many gracious smiles, and used playful fashions with him,\nsuch as nipping him once or twice on the forehead, and shaking her\nfan, as if to reprove him for his answers to her questions, which\nnevertheless, if her countenance might be judged of, did greatly\ncontent her; albeit I once observed her to frown (and methought, then,\nwhat a terror doth lie in a sovereign's frown) and speak sharply to\nhim; at the which a high color came into his cheek, and rose up even\nto his temples, which her majesty perceiving, she did again use the\nsame blandishments as before; and when the collation was ended, and\nthe concert began, which had been provided for her grace's\nentertainment, she would have him sit at her feet, and gave him so\nmany tokens of good-will, that I heard Sir Ralph Ingoldby, who was\nstanding behind me, say to another gentleman:\n\n\"If that young nobleman's father is like to be shorter by the head,\nhis father's son is like to have his own raised higher than ever his\nfather's was, so he doth keep clear of papistry and overmuch fondness\nfor his wife, which be the two things her {606}majesty doth most abhor\nin her courtiers.\"\n\nMy heart moving me to curiosity, I could not forbear to ask:\n\n\"I pray you, sir, wherefore doth not her majesty like her courtiers to\nlove their wives?\"\n\nAt the which question he laughed, and said:\n\n\"By reason, Mistress Constance, that when they be in that case they do\nbecome stayers at home, and wait not on her majesty with a like\ndiligence as when they are unmarried, or leastways love not their\nladies. The Bible saith a man cannot serve God and mammon. Now her\ngrace doth opine men cannot serve the queen and their wives also.\"\n\n\"Then,\" I warmly cried, \"I hope my Lord Surrey shall never serve the\nqueen!\"\n\n\"I' faith, say it not so loud, young Mistress Papist,\" said Sir Ralph,\nlaughing, \"or we shall have you committed for high treason. Some are\nin the Tower, I warrant you, for no worse offence than the uttering of\nsuch like rash words. How should you fancy to have your pretty ears\nbored with a rougher instrument than Master Anselm's the jeweller?\"\n\nAnd so he; but Polly, who methinks was not well pleased that he should\nnotice mine ears, which were little and well-shaped, whereas hers were\nsomewhat larger than did accord with her small face, did stop his\nfurther speech with me by asking him if he were an enemy to papists;\nfor if so, she would have naught to say to him, and he might become a\ncourtier to the queen, or any one else's husband, for anything she did\ncare, yea, if she were to lose her ears for it.\n\nAnd he answered, he did very much love some papists, albeit he hated\npapistry when it proved not conformable to reason and the laws of the\ncountry.\n\nAnd so they fell to whispering and suchlike discourses as lovers hold\ntogether; and I, being seated betwixt this enamored gentleman and the\nwall on the other side, had no one then to talk with. But if my tongue\nand mine ears also, save for the music below, were idle, not so mine\neyes; for they did stray from one point to another of the fair\nspectacle which the garden did then present, now resting on the queen\nand those near unto her, and anon on my Lady Surrey, who sat on a\ncouch to the left of her majesty's raised canopy, together with Lady\nSouthwell, Lady Arundell (Sir Robert's wife), and other ladies of the\nqueen, and on one side of her the bishop of Gloucester, whom, by\nreason of his assiduous talking with her, I took more special note of\nthan I should otherwise have done; albeit he was a man which did\nattract the eye, even at the first sight, by a most amiable suavity of\ncountenance, and a sweet and dignified behavior both in speech and\naction such as I have seldom observed greater in any one. His manners\nwere free and unconstrained; and only to look at him converse, it was\neasy to perceive he had a most ready wit tempered with benevolence. He\nseemed vastly taken with my Lady Surrey; and either had not noticed\nhow others kept aloof from her, or was rather moved thereby to show\nher civility; for they soon did fall into such eager, and in some sort\nfamiliar, discourse, as it should seem to run on some subject of like\ninterest to both. Her color went and came as the conversation\nadvanced; and when she spoke, he listened with such grave suavity,\nand, when she stayed her speech, answered in so obliging a manner, and\nseemed so loth to break off, that I could not but admire how two\npersons, hitherto strangers to each other, and of such various ages\nand standing, should be so companionable on a first acquaintanceship.\n\nWhen the queen rose to depart, in the same order in which she came,\nevery one kneeling as she passed, I did keenly watch to see what\nvisage she would show to my Lady Surrey, whom she did indeed this time\nsalute; but in no gracious manner, as one who looks without looking,\nnotices without {607} heeding, and in tendering of thanks thanketh\nnot. As my lord walked by her majesty's side through the cloisters to\nthe door, he suddenly dropped on one knee, and drawing a paper from\nhis bosom, did present it to her highness, who started as if\nsurprised, and shook her head in a playful manner--(oh, what a cruel\nplayfulness methought it was, who knew, as her majesty must needs also\nhave done, what that paper did contain)--as if she would not be at that\ntime troubled with such grave matters, and did hand it to my Lord\nBurleigh; then gave again her hand to my lord to kiss, who did kneel\nwith a like reverence as before; but with a shade of melancholy in his\nfair young face, which methought became it better than the smiles it\nhad worn that day.\n\nAfter the queen had left, and all the guests were gone save such few\nas my lord had willed to stay to supper in his private apartments, I\nwent unto my lady's chamber, where I found Mistress Milicent, who said\nshe was with my lord, and prayed me to await her return; for that she\nwas urgent I should not depart without speaking with her, which was\nalso what I greatly desired. So I took a book and read for the space\nof an hour or more, whilst she tarried with my lord. When she came in,\nI could see she had been weeping. But her women being present, and\nlikewise Mistress Bess, she tried to smile, and pressed my hand,\nbidding me to stay till she was rid of her trappings, as she did term\nthem; and, sitting down before her mirror,--though I ween she never\nlooked at her own face, which that evening had in it more of the\nwhiteness of a lily than the color of the rose,--she desired her women\nto unbraid her hair, and remove from her head the diamond circlet, and\nfrom her neck the heavy gold chain with a pearl cross, which had\nbelonged to her husband's mother. Then stepping out of her robe, she\nput on a silk wrapper, and so dismissed them, and likewise little\nBess, who before she went whispered in her ear:\n\n\"Nan, methinks the queen is foul and red-haired, and I should not care\nto kiss her hand for all the fine jewels she doth wear.\"\n\nAnd so hugged her round the neck and stopped her mouth with kisses.\nWhen they were gone,\n\n\"Constance,\" quoth she, \"we be full young, I ween, for the burden laid\nupon us, my lord and me.\"\n\n\"Ay, sweet one,\" I cried; \"and God defend thou shouldst have to carry\nit alone;\" for my heart was sore that she had had so little favor\nshown to her and my lord so much. A faint color tinged her cheek as\nshe replied:\n\n\"God knows I should be well cotent that Phil should stand so well in\nher majesty's good graces as should be convenient to his honor and the\nfurtherance of his fortunes, if so be his father was out of prison;\nand 'tis little I should reck of such slights as her highness should\nchoose to put upon me, if I saw him not so covetous of her favor that\nhe shall think less well of his poor Nan hereafter by reason of the\nlack of her majesty's good opinion of her, which was so plainly showed\nto-day. For, good Constance, bethink thee what a galling thing it is\nto a young nobleman to see his wife so meanly entreated; and for her\nmajesty to ask him, as she did, if the pale-faced chit by his side,\nwhen she arrived, was his sister or his cousin. And when he said it\nwas his wife who had knelt with him to greet her majesty\"--\"Wife!\"\nquoth the queen; \"i' faith, I had forgotten thou wast married--if\nindeed that is to be called a marriage which children do contract\nbefore they come to the age of reason; and said she would take\nmeasures for that a law should be passed which should make such\nfoolish marriages unlawful. And when my lord tried to tell her we had\nbeen married a second time a few months since, she pretended not to\nhear, and asked M. de la Motte if, in his country, children were made\nto marry in their infancy. To which he gave answer, that the like\npractice did sometimes take place {608} in France; and that he had\nhimself been present at a wedding where the bridegroom was whipped\nbecause he did refuse to open the ball with the bride. At the which\nher majesty very much laughed, and said she hoped my lord had not been\nso used on his wedding-day. I promise you Phil was very angry; but the\nwound these jests made was so salved over with compliments, which\npleasantly tickle the ears when uttered by so great a queen, and marks\nof favor more numerous than can be thought of, in the matter of\ninviting him to hunt with her in Marylebone and Greenwich park, and\ntelling him he deserved better treatment than he had, as to his\nhousehold and setting forward in the world, that methinks the scar was\nnot long in healing; albeit in the relating of these passages the pain\nsomewhat revived. But what doth afflict me the most is the refusal her\nhighness made to read my lord's letter, lamenting the unhappy position\nof the duke his father, and hoping the queen, by his means and those\nof other friends, should mitigate her anger. I would have had Phil not\nonly go down on his knees as he did, but lie on the threshold of the\ndoor, so that she should have walked over the son's body if she\nrefused to show mercy to the father; but he yet doth greatly hope from\nthe favor showed him that he may sue her majesty with better effect\nsome other time; and I pray God he may be right.\"\n\nHere did the dear lady break off her speech, and, hiding her face in\nher hands, remained silent for a short space; and I, seeing her so\ndeeply moved, with the intent to draw away her thoughts from painful\nmusings, inquired of her if the good entertainment she had found in\nconversing with the bishop had been attributable to his witty\ndiscourse, or to the subjects therein treated of.\n\n\"Ah, good Constance,\" she answered, \"our talk was of one whom you have\noften heard me speak of--Mr. Martin's friend, Master Campion,\n[Footnote 122] who is now beyond seas at Douay, and whom this bishop\nonce did hold to be more dear to him than the apple of his eye. He\nsays his qualifications were so excellent, and he so beloved by all\npersons in and outside of his college at Oxford, that none more so;\nand that he did himself see in him so great a present merit and\npromise of future excellence, that it had caused him more grief than\nanything else which had happened to him, and been the occasion of his\nshedding more tears than he had ever thought to have done, when he who\nhad received from him deacon's orders, and whom he had hoped should\nhave been an honor and a prop to the Church of England, did forsake it\nand fly in the face of his queen and his country: first, by going into\nIreland; and then, as he understood, beyond seas, to serve the bishop\nof Rome, against the laws of God and man. But that he did yet so\ndearly affection him that, understanding we had sometimes tidings of\nMr. Martin, by whose means he had mostly been moved to this lamentable\ndefection, he should be contented to hear somewhat of his whilom son,\nstill dear to him, albeit estranged. I told him we did often see\nMaster Campion when Mr. Martin was here; and that, from what I had\nheard, both were like to be at Douay, but that no letters passed\nbetween Mr. Martin and ourselves; for that his grace did not allow of\nsuch correspondence since he had been reconciled and gone beyond seas.\nWhich the bishop said was a commendable prudence in his grace, and the\npart of a careful father; and added, that then maybe he knew more of\nwhat had befallen Master Campion than I did; for that he had a long\nepistle from him, so full of moving arguments and pithy remonstrances\nas might have shaken one not well grounded and settled in his\nreligion, and which also contained a recital of his near arrest in\nDublin, where the queen's officers would have arrested him, if a\nfriend had not privately warned him of his danger. And I do know, good\n{609} Constance, who that friend was; for albeit I would not tell the\nbishop we had seen Master Campion since he was reconciled, he, in\ntruth, was here some months ago: my lord met him in the street,\ndisguised as a common travelling man, and brought him into the garden,\nwhither he also called me; and we heard then from him how he would\nhave been taken in Ireland, if the viceroy himself, Sir Henry Sydney,\nwho did greatly favor him,--as indeed all who know him incline to do,\nfor his great parts, and nobleness of mind and heart, and withal most\nattractive manners,--had not sent him a message, in the middle of the\nnight, to the effect that he should instantly leave the city, and take\nmeasures for to escape abroad. So, under the name of Patrick, and\nwearing the livery of the Earl of Kildare, he travelled to a port\ntwenty miles from Dublin, and there embarked for England. The queen's\nofficers, coming on board the ship whereon he had taken his passage,\nbefore it sailed, searched it all over; but through God's mercy, he\nsaid, and St. Patrick's prayers, whose name he had taken, no one did\nrecognize him, and he passed to London; and the day after, my lord\nsent him over to Flanders. So much as the bishop did know thereon, he\nrelated unto me, and stinted not in his praise of his great merits,\nand lamentations for what he called his perversion; and hence he took\noccasion to speak of religion. And when I said I had been brought up\nin the Catholic religion, albeit I now conformed to the times, he said\nhe would show me the way to be Catholic and still obey the laws, and\nthat I might yet believe for the most part what I had learnt from my\nteachers, so be I renounced the Pope, and commended my saying the\nprayers I had been used to; which, he doubted not, were more pleasing\nto God than such as some ministers do recite out of their own heads,\nwhom he did grieve to hear frequented our house, and were no better\nthan heretics, such as Mr. Fox and Mr. Fulke and Mr. Charke, and the\nlike of them. But what did much content me was, that he mislikes the\ncruel usage recusants do meet with; and he said, not as if boasting of\nit, but to declare his mind thereon, that he had often sent them alms\nwho suffered for their conscience' sake, as many do at this time. But\nthat I was to remember many Protestants were burnt in the late queen's\ntime, and that if Papists were not kept under by strict laws, the like\nmight happen again.\"\n\n  [Footnote 122: State Papers.]\n\n\"You should have told him,\" I cried, who had been silent longer than I\nliked, \"that Protestants are burnt also in this reign, by the same\ntoken that some Anabaptists did so suffer a short time back, to your\nMr. Fox's no small disgust, who should will none but Catholics to be\nput to death.\"\n\n\"Content thee, good Constance,\" my lady answered; \"I be not so\nfurnished with arguments as thou in a like case wouldst be. So I only\nsaid, I would to God none were burnt, or hanged, or tortured any more\nin this country, or in the world at all, for religion; and my lord of\nGloucester declared he was of the same mind, and would have none so\ndealt with, if he could mend it, here or abroad. Then the queen rising\nto go, our discourse came to an end; but this good bishop says he will\nvisit me when he next doth come to London, and make that matter plain\nto me how I can remain Catholic, and obey the queen, and content his\ngrace.\"\n\n\"Then he will show you,\" I cried, \"how to serve God and the world,\nwhich the gospel saith is a thing not to be thought of, and full of\nperil to the soul.\"\n\nMy Lady Surrey burst into tears, and I was angered with myself that I\nhad spoken peradventure over sharply to her who had too much trouble\nalready; but it did make me mad to see her so beset that the faith\nwhich had been once so rooted in her, and should be her sure and only\nstay in the dangerous path she had entered on, should be in such wise\nshaken as her words did indicate. {610} But she was not angered, the\nsweet soul; and drawing me to herself, laid her head on my bosom, and\nsaid:\n\n\"Thou art a true friend, though a bold one; and I pray God I may never\nlack the benefit of such friendship as thine, for he knoweth I have\ngreat need thereof.\"\n\nAnd so we parted with many tender embraces, and our hearts more\nstrictly linked together than heretofore.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER X.\n\nIn the month of November of the same year in which the queen did visit\nLord and Lady Surrey at the Charter House, a person, who mentioned not\nhis name, delivered into the porter's hands at our gate a letter for\nme, which I found to be from my good father, and which I do here\ntranscribe, as a memorial of his great piety toward God, and tender\nlove for me his unworthy child.\n\n  \"MY DEARLY BELOVED DAUGHTER (so he),--Your comfortable letter has\n  not a little cheered me; and the more so that this present one is\n  like to be the last I shall be able to write on this side of the\n  sea, if it so happen that it shall please God to prosper my intent,\n  which is to pass over into Flanders at the first convenient\n  opportunity: for the stress of the times, and mine own earnest\n  desire to live within the compass of a religious life, have moved me\n  to forsake for a while this realm, and betake myself to a place\n  which shall afford opportunity and a sufficiency of leisure for the\n  prosecution of my design. The comfortable report Edmund made of thy\n  health, increased height, and good condition, as also of thy\n  exceeding pleasant and affectionate behavior to him, as deputed from\n  thy poor father to convey to thee his paternal blessing, together\n  with such tokens as a third person may exhibit of that most natural\n  and tender affection which he bears to thee, his sole child, whom\n  next to God he doth most entirely value and love,--of which charge\n  this good youth assured me he did acquit himself as my true son in\n  Christ, which indeed he now is,--and my good brother's letter and\n  thine, which both do give proof of the exceeding great favor shown\n  toward thee in his house, wherein he doth reckon my Constance not so\n  much a niece (for such be his words) as a most cherished daughter,\n  whose good qualities and lively parts have so endeared her to his\n  family, that the greatest sorrow which could befal them should be to\n  lose her company; which I do not here recite for to awaken in thee\n  motions of pride or a vain conceit of thine own deserts, but rather\n  gratitude to those whose goodness is so great as to overlook thy\n  defects and magnify thy merits;--Edmund's report, I say, coupled with\n  these letters, have yielded me all the contentment I desire at this\n  time, when I am about to embark on a perilous voyage, of which none\n  can foresee the course or the end; one in which I take the cross of\n  Christ as my only staff; his words, \"Follow me,\" for my motto; and\n  his promise to all such as do confess him before men, as the assured\n  anchor of my hope.\n\n  \"Our ingenuous youth informed thee (albeit I doubt not in such wise\n  as to conceal, if it had been possible, his own ability, which, with\n  his devotedness, do exceed praise) how he acquitted both me and\n  others of much trouble and imminent danger by his fortunate despatch\n  with that close prisoner. I had determined to place him with some of\n  my acquaintance, lest perhaps he should return, not without some\n  danger of his soul, to his own friends; but when he understood my\n  resolution, he cried out with like words to those of St. Lawrence,\n  'Whither goeth my master without his servant? Whither goeth my\n  father without his son?' and with tears distilling from his eyes, he\n  humbly entreated he might go together with me, saying, as it were\n  with St. Peter, 'Master, I am {611} ready to go with you to prison,\n  yea to death;' but, forecasting his future ability, as also to try\n  his spirit a little further, I made him answer it was impossible; to\n  which our Edmund replied, 'Alas! and is it impossible? Shall my\n  native soil restrain free will? or home-made laws alter devout\n  resolutions? Am I not young? Can I not study? May I not in time get\n  what you now have got--learning for a scholar? yea, virtue for a\n  priest, perhaps; and so at length obtain that for which you now are\n  ready? Direct me the way, I beseech you; and let me, if you please,\n  be your precursor. Tell me what I shall do, or whither I must go;\n  and for the rest, God, who knows my desire, will provide and supply\n  the want. Can it be possible that he who clothes the lilies of the\n  field, and feeds the fowls of the air, will forsake him who forsakes\n  all to fulfil his divine precept, \"Seek first the kingdom of God and\n  his justice, and all other things shall be given to you?\"' Finally,\n  he ended, to my no small admiration, by reciting the words of our\n  Saviour, 'Whosoever shall forsake home, or brethren, or sisters, or\n  father, or mother, for my sake and the gospel's, shall receive a\n  hundredfold and possess life everlasting.'\n\n  \"By these impulses, often repeated with great fervor of spirit, I\n  perceived God Almighty's calling in him, and therefore at last\n  condescended to let him take his adventures, procuring him\n  commendations to such friends beyond seas as should assist him in\n  his purpose, and furnishing him with money sufficient for such a\n  journey; not judging it to be prudent to keep him with me, who have\n  not ability to warrant mine own passage; and so noted a recusant,\n  that I run a greater risk to be arrested in any port where I embark.\n  And so, in all love and affection, we did part; and I have since had\n  intelligence, for the which I do return most humble and hearty\n  thanks to God, that he hath safely crossed the seas, and has now\n  reached a sure harbor, where his religious desires may take effect.\n  And now, daughter Constance, mine own good child, fare thee well!\n  Pray for thy poor father, who would fain give thee the blessing of\n  the elder as of the younger son--Jacob's portion and Esau's also.\n  But methinks the blessings of this world be not at the present time\n  for the Catholics of this land; and so we must needs be content, for\n  our children as for ourselves (and a covetous man he is which should\n  not therewith be satisfied), with the blessings our Lord did utter\n  on the mountain, and mostly with that in which he doth say, 'Blessed\n  are ye when men shall persecute you, and revile you, and say all\n  manner of evil against you falsely, for my name's sake; for great is\n  your reward in heaven.'\n\n  \"Your loving father in natural affection and ten thousand times more\n  in the love of Christ,   H. S.\"\n\nOh, what a gulf of tenfold separation did those words \"beyond seas\"\nsuggest betwixt that sole parent and his poor child! Thoughts travel\nnot with ease beyond the limits which nature hath set to this isle;\nand what lies beyond the watery waste wherewith Providence hath\nengirdled our shores offers no apt images to the mind picturing the\ninvisible from the visible, as it is wont to do with home-scenes,\nwhere one city or one landscape beareth a close resemblance to\nanother. And if, in the forsaking of this realm, so much danger did\nlie, yea, in the very ports whence he might sail, so that I, who\nshould otherwise have prayed that the winds might detain him, and the\nwaves force him back on his native soil, was constrained to supplicate\nthat they should assist him to abandon it,--how much greater,\nmethought, should be the perils of his return, when, as he indeed\nhoped, a mark should be set on him which in our country dooms men to a\ncruel death! Many natural tears I shed at this parting, which until\nthen had not seemed so desperate and final; {612} and for a while\nwould not listen to the consolations which were offered by the good\nfriends who were so tender to me, but continued to wander about in a\ndisconsolate manner in the garden, or passionately to weep in my own\nchamber, until Muriel, the sovereign mistress of comfort to others,\nalbeit ever ailing in her body, and contemned by such as dived not\nthrough exterior deformity into the interior excellences of her soul,\nwith sweet compulsion and authoritative arguments drawn from her\nadmirable faith and simple devotion, rekindled in mine the more noble\nsentiments sorrow had obscured, not so much through diverting, as by\nelevating and sweetening, my thoughts to a greater sense of the\ngoodness of God in calling my father, and peradventure Edmund also, to\nso great an honor as the priesthood, and never more honorable than in\nthese days, wherein it oftentimes doth prove the road to martyrdom.\n\nIn December of that year my Lord and my Lady Surrey, by the Duke of\nNorfolk's desire, removed for some weeks to Kenninghall for change of\nair, and also Lady Lumley, his grace judging them to be as yet too\nyoung to keep house alone. My lord's brothers and Mistress Bess, with\nher governess, were likewise carried there. Lady Surrey wrote from\nthat seat, that, were it not for the duke's imprisonment and constant\nfears touching his life, she should have had great contentment in that\nretirement, and been most glad to have tarried there, if it had\npleased God, so long as she lived, my lord taking so much pleasure in\nfield-sports, and otherwise so companionable, that he often offered to\nride with her; and in the evenings they did entertain themselves with\nbooks, chiefly poetry, and sometimes played at cards. They had but few\nvisitors, by reason of the disgrace and trouble his grace was in at\nthat time; only such of their neighbors as did hunt and shoot with the\nearl her husband; mostly Sir Henry Stafford and Mr. Rookwood's two\nsons, whom she commended; the one for his good qualities and honest\ncarriage, and the other for wit and learning; as also Sir Hammond\nl'Estrange, a gentleman who stayed no longer away from Kenninghall,\nshe observed, than thereunto compelled by lack of an excuse for\ntarrying if present, or returning when absent. He often procured to be\ninvited by my lord, who used to meet him out of doors, and frequently\ncarried him back with him to dine or to sup, and often both.\n\n\"And albeit\" (so my lady wrote) \"I doubt not but he doth set a\nreasonable value on my lord's society,--who, although young enough to\nbe his son, is exceedingly conversable and pleasant, as every one who\nknows him doth testify,--and mislikes not, I ween, the good cheer, or\nthe wine from his grace's cellar; yet I warrant thee, good Constance,\n'tis not for the sake only of our poor company or hospitable table\nthat this good knight doth haunt us, but rather from the passion I\nplainly see he hath conceived for our Milicent since a day when he\nhurt his arm by a fall not far from hence, and I procured she should\ndress it with that rare ointment of thine, which verily doth prove of\ngreat efficacy in cases where the skin is rubbed off. Methinks the\nwound in his arm was then transplanted into his heart, and the good\nman so bewitched with the blue eyes and dove-like countenance of his\nchirurgeon, that he has fallen head-over-ears in love, and is, as I\nhope, minded to address her in a lawful manner. His wound did take an\nexceeding long time in healing, to the no small discredit of thy\nointment; for he came several days to have it dressed, and I could not\nchoose but smile when at last our sweet practitioner did ask him, in\nan innocent manner, if the wound did yet smart, for indeed she could\nsee no appearance in it but what betokened it to be healed. He\nanswered, 'There be wounds, Mistress Milicent, which smart, albeit no\noutward marks of such suffering do show themselves.' {613} 'Ay,' quoth\nMilicent, 'but for such I be of opinion further dressing is needless;\nand with my lady's licence, I will furnish you, sir, with a liquid\nwhich shall strengthen the skin, and so relieve the aching, if so you\nbe careful to apply it night and morning to the injured part, and to\ncork the bottle after using it.' 'My memory is so bad, fair\nphysician,' quoth the knight, 'that I am like to forget the\nprescription.' She answered, he should stand the bottle so as it\nshould meet his eyes when he rose, and then he must needs remember it.\n\n\"And so broke off the discourse. But when he is here I notice how his\neyes do follow her when she sets the table for primero, or works at\nthe tambour-frame, or plays with Bess, to whom he often talks as she\nsits on _her_ knees, who, if I mistake not, shall be, one of these\ndays, Lady l'Estrange, and is as worthy to be so well married as any\ngirl in the kingdom, both as touching her birth and her exceeding\ngreat virtue and good disposition. He is an extreme Protestant, and\nvery bitter against Catholics; but as she, albeit mild in temper, is\nas firmly settled in the new religion as he is, no difference will\nexist between them on a point in which 'tis most of all to be desired\nhusbands and wives should be agreed. Thou mayst think that I have been\nover apt to note the signs of this good knight's passion, and to draw\ndeductions from such tokens as have appeared of it, visible maybe to\nno other eyes than mine; but, trust me, Constance, those who do\nthemselves know what 'tis to love with an engrossing affection are\nquick to mark the same effects in others. When Phil is in the room, I\nfind it a hard matter at times to restrain mine eyes from gazing on\nthat dear husband, whom I do so entirely love that I have no other\npleasure in life but in his company. And not to seem to him or to\nothers too fond, which is not a beseeming thing even in a wife, I\nstudy to conceal my constant thinking on him by such devices as\ncunningly to provoke others to speak of my lord, and so appear only to\nfollow whereunto my own desire doth point, or to propose questions,--a\npastime wherein he doth excel,--and so minister to mine own pride in\nhim without direct flattery, or in an unbecoming manner setting forth\nhis praise. And thus I do grow learned in the tricks of true\naffection, and to perceive in such as are in love what mine own heart\ndoth teach me to be the signals of that passion.\"\n\nSo far my lady; and not long after, on the first day of February, I\nhad a note from her, written in great distraction of mind at the\nCharter House, where she and all his grace's children had returned in\na sudden manner on the hearing that the queen had issued a warrant for\nthe duke's execution on the next Monday. Preparations were made with\nthe expectation of all London, and a concourse of many thousands to\nwitness it, the tread of whose feet was heard at night, like to the\nroll of muffled drums, along the streets; but on the Sunday, late in\nthe night, the queen's majesty entered into a great misliking that the\nduke should die the next day, and sent an order to the sheriffs to\nforbear until they should hear further. His grace's mother, the\ndowager countess, and my Lady Berkeley his sister (now indeed lowering\nher pride to most humble supplication), and my Lord Arundel from his\nsick-bed, and the French ambassador, together with many others, sued\nwith singular earnestness to her majesty for his life, who, albeit she\nhad stayed the execution of his sentence, would by no means recall it.\nI hasted to the Charter House, Mistress Ward going with me, and both\nwere admitted into her ladyship's chamber, with whom did sit that day\nthe fairest picture of grief I ever beheld--the Lady Margaret Howard,\nwho for some months had resided with the Countess of Sussex, who was a\nvery good lady to her and all these afflicted children. Albeit Lady\nSurrey had often greatly commended this young lady, and styled her so\nrare a piece of perfection that no one {614} could know and not admire\nher, the loveliness of her face, nobility of her figure, and\nattractiveness of her manners exceeded my expectations. The sight of\nthese sisters minded me then of what Lady Surrey had written when they\nwere yet children, touching my Lord Surrey, styling them \"two twin\ncherries on one stalk;\" and methought, now that the lovely pair had\nripened into early maturity, their likeness in beauty (though\ndiffering in complexion) justified the saying. Lady Margaret greeted\nus as though we had not been strangers, and in the midst of her great\nand natural sorrow showed a grateful sense of the share we did take in\na grief which methinks was deeper in her than in any other of these\nmourners.\n\nOh, what a period of anxious suspense did follow that first reprieve!\nwhat alternations of hope and fear! what affectionate letters were\nexchanged between that loving father and good master and his sorrowful\nchildren and servants; now writing to Mr. Dyx, his faithful steward:\n\n  \"Farewell, good Dyx! your service hath been so faithful unto me, as\n  I am sorry that I cannot make proof of my good-will to recompense\n  it. I trust my death shall make no change in you toward mine, but\n  that you will faithfully perform the trust that I have reposed in\n  you. Forget me, and remember me in mine. Forget not to counsel and\n  advise Philip and Nan's unexperienced years; the rest of their\n  brothers' and sisters' well-doing resteth much upon their virtuous\n  and considerate dealings. God grant them his grace, which is able to\n  work better in them than my natural well-meaning heart can wish unto\n  them. Amen. And so, hoping of your honesty and faithfulness when I\n  am dead, I bid you this my last farewell. T. H.\"\n\nNow to another trusty friend and honest dependent:\n\n  \"Good friend George, farewell. I have no other tokens to send my\n  friends but my books; and I know how sorrowful you are, amongst the\n  rest, for my hard hap, whereof I thank God; because I hope his\n  merciful chastisement will prepare me for a better world. Look well\n  throughout this book, and you shall find the name of duke very\n  unhappy. I pray God it may end with me, and that others may speed\n  better hereafter. But if I might have my wish, and were in as good a\n  state as ever you knew me, yet I would wish for a lower degree. Be a\n  friend, I pray you, to mine; and do my hearty commendations to your\n  good wife and to gentle Mr. Dennye. I die in the faith that you have\n  ever known me to be of. Farewell, good friend.\n\n  \"Yours dying, as he was living,\n\n  \"NORFOLK.\"\n\nThese letters and some others did pass from hand to hand in that\nafflicted house; and sometimes hope and sometimes despair prevailed in\nthe hearts of the great store of relatives and friends which often\nassembled there to confer on the means of softening the queen's anger\nand moving her to mercy; one time through letters from the king of\nFrance and other princes, which was an ill shot, for to be so\nentreated by foreign potentates did but inflame her majesty's anger\nagainst the duke; at others, by my Lord Sussex and my Lord Arundel, or\nsuch persons in her court as nearly approached her highness and could\ndeal with her when she was merry and chose to condescend to their\ndiscourse. But the wind shifts not oftener than did the queen's mind\nat that time, so diverse were her dispositions toward this nobleman,\nand always opposed to such as appeared in those who spoke on this\ntopic, whether as pressing for his execution, or suing for mercy to be\nextended to him. I heard much talk at that time touching his grace's\ngood qualities: how noble had been his spirit; how moderate his\ndisposition; how plain his attire; how bountiful his alms.\n\n{615}\n\nAs the fates of many do in these days hang on the doom of one, much\neagerness was shown amongst those who haunted my uncle's house to\nlearn the news afloat concerning the issue of the duke's affair. Some\nCatholics of note were lying in prison at that time in Norwich, most\nof them friends of these gentlemen; of which four were condemned to\ndeath at that time, and one to perpetual imprisonment and loss of all\nhis property for reconcilement; but whilst the Duke of Norfolk was yet\nalive, they held the hope he should, if once out of prison, recover\nthe queen's favor and drive from their seats his and their mortal\nenemies, my Lords Burleigh and Leicester. And verily the axe was held\nsuspended on the head of that duke for four months and more, to the\nunspeakable anguish of many; and, amongst others, his aged and\nafflicted mother, the Dowager Countess of Surrey, who came to London\nfrom the country to be near her son in this extremity. Three times did\nthe queen issue a warrant for his death and then recalled it; so that\nthose trembling relatives and well-wishers in and out of his house did\nlook each day to hear the fatal issue had been compassed, In the month\nof March, when her majesty was sick with a severe inflammation and\nagonizing pain, occasioned, some said, by poison administered by\npapists, but by her own physicians declared to arise from her contempt\nof their prescriptions, there was a strange turmoil, I ween, in some\nmen's breasts, albeit silent as a storm brewing on a sultry day. Under\ntheir breath, and with faces shaped to conceal the wish which bred the\ninquiry, they asked of the queen's health; whilst others tore their\nhair and beat their breasts with no affected grief, and the most part\nof the people lamented her danger. Oh, what five days were those when\nthe shadow of death did hover over that royal couch, and men's hearts\nfailed them for fear, or else wildly whispered hopes such as they\ndurst not utter aloud,--not so much as to a close friend,--lest the\nwalls should have ears, or the pavement open under their feet! My God,\nin thy hands lie the issues of life and death. Thou dost assign to\neach one his space of existence, his length of days. Thy ways are not\nas our ways, nor thy thoughts as our thoughts. She lived who was yet\nto doom so many princely heads to the block, so many saintly forms to\nthe dungeon and the rack. She lived whose first act was to stretch\nforth a hand yet weakened by sickness to sign, a fourth time, a\nwarrant for a kinsman's death, and once again recalled it. Each day\nsome one should come in with various reports touching the queen's\ndispositions. Sometimes she had been heard to opine that her dangers\nfrom her enemies were so great that justice must be done. At others\nshe vehemently spoke of the nearness of blood to herself, of the\nsuperiority in honor of this duke; and once she wrote to Lord Burleigh\n(a copy of this letter Lord Surrey saw in Lord Oxford's hands), \"that\nshe was more beholden to the hinder part of her head than she dared\ntrust the forward part of the same;\" and expressed great fear lest an\nirrevocable deed should be committed. But she would not see Lord\nSurrey, or suffer him to plead in person for his father's life. Yet\nthere were good hopes amongst his friends he should yet be released,\ntill one day--I mind it well, for I was sitting with Lady Surrey,\nreading out loud to her, as I was often used to do--my Lord Berkeley\nburst into the chamber, and cried, throwing his gloves on the table\nand swearing a terrible oath:\n\n\"That woman has undone us!\"\n\n\"What, the queen?\" said my lady, white as a smock.\n\n\"Verily a queen,\" he answered gloomily. \"I warrant you the Queen of\nScots hath ended as she did begin, and dragged his grace into a pit\nfrom whence I promise you he will never now rise. A letter writ in her\ncipher to the Duke of Alva hath been intercepted, in which that\nluckless royal {616} wight, ever fatal to her friends as to herself,\ndoth say, 'that she hath a strong party in England, and lords who\nfavor her cause; some of whom, albeit prisoners, so powerful, that the\nQueen of England should not dare to touch their lives.' Alack! those\nwords, 'should not dare,' shall prove the death-warrant of my noble\nbrother. Cursed be the day when he did get entangled in that popish\nsiren's plots!\"\n\n\"Speak not harshly of her, good my lord,\" quoth Lady Surrey, in her\ngentle voice. \"Her sorrows do bear too great a semblance to our own\nnot to bespeak from us patience in this mishap.\"\n\n\"Nan,\" said Lord Berkeley, \"thou art of too mild a disposition. 'Tis\nthe only fault I do find with thee. Beshrew me, if my wife and thee\ncould not make exchange of some portion of her spirit and thy meekness\nto the advantage of both. I warrant thee Phil's wife should hold a\ntight hand over him.\"\n\n\"I read not that precept in the Bible, my lord,\" quoth she, smiling.\n\"It speaketh roundly of the duty of wives to obey, but not so much as\none word of their ruling.\"\n\n\"Thou hadst best preach thy theology to my Lady Berkeley,\" he\nanswered; \"and then she--\"\n\n\"But I pray you, my lord, is it indeed your opinion that the queen\nwill have his grace's life?\"\n\n\"I should not give so much as a brass pin, Nan, for his present chance\nof mercy at her hands,\" he replied sadly. And his words were justified\nin the event.\n\nThose relentless enemies of the duke, my Lords Burleigh and Leicester,\n--who, at the time of the queen's illness, had stood three days and\nthree nights without stirring from her bedside in so great terror lest\nshe should die and he should compass the throne through a marriage\nwith the Queen of Scots, that they vowed to have his blood at any cost\nif her majesty did recover,--so dealt with parliament as to move it to\nsend a petition praying that, for the safety of her highness and the\nquieting of her realm, he should be forthwith executed. And from that\nday to the mournful one of his death, albeit from the great reluctance\nher majesty had evinced to have him despatched, his friends, yea unto\nthe last moment, lived in expectancy of a reprieve; he himself made up\nhis mind to die with extraordinary fortitude, not choosing to\nentertain so much as the least hope of life.\n\nOne day at that time I saw my Lady Margaret mending some hose, and at\neach stitch she made with her needle tears fell from her eyes. I\noffered to assist her ladyship; but she said, pressing the hose to her\nheart, \"I thank thee, good Constance; but no other hands than mine\nshall put a stitch in these hose, for they be my father's, who hath\nworn them with these holes for many months, till poor Master Dyx\nbethought himself to bring them here to be patched and mended, which\ntask I would have none perform but myself. My father would not suffer\nhim to procure a new pair, lest it should be misconstrued as a sign of\nhis hope or desire of a longer life, and with the same intent he\nrefuseth to eat flesh as often as the physicians do order; 'for,'\nquoth he, 'why should I care to nourish a body doomed to such near\ndecay?'\" Then, after a pause, she said, \"He will not wear clothes\nwhich have any velvet on them, being, he saith, a condemned person.\"\n\nLady Surrey took one of the hose in her hand, but Lady Margeret, with\na filial jealousy, sadly smiling, shook her head: \"Nay, Nan,\" quoth\nshe, \"not even to thee, sweet one, will I yield one jot or tittle of\nthis mean, but, in relation to him who doth own these poor hose,\nexalted labor.\" Then she asked her sister if she had heard of the\nduke's request that Mr. Fox, his old schoolmaster, should attend on\nhim in the Tower, to whom he desired to profess that faith he did\nfirst ground him in.\n\nAnd my Lady Surrey answered yea, that my lord had informed her of\n{617} it, and many other proofs beside that his grace sought to\nprepare for death in the best manner he could think of.\n\n\"Some ill-disposed persons have said,\" quoth Lady Margaret, \"that it\nis with the intent to propitiate the queen that my father doth show\nhimself to be so settled in his religion, and that he is not what he\nseems; but tis a slander on his grace, who hath been of this way of\nthinking since he attained to the age of reason, and was never at any\ntime reconciled, as some have put forth.\"\n\nThis was the last time I did see these afflicted daughters until long\nafter their father's death, who was beheaded in the chapel of the\nTower shortly afterward. When the blow fell which, striking at him,\nstruck a no less fatal blow to the peace and well-doing of his\nchildren, they all left the Charter House, and removed for a time into\nthe country, to the houses of divers relatives, in such wise as before\nhis death the duke had desired. A letter which I received from Lady\nSurrey a few weeks after she left London doth best serve to show the\nmanner of this disposal, and the temper of the writer's mind at that\nmelancholy time.\n\n\n  \"My OWN DEAR CONSTANCE,--It may like you to hear that your afflicted\n  friend is improved in bodily health, and somewhat recovered from the\n  great suffering of mind which the duke, their good father's death,\n  has caused to all his poor children--mostly to Megg and Phil and me;\n  for their brothers and my sister are too young greatly to grieve. My\n  Lord Arundel is sorely afflicted, I hear, and hath writ a very\n  lamentable letter to our good Lady Sussex concerning this sad\n  mishap. My Lady Berkeley and my Lady Westmoreland are almost\n  distracted with grief for the death of a brother they did singularly\n  love. That poor lady (of Westmoreland) is much to be pitied, for\n  that she is parted from her husband, maybe for ever, and has lost\n  two fair daughters in one year.\n\n  \"My lord hath shown much affection for his father, and natural\n  sorrow in this sad loss; and when his last letters written a short\n  time before he suffered, and addressed \"To my loving children,\"\n  specially the one to Philip and Nan, reached his hands, he wept so\n  long and bitterly that it seemed as if his tears should never cease.\n  My lord is forthwith to make his chief abode at Cambridge for a year\n  or two; and Meg and I, with Lady Sussex, and I do hope Bess\n  also--albeit his grace doth appear in his letter to be otherwise\n  minded. But methinks he apprehended to lay too heavy a charge on\n  her, who is indeed a good lady to us all in this our unhappy\n  condition, and was loth Megg should be out of my company.\n\n  \"The parting with my lord is a sore trial, and what I had not looked\n  to; but God's will be done; and if it be for the advantage of his\n  soul, as well as the advancement of his learning, he should reside\n  at the university, it should ill befit me to repine. And now\n  methinks I will transcribe, if my tears do not hinder me, his\n  grace's letters, which will inform thee of his last wishes better\n  than I could explain them; for I would have thee know how tender and\n  forecasting was his love for us, and the good counsel he hath left\n  unto his son, who, I pray to God, may always follow it. And I would\n  have thee likewise note one point of his advice, which indeed I\n  should have been better contented he had not touched upon, forasmuch\n  as his having done so must needs hinder that which thy fond love for\n  my poor self, and resolved adherence to what he calls 'blind\n  papistry,' doth so greatly prompt thee to desire; for if on his\n  blessing he doth charge us to beware of it, and then I should move\n  my lord to so much neglect of his last wishes as at any time to be\n  reconciled, bethink thee with what an ill grace I should urge on\n  him, in other respects, obedience to his commands, which indeed are\n  such as do commend themselves to any Christian soul as most wise and\n  profitable. {618} And now, breaking off mine own discourse to\n  transcribe his words--a far more noble and worthy employment of my\n  pen--and praying God to bless thee, I remain thy tender and loving\n  friend,\n  \"ANN SURREY.\"\n\n\n\"The Duke of Norfolk's letters to\nhis children:\n\n  \"DEAR CHILDREN,--This is the last letter that ever I think to write\n  to you; and therefore, if you loved me, or that you will seem\n  grateful to me for the special love that I have ever borne unto you,\n  then remember and follow these my last lessons. Oh, Philip, serve\n  and fear God, above all things. I find the fault in myself, that I\n  have (God forgive me!) been too negligent in this point. Love and\n  make much of your wife; for therein, considering the great adversity\n  you are now in, by reason of my fall, is your greatest present\n  comfort and relief, beside your happiness in having a wife which is\n  endued with so great towardness in virtue and good qualities, and in\n  person comparable with the best sort. Follow these two lessons, and\n  God will bless you; and without these, as you may see by divers\n  examples out of the Scripture, and also by ordinary worldly proof,\n  where God is not feared, all goeth to wreck; and where love is not\n  between the husband and wife, there God doth not prosper. My third\n  lesson is, that you show yourself loving and natural to your\n  brothers and sister and sister-in-law. Though you be very young in\n  years, yet you must strive with consideration to become a man; for\n  it is your own presence and good government of yourself that must\n  get friends; and if you take that course, then have I been so\n  careful a father unto you, as I have taken such order as you, by\n  God's grace, shall be well able, beside your wife's lands, to\n  maintain yourself like a gentleman. Marry! the world is greedy and\n  covetous; and if the show of the well government of yourself do not\n  fear and restrain their greedy appetite, it is like that, by\n  undirect means, they will either put you from that which law layeth\n  upon you, or else drive you to much trouble in trying and holding\n  your right. When my grandfather died, I was not much above a year\n  elder than you are now; and yet, I thank God, I took such order with\n  myself, as you shall reap the commodity of my so long passed travel,\n  if you do now imitate the like. Help to strengthen your young and\n  raw years with good counsel. I send you herewith a brief schedule,\n  whom I wish you to make account of as friends, and whom as servants;\n  and I charge you, as a father may do, to follow my direction\n  therein; my experience can better tell what is fit for you than your\n  young years can judge of. I would wish you for the present to make\n  your chief abode at Cambridge, which is the place fittest for you to\n  promote your learning in; and beside, it is not very far hence,\n  whereby you may, within a day's warning, be here to follow your own\n  causes, as occasion serveth. If, after a year or two, you spend some\n  time in a house of the law, there is nothing that will prove more to\n  your commodity, considering how for the time you shall have\n  continual business about your own law affairs; and thereby also, if\n  you spend your time well, you shall be ever after better able to\n  judge in your own causes. I too late repent that I followed not this\n  course that now I wish to you; for if I had, then my case perchance\n  had not been in so ill state as now it is.\n\n  \"When God shall send you to those years as that it shall be fit for\n  you to keep house with your wife (which I had rather were sooner,\n  than that you should fall into ill company), then I would wish you\n  to withdraw yourself into some private dwelling of your own. And if\n  your hap may be so good as you may so live without being called to\n  higher degree, oh, Philip, Philip, then shall you enjoy that blessed\n  life which your woful father would fain have done, and never could\n  be so happy. Beware of high degree. To a vain-glorious, proud\n  stomach it seemeth at the first sweet. Look into all {619}\n  chronicles, and you shall find that in the end it brings heaps of\n  cares, toils in the state, and most commonly in the end utter\n  overthrow. Look into the whole state of the nobility in times past,\n  and into their state now, and then judge whether my lessons be true\n  or no. Assure yourself, as you may see by the book of my accounts,\n  and you shall find that my living did hardly maintain my expenses;\n  for all the help that I had by Tom's lands, and somewhat by your\n  wife's and sister's-in-law, I was ever a beggar. You may, by the\n  grace of God, be a great deal richer and quieter in your low degree,\n  wherein I once again wish you to continue. They may, that shall wish\n  you the contrary, have a good meaning; but believe your father, who\n  of love wishes you best, and with the mind that he is at this\n  present fully armed to God, who sees both states, both high and low,\n  as it were even before his eyes. Beware of the court, except it be\n  to do your prince service, and that, as near as you can, in the\n  lowest degree, for that place hath no certainty; either a man, by\n  following thereof, hath too much of worldly pomp, which, in the end,\n  throws him down headlong, or else he liveth there unsatisfied;\n  either that he cannot attain for himself that he would, or else that\n  he cannot do for his friends as his heart desireth. Remember these\n  notes, and follow them; and then you, by God's help, shall reap the\n  commodity of them in your old years.\n\n  \"If your brothers may be suffered to remain in your company, I would\n  be most glad thereof, because continuing together should still\n  increase love between you. But the world is so catching of\n  everything that falls, that Tom being, as I believe, after my death,\n  the queen's majesty's ward, shall be begged by one or another. But\n  yet you are sure to have your brother William left still with you,\n  because, poor boy, he hath nothing to feed cormorants withal; to\n  whom you will as well be a father as a brother; for upon my blessing\n  I commit him to your charge to provide for, if that which I have\n  assured him by law shall not be so sufficient as I mean it. If law\n  may take place, your sister-in-law will be surely enough conveyed to\n  his behoof, and then I should wish her to be brought up with some\n  friend of mine; as for the present I allow best of Sir Christopher\n  Heydon, if he will so much befriend you as to receive her to sojourn\n  with him; if not there in some other place, as your friends shall\n  best allow of. And touching the bestowing of your wife and Megg, who\n  I would be loth should be out of your wife's company; for as she\n  should be a good companion for Nan, so I commit Megg of especial\n  trust to her. I think good, till you keep house together, if my Lady\n  of Sussex might be entreated to take them to her as sojourners,\n  there were no place so fit considering her kindred unto you, and the\n  assured friend that I hope you shall find of her; beside she is a\n  good lady. If it will not be so brought to pass, then, by the advice\n  of your friends, take some other order; but in no case I would wish\n  you to keep any house except it be together with your wife.\n\n  \"Thus I have advised you as my troubled memory can at present suffer\n  me. Beware of pride, stubbornness, taunting, and sullenness, which\n  vices nature doth somewhat kindle in you; and therefore you must\n  with reason and discretion make a new nature in yourself. Give not\n  your mind too much and too greedily to gaming; make a pastime of it,\n  and no toil. And lastly, delight to spend some time in reading of\n  the Scriptures; for therein is the whole comfort of man's life; all\n  other things are vain and transitory; and if you be diligent in\n  reading of them, they will remain with you continually, to your\n  profit and commodity in this world, and to your comfort and\n  salvation in the world to come, whither, in grace of God, I am now\n  with joy and consolation preparing myself. And, upon my blessing,\n  beware of blind papistry, which brings nothing but bondage to men's\n  consciences. {620} Mix your prayers with fasting, not thinking\n  thereby to merit; for there is nothing that we ourselves can do that\n  is good,--we are but unprofitable servants; but fast, I say, thereby\n  to tame the wicked affection of the mind, and trust only to be saved\n  by Christ's precious blood; for without a perfect faith therein,\n  there is no salvation. Let works follow your faith; thereby to show\n  to the world that you do not only say you have faith, but that you\n  give testimony thereof to the full satisfaction of the godly. I\n  write somewhat the more herein, because perchance you have\n  heretofore heard, or perchance may hereafter hear, false bruits that\n  I was a papist;   [Footnote 123] but trust unto it, I never, since I\n  knew what religion meant (I thank God) was of other mind than now\n  you shall hear that I die in; although (I cry God mercy) I have not\n  given fruits and testimony of my faith as I ought to have done; the\n  which is the thing that I do now chiefliest repent.\n\n    [Footnote 123: There would seem to be no doubt that the Duke of\n    Norfolk was a sincere Protestant. The strenuous advice to his\n    children to beware of Popery affords evidence of it. Greatly,\n    however, as it would have tended to their worldly prosperity to\n    have followed their father's last injunctions in this respect, all\n    but one of those he thus counselled were subsequently reconciled\n    to the Catholic Church.\n\n    The Duke's letters in this chapter are all authentic. See the Rev.\n    M. Tierney's History of Arundel, and the Appendix to Nott's\n    edition of Lord Surrey's poems.]\n\n  \"When I am gone, forget my condemning, and forgive, I charge you, my\n  false accusers, as I protest to God I do; but have nothing to do\n  with them if they live. Surely, Bannister dealt no way but honestly\n  and truly. Hickford did not hurt me in my conscience, willingly; nor\n  did not charge me with any great matter that was of weight otherways\n  than truly. But the Bishop of Ross, and specially Barber, did\n  falsely accuse me, and laid their own treasons upon my back. God\n  forgive them, and I do, and once again I will you to do; bear no\n  malice in your mind. And now, dear Philip, farewell. Read this my\n  letter sometimes over; it may chance make you remember yourself the\n  better; and by the same, when your father is dead and rotten, you\n  may see what counsel I would give you if I were alive. If you follow\n  these admonitions, there is no doubt but God will bless you; and I,\n  your earthly father, do give you God's blessing and mine, with my\n  humble prayers to Almighty God that it will please him to bless you\n  and your good Nan; that you may both, if it be his will, see your\n  children's children, to the comfort of you both; and afterward that\n  you may be partakers of the heavenly kingdom. Amen, amen. Written by\n  the hand of your loving father. T. H.\"\n\n\"And to Tom his grace did write:\n\n  \"Tom, out of this that I have written to your brother, you may learn\n  such lessons as are fit for you. That I write to one, that I write\n  to all, except it be somewhat which particularly touches any of you.\n  To fear and serve God is generally to you all; and, on my blessing,\n  take greatest care thereof, for it is the foundation of all\n  goodness. You have, even from your infancy, been given to be\n  stubborn. Beware of that vice, Tom, and bridle nature with wisdom.\n  Though you be her majesty's ward, yet if you use yourself well to my\n  Lord Burleigh, he will, I hope, help you to buy your own wardship.\n  Follow your elder brother's advice, who, I hope, will take such a\n  course as may be to all your comforts. God send him grace so to do,\n  and to you too! I give you God's blessing and mine, and I hope he\n  will prosper you.\"\n\n  \"And to Will he saith (whom methinks his heart did incline to, as\n  Jacob's did to Benjamin):\n\n  \"Will, though you be now young, yet I hope, if it shall please God\n  to send you life, that you will then consider of the precepts\n  heretofore written to your brethren. I have committed the charge of\n  your bringing-up to your elder brother; and therefore I charge you\n  to be obedient to him, as you would have been to me if I had been\n  {621} living. If you shall have a liking to my daughter-in-law, Bess\n  Dacres, I hope you shall have it in your own choice to marry her. I\n  will not advise you otherways than yourself, when you are of fit\n  years, shall think good; but this assure yourself, it will be a good\n  augmentation to your small living, considering how chargeable the\n  world groweth to be. As you are youngest, so the more you ought to\n  be obedient to your elders. God send you a good younger brother's\n  fortune in this world, and his grace, that you may ever be his, both\n  in this world and in the world to come.\"\n\n\"To me, his unworthy daughter, were these lines written, which I be\nashamed to transcribe, but that his goodness doth appear in his good\nopinion of me rather than my so poor merits:\n\n  \"Well-beloved Nan, that hath been as dear to me as if you had been\n  my own daughter, although, considering this ill hap that has now\n  chanced, you might have had a greater marriage than now your husband\n  shall be; yet I hope that you will remember that, when you were\n  married, the case was far otherways; and therefore I hope your\n  dutiful dealings shall be so to your husband, and your sisterly love\n  to your brothers-in-law and sister-in-law, as my friends that shall\n  see it may think that my great affection to you was well bestowed.\n  Thanks be to God, you have hitherto taken a good course; whereby all\n  that wish you well take great hope rather of your going forward\n  therein than backward--which God forbid! I will request no more at\n  your hands, now that I am gone, in recompense of my former love to\n  you, but that you will observe my three lessons: to fear and serve\n  God, flying idleness; to love faithfully your husband; and to be\n  kind to your brothers and sisters--specially committing to your care\n  mine only daughter Megg, hoping that you will not be a sister-in-law\n  to her, but rather a natural sister, yea even a very mother; and\n  that as I took care for the well bestowing of you, so you will take\n  care for the well bestowing of her, and be a continual caller on\n  your husband for the same. If this mishap had not chanced, you and\n  your husband might have been awhile still young, and I would, by\n  God's help, have supplied your wants. But now the case is changed,\n  and you must, at your years of fifteen, attain to the consideration\n  and discretion of twenty; or else, if God send you to live in your\n  age, you shall have cause to repent your folly in youth, beside the\n  endangering the casting away of those who do wholly depend upon your\n  two well-doings. I do not mistrust that you will be mindful of my\n  last requests; and so doing God bless you, and send you to be old\n  parents to virtuous children, which is likeliest to be if you give\n  them good example. Farewell! for this is the last that you shall\n  ever receive from your loving father. Farewell, my dear Nan!\"\n\n  \"And to his own sweet Megg he subjoined in the same letter these\n  words:\n\n  \"Megg, I have, as you see, committed you to your loving sister. I\n  charge you therefore, upon my blessing, that you obey her in all\n  things, as you would do me or your own mother, if we were living;\n  and then I doubt not but by her good means you shall be in fit time\n  bestowed to your own comfort and contentment. Be good; no babbler,\n  and ever be busied and doing of somewhat; and give your mind to\n  reading in the Bible and such other good books, whereby you may\n  learn to fear God; and so you shall prove, by his help, hereafter\n  the better wife, and a virtuous woman in all other respects. If you\n  follow these my lessons, then God's blessing and mine I give you,\n  and pray that you may both live and die his servant. Amen.\"\n\nWhen I read these letters, and my Lady Surrey's comments upon them,\nwhat pangs seized my heart! Her {622} messenger was awaiting an\nanswer, which he said must be brief, for he had to ride to Bermondsey\nwith a message for my Lord Sussex, and had been long delayed in the\ncity. I seized a pen, and hastily wrote:\n\n  \"Oh, my dear and honored lady, what grief, what pain, your letter\n  hath caused me! Forgive me if, having but brief time in which to\n  write a few lines by your messenger, I dwell not on the sorrow which\n  doth oppress you, nor on the many excellences apparent in those\n  farewell letters, which give token of so great virtue and wisdom in\n  the writer, that one should be prompted to exclaim he did lack but\n  one thing to be perfect, that being a true faith,--but rather\n  direct my answer to that passage in yours which doth work in me such\n  regret, yea such anguish of heart, as my poor words can ill express.\n  For verily there can be no greater danger to a soul than to be lured\n  from the profession of a true Catholic faith, once firmly received\n  and yet inwardly held, by deceptive arguments, whereby it doth\n  conceal its own weakness under the garb of respect for the dead and\n  duty to the living. For, I pray you, mine own dear lady, what\n  respect and what duty is owing to men which be not rather due to him\n  who reads the heart, and will ask a strict account of such as,\n  having known his will, yet have not done it? Believe me, 'tis a\n  perilous thing to do evil that good may come. Is it possible you\n  should resolve never to profess that religion which, in your\n  conscience, you do believe to be true, nor to move your lord\n  thereunto, for any human respect, however dear and sacred? I hope\n  other feelings may return, and God's hand will support, uphold, and\n  never fail you in your need. I beseech him to guard and keep you in\n  the right way.\n\n  \"Your humble servant and truly loving poor friend,\n\n  \"CONSTANCE SHERWOOD.\"\n\n\n[TO BE CONTINUED.]\n\n\n------\n\n{623}\n\nFrom The Fortnightly Review.\n\nTHE HEART AND THE BRAIN.\n\nBY GEORGE HENRY LEWES.\n\n\nHeart and brain are the two lords of life. In the metaphors of\nordinary speech and in the stricter language of science, we use these\nterms to indicate two central powers, from which all motives radiate,\nto which all influences converge. They rule the moral and the physical\nlife: the moral owes to them its continuous supply of feelings and\nideas; the physical its continuous supply of food and stimulus. All\nthe composite material which serves to build up the bodily fabric, and\nrepair its daily waste, is only so much \"carted material\" awaiting the\narchitect, until it has twice passed through the heart--until having\nbeen sent by the heart to the lungs it has there received its plastic\nvirtues, and returns to the heart to be thence distributed throughout\nthe organism. So much is familiar to every one; but less familiar is\nthe fact that this transmission of the blood from heart to lungs, and\nits distribution throughout the organism, are rendered possible and\nmade effective only under the influence of the brain. Life is\nsustained by food and stimulus. The operation of nutrition itself is\nindissolubly connected with sensibility. Life is a plexus of nutrition\nand sensation, the threads of which may ideally be separated, but\nwhich in reality are so interwoven as to be indissoluble. This is a\nparadox which even many physiologists will reject; but it is only a\nparadox because biological questions have constantly been regarded\nfrom a chemical point of view.\n\nTo render my proposition free from ambiguity, it is needful to premise\nthat the term heart, by a familiar device of rhetoric, here expresses\nthe whole of that great circulatory apparatus of which it is only a\npart; and in like manner the term brain here expresses the whole of\nthe sensory apparatus. The reader knows perfectly well that in strict\nanatomical language the heart is only one organ having a definite\nfunction; and that the brain--although the term is used with\nconsiderable laxity--is only one portion of the complex nervous\nmechanism, having also its definite functions. But I am not here\naddressing anatomists, and for purposes of simplification I shall\ngenerally speak of the heart as if it were the whole of the vascular\nsystem, and of the brain as if it were the whole of the nervous\nsystem. And there is a philosophic truth suggested by this departure\nfrom the limitations of anatomical definition, namely, that if the\nbrain as a nervous centre requires to be distinguished from all other\nnervous centres, it also requires to be affiliated on them: it has its\nspecial functions as an organ, but it has also a community of\nproperty--_i.e._, sensibility--with all other nervous centres.\n\nIn the study of animal organisms, the scientific artifice called\nanalysis, which separates ideally what nature has indissolubly united,\nisolating each portion of a complex whole to study it undisturbed by\nthe influences of other portions, has established a division of life\ninto animal and vegetable. The division is as old as Aristotle, but\nhas become the common property of science only since the days of\nBichat. It is not exact, but it is convenient. As an artifice it has\nproved its utility, but like all such distinctions it has a tendency\nto divert the mind from contemplation of the real synthesis of nature.\nEven as an artifice the classification is not free from ambiguities;\nand perhaps it would be less exceptionable if {624} instead of vegetal\nand animal we were to substitute nutritive and sensitive. All the\nphenomena of growth, development, and decay--phenomena common to\nplants as to animals--may range under the laws of nutrition. All the\nphenomena of feeling and motion which specially distinguish animals,\nwill range under the laws of sensibility. Plants, it is true, manifest\nmotion, some few of them even locomotion; but in them it is believed\nthat these phenomena are never due to the stimulus of sensibility.\n\nViewing the animal organism as thus differentiated, we see on the one\nhand a complex system of organs--glands, membranes, vessels--all\nharmoniously working to one end, which is to build up the body, and\nsilently repair its continual waste. They evolve the successive phases\nof development. They prepare successive generations. On the other\nhand, we see a complex system of organs--muscles, tendons, bones,\nnerves, and nerve-centres--also harmoniously co-operative. They\nstimulate the organs of nutrition. They work first for the\npreservation of the individual in the struggle of existence; next, for\nthe perfection of the individual in the development of his highest\nqualities.\n\nBut it is important to remember that this division is purely ideal--a\nscientific artifice, not a reality. Nature knows of none such. In the\norganism the two lives are one. The two systems interlace,\ninterpenetrate each other, so that the slightest modification of the\none is followed by a corresponding change in the other. The brain is\nnourished by the heart, and were it not for the blood which is\nmomently pumped into it by the heart, its sensibility would vanish.\nAnd the heart in turn depends upon the brain, not for food, but for\nstimulus, for motive power, without which food is inert. That we may\nfeel, it is necessary we should feed; that we may feed, it is\nnecessary we should feel. Nutrition cannot be dissociated from\nsensation. The blood which nourishes the brain, giving it impulse and\nsustaining power, could never have become arterial blood, could never\nhave reached the brain, had not the heart which sent it there been\nsubjected to influences from the brain. The blood itself has no\nlocomotive impulse. The heart has no spontaneous power: it is a\nmuscle, and like all other muscles must be stimulated into activity.\nUnless the sensitive mechanism were in action, the lungs could not\nexpand, the blood would not become oxygenated, the heart would not\npump. Look on the corpse from which the life has just vanished. Why is\nit inert? There is food within it. It has blood in abundance. There is\nair in the lungs. The muscles are contractile, and the tendons\nelastic. So little is the wondrous mechanism impaired, that if by any\nmeans we could supply a stimulus to awaken the dormant sensibility,\nthe chest would expand, the heart would beat, the blood would\ncirculate, the corpse would revive.\n\nIt is unnecessary to point out in detail how dependent the brain is\nupon the heart; but mention may be made of the fact that more blood is\nsent to the brain than to any other organ in the body: according to\nsome estimates a fifth of the whole, according to others a third. Not\nonly is a large quantity of blood demanded for the continuous activity\nof the brain, but such is the peculiar nature of this great nervous\ncentre, that of all organs it is the most delicately susceptible to\nevery variation in the quality of the blood sent to it. If the heart\npumps feebly, the brain acts feebly. If the blood be vitiated, the\nbrain is lethargic; and when the brain is lethargic, the heart is\nweak. Thus do the two great centres interact. They are both lords of\nlife, and both mutually indispensable.\n\nThere are two objections which it may be well to anticipate:\nNutrition, it may be objected, cannot be so indissolubly blended with\nsensation as I have affirmed, because, in the first place, most of the\nnutritive processes go on without the intervention of {625}\nsensibility; and in the second place, the nutritive life of plants is\nconfessedly independent of sensation, since in plants there is no\nsensitive mechanism whatever. Nutrition is simply a chemical process.\n\nThe answers to these objections may be very brief. Nutrition is a\nbiological not a chemical process: it involves the operation of\nchemical laws, but these laws are themselves subordinated to\nphysiological laws; and one of these laws is the necessary dependence\nof organic activity on a nervous mechanism wherever such a mechanism\nexists. Although popular language, and the mistaken views (as I\nconceive) of physiologists, allow us to say, without any apparent\nabsurdity, that the processes of respiration, digestion, circulation,\nand secretion go on without feeling or sensation--because these\nprocesses do not habitually become distinct in consciousness, but are\nmerged in the general feeling of existence--we have only to replace the\nword feeling, or sensation, by the phrase \"nervous influence,\" and it\nthen becomes a serious biological error to speak of nutrition as\ndissociated from the stimulus of nervous centres, as capable of\ncontinuance without the intervention of sensibility. The chemical\ncombinations and decompositions do not of course depend on this\nintervention, but the _transport_ of materials does. All the disputes\nwhich have been waged on this subject would have been silenced had the\ndisputants borne in mind this distinction between the chemical and\norganic elements in every nutritive process. It is not the stoker who\nmakes the steam; but if the stoker were not to supply the fire with\ncoals, and the safety-valve were not to regulate the amount of\npressure, steam might indeed be generated, but no steam-engine would\nperform its useful work. In like manner, it is not the vascular system\nwhich makes a secretion; but if the blood did not supply the gland\nwith materials, the secreting process would quickly end, and the blood\ncan only be brought to the gland through the agency of muscular\ncontractions stimulated by nervous influence.\n\nGranting that plants have no sensibility, and that in them the process\nof nutrition must go on without such an intervention, we are able to\ndemonstrate that in animals in whose organism the sensitive apparatus\nis an integral portion, the processes of nutrition are more or less\nunder the influence of this apparatus. In saying \"more or less,\" I\nindicate the greater or less perfection of the organism; for, as every\none knows, the perfection of each type is due to the predominance of\nits sensitive mechanism. In some of the lowest types, no trace of a\nnervous mechanism can be discovered. A little higher in the scale, the\nmechanism is very slight and simple. Still higher, it becomes complex\nand important. It culminates in man. Corresponding with this scale of\ncomplexity in the sensitive life is the scale of complexity in the\nnutritive life. As the two rise in importance they rise in the scale\nof dependence. Thus a frog or a triton will live long after its brain\nis removed. I have kept frogs for several weeks without their brains,\nand tritons without their heads. Redi, the illustrious Italian\nnaturalist, kept a turtle alive five months after the removal of its\nbrain. Now it is needless to say that in higher animals death would\nrapidly follow the loss of the brain. A somewhat similar parallelism\nis seen on the removal of the heart. None of the higher animals can\nsurvive a serious injury to the heart; but that organ may be removed\nfrom a reptile, and the animal will crawl away seemingly as lively as\never. A frog will live several hours without a heart, and will hop,\nswim, and struggle as if uninjured. Stilling once removed all the\nviscera from a frog, which, however, continued for one hour to hop,\ndefend itself, and in various ways manifest its vivacity. [Footnote\n124]\n\n  [Footnote 124: Stilling, _Untersuchungen ueber die Functionen des\n  Rueckenmarks_, p. 38. ]\n\n{626}\n\nIn spite of these evidences of a temporary independence of brain and\nheart, as individual organs, there is nothing more certain than the\nintimate interdependence of the sensitive and circulating systems; and\nif in lower animals the interdependence of the two great central\norgans is less energetic than in the higher, the law of the\nintervention of sensibility in all processes of nutrition is\nunaffected. In fact, wherever the motor mechanism is muscular, as it\nis in all but the simplest animals, the necessary intervention of\nsensibility is an _a priori_ axiom. Every action in the organs of such\nanimals is a manifestation of muscular contractility, and there is no\nknown means of exciting this contractility except by the stimulus of a\nnerve.\n\nThe heart is a muscle. Some years ago there was a school of\nphysiologists advocating the hypothesis that the action of the heart\nwas due to the irritability of its muscular tissue, which was\nstimulated by the presence of blood. The great Haller was the head of\nthis school, and his _\"Memoires sur la nature sensible et irritable\ndes parties\"_ [Footnote 125] is still worthy the attention of\nexperimentalists. And, indeed, when men saw the heart continue its\npulsations some time after death, and even after removal from the\nbody, and saw, moreover, that after pulsation had ceased it could be\nrevived by the injection of warm blood, there seemed the strongest\narguments in favor of the hypothesis. Unhappily for the hypothesis,\nthe heart continues to beat long after all the blood has been pumped\nout of it, consequently its beating cannot be due to the stimulus of\nthe blood.\n\n  [Footnote 125: Lausanne, 1756, in 4 vols. ]\n\nIn our own day the difficulty has to a considerable extent been\nremoved by the discovery of a small nervous system specially allotted\nto the heart,--nerves and ganglia imbedded in its substance, which\nthere do the work of nerves and ganglia everywhere else. Cut the heart\ninto pieces, and each piece containing a ganglion will beat as before;\nthe other pieces will be still. Beside this special cardiac system\nwhich influences the regular pulsations, there is the general nervous\nsystem, which accelerates and arrests these pulsations at every moment\nof our lives. The heart is thus connected with the general organism\nthrough the intervention of the great sensory apparatus. Filaments of\nwhat are called the pneumogastric nerves connect the heart with the\nspinal chord and cerebral masses; but it is not the influence of these\nfilaments which causes the regular beatings of the heart (as\nphysiologists formerly supposed), and the proof is that these\nfilaments may all be cut, thus entirely isolating the heart from all\nconnection with the great nervous centres, and yet the heart will\ncontinue tranquilly beating. What causes this? Obviously the stimulus\ncomes from the heart's own nerves; and these are, presumably, excited\nby the molecular changes going on within it.\n\nPhysiologists, as we said just now, supposed that the filaments of the\npneumogastric nerves distributed to the heart caused its beating. What\nthen was their surprise, a few years since, when Weber announced that\nthe stimulation of these fibres, instead of accelerating the heart's\naction, arrested it! Here was a paradox. All other muscles, it was\nsaid (but erroneously said), are excited to increased action when\ntheir nerves are stimulated, and here is a muscle which is paralyzed\nby the stimulation of its nerves. The fact was indisputable; an\nelectric current passed through the pneumogastric did suddenly and\ninvariably arrest the heart. Physiologists were interested. The frogs\nand rabbits of Europe had a bad time of it, called upon to answer\ncategorically such questions put to their hearts. In a little while it\nappeared that although a strong electric current arrested the\npulsations--and in mammals instantaneously--yet a feeble current\naccelerated instead of arresting them. The same opposite results\nfollowed a powerful and a gentle excitation of the upper region of the\nspinal chord.\n\n{627}\n\nTo these very important and suggestive facts, which throw a strong\nlight on many phenomena hitherto obscure, let us add the interesting\nfacts that in a healthy, vigorous animal, the heart quickly recovers\nits normal activity after the withdrawal of the electric stimulus; but\nin a sickly or highly sensitive animal the arrest is final.\n\nWho does not read here the physiological explanation of the familiar\nfact that powerful mental shocks momently arrest the heart, and\nsometimes arrest it for ever? That which a powerful current will do\napplied to the pneumogastric nerve, will be done by a profound\nagitation of grief or joy--truly called a heart-shaking influence. The\nagitation of the great centres of thought is communicated to the\nspinal chord, and from it to the nerves which issue to various parts\nof the body: the limbs are violently moved, the glands are excited to\nincreased activity, the tears flow, the facial muscles contract, the\nchest expands, laughter or sobs, dances of delight and shouts of joy,\nthese and the manifold expressions of an agitated emotion, are the\nafter results--the first effect is an arrest, more or less fugitive,\nfollowed by an increase of the heart's action. If the organism be\nvigorous, the effect of a powerful emotion is a sudden paleness,\nindicating a momentary arrest of the heart. This may be but for an\ninstant; the heart pauses, and the lungs pause with it--\"the breath is\ntaken away.\" This is succeeded by an energetic palpitation; the lungs\nexpand, the blood rushes to face and brain with increased force.\nShould the organism be sickly or highly sensitive, the arrest is of\nlonger duration, and fainting, more or less prolonged, is the result.\nIn a very sensitive or very sickly organism the arrest is final. The\nshock of joy and the shock of grief have both been known to kill.\n\nThe effects of a gentle stimulus we may expect to be very different,\nsince we know that a feeble electric current stimulates the heart's\naction. The nature of the stimulus is always the same, no matter on\nwhat occasion it arises. It may arise from a dash of cold water on the\nface--as we see in the revival of the heart's action when we throw\nwater on the face of a fainting person. It may arise from inhaling an\nirritant odor. It may arise from the pleasurable sight of a dear\nfriend, or the thrill of delight at the new birth of an idea. In every\ncase the brain is excited, either through an impression on a sensitive\nnerve, or through the impulses of thought; and the sensibility thus\ncalled into action necessarily discharges itself through one or more\nof the easiest channels; and among the easiest is that of the\npneumogastric nerve. But the heart thus acted on in turn reacts. Its\nincreased energy throws more blood into the brain, which draws its\nsustaining power from the blood.\n\nExperimentalists have discovered another luminous fact connected with\nthis influence of the brain upon the heart, namely, that although a\ncurrent of a certain intensity (varying of course with the nature of\nthe organism) will infallibly arrest the heart, if applied at once,\nyet if we begin with a feeble current and go on gradually increasing\nits intensity, we may at last surpass the degree which would have\nproduced instantaneous arrest, and yet the heart will continue to beat\nenergetically.\n\nThe effect of repetition in diminishing a stimulus is here very\nnoticeable. It will serve to explain why, according to the traditions\nof familiar experience, we are careful to break the announcement of\ndisastrous news, by intimating something much less calamitous,\nwherewith to produce the first shock, and then, when the heart has\nwithstood that, we hope it may have energy to meet the more agitating\nemotions. The same fact will also serve, partly, to explain why from\nrepetition the effect of smoking is no longer as it is at first to\nproduce paleness, sweating, and sickness. The heart ceases to be\nsensibly affected by the stimulus.\n\n{628}\n\nReturning to the effects of a gentle stimulus, we can read therein the\nrationale of change of scene, especially of foreign travel, in\nrestoring the exhausted energies. The gentle excitement of novel and\npleasurable sights is not, as people generally suppose, merely a\nmental stimulus--a pleasure which passes away without a physical\ninfluence; on the contrary, it is inseparably connected with an\nincreased activity of the circulation, and _this_ brings with it an\nincreased activity of all the processes of waste and repair. If the\nexcitement and fatigue be not too great, even the sickly traveller\nfinds himself stronger and happier, in spite of bad food, irregular\nhours, and many other conditions which at home would have enfeebled\nhim. I have heard a very distinguished physician (Sir Henry Holland)\nsay that such is his conviction of the beneficial influence of even\nslight nervous stimulus on the nutritive processes, that when the\npatient cannot have change of scene, change of room is of some\nadvantage--nay, even change of furniture, if there cannot be change\nof room!\n\nTo those who have thoroughly grasped the principle of the indissoluble\nconjunction of nutrition and sensation, such effects are obvious\ndeductions. They point to the great importance of pleasure as an\nelement of effective life. They lead to the question whether much of\nthe superior health of youth is not due to the greater amount of\npleasurable excitement which life affords to young minds.\n\nCertain it is that much of the marvellous activity of some old men,\nespecially of men engaged in politics or in interesting professions,\nmay be assigned to the greater stimulus given to their bodily\nfunctions by the pleasurable excitement of their minds. Men who\nvegetate sink prematurely into old age. The fervid wheels of life\nrevolve upon excitement. If the excitement be too intense, the wheels\ntake fire; but if the mental stimulus be simply pleasurable, it is\neminently beneficial.\n\nEvery impression reacts on the circulation, a slight impression\nproducing a slight acceleration, a powerful impression, producing an\narrest more or less prolonged. The \"shock\" of a wound and the \"pain\"\nof an operation cause faintness, sometimes death. Indeed, it is useful\nto know that many severe operations are dangerous only because of the\nshock or pain, and can be performed with impunity if the patient first\nbe rendered insensible by chloroform. On the other hand, the mere\nirritation of a nerve so as to produce severe pain will produce\nsyncope or death in an animal which is very feeble or exhausted. It is\npossible to crush the whole of the upper part of the spinal chord (the\n_medulla oblongata_) without arresting the action of the heart, if the\nanimal has been rendered insensible by chloroform; whereas without\nsuch precautions a very slight irritation of the medulla suffices to\narrest the heart.\n\nA moment's reflection will disclose the reason of the remarkable\ndifferences observed in human beings in the matter of sensitiveness.\nThe stupid are stupid, not simply because their nervous development is\nbelow the average, but also because the connection between the two\ngreat central organs, brain and heart, is comparatively languid; the\npneumogastric is not in them a ready channel for the discharge of\nnervous excitement. The sensitive are sensitive because in them the\nconnection is rapid and easy. All nervous excitement must discharge\nitself through one or more channels; but _what_ channels, will depend\non the native and acquired tendencies of the organism. In highly\nsensitive animals a mere prick on the skin can be proved to affect the\nbeating of the heart; but you may lacerate a reptile without sensibly\naffecting its pulse. In like manner, a pleasurable sight or a\nsuggestive thought will quicken the pulse of an intelligent man,\nwhereas his stupid brother may be the spectator of festal or solemn\nscenes and the auditor of noble eloquence with scarcely a change.\n\n{629}\n\nThe highly sensitive organism is one in which the reactions of\nsensibility on the circulation, and of the circulation on the\nsensibility, are most direct and rapid. This is often the source of\nweakness and inefficiency--as we see in certain feminine natures of\nboth sexes, wherein the excessive sensitiveness does not lie in an\nunusual development of the nervous centres, but in an unusual\ndevelopment of the direct connection between brain and heart. There\nare men and women of powerful brains in whom this rapid transmission\nof sensation to the heart is not observable; the nervous force\ndischarges itself through other channels. There are men and women of\nsmall brains in whom \"the irritability\" is so great that almost every\nsensation transmits its agitating influence to the heart.\n\nAnd now we are in a condition to appreciate the truth which was\nconfusedly expressed in the ancient doctrine respecting the heart as\nthe great emotional organ. It still lives in our ordinary speech, but\nhas long been banished from the text-books of physiology, though it is\nnot, in my opinion, a whit more unscientific than the modern doctrine\nrespecting the brain (meaning the cerebral hemispheres) as the\nexclusive organ of sensation. That the heart, as a muscle, is not\nendowed with the property of sensibility--a property exclusively\npossessed by ganglionic tissue--we all admit. But the heart, as the\ncentral organ of the circulation, is so indissolubly connected with\nevery manifestation of sensibility, and is so delicately susceptible\nto all emotional agitations, that we may not improperly regard it as\nthe ancients regarded it, in the light of the chief centre of feeling;\nfor the ancients had no conception of the heart as an organ specially\nendowed with sensibility--they only thought of it as the chief agent\nof the sensitive soul. And is not this the conception we moderns form\nof the brain? We do not imagine the cerebral mass, as a mere mass, and\nunrelated to the rest of the organism, to have in itself sensibility;\nbut we conceive it as the centre of a great system, dependent for its\nactivity on a thousand influences, sensitive because sensibility is\nthe form of life peculiar to it, but living only in virtue of the\nvital activities of the whole organism. Thus the heart, because its\naction is momently involved in every emotion, and because every\nemotion reacts upon it, may, as truly as the brain, be called the\ngreat emotional centre. Neither brain nor heart can claim that title\nexclusively. They may claim it together.\n\n\n----\n\n{630}\n\n[Transcriber: Read this section with a fixed pitch font so the\ntwo columns are correctly aligned.]\n\nFrom The Month.\n\nTHE DREAM OF GERONTIUS.\n\nBY JOHN HENRY NEWMAN, D.D.\n\n[Concluded.]\n\nSec.4.\n\nSOUL.\n\n        But hark! upon my sense\n  Comes a fierce hubbub, which would make me fear,\n  Could I be frighted.\n\nANGEL.\n\n          We are now arrived\n  Close on the judgment-court; that sullen howl\n  Is from the demons who assemble there.\n  It is the middle region, where of old\n  Satan appeared among the sons of God,\n  To cast his jibes and scoffs at holy Job.\n  So now his legions throng the vestibule,\n  Hungry and wild, to claim their property,\n  And gather souls for hell. Hist to their cry.\n\nSOUL.\n\n  How sour and how uncouth a dissonance!\n\nDEMONS.\n\n  Low-born clods\n     Of brute earth,             They aspire\n  To become gods,\n     By a new birth,             And an extra grace,\n  And a score of merits,\n     As if ought                 Could stand in place\n     Of the high thought,        And the glance of fire\n  Of the great spirits,\n     The powers blest,           The lords by right,\n                                     The primal owners\n  Of the proud dwelling          And realm of light,\n     Dispossessed,               Aside thrust,\n                                 Chucked down,\n                                 By the sheer might\n                                     Of a despot's will,\n                                 Of a tyrant's frown,\n  Who after expelling            Their hosts, gave,\n                                     Triumphant still,\n                                 And still unjust,\n                                 Each forfeit crown\n                                     To psalm-droners\n                                     And canting groaners,\n                                 To every slave,\n                                     And pious cheat,\n                                 And crawling knave,\n                                 Who licked the dust\n                                     Under his feet.\n\n{631}\n\nANGEL.\n\n  It is the restless panting of their being;\n  Like beasts of prey, who, caged within their bars,\n  In a deep hideous purring have their life,\n  And an incessant pacing to and fro.\n\nDEMONS.\n\n  The mind bold\n      And independent,\n  The purpose free,\n  So we are told,\n  Must not think\n      To have the ascendant,     What's a saint?\n      One whose breath           Doth the air taint\n      Before his death;          A bundle of bones,\n      Which fools adore,         Ha! ha!\n      When life is o'er,\n  Which rattle and stink,\n      E'en in the flesh.         We cry his pardon!\n  No flesh hath he;\n      Ha! ha!                    For it hath died,\n                                 'Tis crucified\n                                     Day by day,\n  Afresh, afresh,                Ha! ha!\n                                     That holy clay,\n                                 Ha! ha!\n                                     And such fudge,\n  As priestlings prate,          Is his guerdon\n                                     Before the judge,\n                                 And pleads and atones\n                                     For spite and grudge,\n                                 And bigot mood,\n  And envy and hate              And greed of blood.\n\nSOUL.\n\n  How impotent they are! and yet on earth\n  They have repute for wondrous power and skill;\n  And books describe, how that the very face\n  Of th' evil one, if seen, would have a force\n  To freeze the very blood, and choke the life\n  Of him who saw it.\n\n{632}\n\nANGEL.\n\n         In thy trial state\n  Thou hadst a traitor nestling close at home,\n  Connatural, who with the powers of hell\n  Was leagued, and of thy senses kept the keys,\n  And to that deadliest foe unlocked thy heart.\n  And therefore is it, in respect of man,\n  Those fallen ones show so majestical.\n  But, when some child of grace, angel or saint,\n  Pure and upright in his integrity\n  Of nature, meets the demons on their raid,\n  They scud away as cowards from the fight.\n  Nay, oft hath holy hermit in his cell,\n  Not yet disburdened of mortality,\n  Mocked at their threats and warlike overtures;\n  Or, dying, when they swarmed like flies, around,\n  Defied them, and departed to his judge.\n\nDEMONS.\n\n  Virtue and vice,            A knave's pretence.\n  'Tis all the same;          Ha! ha!                  Dread of hell-fire,\n  Of the venomous flame,      A coward's plea.\n  Give him his price,         Saint though he be,      Ha! ha!\n                              From shrewd good sense   He'll slave for hire;\n                              Ha! ha!                  And does but aspire\n                              To the heaven above\n  With sordid aim,            Not from love.           Ha! ha!\n\nSOUL.\n\n  I see not those false spirits; shall I see\n  My dearest Master, when I reach his throne?\n  Or hear, at least, his awful judgment-word\n  With personal intonation, as I now\n  Hear thee, not see thee, angel? Hitherto\n  All has been darkness since I left the earth;\n  Shall I remain thus sight-bereft all through\n  My penance-time? if so, how comes it then\n  That I have hearing still, and taste, and touch,\n  Yet not a glimmer of that princely sense\n  Which binds ideas in one, and makes them live?\n\n{633}\n\nANGEL.\n\n  Nor touch, nor taste, nor hearing hast thou now;\n  Thou livest in a world of signs and types,\n  The presentations of most holy truths,\n  Living and strong, which now encompass thee.\n  A disembodied soul, thou hast by right\n  No converse with aught else beside thyself;\n  But, lest so stern a solitude should load\n  And break thy being, in mercy are vouchsafed\n  Some lower measures of perception,\n  Which seem to thee, as though through channels brought,\n  Through ear, or nerves, or palate, which are gone.\n  And thou art wrapped and swathed around in dreams,\n  Dreams that are true, yet enigmatical;\n  For the belongings of thy present state,\n  Save through such symbols, come not home to thee.\n  And thus thou tell'st of space and time and size,\n  Of fragrant, solid, bitter, musical,\n  Of fire, and of refreshment after fire;\n  As (let me use similitude of earth,\n  To aid thee in the knowledge thou dost ask)--\n  As ice which blisters may be said to burn.\n  Nor hast thou now extension, with its parts\n  Correlative,--long habit cozens thee,--\n  Nor power to move thyself, nor limbs to move.\n  Hast thou not heard of those, who after loss\n  Of hand or foot, still cried that they had pains\n  In hand or foot, as though they had it still?\n  So is it now with thee, who hast not lost\n  Thy hand or foot, but all which made up man.\n  So will it be, until the joyous day\n  Of resurrection, when thou wilt regain\n  All thou hast lost, new-made and glorified.--\n  --How, even now, the consummated saints\n  See God in heaven, I may not explicate:--\n  Meanwhile let it suffice thee to possess\n  Such means of converse as are granted thee,\n  Though till the beatific vision thou art blind;\n  For e'en thy purgatory, which comes like fire,\n  Is fire without its light.\n\nSOUL.\n\n               His will be done!\n  I am not worthy e'er to see again\n  The face of day; far less his countenance,\n  Who is the very sun. Natheless, in life,\n  When I looked forward to my purgatory,\n  It ever was my solace to believe,\n  That, ere I plunged into th' avenging flame,\n  I had one sight of him to strengthen me.\n\nANGEL.\n\n  Nor rash nor vain is that presentiment;\n  Yes,--for one moment thou shalt see thy Lord.\n  Thus will it be: what time thou art arraigned\n  Before the dread tribunal, and thy lot\n  Is cast for ever, should it be to sit\n  On his right hand among his pure elect,\n  Then sight, or that which to the soul is sight,\n  As by a lightning-flash, will come to thee,\n  And thou shalt see, amid the dark profound,\n  Whom thy soul loveth, and would fain approach,\n  One moment; but thou knowest not, my child,\n  What thou dost ask: that sight of the Most Fair\n  Will gladden thee, but it will pierce thee too.\n\n{634}\n\nSOUL.\n\n  Thou speakest darkly, angel; and an awe\n  Falls on me, and I fear lest I be rash.\n\nANGEL.\n\n  There was a mortal, who is now above\n  In the mid glory; he, when near to die,\n  Was given communion with the Crucified,--\n  Such, that the Master's very wounds were stamped\n  Upon his flesh; and, from the agony\n  Which thrilled through body and soul in that embrace,\n  Learn that the flame of the Everlasting Love\n  Doth burn, ere it transform. . . .\n\nSec. 5.\n\n  . . . Hark to those sounds!\n  They come of tender beings angelical,\n  Least and most childlike of the sons of God.\n\nFIRST CHOIR OF ANGELICALS.\n\n  Praise to the Holiest in the height,         And in the depth be praise:\n  In all his words most wonderful;             Most sure in all his ways!\n\n  To us his elder race he gave                 To battle and to win,\n  Without the chastisement of pain,            Without the soil of sin.\n\n  The younger son he willed to be              A marvel in his birth:\n  Spirit and flesh his parents were;           His home was heaven and earth.\n\n  The Eternal blessed his child and armed,     And sent him hence afar,\n  To serve as champion in the field            Of elemental war.\n\n  To be his vice-roy in the world              Of matter, and of sense;\n  Upon the frontier, toward the foe,           A resolute defence.\n\nANGEL.\n\n  We now have passed the gate, and are within\n  The house of judgment; and whereas on earth\n  Temples and palaces are formed of parts\n  Costly and rare, but all material,\n  So in the world of spirits nought is found,\n  To mould withal and form a whole,\n  But what is immaterial; and thus\n  The smallest portions of this edifice,\n  Cornice, or frieze, or balustrade, or stair,\n  The very pavement is made up of life--\n  Of holy, blessed, and immortal beings,\n  Who hymn their Maker's praise continually.\n\n{635}\n\nSECOND CHOIR OF ANGELICALS.\n\n  Praise to the Holiest in the height,      And in the depth be praise:\n  In all his words most wonderful; \t    Most sure in all his ways!\n\n  Woe to thee, man! for he was found \t    A recreant in the fight;\n  And lost his heritage of heaven, \t    And fellowship with light.\n\n  Above him now the angry sky, \t\t    Around the tempest's din\n  Who once had angels for his friends,      Has but the brutes for kin.\n\n  O man! a savage kindred they:             To flee that monster brood\n  He scaled the sea-side cave and clomb     The giants of the wood.\n\n  With now a fear and now a hope,           With aids which chance supplied,\n  From youth to old, from sire to son, \t    He lived, and toiled, and died.\n\n  He dreed his penance age by age; \t    And step by step began\n  Slowly to doff his savage garb, \t    And be again a man.\n\n  And quickened by the Almighty's breath,   And chastened by his rod,\n  And taught by angel-visitings,            At length he sought his God;\n\n  And learned to call upon his name,        And in his faith create\n  A household and a fatherland, \t    A city and a state.\n\n  Glory to him who from the mire, \t    In patient length of days,\n  Elaborated into life \t\t\t    A people to his praise!\n\nSOUL.\n\n  The sound is like the rushing of the wind--\n  The summer wind--among the lofty pines;\n  Swelling and dying, echoing round about,\n  Now here, now distant, wild and beautiful;\n  While scattered from the branches it has stirred,\n  Descend ecstatic odors.\n\nTHIRD CHOIR OF ANGELICALS.\n\n  Praise to the Holiest in the height,        And in the depth be praise:\n  In all his words most wonderful;            Most sure in all his ways!\n\n  The angels, as beseemingly                  To spirit-kind was given,\n  At once were tried and perfected,           And took their seats in heaven.\n\n  For them no twilight or eclipse;            No growth and no decay:\n  Twas hopeless, all-engulfing night,         Or beatific day.\n\n  But to the younger race there rose          A hope upon its fall;\n  And slowly, surely, gracefully,             The morning dawned on all.\n\n  And ages, opening out, divide               The precious and the base,\n  And from the hard and sullen mass           Mature the heirs of grace.\n\n  O man! albeit the quickening ray            Lit from his second birth,\n  Takes him at length what once he was,       And heaven grows out of earth;\n\n  Yet still between that earth and heaven--   His journey and its goal--\n  A double agony awaits                       His body and his soul.\n\n  A double debt he has to pay--               The forfeit of his sins:\n  The chill of death is past, and now         The penance-fire begins.\n\n  Glory to him, who evermore                  By truth and justice reigns;\n  Who tears the soul from out its case,       And burns away its stains!\n\n{636}\n\nANGEL.\n\n  They sing of thy approaching agony,\n  Which thou so eagerly didst question of:\n  It is the face of the incarnate God\n  Shall smite thee with that keen and subtle pain;\n  And yet the memory which it leaves will be\n  A sovereign febrifuge to heal the wound;\n  And yet withal it will the wound provoke,\n  And aggravate and widen it the more.\n\nSOUL.\n\n  Thou speakest mysteries; still methinks I know\n  To disengage the tangle of thy words:\n  Yet rather would I hear thy angel voice,\n  Than for myself be thy interpreter.\n\nANGEL.\n\n  When then--if such thy lot--thou seest thy Judge,\n  The sight of him will kindle in thy heart\n  All tender, gracious, reverential thoughts.\n  Thou wilt be sick with love, and yearn for him,\n  And feel as though thou couldst but pity him,\n  That one so sweet should e'er have placed himself\n  At disadvantage such, as to be used\n  So vilely by a being so vile as thee.\n  There is a pleading in his pensive eyes\n  Will pierce thee to the quick, and trouble thee.\n  And thou wilt hate and loathe thyself; for, though\n  Now sinless, thou wilt feel that thou hast sinned,\n  As never thou didst feel; and wilt desire\n  To slink away, and hide thee from his sight;\n  And yet wilt have a longing aye to dwell\n  Within the beauty of his countenance.\n  And these two pains, so counter and so keen,--\n  The longing for him, when thou seest him not;\n  The shame of self at thought of seeing him,--\n  Will be thy veriest, sharpest purgatory.\n\nSOUL.\n\n  My soul is in my hand: I have no fear,--\n  In his dear might prepared for weal or woe.\n  But hark! a deep, mysterious harmony\n  It floods me, like the deep and solemn sound\n  Of many waters.\n\n{637}\n\nANGEL.\n\n             We have gained the stairs\n  Which rise toward the presence-chamber; there\n  A band of mighty angels keep the way\n  On either side, and hymn the incarnate God.\n\nANGELS OF THE SACRED STAIR.\n\n  Father, whose goodness none can know, but they\n      Who see thee face to face,\n  By man hath come the infinite display\n      Of thine all-loving grace;\n  But fallen man--the creature of a day--\n      Skills not that love to trace.\n  It needs, to tell the triumph thou hast wrought,\n  An angel's deathless fire, an angel's reach of thought.\n\n  It needs that very angel, who with awe\n      Amid the garden shade,\n  The great Creator in his sickness saw,\n      Soothed by a creature's aid,\n  And agonized, as victim of the law\n      Which he himself had made;\n  For who can praise him in his depth and height,\n  But he who saw him reel in that victorious fight?\n\nSOUL.\n\n  Hark! for the lintels of the presence-gate\n  Are vibrating and echoing back the strain.\n\nFOURTH CHOIR OF ANGELICALS.\n\n  Praise to the Holiest in the height,       And in the depth be praise\n  In all his words most wonderful;           Most sure in all his ways!\n\n  The foe blasphemed the holy Lord,          As if he reckoned ill,\n  In that he placed his puppet man           The frontier place to fill.\n\n  For even in his best estate,               With amplest gifts endued,\n  A sorry sentinel was he,                   A being of flesh and blood.\n\n  As though a thing, who for his help        Must needs possess a wife,\n  Could cope with those proud rebel hosts,   Who had angelic life.\n\n  And when, by blandishment of Eve,          That earth-born Adam fell,\n  He shrieked in triumph, and he cried,      \"A sorry sentinel.\n\n  The Maker by his word is bound,            Escape or cure is none;\n  He must abandon to his doom,               And slay his darling Son.\"\n\nANGEL.\n\n  And now the threshold, as we traverse it,\n  Utters aloud its glad responsive chant.\n\n{638}\n\nFIFTH CHOIR OF ANGELICALS.\n\n  Praise to the Holiest in the height,      And in the depth be praise:\n  In all his words most wonderful;          Most sure in all his ways!\n\n  O loving wisdom of our God!               When all was sin and shame,\n  A second Adam to the fight                And to the rescue came.\n\n  O wisest love! that flesh and blood       Which did in Adam fail,\n  Should strive afresh against the foe,     Should strive and should prevail.\n\n  And that a higher gift than grace         Should flesh and blood refine,\n  God's presence and his very self,         And essence all-divine.\n\n  O generous love! that he who smote        In man for man the foe,\n  The double agony in man                   For man should undergo;\n\n  And in the garden secretly,               And on the cross on high,\n  Should teach his brethren and inspire     To suffer and to die.\n\nSec. 6.\n\nANGEL.\n\n  The judgment now is near, for we are come\n  Into the veiled presence of our God.\n\nSOUL.\n\n  I hear the voices that I left on earth.\n\nANGEL.\n\n  It is the voice of friends around thy bed,\n  Who say the \"Subvenite\" with the priest.\n  Hither the echoes come; before the throne\n  Stands the great angel of the agony,\n  The same who strengthened him, what time he knelt\n  Lone in the garden shade, bedewed with blood.\n  That angel best can plead with him for all\n  Tormented souls, the dying and the dead.\n\nANGEL OF THE AGONY.\n\n  Jesu! by that shuddering dread which fell on thee;\n  Jesu! by that cold dismay which sickened thee;\n  Jesu! by that pang of heart which thrilled in thee;\n  Jesu! by that mount of sins which crippled thee;\n  Jesu! by that sense of guilt which stifled thee;\n  Jesu! by that innocence which girdled thee;\n  Jesu! by that sanctity which reigned in thee;\n  Jesu! by that Godhead which was one with thee;\n  Jesu! spare these souls which are so dear to thee,\n  Who in prison, calm and patient, wait for thee;\n  Hasten, Lord, their hour, and bid them come to thee,\n  To that glorious home, where they shall ever gaze on thee.\n\n{639}\n\nSOUL.\n\n  I go before my Judge. Ah! . . . .\n\nANGEL.\n\n        .... Praise to his name!\n  The eager spirit has darted from my hold,\n  And, with the intemperate energy of love,\n  Flies to the dear feet of Emmanuel;\n  But, ere it reach them, the keen sanctity,\n  Which with its effluence, like a glory, clothes\n  And circles round the Crucified, has seized,\n  And scorched, and shrivelled it; and now it lies\n  Passive and still before the awful throne.\n  O happy, suffering soul! for it is safe,\n  Consumed, yet quickened, by the glance of God.\n\nSOUL.\n\n  Take me away, and in the lowest deep\n      There let me be,\n  And there in hope the lone night-watches keep,\n      Told out for me.\n  There, motionless and happy in my pain,\n      Lone, not forlorn,--\n  There will I sing my sad perpetual strain,\n      Until the morn.\n  There will I sing, and soothe my stricken breast,\n      Which ne'er can cease\n  To throb, and pine, and languish, till possessed\n      Of its sole peace.\n  There will I sing my absent Lord and love:--\n      Take me away,\n  That sooner I may rise, and go above,\n  And see him in the truth of everlasting day.\n\nSec. 7.\n\nANGEL.\n\n  Now let the golden prison ope its gates,\n  Making sweet music, as each fold revolves\n  Upon its ready hinge. And ye, great powers,\n  Angels of purgatory, receive from me\n  My charge, a precious soul, until the day,\n  When, from all bond and forfeiture released,\n  I shall reclaim it for the courts of light.\n\n{640}\n\nSOULS IN PURGATORY.\n\n1. Lord, thou hast been our refuge: in every generation;\n\n2. Before the hills were born, and the world was:\n   from age to age thou art God.\n\n3. Bring us not, Lord, very low: for thou hast said,\n   Come back again, ye sons of Adam.\n\n4. A thousand years before thine eyes are but as yesterday:\n   and as a watch of the night which is come and gone.\n\n5. Though the grass spring up in the morning;\n   yet in the evening it shall shrivel up and die.\n\n6. Thus we fail in thine anger; and in thy wrath we are troubled.\n\n7. Thou hast set our sins in thy sight:\n   and our round of days in the light of thy countenance.\n\n8. Come back, O Lord! how long? and be entreated for thy servants.\n\n9. In thy morning we shall be filled with thy mercy:\n   we shall rejoice and be in pleasure all our days.\n\n10. We shall be glad according to the days of our humiliation;\n    and the years in which we have seen evil.\n\n11. Look, O Lord, upon thy servants and on thy work;\n    and direct their children,\n\n12. And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us:\n    and the work of our hands direct thou it.\n   Glory be to the father and to the Son: and to the Holy Ghost.\n   As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be;\n   world without end. Amen.\n\nANGEL.\n\n  Softly and gently, dearest, sweetest soul\n    In my most loving arms I now enfold thee,\n  And, o'er the penal waters, as they roll,\n    I poise thee, and I lower thee, and hold thee.\n\n  And carefully I dip thee in the lake,\n    And thou, without a sob or a resistance,\n  Dost through the flood thy rapid passage take\n    Sinking deep, deeper, into the dim distance.\n\n  Angels, to whom the willing task is given,\n    Shall tend, and nurse, and lull thee, as thou liest;\n  And masses on the earth, and prayers in heaven,\n    Shall aid thee at the throne of the Most Highest.\n\n  Farewell, but not for ever! brother dear,\n    Be brave and patient on thy bed of sorrow;\n  Swiftly shall pass thy night of trial here,\n    And I will come and wake thee on the morrow.\n\n\n----\n\n{641}\n\nFrom The Edinburgh Review. (Abridged.)\n\nTHE CHURCH AND MOSQUE OF ST. SOPHIA.\n\n\n1. _Byzantine Architecture; illustrated by Examples of Edifices\nerected in the East during the earliest ages of Christianity_. With\nHistorical and Archaeological Descriptions. By C. TEXIER and E. P.\nPULLAN. Folio. London: 1864.\n\n2. _Epigraphik von Byzantium und Constantinopolis, von den aeltesten\nZeiten bis zum J._ 1453. Von Dr. S. A. DETHIER und Dr. A. D.\nMORDTMANN. 4to. Wien: 1864.\n\n3. _Acta Patriarchates Constantinopolitani_, 1305-1402, _e Codice MS.\nBibliothecae Palat. Vindobonensis; edentibus_ D. D. MIKLOVISCH et\nMULLER. 8vo. 2 vols. Viennse: 1860-2.\n\n4. _Die alt-christliche Baudenkmale Konstantinopels von V. bis XII.\nJahrhundert. Auf Befehl seiner Majestaet des Koenigs aufgenommen und\nhistorisch erlaeutert von_ W. SALZENBERG. _Im Anhange des Silentiarius\nPaulus Beschreibung der heiligen Sophia und der Ambon, metrisch\nuebersetzt und mit Anmerkungen versehen, von_ Dr. C. W. KORTUeM. Fol.\nBerlin: 1854.\n\n5. _Aya Sofia, Constantinople, as recently restored by Order of H. M.\nthe Sultan Abdul Medjid_. From the original Drawings of Chevalier\nGASPARD FOSSATI. Lithographed by Louis HAGHE, Esq. Imperial folio.\nLondon: 1854.\n\n\nThere is not one among the evidences of Moslem conquest more galling\nto Christian associations than the occupation of Justinian's ancient\nbasilica for the purposes of Mohammedan worship. The most commonplace\nsight-seer from the west feels a thrill when his eye falls for the\nfirst time upon the flaring cresent which surmounts \"Sophia's cupola\nwith golden gleam;\" and this emotion deepens into a feeling of awe at\nthe mysterious dispensations of Providence, when he has stood beneath\nthe unaltered and still stately dome, and\n\n     \"surveyed\n  The sanctuary, the while the usurping Moslem prayed.\"\n\nFor oriental Christians, this sense of bitterness is hardly second to\nthat with which they regard the Turkish occupation of Jerusalem\nitself. In the latter, however they may writhe under the political\nsupremacy of their unbelieving master, still, as the right of access\nto those monuments which form the peculiar object of Christian\nveneration is practically undisturbed, they are spared the double\nindignity of religious profanation super-added to social wrong. But\nthe mosque of St. Sophia is, in Christian eyes, a standing monument at\nonce of Moslem sacrilege and of Christian defeat, the sense of which\nis perpetuated and embittered by the preservation of its ancient, but\nnow desecrated name.\n\nTo an imaginative visitor of the modern mosque, it might seem as if\nthe structure itself were not unconscious of this wrong. The very\nposition of the building is a kind of silent protest against the\nunholy use to which its Turkish masters have perverted it. Like all\nancient Christian churches, it was built exactly in the line of east\nand west; and, as the great altar, which stood in the semicircular\napse, was directly at the eastern point of the building, the\nworshippers in the old St. Sophia necessarily faced directly eastward;\nand all the appliances of their worship were arranged with a view to\nthat position. Now, in the exigencies of Mohammedan ecclesiology,\nsince the worshipper must turn to the Kibla at Mecca (that is, in\nConstantinople, to the south-east), the _mihrab_, or sacred niche, in\nthe modern St. Sophia is {642} necessarily placed out of the centre of\nthe apse; and thus the _mimber_ (pulpit), the prayer carpets, and the\nlong ranks of worshippers themselves, present an appearance singularly\nat variance with every notion of architectural harmony, being arranged\nin lines, not parallel, but oblique, to the length of the edifice, and\nout of keeping with all the details of the original construction. It\nis as though the dead walls of this venerable pile had retained more\nof the spirit of their founder than the degenerate sons of the fallen\nRome of the east, and had refused to bend themselves at the will of\nthat hateful domination before which the living worshippers tamely\nyielded or impotently fled!\n\nThe mosque of St. Sophia had long been an object of curious interest\nto travellers in the east. Their interest, however, had seldom risen\nbeyond curiosity; and it was directed rather toward St. Sophia as it\nis, than to the Christian events and traditions with which it is\nconnected. For those, indeed, who know the grudging and capricious\nconditions under which alone a Christian visitor is admitted to a\nmosque, and the jealous scrutiny to which he is subjected during his\nvisit, it will be easy to understand how rare and how precarious have\nbeen the opportunities for a complete or exact study of this, the most\nimportant of all the monuments of Byzantine art; and, notwithstanding\nits exceeding interest for antiquarian and artistic purposes, far more\nof our knowledge of its details was derived from the contemporary\ndescription of Procopius  [Footnote 126] or Agathias,  [Footnote 127]\nfrom the verses of Paulus Silentiarius, [Footnote 128] from the casual\nallusions of other ancient authorities, and, above all, from the\ninvaluable work of Du Gauge, which is the great repertory of\neverything that has been written upon ancient or mediaeval Byzantium,\nthan from the observation even of the most favored modern visitors of\nConstantinople, until the publication of the works named at the head\nof these pages.\n\n  [Footnote 126: _De Edificiis_, lib. i. c. i.  ]\n\n  [Footnote 127: Pp. 152-3.]\n\n  [Footnote 128: A very good German version, with most valuable notes,\n  is appended to the text of Saltzenberg's _Baudenkmale._]\n\nFor the elaborate account of the present condition of the mosque of\nSt. Sophia which we now possess, we are indebted to the happy\nnecessity by which the Turkish officials, in undertaking the recent\nrestoration of the building, were led to engage the services of an\neminent European architect, Chevalier Fossati, in whose admirable\ndrawings, as lithographed in the \"Aya Sofia,\" every arch and pillar of\nthe structure is reproduced. The archaeological and historical\ndetails, which lay beyond the province of a volume mainly professional\nin its object, are supplied in the learned and careful work of M.\nSalzenberg, who during the progress of the restoration was sent to\nConstantinople at the cost of the late King of Prussia, for the\nexpress purpose of copying and describing exactly every object which\nmight serve to throw light on Byzantine history, religion, or art, or\non the history and condition of the ancient church of St. Sophia, the\nmost venerable monument of them all.\n\nNor is it possible to imagine, under all the circumstances of the\ncase, a combination of opportunities more favorable for the purpose.\nFrom long neglect and injudicious or insufficient reparation, the\nmosque had fallen into so ruinous a condition, that, in the year 1847,\nthe late sultan, Abdul Medjid, found it necessary to direct a\nsearching survey of the entire building, and eventually a thorough\nrepair. In the progress of the work, while engaged near the entrance\nof the northern transept, M. Fossati discovered, beneath a thin coat\nof plaster (evidently laid on to conceal the design from the eyes of\ntrue believers) a beautiful mosaic picture, almost uninjured, and\nretaining all its original brilliancy of color. A further examination\nshowed that these mosaics extended throughout the building; and, with\na liberality which every lover of art must gratefully applaud, the\nsultan at once acceded to the suggestion of M. Fossati, {643} and\nordered that the plaster should be removed throughout the interior;\nthus exposing once more to view the original decorations of the\nancient basilica. It was while the mosque was still crowded with the\nscaffolding erected to carry on this most interesting work, that M.\nSalzenberg arrived in Constantinople. He thankfully acknowledges the\nfacilities afforded to him, as well by the Turkish officials as by the\nChevalier Fossati; and, although the specimens of the purely pictorial\ndecorations of the ancient church which he has published are not as\nnumerous as the reader may possibly expect, yet they are extremely\ncharacteristic, and full of religious as well as of historical and\nantiquarian interest.\n\nNotwithstanding the beauty and attractiveness of M. Louis Haghe's\nmagnificent lithographs of Chevalier Fossati's drawings published in\nthe \"Aya Sofia,\" the subject has received in England far less\nattention than it deserves. There is not an incident in Byzantine\nhistory with which the church of St. Sophia is not associated. There\nis not a characteristic of Byzantine art of which it does not contain\nabundant examples. It recalls in numberless details, preserved in\nmonuments in which time has wrought little change and which the\njealousy or contempt of the conquerors has failed to destroy or even\nto travesty, interesting illustrations of the doctrine, the worship,\nand the disciplinary usages of the ancient Eastern Church, which are\nwith difficulty traced, at present, in the living system of her\ndegenerate representative. To all these researches the wider\ncultivation of art and of history, which our age has accepted as its\ncalling, ought to lend a deeper significance and a more solemn\ninterest. St. Sophia ought no longer to be a mere lounge for the\nsightseer or a spectacle for the lover of the picturesque.\n\nThe history of this venerable church may be said to reach back as far\nas the first selection of Byzantium by Constantine as the new capital\nof his empire. Originally, the pretensions of Byzantium to\necclesiastical rank were sufficiently humble, its bishop being but a\nsuffragan of the metropolitan of Heraclea. But, from the date of the\ntranslation of the seat of empire, Constantine's new capital began to\nrise in dignity. The personal importance which accrued to the bishop\nfrom his position at the court of the emperor, was soon reflected upon\nhis see. The first steps of its upward progress are unrecorded; but\nwithin little more than half a century from the foundation of the\nimperial city, the celebrated fifth canon of the council which was\nheld therein in 381 not only distinctly assigned to the Bishop of\nConstantinople \"the primacy of honor, next after the Bishop of Rome,\"\nbut, by alleging as the ground of this precedence the principle \"that\nConstantinople is the new Rome,\" laid the foundation of that rivalry\nwith the older Rome which had its final issue in the complete\nseparation of the Eastern from the Western Church.\n\nThe dignity of the see was represented in the beauty and magnificence\nof its churches, and especially of its cathedral. One of the\nconsiderations by which Constantine was influenced in the selection of\nByzantium for his new capital, lay in the advantages for architectural\npurposes which the position commanded. The rich and various marbles of\nProconnesus; the unlimited supply of timber from the forests of the\nEuxine; the artistic genius and the manual dexterity of the architects\nand artisans of Greece--all lay within easy reach of Byzantium; and,\nfreely as Constantine availed himself of these resources for the\nembellishment of the new city in its palaces, its offices of state,\nand its other public buildings, the magnificence which he exhibited in\nhis churches outstripped all his other undertakings. Of these churches\nby far the most magnificent was that which forms the subject of the\npresent notice. Its title is often a subject of misapprehension to\nthose who, being accustomed to regard {644} \"Sophia\" merely as a\nfeminine name, are led to suppose that the church of Constantine was\ndedicated to a saint so called. The calendar, as well of the Greek as\nof the Latin Church, does, it is true, commemorate more than one saint\nnamed Sophia. Thus one Sophia is recorded as having suffered martyrdom\nunder Adrian, in company with her three daughters, Faith, Hope, and\nCharity. Another is said to have been martyred in one of the latter\npersecutions together with St. Irene; and a third is still specially\nvenerated as a martyr at Fermo (the ancient Firmum). But it was not\nany of these that supplied the title of Constantine's basilica. That\nchurch was dedicated to the [Greek text]--the HOLY WISDOM; that is,\nto the Divine Logos, or Word of God, under the title of the \"Holy\nWisdom,\" borrowed by adaptation from the well-known prophetic allusion\ncontained in the eighth chapter of Proverbs, and familiar in the\ntheological language of the fourth century.\n\nThe original church, however, which Constantine erected in 325-6 was\nbut the germ out of which the latter St. Sophia grew. The early\nhistory of St. Sophia is marked by many vicissitudes, and comprises,\nin truth, the history of four distinct churches, that of Constantine,\nthat of Constantius, that of Theodosius, and finally that of\nJustinian.\n\nThirty-four years after the foundation of St. Sophia by the first\nChristian emperor, his son, Constantius, either because of its\ninsufficient size, or owing to some injury which it had sustained in\nan earthquake, rebuilt it, and united with it the adjoining church of\nthe _Irene_, or \"peace\" (also built by his father), forming both into\none grand edifice. And, although the church of Constantius was not\nmuch longer lived than that of his father, it is memorable as the\ntheatre for several years of the eloquence of St. John Chrysostom,\nwhile its destruction was a monument at once of the triumph and of the\nfall of that great father. It was within the walls of this church that\nhis more than human eloquence was wont to draw, even from the light\nand frivolous audiences of that pleasure-loving city, plaudits, the\nnotice of which in his own pages reads so strange to modern eyes. It\nwas here that he provoked the petty malice of the imperial directress\nof fashion, by his inimitable denunciation of the indelicacy of female\ndress. Here, too, was enacted that memorable scene, which, for deep\ndramatic interest, has seldom been surpassed in history--the fallen\nminister Eutropius clinging to the altar of St. Sophia for protection\nagainst the popular fury, while Chrysostom, in a glorious exordium on\nthe instability of human greatness,  [Footnote 129] disarms the rage\nof the populace by exciting their commiseration for their fallen\nenemy. Nor can we wonder that those who had hung entranced upon that\neloquent voice should, when it was silenced by his cruel and arbitrary\nbanishment, have recognized a Nemesis in the destruction of the church\nwhich had so often echoed with the golden melody of its tones. St.\nSophia, by a divine judgment, as the people believed, was destroyed\nfor the second time in 404, in the tumult which followed the\nbanishment of St. John Chrysostom.\n\n  [Footnote 129: _Horn, in Eutropium Patricium._ Opp. tom iii., p. 399\n  _et seq._ (Migne ed.) ]\n\nThe third St. Sophia was built in 415 by Theodosius the Younger. The\nchurch of Theodosius lasted longer than either of those which went\nbefore it. It endured through the long series of controversies on the\nIncarnation. It witnessed their first beginning, and it almost\nsurvived their close. It was beneath the golden roof of the Theodosian\nbasilica that Nestorius scandalized the orthodoxy of his flock, and\ngave the first impulse to the controversy which bears his name, by\napplauding the vehement declaration of the preacher who denied to the\nVirgin Mary the title of mother of God. And it was from its ambo or\n{645} pulpit that the Emperor Zeno promulgated his celebrated\nHenoticon--the \"decree of union\" by which he vainly hoped to heal the\ndisastrous division. The St. Sophia of Theodosius was the scene of the\nfirst act in the long struggle between Constantinople and Rome, the\ngreat Acacian schism; when, at the hazard of his life, an impetuous\nmonk, one of the fiery \"Sleepless Brotherhood,\" pinned the papal\nexcommunication on the cope of Acacius as he was advancing to the\naltar. And it witnessed the close of that protracted contest, in the\ncomplete and unreserved submission to Rome which was exacted by the\nformulary of Pope Hormisdas as the condition of reconciliation. The\nstructure of Theodosius stood a hundred and fourteen years--from 415\nto 529, but perished at length in the fifth year of Justinian, in a\ndisaster which, for a time, made Constantinople all but a desert--the\nmemorable battle of the blue and green factions of the hippodrome,\nknown in history as the _Nika_ sedition.\n\nThe restoration of St. Sophia, which had been destroyed in the\nconflagration caused by the violence of the rioters, became, in the\nview of Justinian, a duty of Christian atonement no less than of\nimperial munificence. There is no evidence that the burning of the\nchurch arose from any special act of impiety directed against it in\nparticular; but it is certain that the ancient feuds of the religious\nparties in the east entered vitally as an element of discord into this\nfatal sedition; and even the soldiers who had been engaged on the side\nof the civil power in the repression of the tumult, and who were\nchiefly legionaries enlisted from among the Heruli, the most savage of\nthe barbarian tribes of the empire, had contributed largely to the\nsacrilegious enormities by which, even more than by the destruction of\nhuman life, the religious feelings of the city had been outraged.\n\nThe entire history of the reconstruction exhibits most curiously the\noperation of the same impulse. It was undertaken with a\nlarge-handedness, and urged on with an energy, which bespeak for other\nthan merely human motives. Scarce had Constantinople begun to recover\nafter the sedition from the stupor of its alarm, and the affrighted\ncitizens to steal back from the Asiatic shore to which they had fled\nin terror with their families and their most valuable effects, when\nJustinian commissioned Anthemius of Tralles to prepare the plans of\nthe new basilica, on a scale of magnificence till then unknown. On the\n23d of February, 532, within forty days from the catastrophe, the\nfirst stone of the new edifice was solemnly laid. Orders, to borrow\nthe words of the chronicler,  [Footnote 130] \"were issued\nsimultaneously to all the dukes, satraps, judges, quaestors, and\nprefects\" throughout the empire, to send in from their several\ngovernments pillars, peristyles, bronzes, gates, marbles, and all\nother materials suitable for the projected undertaking. How\nefficiently the order was carried out may yet be read in the motley,\nthough magnificent array of pillars and marbles which form the most\nstriking characteristic of St. Sophia, and which are for the most\npart, as we shall see, the spoil of the older glories of Roman and\nGrecian architecture. We shall only mention here eight porphyry\ncolumns from the Temple of the Sun at Baalbec, which Aurelian had sent\nto Rome, and which, having come into the possession of a noble Roman\nwidow, named Marcia, as her dowry, were presented by that pious lady\nto Justinian, as an offering [Greek text], \"for the Salvation of her\nsoul.\"   [Footnote 131]\n\n  [Footnote 130: _Anonymi de Antiquit. Constantinop._ (in Banduri's\n  _Imperium Orientale_), p. 55.]\n\n  [Footnote 131: _Anonymi_, p. 55.]\n\nIndeed, some of the incidents of the undertaking are so curious in\nthemselves, and illustrate so curiously the manners and feelings of\nthe age, that we are induced to select a few of them from among a mass\nof more or less legendary details, supplied by the anonymous {646}\nchronicler already referred to, whose work Banduri has printed in his\n_Imperium Orientals_  [Footnote 132] and who, if less trustworthy than\nProcopius or the Silentiary, has preserved a much greater amount of\nthe traditionary gossip connected with the building.\n\n  [Footnote 132: Under the title _Anonymi de Antiquitatibus\n  Constantinopoleos_. The third part is devoted entirely to a \"History\n  and Description of the Church of St. Sophia.\"]\n\nFor the vastly enlarged scale of Justinian's structure, it became\nnecessary to make extensive purchases in the immediate circuit of the\nancient church; and, as commonly happens, the demands of the\nproprietors rose in proportion to the necessity in which the imperial\npurchaser was placed. It is interesting to contrast the different\nspirit in which each sought to use the legal rights of a proprietor.\n\nThe first was a widow, named Anna, whose tenement was valued by the\nimperial commissaries at eighty-five pounds of gold. This offer on the\npart of the commissary the widow unhesitatingly refused, and declared\nthat she would consider her house cheap at fifty hundred-weight of\ngold; but when Justinian, in his anxiety to secure the site, did not\nhesitate to wait upon the widow herself in person, she was so struck\nby his condescension, and so fired by the contagion of his pious\nenthusiasm, that she not only surrendered the required ground, but\nrefused all payment for it in money: only praying that she might be\nburied near the spot, in order that, from the site of her former\ndwelling itself, she \"might claim the purchase-money on the day of\njudgment.\" She was buried, accordingly, near the _Skeuophylacium_, or\ntreasury of the sacred vessels.  [Footnote 133]\n\n  [Footnote 133: _Anonymi_, p. 58.]\n\nVery different, but yet hardly less characteristic of the time, was\nthe conduct of one Antiochus, a eunuch, and _ostiarius_ of the palace.\nHis house stood on the spot now directly under the great dome, and was\nvalued by the imperial surveyor at thirty-five pounds of gold. But\nAntiochus exacted a far larger sum, and obstinately refused to abate\nhis demand. Justinian, in his eagerness, was disposed to yield; but\nStrategus, the prefect of the treasury, begged the emperor to leave\nthe matter in his hands, and proceeded to arrest the obdurate\nproprietor and throw him into prison. It chanced that Antiochus was a\npassionate lover of the sports of the hippodrome, and Strategus so\ntimed the period of his imprisonment that it would include an\nunusually attractive exhibition in the hippodrome--what in the\nlanguage of the modern turf would be called \"the best meeting of the\nseason.\" At first Antiochus kept up a determined front; but, as the\ntime of the games approached, the temptation proved too strong; his\nresolution began to waver; and, at length, when the morning arrived,\nhe \"bawled out lustily\" from the prison, and promised that, if he were\nreleased in time to enjoy his favorite spectacle, he would yield up\npossession on the emperor's own terms. By this time the races had\nbegun, and the emperor had already taken his seat; but Strategus did\nnot hesitate to have the sport suspended, led Antiochus at once to the\nemperor's tribunal, and, in the midst of the assembled spectators,\ncompleted the negotiation.  [Footnote 134]\n\n  [Footnote 134: _Anonymi_ p. 59.]\n\nA third was a cobbler, called by the classic name of Xenophon. His\nsole earthly possession was the stall in which he exercised his trade,\nabutting on the wall of one of the houses doomed to demolition in the\nclearance of the new site. A liberal price was offered for the stall;\nbut the cobbler, although he did not refuse to surrender it,\nwhimsically exacted, as a condition precedent, that the several\nfactions of the charioteers should salute him, in the same way as they\nsaluted the emperor, while passing his seat in the hippodrome.\nJustinian agreed; but took what must be considered an ungenerous\nadvantage of the simple man of leather. The letter of Xenophon's.\ncondition was fulfilled. He was placed {647} in the front of the\ncentre tribune, gorgeously arrayed in a scarlet and white robe. The\nfactions, as they passed his seat in procession, duly rendered the\nprescribed salute; but the poor cobbler was balked of his anticipated\ntriumph, being compelled, amid the derisive cheers and laughter of the\nmultitude, _to receive the solute with his back turned to the\nassembly!_  [Footnote 135]\n\n  [Footnote 135: _Anonymi_, p. 59. ]\n\nBut it is around the imperial builder himself that the incidents of\nthe history of the work, and still more its legendary marvels, group\nthemselves in the pages of the anonymous chronicler. For although the\nchief architect, Anthemius, was assisted by Agathias, by Isidorus of\nMiletus, and by a countless staff of minor subordinates, Justinian,\nfrom the first to the last, may be truly said to have been the very\nlife and soul of the undertaking, and the director even of its\nsmallest details. From the moment when, at the close of the\ninauguratory prayer, he threw the first shovelful of mortar into the\nfoundation, till its solemn opening for worship on Christmas-day, 538,\nhis enthusiasm never abated, nor did his energy relax. Under the glare\nof the noon-day sun, while others were indulging in the customary\nsiesta, Justinian was to be seen, clad in a coarse linen tunic, staff\nin hand, and his head bound with a cloth, directing, encouraging, and\nurging on the workmen, stimulating the industrious by liberal\ndonations, visiting the loiterers with his displeasure. Some of his\nexpedients, as detailed by the chronicler, are extremely curious. We\nshall mention only one. In order to expedite the work, it was\ndesirable to induce the men to work after-hours. The natural way of\neffecting this would have been to offer them a proportionate increase\nof pay; but Justinian chose rather to obtain the same result\nindirectly. Accordingly, he was accustomed--if our authority can be\nrelied on--to scatter a quantity of coins about the building; and the\nworkmen, afraid to search for them in the open day, were led to\ncontinue their work till the shades of evening began to fall, in order\nthat they might more securely carry off the spoil under cover of the\ndarkness!\n\nSome of the building operations which this writer describes are\nequally singular. The mortar, to secure greater tenacity, was made\nwith barley-water; the foundations were filled up with huge\nrectangular masses, fifty feet long, of a concrete of lime and sand,\nmoistened with barley-water and other glutinous fluid, and bound\ntogether by wicker framework. The tiles or bricks of which the cupola\nwas formed were made of Rhodian clay, so light that twelve of them did\nnot exceed the weight of one ordinary tile. The pillars and buttresses\nwere built of cubical and triangular blocks of stone, with a cement\nmade of lime and oil, soldered with lead, and bound, within and\nwithout, with clamps of iron.\n\nIt is plain, however, that these particulars, however curious they may\nseem, are not to be accepted implicitly, at least if they are judged\nby the palpable incredibility of some of the other statements of the\nwriter. The supernatural appears largely as an element in his history.\nOn three several occasions, according to this chronicler, the emperor\nwas favored with angelic apparitions, in which were imparted to him\nsuccessive instructions, first as to the plan of the building, again\nas to urging on its progress, and finally as to finding funds for its\ncompletion. One of these narratives is extremely curious, as showing\nthe intermixture of earth and heaven in the legendary notions of the\ntime. A boy, during the absence of the masons, had been left in charge\nof their tools, when, as the boy believed, one of the eunuchs of the\npalace, in a resplendent white dress, came to him, ordered him at once\nto call back the masons, that the work of heaven might not be longer\nretarded. {648} On the boy's refusing to quit the post of which he had\nbeen left in charge, the supposed eunuch volunteered to take his\nplace, and swore \"by the wisdom of God\" that he would not depart from\nthe place till the boy should return. Justinian ordered all the\neunuchs of the palace to be paraded before the boy; and on the boy's\ndeclaring that the visitor who had appeared to him was not any of the\nnumber, at once concluded that the apparition was supernatural; but,\nwhile he accepted the exhortation to greater zeal and energy in\nforwarding the work, he took a characteristic advantage of the oath by\nwhich the angel had sworn not to leave the church till the return of\nhis youthful messenger. Without permitting the boy to go back to the\nbuilding where the angel had appeared to him, Justinian _sent him away\nto the Cyclades for the rest of his life,_ in order that the perpetual\npresence and protection of the angel might thus be secured for the\nchurch, which that divine messenger was pledged never to leave till\nthe boy should return to relieve him at his post!   [Footnote 136]\n\n  [Footnote 136: _Anonymi_, p. 61.]\n\nWithout dwelling further, however, on the legendary details, we shall\nfind marvels enough in the results, such as they appear in the real\nhistory of the building. And perhaps the greatest marvel of all is the\nshortness of the period in which so vast a work was completed, the new\nchurch being actually opened for worship within less than seven years\nfrom the day of the conflagration. Ten thousand workmen were employed\non the edifice, if it be true that a hundred master-builders, each of\nwhom had a hundred men under him, were engaged to accelerate and\ncomplete the undertaking. For the philosophical student of history,\nthere is a deep subject of study in the bare enumeration of the\nmaterials brought together for this great Christian enterprise, and of\nthe various quarters from which they were collected. It is not alone\nthe rich assortment of precious marbles--the spotless white of Paros;\nthe green of Croceae; the blue of Libya; together with parti-colored\nmarbles in a variety hardly ever equalled before--the costly\ncipolline, the rose-veined white marble of Phrygia, the curiously\nstreaked black marble of Gaul, and the countless varieties of Egyptian\nporphyry and granite. Far more curious is it to consider how the\nmaterials of the structure were selected so as to present in\nthemselves a series of trophies of the triumphs of Christianity over\nall the proudest forms of worship in the old world of paganism. In the\nforest of pillars which surround the dome and sustain the graceful\narches of the gynaeconitis, the visitor may still trace the spoils of\nthe Temple of the Sun at Baalbec, of the famous Temple of Diana at\nEphesus, or that of the Delian Apollo, of Minerva at Athens, of Cybele\nat Cyzicus, and of a host of less distinguished shrines of paganism.\nWhen the mere cost of the transport of these massive monuments to\nConstantinople is taken into account, all wonder ceases at the\nvastness of the sums which are said to have been expended in the work.\nIt is easy to understand how, \"before the walls had risen two cubits\nfrom the ground, forty-five thousand two hundred pounds were\nconsumed.\"   [Footnote 137] It is not difficult to account for the\nenormous general taxation, the oppressive exactions from individuals,\nthe percentages on prefects' incomes, and the deductions from the\nsalaries of judges and professors, which went to swell the almost\nfabulous aggregate of the expenditure; and there is perhaps an\neconomical lesson in the legend of the apparition of the angel, who,\nwhen the building had risen as far as the cupola, conducted the master\nof the imperial treasury to a subterranean vault in which eighty\nhundred weight of gold were discovered ready for the completion of the\nwork!   [Footnote 138]\n\n  [Footnote 137: Gibbon's \"Decline and Fall,\" vol. iii. p. 633.]\n\n  [Footnote 138: _Anonymi_, p. 62.]\n\nEven independently of the building itself and its artistic\ndecorations, the value of the sacred furniture and appliances exceeded\nall that had ever before been devised. The sedilia of the {649}\npriests and the throne of the patriarch were of silver gilt. The dome\nof the tabernacle was of pure gold, ornamented with golden lilies, and\nsurmounted by a gold cross seventy-five pounds weight and encrusted\nwith precious stones. All the sacred vessels--chalices, beakers,\newers, dishes, and patens, were of gold. The candelabra which stood on\nthe altar, on the ambo, and on the upper gynaeconitis; the two\ncolossal candelabra placed at either side of the altar; the dome of\nthe ambo; the several crosses within the bema; the pillars of the\niconastasis; the covers of the sacred books--all were likewise of\ngold, and many of them loaded with pearls, diamonds, and carbuncles.\nThe sacred linens of the altar and the communion cloths were\nembroidered with gold and pearls. But when it came to the construction\nof the altar itself, no single one of these costly materials was\nconsidered sufficiently precious. Pious ingenuity was tasked to its\nutmost to devise a new and richer substance, and the table of the\ngreat altar was formed of a combination of all varieties of precious\nmaterials. Into the still fluid mass of molten gold were thrown pearls\nand other gems, rubies, crystals, topazes, sapphires, onyxes, and\namethysts, blended in such proportions as might seem best suited to\nenhance to the highest imaginable limit the costliness of what was\nprepared as the throne of the Most High on earth! And to this\ncombination of all that is most precious in nature, art added all the\nwealth at its disposal, by the richness of the chasing and the\nelaborateness and beauty of the design.\n\nThe total cost of the structure has been variously estimated. It\namounted, according to the ancient authorities, to \"three hundred and\ntwenty thousand pounds;\" but whether these were of silver or of gold\nis not expressly stated. Gibbon  [Footnote 139] leaves it to each\nreader, \"according to the measure of his belief,\" to estimate it in\none or the other metal; but Mr. Neale  [Footnote 140] is not deterred\nby the sneer of Gibbon from expressing his \"belief that gold must be\nintended.\" According to this supposition the expenditure, if this can\nbe believed possible, would have reached the enormous sum of thirteen\nmillions sterling!\n\n  [Footnote 139: \"Decline and Fall,\" vol. iii., p. 523.]\n\n  [Footnote 140: \"Eastern Church,\" vol. i., p. 237.  ]\n\nIt was, no doubt, with profound self-gratulation that, at the end of\nalmost six years of anxious toil, Justinian received the intelligence\nof the completion of this great labor of love. At his special\nentreaty, the last details had been urged forward with headlong haste,\nin order that all might be ready for the great festival of Christmas\nin the year 538; and his architect had not disappointed his hopes.\nThere is some uncertainty as to the precise date of the dedication;\nand indeed it is probable that the festival may have extended over\nseveral days, and thus have been assigned to different dates by\ndifferent writers. But when it came (probably on Christmas eve,\nDecember 24, 538) it was a day of triumph for Justinian. A thousand\noxen, a thousand sheep, a thousand swine, six hundred deer, ten\nthousand poultry, and thirty thousand measures of corn, were\ndistributed to the poor. Largesses to a fabulous amount were divided\namong the people. The emperor, attended by the patriarch and all the\ngreat officers of state, went in procession from his palace to the\nentrance of the church. But, from that spot, as though he would claim\nto be alone in the final act of offering, Justinian ran, unattended,\nto the foot of the ambo, and with arms outstretched and lifted up in\nthe attitude of prayer, exclaimed in words which the event has made\nmemorable: \"Glory to God, who hath accounted me worthy of such a work!\nI have conquered thee, O Solomon!\"\n\nJustinian's works in St. Sophia, however, were not destined to cease\nwith this first completion of the building. Notwithstanding the care\nbestowed on {650} the dome, the selection of the lightest materials\nfor it, and the science employed in its construction, an earthquake\nwhich occurred in the year 558 overthrew the semi-dome at the east end\nof the church. Its fall was followed by that of the eastern half of\nthe great dome itself; and in the ruin perished the altar, the\ntabernacle, and the whole bema, with its costly furniture and\nappurtenances. This catastrophe, however, only supplied a new\nincentive to the zeal of Justinian. Anthemius and his fellow-laborers\nwere now dead, but the task of repairing the injury was entrusted to\nIsidorus the Younger, nephew of the Isidorus who had been associated\nwith Anthemius in the original construction of the church. It was\ncompleted, and the church rededicated, at the Christmas of the year\n561; nor can it be doubted that the change which Isidorus now\nintroduced in the proportions of the dome, by adding twenty-five feet\nto its height, contributed materially as well to the elegance of the\ndome itself as to the general beauty of the church and the harmony of\nits several parts.\n\nThe church of Justinian thus completed may be regarded as\nsubstantially the same building which is now the chief temple of\nIslam. The few modifications which it has undergone will be mentioned\nin the proper place; but it may be convenient to describe the\nbuilding, such as it came from the hands of its first founder, before\nwe proceed to its later history.\n\nSt. Sophia, in its primitive form, may be taken as the type of\nByzantine ecclesiology in almost all its details. Although its walls\nenclose what may be roughly  [Footnote 141] called a square of 241\nfeet, the internal plan is not inaptly described as a Greek cross, of\nwhich the nave and transepts constitute the arm, while the aisles,\nwhich are surmounted by the gynaeconitis, or women's gallery, may be\nsaid to complete it into a square, within which the cross is\ninscribed. The head of the cross is prolonged at the eastern extremity\ninto a slightly projecting apse. The aisle is approached at its\nwestern end through a double narthex or porch, extending over the\nentire breadth of the building, and about 100 feet in depth; so that\nthe whole length of the structure, from the eastern wall of the apse\nto the wall of the outer porch, is about 340 feet. In the centre, from\nfour massive piers, rises the great dome, beneath which, to the east\nand to the west, spring two great semi-domes, the eastern supported by\nthree, the western by two, semi-domes of smaller dimensions. The\ncentral of the three lesser semi-domes, to the east, constitutes the\nroof of the apse to which allusion has already been made. The piers of\nthe dome (differing in this respect from those of St. Peter's at Rome)\npresent from within a singularly light and elegant appearance; they\nare nevertheless constructed with great strength and solidity,\nsupported by four massive buttresses, which, in the exterior, rise as\nhigh as the base of the dome, and are capacious enough to contain the\nexterior staircases of the gynaeconitis. The lightness of the\ndome-piers is in great part due to the lightness of the materials of\nthe dome itself already described. The diameter of the dome at its\nbase is 100 feet, its height at the central point above the floor is\n179 feet, the original height, before the reconstruction in 561,\nhaving been twenty-five feet less.  [Footnote 142] The effect of this\ncombination of domes, semi-domes, and plane arches, on entering the\nnave, is singularly striking. It constitutes, in the opinion of the\nauthors of \"Byzantine Architecture,\" what may regarded as the\ncharacteristic beauty be of St. Sophia; and the effect is heightened\nin the modern mosque by the nakedness of the lower part of the {651}\nbuilding, and by the absence of those appurtenances of a Christian\nchurch,--as the altar, the screen, and the ambo,--which, by arresting\nthe eye in more minute observation, withdrew it in the Christian times\nfrom the general proportions of the structure. This effect of\nlightness is also increased by numerous window's, which encircle the\ntympanum. They are twenty-four in number, small, low, and\ncircular-headed; and in the spaces between them spring the twenty-four\ngroined ribs of the dome, which meet in the centre and divide the\nvault into twenty-four equal segments. The interior was richly\ndecorated with mosaic work. At the four angles beneath the dome were\nfour colossal figures of winged seraphim; and from the summit of the\ndome looked down that majestic face of Christ the Sovereign Judge,\nwhich still remains the leading type of our Lord's countenance in the\nschool of Byzantine art, and even in the Latin reproductions of it\nfills the mind with a feeling of reverence and awe, hardly to be\nequalled by any other production of Christian art. The exterior of the\ndome is covered with lead, and it was originally surmounted by a\nstately cross, which in the modern mosque is replaced by a gigantic\ncrescent fifty yards in diameter; on the gilding of this ornament\nMurad III. expended 50,000 ducats, and the glitter of it in the\nsunshine is said to be visible from the summit of Mount Olympus--a\ndistance of a hundred miles. To an eye accustomed to the convexity of\nthe cupola of western churches, the interior height of the dome of\nSophia is perhaps somewhat disappointing, especially considering the\nname \"aerial,\" by which it is called by the ancient authorities. This\nname, however, was given to it, not so much to convey the idea of\nlightness or \"airiness\" in the structure, as because its proportions,\nas designed by the architect, were intended to represent or reproduce\nthe supposed convexity of the \"aerial vault\" itself.\n\n  [Footnote 141: This is not exactly true. The precise dimensions of\n  the building (excluding the apse and narthex) are 241 feet by 226\n  feet.]\n\n   [Footnote 142: Later Greek authorities, for the purpose of exalting\n   the glories of the older church, allege that the second dome is\n   fifteen feet lower than the first; and even Von Hammer\n   (_Constantinople und der Bosporus_, vol. i., p. 346) adopts this\n   view. But Zonaras and the older writers agree that the height was\n   increased by twenty-five feet. See Neale's \"Eastern Church,\" vol.\n   i., p. 239.]\n\nWith Justinian's St. Sophia begins what may be called the second or\nclassic period of Byzantine archaeology. It is proper, therefore, that\nwe should describe, although of necessity very briefly, its general\noutline and arrangements.\n\nWith very few exceptions, the Greek churches of the earlier period\n(including the older church of St. Sophia, whether as originally built\nby Constantine and restored by his son, or as rebuilt by Theodosius)\nwere of that oblong form which the Greeks called \"dromic\" and which is\nknown in the west as the type of the basilica. The present St. Sophia,\non the contrary, may be regarded as practically the type of the\ncruciform structure. This cruciform appearance, however, is, as has\nbeen already explained, confined to the internal arrangement, the\nexterior presenting the appearance of a square, or if the porch be\nregarded as part of the church, of an oblong rectangle.\n\nTo begin with the narthex or porch:--That of St. Sophia is double,\nconsisting of an outer (exonarthcx) as well as an inner (esonarthex)\nporch. Most Byzantine churches have but a single narthex--often a\nlean-to against the western wall; and in some few churches the narthex\nis altogether wanting. But in St. Sophia it is a substantive part of\nthe edifice; and, the roof of the inner compartment being arched, it\nforms the substructure of the western gynaeconitis, or women's choir,\nwhich is also carried upon a series of unrivalled arches supported by\npillars, most of which are historical, around the northern and\nsouthern sides of the nave. The outer porch is comparatively plain,\nand communicates with the inner one by five marble doorways (of which\none is now walled up), the doors being of bronze, wrought in floriated\ncrosses, still distinguishable, although much mutilated by the Turkish\noccupants. The inner porch is much more rich, the floor of watered\nmarble, and the walls lined with marbles of various colors and with\nrichly carved alabaster. It opens on {652} the church by nine gates of\nhighly-wrought bronze; over the central portal is a well-preserved\ngroup in mosaic, bearing the inscription: [Greek text]--and\nrepresenting our Lord, with the Virgin and St. John the Baptist on\neither hand, in the act of giving with uplifted right hand his\nbenediction to an emperor (no doubt Justinian) prostrate at his feet.\nThis group is represented in one of M. Salzenberg's plates; and it is\nspecially interesting for the commentary, explanatory of the attitude\nof our Lord, given in the poem of Paul the Silentiary, according to\nwhom the position of our Lord's fingers represents, in the language of\nsigns then received, the initial and final letters of the sacred name,\n[Greek text]:\n\n[Greek text]\n\nThe outstretched forefinger meant I; the bent second finger, C or\n[sigma]; the third finger applied to the thumb, X; and the little\nfinger, [sigma]. It may also be noted that Justinian in this curious\ngroup is represented with the nimbus. During the progress of the\nrestoration of the building in 1847, this mosaic was uncovered, and\nexactly copied; but like all the other mosaics which contain\nrepresentations of the human form, it has been covered with canvas,\nand again carefully coated with plaster. It was on the _phiale_ or\nfountain of the outer court of this narthex that the famous\npalindromic inscription was placed:\n\n  [Greek text]\n  \"Wash thy sins, not thy countenance only.\"\n\nThe interior of St. Sophia, exclusive of the women's choir, consisted\nof three great divisions--the nave, which was the place of the laity;\nthe _soleas_, or choir, which was assigned to the assisting clergy of\nthe various grades; and the _bema_, or sanctuary, the semi-circular\napse at the eastern end in which the sacred mysteries were celebrated,\nshut off from the soleas by the _inconastasis_ or screen, and flanked\nby two smaller, but similar, semicircular recesses; the _diaconicon_,\ncorresponding with the modern vestry; and the _prothesis_, in which\nthe bread and wine were prepared for the eucharistic offering, whence\nthey were carried, in the procession called the \"Great Entrance,\" to\nthe high altar within the bema.\n\nThe position of these several parts is still generally traceable in\nthe modern mosque, although, the divisions having been all swept away,\nthere is some controversy as to details.\n\nThe nave, of course, occupies the western end, and is entered directly\nfrom the porch. It was separated from the soleas, or choir, at the\n_ambo_--the pulpit, or more properly gallery, which was used not only\nfor preaching, but also for the reading or chanting of the lessons and\nthe gospel, for ecclesiastical announcements or proclamations, and in\nSt. Sophia for the coronation of the emperor. The ambo of St. Sophia\nwas a very massive and stately structure of rich and costly material\nand of most elaborate workmanship; it was crowned by a canopy or\nbaldachin, surmounted by a solid golden cross a hundred pounds in\nweight. All trace of the ambo has long disappeared from the mosque;\nbut from the number of clergy, priests, deacons, subdeacons, lectors,\nand singers (numbering, even on the reduced scale prescribed by\nJustinian, 385) which the soleas was designed to accommodate, as well\nas from other indications, it is believed that the ambo, which was at\nthe extreme end of the soleas, must have stood under the dome, a\nlittle to the east of the centre. The seat of the emperor was on the\nleft side of the soleas, immediately below the seats of the priests,\nclose to the ambo, and opposite to the throne of the patriarch. The\nseats assigned in the present patriarchal church to the princes of\nWallachia and Moldavia correspond in position to those formerly\noccupied by the throne of the emperor and are directly opposite that\nof the patriarch. Beside its sacred uses, the ambo of St. Sophia was\n{653} the scene of many a striking incident in Byzantine history. The\nreader of Gibbon will recall the graphic picture of Heracleonas\ncompelled by the turbulent multitude to appear in the ambo of St.\nSophia with his infant nephew in his arms for the purpose of receiving\ntheir homage to the child as emperor; [Footnote 143] or his still more\nvivid description of the five sons of Copronimus, of whom the eldest,\nNicephorus, had been made blind, and the other four had their tongues\ncut out, escaping from their dungeon and taking sanctuary in St.\nSophia. There are few more touching stories in all the bloody annals\nof Byzantium than that which presents the blind Nicephorus employing\nthat faculty of speech which had been spared in him alone, by\nappealing from the ambo on behalf of his mute brothers to the pity and\nprotection of the people!  [Footnote 144]\n\n  [Footnote 143: \"Decline and Fall,\" vol. iv.. p. 403. ]\n\n  [Footnote 144: _Ibid_., vol. iv., p. 413. ]\n\nBut it was upon the bema of St. Sophia, as we have already seen, that\nthe wealth and pious munificence of Justinian were most lavishly\nexpended. It was shut off from the soleas by the inconastasis, which\nin Byzantine art is a screen resembling, in all except its position,\nthe rood-screen of western architecture, and derived its name from the\nsacred pictures ([Greek text]) represented upon it. In that of St.\nSophia the material was silver, the lower part being highly wrought\nwith arabesque devices, and the upper composed of twelve pillars,\ntwined two and two, and separated by panels on which were depicted in\noval medallions the figures of our Lord, his Virgin Mother, and the\nprophets and apostles. It had three doors; the central one (called\n[Greek text], \"sacred door\") leading directly to the altar, that on\nthe right to the diaconicon, and that on the left to the prothesis.\nThe figures on either side of the central door, following what appears\nto have been the universal rule, were those of our Lord and the\nVirgin, and above the door stood a massive cross of gold. The altar,\nwith its canopy or tabernacle, has been already described. The\n_synthronus_, or bench with stalls, for the officiating bishop and\nclergy, are at the back of the altar along the circular wall of the\nbema. The seats were of silver gilt. The pillars which separated them\nwere of pure gold. All this costly and gorgeous structure has of\ncourse disappeared from the modern mosque. The eye now ranges without\ninterruption from the entrance of the royal doors to the very\nextremity of the bema;--the only objects to arrest observation being\nthe sultan's gallery (maksure), which stands at the left or north side\nof the bema; the mimber, or pulpit for the Friday prayer, which is\nplaced at the right or southern end of the ancient inconastasis; the\nmahfil, or ordinary preaching pulpit, in the centre of the mosque; and\nthe mihrab, or sacred niche, which is at the south-east side of the\nbema.\n\nIt was more difficult, in converting the church into a mosque, to get\nrid of the numerous sacred pictures in gold and mosaic which adorned\nthe walls and arches. Accordingly, instead of attempting to remove or\ndestroy them, the Moslem invaders of the church were content with\ncovering all these Christian representations with a coat of plaster;\nand thus in the late reparation of the mosque, the architect, having\nremoved the plaster, was enabled to have copies made of all the groups\nwhich still remained uninjured. Of the principal of them M. Salzenberg\nhas given fac-similes. On the great western arch was represented the\nVirgin Mary, with Sts. Peter and Paul. On the side walls of the nave,\nabove the women's choir upon either side, were figures, in part now\ndefaced, of prophets, martyrs, and other saints. M. Salzenberg has\nreproduced in his volume Sts. Anthemius, Basil, Gregory, Dionysius the\nAreopagite, Nicolas of Myra, Gregory the Armenian apostle, and the\nprophets Jeremiah, Isaiah, and Habakkuk. On the great eastern arch was\na group consisting of the Virgin Mary, St. John the Baptist, and {654}\nthe Emperor John Palaeologus, the last Christian restorer of the\nbuilding; but these figures--and still more the group which decorated\nthe arch of the bema, our Lord, the Virgin, and the Archangel\nMichael--are now much defaced. Much to the credit of the late sultan,\nhowever, he not only declined to permit the removal of these relics of\nancient Christian art, but gave orders that every means should be\ntaken to preserve them; at the same time directing that they should be\ncarefully concealed from Moslem eyes, as before, by a covering of\nplaster, the outer surface of which is decorated in harmony with those\nportions of the ancient mosaic, which, not containing any object\ninconsistent with the Moslem worship, have been restored to their\noriginal condition. Accordingly, the winged seraphim at the angles of\nthe buttresses which support the dome have been preserved, and, to a\nChristian visitor, appear in strange contrast with the gigantic Arabic\ninscriptions in gold and colors which arrest the eye upon either side\nof the nave and within the dome, commemorating the four companions of\nthe Prophet, Abu-bekr, Omar, Osman, and Ali.\n\nBut there is one characteristic of St. Sophia which neither time nor\nthe revolutions which time has brought have been able to efface or\neven substantially to modify--the strikingly graceful and elegant,\nalthough far from classically correct, grouping of the pillars which\nsupport the lesser semidomes and the women's choir. It would be\nimpossible, without the aid of a plan, to convey any idea of the\narrangement of this matchless assemblage of columns, which, as we have\nalready observed, are even less precious for the intrinsic richness\nand beauty of their material than for the interesting associations\nwhich their presence in a Christian temple involves. Most of these may\nstill be identified. The eight red porphyry pillars standing, two and\ntwo, under the semi-domes at either end of the nave, are the\ncelebrated columns from the Temple of the Sun, already recorded as the\ngift of Marcia, offered by her \"for the salvation of her soul.\" The\neight pillars of green serpentine which support the women's choir, at\neither side of the nave, are from the Temple of Diana at Ephesus; and\namong the remaining pillars on the ground floor, twenty-four in\nnumber, arranged in groups of four, are still pointed out\nrepresentatives of almost every form of the olden worship of the Roman\nempire--spoils of the pagan temples of Athens, Delos, Troas, Cyzicus,\nand other sanctuaries of the heathen gods.\n\nLess grand, but hardly less graceful, are the groups of pillars,\nsixty-seven in number, in the women's choir above the aisles and the\ninner porch. The occasional absence of uniformity which they present,\ndiffering from each other in material, in color, in style, and even in\nheight, although it may offend the rules of art, is by no means\nungrateful to the eye. In the total number of the pillars of St.\nSophia, which is the broken number one hundred and seven, there is\nsupposed to be a mystic allusion to the seven pillars of the House of\nWisdom.  [Footnote 145]\n\n  [Footnote 145: Proverbs ix. 1.]\n\nSuch was St. Sophia in the days of its early glory--a fitting theatre\nfor the stately ceremonial which constituted the peculiar\ncharacteristic of the Byzantine court and Church. On all the great\nfestivals of the year--Christmas, Epiphany, Palm Sunday, Easter,\nPentecost, and the Ascension; at the ceremony of the emperor's\ncoronation; at imperial marriages; and on occasions, more rare in the\ninglorious annals of the Lower Empire, of imperial triumphs,--the\nemperor, attended by the full array of his family I and court, went in\nstate to St. Sophia and assisted at the celebration of the divine\nmysteries. The emperor himself, with his distinctive purple buskins\nand close tiara; the Caesar, {655} and, in later times, the\nSebastocrator, in green buskins and open tiara; the Despots, the\nPanhypersebastos, and the Protosebastos; the long and carefully\ngraduated line of functionaries, civil and military--the Curopalata,\nthe Logothete and Great Logothete, the Domestic and Great Domestic,\nthe Prostostrator, the Stratospedarch, the Protospatharius, the Great\nAEteriarch, and the Acolyth, with the several trains of attendants in\nappropriate costume which belonged to each department,--combined to\nform an array for which it would be difficult to find a parallel in\nthe history of ceremonial; and when to these are added the purely\necclesiastical functionaries, for whose number even the munificent\nprovision of space allotted by Justinian's architect was found at\ntimes insufficient, some idea may be formed of the grandeur of the\nservice, which, for so many ages, lent to that lofty dome and these\nstately colonnades a life and a significance now utterly lost in the\nworship which has usurped its place. As a purely ecclesiastical\nceremony, probably some of the great functions at St. Peter's in Rome\nsurpass in splendor such a ceremonial as the \"Great Entrance\" at St.\nSophia on one of the emperor's days. But the latter had the additional\nelement of grandeur derived from the presence of a court unrivalled\nfor the elaborate stateliness and splendor of its ceremonial code.\n\nWe have said that the church of Justinian is, in all substantial\nparticulars, the St. Sophia of the present day. In an architectural\nview the later history of the building is hardly worth recording. The\neastern half of the dome, in consequence of some settling of the\nfoundation of the buttresses, having shown indications of a tendency\nto give way, it became necessary in the reign of Basil the Macedonian,\ntoward the end of the ninth century, to support it by four exterior\nbuttresses, which still form a conspicuous object from the Seraglio\nPlace. The Emperor Michael, in 896, erected the tower still standing\nat the western entrance, to receive a set of bells which were\npresented by the doge of Venice, but which the Turks have melted down\ninto cannon. About half a century later, a further work for the\npurpose of strengthening the dome was undertaken by the Emperor\nRomanus; and in the year 987 a complete reparation and\nre-strengthening of the dome, within and without, was executed under\nBasil the Bulgaricide, in which work the cost of the scaffolding alone\namounted to ten hundred weight of gold.\n\nNo further reparations are recorded for upward of two centuries. But,\nto the shame of the founders of the Latin empire of Constantinople,\nthe church of St. Sophia suffered so much in their hands, that, after\nthe recovery of the city by the Greeks, more than one of the later\nGreek emperors is found engaged in repairing the injuries of the\nbuilding. Andronicus the Elder, Cantacuzenus, and John IV.\nPalaeologus, each had a share in the work; and, by a curious though\nfortuitous coincidence, Palaeologus, the last of the Christian\nemperors who are recorded as restorers of St. Sophia, appears to be\nthe only one admitted to the same honor which was accorded to its\nfirst founder Justinian--that of having his portrait introduced into\nthe mosaic decorations of the building. John Palaeologus, as we saw,\nis represented in the group which adorned the eastern arch supporting\nthe great dome. The figures, however, are now much defaced.\n\nHow much of the injury which, from whatever cause, the mosaic and\nother decorations of St. Sophia have suffered, is due to the\nfanaticism of the Turkish conquerors of Constantinople it is\nimpossible to say with certainty. Probably, however, it was far less\nconsiderable than might at first be supposed. Owing to the peculiar\ndiscipline of the Greek Church, which, while it freely admits painted\nimages, endures no sculptured Christian representations except that of\nthe cross itself, there was little in the marble or bronze of St.\nSophia to provoke Moslem {656} fanaticism. The crosses throughout\nthe building, and especially in the women's choir, have been modified,\nrather than completely destroyed; the mutilator being generally\nsatisfied with merely chiselling off _the head of the cross_ (the\ncruciform character being thus destroyed), sparing the other three\narms of the Christian emblem. For the rest, as we have already said,\nthe change consisted in simply denuding the church of all its\nChristian furniture and appliances, whether movable objects or\npermanent structures, and in covering up from view all the purely\nChristian decorations of the walls, roof, and domes. The mosaic work,\nwhere it has perished, seems to have fallen, less from intentional\noutrage or direct and voluntary defacement, than from the\nlong-continued neglect under which the building had suffered for\ngenerations, down to the restoration by the late sultan.\n\nThe alterations of the exterior under Moslem rule are far more\nstriking, as well as more considerable. Much of the undoubtedly heavy\nand inelegant appearance of the exterior of St. Sophia is owing to the\nabsence of several groups of statues and other artistic objects which\nwere designed to relieve the massive and ungraceful proportions of the\nbuttresses and supports of the building as seen from without. Of these\ngroups the most important was that of the celebrated horses now at St.\nMark's in Venice. On the other hand, the addition of the four minarets\nhas, in a different way, contributed to produce the same effect of\nheaviness and incongruity of proportion. Of these minarets, the first,\nthat at the south-east angle, was built by Mahomet II. The second, at\nthe north-east, was erected by Selim, to whose care the mosque was\nindebted for many important works, intended as well for its actual\nrestoration as for its prospective maintenance and preservation. The\nnorth-western and south-western minarets are both the work of Amurath\nIII. These structures, although exceedingly light and elegant in\nthemselves, are altogether out of keeping with the massive structure\nto which they were intended as an appendage, and the pretentious style\nof their decoration only heightens by the contrast the bald and\nunarchitectural appearance of the exterior of the church. It is not\ntoo much to say that the effect of these peculiarly Mohammedan\nadditions to the structure is externally to destroy its Christian\ncharacter.\n\nBut whatever may be said of the works of former sultans, it is\nimpossible not to regard the late Sultan Abdul Medjid as a benefactor\nto Christian art, even in the works which he undertook directly in the\ninterest of his own worship. From the time of Amurath III. the\nbuilding had been entirely neglected. Dangerous cracks had appeared in\nthe dome, as well as in several of the semi-domes. The lead covering\nof all was in a ruinous condition; and the apertures not only admitted\nthe rain and snow, but permitted free entrance to flocks of pigeons\nand even more destructive birds. The arches of the gynaeconitis were\nin many places split and in a tottering condition The pillars,\nespecially on the upper floor, were displaced and thrown out of the\nperpendicular; and the whole structure, in all its parts and in all\nits appointments, presented painful evidence of gross and\nlong-continued neglect. M. Louis Haghe has represented, in two\ncontrasted lithographed sketches, the interior of the mosque such as\nit was and such as it now is since the restoration. The contrast in\nappearance, even on paper, is very striking; although this can only be\nrealized by those who have had the actual opportunity of comparing the\nnew with the old. But the substantial repairs are far more important,\nas tending to the security of a pile so venerable and the object of so\nmany precious associations. The great dome, while it is relieved from\nthe four heavy and unsightly buttresses, is made more permanently\nsecure by a double girder of wrought iron around the base. The lead of\nthe dome and the roof has been {657} renewed throughout. The tottering\npillars of the women's choir have been replaced in the perpendicular,\nand the arches which they sustain are now shored up and strengthened.\nThe mosaic work throughout the building has been thoroughly cleaned\nand restored, the defective portions being replaced by a skilful\nimitation of the original. All the fittings and furniture of the\nmosque--the sultan's gallery, the pulpits, the mihrab, and other\nappurtenances of its worship--have been renewed in a style of great\nsplendor. The work of reparation extended over two years, and owed\nmuch of its success, as well as of the spirit in which it was\nexecuted, to the enlightened liberality of Redschid Pacha. An effort\nis said to have been made by the fanatical party in Constantinople to\ninduce the sultan to order the complete demolition of the mosaic\npictures on the walls, as being utterly prohibited by the Koran. But\nhe firmly refused to accede to the demand; and it was with his express\npermission that the king of Prussia commissioned M. Salzenberg to\navail himself of the occasion of their being uncovered, in order to\nsecure for the students of the Christian art of Byzantium the\nadvantage of accurate copies of every detail of its most ancient as\nwell as most characteristic monument.\n\n------\n\nFrom The Lamp.\n\nALL-HALLOW EVE; OR, THE TEST OF FUTURITY.\n\nBY ROBERT CURTIS.\n\n\nCHAPTER VII.\n\nHere it was that the real fun was going on! From the centre of the\nveiling hung a strong piece of cord, with cross sticks, about eighteen\ninches long, at the end. On each end of one of these sticks was stuck\na short piece of lighted candle, while on the ends of the other were\nstuck small apples of a peculiarly good kind. The cross was then set\nturning, when some plucky hero snapped at the apples as they went\nround, but as often caught the lighted candle in his mouth, when a\nhearty laugh from the circle of spectators proclaimed his\ndiscomfiture. On the other hand, if fortunate enough to secure one of\nthe apples, a clapping of hands, and shouts of \"Well done!\" proclaimed\nhis victory.\n\nA little to one side of this \"merry-go-round\" was a huge tub of\nspring-water, fresh from the pump, and as clear as crystal. It was\nintended that the performers at this portion of the fun should,\nstripped to the waist, dive for pence or whatever silver the\nby-standers chose to throw in. Up to this it had not come into play,\nfor until their \"betthers came down from the parlor\" no silver was\nthrown in; and the youngsters were \"loth to wet theirsel's for\nnothin'.\" Now, however, a _tenpenny-bit_ from Tom Murdock soon\nglittered on the bottom of the tub, a full foot and a half under\nwater. Forthwith two or three young fellows \"peeled off,\" to prove\ntheir abilities as divers. The first, a black-haired fellow, with a\nhead as round as a cannon-ball, after struggling and bubbling until\nthe people began to think he was smothering, came up without the\nprize. He was handed a kitchen towel to rub himself with; while one of\nthe other young gladiators adjusted the tenpenny-bit in the middle of\nthe tub, drew {658} in a long breath, and down he went like a duck. He\nwas not nearly so long down as the other had been; he neither\nstruggled nor bubbled, and came up with the money between his teeth.\n\n\"It wasn't your first time, Jamesy, anyhow,\" said one.\n\n\"How did you get a hoult of it, Jamesy avic?\" said another.\n\nBut he kept drying his head, and never minding them.\n\nAnother tenpenny was then thrown in by old Ned Cavana; it withstood\nrepeated efforts, but was at last fairly brought up. Jamesy seemed to\nbe the most expert, for having lifted this second tenpenny, his\nabilities were finally tested with a _fippenny-bit_, which after one\nor two failures he brought up triumphantly in his teeth; all the other\ndivers having declined to try their powers upon it.\n\nBy this time the kitchen floor was very wet, and it was thought,\nparticularly by the contributors to the tub, that there had been\nenough of that sort of fun. The girls, who were standing in whatever\ndry spots of the flags they could find, thought so too; they, did not\nwish to wet their shoes before the dance, and there was another move\nback to the parlor.\n\nHere the scene was completely changed, as if indeed by magic, as\nnobody had been missed for the performance. The long table was no\nwhere to be seen, while the chairs and forms were ranged along the\nwalls, and old Murrin the piper greeted their entrance with an\nenlivening jig.\n\nPartners were of course selected at once, and as young Lennon _happened_\nto be coming in from the kitchen with Winny Cavana at the moment, they\nwere soon with arms akimbo footing it to admiration opposite each\nother. Not far from them another couple were exhibiting in like\nmanner. They were Tom Murdock and Kate Mulvey; while several other\npairs were \"footing it\" through the room. To judge from the\nself-satisfied smile upon Kate Mulvey's handsome lips, she was not a\nlittle proud or well pleased at having taken Tom Murdock from the\nbelle of the party; for she had too much self-esteem to think that it\nwas the belle of the party had been taken from Tom Murdock.\n\nI need not pursue the several sets which were danced, nor\nparticularize the pairs who were partners on the occasion. Of course\nTom Murdock took the first opportunity possible to claim the hand of\nWinifred Cavana for a dance. Indeed, he was ill-pleased that in his\nown house he had permitted any chance circumstance to prevent his\nhaving opened the dance with her, and apologized for it--\"but it\nhappened in a manner over which he had no control.\" He had picked up\nthat expression at a race-course.\n\nWith all his bitterness he had the good sense not to make a scene by\nendeavoring to frustrate that which he had not the tact to obviate by\npre-arrangement. Winny had made no reply to his apology, and he\ncontinued, \"I did not ask Kate Mulvey to dance until I saw you led out\nby young Lennon.\"\n\n\"That is a bad compliment to Kate,\" she observed.\n\n\"I can't help that,\" said he gruffly; \"some people take time d-mn-bly\nby the forelock.\"\n\n\"That cannot apply to either him or me in this case; there were two\npairs dancing before he asked me.\"\n\nNow although this was certainly not said by way of reproach to Tom for\nnot himself being sooner, it was unanswerable, and he did not try to\nanswer it. He was not however in such good humor as to forward himself\nmuch in Winny's good opinion, and Emon-a-knock, who watched him\nclosely, was content that he should be her sole beau for the rest of\nthe evening.\n\nRefreshments were now brought in; cold punch for the boys and \"nagus\"\nfor the girls; for old Murdock could afford to make a splash, and this\nhe thought \"was his time to do it. If any one was hungry, there was\nplenty {659} of cold mate and bread on the kitchen dresser.\" But after\nthe calcannon and tea, nobody seemed to hear him.\n\nAfter the liquor on the first tray was disposed of, and the glasses\ncollected for a replenish, a solo jig was universally called for. The\ntwo best dancers in the province were present--Tom Murdock and Edward\nLennon, so there could be no failure.\n\nOld Murdock had never seen young Lennon dance until that night, and so\nfar as he could judge, \"he was not the man that Tom need be afraid\nof.\" He had often seen Tom's best dancing, and certainly nothing which\nyoung Lennon had exhibited there up to that time could at all touch\nit.\n\n\"Come, Tom,\" said he, \"give the girls a specimen of what you can do,\nyour lone,\" and he laid the poker and tongs across each other in the\nmiddle of the floor.\n\nPaddy Murrin struck up a spirit-stirring jig, which no one could\nresist. The girls were all dancing it \"to themselves,\" and young\nLennon's feet were dying to be at it, but of course he must wait.\n\nIndeed he was not anxious to exhibit in opposition to his host's son,\nbut feared his reputation as a dancer would put him in for it.\n\nTom Murdock having been thus called on, was tightening the fung of one\nof his pumps, to begin. Turning then to Murrin, he called for \"the\nfox-hunter's jig.\"\n\nHe now commenced, and like a knowing professor of his art \"took it\neasy\" at the commencement, determined however to astonish them ere he\nhad done. He felt that he was dancing well, but knew that he could\ndance much better, and would presently do so. He had often tried the\n\"poker and tongs jig,\" but hitherto never quite to his satisfaction.\nHe had sometimes come off perfectly victorious, without touching them,\nbut as often managed to kick them about the floor. He was now on his\nmettle, not only on account of Winny Cavana, but also because \"that\nwhelp, Lennon, was looking on, which he had no right to be.\" For a\nwhile he succeeded admirably. He had tipped each division of the cross\nwith both heel and toe, several times with rapid and successful\nprecision; but becoming enthusiastic, as the plaudits passed round, he\ncalled to Murrin \"to play faster,\" when after a few moments of\nincreased speed, he tripped in the tongs, and came flat on his back\nupon the floor. He was soon up again, and a few touches of the\nclothes-brush set all to rights, except the irrepressible titter that\nran round the room.\n\nOf course there was an excuse one of the fungs of his pump had again\nloosened and caught in the tongs. This was not merely an excuse, but a\nfact, upon which Tom Murdock built much consolation for his \"partial\nfailure,\" as he himself jocosely called it; but he was savage at\nheart.\n\nThere was a general call now from the girls for young Lennon, and\n\"Emon-a-knock, Emon-a-knock,\" resounded on all sides. He would not\nrise, however; he was now more unwilling than ever to \"dance a match,\"\nas he called it to himself, with his host's son.\n\nThe \"partial failure\" of his rival--and he was honest enough to admit\nthat it was but partial, and could not have been avoided--gave him\nwell-founded hopes of a triumph. He too had tried his powers of\nagility by the poker and tongs test, and oftener with success than\notherwise. It was some time now since he had tried it, as latterly he\nhad not much time to spare for such amusements. He was unwilling, but\nnot from fear of failure, to get up; but no excuse would be taken; he\nwas caught by the collar of his coat by two sturdy handsome girls, and\ndragged into the middle of the room. Thus placed before the\nspectators, he could not refuse the ordeal, as it might be called.\n\nHe had his wits about him, however. He had seen Tom Murdock whisper\nsomething to the piper when he was first called on to stand up, and it\n{660} proved that he was not astray as to its purport.\n\nRecollecting the jig he was in the habit of dancing the poker and\ntongs to, he asked the piper to play it. Murrin hesitated, and at last\ncame out with a stammer that \"he hadn't it, but he'd give him one as\ngood,\" striking up the most difficult jig in the Irish catalogue to\ndance to.\n\n\"No,\" said Lennon stoutly, \"I heard you play the jig I called for a\nhundred times, and no later than last night, Pat, at Jemmy Mullarky's,\nas I passed home from work, and I'll have no other.\"\n\n\"I took whatever jig he happened to strike up,\" said Tom with a sneer.\n\n\"You might have had your choice, for that matter, and I daresay you\nhad,\" replied Lennon, \"and I'll have mine! It is my right.\"\n\n\"If a man can dance,\" continued Tom, \"he ought to be able to dance to\nany jig that's given him; it's like a man that can only say his\nprayers out of his own book.\" And there was a suppressed smile at\nLennon's expense.\n\nHe saw it, and his blood was up in a moment.\n\n\"He may play any jig he chooses now,\" exclaimed Lennon, \"except one,\nand that is the one _you_ told him to play,\" taking his chance that his\nsuspicions were correct as to the purport of the whisper.\n\n\"I'll play the one I pled for the young masther himself; an' if that\ndoesn't shoot you, you needn't dance at all,\" said Murrin, apparently\nprompted again by Tom Murdock.\n\nThis was a decision from which no impartial person could dissent, and\nLennon seemed perfectly satisfied, but after all this jaw and\ninterruption he felt in no great humor to dance, and almost feared the\nresult.\n\nAs he stood up he caught a glance from Winny's eye which banished\nevery thought save that of complying with that look. If ever a look\nplanted an undying resolve in a man's heart it was that. It called him\n\"Emon\" as plain as if she had spoken it, and said, \"Don't let _that\nfellow_ put you down,\" and quick as the glance was it added, \"he's a\nnasty fellow.\"\n\nTo it now Emon went with his whole heart. He cared not what jig Pat\nMurrin played, \"or any other piper,\" he was able for them.\n\nAt first the quiet tipping of his heel and toe upon the floor, with\nnow and then a flat stamp which threw up the dust, was inimitable. As\nhe got into the \"merits of the thing,\" the music was obliged to vie\nwith him in activity. It seemed as much as if he was dancing for the\npiper to play to, as that the piper was playing for him to dance.\nThose who were up to the merits of an Irish jig, could have told the\none he was dancing to if there had been no music at all. There was a\ntip, a curl, or a stamp for every note in the tune. In fact he played\nthe jig upon the floor with his feet. He now closed the poker and\ntongs with confidence, while Tom Murdock looked on with a malicious\nhope that he too would bungle the business; and Winny Cavana looked on\nwith a timid fear of the same result. But he danced through and\namongst them as if by magic--a toe here, and a heel there, in each\ncompartment of the crossed irons with the rapidity of lightning, but\nhe never touched one of them.\n\n\"Quicker! quicker,\" cried Murdock to the piper, seeing that Lennon was\nperfect master of his position.\n\n\"Aye, as quick as you like,\" stammered Lennon, almost out of breath;\nand the increased speed of the music brought forth more striking\nperformance, testified to by the applause which greeted his finishing\nbow.\n\nHe caught a short glance again from Winny's eye, as he passed to a\nvacant seat. \"Thank you, Emon, from my heart,\" it said, as plainly as\nthe other had spoken when he stood up.\n\nIt was now well on in the small hours, and as old Murdock and his son\nhad both ceased in a manner to do any more honors, their silence was\naccepted as a sort of \"notice to quit,\" {661} and there was a general\nmove in search of bonnets and cloaks. Tom Murdock knew that he was in\nthe dumps, and wisely left Winny to her father's escort. Lennon's way\nlay by the Mulveys, and he was \"that far\" with Kate and some others.\nIndeed, all the branch roads and pathways were echoing to the noisy\nchat and opinions of the scattered party on their several ways home.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII.\n\nThe after-reflections of those most interested in the above gathering\nwere various, and it must be admitted to some extent unsatisfactory.\nFirst of all, old Murdock was keen enough to perceive that he had not\nfurthered his object in the least by having given the party at all.\nFrom what Tom had told him he had kept a close watch upon young\nLennon, of whose aspirations toward Winny Cavana he had now no doubt,\nand if he was not sure of a preference upon her part toward him, he\nwas quite certain that she had none toward Tom. This was the natural\nresult of old Murdock's observations of Winny's conduct during the\nevening,--who, while she could and did hide the one, could not, and\ndid not, hide the other.\n\nTom Murdock was the least satisfied of them all with the whole\nbusiness, and sullenly told his father, who had done it all to serve\nhim, that \"he had done more harm than good, and that he knew he would,\nby asking that whelp Lennon; and he hoped he might never die till he\nbroke every bone in his body. By hook or by crook, by fair means or\nfoul, he must put a stop to his hopes in that quarter.\"\n\nHis father was silent. He felt that he had not advanced matters by his\nparty. Old Cavana was not the sharp old man in these matters, either\nto mind or divine from how many points the wind blew, and quietly\nsupposed all had gone on smoothly, as he and old Murdock wished.\n\nWinifred had been more than confirmed in her dislike to Tom Murdock,\nwhile her secret preference for Emon-a-knock had been in no respect\ndiminished. She had depth enough also to perceive that Kate Mulvey was\nanxious enough to propitiate the good opinion, to which she had taken\nno pains to hide her indifference. She was aware that Kate Mulvey's\nname had been associated with young Lennon's by the village gossips,\nbut she had seen nothing on that night to justify any apprehension, if\nshe chose to set herself to work. She would take an opportunity of\nsounding her friend upon this momentous subject, and finding out how\nthe land really lay. If that was the side of her head Kate's cap was\ninclined to lean to, might they not strike a quiet and confidential\nlittle bargain between them, as regarded these two young men?\n\nKate Mulvey's thoughts were not very much at variance with those of\nher friend Winny. She, not having the same penetration into the\nprobable results of sinister looks and scowling brows; or not,\nperhaps, having ever perceived them, had thrown one of the nicest caps\nthat ever came from a smoothing-iron at Tom Murdock, but she feared he\nhad not yet picked it up. She was afraid, until the night of the\nparty, that her friend and rival--yes, it is only in the higher ranks\nof society that the two cannot be united--had thrown a still more\nrichly trimmed one at him; but on that night, and she had watched\nclosely, she had formed a reasonable belief that her fear was totally\nunfounded. She was not quite sure that it had not been let drop in\nEmon-a-knock's way, if not actually thrown at him. These girls, in\nsuch cases, are so sharp!\n\nThe very same thought had struck her. She also had determined upon\nsounding her friend Winny, and would {662} take the first favorable\nopportunity of having a confidential chat with her upon the subject.\nThe girls were very intimate, and were not rivals, only they did not\nknow it. We shall see by-and-by how they \"sounded\" each other.\n\nYoung Lennon's after-thoughts, upon the whole, were more satisfactory\nthan perhaps those of any of the other principal persons concerned. If\nWinny Cavana had not shown him a decided preference over the general\nset of young men there, she had certainly been still less particular\nin her conduct and manner toward Tom Murdock. These matters, no doubt,\nare managed pretty much the same in all ranks of society, though, of\ncourse, not with the same refinement; and to young Lennon, whose heart\nwas on the watch, as well as his eyes, one or two little incidents\nduring the night gave him some faint hopes that, as yet at least, his\nrich rival had not made much way against him. Hitherto, young Lennon\nhad looked upon the rich heiress of Rathcash as a fruit too high for\nhim to reach from the low ground upon which he stood, and had given\nmore of his attention to her poorer neighbor Kate Mulvey. He, however,\nmet with decided reluctance in that quarter, and being neither\ncowardly, ignorant, nor shy, he had improved one or two favorable\noccasions with Winny Cavana at the party, whom he now had some,\nperhaps delusive, notion was not so far above his reach after all.\n\nThese are the only persons with whose after-thoughts we are concerned.\nThere may have been some other by-play on the part of two or three\nfine young men and handsome girls, who burned themselves upon the bar,\nand danced together after they became cinders, but as they are in no\nrespect mixed up with our story, we may pass them by without\ninvestigating their thoughts, further than to declare that they were\nall well pleased, and that the praises of old Murdock's munificence\nrang from one end of the parish to the other.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IX.\n\nI must now describe a portion of the garden which stretched out from\nthe back of old Ned Cavana's premises. A large well-enclosed farmyard,\nalmost immediately at the rear of the house, gave evidence of the\ncomfort and plenty belonging not only to the old man himself, but to\neverything living and dead about the place; and as we shall be obliged\nto pass through this farm-yard to get into the garden, we may as well\ndescribe it first. Stacks of corn, wheat, oats, and barley, in great\nvariety of size, pointed the pinnacles of their finishing touch to the\nsky. Sticking up from some of these were sham weather-cocks, made of\nstraw, in the shape of fish, fowl, dogs, and cats, the handiwork of\nJamesy Doyle, the servant boy,--the same black-headed urchin who lifted\nthe tenpenny-bit out of the tub at old Murdock's party. They were\nfastened upon sticks, which did not turn round, and were therefore put\nup more to frighten away the sparrows than for the purpose of\nindicating which way the wind blew, or, more likely still, as mere\nspecimens of Jamesy Doyle's ingenuity. The whole yard was covered a\nfoot deep with loose straw, for the double purpose of giving comfort\nto two or three litters of young pigs, and that of being used up, by\nthe constant tramping, into manure for the farm; for cows, heifers,\nand calves strayed about it without interruption. A grand flock of\ngeese, as white as snow and as large nearly as swans, marched in from\nthe fields, headed by their gander, every evening about the same hour,\nto spend their night gaggling and watching and sleeping by turns under\nthe stacks of corn, which were raised upon stone pillars with mushroom\nmetal-caps, to keep out the rats and mice. A big black cock, with a\nhanging red comb and white jowls, and innumerable hens belonging to\nhim, something on the Brigham Young system, marched triumphantly\nabout, calling his favorites {663} every now and then with a quick\nmelancholy little chuckle as often as he found a tit-bit amongst the\nstraw. Ducks, half as large as the geese, coming home without a\nfeather raffled, in a mottled string of all colors, from the stream\nbelow the hill, diving, for variety, into the clean straw, emerging\nnow and then, and smattering with their flat bills in any little\npuddle of water that lay between the pavement in the bare part of the\nyard. \"Bullydhu,\" the watch-dog, as evening closed, taking possession\nof a small wooden house upon wheels,--Jamesy Doyle's handiwork\ntoo,--that it might be turned to the shelter, whichever way the wind\nblew. It was a miracle to see Bully getting into it, the door was so\nlow; another piece of consideration of Jamesy's for the dog's comfort.\nYou could only know when he was in it by seeing his large soft paws\nunder the arch of the low door.\n\nBeyond this farm-yard--farm in all its appearance and realities--was\nthe garden. A thick, high, furze hedge, about sixty yards long, ran\ndown one side of it, from the corner of the farmyard wall; and at the\nfurther end of this hedge, which was the square of the garden, and\nfacing the sun, was certainly the most complete and beautiful\nsummer-house in the parish of Rathcash, or Jamesy Doyle was very much\nmistaken. It also was his handiwork. In fact, there was nothing Jamesy\ncould not turn his hands to, and his heart was as ready as his hands,\nso that he was always successful, but here he had outstripped all his\nformer ingenuity. The bower was now of four years' standing, and every\nsummer Jamesy was proud to see that nature had approved of his plan by\nendorsing it with a hundred different signatures. With the other\nportions of the garden or its several crops, we have nothing to do; we\nwill therefore linger for a while about the furze hedge and in\n\"Jamesy's bower\" to see what may turn up. But I must describe another\nitem in the locality.\n\nImmediately outside the hedge there was a lane, common to a certain\nextent to both farms. It might be said to divide them. It lay quite\nclose to the furze hedge, which ran in a straight line a long distance\nbeyond where \"Jamesy's bower\" formed one of the angles of the garden.\nThere was a gate across the lane precisely outside the corner where\nthe bower had been made, and this was the extent of Murdock's right or\ntitle to the commonalty of the lane. Passing through this gate,\nMurdock branched off to the left with the produce of his farm. It is a\nlong lane, they say, that has no turning, and although the portion of\nthis one with which we are concerned was only sixty yards long, I have\nnot, perhaps, brought the reader to the spot so quickly as I might. I\ncertainly could have brought him through the yard without putting even\nthe word \"farm\" before it, or without saying a word about the stacks\nof corn and the weather-cocks, the pigs, cows, heifers, and calves,\nthe geese, ducks, cock, and hens, \"Bullydhu\" and his house, etc., and\nwith a hop, step, and a leap I might have placed him in \"Jamesy's\nbower\" if he had been the person to occupy it--but he was not. With\nevery twig, however, of the hedge and the bower it is necessary that\nmy readers should be well acquainted; and I hope I have succeeded in\nmaking them so.\n\nWinny Cavana was a thoughtful, thrifty girl, an experienced\nhousekeeper, never allowing one job to overtake another where it could\nbe avoided. Of course incidental difficulties would sometimes arise;\nbut in general she managed everything so nicely and systematically\nthat matters fell into their own time and place as regularly as\npossible.\n\nWhen Winny got the invitation for Mick Murdock's party, which was only\nin the forenoon of the day before it came off, her first thought was,\nthat she would be very tired and ill-fitted for business the day after\nit was over. She therefore called Jamesy Doyle to her assistance, and\non that day and {664} the next, she got through whatever household\njobs would bear performance in advance, and instructed Jamesy as to\nsome little matters which she used to oversee herself, but which on\nthis occasion she would entrust solely to his own intelligence and\njudgment for the day after the party. She could not have committed\nthem to a more competent or conscientious lad. Anything Jamesy\nundertook to do, he did it well, as we have already seen both in the\nhaggard, the garden, and the tub--for it was he who brought up the\nfippenny-bit at Murdock's, and he would lay down his life to serve or\neven to oblige Winny Cavana.\n\nHaving thus purchased an idle day after the party, Winny was\ndetermined to enjoy it, and after a very late breakfast, for her\nfather, poor soul, was dead tired, she called Jamesy, and examined him\nas to what he had done or left undone. Finding that, notwithstanding\nhe had been up as late as she had been herself the night before, he\nhad been faithful to the trust reposed in him, and that everything was\nin trim order, she then complimented him upon his snapping and diving\nabilities.\n\n\"How much did you take up out of the tub, Jamesy?\" she asked.\n\n\"Be gorra, Miss Winny, I took up two tenpenny-bits an' a fippenny.\"\n\n\"And what will you do with all that money, Jamesy? it is nearly a\nmonth's wages.\"\n\n\"Be gorra, my mother has it afore this, Miss Winny.\"\n\n\"That is a good boy, Jamesy, but you shouldn't curse.\"\n\n\"Be gorra, I won't, miss; but I didn't think that was cursing, at all,\nat all.\"\n\n\"Well, it is swearing, Jamesy, and that is just as bad.\"\n\n\"Well, Miss Winny, you'll never hear me say it agen.\"\n\n\"That's right, James. Is the garden open?\n\n\"It is, miss; I'm afther bringing out an armful of leaves to bile for\nthe pigs.\"\n\nWinny passed on through the yard into the garden. It was a fine, mild\nday for the time of year, and she was soon sitting in the bower with\nan unopened story-book in her lap. It was a piece of idle folly her\nbringing the book there at all. In the first place, she had it by\nheart--for books were scarce in that locality, and were often\nread--and in the next, she was more in a humor to think than to read.\nIt was no strange thing, under the circumstances, if, like some\nheroines of a higher stamp, \"she fell into a reverie.\" \"How long she\nremained thus,\" to use the patent phrase in such a case, must be a\nmere matter of surmise; but a step at the gate outside the hedge, and\nher own name distinctly pronounced, caused her to start.\nEaves-dropping has been universally condemned, and \"listeners,\" they\nsay, \"never hear good of themselves.\" But where is the young girl, or\nindeed any person, hearing their own name pronounced, and being in a\nposition to listen unobserved, who would not do so? Our heroine, at\nall events, was not \"above that sort of thing,\" and instead of\nhemming, or coughing, or shuffling her feet in the gravel, she cocked\nher ears and held her breath. We would be a little indulgent to a\nperson so sorely tempted, whatever our readers may think.\n\n\"If Winny Cavana,\" she heard, \"was twice as proud, an' twice as great\na lady, you may believe me, Tom, she wouldn't refuse you. She'll have\nsix hundred pounds as round as the crown of your hat; an' that fine\nfarm we're afther walkin' over; like her, or not like her, take my\nadvice an' don't lose the fortune an' the farm.\"\n\n\"Not if I can help it, father. There's more reason than you know of\nwhy I should secure the ready money of her fortune at any rate; as to\nherself, if it wasn't for that, she might marry Tom Naddy _th'\naumadhawn_ if she had a mind.\"\n\n\"Had you any chat with her last night, Tom? Oh then, wasn't she\nlookin' elegant!\"\n\n{665}\n\n\"As elegant as you please, father, but as proud as a peacock. No, I\nhad no chat with her, except what the whole room could hear; she was\ndetermined on that, and I'm still of opinion that you did more harm\nthan good.\"\n\n\"Not if you were worth a _thrawncen_, Tom. Arrah avic machree, you\ndon't undherstand her; that was all put on, man alive. I'm afeerd\nshe'll think you haven't the pluck in you; she's a sperited girl\nherself, and depend upon it she expects you to spake, an' its what\nshe's vexed at, your dilly-dallyin'. Why did you let that fellow take\nher out for the first dance? I heerd Mrs. Moran remark it to Kitty\nMulvey's mother.\"\n\n\"That was a mistake, father; he had her out before I got in from the\nkitchen.\"\n\n\"They don't like them mistakes, Tom, an' that's the very thing I blame\nyou for; you should have stuck to her like a leech the whole night;\nthey like a man that's in earnest. Take my advice, Tom avic, an put\nthe question plump to her at wanst fore Shraftide. Tell her I'll lay\ndown a pound for you for every pound her father gives her, and I'll\nmake over this place to you out an out. Old Ned an I will live\ntogether while we last, an that can't be long, Tom avic. I know he'll\nsettle Rathcash upon Winny, and he'll have the interest of her fortune\nbeside--\"\n\n\"Interest be d--d!\" interrupted Tom; \"won't he pay the money down?\"\n\n\"He might do that same, but I think not; he's afeerd it might be\ndribbled away, but with Rathcash, an Rathcashmore joined, the devil's\nin it and she can't live like a lady; at all events, Tom, you can live\nlike a gentleman; ould Ned's for you entirely, Tom, I can tell you\nthat.\"\n\n\"That is all very well, father, and I wish that you could make me\nthink that your words would come true, but I'm not come to\nfour-and-twenty years of age without knowing something of the way\ngirls get on; and if that one is not set on young Lennon, my name is\nnot Tom Murdock; and I'll tell you what's more, that if it wasn't for\nher fortune and that farm, he might have her and welcome. There are\nmany girls in the parish as handsome, and handsomer for that matter,\nthan what she is, that would just jump at me.\"\n\n\"I know that, Tom agra, but maybe it's what you'll only fix her on\nthat whelp, as you call him, the stronger, if you be houldin' back the\nway you do. They like pluck, Tom; they like pluck, I tell you, and in\nmy opinion she's only makin' b'lief, to dhraw you out. Try her, Tom,\ntry her.\"\n\n\"I will, father, and if I fail, and I find that that spalpeen Lennon\nis at the bottom of it, let them both look out, that's all. For his\npart, I have a way of dealing with him that he knows nothing about,\nand as for her--\"\n\nHere Jamesy Doyle came out into the lane from the farm-yard, and\nfather and son immediately branched off in the direction of their own\nhouse, leaving Tom Murdock's second part of the threat unfinished.\n\nBut Winny had heard enough. Her heart, which had been beating with\nindignation the whole time, had nearly betrayed itself when she heard\nEmon-a-knock called a spalpeen.\n\nOne thing she was now certain of, and the certainty gave her whole\nsoul relief,--that if ever Tom Murdock could have had any chance of\nsuccess through her father's influence, and her love for him, it was\nnow entirely at an end for ever. Should her father urge the match upon\nher, she had, as a last remedy, but to reveal this conversation, to\ngain him over indignantly to her side.\n\n{666}\n\nWinny was seldom very wrong in her likings or dislikings, although\nperhaps both were formed in some instances rather hastily, and she\noften knew not why. In Tom Murdock's case, she was glad, and now\nrather \"proud out of herself,\" that she had never liked him.\n\n\"I knew the dirt was in him,\" she said to herself as she returned to\nthe house. \"I wish he did not live so near us, for I foresee nothing\nbut trouble and vexation before me on his account. I'm sorry Jamesy\nDoyle came out so soon. I'd like to have heard what he was going to\nsay of myself, but sure he said enough. Em-on-a-knock may despise\nhimself and his threat.\" And she went into the house to prepare the\ndinner.\n\nTom Murdock, notwithstanding his shortcomings, and they were neither\nfew nor far between, was a shrewd, clever fellow in most matters. It\nwas owing to this shrewdness that he resolved to watch for some\nfavorable opportunity, rather than seek a formal meeting with Winny\nCavana \"_at wanst_\" as had been 'advised by his father.\n\n[TO BE CONTINUED.]\n\n------\n\nFrom Once a Week.\n\nSAINT DOROTHEA.\n\n  The sun blazed fiercely out of cloudless blue,\n  And the deep sea flung back the glare again,\n  As though there were indeed another sun\n  Within the mimic sky reflected there;\n  Not steadily and straight, as from above,\n  But all athwart the little rippling waves\n  The broken daybeams sparkling leapt aloft\n  In glittering ruin; scarce a breath of air\n  To stir the waters or to wave the trees;\n  The flowers hung drooping, and the leaves lay close\n  Against their branches, as if sick and faint\n  With the dull heat and needing strong support.\n  The city walls, the stones of every street,\n  The houses glow'd, you would have thought that none\n  Would venture forth, till that the gracious night\n  Should come with sable robe and wrap the earth\n  In softest folds, and shade men from the day.\n  But see, from every street the seething crowds\n  Pour out, and all along the way they stand,\n  And ribald jest and song resound aloud,\n  And light accost and careless revelry:\n  What means this, wherefore flock the people forth?\n  Ceases the hum, a sudden silence falls\n  On all around, the tramp of armed men\n  Rings through the air; and hark, what further sound?\n  A girl's fresh voice, a sad sweet song is heard\n  Above the clank of arms, men hold their breath;\n  Yet not all sadness is that wondrous chant,\n  That hushes the wild crowd with sudden awe.\n  As when the nightingale's mellifluous tones\n  Rise in the woodland, ere the other birds         {667}\n  Have ceased their vesper hymn, that moment drops\n  Each fluttering songster's wild thanksgiving lay,\n  So for awhile did silence fall on all\n  Within the seething crowd at that sweet voice.\n  She comes, they bring her forth to die, for she\n  This day must win the martyr's palm, this day\n  Must witness for her faith, this day must reap\n  The fruit of all her pains, long rest in heaven!\n  Long had they spared her, for the governor\n  Was loth that she should suffer, and her race\n  Was noble, so they hoped to make her yield,\n  And waited still and waited; but at length\n  They grew enraged at her calm steadfastness,\n  They knew not whence a resolution such\n  As made a young maid baffle aged men,\n  So she must die.\n\n            Now as she went along\n  'Midst all her guards, again burst forth the mob\n  Into such bitter taunts, such foul wild words,\n  As sent the hot blood mantling to her cheek\n  For shame that she, a maid, must hear such things;\n  And yet was no remorse within their hearts,\n  No light of pity in their savage eyes,\n  Like hungry wolves that scent the blood from far\n  They howled with joy, expectant of their prey.\n  There was one there, he in old days had loved\n  Her fair young face, but he too now, with scorn\n  Written in his dark eyes and on his brow,\n  And in the curl of his short lip, stood by;\n  It 'seemed not such a face, that bitter smile,\n  For he was passing fair, in youth's heyday;\n  But if contemptuous was his mien, his words\n  Were worse for her to bear, for he cried out--\n  He, whom her heart yet own'd its only love!\n  He, whom she held first of all living men!\n  He, whom she honor'd yet, though left by him\n  In her distress and danger!--this man cried,\n  \"Ho, Dorothea! doth the bridegroom wait?\n  And goest thou to his arms? Joy go with thee!\n  But yet when in his palace courts above,\n  Whereof thou tellest, fair one, think on us\n  Who toil in this sad world below; on me\n  Think thou before all others, thine old love,\n  And send me somewhat for a token, send\n  Of that same heavenly fruit and of those flowers\n  That fade not!\"\n\n                Then she turn'd and answer'd him,\n  \"As thou hast said, so be it, thy request\n  Is granted!\" and she pass'd on to her death.\n  She died: her soul was rapt into the skies.\n  The vulgar horde who watch'd her torture, knew\n  Nought of the great unfathomable bliss                  {668}\n  Which waited her, and when her spirit fled\n  None saw the angel bands receive her, none\n  Heard the long jubilant sweet sound that burst\n  Through heaven's high gates, swept from ten thousand harps\n  By seraph choirs, for she had died on earth\n  Only to enter on the life above.\n  Night fell upon the earth, the city lay\n  Slumb'ring in cool repose, the restless sea,\n  Weary with dancing all day 'neath the sun,\n  Was hushed to sleep by the faint whisp'ring breeze\n  That, wanting force to sport, but rose and fell\n  With soothing murmur, like to pine boughs stirr'd\n  By the north wind: sleep held men's eyelids close.\n  And he, that youth, slept, aye, slept peacefully,\n  Nor reck'd of the vile insult he had pour'd\n  Upon the head of one whom once he swore\n  To love beyond all others. As he lay,\n  Wrapt in the dreamless slumber of young health,\n  Sudden a light unearthly clear hath fill'd\n  The chamber, and he starts up from his couch,\n  Gazing in troubled wonder: by his side\n  What sees he?\n\n                    A young boy he deems him first,\n  But when had mortal such a calm pure smile\n  Since our first father lost his purity?\n  A radiant angel, rather, should he be,\n  Who stands all glorious, bearing in his hands\n  Such fruit and flowers as surely never grew\n  On this dull earth; their fragrance fill'd the air,\n  And smote the senses of Theophilus,\n  That a sad yearning rose within his heart,\n  Such as at times a strain of song will raise,\n  Or some chance word will bring (we know not why),\n  Flooding the inmost soul with that strange sense,\n  Half pain, half pleasure, of some bygone time--\n  Some far off and forgotten happiness,\n  We know not where nor what.\n\n                    The stranger spoke,\n  And thus he said, \"Rise up, Theophilus!\n  And take these gifts which I from heaven bring.\n  Fair Dorothea, mindful of her words,\n  Hath sent thee these, and bids thee that henceforth\n  Thou scoff not, but believe!\"\n\n                    With those same words\n  Vanish'd the cherub, and the room was dark,\n  Save where the moonbeams made uncertain light,\n  And where remain'd those blossoms and that fruit,\n  For from each leaf and stem there stream'd a ray\n  As of the morning.\n\n                    Down upon his couch\n  Theophilus sank prone, with awe oppress'd;                {669}\n  But for a moment. Starting wildly up,\n  He cried, \"My love, my Dorothea, list!\n  If thou canst hear me in those starry halls\n  Where now thou dwellest, I accept thy gift.\n  Do thou take mine, for I do give myself\n  Up to the service of thy Lord; thy faith\n  Shall from this hour be mine, for I believe!\"\n\n------\n\nTranslated from Der Katholik.\n\nTHE TWO SIDES OF CATHOLICISM.\n\n[Second Article.]\n\nI. THE PROBLEM.\n\n\"Neither,\" says Jesus Christ, \"do they put new wine into old bottles;\notherwise the bottles break, and the wine runneth out.\" The parable\nteaches that the new spirit of Christianity requires a new form,\ncorresponding to its essence. The essence and the form of Christianity\nare, therefore, intimately connected.\n\nWhat is thus generally enunciated in regard to the essential\nconnection of the spirit of Christianity with the forms of its\nexpression, is equally true of the mutual relations subsisting between\nthe substance and the manifestation of the Church. Christianity and\nthe Church are virtually identical. The former, considered as a source\nof union and brotherhood, constitutes the Church, In a former article\nwe have recognized Catholicism as the type of the Church Founded by\nChrist. Hence the interdependence of the essence with the form of\nChristianity in general is not more thorough than that of the spirit\nof the Church with the historical development of Catholicism.\n\nThese remarks will be found to designate the object of the present\nessay. An inquiry into the fundamental principle of Catholicism must\naddress itself to the elucidation of the cause of the necessary\nconnection between the spirit and the outer shape of the Church just\nmentioned. The direction in which the light is to be sought appears by\nthe parable cited above.\n\nThe new wine requires new bottles, because they only correspond with\nits nature. By the same induction it is affirmed that if the true\nChurch is realized only in the form of Catholicism, the reason is to\nbe found in the inmost nature of the Church, in the catholicity of her\nspirit.\n\nThis idea of the inherent catholicity of the Church, as well as the\nforegoing assertion of a necessary inter-dependence of the essence\nwith the image of Catholicism, is to be established on scriptural\nauthority by the following disquisition.\n\n\nII. THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH.\n\nThe shape and form in which Catholicism appears in history has its\nroot in the papacy. It is certainly deserving of attention, that\nprecisely in the institution of the papacy the Church is designated by\na name which affords an insight into her inmost nature.\n\nOn that occasion the Church--meaning the Church as apparent in\nhistory--is called the kingdom of heaven.  [Footnote 146] The Lord\nsays to Peter, \"I will give {670} unto thee the keys of the kingdom of\nheaven;\" a promise substantially the same with that given in the same\nbreath to the same apostle, though under a different metaphor, when\nJesus calls him the rock upon which he will build his Church. The\nprimate is the subject of both predictions. The apostle Peter is to be\nthe foundation of the Church, and he is to receive the keys of the\nsame edifice, that is to say, he is to be the master of the house.\n\n  [Footnote 146: Matt. xvi. 18, 19. ]\n\nThat the epithet of \"kingdom of heaven\" expresses the essential\ncharacter of the Church, is easily shown by a glance at the passages\nof Scripture in which the Church is mentioned. Such is always the case\nwhere the kingdom of God or of heaven is represented as in course of\nrealization on earth. In this respect the parables of Jesus are\nespecially significant. They address themselves principally to the\nspirit, the organization, and the most essential peculiarities of the\nnew order of things which Jesus Christ had come into the world to\nestablish. In these discourses the new foundation is constantly\nbrought forward as the kingdom of God or of heaven. Thus we cannot but\nrecognize in this expression a designation of the inner essence of the\ninstitution of Jesus.\n\nAt a time when his destined kingdom had not yet become historically\nmanifest, Jesus might still say, in the same acceptation of the term,\nthat it was already present, and palpable to all who sought to grasp\nit. This actual presence of the kingdom is deduced by the Lord from\nthe efficacy of his miracles. In them the vital principle of\nCatholicism was already at work. It had entered the world at the same\ninstant with the person of the Son of Man. But not until after Christ\nwas exalted did it assume a historical palpability. No less does the\ndeclaration of Jesus, that from the days of John the Baptist the\nkingdom of heaven suffereth violence, display Catholicism as a power\neven before it came to figure in history. For this very forwardness\nwith which even then the violent took it by force, was a product of\nthe Christ-like power which had entered humanity simultaneously with\nthe person of the Messiah. And where the Jews are called sons of the\nkingdom, it is likewise in reference to this elementary principle of\nCatholicism. It had been planted in the first instance on the\nhistorical soil of Judaism, thence, of course, to spread its benign\ninfluence over the earth, and thus to make historically manifest the\nvital substance of the Church in its only adequate expression. \"Many\nshall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down with\nAbraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom.\" On the other hand, the\nkingdom shall be taken from the Jews, because they have made it\nunfruitful.\n\nNo Christian sermon should omit to give this inner view of\nCatholicism, or of the advent of the kingdom. Therein lies its\npeculiar force. The preacher of the gospel has no more effective word\nof consolation for the pious souls who give him a ready hearing, than\nthe assurance that the kingdom of God has come nigh unto them. In this\nword, also, the apostle of Christ has his most potent weapon against\nthe assailants of the Church. If they receive you not, says the Lord\nunto his disciples, go your ways out into the streets of the same\ncity, and say, Even the very dust of your city, which cleaveth on us,\nwe do wipe off against you; yet know this, that the kingdom of God is\nat hand. The invincibility of Catholicism grows out of the power of\nits principle. As of old in enabling the apostles to heal the sick, so\nat the present day in her varied fortunes the Church approves herself\nthe kingdom of God.\n\nBut how is the interior of the Church related to the exterior? The\nword of the kingdom is the seed of Catholicism. According to the\nquality of the hearers of the word, the growing grain is fruitful or\nempty, the members genuine or spurious. Again, the kingdom of heaven\nis like to a net, cast into the sea, and gathering together all kind\nof fishes. The kingdom of the Son of Man is not without scandals, and\nthem that work {671} iniquity.  [Footnote 147] Hence the kingdom of\nGod on earth embraces the entire Church in her temporal existence. The\nlatter is shown to be a kingdom of long-suffering, in preserving her\nconnection even with ingredients estranged from her in spirit, leaving\nthe ultimate separation of the false members to the final judgment.\nEven these erring ones carry on their souls the impress of the\nkingdom, the signature of baptism. Nevertheless their adhesion to the\nkingdom is external and objective merely. In the more accurate sense\nof the word, the idea of the kingdom applies only to the marrow, the\nsoul of the Church. The good seed only are the real children of the\nkingdom.\n\n  [Footnote 147: Matt. xiii. 41.]\n\nThis account of the formation of the kingdom of God explains how the\nessence of the true Church becomes a historical reality in the actual\ncondition of Catholicism, notwithstanding its imperfections. The\nposition, therefore, that the spirit of the Church is inseparable from\nher temporal existence by no means denies that this historical\nexterior of Catholicism may be infected with elements having nothing\nin common with, and even hostile to, the character of the true Church.\nThis results from the fact that the true Church, though always\npreserving a unitary organization, realizes herself by degrees only.\nThe form of Catholicism is gradually purified and disclosed by the\nsanctifying virtue of its inner life. Thus it is that parasites take\nroot in the soil of the Church.\n\nIt is therefore a shifting of the real issue when Mr. Hase defines the\nCatholic antagonism to the ideal Church of Protestantism as consisting\nin a notion of Catholicism that in all essential attributes there is a\nperfect congruity between the idea of the Church and the concrete\nChurch of Rome; or in other words, that the latter Church is at all\ntunes the perfect type of Christianity. Two distinct things are here\nconfounded. The position of Catholicism--that the essence of the true\nChurch, so far as realized at all, exists only within the Catholic\nChurch, where alone, therefore, a further development of this essence\ncan be accomplished or the ideal of the Church attained--is by no\nmeans equivalent to the pretension, attributed to Catholicism by Hase,\nthat Catholicism has already attained the ideal, or that it is at all\ntimes the most perfect representation of Christianity. After this\nmisrepresentation of the position of Catholicism, Hase has no\ndifficulty in distorting the well-known Catholic doctrine that sinners\nalso belong to the Church into an unconscious acknowledgment of the\nideal Church of Protestantism.\n\nWhile the toleration of spurious members is a mandate of the\neducational mission of the Church, it involves, moreover, a special\ndispensation of Divine Providence. Like her divine principle, the\nChurch appears as a servant among men. The beauty of her inner life is\nveiled beneath an exterior covered with manifold imperfections. This\nserves as a constant admonition to the Church not to rely upon\nexternals. Yet even these shadows on the image of the Church are\nevidences of her vitality. How superhuman must be an organization\nwhich outlasts all enemies in spite of many deficiencies! It is error,\ntherefore, to infer from the undeniable, practical incongruity between\nthe essence of the Church and her outward form that there cannot be an\nexclusive, concrete realization of the true Church in history.\n\nTo make the growth of Catholicism intelligible to his hearers, Jesus\ncompares the kingdom of heaven with a grain of mustard, which unfolds\nthe least of all seeds to a stately tree. Immediately thereafter it is\nsaid that the kingdom of heaven penetrates the mass of humanity like\nleaven. The law of development of Catholicism is further illustrated\nby the following parable: The earth, says Jesus, bringeth forth fruit;\nfirst the blade, then the ear, afterward the full corn in the ear; man\nhas but to cast the seed into the earth; then he may sleep, and the\nseed shall {672} spring and grow up, he knoweth not how. Even so is\nthe kingdom of God. The Church therefore carries the germs of her\ngrowth in her inmost nature. Catholicism is gradually developed out of\nitself, from within. Thanks to the energy of her own principle, the\nChurch with her arms encircles nation after nation. The faculty of\nbeing all things unto all men she owes to her being the kingdom of\nGod. Here is the root of Catholicism. As the kingdom of God, the\nChurch is fraught with a wealth adequate to the mental requirements of\nall individuals and all nations. As the kingdom of God, the Church is\nadapted to every age and clime.\n\nThe word \"Church\" is used by Jesus Christ far more rarely than that of\nthe \"kingdom of heaven;\" indeed but twice, and on each occasion in\ndirect reference to the external form of the Church.\n\nThat this historical exterior of Catholicism, designated the Church,\nis the manifestation of the kingdom of God, We have already deduced\nfrom Matt. xvi. 18, 19, and xiii. 41. The same truth is expressed in\nthe parable of the treasure hid in the field. He who would possess the\ntreasure, that is to say, the kingdom of heaven, or the vital\nprinciple of Catholicism, must buy the field in which the gem is\nconcealed. The field, the Catholic exterior of the Church, is not the\ninner life; but the latter is realized only in the historical form of\nCatholicism.\n\nIt now behooves us to more precisely expound this relation between the\nspirit and the outer form of the Church from the words of Jesus. The\nway to do this is indicated by our Lord himself. It consists in an\nextended analysis of the biblical idea of the kingdom of God. In it is\ndisclosed the inmost nature of the Church and thereby the ultimate\norigin of her historical figure as instituted by Christ, or the\nprinciple of Catholicism, which is the object of our search.\n\nMy kingdom, says the Lord, is not of this world; that is to say, its\norigin is not here, and it is not established by the exercise of\nworldly power. _Regnum meum non est hinc_. True, the kingdom of Christ\nis established in the midst of the world, but it was not generated\nthere: from above, from heaven, it was planted in the world as a\nsupernatural _realm of grace_. Therefore its existence and its\nextension is in no wise dependent on worldly power; its foundations\nlie deeper, in the principle of truth which has entered the world with\nChrist. For this cause came he into the world, that he should bear\nwitness unto the truth. All they that are of the truth, do him homage\nas their king, and hear his kingly voice. The same principle works in\nthem as that of a new worship; they worship the Father in spirit and\nin truth.\n\nBut this elevated sense of truth in individual souls is the fruit of a\nhigher form of being. He that is of God heareth the words of God; but\nthey hear them not who are not of God. The entrance into the kingdom\nof God therefore necessarily presupposes a new beginning of man's\nlife, a new birth of water and of the Spirit. Wherever the kingdom of\nGod obtains a foothold, it assumes the form of an entirely new state\nof things, of a new creation, of the principle of a new mental\nactivity, a new _nature_ of the spirit.\n\nA transmutation of our souls, such as just described, necessarily\ninvolves a rupture with the natural man, a discarding of the original\nindividuality. Without this alteration we are impervious to the new\nlight which is to enter our souls together with the kingdom of God.\nThis indispensable self-denial is accomplished by a two-fold\ninstrumentality--by the love of God, which is the first commandment,\nand by the love of our neighbor as ourselves. Whoever is in this frame\nof mind is pronounced by Jesus to be not far from the kingdom of God.\n\nWhat has been said reveals another peculiarity of the kingdom of God\non earth. It is a _supernatural_ kingdom. At this point only do we\nfully comprehend the title of the Church to {673} the designation of\nthe kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of God historically manifested in\nthe Church is intimately connected with the intro-divine relations or\nthe inmost life of the Deity. By admission into the Church God the\nFather translates us into the kingdom of his beloved Son. This is not\nmerely an exercise of the creative love common to the three persons of\nthe Trinity. On the contrary, it is an evidence what manner of love\nthe Father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called the sons of\nGod. Precisely in this is the peculiar supernatural character of this\ndispensation made manifest. It is this supernatural characteristic of\nthe Church which accounts for the bestowal upon the Church of the name\nof the coming realm of glory. The germ of the latter is already\ncontained in the existing Church. While, for this reason, the Church\nvisible is called the kingdom of heaven, so the latter continues to\nbear the name of the Church even in the splendor of its eternal glory.\nThis circumstance warrants the bold utterance of the apostle that our\nconversation is in heaven. In the same sense it is laid down in the\ncatechism of the council of Trent that the Church militant and the\nChurch triumphant are but two parts of the one Church, not two\nchurches; and with entire consistency the same authority speaks of the\nChurch militant as synonymous with the kingdom of heaven.\n\nIt is but another expression for the supernatural character of the\nChurch if she is called the Jerusalem which is above, even in her\nhistorical form and figure. And precisely because this epithet applies\nto her, she is free and is our mother. The catholicity of the Church,\nher faculty of enfolding all mankind, of being the spiritual mother of\nus all, is owing to her supernatural character.\n\nThis doctrine of the supernaturalness of the Church is the connecting\nlink between the essence and the form of Catholicism. As the latter is\nsupernatural in its character, so must the form of its establishment\nbear a supernatural impress. How can anything utterly supernatural\nattain an adequate form of expression by mere natural development? It\nassumes a historical reality in so far only as it assumes\nsimultaneously with its supernatural essence a corresponding\nsupernatural image. The form as well as the substance of the Church\nmust needs be the fruit of an immediate interposition of God, because\nthe substance must needs exercise its supernatural functions.\n\nThe idea just expressed may have been dimly present to the mind of\nMoehler when he wrote: \"But it is the conviction of Catholics that\nthis purpose of the divine revelation in Christ Jesus would not have\nbeen attained at all, or at least would have been attained but very\nimperfectly, if this embodiment of the truth had been but momentary,\nand if the personal manifestation of the Word had not been\nsufficiently powerful to give its tones the highest degree of\nintensified animation, and the most perfect conceivable efficacy, that\nis to say, to breathe into it the breath of life, and to create a\nunion once more setting forth the truth in its vitality, and remaining\nemblematically the conclusive authority for all time, or, in other\nwords, representing Christ himself.\"\n\nViewed in this light, the historical manifestation of the Church,\ninstituted Matt. xvi. 18, 19, presents itself as a postulate of her\nessence. Because the Church was essentially destined historically to\nmanifest the kingdom of God, the Lord built her upon Peter, the rock.\nA temporal establishment of the kingdom of heaven in the midst of this\nworld required the divine installation of an individual keeper of the\nkeys. Thus the idea of the papacy flows from that of a kingdom of God\non earth.\n\nIf, then, this explanation presents Catholicism as a supernatural\nkingdom, and if this very attribute constitutes the characteristic\nfeature of its being, its inmost life and fundamental {674} principle,\nit is manifestly inadmissible to place the kingdom of God as\nestablished in the Church on the same footing with the works of\ncreation. A juxtaposition like this would entirely ignore the vital\nessence of the Church, that is to say, her superiority to nature.\n\nThe same distinction is overlooked by those who regard Church and\nstate as simply two manifestations of the same kingdom of God. Such is\nthe point of view of a system of moral theology, the influence of\nwhich upon the opinions prevailing among a considerable fraction of\nthe present generation of theologians is not to be mistaken. In the\neye of that doctrine \"Mosaism and Christianism--state and Church--both\nexternally represent the kingdom, and both represent one and the same\nkingdom; the former [the state] rather in its negative, the latter\n[the Church] rather in its positive aspect. And thus we have two great\nformations in which the kingdom on earth is made manifest, Church and\nstate.\" Could Hirscher have reached any other conclusion? He regards\nit as his task \"to dispose of the question whether the germs of the\ndivine kingdom, like seeds, are implanted in the character of man as\nin a fruitful soil, and whether they can spring forth from it [_i.e._,\nfrom the character or nature of man himself] and blossom as the\nkingdom of God.\"\n\nAlthough it is here said that \"God abode in man with his Holy Spirit\nand with its sanctifying grace,\" yet the Holy Spirit or his grace is\nnot made the foundation upon which the kingdom is erected; that\nfoundation is sought, on the contrary, in the \"divine powers\" infused\ninto man at his creation. God only assists at the upraising of the\nkingdom through them by \"dwelling in them for ever as the principle of\ndivine guidance.\"\n\nThe logical inference from these premises, which seek the germs of the\nkingdom of God as established on earth in human nature itself, that is\nto say, in the \"heavenly faculties\" inherent in man, is well disclosed\nin the definition of the kingdom of God on earth given by Petersen, a\ntheologian reared in the school of Schleiermacher. \"The kingdom of God\non earth,\" says he, \"is at once Church, state, and civilization,\n_i.e._, it is an organism of community in religion, morals, and\nsociety, and by these three special organisms it essentially\napproaches, develops, and perfects its organic unity, in organizing\nits religious principle in the Church, its moral framework in the\nstate, and its natural base in civilization, thus in the unity of all\nthree rounding its proportions as a universal organism of genuine\nhumanity.\" If \"the germs of the divine kingdom, like seeds, are\nimplanted in the character of man as in a fruitful soil,\" it is\nentirely consistent to regard the kingdom of God on earth as\n\"substantially identical with the idea of the human race,\" as \"the\nrealization of that idea.\"\n\nIt gives us pleasure to state that the notion of the kingdom of God on\nearth just alluded to has been declared unscriptural even in a\nProtestant exegesis of greater thoroughness.   [Footnote 148]\n\n  [Footnote 148: Hofman, _Schriftbeweis_, 1855. ]\n\nIII. THE BODY OF CHRIST.\n\nNext to the idea of the kingdom of God, the most significant\nexpression for the inner essence of Catholicism is found in the\nscriptural conception of the body of Christ. As his body, the Church\nis intimately connected with him. Christ and the Church belong\ntogether as the head and the body; both constitute a single whole.\nThis intimate relation between Christ and the Church is described by\nthe Scriptures in animated terms. The Church, it says, is for Christ\nwhat our own body is for us; as members of the Church we are members\nof the body of Christ, of his flesh, and of his bones. On one\noccasion, indeed, the apostle uses the word Christ as synonymous with\nthe Church, so intimate is their relation.\n\n{675}\n\nAnd it is the Son of Man, or Christ in his human capacity, as whose\nbody the Church is regarded. For as the head thereof the apostle\ndesignates him who was raised from the dead. The Church here enters\ninto a profoundly intimate relation to the sacred humanity of Christ.\nWe shall seek further profit from this idea in the sequel.\n\nImmediately after having called the Church the body of Christ, he\ncalls her the [Greek text]. This epithet results from the foregoing.\nIt is because she is the body of Christ that the Church is the [Greek\ntext]. I translate these difficult words, the fulness of him who\nfilleth all in all. God who filleth all things with his essential\npresence, in whom we live, and move, and have our being, hath his\nfulness in the Church. The Church is entirely filled with God. But\nhow? Is not God, in his very nature, present everywhere? How then can\nthe Church be filled with God in a greater degree than the world\nwithout? As the body of Christ, she has this capacity. For if the\nChurch, as Christ's body, assumes a special relation, peculiar to\nherself, to his sacred humanity, then, by that very assumption, she\nacquires a share in the [Greek text] of the Deity which dwells bodily\nin that sacred humanity. She thereby becomes the spot where God is\nespecially revealed and glorified. For while God, in the fulness of\nhis nature, is present over all the world, nevertheless this presence\nis more largely apparent in the Church than elsewhere. By the Church\nalone the manifold wisdom of God is known unto the principalities and\npowers in heavenly places. In him is glory in the Church by Christ\nJesus throughout all ages, world without end. Thus she stands approved\nas his pleroma, as entirely filled with God.\n\nBut how are we to understand this repletion of the Church with God? It\nis well known that Moehler sees in the visible Church the \"Son of God\ncontinually appearing among men in human form, constantly re-creating,\neternally rejuvenating himself, his perpetual incarnation.\" In this\nsense he apprehends the scriptural conception of the body of Christ,\nthe \"interpretation of the divine and the human in the Church.\" This\nproposition, which has become celebrated, was intended, in the first\ninstance, to afford a more profound insight into the visibility of the\nChurch, in addition to which it is inseparable from Moehler's views on\nthe subject of the means of grace. In this twofold light we must make\nit the subject of examination.\n\nMoehler goes on to argue that, if the Church is a continuance of the\nincarnation, she must be, like the latter, a visible one. This can\nmean no more than that even as the Son of God during his stay upon\nearth wrought visibly for mankind in the flesh, so also the saving\nefficacy of Christ, abiding after his departure from the earth,\nrequires a visible medium. Such a point, however, Protestantism is far\nfrom disputing. In the separate congregations, in their visible means\nof grace, and in the audible exposition of the word of God, even\nProtestants admit that the efficacy of Christ is visibly perpetuated,\nand the idea of Christianity and the Church gradually realized. Every\nProtestant denomination aspires to be the palpable image, the living\npresentment, of the Christian religion. Moehler's conception of the\nSon of God continually appearing among men in human form has even\nbecome a favorite theme of modern Protestant theology. This will\nappear from the mere perusal of the disquisitions on this head of the\nso-called Christological school. The advantage gained for the Catholic\ninterpretation amounts to nothing. For the point is not that the\nefficacy of Christ is perpetually exercised among men in a visible\nmanner, but it is in question whether this continued exercise ensues\nonly in the fold of a particular institution, and by particular means\nof grace.\n\nMoehler arrived at his doctrine in {676} reference to the Church\nthrough the medium of his views regarding the means of grace. In his\nopinion \"the Eucharistic descent of the Son of God\" (and the same must\nbe inferred to apply to all the means of grace which it is the\nfunction of the Church to administer  [Footnote 149]) \"is a part of\nthe totality of his merit, wherewith we are redeemed.\" The sacramental\noffering of Christ is \"the conclusion of his great sacrifice for us,\"\nand in it \"all the other parts of the same sacrifice are to be\nbestowed upon us; in this final portion of the objective offering, the\nwhole is to become subjective, a part of our individual being.\" But\nthe incarnation of God, or, in other words, the work of our salvation\naccomplished by Christ during his walk upon earth, stands in need of\nno continuation or completion by a posthumous labor of Christ,\nconstituting \"a part of the totality of his merit, wherewith we are\nredeemed.\" The perpetual condescension of Christ, administered by the\nChurch, to our helplessness, does not form a complement to the\nobjective work of salvation; it is not an integral part of it, but\nonly its continued application. \"_Christus_\" says Suarez, \"_jam vero\nnos non redimit, sed applicat nobis redemptionem suam_\"  [Footnote\n150] If this work of redemption were even now in progress--that is to\nsay, if \"the Eucharistic descent of the Son of God\" were \"a part of\nthe totality of his merits, wherewith we are redeemed,\" then Christ\nwould not have fully taken away the sin of the world once for all on\nGolgotha. Who would maintain such a proposition? Moehler would be the\nlast man to do so. He would therefore undoubtedly have renounced the\nopinion in question if these, its logical results, had presented\nthemselves to his mind. The sacramental offering of Christ, as indeed\nthe whole of his perennial saving efficacy in the sacraments of the\nChurch, wherewith we are saved, is only the _means_ by which it is\napplied to our salvation. The _ground_ of salvation for all mankind\nwas perfected in the sufferings and death of Christ. The _realization_\nof salvation for individuals is accomplished by their appropriating to\nthemselves the salvation purchased or achieved for all mankind by the\nprecious blood of Jesus Christ; a work in which, undoubtedly, Christ\nhimself co-operates as the head of the Church.\n\n  [Footnote 149: For, according to St. Thomas, \"the Eucharist is the\n  _perfectio omnis sacramenti, habens quasi in capitulo et summo\n  omnia, quae alia sacramenta continent singillatim;_ the perfection\n  of the whole sacrament, having as it were in an epitome and a\n  summary all the virtues which, other sacraments contain\n  singly.\"--IV. Sent. a. 8. q. 1, a. 2, _solut_. 2 _ad_. 4.]\n\n  [Footnote 150: At present Christ does not redeem us, but applies\n  to us his redemption. _De Incarnat., Par. I., Disp_. 39, _Sec_. 3.]\n\nIn this sense the apostle says that he fills up those things that are\nwanting of the sufferings of Christ in his flesh. By faithfully\nfollowing Christ, we partake more and more of the fruits of\nredemption. Thus is Christ likewise gradually fulfilled in the\nindividual Christians--that is to say, he finds in them a more and\nmore ample expression. And in the same degree in which Christ stamps\nhimself upon the single members of the Church, the latter also is more\nand more filled with him.\n\nScarce has the apostle declared of Christ, in Col. ii. 9, that in him\ndwelleth all the [Greek text] of the Godhead corporally, when he turns\nto the Colossians with the words, \"And you are filled in\"--God that is\nto say, \"in him,\" _i.e._ in Christ, in so far as ye stand in communion\nwith him, \"which is the head of all principality and power.\" This\ncommunion of individuals with Christ, and their attendant\nparticipation in the fulness of the Godhead which dwelleth in him, is\naccomplished by the instrumentality of the Church, particularly by the\nsacrament of baptism, which incorporates the individual with the\nChurch. Verse 10-12: \"_Et estis in illo repleti. In quo et circumcisi\nestis, circumcisione non manu facta, sed in circumcisione Christi,\nconsepulti ei in baptismo._\"\n\nThus the Church is seen to be the pleroma of the Godhead in a twofold\n{677} point of view. First, in her members, which, being gradually\nfilled with God, become partakers of the divine nature. In the second\nplace, in the active cooperation of the Church herself in the\nperformance of this work.\n\nIn the first regard, the repletion of the Church with God is not a\nstate attained once for all. It is rather a process of measured growth\n[Greek text]. The measure of the age of the fulness of Christ is the\ngoal and the objective point of the entire development of the Church.\nIt will be attained when every individual shall have become complete\nin Christ, and therewith also in his own person a pleroma of Christ.\nIn the edifying of the body of Christ, or in the establishment of the\nChurch, therefore, we must work without repose till we all meet in the\nunity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God. In this\nsense only can it be said that there is a progress in the Church. This\ncontinued development of Catholicism the apostle regards as a gradual\nrepletion of the single members of the Church with all the fulness of\nGod, [Greek text].\n\nWe have as yet, however, come to know but the one phase of this\nrelation of the Church to Christ, or to the pleroma of the Godhead.\nThe Church is not only destined to present herself at the close of her\nhistorical development as the pleroma of him that filleth all in all;\nshe is even now entitled to this attribute, by virtue of her essential\ncharacter.\n\nOn this head we derive instruction from a nearer contemplation of the\nprocess of development in which the erection of the Church is\ncompleted. \"The whole body,\" says the apostle, meaning the body of\nChrist himself, \"maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of\nitself in charity.\" The Church therefore carries within herself, in\nthe inmost recesses of her being, the principle and the germinal power\nof her whole development. This fundamental principle of Catholicism is\nChrist himself, who pervades the Church as his body.\n\nThere is a subjective and an objective repletion of the Church with\nChrist. The former progresses gradually, in so far as the single\nmembers of the Church assimilate themselves more and more to Christ.\nThe latter is a given state of things from the first. In it consists\nthe most subtle essence of the Church. This objective presence of\nChrist in her approves itself as the vital power of her growth. The\ngradual ripening of the Church therefore grows up into Christ ([Greek\ntext], Eph. iv. 15) on the one hand, and proceeds from him ([Greek\ntext]) on the other. From him--that is to say, by means of the\nvivifying influence of the Son of God, present in the Church, she\nmaketh increase of herself unto the edifying of herself in charity.\n\nIt is the same idea, when the apostle characterizes the growth of the\nChurch as an [Greek text], an _augmentum Dei, i.e._, a growth\nemanating from God. God effects it, but by the instrumentality of the\nChurch, within her and as issuing from her. For this purpose God hath\ninstalled her as his pleroma. Precisely because the Church is filled\nwith God, or is his pleroma, the members of the Church may gradually\nbecome complete in him. Thus there is a development and a progress\nonly for the individual members of the Church. She herself, by virtue\nof her essential character, is superior to development, and acts as\nthe impelling force of this development. Christianity _has_ a history,\nbut it _is_ not itself a history. The essence of Christianity, which\nis that of the Church, is not a thing in process of formation, it is a\nthing accomplished and perfect from the beginning.\n\nThe scriptural idea of the body of Christ presents the principle of\nCatholicism in a new light. The Church alone has Christ for her head.\nIt is her exclusive privilege to be the body of Christ. This gives her\na fellowship of life with Christ, by which she is distinguished from\nthe world, the {678} latter sustaining to him no relation but that of\nsubjection and dependence. But upon what rests this privilege of the\nChurch? Why is she alone the body of Christ, the pleroma of the\nGod-head?\n\nChristology must supply the fundamental reason. According to the\nCatholic dogma of the person of Christ, he filleth the universe only\nby virtue of his Godhead. With his life as the Son of Man he filleth\nonly the Church, his body. But how much more largely does God reveal\nhimself by his personal inhabitation of the sacred humanity of Christ\nthan by the creative power wherewith he penetrateth and filleth all in\nall! Here a single ray, a faint reflection of his glory, flutters\nthrough the veil of created nature, there the fulness of the Godhead\ndwelleth bodily.\n\nThe idea of Catholicism, therefore, coincides with that of fulness. As\nthe pleroma of him who filleth all in all, the Church harbors in her\nbosom a treasure, the richness of which is inexhaustible. Every\ncreated thing, every single period, every particular phase of the\nculture of the human mind, has some good attribute. Yet this attribute\nis a mere special advantage, a peculiar quality, a feeble reflex of\nthe chief good, a single ray of the shining sea of goodness inclosed\nin the unfathomable abyss of the divine essence, of the fulness of the\nGodhead. The completeness of the revelation of God's goodness is found\nonly in the sacred humanity of Christ, and therefore in the Church.\nHence the Church is the highest good that is to be found on earth. Let\nthe productions of the human mind, at a given stage of its\ndevelopment, be ever so glorious and sublime, they can never supplant\nthe pleroma of the Church. Her wealth is fraught with all the possible\nresults of the human intellect and imagination; and these, in the\nfulness of the Church, are intensified, raised, as it were, to a\nhigher power of goodness. Every production of the human mind is more\nor less in danger of falling short of the requirements of later ages.\nThe metal of all such fabrics needs to be recast from time to time, as\nforms and fashions change. In default of this, it gradually\ndegenerates into mere antiquity, or, in the most fortunate event, it\npreserves only the character of an honored relic. From this fate of\nall that comes into existence the Church is exempt. She alone is ever\nyoung, and always on a level with the times. This qualifies her to be\nthe teacher of the world from age to age. Hence, also, she is enabled\nto minister an appropriate remedy for the disease of every generation.\nHow, then, can a movement which makes war on the Church claim to be an\nadvance of the human mind in the right direction? The interests of\ntrue civilization will never interfere with those of the Church.\n\nAs well that the Church is the body of Christ as that in her is the\nfulness of him who filleth all in all--both of these attributes adhere\nto her in virtue of her divine foundation. Thus Catholicism, whose\nfundamental principle we have contemplated in this twofold scriptural\naspect, is not the product of the combination of any external\ncircumstances. It is grounded in the very idea of the Church, in the\ninmost depths of her being. Therefore she remains the Catholic Church\nin every vicissitude of her external condition, whether in the\nsplendor of princely honors, or under the crushing weight of Neronic\npersecution.\n\nIf, then, Catholicism is of the essence of the Church, the momentous\nconclusion is irresistible, that the true Church is capable of\nrealization in such an image only as enables her to present herself in\nher essential feature of catholicity. It follows that the papacy, as\nnecessary to the Catholic manifestation of the Church, is imperatively\ndemanded by the law of her being.\n\n------\n{679}\n\nFrom Once a Week.\n\nTHE CATHEDRAL LIBRARY.\n\nIt is now between forty and fifty years ago that I obtained leave from\nthe dean and chapter of Winterbury Cathedral to read for some weeks in\ntheir cathedral library. The editions of the fathers and of some\nimportant middle-age writers which are preserved in that quiet library\nboast of peculiar excellence, and I well remember the exultation with\nwhich I, then a very young man, received news of the desired\ninformation to ransack those treasures. Having secured a small lodging\nin the close, or cathedral enclosure, I set out for Winterbury early\nin the year 182-. Through the kindness of one of the canons, who\nseldom had to consult the library on his own account, I was provided\nwith a key to the library buildings, and allowed to keep undisturbed\npossession of it as long as my visit lasted. This key gave access not\nonly to the library, but to all parts of the cathedral likewise,\nincluding even the cloisters, so that I was able to let myself in and\nout of the noble edifice at all hours of the day or night, and to\nramble unchallenged through aisle, crypt, stalls, triforium, and\norgan-loft.\n\nI have never forgotten, and shall never forget, the day on which I\nfirst took my seat in the room which was to be the special scene of my\nlabors. The library lay on the south side of the cathedral, being a\nlower continuation of the south transept, and forming one side of the\ncloister court. It was obviously, therefore, raised above the height\nof the cloister vaulting, and it was reached by a flight of stairs\nopening into the cathedral itself. Narrowness (it measured about\neighty feet by thirty), and a certain antique collegiate air (and\nsmell, too, to be perfectly accurate) about the bindings of the books\nand the coverings of the chairs, were its chief characteristics. There\nwas a bust of Cicero at one end, and of Seneca at the other. Some\nsmaller busts of the principal Greek fathers adorned the side-shelves,\nand a dingy portrait of the \"judicious\" Hooker abode in a musty frame\nover the heavy stone mantelpiece. The fender itself was of stone, or\nrather the fireplace was not protected by a fender at all, but by a\nsmall stone wall, about three inches thick and six inches high, which\nafforded blissful repose to the outstretched foot.\n\nOne April evening, shortly after sunset, when there was still daylight\nenough to read the titles on the backs of books, I walked across the\nclose in order to fetch and bring away with me a couple of volumes of\nwhich I stood in need. It was an hour when the grand old cathedral is\naccustomed to put on its very best appearance. The heaven-kissing\nspire and the far lower, but beautiful, western towers are tinted with\nthe faint rose color which suits old stonework so admirably; and the\ndeep gloom of the cloisters, tempered by the glow from the noble piles\nof masonry overhead, makes it possible and easy to realize some of the\nrapturous visions of the recluse. I passed as usual down the nave, and\nhaving ascended the little staircase, let myself into the library, and\nwas on the point of attacking the necessary bookshelf, when instead of\nplacing the key in my pocket, as it was my habit to do, I tossed it\ncarelessly on to the sill of an adjoining window. The woodwork of the\nlibrary was by no means in a sound condition, and between the inner\nedge of the sill and the wall there was a wide chink, opening down\ninto unseen depths of distance. Into this chink, impelled by my evil\ngenius, or by one of the ghostly beings that (as {680} I was assured\nby the verger) haunt the library and cloisters, down tumbled my\nunlucky key. I saw it disappear with a sharp twinge of vexation,\nprincipally, however, at the thought of the time and trouble that\nwould be consumed in bringing it to light again. To-morrow, I said to\nmyself, I shall be forced to get a carpenter to remove this sill, and\nrake up the key from heaven knows where; while smirking Mr. Screens,\nthe verger, will watch the whole proceeding, and insinuate with silent\nsuavity a doubt whether I am a fit person to be entrusted with Canon\nDoolittle's key. It was not until I had come down from the short\nladder with the books under my arm, and, warned by the deepening\nshades, was about to leave the library, that the full effect of the\nkey's disappearance presented itself to my mind. The outer gate and\ninner door of the nave had been carefully shut by me, according to\ncustom, on entering the cathedral. All the gates and doors were fitted\nwith a spring-lock, so that without my key I was double-locked into\nthe building. My first thought was one of amusement, and I fairly\nlaughed aloud at my own perplexity. It seemed an impossible and\ninconceivable thing that one might really have to pass the entire\nnight in this situation. Presently I left the library, the door of\nwhich I had not shut on entering, and went down the staircase into the\ntransept, and then into the nave. I carefully tried the inner door,\nbut without effect. I had done my duty on entering, and it was\nhopelessly and mercilessly fastened against me. Resolved on\nmaintaining unbroken self-possession, I returned to the library. It\nwas now quite dark, the only light being that reflected from the\nshafts of the cloisters, on which the moonbeams were now beginning to\nfall. I sat down in a large arm-chair which stood at one end of the\nlibrary table, and thought over all the possible means of extricating\nmyself from an unexpected durance. Should I go up to the belfry in the\nnorth-western tower and toll one of the bells until the verger, roused\nfrom his first sleep, should come to see what was the matter? but even\nthis I could not do without the key, which would be required to open\nthe door at the entrance of the tower. Or should I make my way into\nthe organ-loft, and filling the bellows quite full, strike a\nsuccession of loud chords, until the music might attract the attention\nof some passer-by? this might be done, but it would be a perilous\nexperiment. Half Winterbury would be seized with the belief that their\nold cathedral was haunted. The organ-loft would be invaded by vergers,\nbeadles, and constables--there were no blue-coated police in those days--\nand I should move about the ancient city ever after with the stigma of\na madcap on my head. People would nod knowingly to one another as I\npassed, and significantly tap their foreheads, by way of hinting that\nI was \"a little touched.\" Canon Doolittle would recall his key, and\nabstain from inviting me to his hospitable table. Gradually,\ntherefore, I gave up the scheme of saving myself by means of the\norgan; and the belfry being already set aside, no other resource\nremained but to stay where I was, and quietly to pass the hours as\nbest I could until Mr. Screens should open the doors at about\nhalf-past six in the morning, ready for the seven o'clock prayers in\nthe Lady chapel.\n\nI was luckily undisturbed by any fears arising from the possible\nanxiety of my landlady. Winterbury is near the sea; and I had on more\nthan one occasion spent the greater part of the night on the cliffs,\nwatching the glorious moonlit effects upon the romantic coast scenery\nof that district. These Mrs. Jollisole was accustomed to call my\n\"coast-guard nights;\" and I made no doubt that, should I fail to\nappear, the sensible old lady would go contentedly to bed, supposing\nme to have mounted guard on the cliffs.\n\nI therefore lost no time in composing myself, if not to sleep, at any\nrate to an attempt at sleep. The library table was always surrounded\nby an {681} array of solemn old oak chairs, padded with cushions of\nyellowish leather, and looking as though--if their own opinion were\nconsulted--no mortal man of lower degree than a prebendary should ever\nbe allowed to seat himself upon them. At each end of the table there\nwas a chair of a superior order--a couple of deans, as it were,\nkeeping high state amidst the surrounding canons. These chairs were\nmade of precisely the same kind of oak, and covered with leather of\nexactly the same yellowish tinge as the others, but their whole design\nwas larger and more imposing, and what was of the most consequence to\nme in my present position--they were _arm_-chairs, affording opportunity\nfor all manner of easy and sleep-inviting postures. Throwing myself\ninto one of these dignified receptacles, I soon fell asleep, and soon\nafterward took to dreaming.\n\nLeaning in my dream on the sill of the library window, I fancied\nmyself to be gazing down into a peaceful church-yard. One by one, like\ngleams of moonlight in the dark shade of the surrounding cloisters, I\nsaw a number of young girls assemble, and fall with easy exactitude\ninto rank, as if about to take part in a procession. Each slender\nfigure was draped in the purest white muslin, with a veil of the same\nmaterial arranged over the head, and partially concealing the face.\nJust as one sees at the present day in Roman Catholic churches at the\nmore important _fetes_, the procession was arranged according to the\ngradations of height. The very young children were in the front, and\nas the other end of the line was approached, the pretty white figures\ngrew gradually taller, until girls of eighteen or nineteen brought up\nthe rear. They presently began to move, and it was clear that they\nwere about to take part in some solemn office for the dead. With two\npriests at their head, they made the circuit of the cloisters, moving\nalong with graceful regularity of step. Between each pair of the\nslender columns of the cloister building, I imagined that a small\nstone basin (or \"_benitier_\") was set, standing on a low pedestal, and\nfilled with holy water. Each girl walking on the side next to these\nbasins was furnished with a small broom of feathers, like those which\nmay at any time be seen in the Continental churches. Dipping these\nbrooms from time to time into the basins of water, they waved them in\nbeautiful harmony with their own harmonious movements, sprinkling the\nancient monumental slabs over which they were stepping. They sang to a\nstrain of rare melody the familiar words of _Requiem AEternam_.\n\nPresently they seemed to change time and tune, and to sing a hymn of\nmany verses, each verse ending with a refrain. A single voice would\ngive the verse, but all joined together in the plaintive music of the\nrefrain:\n\n  \"Through life's long day and death's dark night,\n  O gentle Jesus! be our light!\"\n\nI have heard much music, secular and sacred, since then; but I know of\nno musical effect which abides with me so constantly as that imagined\nchanting of young voices heard long ago.\n\nOne girl in particular attracted my attention as I dreamt. She was one\nof the pair who closed the procession, and was of a commanding height\nand extremely elegant figure. She had, as it seemed to me, taken\nexcessive precaution in drawing her ample veil closely around her head\nand face,\n\n* * * *\n\nOn a sudden I awoke. There, in one of the decanal arm-chairs, I was\nsitting--in an easy, familiar posture, as if I had been myself a dean--\nand there beside me, close at hand, within reach of my outstretched\narm, was a tall figure in white, clearly a female form, and the\nprecaution had been taken of drawing an ample veil closely around the\nhead and face. Any one but an imbecile would have acted as I did,\nthough I remember taking some credit to myself at the time for my\ncoolness and presence of mind. I simply sat still and stared; and by\ndegrees I observed, I conned. Years before, in my boyhood, I had\nwalked a good {682} deal on the stretch; and I had known what it was\nin North Devon to wake up \"upon the middle of the night,\" to feel the\nhard, unyielding turf underneath one's back, and see and gaze, gaze\nwistfully upon the bright unanswering stars above one's head. Even\nthen one could divine the true value of a bed. But to wake on the\ndowns in the small hours is a trifle compared with waking in a\ncathedral any time between dew and dawn. More especially when, as was\nmy case, you have a ghost at your elbow. Not that my ghost remained\nlong stationary. She did not. Starting from my arm-chair, she began a\nsurvey of the shelves by moonlight in so active and business-like a\nmanner that I felt no doubt, given her _quondam_ or present mortality,\nshe was or had been a \"blue.\" In five minutes, my powers of decision\nwere wide awake, and the question of her mortality was settled. She\nwas not a thing of the past, but alive as I myself was; and the only\nscruple was, how or how soon to awaken her from her somnambulist's\ndream. While I was debating with myself the best means to pursue, she\nsuddenly passed out of the library door on to the stone staircase. My\nalarm was now fairly excited. She had two courses to pursue in her\nsensational career--I employ the word in a more correct use than it is\ncommonly put to. She might either turn downward toward the floor of\nthe church itself, in which case she could do herself little or no\nharm; or she could mount the ascending staircase, and reach an outward\nparapet, with heaven knew what mad scheme in view, before I had time\nto overtake her. She chose the second alternative, and--she leading, I\nfollowing--we mounted the lofty staircase that leads to the base of\nthe spire. I was aware that the door at the top of this particular\nascent was not furnished with a lock; it was fastened by a simple\nbolt, and I had little doubt that my sleep-walking friend would shoot\nthat bolt back as readily as she had taken down and replaced the books\non the library shelves. My greatest fear was that she might begin\nplaying some mad prank upon the parapet before I was sufficiently near\nto arrest her movements. I need hardly add that, influenced by the\ndread of consequences commonly said to follow on a sudden awakening\nfrom a fit of somnambulism, I inwardly resolved to try every means of\nhumoring and coaxing my companion down again to _terra firma_, and\nonly as a last resort to attempt arousing her. In a few moments we\nstood side by side on the platform looking down on Winterbury, which\nlay outstretched in the white moonlight. It was a tranquil and\nbeautiful scene. There was the church of St. Werburgh, a noble\nmonument of thirteenth century building, which would attract\ninstantaneous admiration anywhere but under the shadow of Winterbury\ncathedral. There was the fine old market-place, with the carved stone\npump at which Cromwell drank as he passed through the city; and the\ncharmingly quaint guildhall, and the ruins of the abbey skirting the\nriver in the distance. I was not permitted, however, long to enjoy the\nprospect. Before I could lift a finger to arrest her rapid movements,\nmy mysterious companion had stepped lightly on to the parapet, and\nbegan a quick and perfectly unembarrassed walk around it. Dreading the\nexperiment of forcible rescue, it occurred to me to try the effect of\nquietly accosting her, and endeavoring--by humoring her present mental\ncondition--to decoy her away from her perilous amusement. It was an\nawful moment of suspense. Should she lose her balance and her life, it\nwould be next to impossible for me ever totally to clear up the\nenigmatical circumstance of my having been actually present by her\nside during that weird moonlit dance upon the parapet. If, on the\nother hand, I were to seize and lift her from the top-stone, she might\nrouse the whole close with frightful screams, she might faint--might\neven die--in my arms, or from the shock of sudden awakening she might\nlose her reason.\n\n{683}\n\nBut there was no time to stand balancing chances. Accordingly, I\ngently drew toward her side, and said, in as easy and collected a tone\nas I could command,\n\n\"I think we left the library door unlocked; before you complete your\nrounds, had we not better go down the stairs and secure it? Having\nbeen allowed the entry of the cathedral, I think we are bound in honor\nto shut doors after us.\"\n\n\"To be sure,\" she replied, and instantly, to my intense relief,\ndropped cleverly down into the space between the parapet and the lower\ncourses of the spire. \"To be sure, the door should be locked at once.\nLet us go down. I cannot make out who you are. In none of my former\nvisits to the cathedral have I met you; but you seem to be no\nintruder, and I will certainly go down and secure the door as you\nsuggest.\"\n\nAll this was uttered quickly and easily, but with an abstracted air,\nand without the slightest motion of her steadfast eyes. While still\nspeaking, she stooped under the low door-way at the stair-head, and\nbegan to descend. I followed, busily devising plans for preventing any\nfresh ascent, and yet still avoiding the necessity of breaking the\ncurious spell which bound her. We reached the library door. To my\nsurprise, she produced a key of her own, and was about to turn the\nlock, when I remembered that at this rate I should be deprived for the\nrest of the night of my only comforts, the warm atmosphere of the\nlibrary and the decanal arm-chair. I therefore extemporized a bold\nstroke.\n\n\"Excuse me,\" I said, \"I have left my hat and a few papers inside, and\nhaving a canon's key, I will save you the trouble of locking up. But\npermit me to suggest that it is still very early in April and the\nnight is cold. Why not give up the rest of your walk for to-night, and\nreturn again on one the glorious nights in May or June?\"\n\nWithout uttering a syllable in reply, she turned on her heel, and\nbegan slowly descending the staircase into the transept. My curiosity\nwas now fairly on the alert, and I resolved to unravel the mystery, at\nleast so far as to discover by what means she would leave the\ncathedral, and in what direction she would go. Stepping for a moment\ninside the library, I hastily but quietly slipped off my shoes on the\nmatting of the floor, and followed her barefoot and silent. She was\njust stepping from the staircase into the transept, when I caught\nsight of her again. With the same steady and self-possessed action\nwhich she had displayed throughout, she crossed the transept, and made\nstraight for a small postern door which led, as I knew, into the\ngarden of the bishop's palace. This she unlocked, and I made sure\nthat, having passed through, she would lock it again behind her.\nWhether, however, she was a little forgetful that night, or whether\nthe unexpected _rencontre_ with a stranger had ruffled the tranquil\nserenity of her trance, it so happened that she omitted to turn the\nlock, and I was able, after gently reopening the door, to trace her\nprogress still further. Under the noble cedars of the episcopal\ngardens, past long flower-beds and fresh-mown lawns, I followed her\nbarefoot, until we arrived within a few yards of the hinder buildings\nof the palace. Here I stopped under the dark shade of a cedar, and\nwatched my companion walk coolly up to a little oaken, iron-clamped\ndoor, open it, and disappear within the house. Then of course I\nretraced my steps toward the cathedral. But stopping again under one\nof the magnificent cedars, I could not avoid a few moments' reflection\non the exceedingly odd position into which accident had brought me.\nHere was I, alone and barefooted, standing, at two o'clock in the\nmorning, on the lawn of the palace, where I had no more business than\nI had at the top of the spire; and the only place in which I could\nfind shelter for the night was the cathedral itself, a building {684}\nthat most people would rather avoid than enter during the small hours.\nThe queerness of my situation, however, did not prevent me from\nenjoying to the full the extreme loveliness of the gardens, and the\nglorious view of the splendid edifice, rising white and clear in the\nmoonlight above their shady alleys and recesses.\n\nOn regaining the library, I dozed away the remainder of the dark hours\nin the same commodious arm-chair, and as soon as the bell began to\ntoll for the seven o'clock prayers, I passed unnoticed out of the\nbuilding and regained my lodgings.\n\n\"Been keeping a coast-guard night, sir?\" said Mrs. Jollisole, as she\nset the breakfast things in order.\n\n\"Why, yes, Mrs. Jollisole,\" I answered; \"I did enjoy some rather\nextensive prospects last night.\"\n\nAnd that was all that passed. I had fixed it in my own mind that I\nwould keep my own counsel strictly until I should have called at the\npalace, and communicated the whole of the circumstances in confidence\nto the bishop, with whom I was slightly acquainted.\n\nThis plan I carried into effect in the course of the morning. His\nlordship was at home, and listened with his customary kindness and\ncourtesy to the whole of my romantic recital. Just as I was finishing,\nhis study door opened, and a young lady entered, dressed in black,\ntall, and strikingly beautiful, though looking pale and fagged.\nGlancing at me she gave a slight start, and taking a book from one of\nthe shelves, instantly left the room, after a few muttered words of\napology for disturbing the bishop. It was my companion of the library\nand the tower.\n\n\"I see,\" said his lordship, \"that you have recognized the ghost. That\nyoung lady is an orphan niece of mine, and has been brought up in my\nhouse from her infancy. Never strong, she has reduced what vigor she\npossesses by her ardent love of books, and her intellectual interest\nis awake to all kinds of subjects. She is equally unwearied in\nvisiting amongst the poor, and often returns home from her rounds in a\nstate of exhaustion from which it is difficult to rouse her. About a\ntwelvemonth ago we first noticed the appearance of a tendency to\nsomnambulism. She was removed for several weeks to the sea-side, and\nwe began to hope that a permanent improvement had set in. A severe\nloss, however, which she has lately sustained, has, I fear, done her\ngreat injury, and here is proof of the old malady returning. We are\nindebted to you, sir,\" added the kind old man, \"for your judicious and\nthoughtful way of proceeding under the circumstances of last night,\nand for at once putting me in possession of the details, which will\nenable me to take the necessary precautions.\"\n\nBefore leaving the bishop's company, I begged him to go with me into\nthe cathedral, and to be present while a carpenter removed the\nwoodwork of the library window in order to recover the key. This he\nconsented at once to do, and we crossed the gardens by the very route\nwhich \"the ghost\" and I had traversed during the night. On removing\nthe panelling, we found that the depth of the chink was comparatively\ntrifling, and the key was soon seen shining among the dust.\n\nI was further gratified by another discovery, which, together with the\nextreme pleasure that it gave the bishop, quite indemnified me for my\nnight's imprisonment.  We noticed, partially concealed by rubbish in a\nniche of the wall below the panelling, the corner of a vellum\ncovering. On further examination, this proved to be a MS. copy of St.\nMatthew's Gospel, not indeed of the most ancient date, but adorned\nwith very rare and curious illumination, and making an excellent\naddition to the stores of the library. After a _tete-a-tete_ dinner\nthat evening with the friendly bishop, we spent a pleasant hour or two\nin a thorough inspection of the newly-found treasure.\n\nIt was little more than a month afterward that I heard the great bell\nin the western tower toll the tidings {685} of a death. One week more,\nand a sorrowing procession of school-children and women of the\nalms-houses filed from the transept into the quiet cloister-ground,\nthere to bury the last remains of one who would seem to have been to\nthem in life a loving and much-loved friend. It was so. The eager\nbrain and the yearning heart, worn out with unequal labors, were laid\nto rest for ever. The bishop's frail nursling was dead.\n\n----\n\nFrom The Month.\n\nCATHOLIC PHILOSOPHY IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY\n\n\nThe errors of the present day are generally the consequences of some\nfalse principle admitted long ago, and many may be traced clearly to\nthe calamities of the sixteenth century. One of these is, that the\nmediaeval learning preserved (as was declared at the Council of Trent)\nchiefly among the monks was in its nature useless and trifling, fitted\nonly to amuse ignorant and narrow-minded men in the darkness of the\nmiddle ages, and consisted in certain metaphysical speculations and\nlogical quibbles, called scholastic teaching. Several French writers\nhave done much to disabuse men of this prejudice, by making known the\namount of knowledge and science attained by mediaeval scholars, whose\nworks are despised because they are too scarce to be read, and perhaps\ntoo deep to be understood in a less studious age. One of these\nchampions of he truth is Ozanam, who has traced with a master-hand the\npreservation of all that was valuable in antiquity, through the\ndownfall of the empire; and he has rendered a subject which otherwise\nit would have been presumption to approach a plain matter of history,\nwhich the reader has only to receive, like other facts; so that we see\nhow, under the safeguard of the Church, the same powers which were\nformerly used in vain by the philosophers for the discovery of truth,\nwere successfully used for the attainment its deeper mysteries. But\nall that is human is marked by imperfection; and the very instinct\nwhich led philosophers to \"feel after\" their Creator, and seek that\nsupreme good for which we were created, was misled by errors which all\nultimately ended in infidelity. It is not necessary to dwell on these.\nA few words will remind the classical scholar that the Ionian school,\nwhich sought truth by experiment, through the perception of the\nsenses, leads to fatalism and pantheism; while Pythagoras, who sought\nby reason and the sciences him who is above and beyond their sphere,\nleft the disappointed reason in a state of doubt and indifference, or\nelse despair. Plato alone pursued a course of safety. Taking the\nexistence of God as a truth derived perhaps from patriarchal teaching,\nhe used the Socratic method of induction only for the destruction of\nfalsehood, and received with fearless candor all that the poets taught\nof superhuman goodness and beauty; for though the symbolism of the\npoets degenerated into disgusting idolatry, they have been called the\ntruest of heathen teachers. It is well known how Aristotle\nstrengthened the reasoning power; but the mighty power had no object\non which to put forth its strength, and the more noble minds rejected\nat once both reasoning and experiment, and sought for religion in the\nmysticism of Alexandria. Such was the wreck and waste of all that man\ncould do without revelation, {686} and so sickening was the\ndisappointment, that St. Augustin would fain have closed the Christian\nschools to Virgil and Cicero, which he loved once too well; but St.\nGregory, brought up as he was a Roman and a Christian, had nothing to\nrepent of or to destroy, and classic letters were preserved by\nChristians.\n\nOzanam found pleasure in believing that Christianity, while as yet\nconcealed in the catacombs, was \"in all senses undermining ancient\nRome,\" and that it had an ameliorating effect on the Stoic, which was\nthen the best sect of the philosophers; so that Seneca, instead of\nfollowing the lantern of Zeno, who confused the natures of God and\nman, learnt from St. Paul not only to distinguish them, but also the\nrelation in which man regards his Creator and Father, whom he serves\nwith free-will and love, by subduing his body to the command of his\nsoul. But the pride of philosophy may be modified without being\nsubdued. The principle of heathenism is \"the antagonist of\nChristianity: one is from man, and for man; the other from God, and\nfor God.\" It was the object of St. Paul and the first fathers of the\nChurch to liberate the intellect as well as the affections from\nperversion, and to teach how the treasures of antiquity might be used\nby Christians for religion, as the spoils of Egypt and the luxurious\nperfumes of the Magdalen. And after the fierce battle of Christianity\nwith paganism was over, the triumph of the Church was completed under\nConstantine by the Christianization of literature; that is, by using\nin the service of truth all those powers which had been wasted in the\nineffectual efforts for its discovery. \"A mixed mass of ancient\nlearning was saved from the wreck of the Roman world; and as Pope\nBoniface preserved the splendid temple of the Pantheon, and dedicated\nit to the worship of God glorified in his saints, so the doctors of\nthe Church employed the logic and eloquence of the philosophers\nwithout adopting their theories. This was not always easy, and some,\nlike Origen and Tertullian, fell into error; for the distinctive\ncharacter of Christian teaching is to be dogmatic, not argumentative,\nsubmitting the conclusions of reason to the decisions of inspired\nauthority, and the province of reason has bounds which it cannot\npass.\"\n\nGradually a Christian literature arose. Not only in the still\nclassical Roman schools, but in those of Constantinople, Asia, and\nAfrica, pagan writings were used as subservient to the training of\nChristian authors, and the fourth century was the golden age of\nintellect as well as sanctity. The fathers employed their classical\ntraining in the study of the Holy Scriptures; but, according to the\ntrue principle of sacred study, they sought from Almighty God himself\nthe grace which alone can direct the use of the intellectual powers.\n\"From the three senses of Holy Scripture\" (says St. Bonaventure, in a\npassage quoted by Ozanam out of his _Redactio Artium ad Theologiam_)\n\"descended three schools of Scriptural teaching. The _allegorical_,\nwhich declares matters of faith, in which St. Augustin was a doctor,\nand in which he was followed by St. Anselm and others, who taught by\ndiscussion. The _moral_, on which St. Gregory founded his preaching\nand taught men the rule of life, in which he was followed by St.\nBernard who belongs also to the mystical school and by a host of\npreachers. While from the third or _analogical_ sense, St. Dionysius\ntaught by contemplation the manner in which man may unite himself to\nGod.\" Ozanam names a chain of authors as belonging to this school of\n\"Boethius, who on the eve of martyrdom wrote the consolations of that\nsorrow which is concealed under the illusions of the world; Isidore,\nBede, Rabanus, Anselm, Bernard, Peter Damian, Peter the Lombard, who\nrejoiced 'to cast his sentences like the widow's mite into the\ntreasury of the temple, Hugo, and Richard of St. Victor, Peter the\nSpaniard, Albert, St. Bonaventure, and St. Thomas.\"\n\n{687}\n\n\"Under the barbarian rule, all the intellectual, an well as the\ndevout, took sanctuary in the cloister; so that when the Arian\nLombards attacked the centre of Christendom, they were opposed only by\nthe teaching and discipline of the Church as perfected by St. Gregory;\nand the power of these must have been supernatural, as the influence\nof letters was nearly lost in Rome. Then, in defence of the faith, St.\nBenedict marshalled a new band of devoted champions in the mountains\nof Subiaco, and he made it a part of their duty to preserve the\ntreasures of learning, and to employ them in the service of religion;\nand these monks,\" says Ozanam, \"who spent six hours in choir,\ntranscribed in their cells the historians and even the poets of Greece\nand Rome, and bequeathed to the middle ages the most valuable writings\nof antiquity.\"\n\nIt is agreed by all that Charlemagne was the founder of the middle\nages; and he opened the schools in which theology was formed into a\nscience, and gained the title of scholastics. Alcuin was the\ninstrument by whom Charlemagne remodelled European literature, with\nthe authority of the Church and councils, tradition and the fathers.\nOf these the Greek were little known west of Constantinople; and the\nchief representative of the Latin fathers was St. Augustin. There were\na few later writers, as Boethius on the \"Consolation of Philosophy,\"\nand Cassidorus, who wrote _De Septem Disciplinis_.\n\n\"Every one knows,\" says Ozanam, \"that when Europe was robbed of\nancient literature by the invasion of barbarians, the remains of\nscience, saved by pious hands, were divided into seven arts, and\nenclosed in the Trivium and Quadrivium.\" These arts were grammar,\nrhetoric, logic, and mathematics, which last comprehended arithmetic\nand geometry, music and astronomy. \"The establishment of public\nschools in cent, ix.,\" says Ozanam, \"assisted the progress of\nreasoning, till it became in itself an art capable of being employed\nindifferently to prove either side of an argument. The science of\nwords was no longer that of grammar, but became dialectics; and words\nwere used lightly as a mere play of the intellect, or as a mechanical\nprocess to analyze truth.\" But it can never be lawful for a Christian\nto discuss what has been revealed, as though it were possible that\nthose who reject it may be right; nor to consider truth as an open\nquestion, which is still to be decided, and may be sought by those\nrules of reasoning which had been laid down by Aristotle for the\ndiscovery of what was as yet unknown. It was for this reason that, as\nOzanam says, Tertullian called Aristotle the patriarch of heretics;\nyet his rules of reasoning were right, and the error lay in using them\namiss. Thus the Manichaeans reasoned when they should have believed,\nand the Paulicians subjected the Holy Scriptures to their own\ninterpretation, and rejected all that was above their comprehension;\nand thus in after-times did the Albigenses, and then the Protestants\nof the sixteenth, and the Liberals of the nineteenth, century.\n\nIt was in 891 that Paschasius wrote, for the instruction of his\nconvent, a treatise on the Holy Eucharist, in which he proved by\nreasoning that doctrine which \"the whole world believes and\nconfesses;\" but he was contradicted by Ratram, who first put forth the\nheresy that the real presence is only figurative, and then the Church\npronounced the dogma of transubstantiation. From that time theologians\nwere obliged to confute the intellectual heresies of philosophers by\nfighting, as on common ground, with the weapons of argument which were\nused by both, in order to defend the doctrines which had been hitherto\ndeclared simply and by authority, as by our Lord himself. \"Now,\" says\nOzanam, \"mysteries were subjected to definitions, and revelation was\ndivided into syllogisms. And as the love of argument 'increased, the\ndisputants took up the question which {688} had been discussed among\nheathen philosophers as to the abstract existences which are called\nuniversal forms or ideas; types of created things eternally existing\nin the mind of God, according to the teaching of St. Bonaventure. And\nwhen these were discovered by metaphysics, logic was exercised upon\nthem; and a dispute arose as to whether truth exists independently of\nthe perceptions of man. The Platonists asserted that it does, and this\nbelief, which they called idealism, was held by the divines, and was\ncalled realism, while those who denied that it exists independently of\nman were said to be nominalists.\" In modern days the dispute of\nrealism and nominalism is laughed at as an idle war of words; but the\nwar is, in truth, on principles, and still divides the orthodox and\nunbeliever, and the names of realism and nominalism are only changed\nfor objective and subjective truth.\n\nA painful experience had long prevailed that the spirit of controversy\nis destructive of devotion; and the more devout, weary of the wars of\nphilosophers, rejected logic, and found in the mystic school that\nrepose which had been sought even by heathens in a counterfeit\nmysticism, in which the evil powers deluded men by imitating divine\ninspirations. According to Ozanam, \"Christian mysticism is idealism in\nits most brilliant form, which seeks truth in the higher regions of\nspontaneous inspiration;\" and he goes on to explain, from the writings\nof St. Dionysius, that its nature is contemplative, ascetic, and\nsymbolical. It is _contemplative_, as it brings man into the presence\nof the immense indivisible God, from whom all power, life, and wisdom\ndescend upon man through the hierarchies of the angels and through the\nChurch, and whose divine influences act in nine successive spheres\nthrough all the gradations between existence and nothing. It is\n_ascetic_, as it acts on the will through the link which connects the\nbody with the mind, and regulates the passions through the inferior\npart of the soul. This \"medicine of souls\" was taught by the fathers\nof the desert, who were followed by all the mystic doctors; and it was\non this reciprocal action of physics and morals that St. Bonaventure\nafterward wrote the Compendium. It is _symbolic_, because it takes the\ncreation as a symbol of spiritual things, and the external world as\nthe shadow of what is invisible. The union of man with God is the\nobject and fullness of the knowledge which regards both the divine and\nhuman nature, and levels all intellects in the immediate presence of\nGod. This was imparted to Adam, and restored by Christ our Lord, who\nleft it in the keeping of the Church. The first uninspired teacher of\nthis mystic theology is thought to have been Dionysius the Areopagite,\nand the martyred Bishop of Athens, or, as some say, of Paris. In the\nfestival of his martyrdom it is declared \"that he wrote books, which\nare admirable and heavenly, concerning the divine names, the heavenly\nand ecclesiastical hierarchy, and on mystical theology.\" Ozanam quotes\na fragment from his writings, which teaches that the indivisibility of\nGod is intangible by mathematical abstractions of quantity, and\nindefinable by logic, because definition is analysis; and it is\nincomparable, because there are no terms of comparison.\n\nThe teaching of St. Dionysius was not forgotten when the knowledge of\nGreek was lost in the west. He was succeeded in this religious and\nChristian philosophy by St. Anselm in the eleventh century. In his\n_Monologium, De Ratione Fidei_, he supposes an ignorant man to be\nseeking the truth with the sole force of his reason, and disputing in\norder to discover a truth hitherto unknown. \"Every one, for the most\npart,\" he says, \"if he has moderate understanding, may persuade\nhimself, by reason alone, as to what we necessarily believe of God;\nand this he may do in many ways, each according to that best suited to\nhimself;\" {689} and he goes on to say that his own mode consists in\ndeducing all theological truths from one point--the being of God. All\nthe diversity of beautiful, great, and good things supposes an ideal\none or unity of beauty, and this unity is God. Hence St. Anselm\nderives the attributes of God--the creation, the Holy Trinity, the\nrelation of man to God, in a word, all theology. The _Proslogium_, or\ntruth demonstrating itself, is a second work, in which St. Anselm\nproposes to demonstrate truth which has been already attained. \"As in\nthe first he had, at the request of some brothers, written _De Ratione\nFidei_ in the person who seeks by reasoning what he 'does not know, so\nhe now seeks for some one of these many arguments which should require\nno proof but from itself. He was the first to use the famous argument,\nthat from the sole idea of God is derived the demonstration of his\nexistence. He thus begins the _Proslogium:_ 'The fool hath said in his\nheart, there is no God. Wherefore the most foolish atheist has in his\nmind the idea of the sovereign good, which good cannot exist in\nthought only, because a yet greater good can still be conceived. This\nsovereign good therefore exists independently of the thought, and is\nGod.'\" It is not worth while to follow out the errors which arose in\nthe middle ages from nominalism. In the eleventh century Roscelin\ncarried it to the absurdity of saying that ideas are only words, and\nthat nothing real exists except in particulars. And Philip of\nChampeaux asserted the opposite extreme, and denied the existence of\nall but universals; as that humanity alone exists, of which men are\nmere parts or fragments. It was in the twelfth century that Abelard,\nwho had been trained in both these systems, came forth in the pride of\nhis vast intellect to reconcile them by a new theory, but his search\nafter truth was by a mere intellectual machinery, to be employed by\nscience in order to construct general scheme of human knowledge; while\nit led to the rejection of that simple faith which believes without\nexamination, and substituted the system of rationalism, so fruitful to\nthis day of error and unbelief.\n\nIt was while men were constructing this intellectual tower of Babel\nthat Almighty God raised up as the champion of the truth the meek and\nholy St. Bernard. Like David he laid aside his weapons of reasoning,\nand left his cloister to overthrow the gigantic foe. In the cowl of\nSt. Benedict, he declared that the truth, which men sought by human\nefforts, was to be received in faith as the gift of God, from whom all\nknowledge and light proceeds. And it was not the powers of his\nwell-trained faculties, nor his classical and poetical studies, but\nhis prayers, which gained the victory; so that, as by miracle,\nAbelard, the most eloquent disputant of his age, stood mute before the\nsaint, who taught that faith is no opinion attained by reasoning, but\na conviction beyond all proof that truth is revealed by God. This had\nbeen the teaching of St. Gregory, who said that faith which is founded\non reason has no merit; and of St. Augustin, who said that faith is no\nopinion founded on reflection, but an interior conviction; and of the\napostle, who said that faith is the certainty of things unseen. It is\nconsoling to read that the holy influence of St. Bernard did not only\nsilence his adversary; the heart of Abelard was melted, he laid aside\nthe studies in which he had so nearly lost his soul, and he made his\nsubmission to the Church, and sought the forgiveness of St. Bernard.\nSoon afterward he died a penitent, sorrowing for his moral and\nintellectual offences. But evil does not end with the guilty; and his\nschool has continued brilliant in intellect and taste, but\npresumptuous in applying them to the examination of truth. On the\nother hand, the two folio volumes of St. Bernard have been always a\ntreasury of devotion, where the saints and pious of all succeeding\nages have been trained. It is impossible for words to {690} contain\nmore thought; and he had the gift of penetrating thoughts contained in\nthe inspired writings; as when he wrote twenty-four sermons on the\nthree first verses of the Canticles. Ozanam says that St. Pierre\nperceived a fresh world of insects each day that he examined a single\nstrawberry-leaf; and thus in the spiritual world the intellect of St.\nBernard contemplated and beheld wonders with a sort of microscopic\ninfinity, while his vast comprehension was analogous in its\ndiscoveries to the telescope. Such were the gifts conferred by God on\nthe humble abbot of Clairvaux.\n\nThere were in the time of St. Bernard other great teachers: Peter the\nVenerable, St. Norbert, Godfrey, Richard, and Hugo, all monks of St.\nVictor. Ozanam says that he embraced the three great modes of\nteaching--that is, the allegorical, moral, and analogical; and\npreceded St. Bonaventure in a gigantic attempt to form an\nencyclopaedia of human knowledge, based on the truth declared by St.\nJames, that every good and perfect gift descends from the Father of\nlight, who is above.\n\nWith a vast amount of literary treasures the crusaders had brought\nfrom the east, in the twelfth century, the Greek authors, with their\nArab commentators. They brought the physics, metaphysics, and morals\nof Aristotle; and they brought also the pantheism, which, says\nRatisbon, the Saracens, like the early Stoics, had learnt from the\nBrahmins, who believe that men have two souls--one inferior and led by\ninstinct, the other united and identical with God. This fatal error\nwas received by a daring school, to which Frederic of Sicily was\nsuspected to belong. It was to confute this school that St. Bernard\nhad taught in his sermons on the Canticles that union with God is not\nby confusion of natures, but conformity of will. The poison entered\nEurope from the west as well as the east; the Arabs in Spain mixed the\ndelusions of Alexandria with the subtleties of Aristotle, and the\nresult was such men as Averroes and Avicenna. Gerbert, afterward\nSilvester II., had himself studied in Spain, and brought back into the\nEuropean schools not only the philosophy of Aristotle, but the Jewish\ntranslations of Averroes. The unlearned monks of the west were\nnaturally alarmed at the new works on physics, astronomy, and alchemy,\nand especially at the logic of Aristotle, and the terrible eruption of\npantheism. It was then that the Church exercised her paternal\nauthority, and condemned the confusion of the limits between faith and\nopinion, and the degradation of the sciences to mere worldly purposes.\nOzanam gives the bull issued in 1254 by Innocent IV., in which he\ncomplains that the study of civil law was substituted for that of\nphilosophy, and that theology itself was banished from the education\nof priests. \"We desire to bring back men's minds to the teaching of\ntheology, which is the science of salvation; or at least to the study\nof philosophy, which, though it does not possess the gentle pleasures\nof piety, yet has the first glimpses of that eternal truth which frees\nthe mind from the hindrance of covetousness, which is idolatry.\"\n\nThe tendency of philosophical errors was now rendered apparent by\ntheir development, so that what was at first a vague opinion was now a\nbroad and well-defined system. Those who were firm in the teaching of\nthe Church found it necessary to use every means for opposing such\nmultiplied evils, and they boldly ventured on a Christian eclecticism,\nwhich should employ all the faculties and all the modes of using them\nin the service of religion; but it was not like the eclecticism of\nAlexandria, where the ideas of Plato were united with the forms of\nAristotle, and adorned by the delusions of magic. The strength of\nChristian eclecticism lay in the pure unity of faith, defended by all\nthe powers of man. {691} \"Both analysis and synthesis,\" says Ozanam,\n\"are harmonized in true science: they are the two poles of the\nintellectual world, and have the same axis and horizon. The\nintersecting point of the two systems was the union of what is true in\nrealism and nominalism with mystic teaching, and the eclectic admitted\nthe experience of the senses as well as the deductions of reason and\nthe intuition of mysticism with the testimony of learning. Thus were\nunited in the study of truth the four great powers of the soul,\nreason, tradition, experience, and intuition.\" But it has been\nremarked that some of the masters who taught by experiment and\ntradition were persecuted as magicians, and some of those who used\nreason and intuition were canonized. Both, however, observed the\nascetic life, of which the abstinence of Pythagoras and the endurance\nof the Stoics were imitations, and all practised the virtues most\nopposite to heathen morality, namely, humility and charity. The first\nattempt at uniting the different opinions of the learned was made by\nPeter Lombard, who collected the sentences of the fathers into a work,\nwhich gained him the title of Master of the Sentences, and which was\nafterward perfected in the _Summa_ of St. Thomas. Albert the Great\nleft the palace of his ancestors for the Dominican cloister. He\nstudied at Cologne, and was unequalled in learning and psychology.\nWhile he reasoned on ideas, he made experiments on matter; nay, he\nused alchemy, to discover unknown powers and supernatural agents. It\nis said that his twenty-one folio volumes have never been sufficiently\nstudied by any one to pronounce on their merits. His work on the\nuniverse was written against pantheism, and declares the presence of\nGod in every part of creation, without being confused with it. That\ndivine presence is the source of all power. \"He was,\" says Ozanam (p.\n33), \"an Atlas, who carried on his shoulders the whole world of\nscience, and did not bend beneath its weight.\" He was familiar with\nthe languages of the ancients and of the east, and had imbibed\ngigantic strength at these fountains of tradition. He believed in the\ntitle of magician, which his disciples gave him; and he is remembered\nby posterity rather as a mythological being than as a man.\n\nThe contemporary of Albert, says Ozanam, was Alexander Hales, who\nwrote the \"Summa of Universal Theology.\" William of Auvergne was a\nDominican and preceptor of St. Louis; he wrote _Specimen Doctrinale,\nNaturale, Historiale;_ a division of the sciences and their end,\ncontaining--1, theology, physics, and mathematics; 2, practice,\nmonastic, economic, and politic; 3, mechanics and arts; 4, logic and\nwords. Duns Scotus, a Franciscan, was more accurate in learning than\nAlbert himself; sound, though no discoverer in physics, and deep in\nmathematics. He commented on Aristotle and Peter Lombard. From his\nstrength, sagacity, and precision, he was named the Doctor Subtilis.\nHe wrote on free will, and says that its perfection is conformity to\nthe will of God; and derives the moral law from the will of God,\naccording to St. Paul, \"Sin is the transgression of the law.\" When St.\nThomas taught that the moral law is necessarily good because God is\ngood, and this question divided the learned into the schools of\nScotists and Thomists, Roger Bacon, an English Franciscan, was the\npupil of Scotus; but he was eclectic, and admitted both exterior and\ninterior experience, and the deductions of reason, into the\nintercourse of the soul with God. Though he condemned magic as an\nimposture, he wrote on alchemy, and with the simplicity of enthusiasm\nhe hoped to find the philosopher's stone, and to read the fall of\nempires in the stars. He believed in the powers of human science, and\nhe hints at the possibility of a vessel moving without sails or oars;\nand imagined a balloon, a diving-bell, a suspension bridge, and other\nmiracles of art, especially a telescope and a multiplying-glass.\nSpeaking of Greek {692} fire and unquenchable lamps, he says that art\nas well as nature has its thunders, and describes the effect of\ngun-powder, the attraction of the loadstone, and the sympathies\nbetween minerals, plants, and animals; and says, \"When I see the\nprodigies of nature, nothing startles my faith either in the works of\nman or in the miracles of God;\" concluding, that Aristotle may not\nhave penetrated the deepest secrets of nature, and that the sages of\nhis own time will be surpassed by the novices of future days. He had\nthe same clear and sound views of supernatural things, and wrote on\nthe secret works of art and nature, and the falsehood of magic. \"Man\ncannot influence the spiritual world except by the lawful use of\nprayer addressed to God and the angels, who govern not only the world\nof spirits, but the destinies of man.\" Though called the Doctor\nMirabilis, he was suspected of magic, and died neglected in a prison,\nwhere he had no light to finish his last works. His manuscripts were\nburned at the Reformation, in a convent of his order, by men \"who\nprofessed,\" says Ozanam, \"to restore the torch of reason, which had\nbeen extinguished by the monks of the middle ages.\"\n\nRaymond Lulli, the Doctor Illuminatus, was a Franciscan, the great\ninventor of arts; but he was a philosophical adventurer, whose cast of\nmind was Spanish, Arabian, African, and eastern. His youth was\nlicentious, his life turbulent, and his imagination restless; but he\ndied as a saint and a martyr on his return from liberating the\nChristian slaves in Spain.\n\nThe glory of the Franciscan order is the Seraphical Doctor, St.\nBonaventure. He was educated under Hales, the Irrefragable Doctor. His\ngenius was keen and his judgment just, and he was a master of\nscholastic theology and philosophy. But when he studied, it was at the\nfoot of a crucifix, with eyes drowned in tears from incessant\nmeditation on the passion of Christ. His life was dedicated to the\nglory of God and his own sanctification; yet he spent much time in\nactual prayer, because he knew from mystic theology that knowledge and\nobedience are the gifts of God; and devoted himself to mortifications,\nbecause they alone prepare the soul for the reception of divine grace\nand intuition. Yet though he obtained the gift of ecstacy and the\ngrace of crucifying the human nature, he placed Christian perfection\nnot in heroic acts of virtue, but in performing ordinary actions well.\nOzanam quotes his words: \"A constant fidelity in small things is a\ngreat and heroic virtue; it is a continued crucifixion of self-love, a\ncomplete sacrifice of self, an entice submission to grace.\" And his\nown pale and worn countenance shone with a happiness and peace which\nexemplified his maxim that spiritual joy is a sign that grace is\npresent in the soul. Though his desire for sacramental communion was\nintense, yet we are told his great humility once kept him at a\ndistance from the altar, till an angel bore to him the consecrated\nhost; and the raptures with which he always received his God are\nexpressed, though doubtless imperfectly, in the burning words,\n_Transfige Domine_, etc., which he was wont to utter after he had\nhimself offered the holy sacrifice. His devotional works, written for\nSt. Louis and others in his court, fill the heart with their unction,\nand rank him as the great master of spiritual life. It was during the\nintervals of ecstasies that he wrote; and while he was occupied on the\nlife of St. Francis, St. Thomas beheld him in his cell raised above\nthe earth, and the future saint exclaimed: \"Leave a saint to write the\nlife of a saint.\"\n\nIt is with profound reverence that we must inquire what was the\nintellectual teaching of so holy a man; and it is, indeed, so vast and\nyet so deep that it exhausts all the human powers in contemplating the\nnature of God and the end of man, which is his union to God. Ozanam\ngives a passage from his work on the \"Reduction of Arts to\nPhilosophy,\" in which he {693} says that philosophy is the medium by\nwhich the theologian forms for himself a mirror (_speculum_) from\ncreated things, which serve him as steps by which he may ascend to\nheaven. He begins by the revealed truth, that every good and perfect\ngift descends from the Father of light, and teaches of its descent by\nthese four ways--exterior, inferior, interior, and superior--through\nsuccessive irradiations, namely, Holy Scripture, experimental\nmechanics, and philosophy, which succeed each other like the days of\ncreation, all converging in the light of Holy Scripture, and all\nsucceeded by that seventh day in which the soul will rest in the\nperfect knowledge of heaven.\n\n1. Exterior light, or tradition, relates to the exterior forms of\nmatter, and produces the mechanical arts, which were divided by Hugo\ninto seven--weaving, work in wood and in stone, agriculture, hunting,\nnavigation, theatricals, and medicine.\n\n2. Inferior light, or that of the senses, awakens in the mind the\nperceptions of the five senses, as St. Augustin says, by that fine\nessence whose nature and whose seat baffles all our discoveries.\n\n3. Interior light, or reason, teaches us by the processes of thought\nthose intellectual truths which are fixed in the human mind by\nphysics, logic, and ethics, through rational, natural, and moral\naction on the will, the conduct, and the speech, which are the triple\nfunctions of the understanding, and on the three faculties of the\nreason--apprehension, judgment, and action; this interior light acts\non outward things by physics, mathematics, and metaphysics, and\nperceives God in all things by logic, by physics, and by ethics. And\nhe goes on to consider truth as it is in the essence of words, things,\nand actions.\n\n4. The superior light proceeds from grace and from the Holy\nScriptures, and reveals the truths relating to salvation and\nsanctification. It is named from its raising us to the knowledge of\nthings above us, and because it descends from God by way of\ninspiration and not by reflection. This light also is threefold. Holy\nScripture contains, under the literal sense of the words, the\nallegorical, which declares what must be believed concerning God and\nman; the moral, which teaches us how to live; the analogical, which\ngives the laws by which man may unite himself to God. And the teaching\nof Holy Scripture contains three points--faith, virtue, and beatitude.\nThe course by which knowledge must be sought is by,\n\n1, tradition; 2, experiment; 3, reason; and 4, a descent as it were by\nthe same road, so as to find the stamp of the divinity on all which is\nconceived, or felt, or thought. All sciences are pervaded by\nmysteries; and it is by laying hold of the clue of the mystery that\nall the depths of each science are explored.\n\nIt was to Mount Alvernia, where his master, St. Francis, so lately\nreceived the stigmata, that St. Bonaventure retired to write the\n_Itinerarium Mentis ad Deum_, in which he treats on the divine nature,\nand considers God as manifesting himself in three modes, and man as\nreceiving the knowledge of him by the three functions of memory,\nunderstanding, and will.\n\nOzanam says: \"To these triple functions of the mind God manifests\nhimself in three ways: 1, by the traces of his creation in the world;\n2, by his image in human nature; 3, by the light which he sheds on the\nsuperior region of the soul. Those who contemplate him in the first\nare in the vestibule of the tabernacle; those who rise to the second\nare in the holy place; those who reach the third are within the holy\nof holies, where the two cherubim figured the unity of the divine\nessence and the plurality of divine persons.\" He likens the invisible\nexistence of God to the light, which, though unseen, enables the eye\nto perceive colors; and proves from his existence his unity, eternity,\nand perfection; and from the eternal action of his goodness he deduces\nthe doctrine of the Trinity.\n\n{694}\n\nThe _Breviloquium_ treats on the nature of man, who exists not of\nhimself, nor by emanation from God, but was called into life out of\nnothing by the Creator, and lives by no mortal life borrowed from the\nouter world, but by its own and immortal life, intelligent and free.\nThese attributes of God are communicated by him to his creatures\naccording to his own law, \"that the superior shall be the medium of\ngrace to the inferior.\" The happiness of the soul must be immortal and\nis in God, and she can exist separated from this body which she\ninhabits and moves. Ozanam says: \"The _Compendium Theologies\nVeritatis_ treats of the connection between physics and morals, and\ninquires how the body indicates the variations of the soul by that\nmysterious link on which the scientific speculate, but which the saint\ntreats as a subject not for dogmatizing but for contemplation,\nassisted by the mortification which alone brings the passions into\nsubserviency. But the Seraphic Doctor left his teaching unfinished.\nSome of his spiritual works have been translated by the Abbe\nBerthaumier; and the reader will find that what has been said gives an\nimperfect idea of the writings of this doctor of the Church, which\nfill six folio volumes, and have scarcely been mastered by a few,\nthough they have warmed the devotion of many; and one short treatise,\ncalled the \"Soliloquy,\" is of such a nature as to include the whole\nscience of devotion. It represents the soul contemplating God, not in\nhis creatures, but within itself, and asking what is her own position\nin his presence: created by him, and sinning against him; redeemed by\nhim, and yet sinning; full of contrition, yet firm in the hope of\nglory. The teaching of St. Paul is continued by St. Augustin, St.\nAmbrose, and St. Bernard; and it seems as if no other book were\nneedful. One passage, and one only, may show the treasures it\ncontains. The soul is convinced of the vanity of created things, and\nasks how men are so blinded as to love them. Because the soul is\ncreated with so glorious and sensitive a nature, that it cannot live\nwithout love; and while the elect find nothing in created things which\ncan satisfy their desire of happiness, and therefore rest in the\ncontemplation of God, the deluded multitude neglect themselves for\npassing objects, and love their exile as if it were their home. But\nOzanam does not leave his history of intellectual progress to treat of\nspiritual gifts.\n\nSt. Thomas was born nearly at the same time as St. Bonaventure, in the\nsame wild valleys of the Apennines. They studied together at Paris;\nthey lived and died and were canonized together.\n\nIt was said by Pallavicini that \"when, in the twelfth century, the\nArabs made Cordova a second Athens, and Averroes used the philosophy\nof Aristotle as a weapon against the faith, God raised up the\nintellect of St. Thomas, who, by deep study of Aristotle, found in his\nown principles a solution of the arguments used by infidels; and the\nscholastics, following him, have so employed Aristotle to defend\nChristianity, that whosoever rebels against the Vatican rebels also\nagainst the Lycaeum.\" St. Thomas had, however, to confute the errors\nof Aristotle, and of Abelard and others who had followed them, while\nhe set forth the great truths of reason which he taught. It was in\n1248 that he published a comment on the \"Ethics.\" He had himself, says\nOzanam, the learning and the weight of Aristotle; his power of\nanalysis and classification, and the same sobriety of language. He had\nalso studied the Timaeus of Plato, the doctrines of Albert, Alexander\nHales, and John of Salisbury. He followed the school of St. Augustin,\nand drew from St. Gregory his rule of morals. His comments on the\nSentences contain a methodical course of philosophy, as his _Summa_\ncontains an abridgment of divinity. In an extract given by Ozanam, St.\nThomas says, faith considers beings in relation to God; philosophy, as\nthey {695} are in themselves. Philosophy studies second causes; faith,\nthe first cause alone. In philosophy the notion of God is sought from\nthe knowledge of creatures, so that the notion of God is second to\nthat of his creatures; faith teaches first the notion of God, and\nreveals in him the universal order of which he is the centre, and so\nends by the knowledge of creatures; and this is the most perfect\nmethod, because human understanding is thus assimilated to the divine;\nwhich contemplating itself contemplates all things in itself.\nTheology, therefore, only borrows from philosophy illustrations of the\ndogmas she offers to our faith.\n\nIt was in 1265 that, at the request of St. Raymond de Pennafort, St.\nThomas wrote the _Summa Theologies_ against the infidels in Spain; a\nbook which has ever since been considered as a perfect body of\ntheology and the manual of the saints. \"In the philosophy of St.\nBonaventure,\" says Ozanam, \"the leading guide was perhaps rather the\ndivine love than the researches of intellect.\" St. Thomas combined all\nthe faculties under the rule of a lofty meditation and a solemn\nreason, uniting the abstract perceptions beheld by the understanding\nwith the images of external things received by the senses. \"It was a\nvast encyclopaedia of moral sciences, in which was said all that can\nbe known of God, of man and his relations to God; in short, _Summa\ntotius theologies_. This monument, harmonious though diverse, colossal\nin its dimensions, and magnificent in its plan, remained unfinished,\nlike all the great political, literary, and architectural creations of\nthe middle age, which seem only to be shown and not suffered to\nexist.\" And the Doctor Angelicus left the vast outline incomplete.\nThat outline is to be appreciated only by the learned; the ignorant\nmay guess its greatness by a catalogue, however meagre, of its\ncontents. In the first part, or the natural, St. Thomas treats of the\nnature of God and of creatures; his essence, his attributes, and the\nmystery of the Holy Trinity; then, in relation to his creatures, as\ntheir Creator and Preserver. In the second, or moral, part he treats\nof general principles, of virtues and vices, of the movement of the\nreasonable creature toward God, of his chief end, and on the qualities\nof the actions by which he can attain it, of the theological and moral\nvirtues. In the third, or theological, part he examines the means of\nattaining God, the incarnation and the sacraments. In the _Summa_,\nsays Ozanam, \"the notions of things lead to the attributes of the\ndivinity, unity, goodness, and truth; thus, natural theology arrived\nat the unity as well as the attributes of God, while from his action\nis deduced his Personality and Trinity. Then follows the nature of\ngood and bad angels, of souls in a separate state; and then the\nscience of man considered as a compound being of soul and body,\nendowed with intellect for receiving impressions from the divine light\nabove, and from its reflection on things below. He is also endowed\nwith desire, by which he is formed to seek goodness and happiness, but\nis free in will to chose vice or virtue; and the rejection of sin, and\nacquisition of virtue, in a life regulated by divine human law, is a\nshadow of life in heaven. Enough has been said to show how lofty was\nthe teaching of the saint; to whose invocation large indulgences are\nattached, and who had the task of composing the office used on the\nfestival of Corpus Domini. The great object of his adoration and\ncontemplation was the mystery of the real presence; and his _Adoro Te\ndevote_ may be used as an act of worship at the holiest moment of the\nsacrifice of the altar. The ecstasy of his joy in communion is\nexpressed in the _Gratias Tibi ago_; and he declared his faith in the\nmystery as he lay on the ashes where he died. And this pure faith is\nrecorded by Raphael, who represents him in his picture of the 'Dispute\non the Blessed Eucharist' among the doctors of all ages before the\nmiraculous host.\"\n\n{696}\n\nLike all other saints, he sought detachment by mortification, and the\nlove of God by prayer. His principle was, that prayer must precede\nstudy, because more is learnt from the crucifix than from books; and\nhis last maxim was, that in order to avoid being separated from God by\nsin, a man must walk as in the sight of God and prepared for judgment.\nWhen he laid aside his religious studies to prepare for eternity, he\nused the words of St. Augustin: \"Then shall I truly live when I am\nfull of thee and thy love; now am I a burden to myself, because I am\nnot entirely full of thee.\"\n\nMystic theology was now carried to perfection by Gersen, abbot of the\nBenedictine monastery of Verceuil from 1220 to 1240. Many attribute to\nhim the authorship of the \"Imitation of Christ;\" there are, however, a\nnumber of others who do not agree with this opinion. The \"Imitation\"\nis generally ranked as coming very close after the inspired writings.\nWhat is said of the interior life is more or less intelligible to\nthose who are endeavoring after perfection, but must be unintelligible\nto any who have not the faith: _\"Una vox librorum\"_ (iii. 43), says\nthe author; but the one voice does not teach all alike, for he who is\nwithin is the teacher of truth. The four books are in the hands of\nall. The contents of the first are on the conduct of men as to the\nexterior world, and the qualities necessary for the following of\nChrist--humility, detachment, charity, and obedience; then grace will\nbe found, not in external things, but within, in a mind calm,\nobedient, and seeking not to adapt but to master circumstances. The\nsecond teaches him who turns from creatures that the kingdom of God is\nwithin, and that the government of this inner world is the science of\nperfection: \"Give room to Christ and refuse entrance to others; then\nwill man be free amid the chaos, and creatures will be to him only the\n_speculum vitae_.\" Seek Christ in all, and you will find him in all;\nseek self, and you will find it everywhere: one thing is above all,\nthat leaving all you leave self. In the third book the soul listens to\nthe internal voice of God, who makes known to her that he is her\nsalvation; and she therefore prays for the one gift of divine love. It\nis impossible, perhaps not desirable, to repeat the devout aspirations\nof this divine love. May those who read the holy words receive their\nimport through the light of grace! The fourth book relates to the\nunion of the soul with her Lord through sacramental communion; and\nthis can only be read in the hours of devotion.\n\nIt is presumptuous to say even thus much of the great saints who lived\nin the thirteenth century, how is it possible to undervalue the\nprogress they made in all the highest powers of the soul? or who can\nspeak of the schools of the middle ages as deserving of contempt in\ndays which cannot comprehend them?\n\nOzanam desires to show that Dante was trained in this exalted\nlearning, and has embodied what he learnt in his _Divina Commedia_. He\nspeaks of the full development attained by scholastic teaching in\nthose great teachers, after whom no efforts were made to extend the\nlimits of human knowledge; and he speaks of the perplexities which\narose with the anti-papal schism. \"It was to the calm and majestic\nphilosophy of the thirteenth century,\" says Ozanam, \"that Dante turned\nhis eyes; and his great poem declared to an age, which understood him\nnot, the contemplative, ascetic, and symbolical teaching of the mystic\nschool, which he had studied in the _Compendium_ of St. Bonaventure\nand the _Summa_ of St. Thomas;\" and he proves by an analysis of that\nwonderful poem that it contains not only the great truths of\nrevelation, but the spirit of the decaying mediaeval philosophy:\n\n  \"O voi che avete gli intelletti sani,\n  Mirate la dottrina che ascende\n  Sotto 'l velame del versi strani.\"\n\n------\n\n{697}\n\nTranslated from the Revue du Monde Catholique.\n\nWHAT CAME OF A PRAYER.\n\n\nIn the fifth story of an old house in the Rue du Four-Saint-Germain,\nlay a sick woman whose pale emaciated face bore traces of age and\nsorrow. Beside her bed was a young man, whose tender care showed him\nto be her son. The furniture of the apartment, though of the plainest\nkind, was neatly and carefully arranged, while the crucifix at the\nhead of the bed and a statue of the Blessed Virgin marked the\nChristian family. The youth had just given his mother a spoonful of\ngruel, and she had fallen asleep smiling on her son--that quiet sleep\nattendant on recovery from severe illness. He knelt to thank God for\nhaving saved his mother's life, and while he prays, and she sleeps,\nwithout disturbing the prayer of the one, or the sleep of the other, I\nwill tell you their story in a few words.\n\nThe father was a printer at Sceaux. Industrious, prudent, of\nscrupulous integrity, loving justice and fearing God, he acquired by\nhis honest labor a competence for his old age and a fair prospect for\nhis son. Losses, failures, and unforeseen misfortunes ruined him, and\nhe found himself bankrupt. This blow sensibly affected him, but did\nnot overwhelm him. He was offered a situation as compositor in a\nprinting office in Paris, resumed the workman's dress, and\ncourageously began to work. His wife, as strong as he, never uttered a\ncomplaint or regret. Their son was withdrawn from college to learn his\nfather's trade, and although so young, his heart was penetrated with\nprofound religious faith. Thus lived this humble household, resigned\nand happy, because they loved each other, feared God, and accepted\ntrials. Several years elapsed, years of toil in their endeavors to\nliquidate the debts of the past: fruitful, however, in domestic joys.\nThe child became a young man, and fulfilled the promises of his\nchildhood. God blessed these afflicted parents in their son.\n\nSuddenly the father fell sick and died. Those of us who have wept at\nthe death-bed of a father, know the anguish of those hours when we\ncontemplate for the last time the beloved features which we are to see\nno more on earth; the impressions of which grief time softens but can\nnever efface. For those who live entirely in the domestic circle, the\nseparation, in breaking the heart, breaks at the same time the tie to\nlife. Left thus alone, the mother and son were more closely united,\neach gave to the other the love formerly bestowed upon him who was no\nmore. Jacques Durand was now twenty-five years old. His countenance\nwas frank and open, but serious and grave. He had the esteem of his\nemployer, the respect of his companions, and the sympathy of all who\nknew him. He was not ashamed to be a mechanic, knowing the hidden\ncharm of labor when that labor is offered to God. During the month of\nhis mother's illness he did not leave her pillow. The physician\npronounced her, the day before our story opens, out of danger. You\nunderstand now why the young man prayed with so much fervor while his\nmother slept. His devotions were interrupted by a knock at the door.\nIt was Mme. Antoine, the porter's wife, a little loquacious, but\nobliging to her tenants, in a word, such a portress as we find only in\nbooks. Jacques, who was going out, had requested her to take his place\nbeside his mother. She entered quietly for fear of disturbing the\npatient, received the directions which the young man gave her in a low\nvoice, and seating herself near the bedside, busied her skilful\nfingers with her knitting. Old Antoine, the porter, stopped our friend\nJacques at the foot {698} of the staircase. He was polite, benevolent,\nattached to his tenants, did not despise them if they were poor, and\nrendered them a service if he could. He was an old soldier of 1814. He\ndelighted to speak of the French campaign, wore with pride the medal\nof St. Helena, and showed a seal which he received at Champaubert. \"In\nremembrance of Napoleon,\" he says, raising his hat and straightening\nhis bent figure. I don't know of any fault that he had except relating\ntoo often the battle of Champaubert.\n\n\"Well,\" said he, \"how is Mme. Durand?\" \"Much better,\" replied the\nyouth, \"she has just fallen into a quiet sleep, which the doctor\ndeclares favorable to her recovery.\" \"God be praised,\" resumes\nAntoine. \"Beg pardon, M. Jacques, I can tell you now Mme. Durand has\nmade us very uneasy.\" In saying this he gave the young man a cordial\nshake of the hand, which the latter heartily returned.\n\nIn going out Jacques took the Rue du Vieux-Colembier, and entered the\noffice of the Mont-de-piete at the corner of La Croix-Rouge.\n\nDuring his mother's illness he had spent many hard-earned savings, for\nyou already know he had imposed on himself the obligation of paying\nthe debts of the failure, and beside, detained at home with his\nmother, he had been unable to earn anything during the month. Still\nthe doctor had to be paid, and medicines bought; the small sum\nadvanced by his employer was nearly exhausted, and he was now on his\nway to pawn a silver fork and spoon. A young girl stood beside him in\nthe office, and as there were many to be served before himself, he\nrelieved the weariness of waiting by watching her. Her cap had no\nribbons, but was gracefully placed on her light hair; a woollen dress,\nnot new, nor of the latest fashion, but clean and well kept, a wedding\nring (doubtless her mother's legacy), and a plain shawl, completed her\npoor toilette. Jacques was attracted by her modest air. Some\nindustrious seamstress, he said to himself. As his turn had now come,\nhe presented the fork and spoon--the value was ascertained--and the\nsum paid. The girl, following him, drew from a napkin a half worn\ncloak, which she offered with a timid air.\n\n\"Ten francs,\" says the clerk.\n\n\"Oh!\" said she blushing, \"if you could give me fifteen for it! See,\nsir, the cloak is still good.\"\n\n\"Well, twelve francs; will you trade at that price?\"\n\nHaving given her assent, she took the money and the receipt, and went\nout. Jacques preceded her, and before passing out the door, he saw her\ndry a tear. \"She is weeping,\" he said to himself; \"I suppose the rent\nis unpaid. Poor girl! Stupid clerk!\" With these reflections he arrived\nat the druggist's; he bought the remedies prescribed by the doctor;\nthen certain that Mme. Antoine was taking good care of his charge, he\nthought he should have time to say a prayer at the church of St.\nSulpice. Jacques had a particular devotion to the Blessed Virgin. It\nis to her intercession he attributed his mother's cure: it is before\nher altar that he knelt. His prayer was an act of thanksgiving and a\npetition for a new favor. His mother wished him to marry; he had often\ndreamed of cheering her old age by the affection of a daughter, and he\nasked the Virgin to guide him in his choice.\n\nHappiness disposes the soul to charity. He thought of the motherless,\nthe suffering, and the sorrowful, and prayed for them. He remembered\nthe young girl he had just seen weeping, and prayed for her. At this\nmoment, a woman kneeling in front of him rose, and as she passed him\nto leave the church he recognized the young girl. Prayer has the\nsecret of drying our tears; her face had resumed its usual serenity.\nHe still prayed for her: \"Holy Virgin, watch over that child, grant\nthat she may be ever pious and chaste, and all else shall be added to\nher.\" As he prepared to leave, he saw a letter beside the chair where\n{699} the girl had knelt. He made haste to rejoin her in order to\nrestore it; but she had already left the church. He put it in his\npocket, intending to burn it when he reached home.\n\nThat evening, as he sat by his mother's side while she slept,\nhere-viewed the events of the day, according to his custom,\npreparatory to his examination of conscience. Thus he recalled the\nincidents of the morning, and having drawn the letter from his pocket\nprepared to burn it. He approached the fire and was about to throw it\nin. What restrains his hand? In the letter he feels something--a piece\nof gold, perhaps. It was not sealed; he opened it, and drew out a\nmedal of the Blessed Virgin. The open letter excited his curiosity; he\nwas tempted to read it. Do not blame him too severely, reader, if he\nyields to the temptation. He has finished his perusal, and I see he is\naffected. His emotion excites my curiosity, and I am tempted to read\nit in my turn. Will you be angry with me, or will you be accomplices\nin my fault? Here are the contents of the letter:\n\n  TO M. LUCIEN RIGAUT,\n  CORPORAL IN THE 110TH REGIMENT, METZ.\n\n  \"MY DEAR BROTHER:--I cannot send you the hundred francs you ask me\n  for. Do not blame me, it is not my fault; work is not well paid, and\n  everything is very dear in Paris, and you must know last month I had\n  to pay something to the man who takes care of mamma's tomb. When you\n  return I am sure you will be much grieved if that is neglected. You\n  shall receive fifty francs. Here are thirty from me; the remainder\n  is from the good Abbe Garnier whom I went to see, and who wishes\n  also to assist his extravagant child. At the same time he gave me\n  for you a medal of the Blessed Virgin, which you will find in my\n  letter, and which you must wear on your neck. That, my naughty\n  brother, will preserve you from danger and keep you from sin.\n  Promise me never more to associate with bad companions, who lead you\n  to the cafes and who are not too pious, I am sure. You must say your\n  prayers morning and night, go to mass on Sunday, confess, and live\n  like a good Christian. I will not reproach you for having neglected\n  your duties, but I am grieved, and if you could have seen your poor\n  sister weep I am sure you would reform. Do you remember when mamma\n  was about to leave us, and we were beside her bed restraining our\n  tears that she might have as a last joy in this world the smile of\n  her children, how she made us promise to be always good and\n  religious? Never forget that promise, Lucien, for the good God\n  punishes perjured children. What will you think of my letter? Oh,\n  you will call me a little scold. You will be angry at first, then\n  you will pardon me; you will put the medal around your neck, and you\n  will write me a good letter to restore gaiety to my heart. You do\n  not know how well I have arranged my room. When you return you will\n  recognize our old furniture. Mamma's portrait hangs over the bureau,\n  and I have placed our first communion pictures on each side. When I\n  have money I buy flowers, and for four sous I give to my abode the\n  sweet odor of the country. Shall I tell you how I employ my time? I\n  am an early riser. First my housekeeping, then my breakfast;\n  afterward I hear mass, and from the church to my day's work. Thanks\n  to the recommendation of the Abbe Garnier and of the sister at the\n  Patronage, I do not want for work. In the evening, before returning,\n  I say a prayer in the church; then my supper, and a little reading\n  or mending till bed-time. On Sunday after mass I go to the cemetery\n  to pray at mamma's tomb, afterward to the Patronage, where we enjoy\n  ourselves much. I wish you could see how good the sister is, how she\n  spoils me, how gently she scolds me when I am not good, for in spite\n  of all my sermons it sometimes happens that I deserve to be scolded.\n  You see, brother, that I have no time to be sad. If in the evening I\n  feel {700} lonely, I think of God, who is always near us, of my good\n  friends, of you, whom I shall see next year, and these sweet\n  thoughts make me forget the isolation of my little room. How proud I\n  shall be to go out leaning on your arm, and to walk with you on\n  Sunday in the Luxembourg! With the corporal's ribbons and the\n  Italian medal, I am sure everybody will turn round to look at you.\n  Do you know I have made a novena that you may be made sergeant\n  before the beginning of next year? I will send you every month ten\n  francs to finish paying your debt. Have no scruples in accepting\n  them; it is superfluous money which would have served to buy\n  gew-gaws. You do me a favor in taking it,  as I shall be prevented\n  from becoming a coquette. What shall I say more to you? Be good, be\n  a Christian; but I have already said that. Do not forget me, but\n  write often. We must love one another, since each of us is all the\n  family of the other. Farewell, Lucien.\n    \"Your affectionate sister,\n    MADELEINE.\"\n\nI do not regret having been curious. I understand the emotion of\nJacques. I am also moved. This letter from a sister to a brother, so\nsimple and naive, breathes in every word the perfume of sincere piety,\nand in each line is found the candor of an innocent heart. When\nJacques had finished reading it, he still lingered before throwing it\ninto the fire. He wished to read it again. He read it several times;\nthen he shut it up in a drawer, and put the medal around his neck. He\nwas charmed. He loved this simple letter, and he loved, almost without\nknowing it, this child whose thoughts had been accidentally made known\nto him. He guessed what the sister did not tell her brother, the\npawning of the cloak to complete the fifty francs, the privations to\nwhich she submits in order to send every month the promised ten\nfrancs. \"I understand now,\" said he, \"the secret of her tears. Three\nfrancs are wanting for the required sum.\"\n\nHe was still more moved by her tears now that he had the secret of\nthem. \"A good Christian girl,\" thought he. In his evening prayer she\nwas not forgotten.\n\nThe following day, as his mother was tolerably restored, he returned\nto the printing office. As he worked he thought of Madeleine, and was\nsad that he should see her no more. It was a folly, but who has not\nbeen foolish? A little folly is the poetry of youth.\n\nTime passed, the impression grew fainter, but was not effaced. It was\nlike a dream we try to retain on awakening, but whose brilliant colors\nfade by the light of day. Mme. Durand was fully restored, but although\noccupied with the care of the household, she did not go out, and this\nexplains why on Easter Sunday Jacques was alone at high mass in the\nchurch of St. Sulpice. This festival, when the faithful are united in\none common joy, disposes the heart to serene impressions. After having\nthanked God for his mother's recovery, he dreamed of a new affection,\nand begged the blessed Virgin to guide him in his choice. Mass being\nended, a young girl on her knees in front of him rose to leave the\nchurch, and he recognized Madeleine. He left in his turn, and during\nthe day he thought of that sweet face, which had twice appeared to\nhim, as if in answer to his prayer. It is Madeleine whom he will\nmarry, her smile shall make the joy of his Christian fireside; still,\nhow is he to see her again? He knows not; the Blessed Virgin, when she\nchooses, will bring him back to her.\n\nIn their evening chats, when his mother made plans of marriage for\nhim, he never uttered Madeleine's name.\n\nAgain, on one of those mild days which are the charm of the month of\nApril, he was walking in the Luxembourg. It was a beautiful Sunday,\nthe lilacs were in flower, and the old garden seemed rejuvenated in\nits new dress. As he thought of Madeleine, {701} two verses from\nBrizeux recurred to his memory:\n\n  \"Vienne Avril, et jeunesse, amours, fleurs sont ecloses;\n  Dieu sous la meme loi mit les plus belles choses.\"\n\nAt the turn of a walk, in a fresh, simple dress, he saw her once more.\nWhen she had passed he followed her. He knew not why himself, but an\nindescribable charm attracted and retained him near her. He left the\nLuxembourg, went down the Boulevard Mont Parnasse, and saw her enter a\nhouse which he recognized as an asylum for young work-women.\n\nOne morning, as he stopped at Antoine's lodging, he saw on his face\ntraces of sorrow.\n\n\"You seem sad,\" he said to him; \"has any misfortune happened to you?\"\n\n\"No,\" replied Antoine, \"but I am grieved. A young woman, beg pardon,\nwho has lived above for two months, has just fallen ill, of bad fever,\nthe doctor says. She is a good girl, M. Jacques--a good industrious\ngirl. She has worked hard and sat up late, which brought on fever, and\nwhen I think of it I am troubled.\"\n\n\"Is she alone?\" asked Jacques.\n\n\"Entirely alone; but so gay, of a disposition so sweet, that though\npoorly fed and overworked she never complained. When she passed,\nmorning and night, she had always a pleasant word for old Antoine. You\nwill not believe it, but for three days she has not been down. I have\nbeen as much afflicted as if she were my own child.\"\n\nSo saying, he wiped a tear which fell on his white mustache.\n\nDuring the day Jacques recalled the words of the old man. He was sad\nat the thought of the poor girl, sick without a friend near her, for\neven Antoine was detained at the lodge during his wife's absence. He\ndid not know her (and that was not surprising, as in Paris two\nneighbors often live strangers to each other) and had never seen her:\nhe was troubled that she suffered, and that no one was near her to\nalleviate her suffering. He resolved to speak to his mother in the\nevening of her case, that she might go and take care of her. He\nthought how Madeleine might fall sick, and have no one near her. He\ndetermined to confide to his mother the secret of his love, and to beg\nher to see Madeleine and obtain her consent to their marriage.\n\nIn the evening he informed his mother of their neighbor's illness, and\nthe next day Mme. Durand took her place at her bedside. It was a\ndangerous illness, but youth, good care, prayer, and a novena to the\nBlessed Virgin triumphed, and at the end of fifteen days she began to\nimprove. During this time Mme. Durand devoted herself to this sweet,\npatient child. When her care was no longer necessary she continued to\ngo every morning to her patient's room. They worked and talked\ntogether. Mme. Durand spoke of her son and she of her mother whom she\nhad lost, and insensibly a mutual affection sprang up between them.\nJacques listened with interest to his mother's praise of the sick\nchild, and was for a moment distracted from his remembrance of\nMadeleine. He had, moreover, that modesty of true love which shrank\nfrom the avowal of its tenderness. His mother knew nothing of his\nlove, and touched by the sweetness and patience of the young girl whom\nshe had nursed, hoped she might yet become her son's wife.\n\nOne evening in the month of June he was walking with his mother in the\ngardens of the Luxembourg. He remembered his last meeting with\nMadeleine, which recalled these verses of Brizeux:\n\n                \"Un jeune homme\n  Natlf du meme eudroit, travailleur, econome\n  En voyant sa belle ame, en voyant sou beau corps\n  L'airnee: les vieilles gens firent lea deux accords.\"\n\nHe was about to speak to his mother of Madeleine when she said to him,\n\"My son, you are entering your {702} twenty-sixth year, it is time for\nyou to marry, and if you wish, I should like to call our neighbor, the\nyoung girl whom I have nursed, my daughter.\"\n\n\"Mother,\" said Jacques, \"I cannot marry her, I love another.\" He then\nrelated his simple story, and pronounced for the first time\nMadeleine's name. Mme. Durand listened much moved. She understood and\nshared the trusting faith of her son. \"My child,\" said she, \"it shall\nbe as you desire. I will go on Sunday to the Patronage.\"\n\nThe week passed. Mme. Durand continued to see her patient often, and\nshe, nearly restored, came sometimes to her apartment at the time\nJacques was at the printing office, for his mother wished to prevent a\nmeeting which might perhaps trouble an innocent heart. But on\nSaturday, having returned sooner than usual, he found the young girl\nin his mother's room. They conversed a moment, and she withdrew. In\nthe pallid face he recognized the sweet countenance of Madeleine. When\nshe had gone, he embraced his mother, weeping and smiling at the same\ntime. \"It is she, it is my sweet Madeleine.\" His mother, returning his\nembrace, exclaimed, \"She shall be your wife and my daughter.\"\n\nI must tell you how, on Jacques' return from work, Mme. Durand went\nfor Madeleine, how they passed many a pleasant evening in conversation\nor in reading a good book, and under their mother's eye loved each\nother with a pure and earnest love.\n\nAt the end of a month Mme. Durand obtained the consent of Madeleine,\nbut she said nothing to her of her son's secret, of their meeting, of\nthe letter, of the feelings so long cherished, nor of the protection\nof Mary, who had brought together these two Christian souls. This she\nleft for him to relate one day when he was alone with his betrothed.\nShe listened much affected, and you may be surprised to learn that she\nforgot to ask for the lost letter and the medal of the Virgin.\n\nMme. Durand saw the good abbe and the sister at the Patronage, and\nthey approved the marriage. The consent of the soldier brother was\nasked and obtained.\n\nThe marriage was to take place in a few days. \"Beg pardon,\" says\nAntoine, \"these two young people were made for each other--a fine\nmatch really. You will not believe me, but I love them as if they were\nmy own children.\"\n\nLucien came to Paris for the wedding. From the first he made a\nconquest of Antoine. It turned out that Antoine too had served in the\n110th. The two heroes talked of their campaigns. One related the\nbattle of Champaubert, the other that of Solferino. The medal of St.\nHelena fraternized with the Italian medal; they drank to the laurels\nof the old 110th, to the triumphs of the new. The veteran and the\nconscript became the best friends in the world.\n\nThe great day arrived. The abbe blessed the union and Antoine gave\naway the bride. He straightened his bent figure; he put a new ribbon\nin his medal. He was prouder than on the evening of Champaubert, when\nNapoleon said, \"Soldiers of the 110th, you are heroes?\" Brother\nLucien, with his corporal's badge and his Italian medal, added much to\nthe brilliancy of the cortege. Mesdames Durand and Antoine put on\ntheir richest dresses. What shall we say of Madeleine in her bridal\ndress? of her veil, and the wreath upon her auburn tresses? of the\nsweet face reflecting the purity of an innocent heart and a chaste\nlove? of the tears which flow when the heart is too full? of the\nsacred hour when this Christian couple unite in a common prayer?\n\nNow they are married they do not seek pleasures abroad. Their\nhappiness is found in their daily labor, their evening conversation,\nor reading; on Sunday, after mass, a walk to the Tuileries, while\ntheir mother at their side smiles on their love. Their hearts are\ndrawn so near together that {703} they beat in unison, they think and\nfeel at the same time. At last a child makes one more joy in this\njoyous house--one stronger bond between these united souls. Such is\ntheir pure affection: a love which age can never wither, a love born\nof a prayer, and blest by God.\n\nJacques has reaped the fruit of his labor; he has paid all the debts\nof the past, and ease and plenty have returned to the household. He\nhopes to be soon taken into partnership with his employer.\n\nThey do not wish to leave the old house in the Rue du\nFour-Saint-Germain, so filled with sweet memories, but they have taken\na lower floor, they have a large apartment, and are almost rich. The\npoor have their share of their riches.\n\nLucien, the soldier, has entirely reformed, and has risen to the rank\nof sergeant. Perhaps he may yet wear an officer's epaulettes.\n\nOld Antoine grows old, but his heart remains young; his figure is more\nbent, but he still straightens it when he speaks of Napoleon, and\nrelates to our friends the battle of Champaubert. He was the godfather\nof the little boy. \"A fine child,\" said he \"Beg pardon, we will make a\ngeneral of him.\" \"I am willing, I am sure,\" said Madeleine, \"but we\nmust first make him a Christian.\"\n\n------\n\nFrom The London Review.\n\nCATHOLIC PROGRESS IN LONDON.\n\n\nThere are few questions upon which there exists a greater variety of\nopinion, and with regard to which such contradictory statements are\npublished, as upon the increase of Roman Catholicism in the\nmetropolis. There are those on one hand who believe that it has made\nno progress at all, and that the rumors of \"conversions,\" and even\nthose Roman Catholic buildings which have of late years sprung up in\nsuch abundance around us, are not to be taken as proofs of such an\nincrease in the numbers of Roman Catholics as the latter at least seem\nto indicate. Others believe without doubting that the Catholic Church\nis silently and energetically spreading its ramifications over the\nmetropolis, and that there is hardly a household of any respectability\nin which its agents, in some form or other, have not contrived to get\na footing; while there are persons who go so far as to assert that\nmany of the Protestant clergy themselves are the direct emissaries of\nRome, doing her work, and doing it consciously--nay, doing it under\ncompact--while receiving the pay of the National Church. We believe\nthat the truth will be found to lie between these extreme views. Not\nonly has the Church of Rome gained ground in London, but it is\nsteadily progressing, even at the present time, though by no means at\nsuch a rate, except in certain parishes, as to occasion the slightest\ndanger to the Protestant cause, if only a moderate amount of energy\nand good will is shown by the Reformed denominations in securing their\nflocks within their own folds. We have already stated our belief that\nthe fact of a clergyman holding High or Low Church views is not in any\nmanner whatever necessarily connected with the increase of Catholicism\namong his congregation, but that such increase is owing either to the\nlack of a sufficient staff of the Protestant clergy to {704} repel its\nadvances, or to the apathy or inefficiency of the incumbent, or, as\nmay be especially shown in some wealthy districts, to that mysterious\nwant of power in the clergy of the Church of England over the minds of\nthe rich and influential of their parishioners. And that this view is\nnot without some basis in fact, will be seen when we have described\nthe present relative position of the Catholic and Anglican Churches in\nthe wealthy, aristocratic, and populous parish of Kensington,\ncomprising as it does the three wards of Notting-hill, Kensington, and\nBrompton.\n\nFormerly, for the accommodation of the whole of the Roman Catholics of\nthe parish of Kensington, there was but one small chapel near the High\nstreet, which appeared amply sufficient for the members of that creed.\nBut ten or twelve years ago a Roman Catholic builder purchased, at an\nenormous price, a plot of ground about three acres in extent beside\nthe church of the Holy Trinity, Brompton. For a time considerable\nmystery prevailed as to the uses it was to be applied to; but, shortly\nafter the buildings were commenced, they were discovered to be for the\nfuture residence and church of the Oratorian fathers, then established\nin King William street, Strand. As soon as a portion of the building\nwas finished, the fathers removed to it from their former dwelling;\nand the chapel, a small and commodious erection, was opened for divine\nservice. At first the congregation was of the scantiest description;\neven on Sundays at high mass, small as the chapel was, it was\nfrequently only half filled, while, on week days, at many of the\nservices, it was no uncommon circumstance to find the attendances\nscarcely more numerous than the number of priests serving at the\naltar. By degrees the congregation increased, till the chapel was\nfound too small for their accommodation, and extensive additions were\nmade to it; but these, again, were soon filled to overflowing, and\nfurther alterations had to be made, till at last the building was\ncapable of holding without difficulty from 2,000 to 2,500 persons. It\nis now frequently so crowded at high mass that it is difficult for an\nindividual entering it after the commencement of the service to find\neven standing room. In the meantime the monastery itself, if that is\nthe proper term, was completed--a splendid appearance it presents--\nand we believe is now fully occupied.\n\nThe Roman Catholic population in the parish, or mission, under the\nspiritual direction of the fathers of the Oratory, now comprises\nbetween 7,000 and 8,000 souls. The average attendance at mass on\nSundays is about 5,000, and the average number of communions for the\nlast two years has been about 45,000 annually. But in addition to this\nchurch, Kensington has three others, St. Mary's, Upper Holland street,\nSt. Simon Stock, belonging to the Carmelite Friars, and the church of\nSt. Francis Assissi in Notting Hill. Of monasteries, or religious\ncommunities of men, it has the Oratorians before mentioned, and the\nDiscalced Carmelites, in Vicarage place. Of convents of ladies, it has\nthe Assumption in Kensington square, the Poor Clares Convent in Edmond\nterrace, the Franciscan Convent in Portobello road, the Sisters of\nMisericorde, 195 Brompton road, and the Sisters of Jesus, 4 Holland\nvillas. Of schools, the Roman Catholics possess, in the parish of\nKensingtion, the Orphanage in the Fulham road, the Industrial School\nof St. Vincent de Paul, as well as the large Industrial Schools for\ngirls in the southern ward. All these schools are very numerously\nattended, the gross number of pupils amounting to 1,200, those of the\nOratory alone being 1,000. The kindness and consideration shown by the\nRoman Catholic teachers to the children of the poor is above all\npraise, not only in Kensington, but in all localities where they are\nunder their charge.\n\nIt might be imagined from this account of the Roman Catholic\ninstitutions in Kensington, that a general {705} rush had been made\nupon that parish, and that the surrounding districts were\ncomparatively free from Roman Catholics. Such, however, is very far\nfrom being the case. In the union of Fulham and Hammersmith we have\nthe Roman Catholic church of St. Thomas of Canterbury, the church of\nthe Holy Trinity, Brook-green, and the church of Our Lady of Grace,\nTurnham-green. Of monasteries there are the St. Mary's Training\nCollege and the Brothers of Mercy, and for ladies there is the order\nof the Good Shepherd. Of charities and schools they have the Holy\nTrinity alms-houses on Brook-green, a home for aged females, a refuge\nfor female penitents, most admirably managed and producing a most\nbeneficial effect, an excellent reformatory for criminal boys, the\nlarge industrial schools of St. Vincent de Paul, and a home, St.\nJoseph's, for destitute boys. In Bays-water there is the cathedral of\nSt. Mary's of the Angels (of which the celebrated Dr. Manning is the\nsuperior) and the convent of Notre Dame de Sion. In Chelsea there is\nthe church of St. Mary's, Cadogan terrace, a convent for the Sisters\nof Mercy, another for the Third Order of Servites, as well as two well\nconducted and numerously attended schools.\n\nIn the united parishes of St. Margaret's and St. John's, Westminster,\na few years since, the priests opened their campaign with considerable\nenergy. In addition to their church in the Horsferry road, which was\nopened in 1813, they erected those of St. Peter's and St. Edmond's in\nPalace street, the superior priest of the latter being the celebrated\nFather Roberts, a man not only respected for the energy he shows in\nthe cause of his religion, but beloved by all classes for his\nphilanthropy. To these some schools and convents were added, the most\ncelebrated of the latter being that of the Sisters of Charity in\nVictoria street. At first the priests seemed to be sanguine of success\nin the parish; but their advance was met by men of as much ability,\ncourage, and energy as themselves.\n\nOn the Surrey side of the water the Catholic Church has the\nmagnificent cathedral dedicated to St. George, in St. George's Fields;\nthe church of the Most Holy Trinity, Parker's road, Dockhead,\nBermondsey; the church of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception,\nTrinity road, Rotherithe; that of Our Lady of La Salette and St.\nJoseph, Melior street, Southwark; and the church of the Sacred Heart\nof Jesus, Windham street, Camberwell; beside several others in\nPeckham, Clapham, Lambeth, and the surrounding districts. Of\ncommunities of men there are the Capuchines at Peckham and at Clapham,\nthe Redemptorists, and the Brothers of the Christian Schools. Of\nconvents they have the Religious of the Faithful Virgin at Norwood,\nwhich also comprises an orphanage; the order of the Sisters of Mercy\nin Bermondsey; the order of the Sisters of the Christian Retreat, St.\nJoseph's, Kennington; the Little Sisters of the Poor, Fentiman road,\nLambeth; beside one or two others of minor importance. It should also\nbe remarked that all these establishments, with one or two exceptions,\nhave sprung up within the last ten or twenty years. Of the numbers of\nthe congregations of the different churches it would be difficult to\nform a just idea, but they are certainly very great; that properly\nattached to St. George's cathedral alone we have been assured, on most\nreliable Roman Catholic authority, amounting to 12,000 or 13,000. The\nnumber of children attending the schools is doubtless proportionably\ngreat.\n\nIn the north-eastern portion of the metropolis, we find the Roman\nCatholics, although they have lately built several new churches, are\nfully occupied in holding their own ground without exerting themselves\nto make converts. And here, opposed as we are to their creed on\ndoctrinal points, it would be unjust to withhold our meed of praise to\nthe exertions of the priests in relieving the temporal miseries of\n{706} their poor. It would be difficult to imagine charitable efforts\ncarried on more indefatigably or nobly. Few who have not visited and\npersonally inspected the different courts and alleys in the\nneighborhood of Spitalfields, Bethnal-green, St. George's-in-the-East,\nand Ratcliffe Highway, inhabited as they are by the poor Irish, can\nhave an idea of the abject poverty which reigns in them, or the amount\nof patience, courage, and Christian feeling necessary to relieve it.\nYet all this is cheerfully performed by the Roman Catholic priesthood,\ntheir energies appearing to increase in proportion as the difficulties\nand dangers before them become greater. It would perhaps be an\ninjustice to their body in this district to select any for notice in\npreference to the rest; but we cannot refrain from making special\nmention of the labors of the Rev. Father Kelley, of Ratcliffe Highway,\nand the Rev. Father Chaurain, of Spitalfields, into the results of\nwhose exertions we have made personal investigation.\n\nIn the northern districts of the metropolis, especially in Islington\nand its surrounding neighborhoods, the Roman Catholics appear to have\nmade considerable progress. They have lately built several new\nchurches as well as houses for religious communities, both for men and\nwomen. That their progress in the metropolis is not solely the result\nof the High-Church practices in the establishment may be presumed from\nthe fact that, although the inhabitants of Islington and its vicinity\nare particularly noted for their attachment to Low-Church principles,\nCatholicism has gained more ground there than in localities where\nPuseyism is dominant. In the north-western districts it does not\nappear to have increased, though the churches are well attended, and\nthe congregations apparently very numerous. That of one of the\nlargest, Our Lady's church, in St. John's Wood, is 6,000, and the\nchildren in the schools 600. In the central districts of London Roman\nCatholic churches are very numerous and proportionately well attended;\nthose in Moorfields, and those in the neighborhood of Covent Garden\nand Piccadilly, being particularly so.\n\nOne of the most effective means employed by the Roman Catholics to\nmake the conversions is the opening of schools for the education of\nchildren of the poor; nor do they hesitate to admit that these schools\nare not only open to the children of their own persuasion, but to all\nwho may choose to avail themselves of them. This is clear from the\nspeech of the late Cardinal Wiseman at the Roman Catholic Congress\nheld at Malines in the autumn of 1863. Speaking of the hundreds of\nragged children, scarcely knowing their parents, he had been\naccustomed to meet in the different lanes and alleys of the poorer\nLondon localities, he says: \"We are doing all we can to gather these\npoor little outcasts together, and to give them Christian training.\nThe schools in which they are taught, and to which I am at present\nalluding, are themselves situated in a truly fearful spot, Charles\nstreet, Drury lane. We owe them in a great measure to the great zeal\nof the fathers of the Oratory. Their cost has been no less than\nL12,000. The Religious Sisters from Tournay, with a devotion truly\nheroic, have undertaken the care of the girls' school. For some time\npast we have had the consolation of seeing increased, by 1,000 a year,\nthe number of children attending our schools for the poor; there still\nremain 17,000 poor children who attend no school.\"\n\nThe Catholic Church judges rightly that a few years hence the children\nunder its care will not only augment the number of adult members of\nits faith, but will proportionately swell their ranks in the next\ngeneration. Nor is this danger to the Protestant cause to be despised.\nAll their schools are admirably managed, and the children in them are\ntreated with the greatest kindness and consideration. We have visited\nseveral, and in all we remarked a great affection and {707} respect\nexisting in the minds of the pupils for their teachers, the latter not\nconsidering that their duties are over when the classes are dismissed,\nbut afterward entering into their amusements and occupations with\ngreat patience and good humor. We lately visited unexpectedly the\nschool alluded to by Cardinal Wiseman, and although lessons were over\nwe found one of the masters in the large play-room busily employed in\ninstructing a dozen of the most ragged urchins it would be possible to\nfind in that squalid and impoverished locality in the mysteries of\nspinning peg-tops. Such acts of kindness to children are not forgotten\nwhen they grow up, and a better means of binding them to their faith\nwhen adults it would be impossible to imagine.\n\nIn Gate street, Lincoln's Inn-fields, is another school of the same\ndescription. We have watched its progress since its establishment, and\nmarked the great increase in the number of its scholars. It commenced\nwith very few, but must now number several hundreds. Those in\nDrury-lane have more than four hundred children, among whom, perhaps,\nnot ten before the buildings were erected were receiving any\ninstruction whatever. All the Roman Catholic charities appear to be\nadmirably managed; their orphanages especially so. Those of the\nSisters of Charity in Victoria street, Westminster, and Norwood,\nconsidering the comparatively small means at the disposal of their\npriesthood, are perfect models of what institutions of the kind ought\nto be; at the same time, it must not be imagined that the Roman\nCatholic charities in London are solely of a description calculated to\nobtain converts to their creed. Their reformatories for fallen women\nand their exertions for the relief of the sick are worthy of the\nhighest praise. An hospital, with a church attached, solely for\nchronic and incurable diseases, has for some time been established in\nGreat Ormond street, at the expense of a gentleman of wealth. The\nhospital is under the care of the prioress and sisters of the Order of\nSt. John of Jerusalem, and we never saw an infirmary of the kind\nbetter managed. A large staff of nuns nurse the sick; and not only are\ntheir numbers greater in proportion to those of the patients than in\nany of our metropolitan hospitals, but their attention and kindness to\nthose under their charge might serve as a model to many of our\nProtestant institutions of a similar character.\n\n----\n\n{708}\n\n\nFrom Chambers's Journal.\n\nA VANISHING RACE.\n\n\nThe residence of Captain C. F. Hall in the arctic regions, and his\nexplorations among the solemn and majestic wastes surrounded by the\n\"hyperborean seas,\" have invested the Esquimaux with a degree of\ninterest which they had never previously excited. The savage\ninhabitants of the more beautiful and fertile regions of the earth\nhave been observed by travellers with close and careful attention,\nwhich leads to hopeful efforts for their civilization. As the map of\nthe world is opened up to our comprehension, new schemes and prospects\nfor the advance of the human race are opened with it; savans, artists,\nmissionaries, merchants, gird themselves to the contest with the\nmaterial and moral conditions of the peoples yet, though the world's\nday has lasted so long, in their infancy, whose unknown future may\ncontain histories as brilliant as those of the civilizations of the\npresent and the past. But there is a race who have not excited such\nhopes, who have not given rise to such exertions--a race whose life of\nunimaginable hardship gives them a mysterious resemblance to the\nphantoms of mythological belief, and places them beyond the reach of\nthe sympathies of civilization by its physical conditions, the\namelioration of which is impossible. Beyond the stern barrier which\nnature has set in the northernmost part of her awful realm, behind the\nterrible rampart of snow and ice, and storm and darkness, these\ncreatures of her wrath, rather than of her bounty, dwell. To reach\ntheir land, the traveller must leave behind him every familiar object,\nand abandon every habit or need of ordinary life. He must bid farewell\nto green trees, to fertile fields, to the crops which give food to man\nand beast, to the domestic animals, to every mode of conveyance, to\nevery implement of common use, to food and clothing such as even the\npoorest and roughest sons of a less terrible clime may command; to the\nthousand voices of nature, even in its secluded nooks, It is a mockery\nto speak of the arctic regions as the land of the Esquimaux, for\nnowhere on the earth is man less sovereign. Here nature is indeed\ngrand beyond conception, but also terrible, implacable, and\nimpenetrable. She sets man aside in her awful scorn; he is a thing of\nno moment, a cumberer of the ice-fields, learning the simple lessons\nwhereby he supports his squalid existence from the brutes, which are\nlordlier than he, inasmuch as the ice-slavery is no chain of servitude\nto them; and heedless of him, of his terrible hunger and destitution,\nof his hopeless isolation, she builds her ice-palaces upon the seas,\nand locks the land in her glittering ice-chains, and flings her\nterrific banners of flame wide against the northern sky; and sends her\nvoice abroad, without a tone of pity in its vibrations, sounding\nthrough the troubled depths of the waters and the rent masses of the\nmany-tinted icebergs. Nature is indeed beautiful in her northern\nstrongholds, but her beauty shows only its terrible aspects, its dread\ngrandeur. The face of the mighty mother does not soften into a smile\nfor the feebleness of her youngest-born offspring, but is fixed in its\nawful sublimity. There is no point of contact between this ice-kingdon\nand European civilization, and men of our race and tongue shrink from\nit with an appalled sadness, for has it now been the tomb of many of\nour brave and beloved? Three centuries ago it earned that evil\nreputation, which, in the then elementary state of geographical\nknowledge, and the general prevalence of superstition, assumed a weird\nand baleful form. It has but increased {709} in degree, though\ndiffering in kind, in our days, and we think of the arctic regions as\nthe sepulchre of the beloved dead, the land toward which the heart of\nEngland yearned, and which kept pitiless silence through long years of\nhope deferred. But of its people we do not think; we are satisfied to\nhave but a vague notion of them; to wonder, amid the many marvels of\nthat mighty problem--the distribution of the human race--how human\nbeings ever found their way to those dreadful fastnesses, more cruel\nin their exaction of human suffering than the desert and the forest.\nThis indifference gives way when we learn what manner of people these\nare whom we call Esquimaux, a word which signifies \"eaters of raw\nfood,\" but who call themselves _Innuit_, or \"the people,\" and explain\ntheir own origin by a story which is a pleasing testimony to the\ncommon possession of self-conceit by all nations. They say that the\nCreator made white men first, but was dissatisfied with them, regarded\nthem as worthless unfinished creatures, and straightway set about\nmaking the Innuit people, who proved perfectly satisfactory.\n\nCaptain Hall lived among this strange race for two years and a half,\nand he is about to return and prosecute his researches in Boothia and\nKing William's Land. This time, his object is to trace the remnants of\nthe Franklin expedition, which--as he finds the history of the few\nevents which have ever marked the progress of time in that distant\nland handed down by oral tradition with extraordinary distinctness--he\nhas no doubt of being able to do. His first journey was in search of\nrelics of the Frobisher expedition, and was as successful as it was\ndaring, patient, and persevering. His experiences were strange in all\nrespects, and in many most revolting; but we owe much to this\ncheerful, courageous, simple-hearted American gentleman, who has\nrevealed the Esquimaux to us as Captain Grant has revealed the African\ntribes, and oriental tourists the dwellers in the deserts. There is\npoetical harmony in the stern conditions of life among the Innuits;\nthere is the impress of sadness and of sterility upon them all. Time\nitself changes its meaning in a land where\n\n  \"The sun starts redly up\n  To shine for half a year,\"\n\nand dim wintry twilight lasts throughout the other half, and hunger is\nthe normal state of the people. The traveller's route is to be traced\non the map, which is mere guess-work hitherto, up the western side of\nDavis's Strait; and once away from Holsteinborg, the journey assumes\nall its savage features. The terrible icebergs rear their menacing\nmasses in the track of the ship; the sun pours its beams upon them,\nand bathes them in golden light; they appear in fantastic shapes of\nGothic cathedral, of battlemented tower, of clear single-pierced\nspire, of strong fenced city, of jewel-mountain, of vast crystal\nhills; and so, as the voyager leaves art and civilization behind,\ntheir most supreme forms flash a mirage-like reminiscence upon him,\nintensifying the contrast of the prospect, and luring him to a frantic\nand futile regret.\n\nA grand and terrible confusion reigns around; the voyager shrinks from\nthe overwhelming scene, where ranges of mountains, islands, rocks,\ncastles, huge formless masses, and gorgeous prismatic lights, surround\nthat laboring speck upon the mystic sea, of whose littleness he is so\nsmall an atom; and a strange sense, which is not fear, but awe, comes\nto him with the knowledge that nothing of this sublime confusion is\nreal, on the horizon or beyond it. For all the time of his stay in the\narctic regions he is to be surrounded by contradictions, by the\nsublimest manifestations of nature, by the lowest conditions of\nhumanity, by gorgeous and majestic optical delusions, and by the\nhardest and most grovelling facts of daily existence; he must share,\nto their fullest extent, the relentless physical needs of the {710}\npeople, and live, if he would live at all, in close contact with\nthem--and yet his solitude must be inwardly profound and\nunapproachable; his purposes unintelligible to his associates; and\ntheir language, elementary in itself, dimly and scantily comprehended\nby him even in its most sparing forms. All this without any of the\nalleviations of life among savages in southern countries--without the\nwarmth, which, if sometimes oppressive, is ordinarily\ngrateful--without the rich and genial beauties of nature--without the\nresources of sport without the natural fruits of the earth--without\nthe intellectual occupation of speculating upon development, of\nascertaining capabilities, or of investigating sources of wealth. The\ncivilized dweller in arctic regions has none of these. He beholds,\nwith admiration so solemn as to be painful, the unapproachable dignity\nand hard implacable stillness of nature; but he never dreams of\ntreasure to be wrested from the cells of the ice-prison; he seeks the\ndead--the dead of centuries ago--the dead of a decade since, to be\nfound, it may be, incorporated with their frozen resting place; for\nthe fiat of nature arrests decay in these terrible regions, where\ndeath and life are always at close gripes with one another. While the\nmind is ceaselessly impressed with sadness and solemnity, the body\nasserts its claim to superiority; it will not be forgotten or\nneglected, for cold encompasses it with unrelaxing menace of death,\nand hunger preys upon the vitals, whose heat wanes rapidly in the\npitiless climate, and which crave for the nutriment so hard to\nprocure, so repulsive when procured.\n\nToil is the law of the ice-clad land--toil, not to wrest from the\nbosom of the earth her children's sustenance, but to tear from the\namphibious creatures, from whom they have learned how to shelter\nthemselves from the cold, and whose skins cover them, the unctuous\nflesh, which they devour raw in enormous quantities. The Innuit are,\non the whole, a gentle people, driven by the relentless need and\nseverity of their lives into close and peaceful companionship. They\nhave no king, no government, no law, no defined religion, no property;\nthey have, for all these, custom--the oldest law; they are animated by\nthe same spirit that dictated the reply once made to one who sat by\nJacob's well: \"Our fathers worshipped in this mountain, and we\nworship.\" As \"the old Innuits\" did, so do their successors. They have\nno bread, no medicine, no household furniture; they are poor human\nwaifs upon the wide white bosom of the frozen seas; and they have, no\nhelp or resource but in the seal, the walrus, the white bear, the\nrein-deer, and the wonderful Esquimaux dogs, which are by far the\nnoblest living creatures in all those sterile wastes. From the seal\nthey have learned to make the _igloo_, which is the house of the\nInnuit. They eat the flesh of this animal, and drink its fresh warm\nblood; they kill its young, and eagerly swallow the milk of the\nmother, found in the stomach of the baby seal. When the sudden summer\ncomes, and the snow melts, and leaves the surface of the ice bare,\nthey are houseless; the igloo melts away; their home is but of frozen\nwater, and suddenly it disappears. Then they have recourse to the\n_tupic_, which is a huge sheet of skins hung across a horizontal pole,\nsupported at either end. Their bed is a snow platform, strewn with the\nmoss which is the rein-deer's food, and covered with skins. Their\nchoicest dainties are the fat of the _tuktoo_, or rein-deer, the\nmarrow procured by mashing the bones of the legs, and the thick,\nwhite, unctuous lining of the whale-hide.\n\nThe interior of an igloo presents a picture more repulsive than that\nof any African hut or Indian wigwam, more distressing to human\nfeelings and degrading to human pride. The igloo is a dome-shaped\nbuilding, made of ice-blocks, with an aperture in the roof, and a rude\ndoorway at one side, closed {711} with ice-blocks, when the inmates\nare assembled. The snow platform which forms the bed is occupied by\nthe women and the stranger. Men and women are clad in skins, put\ntogether with neatness and ingenuity. The dress of the sexes differs\nonly in two particulars; that of the women is furnished with a long\ntail, depending from the jacket, and has a sort of hood, in which\nloads and children are carried. The life of the infant is preserved by\nits naked body being kept in contact with that of the mother. One\nhousehold implement they possess--it is a stone lamp; something like\na trough, with a deep groove in it, in which the dried moss, used as a\nwick, floats in the seal oil, expressed by the teeth of the women from\nlumps of blubber, which they patiently \"mill\" until the precious\nunguent is all procured. But this lamp too often fails them, and\ndarkness and hunger take up frequent abode with the Innuit. Days and\nnights are passed by the men, sitting singly, in death-like stillness\nand silence, by the hole which they have found, far under the snow, at\nwhich the seal will \"blow.\" It is strange and terrible to think of\nthose watches, in the midst of the desolation, under that arctic sky,\nwith the cold dense fog now swooping, now lifting, in the enforced\nstillness, with famine gnawing the watcher, and famine at home in the\nigloo, and the chance of food depending on the sureness of one\ninstantaneous stroke, down through the snow, through the narrow\norifice in the ice, into the throat of the animal with the sleek skin,\nand the mournful human eyes, which vainly implore mercy from raging\nhunger.\n\nWhen the Innuit brings the seal to the igloo, a crowd invades the\nnarrow space, for the simplest hospitality prevails, and the long\nwatch, the skilful stroke, do not constitute sole ownership of the\nprize. The skin is stripped off the huge unsightly carcass, and a\nhorrible scene ensues. The flesh is torn or cut with the stone knives\nin large lumps, and having been first licked by the women, to remove\nany hairs or other adhesive matter, is distributed to the party, and\ndevoured raw; the blood is drunk, the bones are mashed, the entrails\nare greedily eaten, the dogs sharing in all; and the blubber is made\nto yield its oil by the disgusting process already described. One\nturns silenced from the picture; from the sights, and sounds, and\nscents; from the vision of dark faces, eager with gluttonous longing,\ngathered round the red, flaring light; from the skin-clothed bodies,\nreeking with grease and filth, and the foul exhalations of the\nmutilated animal; from the lumps of flesh torn by savage hands, and\ncrammed dripping into distended mouths; from the steaming blood, and\nthe human creatures who rapturously quaff it in the presence of the\nwhite man, who sits among them and feeds with them, whose heart yearns\nwith dumb compassion for them, who has wonderful scientific\ninstruments in his pockets, and his Bible in his breast. As the seal\nteaches the Innuits the art of housing themselves, so the white bear\nteaches them how to kill the walrus, their most plentiful and frequent\nfood, when the ice is drifting, and the unwieldy creatures lie upon\nthe blocks close inshore; then the bear climbs the overhanging\nprecipice, and taking a heavy block in his deft forepaws, he hurls it\nwith rare skill and nicety of aim upon the basking monster below. So\nbrutes train men in those dreadful regions, and not men brutes. The\nlife of the Innuits is full of such contradictions. And their deaths?\nFrom the contemplation of these one turns away appalled, for they die\nin utter solitude.\n\nWhen Captain Hall first heard of this horrible custom, he started off\nat once to see its truth; and having removed the blocks with which the\ndoorway had been built up, entered an igloo, and found a woman who\nhad yet many days to linger thus fastened up in her living tomb.\nAgain, hearing that a woman had been abandoned to die, at a great\ndistance, he set forth, {712} and having reached the spot with immense\ndifficulty and danger, he managed to remove the snow and the block\nwhich closed the hole in the top of the igloo, lowered himself into\nit, and found the woman dead, and frozen as hard as her bier and her\ntomb, with a sweet serene smile upon the marble face. So this is the\nclose of a life of toil and privation--the withdrawal of every kindred\nface, the fearful solitude of the ice-walls, the terrible arctic\ndarkness and silence, and the frozen corpse lying unshrouded, naked,\nbeneath the frozen skins, until the resurrection. Surely the angel of\ndeath is an angel of mercy there, and does his errand gently, bearing\naway the lonely, terrified spirit to the city of gold, the gates of\npearl, the jasper sea, the land where there is no darkness, physical\nor mental, for evermore. The earth, always pitiless to them, which\nnever feeds them from her bosom, does not suffer her dead children of\nthe Innuit people to sleep their last sleep in her lap. Their graves\nare only blocks of ice piled around and above the corpses, which\nremain unharmed, unless when the blocks melt, as they sometimes do,\nand the wolves, dogs, or bears gain access to the frozen remains. The\nInnuits are dying out; disease is making havoc among them;\nconsumption, formerly unknown, is thinning their numbers by its slow,\nfurtive, murderous advance; their children are few, and fewer still\nare reared; and the long story of awful desolation draws to a close.\nWho can regret it? Who can do aught but desire that the giant wastes\nof the arctic regions should be left to the soulless creatures of God;\nthat the great discord between them and human life has ceased to\ntrouble the harmony of creation; that the mystery of such an existence\nis quietly laid at rest, among the things which \"we know not now, but\nwhich we shall know hereafter?\"\n\n--------\n\nMISCELLANY.\n\n\nSCIENCE.\n\n\n_A New Kind of Mirror.--The Chemical News_ states that M. Dode, a\nFrench chemist, has introduced platinum mirrors, which are greatly\nadmired, and which present this advantage, that the reflecting metal\nis deposited on the outer surface of the glass, and thus any defect in\nthe latter is concealed. The process, which is patented in Paris, is\ndescribed as follows: Chloride of platinum is dissolved in water, and\na certain quantity of oil of lavender is added to the solution. The\nplatinum immediately leaves the aqueous solution and passes to the\noil, which holds it in suspension in a finely divided state. To the\noil so charged the author adds litharge and borate of lead, and paints\na thin coat of this mixture over the surface of the glass, which is\nthen carried to a proper furnace. At a red heat the litharge and\nborate of lead are fused, and cause the adhesion of the platinum to\nthe softened glass. The process is very expeditious. A single baking,\nM. Dode says, will furnish 200 metres of glass ready for commerce. It\nwould take fifteen days, he says, to coat the same extent with mercury\nby the ordinary plan.\n\n\n\n_African Silkworm_.--A silkworm before unknown in Europe has been\nintroduced into France from Senegal, and without suffering from change\nof climate. It yields a richer silk than that of any other worm known\nto naturalists, and its cocoons are twice the ordinary weight. It is\nto be tried in Algiers, and if successful there, this new and rich\nsilk may become in time an important article of commerce.\n\n\n\n_Science in a Balloon_.--Mr. Glaisher has {713} given, in a lecture at\nthe Royal Institution, a _resume_ of his scientific experiments in\nballoons. Tables recording the decline of temperature with elevation,\nshow that when the sky was clear a more rapid decline took place than\nwhen the sky was cloudy. Under a clear sky, a fall of 1 deg. takes place\nwithin 100 feet of the earth, but at heights exceeding 25,000 feet it\nis necessary to pass through 1,000 feet of vertical height to obtain a\nfall of 1 deg. in temperature. At extreme elevations, in both states of\nthe sky, the air became very dry, but as far as his experiments went,\nwas never quite free from water. From ascents made before and after\nsunset, Mr. Glaisher concludes that the laws which hold good by day do\nnot hold good by night; indeed, it seemed probable that at night, for\nsome little distance, the temperature may increase with elevation,\ninstead of decreasing. From experiments made on solar radiation with a\nblackened bulb thermometer, and with Herschel's actinometer, it was\ninferred that the heat rays from the sun pass through space without\nloss, and become effective in proportion to the density or the amount\nof water present in the atmosphere through which they pass. If this be\nso, the proportion of heat received at Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, and\nSaturn may be the same as that received at the earth, if the\nconstituents of their atmospheres be the same as that of the earth,\nand greater if the amount of aqueous vapor be greater, so that the\neffective solar heat at Jupiter and Saturn may be greater than at\neither the inferior planets, Mercury or Venus, notwithstanding their\nfar greater distances from the sun. This conclusion is most important\nas corroborating Professor Tyndall's experiments on aqueous vapor.\nExperiments on the wind showed that the velocity of the air at the\nearth's surface was very much less than at a high elevation. A\ncomparison of the temperature of the dew point, as shown by different\ninstruments, gave results proving that the temperatures of the dew\npoint, as found by the use of the dry and wet bulb thermometers, and\nDaniell's hygrometer, are worthy of full confidence as far as the\nexperiments went.\n\n\n\n_The Eruption of Mount Etna_.--At a recent meeting of the Paris\nAcademy of Sciences, an important letter was read from M. Fouque to M.\nSaint-Claire Deville on the eruption of Etna, which has presented\nseveral phenomena of great scientific interest.\n\nThe eruption commenced at half-past ten on the evening of January 31.\nOn the previous day two successive shakings of the earth had been\nnoticed. Just before the eruption began a violent earthquake was felt,\nthe wave travelling to the north-east; after this, slight oscillations\ncontinued until about 4 A.M. Large flames now rose from a point on the\nnorth-east side of Etna 5,500 feet above the snow line, and lava began\nto flow rapidly. In two or three days the lava traversed a space of\n19,000 feet, with a width of from 10,000 to 12,000, and a variable\nthickness, but often reaching to the depth of 30 or 60 feet. After\ndestroying for some distance everything in its passage, the current of\nlava struck one of the old craters, and then bifurcated. The stream on\nthe west side moved very slowly, and, becoming subdivided, it nearly\nceased to move; the stream on the east side fell over a deep and\nprecipitous valley, which it soon filled, being then able to continue\nits progress, until finally it was stopped by a lava mound of a\nprevious eruption.\n\nThe number of the craters is seven; of these five form a vast\nelliptical enclosure, the major axis of which is directed toward the\nnorth-east. A deep fissure, 1,500 feet in length, opened from the base\nof a former crater, Frumento, to the nearest of the present cones.\nThis chasm, M. Fouque shows, was probably formed by the shock at the\ncommencement of the eruption. This fissure, and also a depression of\nthe crater Frumento, is in a right line with the major axis of the\nellipse formed by the craters. The same general fact has been several\ntimes noticed in previous eruptions.\n\nThe vapors attending an eruption have been divided into the dry,\ncontaining chiefly chloride of sodium and no water, the acid, which\ncontain a large amount of watery vapor, the alkaline, and the\ncarbonic. The first indicates the maximum, and the last the minimum of\nvolcanic action. Each of these varieties of vapor, succeeding in their\norder, were noticed at this eruption. M. Fouque found the dry vapor\nupon the still incandescent lava; the acid vapor in those parts where\nthe temperature was over {714} 400 deg.; the alkaline, where the\ntemperature was lower, but generally over 100 deg.; and finally, carbonic\nacid has been detected in one of the adjacent old craters, which was\nat the ordinary temperature. The first three varieties of vapor were\nthus found upon the same transverse section of the lava, less than 150\nfeet distant from each other. In all these vapors the atmospheric air\nwhich accompanied them was deprived of part of its oxygen, generally\ncontaining only from 18 to 19 per cent., and in some alkaline vapors\nthe proportion was still less.\n\nIn this eruption there was a remarkable absence of sulphur and its\ncompounds; chemical tests as well as the sense of smell could detect\nno trace of them. The eruption indeed was characterized by the absence\nof the compounds of sulphur and the abundance of the compounds of\nchlorine. Hydro-chlorate of ammonia, which was found in abundance, has\ngenerally been regarded as exclusively belonging to the alkaline\nvapors; but here it has been discovered among the other varieties,\nwhilst the alkaline vapors were distinguished by the carbonate rather\nthan by the hydrochlorate of ammonia.\n\nAt the present time, M. Fouque writes, the eruption is most active in\nthe four lowest craters; these throw liquid lava into the air, and\nemit a nearly colorless smoke; the three superior craters eject\nsolidified lava and black stones, at the same time pouring out a dense\nsmoke charged with aqueous vapor and brown-colored ashes.\n\nThe three higher craters produce every two or three minutes a very\nloud report resembling the rolling of thunder; the four lower craters,\non the contrary, send forth a rapid succession of ringing sounds,\nwhich it is impossible to count. These sounds follow each other\nwithout any cessation, and are only to be compared to the noise\nproduced by a series of blows from a hammer falling on an anvil. If\nthe ancients heard these noises in former eruptions, it is easily\nconceivable how they imagined a forge to exist in the centre of the\nvolcano, with Cyclops for the master workman. The lava is black, rich\nin pyroxene, and strongly attracted by a magnet. Since the\ncommencement of the eruption, the central crater of Etna has emitted\nwhite vapors, which continually cover its summit. Several good\nphotographs of the eruption have been taken by M. Berthier, who\naccompanied M. Fouque in his explorations, which were by no means\nunattended with danger.\n\nM. Saint-Claire Deville then made some observations on this paper. He\nexplained the almost entire absence of sulphur by the fact that M.\nFouque only examined the vapors from the lava. These nearly always\ncontain chlorine for their electro-negative element, and scarcely\nshow, and that not until later, sulphuretted and carbonic vapors.\nAfter the eruption of Vesuvius in 1861, very light deposits of sulphur\nwere found covering the hydrochlorate of ammonia, which shows that the\nformer body is not absent from the lava. The existence of\nhydrochlorate of ammonia in the emanations does not necessarily\nexclude that of the vapors of hydrochloric and sulphuric acids.\n\n\n_Magnetism of Iron-clad Ships_.--Staff-Commander Evans, of the British\nnavy, and Mr. Archibald Smith, who have devoted themselves for several\nyears to investigations into the character of the magnetism of\niron-built and armor-plated ships, have embodied the results of their\nstudies in an interesting paper read at a recent meeting of the Royal\nSociety. It is well known that iron ships have been very difficult to\nnavigate because of the disturbing effect of the iron upon the\ncompass, and serious accidents have happened in consequence. But\nunderwriters, and the whole naval profession, will be glad to hear\nthat the difficulty and risk are now greatly lessened, if not entirely\nremoved. For the results established by the paper in question\nare--That it is no longer necessary to swing a ship in order to\nascertain the compass deviation, or error, seeing that it is possible\nto determine the various forms of error by mathematics; that an iron\nship should always be built with her head to the south; if built head\nnorth, there is such a confused amount of magnetism concentrated in\nthe stern as to have a violent disturbing effect on the compass; that\nif, after building, a ship is to be armor-plated, the head, during the\nfixing of the plates, should be turned in the opposite direction--\nthat is, to the north; and that especial pains should be taken while\nbuilding an iron ship to provide a {715} suitable place for the\nstandard-compass. Beside these particulars, the shot and shell stowed\nin the vessel, the iron water-tanks, and, indeed, all the iron used in\nher interior fittings, are to be taken into account; and it is\nsatisfactory to know that the influence exerted on the compass by any\none or all of these conditions can be ascertained, and allowed for, as\nin the other cases above mentioned.\n\n\n_\"Gyges\" Explained_.--The London _Reader_ gives the following\nexplanation of a curious experiment in optics which has been performed\nat one of the London theatres under the name of \"Eidos AEides,\" and\nreproduced in New York under the appellation of \"Gyges.\" It consists\nin causing an actor or an inanimate object which is in full view of\nthe audience at one moment to disappear instantly, and then to\nreappear with the same rapidity. The means by which this is\naccomplished are very simple, and are to some extent similar to those\nused in exhibiting \"Pepper's Ghost.\" A sheet of plain unsilvered glass\nis placed upon the stage, either upright or inclined at a suitable\nangle, at the place where the actor or object is to disappear. This\nglass is not perceived by the audience, and it does not interfere with\ntheir view of the scenery, etc., behind the plate. A duplicate scene\nrepresenting that part of the back of the stage covered by the glass\nis placed at the wing, out of sight of the spectators. With the\nordinary lighting of the stage the reflection of this counterfeit\nscene in the glass is too faint to be observed; but when a strong\nlight is thrown upon the scene, the stage lights being lowered at the\nsame time, the image becomes visible. This duplicate scene being an\nexact _fac-simile_ of the background of the stage, the change is not\nnoticed by the audience, the only difference being that they now see\nby reflection that which they saw a moment previously by direct\nvision. The actor, standing a sufficient distance behind the glass, is\ncompletely hidden from view, and he is again rendered visible by\nturning down the light on the false scene and allowing the stage\nlights to predominate. When \"Eidos AEides\" was being performed at Her\nMajesty's Theatre, it was, however, possible, with a good opera-glass,\nto distinguish the outline of the figure behind the plate. The effects\nproduced may of course be modified. An actor may be made to appear\nwalking or flying in the air, or dancing on a tight-rope, by eclipsing\nor obscuring a raised platform on which he may be placed.\n\n------\n\nNEW PUBLICATIONS.\n\n\nHISTORY OF ENGLAND FROM THE FALL OF WOLSEY\nTO THE DEATH OF ELIZABETH.\nBy James Anthony Froude, M.A., late fellow of Exeter College, Oxford.\nVolumes I. and II. 8vo., pp. 447 and 501. New York: Charles Scribner &\nCompany.\n\nIn these two luxurious volumes we have the first instalment of an\nimportant work upon the most important period of English history. Six\nother volumes are to follow. Mr. Froude is a thorough good Protestant.\nHis main purpose in this history seems to have been the glorification\nof the English reformers. For the worst sovereigns of the house of\nTudor he displays an enthusiastic admiration which, one is tempted to\nbelieve, is half genuine sentiment, and half love of paradox.\nCatholics, of course, he could not have expected to satisfy; but he\nhas gone too far to please even the members of his own Church. Of\nHenry VIII., whose apologist he has appropriately been called, he\ndraws a flattering portrait:\n\n\"If Henry VIII.,\" he says, \"had died previous to the first agitation\nof the divorce, his loss would have been deplored as one of the\nheaviest misfortunes which had ever befallen the country; and he would\nhave left a name which would have taken its place in history by the\nside of that of the Black {716} Prince or of the conqueror of\nAgincourt. Left at the most trying age, with his character unformed,\nwith the means at his disposal of gratifying every inclination, and\nmarried by his ministers when a boy to an unattractive woman far his\nsenior, he had lived for thirty-six years almost without blame, and\nbore through England the reputation of an upright and virtuous king.\nNature had been prodigal to him of her rarest gifts. In person he is\nsaid to have resembled his grandfather, Edward IV., who was the\nhandsomest man in Europe. His form and bearing were princely; and\namidst the easy freedom of his address, his manner remained majestic.\nNo knight in England could match him in the tournament except the Duke\nof Suffolk; he drew with ease as strong a bow as was borne by any\nyeoman of his guard; and these powers were sustained in unfailing\nvigor by a temperate habit and by constant exercise.\" His state papers\nand letters lose nothing by comparison with those of Wolsey and\nCromwell. He was an accomplished musician; he wrote and spoke in four\nlanguages; he was one of the best physicians of his age, an engineer,\nand a theologian. \"He was 'attentive,' as it is called, 'to his\nreligious duties,' being present at the services in the chapel two or\nthree times a day with unfailing regularity, and showing to outward\nappearance a real sense of religious obligation in the energy and\npurity of his life.\" In private he was good-humored and good-natured.\nBut \"like all princes of the Plantageuet blood, he was a person of a\nmost intense and imperious will. His impulses, in general nobly\ndirected, had never known contradiction; and late in life, when his\ncharacter was formed, he was forced into collision with difficulties\nwith which the experience of discipline had not fitted him to\ncontend.\" \"He had capacity, if his training had been equal to it, to\nbe one of the greatest of men. With all his faults about him he was\nperhaps the greatest of his contemporaries.\"\n\nMr. Froude does not believe that the king's scruples respecting the\nvalidity of his marriage with Catharine of Aragon were inspired by his\naffection for Anne Boleyn. \"They had arisen to their worst dimensions\nbefore he had ever seen Anne Boleyn.\" But Mr. Froude's narrative of\nthe king's early intercourse with Anne is extremely unsatisfactory,\nnot to say disingenuous. How long Henry may have cherished his\nscruples in secret, our author affords us no means of guessing; but\nthe earliest intimation which he finds of an intended divorce was in\nJune, 1527. It was in 1525, he says, that Anne came back from France\nand appeared at the English court. This is an error, and is\ninconsistent with other statements in the same chapter; the date was\n1522; and almost immediately afterward the king began to pay Anne\nmarked attention. Her celebrated love-passage with Lord Percy took\nplace in 1523. Mr. Froude speaks of it as follows: \"Lord Percy, eldest\nson of Lord Northumberland, as we all know, was said to have been\nengaged to her. He was in the household of Cardinal Wolsey; and\nCavendish, who was with him there, tells a long romantic story of the\naffair, which, if his account be true, was ultimately interrupted by\nLord Northumberland himself.\" Now what will be thought of our author's\nhonesty when we say that Cavendish repeats again and again that the\nmatch was broken off _by command of the king?_ Lord Northumberland did\nnot appear in the matter at all until Wolsey, by his majesty's orders,\nhad remonstrated with the young nobleman, and threatened him with dire\nconsequences if he should persist in a pursuit which was displeasing\nto his sovereign. Mr. Froude carefully suppresses all allusion to\nintercourse between the king and his fair favorite, until the project\nof the divorce was well advanced,--not discussing or discrediting the\nstatements of other historians respecting Henry's early passion for\nAnne Boleyn; but simply putting them behind his back, as matters of\nwhich it did not suit his purpose to take notice. This fashion of\nwriting may do for romance, but not for history.\n\nIn demanding a divorce from his first queen, Henry has, as we might\nsuppose, Mr. Froude's full approval:\n\n\"It may be admitted, or it ought to be admitted, that if Henry VIII.\nhad been contented to rest his demand for a divorce merely on the\ninterests of the kingdom; if he had forborne, while his request was\npending, to affront the princess who had for many years been his\ncompanion and his queen; if he had shown her that respect which her\n{717} high character gave her a right to demand, and which her\nsituation as a stranger ought to have made it impossible to him to\nrefuse, his conduct would have been liable to no imputation, and our\nsympathies would without reserve have been on his side. . . . . His\nkingdom demanded the security of a stable succession; his conscience,\nit may not be doubted, was seriously agitated by the loss of his\nchildren; and looking upon it as the sentence of heaven upon a\nconnection the legality of which had from the first been violently\ndisputed, he believed that he had been living in incest and that his\nmisfortunes were the consequence of it. Under these circumstances he\nhad a full right to apply for a divorce.\"\n\nWith all its faults, Mr. Froude's book tells many wholesome truths in\na very forcible manner. Here is an admission which from such an\nout-and-out Protestant we should hardly have looked for; he is\nspeaking of religious persecution:\n\n\"We think bitterly of these things, and yet we are but quarrelling\nwith what is inevitable from the constitution of the world. . . . The\nvalue of a doctrine cannot be determined on its own apparent merits by\nmen whose habits of mind are settled in other forms; while men of\nexperience know well that out of the thousands of theories which rise\nin the fertile soil below them, it is but one here and there which\ngrows to maturity; and the precarious chances of possible vitality,\nwhere the opposite probabilities are so enormous, oblige them to\ndiscourage and repress opinions which threaten to disturb established\norder, or which, by the rules of existing beliefs, imperil the souls\nof those who entertain them. Persecution has ceased among ourselves,\nbecause we do not any more believe that want of theoretic orthodoxy in\nmatters of faith is necessarily fraught with the tremendous\nconsequences which once were supposed to be attached to it. If,\nhowever, a school of Thugs were to rise among us, making murder a\nreligious service; if they gained proselytes, and the proselytes put\ntheir teaching in execution, we should speedily begin again to\npersecute opinion. What teachers of Thuggism would appear to\nourselves, the teachers of heresy actually appeared to Sir Thomas\nMore, only being as much more hateful as the eternal death of the soul\nis more terrible than the single and momentary separation of it from\nthe body. There is, I think, no just ground on which to condemn\nconscientious Catholics on the score of persecution, except only this:\nthat as we are now convinced of the injustice of the persecuting laws,\nso among those who believed them to be just, there were some who were\nled by an instinctive protest of human feeling to be lenient in the\nexecution of those laws; while others of harder nature and more narrow\nsympathies enforced them without reluctance, and even with\nexultation.\"\n\nThe following extract from an account of the feelings of the mass of\nthe English people during the early stages of the divorce affair, must\nbe rather unpalatable to the High-Church Episcopalians:\n\n\"They believed--and Wolsey was, perhaps, the only leading member of\nthe privy council, except Archbishop Warham, who was not under the\nsame delusion--that it was possible for a national church to separate\nitself from the unity of Christendom, and at the same time to crush or\nprevent innovation of doctrine; that faith in the sacramental system\ncould still be maintained, though the priesthood by whom those\nmysteries were dispensed should minister in golden chains. This was\nthe English historical theory handed down from William Rufus, the\nsecond Henry, and the Edwards; yet it was and is a mere phantasm, a\nthing of words and paper fictions, as Wolsey saw it to be. Wolsey knew\nwell that an ecclesiastical revolt implied, as a certainty, innovation\nof doctrine; that plain men could not and would not continue to\nreverence the office of the priesthood, when the priests were treated\nas the paid officials of an earthly authority higher than their own.\nHe was not to be blamed if he took the people at their word; if he\nbelieved that, in their doctrinal conservatism, they knew and meant\nwhat they were saying; and the reaction which took place under Queen\nMary, when the Anglican system had been tried and failed, and the\nalternative was seen to be absolute union with Rome, or a forfeiture\nof Catholic orthodoxy, proves after all that he was wiser than in the\nimmediate event he seemed to be; that if his policy had succeeded, and\nif, {718} strengthened by success, he had introduced into the Church\nthose reforms which he had promised and desired, he would have\nsatisfied the substantial wishes of the majority of the nation.\"\n\nFrom an introductory chapter on the social condition of England in the\nearly part of the sixteenth century, we extract the following graphic\npassage, as an example of Mr. Froude's fascinating style. Doubtless\nmost of our readers will agree with us in wishing that so graceful a\npen had been more worthily employed:\n\n  \"The habits of all classes were open, free, and liberal. There are\n  two expressions, corresponding one to the other, which we frequently\n  meet with in old writings, and which are used as a kind of index,\n  marking whether the condition of things was or was not what it ought\n  to be. We read of 'merry England';--when England was not merry,\n  things were not going well with it. We hear of the 'glory of\n  hospitality,' England's pre-eminent boast,--by the rules of which all\n  tables, from the table of the twenty-shilling freeholder to the\n  table in the baron's hall and abbey refectory, were open at the\n  dinner hour to all comers, without stint or reserve, or question\n  asked: to every man, according to his degree, who chose to ask for\n  it, there was free fare and free lodging; bread, beef, and beer for\n  his dinner; for his lodging, perhaps, only a mat of rushes in a\n  spare corner of the hall, with a billet of wood for a pillow, but\n  freely offered and freely taken, the guest probably faring much as\n  his host fared, neither worse nor better. There was little fear of\n  an abuse of such licence, for suspicious characters had no leave to\n  wander at pleasure; and for any man found at large, and unable to\n  give a sufficient account of himself, there were the ever-ready\n  parish stocks or town gaol. The 'glory of hospitality' lasted far\n  down into Elizabeth's time; and then, as Camden says, 'came in great\n  bravery of building, to the great beautifying of the realm, but to\n  the decay' of what he valued more.\n\n  \"In such frank style the people lived, hating three things with all\n  their hearts: idleness, want, and cowardice; and for the rest,\n  carrying their hearts high, and having their hands full. The hour of\n  rising, winter and summer, was four o'clock, with breakfast at five,\n  after which the laborers went to work, and the gentlemen to\n  business, of which they had no little. In the country every unknown\n  face was challenged and examined,--if the account given was\n  insufficient, he was brought before the justice; if the village\n  shopkeeper sold bad wares, if the village cobbler made 'unhonest'\n  shoes, if servants and masters quarrelled, all was to be looked to\n  by the justice; there was no fear lest time should hang heavy with\n  him. At twelve he dined; after dinner he went hunting, or to his\n  farm, or to do what be pleased. It was a life unrefined, perhaps,\n  but colored with a broad, rosy English health.\"\n\n\nTHE AMERICAN ANNUAL CYCLOPEDIA AND REGISTER OF\nIMPORTANT EVENTS OF THE YEAR 1864.\n8vo., pp. 838. New York: D. Appleton & Company.\n\nThe Annual Cyclopedia grows more and more valuable and interesting\nevery year. The present volume is a great improvement upon all that\nhave gone before it. The course of events has been unusually varied\nand startling, and the topics suggested by it appear to have been for\nthe most part selected with good judgment and treated by competent\nwriters. We have under the head of \"Army Operations\" an admirable\nhistory of Sherman's great march and of Grant's campaign in the\nwilderness, both illustrated with maps. The article on the \"Army of\nthe United States\" abounds in information respecting the number of\ntroops, organization, supplies, department and corps commanders, etc.,\nsuch as everybody wants to have, but nobody knows where to look for.\nUnder the titles of \"Confederate\" and \"United States Congress\" we have\na complete political history of our country during the last year,\nwhile the condition and progress of the several foreign states are\ntreated in their proper places. A great deal of interesting matter is\ngiven in the articles on the \"Anglican\" and \"Greek\" Churches,\n\"Commerce\" and \"Commercial Intercourse,\" \"Diplomatic Correspondence\nand Foreign Relations,\" \"Finances of the United States,\" \"Freedmen,\"\n\"Freedom of the Press,\" \"Geographical Explorations and Discoveries,\"\n\"Literature and Literary Progress,\" \"Military Surgery and Medicine\"\n(profusely illustrated), \"Navy,\" \"Ordnance,\" \"Petroleum,\" etc., etc.\n{719} Under the head of \"Public Documents\" is the most correct\ntranslation of the Pope's Encyclical and syllabus of errors condemned\nthat has yet appeared in this country. Biographical sketches are also\ngiven of the most distinguished men who died during the course of the\nyear.\n\n\nSONGS FOR ALL SEASONS. By Alfred Tennyson. With illustrations by D.\nMaclise, T. Creswick, S. Eytinge, C. A. Barry, H. Fenn, and G.\nPerkins. 16mo., pp. 84. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.\n\n\nHOUSEHOLD POEMS. By Henry W. Longfellow. With illustrations by John\nGilbert, Birket Foster, and John Absolon. 16mo., pp. 96. Boston:\nTicknor & Fields.\n\nThe series of \"Companion Poets for the People,\" of which these two\nvolumes are the first issues, deserves special commendation as an\nexample of the way in which cheapness and elegance may be combined.\nFor half a dollar Messrs. Ticknor & Fields offer us a neat little\nbook, printed in the best style of typography, on rich tinted paper,\nwith a clean broad margin, and some twelve or fifteen wood-cuts by\nreputable artists. The selections appear to have been made with good\njudgment, and include some late pieces of both Tennyson and Longfellow\nwhich are not to be found in previous editions of their works.\n\n\nTHE HISTORY OF THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION IN GERMANY AND\nSWITZERLAND, AND IN ENGLAND, IRELAND, SCOTLAND, THE NETHERLANDS,\nFRANCE, AND NORTHERN EUROPE.\nIN A SERIES OF ESSAYS, REVIEWING D'AUBIGNE, MENZEL, HALLAM,\nBISHOP SHORT, PRESCOTT, RANKE, FRYXELL, AND OTHERS.\nBy M.J. Spalding, D.D., Archbishop Baltimore. Fourth revised edition,\nTwo volumes in one. 8vo., pp. 494 and 509. Baltimore: John Murphy &\nCompany.\n\nWe welcome this new and improved edition of the best antidote that has\nyet been prepared for English readers to the common misrepresentations\nof Protestant historians of the reformation. Archbishop Spalding's\nbook has been so long before the public, and has been received with\nsuch general favor, that it would be superfluous at this late day to\nenter upon a general examination of its merits. It will prove a\nvaluable guide to the student of English and continental history; he\nwill find here the chief points made against the Church, by the long\nlist of writers named in the title-page, taken up and answered by a\nprelate of high reputation for sound and thorough scholarship. Dr.\nSpalding of course does not deny that there were abuses in the 16th\ncentury which ought to have been abolished; but he contends that the\ngravity and extent of these disorders have been greatly exaggerated;\nthat they generally originated in the world and its princes, not in\nthe Church; most of them being due to the fact that bad men were\nthrust into high ecclesiastical places by worldly-minded and\navaricious sovereigns; that there was a lawful and efficacious remedy\nfor all such evils, which consisted in giving to the popes their due\npower and influence in the nomination of bishops and in the\ndeliberations of general councils; in a word, that \"reformation within\nthe Church, and not revolution outside of it, was the only proper,\nlawful, and efficacious remedy for existing evils;\" and finally, \"that\nthe fact of Christians having at length felt prepared to resort to the\ndesperate and totally wrong remedy of revolution was owing to a train\nof circumstances which had caused faith to wane and grow cold, and\nwhich now appealed more to the passions than to reason, more to human\nconsiderations than to the principles of divine faith and the\ninterests of eternity.\"\n\n\nTHE YEAR OF MARY; OR, THE TRUE\nSERVANT OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN.\nTranslated from the French of Rev. M. d'Arville, Apostolic\nProthonotary. Edited, and in part translated, by Mrs. J. Sadlier.\n12mo. Philadelphia: Peter F. Cunningham.\n\nThis is a work intended for the use either of private persons or of\nconfraternities, sodalities, and similar associations formed in honor\nof the Blessed Virgin. The matter is distributed into exercises, the\nnumber of which is fixed at seventy-two, because our Lady is supposed\nto have lived seventy-two years on earth. One exercise is appropriated\nto each of the Sundays and principal festivals of the year.\n\n{720}\n\nThe reverend author writes with simplicity and unction, and has given\nus a really devout book. The translation seems to be very well done.\n\n\nCEREMONIAL, FOR THE USE OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCHES\nIN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. Published by order of the First\nCouncil of Baltimore, with the approbation of the Holy See. Third\nedition, carefully revised and considerably enlarged. With\nillustrations. 12mo., pp. 534. Baltimore: Kelly & Piet.\n\nThis book is almost indispensable to clergymen, and very convenient\nfor laymen who wish to understand the beautiful ceremonies which the\nChurch has appointed for the various festivals and services of the\necclesiastical year. It was originally compiled by Bishop Rosati, of\nSt. Louis, and formally adopted by the council of Baltimore in 1852.\nThe extensive additions which are now published with it were made by\ndirection of the late Archbishop Kenrick, of Baltimore. They consist\nof the ceremonies of low mass, low mass for the dead, and the manner\nof giving holy communion within the mass or at other times;\ninstructions for the priest who is obliged to say two masses, from the\ndecrees of the sacred congregation of rites, approved under the\npresent pope; the manner of singing mass without deacon and\nsub-deacon, and the vespers without cope-bearers, in accordance with\napproved usages of the best-regulated churches in Italy; the mode of\ngiving benediction with the blessed sacrament, in which the ceremonial\nof bishops and the various decrees of the sacred congregation of rites\nare strictly followed; Gregorian notes to guide the celebrant and\nsacred ministers in singing the prayers, gospel, epistle, confiteor,\netc.\n\nThe illustrations, intended to show the proper form of various church\nutensils, church furniture, etc., constitute a valuable feature of the\nbook.\n\n\nMEDITATIONS AND CONSIDERATIONS FOR A RETREAT OF\nONE DAY IN EACH MONTH.\nCompiled from the writings of Fathers of the Society of Jesus, by a\nReligious. Published with the approbation of the Most Rev. Archbishop\nof Baltimore. 18mo., pp. viii., 154. Baltimore: Kelly & Piet.\n\nThis little book is designed for the use not only of religious\ncommunities, but of persons in the world who may feel disposed to\ndevote a day now and then exclusively to the affairs of their souls.\nThe exercises consist of three meditations and a \"consideration,\" for\neach month in the year, arranged after the manner of the exercises of\nSt. Ignatius.\n\n\nSTREET BALLADS, POPULAR POETRY,\nAND HOUSEHOLD SONGS OF IRELAND.\n16mo., pp. 312. Boston: Patrick Donahoe.\n\nThe poems contained in this little volume are by a great number of\nauthors, and of course of very different degrees of merit. Most of\nthem are of a patriotic nature; a good many are amatory; and two or\nthree seem to have no business in the collection at all. For example,\nLieut-Colonel Halpine's \"April 20, 1864,\" is a poem of the American\nrebellion. Mr. John Savage's \"At Niagara\" is certainly neither a\nstreet ballad nor a household song, nor is it part of the popular\npoetry of Ireland any more than of our own country. We dare say,\nhowever, that nobody will feel disposed to quarrel with the editor for\nincluding these spirited pieces, as well as others we might mention,\nwhich do not properly belong under the categories mentioned in the\ntitle-page.\n\nAmong the best known writers whose names appear in the table of\ncontents are William Allinghain, Aubrey De Vere, Samuel Fergusson,\nLady Wilde, Gerald Griffin, and Clarence Mangan.\n\n\nTHE MONTH OF MARY, FOR THE USE OF ECCLESIASTICS.\nTranslated from the French. 32mo., pp. 207. Baltimore: John Murphy &\nCompany.\n\nThis little manual is intended exclusively for ecclesiastics,\nespecially students in theological seminaries. It sets forth, for each\nday of the month, some trait of the life of the Blessed Virgin, first\nas an object of veneration and love, secondly, as a model of some\nvirtue of the clerical state, and finally, as a motive of confidence.\nIt is brief, suggestive, and practical.\n\n\n_The Man without a Country_ (Boston: Ticknor & Fields) is a reprint in\npamphlet form of a remarkable narrative which appeared originally in\n_The Atlantic Monthly_.\n\n----------\n{721}\n\nTHE CATHOLIC WORLD.\n\nVOL. I., NO. 6. SEPTEMBER, 1865.\n\n\nFrom The Dublin Review.\n\nTHE CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS OF ALEXANDRIA.--ORIGEN.\n\n\n_Origenis Opera Omnia_. Ed. De la Rue, accurante J. P. MIGNE. Paris.\n\n_Origenes_, Eine Darstellung seines Lebens und seiner Lehre, von Dr.\nREDEPENNING. (Origen: A History of his Life and Doctrine. By Dr.\nREDEPENNING). 1841. Bonn.\n\nIn a former article we have given some account of the labors and\nteaching of Pantaenus and Clement in the twenty years after the death\nof Marcus Aurelius (180-202), during which the Church enjoyed\ncomparative peace. Commodus was not a persecutor, like his philosophic\nfather. Personally, he was a signal instance of the total break-down\nof philosophy as a training for a prince imperial; for whatever\nadvantages the most enlightened methods and the most complete\nestablishment of philosophic tutors could afford were his, probably to\nhis great disgust. But the Church has often found that an imperial\nphilosopher is something even worse than an imperial debauchee.\nPertinax and Didius Julianus, who succeeded Commodus, had little time\neither for philosophy or pleasure, for they followed their\npredecessor, after the violent fashion so popular with conspirators\nand Praetorians, in less than a twelvemonth. Septimius Severus, the\nfirst, and, with one exception, the only Roman emperor who was a\nnative African, during the earlier years of his reign protected the\nChristians rather than otherwise. How and why he saw occasion to\nchange we shall have to consider further on.\n\nDuring these twenty years of tranquillity the great Church of\nAlexandria had been making no little progress. Her children had not\nbeen entirely undisturbed. The populace, and sometimes the\nmagistrates, often did not wait for an imperial edict to set upon the\nChristians, and the commotions that followed the death of Commodus\nwere the occasion of more than one martyr's crown. We learn from\nClement of Alexandria, speaking of this very time of comparative\nquiet, that burnings, beheadings, and crucifixions took place \"daily;\"\nwhereby he seems to point to some particular local persecutions. But\nthe Alexandrian Church, on the whole, was left in peace, and was\nrapidly extending herself among the student population of the city,\namong the Greeks, but, above all, among the poorer classes of the\nnative Egyptians. Christianity seems to have spread in Egypt with a\n{722} rapidity almost unexampled elsewhere, and historians have taken\nmuch pains to point out that this was the effect of the considerable\nagreement there is between the asceticism of the early Church and that\nof the native worship. Without discussing the point, we may note that\nrapidity of extension was the rule, not the exception, when an apostle\nwas the missionary; and that the Alexandrian Church was founded by\ndirect commission from St. Peter, and, therefore, shared with Rome and\nAntioch the distinction of being the mother-city of Christianity.\nMoreover, the Nile valley, which above the Delta is nowhere more than\neleven miles in width, contained a teeming population, the whole of\nwhich was thoroughly accessible by means of the river itself. For\nnearly five hundred miles every city and town, every least village and\nhamlet, stood right on the banks of the great water-way; and it is\nprobable that half the inhabitants of Upper Egypt and the Thebaid were\noften floating on its bosom at one and the same time. The high road\nthat was so serviceable for traffic and pleasure could be made of\nequal service to religion. How unweariedly the successors of St. Mark\nmust have traversed it from end to end may be read in the history of\nthose lauras and hermitages that at one time were to be found wherever\nits rocky barriers were indented by a sandy valley, and wherever the\nold builders of Thebes and Memphis had left a quarried opening in the\nlimestone. There was not a stronger contrast between these monastic\ndwellings and the bosom of the gay river than there was between\nEgyptians Christian and Egyptians pagan. If the Church's converts\nrushed into the deserts and the caves, it was not especially because\nthey liked them, but because there was absolutely no other means of\ngetting out of a society not to be matched for immorality except,\nperhaps, by pagan Rome at its very worst. Of the number of Christians\nin Alexandria itself at the commencement of the third century we can\nonly form an approximate judgment. On the one hand, Eusebius tells us\nthat the Church had spread over the whole Thebaid. As the Thebaid was\nthe southern division of Egypt proper, and, therefore, the most\ndistant from Alexandria, we may safely say as much, at least, for the\nDelta and Middle Egypt. On the other hand, we are told by Origen that\nthe Christians in the city were not so numerous as the pagans, or even\nthe Jews. This will not appear surprising if we recollect that the\nAlexandrian Jews were more numerous, as well as richer and more\npowerful, than any other Jewish community in the world. We know enough\nto be quite sure that the Alexandrian Church was working quietly but\nvigorously. From the heads of the Catechetical school down to the\nhumblest little child that was marked out by baptism in the great city\nof sin, there was a great work going on. The impulse that Pantaenus\nand Clement were giving was felt downward and around, and when Origen\nbegins to rise on the scene, we can mark what an advance there has\nbeen even in the short twenty years since the death of Marcus\nAurelius.\n\nSeptimus Severus had reigned for ten years, as we said above, before\nhe began to persecute. He was undoubtedly an able and vigorous\nemperor; he could meet his enemies and get rid of his friends, bribe\nthe Praetorians and slaughter his prisoners of war, with equal\ncoolness and generally with equal success. In the course of a reign of\ntwenty years he seems to have visited with hostile intent the greater\npart of his extensive empire, from the Syrtes of Africa, where he was\nborn, to the banks of the Euphrates, and thence to Britain, where he\ndied, at York, A.D. 211. At the time we speak of (198) he had just\nconcluded a brilliant campaign against those pests of the Roman\nsoldiery, the Parthians; and having then engaged the Arabs, still in\narms for a chief whose head he had had the pleasure {723} of sending\nto Rome twelve months before, had got rather the worst of it in two\nbattles. It was between this and the year 202 that he visited\nAlexandria. There can be no doubt he must have been received at\nAlexandria with no little triumph by one class of its citizens. Some\nsix years before, he had restored to the Greek inhabitants their\nsenate and municipal privileges. The Greeks, who, as far as intellect\nwent, were the indisputable rulers of Alexandria, must have been\nhighly elated at being now restored to civil importance; for though\ntheir senate was little more than an ornament, and their municipal\nrights confined to holding certain assemblies for the discussion of\ngrievances, still, to have a recognized machinery of wards and tribes,\nand to be called \"men of Macedon,\" as of old, was not without\nadvantage, and was, indeed, all that their fathers had presumed to\nseek for, even in the days of the lamented Ptolemies. We cannot doubt,\ntherefore, that by the Greeks Severus was received with much\nenthusiasm, and he, on his part, seems to have been equally satisfied\nwith his reception, for we find that he enriched Alexandria with a\ntemple of Rhea, and with public baths which he named after himself.\nBut more came of this visit than compliments or temples. It was an\nhour of favor for the Greeks; the chief among them were also the\nchiefs and ruling spirits of the university; we know they must have\ncome across Christianity during the preceding twenty years in many\nways, but chiefly as a teaching that was gaining ground yearly among\ntheir best men; as philosophers, we know they loathed it; as\nworshippers of the immortal myths, they were burning to put it down.\nDoes it seem in any way connected with these facts that Severus at\nthis very time changes his policy of mildness, and issues a decree\nforbidding, under severest penalties, all conversions to Christianity\nor Judaism? There is something suggestive in the juxtaposition of\nfacts, and it is not at all impossible that the commencement of the\nfifth persecution was a compliment to Clement of Alexandria. Severus,\nindeed, must have frequently come into contact with Christianity\nhimself during the three or four years he spent in Syria and the East;\nhe could not have visited Antioch, Edessa, and Caesarea without being\nobliged to notice the development of the Church. The Jews, too, had\ngiven him a great deal of trouble, which may account for that part of\nthe edict which affected them, and perhaps the Montanist fanatics had\nhelped to irritate him against the name of Christian. However these\nthings may be, the prohibition, though apparently moderate in its\nscope, was the signal for the outburst of a tremendous persecution.\nLaetus, the prefect of Alexandria, was so zealous in his work, that it\nis impossible not to suspect that he was acting under the very eye of\nhis imperial master. He was not content with torturing and slaying in\nthe city itself, but sent his emissaries up the Nile to the very\nextremity of the Thebaid to hunt up the Christians and send them by\nboatloads to the capital for judgment and punishment. Numbers of the\nAlexandrian Christians fled to Palestine and elsewhere on the first\nintimation of danger. Pantaenus, who had returned from his Indian\nmission, had perhaps already left Alexandria; but Clement was at the\nhead of the Catechisms, and he was of the number of those who fled.\nThe great school was for a time broken up. The functions of the Church\nwere suspended for want of ministers, or prevented by the\nimpossibility of meeting in safety. It was taught in the Alexandrian\nChurch that if they were persecuted in one city, they should flee into\nanother; and, just at this time, the Motanist error, that it was\nunlawful to flee from persecution, caused this teaching to be acted\nupon with less hesitation than usual; and so, in the year 202,\nChristians in Alexandria, from being a comparatively flourishing\ncommunity, became a proscribed and secret sect.\n\n{724}\n\nIt would be very far from the truth, however, to suppose that the\nteachings of the Catechetical school had not been able to form\nmartyrs. We know that multitudes stood up for their faith and shed\ntheir blood for it at Alexandria, during the first years of this\npersecution, and this amidst horrors so unusual even with persecutors,\nthat it was thought they portended the coming of the last day. The\nname of Potamiana alone will serve to raise associations sufficient to\npicture both the heroism of the confessors and the enormities of the\ntyrants. But there is another name with which we are more nearly\nconcerned at present. Leonides, the father of Origen, was one of those\nChristians who had not fled from the persecution. He was an inhabitant\nof Alexandria, a man of some position and substance, and when the\ntroubles began he was living in Alexandria with his wife and family.\nIt was not long before he was marked down by Laetus and dragged to\nprison. The martyr's crown was now within his grasp; but he left\nbehind him in his desolate home another who was burning to share it by\nhis side. His son, Origen, was not yet seventeen when his father was\ntorn away by the Roman soldiers, and, in spite of the entreaties of\nhis mother, he insisted upon following him to prison. His mother\nfinally kept him beside her by a device which may raise a smile in\nthis generation. She \"hid all his clothes,\" says Eusebius, and so\ncompelled him to stop at home. But his zeal was all aroused and on\nfire, and, indeed, in this, the earliest incident known to us of his\nlife, we seem to read the zeal and fire of the man that was to be. He\nsent a message to his father in these words, \"Be sure not to waver on\n_our_ account.\" The exact words seem to have been handed down to us,\nand Eusebius, who gives them, probably received them from Origen's own\ndisciples in Caesarea of Palestine. The boy well knew what would be\nthe martyr's chief and only anxiety in his prison. The thought of the\nwife and seven young children whom he was leaving desolate would be a\nfar bitterer martyrdom than the Roman prisons. But Leonides gloriously\npersevered, confessed the faith, and was beheaded, while the whole of\nhis property was confiscated to the emperor.\n\nOrigen, as we have said, was not quite seventeen years old at his\nfather's martyrdom, having been born about the year 185. Both his\nfather and mother were Christians, and apparently had dwelt a long\ntime in Alexandria. He had therefore been brought up from his infancy\nin that careful Christian training which it is the pride and joy of a\ngood and earnest Christian father to bestow upon his son. The traces\nof this training, as we find them in Eusebius, are touching in the\nextreme. Leonides, to whom the teachings of Clement had made the Holy\nScriptures a very fountain of life and sweetness, made them the\nprincipal means of the education of his son. Every day the child\nrepeated to his father a portion of the holy books, and was instructed\naccording to his capacity. Knowing what, in after life, was to be\nOrigen's connection with the Holy Scriptures, we are not surprised to\nfind that his father soon began to experience some difficulty in\nanswering his questions. The boy, with true Alexandrian instinct, was\nnot content with the bare letter of the book; he would know its hidden\nmeaning and prophetic sense. Leonides discouraged these questions and\nspeculations, not, it would seem, because he disapproved of them, but\nbecause he sensibly thought them premature in so young a child. But in\nthe secret of his heart he was full of joy to see the ardor,\neagerness, and amazing quickness of his dear child, and often, when\nthe boy was asleep, would he uncover his breast and reverently kiss\nit, as the temple of the Holy Spirit. It is of very great importance\nfor the right comprehension of the great Origen to bear in view this\npicture of his tender youth, and to reflect that he was no convert\nfrom heathenism, no {725} Christianized philosopher, whose early\nnotions might from time to time be expected to crop up in the field of\nhis orthodoxy, but a Christian child, born and bred in the Church's\nbosom, brought up by a father of unquestioned ability, who died a\nmartyr and is honored as a saint. Origen began to think rightly as\nsoon as he could think at all; his early education left him nothing to\nforget. As he grew up and began to be familiar with Alexandria the\nbeautiful, he received that subtle education of the eye and\nimagination that every Alexandrian, like every Athenian, succeeded to\nas an heirloom. But with the heathen philosophers he had nothing to\ndo, and it may be questioned whether he ever entered the walls of the\nMuseum. His father had not neglected to teach him the ordinary\nbranches of Greek learning. He attended the lectures of Clement, those\nbrilliant and winning discourses, half apology, half exhortation, that\nhe himself was afterward to emulate so well. He heard Pantaenus, also,\nafter the venerable teacher had returned from his Indian mission. We\nmay be sure that he dreaded worse than poison the society of the pagan\nyouth of the university; this his subsequent conduct proves. But he\nhad his circle of friends, and among them was a young man, somewhat\nolder than himself, who was hereafter to leave an undying name as St.\nAlexander of Jerusalem. Thus, by ear and eye, by master and by\nfellow-student, by his father's labor, and by the workings of his own\nwonderful intellect and indomitable will, he was formed into a man.\nHis education came to a premature end; but his father's martyrdom,\nthough to outward seeming it left him a destitute orphan, really\nhardened the boy of seventeen into the man and the hero.\n\n\"When his father was martyred,\" continues Eusebius, writing, in all\nprobability, from the relation of those who had heard Origen's own\naccount, \"he was left an orphan, with his mother and six young\nbrothers and sisters, being of the age of seventeen. All his father's\nproperty was confiscated to the emperor's treasury, and they were in\nthe utmost destitution; but God's providence took care of Origen.\" A\nrich and illustrious lady of Alexandria received him into her house.\nWhether this lady was professedly a Christian, a pagan, or a heretic,\nhistory does not say. She can hardly have been a pagan, though it is\nnot impossible that a philosophic and liberal pagan lady should have\ntaken a fancy to help such a youth as Origen. It is not likely that\nshe was a heretic, for in that case Origen would never have entered\nher door. Thanks to the Gnostics, heretics in those days were looked\nupon in Alexandria as more to be dreaded than pagans. She was\nprobably, by outward profession at least, a Christian, \"illustrious,\"\nsays the historian, \"for what she had done, and illustrious in every\nother way.\" What she had done we are not permitted even to guess; but\none fact in her history we do know, and it is very significant. She\nhad living in her house, on the footing of an adopted son, one Paul, a\nnative of Antioch, and one of the chiefs of the Alexandrian heretics.\nIt is certain that Origen's patroness must have had either very\nuncertain or very easy notions of Christianity, if she could lend her\nhouse, her money, and her influence to an arch-heretic, who had come\nfrom Syria to trouble the Church of Alexandria, as Basilides and\nValentine had come before him. Gnosticism had probably lost ground in\nthe city, under the eloquent attacks of St. Clement. This Paul was a\nman of great eloquence, and his reputation attracted great numbers to\nhear him, not only of heretics, but also of Christians. He came from\nAntioch, the headquarters of an unknown number of Gnostic sects, and,\nwith the usual instinct of false teachers, he had \"led captive\" this\nAlexandrian lady. Mark, of infamous memory, had already done the same\nthing by others, and perhaps by her, and Paul had succeeded to his\nposition and was now {726} the rival of the head of the Catechisms.\nSuch a state of things makes it easier to understand why St. Clement,\nin his _Stromata_, calls those who lean to heresy \"traitors to\nChrist,\" and compares perverts to the companions of Ulysses in the sty\nof Circe, and why he makes the very treating with heretics to be\nnothing less than desertion in the soldier of Christ. It does seem a\nlittle strange, at first sight, that the uncompromising Origen should\nhave consented to receive assistance from one whose orthodoxy must\nhave been in such bad odor. The difficulty grows less, however, if we\nconsider the circumstances. It was in the very heat of a terrible\npersecution, when the canons of the Church must have been suspended.\nOrigen had lost his father, and had nowhere to turn for bare\nsubsistence. We can hardly wonder if, in such a strait as this, he\nasked few questions when the charitable lady wished to take him in.\nBut when the grief and agitation of his orphaned state had somewhat\nsubsided, and when the persecutors had begun to slacken their fury, we\nmay suppose that he began to examine the harbor of his refuge, and\nthat it pleased him not. He was under the same roof as Paul of\nAntioch, a heretic and a leader of heretics; but never, young as he\nwas, could he be induced to associate with him in prayer, or in any\nway that could violate the canons of the Church, as far as it was\npossible to keep them in such times. \"From his childhood,\" says his\nbiographer, \"he kept the canons, and execrated the teachings of\nheretics;\" and he tells us that this last phrase is Origen's own. And\nit seems that he took the most energetic measures to get away from a\ncompanionship that he must have loathed. He had been well instructed,\nas we have said, by his father in the ordinary branches of education.\nAfter his father's death he again applied himself to study with\ngreater ardor than before, for he had an object in view now. It was\nnot long before he was offering himself as a public teacher of those\nsciences that are designated by the general term \"_Grammatica_.\" It\nwas the first public step in a life that was afterward to be little\nless than the entire history of the Eastern Church. He was not yet\neighteen, but there was no help for it. He must have bread, and he\ncould not eat of the loaf that was shared by Paul of Antioch. Early\nwriters lay much stress on this first exhibition of orthodox zeal in\nhim who was afterward to be the \"hammer\" of heretics, from Egypt to\nGreece. Certain it is that his conduct as a boy was the same as his\nsentiments when he was in his sixtieth year. \"To err in morals,\" he\nwrote in his commentary on Matthew, at Caesarea, forty years after his\nfirst essay as a teacher of grammar,--\"to err in morals is bad, but to\nerr in dogma and to contradict Holy Writ is much worse.\" If in after\nlife he was to be so singularly earnest and so unaffectedly devout, so\nenthusiastic for the Gospel, so eager in exploring the depths of\nsacred science, and so unwavering in his faith, all this was but the\ngrowth and development of what was already springing in his soul in\nthose early years of his trials and zeal. The strong will was already\ntrying its first flights, the sensitive heart was being schooled to\nthrow all its motive power into duty, and the quick, clear\napprehension and the wonderful memory for which he was to be so\nfamous, were already beginning to show what they would one day be.\n\nOrigen was now a teacher of grammar and the sciences, but he had not\nkept school for many months when his teachings took a turn that he can\nhardly have anticipated. His text-books were the common pagan\nhistorians, poets, and philosophers that have been thumbed by the\nschool-boy from that generation to this. It was no part of Origen's\ncharacter to leave his hearers in error when plain speaking would\nprevent it; and so it happened that his exposition of his author often\ntook in hand not merely the parts of speech, but the doctrine. Though\nhe was only {727} school-master by profession, his scholars soon found\nout he was a Christian, and a Christian of uncommon power and\nclear-sightedness. The Catechetical school was closed; masters and\nscholars were scattered in flight or in concealment. It was not long,\ntherefore, before the young teacher found himself applied to by first\none heathen and then another, who, under other circumstances, would\nhave applied to the school of the Catechisms. Among these were\nPlutarchus, who soon afterward showed how a young Alexandrian student\ncould die a glorious martyr; and Heraclas, his brother, who, after his\nconversion, left everything to remain with his master, became his\nassistant and successor in his catechetical work, and finally died\nPatriarch of Alexandria. These were the first-fruits of his zeal for\nsouls. Many others followed; and as the persecution was somewhat\nabating, Demetrius, bishop of Alexandria, looking round for men to\nresume the work of the schools, saw no one better fitted to be\nintrusted with its direction than Origen himself. He was accordingly,\nthough not yet eighteen, appointed the successor of Clement.\n\nLaetus, prefect of Alexandria, who had exerted himself so strenuously\nto please Severus when the persecution commenced, had now been\nrecalled; probably he had reaped the reward of his zeal, and was\npromoted. His successor, Aquila, signalized his entering upon office\nby an activity that outdid that of Laetus himself. The persecution\nthat had calmed down a little toward the end of the first year and\nwhen Laetus was leaving, now raged with redoubled fury. We have\nalready said that the authoritative tradition, and, in great measure,\nalso the practice, of the Alexandrian Church was flight at a time like\nthis. Origen, however, was very far from fleeing; never at any time of\nhis life did he display such fearless baldness, such energetic\ncontempt for the enemy, as during these years of blood, from 204 to\n211. There was no prison so well-guarded, no dungeon so deep, that he\ncould not hold communication with the confessors of Christ. He went up\nto the tribunals with them, and stood beside them at the interrogatory\nand at the torture. He went back with them in a sort of defiant\ntriumph, after sentence of death had been pronounced. He walked\nundauntedly by their side up to the stake and the beheading block, and\nkissed them and bade them adieu when it was time for them to die. It\nis no wonder that Eusebius sets down his own safety to a miraculous\ninterposition of the right hand of God. Once, as he stood by a dying\nmartyr, embracing him as he expired, the Alexandrian mob set on him\nwith stones and nearly killed him; how he escaped none could tell.\nAgain and again the persecutors tried to seize him; as often (\"it is\nimpossible,\" says the historian, \"to tell how often\") was he delivered\nfrom their hands. He was nowhere safe: no sooner did the mob get a\nsuspicion of where he was than they surrounded the house, and hounded\nin the soldiers to drag him out. He fled from house to house; perhaps\nhe was assisted to escape by some of his numerous friends; perhaps he\nhid himself, as St. Athanasius in the next century did, in some of\nthose underground wells and cisterns with which every house in\nAlexander's city was provided, and then sought other quarters when the\nmob had gone off. But it was not long before he was again discovered.\nThe numbers that came to hear him soon let the infuriated pagans know\nwhere their victim was, and he was again besieged and hunted out.\nOnce, St. Epiphanius relates, he was caught, apparently by a\nstreet-mob, and some of the low Egyptian priests as their leaders. It\nwas near the Egyptian quarter of the city; perhaps, even, he was\nvisiting some poor native convert in the dirty streets of the Rhacotis\nitself. If so, the name of Origen would have been enough to empty the\nwhole quarter of its pariah race, and bring them yelling and cursing\ninto the {728} Heptastadion. They showed him no mercy; they abused him\nhorribly; they beat him and bruised him; they dragged him along the\nground. But before killing him outright, the idea seized them that\nthey should make him deny his religion, and at the same time make a\nshameful exhibition of himself. There must have been Greeks in the\ncrowd, for Egyptians would never have had patience to spare him so\nlong. The Serapeion, however, was at hand, and thither they dragged\nhim. As they hauled him along, \"they shaved his head,\" says St.\nEpiphanius--that is, they tried to make him look like the Egyptian\npriests, who were distinguished by a womanish smoothness of face; and\nwe may imagine that they did it with no gentle hands. When at length\nthe rushing mob had surged up the steps of the great temple, their\nvictim in the midst of them, they set him on his feet, and gave him\nsome palm branches, telling him to act the priest and distribute them\nto the votaries of Serapis. The palm, we know, was a favorite tree\nwith the Egyptian priests; it was sculptured and painted on the walls\nof their huge temples, and it was borne in the hands of worshippers on\nsolemn festivals. On the present occasion there were, probably,\npriests of one rank or another standing before the vestibule of the\nSerapeion, ready to supply those who should enter. It was, therefore,\nthe work of a moment to seize the stock of one of these ministers, and\nforce Origen to take his place. If they anticipated the pleasure of\nseeing the hated Christian teacher humiliated to the position of an\n_ostiarius_ of an idolatrous temple, they were never more mistaken in\ntheir lives. Origen took the palms, and began without hesitation to\ndistribute them; but, as he did so, he cried out in a voice as loud\nand steady as if neither suffering nor danger could affect him, \"Take\nthe palms, good people!--not the palms of idols, but the palms of\nChrist!\" How he escaped after this piece of daring, we are only left\nto conjecture. Perhaps the Roman troops came suddenly on the scene to\nquell the riot; and as they hated the dwellers in the Rhacotis almost\nas much as the latter hated Origen, the neighborhood of the Serapeion\nwould have been speedily cleared of Egyptians. However it came about,\nOrigen was saved.\n\nMeanwhile, he saw his own scholars daily going to death. The young\nstudent Plutarchus fell among the first victims of Aquila's new vigor;\nOrigen was by his side when he was led to execution, was recognized by\nthe mob, and once more narrowly escaped with his life. Serenus,\nanother of his disciples, was burnt; Heraclides, a catechumen, and\nHero, who had just been baptized, were beheaded; a second Serenus,\nafter enduring many torments, suffered in the same way. A woman named\nHeraeis, one of his converts, was burned before she could be baptized,\nreceiving the baptism of fire, as her instructor said. Another who is\nnumbered among his disciples is Basilides, the soldier who protected\nSt. Potamiana from the insults of the mob, and whom she converted by\nappealing to him three nights afterward. We are told that the\nbrethren, and we know who would be foremost among the brethren in such\na case, visited him in prison as soon as they heard of his wonderful\nand unexpected confession. He told them his vision, was baptized, and\nthe following day died a martyr. Probably it was Origen who addressed\nto him the few hurried words of instruction there was time to say.\n\"All the martyrs,\" says Eusebius, \"whether he knew them or knew them\nnot, he ministered to with the most eager affection.\" His reputation,\nit may well be conceived, suffered no diminution as these things came\nto be known. The horrors of the persecution could not keep scholars\naway from him, nor prevent increasing numbers from coming to seek him.\nMany of the unbelieving pagans, full of admiration for a holiness of\nlife and a heroism they could not comprehend, came to his {729}\ninstructions; and even literary Greeks who had gone through the\ncurriculum of the Museum, and were deeply versed in Platonic myths and\nPythagorean theories of mortification, came to listen to this fearless\nyoung philosopher, in whom they found a learning that could not be\ngainsaid, combined with a practical contempt for the things of the\nbody that was quite unknown in their own schools.\n\nThe persecution seems to have died down and gone out toward the year\n211, nine years after its commencement. Origen's labors became the\nmore extraordinary in proportion as he had freer scope for pursuing\nthem. The feature in his life at this time, which is most\ncharacteristic of the time and the city, and which more than anything\nelse attracted the cultivated heathens to listen to him, was his\nsevere asceticism. Times of persecution may be considered to dispense\nwith asceticism; but Origen did not think so. It was a saying of his\nmaster, St. Clement, and, indeed, appears to have been a common\nproverb in that reformed school of heathen philosophy which resulted\nin Neo-Platonism, \"As your words, so be your life.\" A philosopher in\nAlexandria at that time, if he would not be thought to belong to an\neffete race of thinkers who had long been left behind, or who only\nsurvived in the well-paid and well-fed professorships of the\nuniversity, was of necessity a man whose strict and sober living\ncorresponded to the high and serious truths which he considered it his\nmission to utter. St. Clement did not forget this, either in principle\nor in practice, when he undertook to win the heathen men of science to\nChrist. Origen, born a Christian, made a teacher apparently by chance\nand in the confusion of a persecution, cared little, in the first\ninstance, for what pagan philosophy would think of him. The fact that\nall who pretended to be philosophers pretended also to asceticism may,\nindeed, have caused him to embrace a life of denial more as a matter\nof course. But the holy gospels and the teachings of Clement were the\nreasons of his asceticism. It is amazing that Protestant writers, when\nthey write of the asceticism of the early Church, can see in it\nnothing but the reflection of Buddhism, or Judaism, or of the tenets\nof Pythagoras, and that they always seem nervously glad to prove by\nthe assistance of the Egyptian climate or the Platonic hatred of\nmatter, that it was not the carrying out of the law of Christ, but\nmerely a self-imposed burden. Climate, doubtless, has great influence\non food, and English dinners would no more suit an Egyptian sun than\nwould the two regulation _paximatia_ of the Abbot Moses in Cassian be\nenough for even the most willing of English Cistercians. But why go to\nclimate, to Plato, to Pythagoras, and to Buddha, to account for what\nis one of the most striking recommendations of the gospels? We need\nnot stop to inquire the reason, but we may be sure that a child who\nhad been taught the Holy Scriptures by heart would not be unlikely to\nknow something of their teaching. His biographer tells us expressly,\nwith regard to several of his acts of mortification, that they were\ndone in the endeavor to carry out literally our Lord's commands. And\nyet it is very remarkable, and a trait of the times, that Eusebius, in\ndescribing his mode of life, uses the word philosophy three times\nwhere we should use asceticism. Origen, soon after being appointed\nhead of the Catechetic school, found he could not do his duty by his\nhearers as thoroughly as he could wish, on account of his other\noccupation of teacher of grammar. He therefore resolved to give it up.\nIt was his only means of subsistence, but he might reasonably have\nexpected \"to live by the gospel\" as long as he was in such a post as\nchief catechist. If he had expected this he would not have been\ndisappointed, for there would have been no lack of charity. But he had\nan entirely different view of the matter. He would be a burden {730}\nto no one, and would live a life of the strictest poverty. Simple,\nstraightforward, and great, here as ever, we may conceive how he would\nappreciate the fetters of a rich man's patronage. But, if we may trust\nthe utterances of his whole life, his love for holy poverty was such\nthat, while it makes some refer once more to Pythagoras, to a Catholic\nit rather suggests St. Francis of Assisi. \"I tremble,\" he said thirty\nyears afterward, \"when I think how Jesus commands his children to\nleave all they have. For my own part, I plead guilty to my accusers\nand I pronounce my own sentence; I will not conceal my guiltiness lest\nI become doubly guilty. I will preach the precepts of the Lord, though\nI am conscious of not having followed them myself. Let us now at least\nlose no time in becoming true priests of the Lord, whose inheritance\nis not on earth but in heaven.\" Such language from one who can hardly\nbe said to have possessed anything during his whole life can only be\nexplained on one hypothesis. In order, therefore, at once to secure\nhis independence in God's work, and to oblige himself to practise\nrigorous poverty, he made a sacrifice which none but a poor student\ncan appreciate. He sold his manuscripts, and secured to himself, from\nthe sale, a sum of four oboli a day, which was to be his whole income.\nThis sum, which was about the ordinary pay of a common sailor, who had\nhis food and lodging provided for him, was little enough to live upon;\nbut miserable as it was, Origen must have paid a dear premium to\nobtain it. Those manuscripts of \"ancient authors\" were probably the\nfruits and the assistance of his early studies; he must have written\nmany of them under the eye of his martyred father. He had \"labored\nwith care and love to write them out fairly,\" we are told, and\ndoubtless he prized them at once as a scholar prizes his library and a\nlaborious worker the work of his hands. For many years, probably until\nhe went to Rome in 211, he continued to receive his twopence or\nthreepence every day from the person who had bought his books. But we\ncease in great part to wonder how little he lived on when we know how\nhe lived. In obedience to our Lord's command, and in opposition to the\nprevailing practice of all but the poorest classes, he wore the tunic\nsingle, and as for the pallium, he seems either to have dispensed with\nit altogether, or only to have worn it whilst teaching. For many years\nhe went entirely barefoot. He fasted continually from all that was not\nabsolutely necessary to keep him alive; he never touched wine; he\nworked hard all day in teaching and visiting the poor; and after\nstudying what we should call theology the greater part of the night,\nhe did not go to bed, but took a little rest on the floor. This\n\"vehemently philosophic\" life, as Eusebius calls it, reduced him in\ntime, as might have been expected, to a mere wreck; insufficient food\nand scanty clothing brought on severe stomachic complaints, which\nnearly caused his death. It is not to be supposed that his disciples\nand the Church in general looked on with indifference whilst he\npractised these austerities. On the contrary, he was solicited over\nand over again to receive assistance and to take care of himself; and\nmany were even somewhat offended because he refused their well-meant\noffers. But Origen had chosen to put his hand to the plough, and he\nwould not have been Origen if he had turned back. It is probable,\nindeed, that he somewhat moderated his austerities when his health\nbegan to give way seriously; but hard work and hard living were his\nlot to the end, and the name of Adamantine, which he received at this\ntime, and which all ages and countries have confirmed to him, shows\nwhat the popular impression was of what he actually went through. As\nmight have been expected, a man of such singleness and determination\nhad many imitators. We have seen that the very pagan philosophers came\nto listen to him. {731} The young scholars whom he instructed, and\nmany of whom he converted, did more than listen to him; they joined\nhim, and imitated as nearly as they could what Eusebius again calls\nthe \"philosophy\" of his life. It was no barren aping of externals,\nsuch as might have been seen going on a little way off at the Museum;\nhe, on his part, taught them deep and earnest lessons in the deepest\nand most earnest of all philosophies; they, on theirs, proved that his\nwords were power by the severest of all tests--they stood firm in the\nhorrors of a fearful persecution, and more than one of them witnessed\nto them by a cruel death.\n\nAs long as the persecution lasted, anything like regularity and\ncompleteness in a work like that of Origen was clearly impossible. But\na persecution at Alexandria, though generally furious as long as it\nlasted, happily seldom lasted very long. Popular opinion was, no\ndoubt, very bitter against Christianity. But popular opinion was one\nthing; the will of the prince-governor another. Moreover, the popular\nopinion of the Greek philosophers was generally diametrically opposed\nto that of their Roman masters, and the beliefs and traditions of the\nRhacotis tended to the instant extermination of the Jews; and though\nthese four antagonistic elements could, upon occasion, so far forget\ntheir differences as to unite in an onslaught against the Christians,\nyet, before long, quarrels arose and riots ensued among the allied\nparties to such an extent that the legionaries had no choice but to\nclear the streets in the most impartial manner. Again, it is quite\ncertain that the Christian party included in it not a few men of rank;\nand, what is more important, of power and authority. This we know from\nthe trouble St. Dionysius, one of Origen's scholars, afterward had\nwith many such persons who had \"lapsed\" in the Decian persecution. As\neverything, therefore, depended on the humor of the governor, and as\nthe governor was, as other men, liable to be influenced by bribes\nsuggestions, and caprice, a furious persecution might suddenly die\nout, and the Church begin to enjoy comparative peace at the very time\nwhen things looked worst. Until the year 211, \"Adamantius\" taught,\nstudied, prayed, and fasted amidst disturbance, martyrdoms, and\nfleeings from house to house; but that year wrought a change, not only\nin Alexandria, but over the whole world. It was simply the year of the\ndeath of Septimus Severus at York, and of the accession of Caracalla\nand Geta; but this was an event which, if precedents were to be\ntrusted, invited all the nations that recognized the Roman eagle to be\nready for any change, however unreasonable, beginning with the senate,\nand ending with the Christians. It was, probably, in this same year,\n211, that Origen took advantage of the restoration of tranquillity to\nvisit the city and Church of Rome. It would seem that this episode of\nhis journey to Rome has not been sufficiently considered in the\ngreater part of the accounts of his life. Protestant writers, as may\nbe expected, pass it over quietly, either barely mentioning it, or, if\nthey do put a gloss upon it, confining themselves to generalities\nabout the interchange of ideas or the antiquity and renown of the\nRoman Church. But there is evidently more in it than this. Origen was\njust twenty-six years of age: though so young, he was already famous\nas a teacher and a holy liver in the most learned of cities, and one\nof the most ascetical of churches. His work was immense, and daily\nincreasing. On the cessation of the persecution, the great school was\nto be reorganized, and put once more into that thorough working order\nwhich had made it so effective under Pantaenus and Clement. Yet, just\nat this busy crisis, he hurries off to Rome, stays there a short time,\nand hurries back again. In the first place, why go at all? What could\nRome or any other church give him that he had not already at\nAlexandria? Not scientific learning, certainly; not a systematic {732}\norganization of work; not reverence for Holy Scripture; not the method\nof confuting learned philosophy. Again: why go specially to Rome? Was\nthere not a high road, easy and comparatively short, to Caesarea of\nPalestine, and would he not find there facilities enough for the\n\"interchange of thought?\" For there, about fifteen years before, had\nassembled one of the first councils ever held since the council of\nJerusalem. Was there not Jerusalem, the cradle of the Church? It was\nthen, indeed, shorn of its glory, both spiritual and historical; for\nit was subject, at least not superior, to Caesarea, and was known to\nthe empire by the name of Aelia Capitolina; but its aged bishop was a\nworker of miracles. Was there not Antioch, the great central see of\nbusy, intellectual Syria, the see of St. Theophilus, wherein saintly\nbishops on the one hand, and Marcionite heresy and Paschal schism on\nthe other, kept the traditions of the faith bright and polished? Were\nthere not the Seven Churches? Was there not many a \"mother-city\"\nbetween the Mediterranean and the mountain ranges where apostolic\nteachings were strong yet, and apostolic men yet ruled? Origen's\nmotive in going to \"see Rome\" is given us by himself, or, rather, by\nhis biographer in his words; but, unfortunately, in such an ambiguous\nway that it is almost useless as an argument; he wished, says\nEusebius, \"to see the very ancient Church of Rome.\" The word we have\ntranslated \"very ancient\" ([Greek text]) may also mean, as we need not\nsay, \"first in dignity.\" It is hardly worth while to argue upon it,\nbut it will not fail to strike the reader that Jerusalem and Antioch,\nnot to mention other sees, were both older than Rome, if age was the\nonly recommendation. Origen's visit to Rome, then, is a very\nremarkable event in his life, for it shows undoubtedly that the chief\nof the greatest school of the Church found he required something which\ncould only be obtained in Rome, and that something can only have been\nan approach to the chief and supreme depositary of tradition. He was\nat the very beginning of his career, and he could begin no better than\nby invoking the blessing of that rock of the Church of whom his\nmaster, Clement, had taught him to think so nobly and lovingly. We\nshall see that, many a year after this, in the midst of troubles and\ncalumnies, when his great life was nearly closed, the same see of\nPeter received the professions and obedience of his failing voice, as\nit had witnessed and blessed the ardor of his youth. He was not,\nindeed, the first who, though already great in his own country, had\nbeen drawn toward a greatness which something told them was without a\nrival. Three-quarters of a century before Rome had attracted from\nfar-off Jerusalem that great St. Hegesippus, the founder of church\nhistory, whose works are lost, but whose fame remains. A convert from\nJudaism, he left his native city, travelled to Rome, and sojourned\nthere for twenty years, busily learning and committing to writing\nthose practices and traditions of the Roman Church which he afterward\nappears to have disseminated all over the East, and which he conveyed,\ntoward the end of his life, to his own Jerusalem, where he died. From\nAssyria and beyond the Tigris the \"perfume of Rome\" had enticed the\ngreat Tatian--happy if, on his return, he had still kept pure that\nfaith which, at Rome, he defended so well against Crescens the cynic.\nA great mind and a widely cultivated genius found the sphere of its\nrest in Rome, when St. Justin finished his wanderings there and sealed\nthe workings of his active intellect by shedding his blood at the\nbidding of the ruling clique of Stoics--_\"philosophus et martyr\"_ as\nthe old martyrologies call him. A famous name, too, is that of Rhodon,\nof Asia, well known for his steady and able defence of the faith\nagainst Marcionites and other heretics. These, and such as these, had\ncome from the world's ends to visit the great apostolic see before\nOrigen's day dawned. But there were others, and as great, whom {733}\nhe may actually have met in the city, either on a visit like himself,\nor because they were members of the Roman clergy. There was the great\nCarthaginian, Tertullian, who, for many years, lived, learned, and\nwrote in Rome; his works show how well he knew the Roman Church, and\nhow often afterward he had occasion, in his polemical battles, to\nallude to the _\"Ecclesia transmarina\"_ as Africa called Rome. A\nmeeting between Origen and Tertullian is a very suggestive idea; the\nonly misfortune is, that we have no warrant whatever for supposing it\nbeyond the bare possibility. But by naming Tertullian we suggest one\nview, at least, of the ecclesiastical society which Origen would meet\nwhen he visited Rome. Another celebrated man, whom there is more\nlikelihood that Origen did meet, is the convert Roman lawyer, Minucius\nFelix, who employed his recognized talents and trained skill in\nvigorous apologetic writings, one of which we still possess. A third\nwas the priest Caius, one of the Roman clergy, famed as the adversary\nof Proclus the Montanist, unless he had already started on his\nmissionary career as regionary bishop. Finally, there was St.\nHippolytus, who, like Caius, was from the school of St. Irenaeus, and\nhad come from Lyons to Rome, where he seems to have been no unworthy\nrepresentative of his teacher's zeal against heretics. Nearly every\nstep of the life of St. Hippolytus is encumbered by the ruin of a\nlearned theory or the useless rubbish of an abandoned position; but he\nas far as we can conjecture, the chief scientific adviser of the Roman\npontiffs in the measures they took at this time regarding Easter and\nagainst the Noetians. Until scientific men have settled their disputes\nas to who was the author of the _Philosophumena_, or Treatise _against\nAll Heresies_, little more can be said about St. Hippolytus. The\nTreatise itself, however, whose recovery some twenty years ago excited\nso much interest, must have had an author, and it is nearly certain\nthe author must have been one of the Roman clergy at this very time.\nIt is still more certain that the matters therein discussed must\nrepresent very completely one view of Church matters at Rome in the\nearly part of the third century; and, therefore, even if Origen did\nnot meet the author in person, he must have met many who thought as he\ndid. Now it is rather interesting to read the _Philosophumena_ in this\nlight, and to conjecture what Origen would think of some of its views.\nThe leading idea of the work, which is not even yet extant complete,\nis to prove that all heresies have sprung from Greek philosophy. This\nit attempts to do by detailing, first, the systems of the\nphilosophers, then those of the heretics, and showing their mutual\nconnection. The scandalous attack on St. Callistus, in the ninth book,\nmay or may not be an interpolation by a later hand; if not, the author\nmust have been much more ingenious than reputable. There is no denying\nthe historical and literary value of the Treatise; but where it\nprofesses to draw deductions and to give philosophical analyses of\nsystems, it seems of comparatively moderate worth. For instance, the\nauthor's analysis and appreciation of the philosophy of Aristotle is\nlittle better than a libel on the great _\"maestro di lor chi sanno;\"_\nand Basilides, though doubtless a clever personage in his way, can\nhardly have taken the trouble to go so far for the small amount of\nphilosophy that seasons his fantastical speculations. But a general\nopinion resembling the opinion maintained in the Treatise seems to\nhave been common in the West; and when Tertullian says of the\nphilosophy of Plato that it was _\"haereticorum omnium\ncondimentarium,\"_ he was doubtless expressing the idea of many beside\nhimself. To Origen, fresh from the school of Clement and the\natmosphere of Alexandria, such language must have sounded startling,\nto say the least, and we cannot help feeling he would be rather {734}\nsorry, if not indignant, to hear the great names he had been taught to\nthink of with so much admiration and compassion unfeelingly\ncaricatured into a relationship of paternity with such men as the\nfounders of Gnosticism. He does not appear to have been very familiar\nyet with the Greek systems; they had not come specially in his way,\nthough he had heard of them in the Christian schools, and there is\nlittle doubt that he had already seen the necessity of studying them\nmore closely, as he actually did on his return to Alexandria. What\neffect the views of the Western Church had on his teaching, and how he\ntreated the philosophers, we shall have to consider in the sequel.\nMeanwhile, his stay at Rome was over; he had studied the faith and\nheresy, discipline and schism, church organization and sectarian\nrebellion, in the most important centre of the whole Church, and his\nschool at Alexandria was awaiting him, to reap the benefit of his\njourney.\n\nOn the return of Origen to Alexandria, it would almost appear\nas if he had wished to decline, for a time, the office of chief of the\nCatechisms. The historian tells us that he only resumed it at the\nstrongly expressed desire of his bishop, Demetrius, who was anxious\nfor the \"profit and advantage of the brethren.\" Perhaps he wished for\ngreater leisure than such a post would permit of, in order to carry\ninto execution certain projects that were forming in his mind. But\nneither the patriarch nor his scholars would hear of his giving up,\nand so he had to settle to his work again; \"which he did,\" says\nEusebius, \"with the greatest zeal,\" as he did everything. From this\ntime, with one or two short interruptions, he lived and taught in\nAlexandria for twenty years. His life as an authoritative teacher and\n\"master in Israel\" may be said to commence from this point. It was an\nepoch resembling in some degree that other epoch, thirty years before,\nwhen Pantaenus had been called upon to take the charge of chief\nteacher in the Alexandrian Church. Now, as then, the winter of a\npersecution had passed, and the season was sunny and promising. Now,\nas then, men were high in hope, and set to work with valiant hearts to\nrepair the breaches the straggle had left, and to restore to the\nrock-built fortress that glory and comeliness that became her so well;\nbut with which, if need was, she could securely dispense. But there\nwas no slight difference between 180 and 211. The tide of Christianity\nhad risen perceptibly all over the Church; most of all on the shores\nof its greatest scientific centre. The possibility of appealing to\nthose who had heard the apostles had long been past, but now even the\ndisciples of Polycarp, Simeon, and Ignatius had disappeared; instead\nof Irenaeus there was Hippolytus, and Demetrius of Alexandria was the\neleventh successor of St. Mark. Heretics had multiplied, questions had\nbeen asked, tradition was developing itself, dogma was being fixed.\nThe form of teaching was, therefore, in process of change as other\nthings changed. Greater precision, more \"positive theology,\" a more\nconstant look-out for what authority had said or might say--these\nnecessities would make the teacher's office more difficult, even if\nmore definite. The position of the Church toward its enemies, also,\nwas sensibly changing. The \"gain-sayers\" were not of the same class as\nhad been addressed by St. Theophilus or St. Justin. The state of\nthings had grown more distinctly marked. Christianity was no longer an\nidea that might, in a burst of noble rhetoric, be made to set on fire,\nfor a moment, even the camp of the enemy. It was now known to the\nGentile world as a stern and unyielding praxis; susceptible, perhaps,\nof scientific and literary treatment, but quite distinct from both\nscience and letters. Enthusiastic but timid _dilettanti_ had lost\ntheir enthusiasm, and gave full scope to their fears. Amiable\nphilosophers took back the right hand of fellowship, and retreated\nbehind those who, by a {735} special instinct, had always refused to\nbe amiable, and now thought themselves more justified than ever. On\nthe Christian side the war had lost much of the adventure which\naccompanies the first dashing inroads into an enemy's country.\nSurprises were not so easy, systematic opposition was frequent, and\ntheir writers were obliged to fight by tactics, and in the prosaic\narray of argument for argument. Documents, moral testimony,\ninstitutions, were the objects of attack from without. The apostles\nwere vilified, faith was proved to be irrational, the Bible was ranked\nwith Syrian impostures and Jewish charm-books. And here, in the matter\nof the Bible, was a mighty enterprise for the Christian teacher. The\ncanon had not yet been officially promulgated. A generation that would\ndespise an apocryphal book of Homer or a false Orphic hymn would not\nbe easily satisfied with the credentials of a religion. Great, then,\nwould be that Christian teacher who should at once teach the faithful,\nand yet not \"take away from\" the faith; win the philosophers, and yet\nfight them hand to hand; and give to the world a critical edition of\nthe Bible, yet hold fast to ancient tradition. Such was the work of\nOrigen.\n\nHe began by external organization; he divided the multitudes that\nflocked to the Catechisms into two grand classes; one of those who\nwere commencing, another of those who were more advanced. The former\nclass he gave to his first convert, Heraclas; the latter he kept to\nhimself. Heraclas was \"skilled in theology,\" and \"in other respects a\nvery eloquent man;\" and, moreover, he was \"fairly conversant with\nphilosophy,\" three qualifications in an Alexandrian catechist none of\nwhich could be dispensed with. In any case, the division was a matter\nof absolute necessity, for these extraordinary Alexandrian scholars,\nmodels and patterns that deserve to be imitated more extensively than\nthey have been, gave him no respite and kept no regular school-hours,\nbut crowded in and out \"from morning till night;\" \"not even a\nbreathing-space did they afford him,\" says his biographer. In such\ncircumstances theological study and scriptural labors were out of the\nquestion, even if he had been the man of adamant that his admirers,\nwith the true Alexandrian passion for nicknames, had already begun to\ncall him. He therefore looked about among \"his familiars,\" those of\nhis disciples who had attached themselves to him and lived with him a\nlife of study and asceticism; and from them he chose out Heraclas, the\nbrother of the martyred Plutarchus, to be the chief associate of his\nwork.\n\nIt need not be again mentioned that Origen's work, as that of\nPantaenus and of Clement before him, had three classes of persons to\ndeal with--catechumens, heretics, and philosophers. His dealings with\nthe heretics and philosophers will be treated of more appropriately\nwhen we come to consider his journeys, the most important of which\noccurred after the expiration of the twenty years with which we are\nnow concerned. As the school of Alexandria was chiefly and primarily\nconnected with the catechumens, the account of the twenty years of his\npresidency will naturally be concerned chiefly and primarily with the\nlatter, that is to say, with those whom that great school undertook to\ninstruct in faith and discipline. And here we approach and stand close\nbeneath one side of that monumental fane that bears upon it for all\ngenerations the name of Origen. The neophytes of Alexandria were\nchiefly taught out of one book; it was the custom handed from teacher\nto teacher; each held up the book and explained it, according to the\n\"unvarying tradition of the ancients.\" For two hundred and ten years\nthe work had gone on; but time has destroyed nearly every trace of\nwhat was written and spoken. For the first time since St. Mark wrote\nthe gospel, Alexandria speaks now in history with a voice that shall\ncommence a new era in the history of {736} Holy Scripture. Pantaemus\nhad written \"Commentaries\" on the whole of the Bible; Clement had\nleft, in the _Hypotyposes_, a summary exposition of all the canonical\nScripture, not forgetting a glance at the \"Contradictions\" of\nheretics. Both these writings have perished long ago. When Origen\ncame, in his turn, to take the same work in hand, a pressing want soon\nforced itself upon his mind. There was no authentic version of the\nsacred Word. The New Testament canon was still uncertain, one Church\nupholding a greater number of books, another less. The Roman canon\nwas, indeed, from the first identical with the Tridentine (see\nPerrone, _\"De Locis Theologicis\"_). But the Church of Antioch, _e.g._,\nignored no less than five of the canonical books. Alexandria, well\nsupplied with learned expositors, and not a little influenced by the\nnative Alexandrian instinct for criticism and grammar, had got further\nin the development of the canon than the majority of its sisters. Yet,\nso far, there had hardly been any distinct interference on the part of\nauthority, and though, as we shall see, Origen's New Testament canon\nwas the same as that of the Council of Trent, yet there were not\nwanting private writers who expressed doubts about the Epistle to the\nHebrews or the Apocalypse. One thing, however, is very clear in all\nthese somewhat troublesome disputes about the canon; whether we turn\nto Tertullian in Africa, to St. Jerome in Italy, to St. Irenaeus in\nthe West, or to Clement and Origen in the East, we find one grand and\nlarge criterion put forth as the test of all authenticity, viz., the\ntradition of the ancients. \"Go to the oldest churches,\" says St.\nIrenaeus. \"The truest,\" says Tertullian, \"is the oldest; the oldest is\nwhat always was; what always was is from the apostles; go therefore to\nthe churches of the apostles, and find what is there held sacred.\" \"We\nmust not transgress the bounds set by our fathers,\" says Origen. It\ntook several centuries to complete this process; but the principle was\na strong and a living one, and its working out was only a matter of\ntime. It was worked out something in this fashion. A provincial\npresbyter, we will say from Pelusium, or Syene, or Arsinoe, came up to\nAlexandria (he may easily have done so, thanks to the police\narrangements and engineering enterprise of Ptolemy Philadelphus);\nhaving much ecclesiastical news to communicate, and perhaps important\nbusiness to arrange on the part of his bishop, he would be thrown into\nclose contact with the presbytery of the metropolitan Church. Let us\nsuppose that, in order to support some point of practical morality,\ntouching the \"lapsed\" or the converts, he quoted Hermas' \"Shepherd\" as\ncanonical Scripture. The archdeacon with whom he was arguing would\ndemur to such an authority; let him quote Paul, or Jude, or Peter, or\nJohn, but not Hernias; Hernias was not in the canon. The presbyter\nfrom the provinces would be a little amazed and even ruffled; how\ncould he say it was not in the canon when he himself had heard it read\non the Lord's day before the sacred mysteries in the patriarchal\nChurch, in the presence of the very patriarch himself, seated on his\nthrone, and surrounded by the clergy? A canonical book meant a book\nwithin the Church's general rule ([Greek text]), and the rule of the\nChurch was that a book read at such a time was thereby declared true\nScripture. The archdeacon would reply that the presbyter was right in\nthe main, both as to facts and principles; but would point out that at\nAlexandria they had a set of books which were read at the solemn time\nhe mentioned, beside regular Scripture; and if he had known their\nusages better, or if he had asked any of the clergy, or the patriarch,\nhe would be aware that such writings were only _read to the people_ as\npious exhortations, not _defined_ as the repository of the faith. The\npresbyter would consider this inconvenient, and would doubtless be\nright in thinking so. The practice was {737} condemned by various\ncouncils in the next century. But he would at once admit that if the\ntradition were so, then the Alexandrian Church certainly appeared to\nreject Hernias. But he would have another difficulty. Did not Clement,\nof blessed memory, consider Hernias as authentic, or, at any rate, the\nEpistle of Barnabas, which was quite a parallel case? And did not\nOrigen (whom we suppose to be then teaching) call the \"Shepherd\"\n\"divinely inspired?\" It was true, the archdeacon would rejoin, that\nboth Clement in former years and Origen then spoke very highly of\nseveral writings of this class; but he must refer him once more to the\nauthoritative tradition of the Alexandrian Church, to be learned, in\nthe last instance, from the lips of Demetrius himself: this would at\nonce show that Clement and Origen could not mean to put Hernias on a\nlevel with Paul, and Origen himself would certainly admit so much, if\nhe were asked. The presbyter would inquire, during his stay, of the\nheads of the Catechetical school, of the ancient priests, and of the\npatriarch; he would be satisfied that what the archdeacon said was\ntrue; and he would return to his city on the Red Sea, or at the\nextremity of the Thebaid, or on the north-western coast of the\ncontinent, with authentic intelligence that the Apostolic Church of\nAlexandria rejected Hermas from the Scripture canon, and that,\ntherefore, it certainly ought to be rejected by his own Church. He\nwould, perhaps, in addition to this, bring the information that the\nmetropolitan Church, so he had found out in his researches, upheld the\nEpistle to the Hebrews, or the Apocalypse of the Apostle John, to be\ntrue and genuine Scripture; would it not, therefore, be well to\nconsider whether these also should not be admitted by themselves? In\nthis way, or in some way analogous, the Churches that lay within the\n\"circumscription\" of a patriarchal or apostolic see would by degrees\nbe led to conform their canon to the canon of the principal Church. As\ntime went on, the great metropolitan sees themselves became grouped\nround the three grand centres of Alexandria, Antioch, and Rome; and,\nfinally, in the process of the development of tradition, at least as\nearly as A.D. 800, the whole Church had adopted the canon as approved\nby Rome in the decretal of Innocent I. It is, therefore, a remarkable\nfact that Origen quotes the canon of the New Testament precisely as it\nnow stands in the Vulgate. It would hardly be true to say that he\nformally states as exclusively authentic the complete list of the\nCatholic canon; but that he does enumerate it is certain. Moreover, in\naddition to the remarkable correctness of his investigations on the\ncanon, Origen did much, in other ways, for a book that was\nemphatically the textbook of his school. The exemplars in general use\nwere in a most unsatisfactory state: there were hardly two alike.\nWriters had been careless, audacious innovators had inserted their\ninterpolations, honest but mistaken bunglers had added and taken away\nwhenever the sense seemed to require it. It is Origen himself who\nmakes these complaints, and nobody had better occasion to know how\ntrue they were. The manuscript used in the great Church probably\ndiffered from that used by the chief catechist; his, again, differed\nfrom every one of those brought to class by the wealthier of his\nscholars. One would bring up a copy of St. Matthew's Gospel, which, on\ninvestigation, would turn out to be full of Nazarite or Ebionite\n\"improvements\"--another would have an Acts of the Apostles, which had\nbeen bequeathed to him by some venerable Judaizant, and wherein St.\nJames of Jerusalem would be found to have assumed more importance than\nSt. Luke was generally supposed to have given him. A third would have\na copy so full of monstrous corruptions in the way of mutilation and\ndeliberate heretical glossing, that the orthodox ears of the {738}\nmaster would certainly have detected a quotation from it in two lines:\nit would be one of Valentine's editions. A fourth, newly arrived from\nsome place where Tertullian had never been heard of, would appear with\na bulky set of _volumina_, which Origen would find to his great\ndisgust to be the New Testament \"according to Marcion.\" That first and\nchief of reckless falsifiers had \"circumcised\" the New Testament, as\nSt. Irenaeus calls it, to such an extent that he had to invent a\nquantity of new Acts and Apocalypses to keep up appearances, and what\nhe retained he had freely cut and tortured into Marcionism; for he\nsaid openly that the apostles were moderately well-informed, but that\nhis lights were far in advance of them. Such examples as these are, of\ncourse, extremes; but even in orthodox copies there must have been a\nbewildering number of _variantes_. Origen's position would bring him\ninto contact with exemplars from many distant churches. The work of\ncopying fresh ones for the \"missions,\" or to supply the wants of the\nprovinces, would necessitate some choice of manuscripts; and in a\nmatter so important, we may be sure that his catechists,\nfellow-townsmen of Aristarchus, rather enjoyed than otherwise the\nvigorous critical disputes which the collation of MSS. has a special\ntendency to engender. It is nearly established--indeed, we may say, it\nis certain--that Origen wrote a copy of the New Testament with his own\nhand. It was not a new edition, apparently, but a corrected copy of\nthe generally received version. He corrected the blunders of copyists;\nhe struck out of the text everything that was evidently a mere gloss;\nhe re-inserted what had clearly dropped out by mischance, and adopted\na few readings that were unmistakable improvements. But he made no\nalteration of the text on mere conjecture. However faulty a reading\nmight seem, he never changed it without authority; he had too much\nreverence for Holy Scripture, and probably, also, too bitter an\nexperience of conjectural emendations, to sanction such dangerous\nproceedings by his own practice. This precious copy, the fruit of his\nlabors and study, the depositary of his wide experience, and the\nrecord of his \"adamantine\" industry, was apparently the one from which\nhe himself always quoted, and, therefore, we may conclude, which he\nalways used. It lay, after his death, in the archives of Caesarea of\nPalestine, with his other Biblical MSS. Pamphilus the Martyr is\nrelated to have copied it; and in the time of Constantine, Eusebius\nsent many transcripts of it to the imperial city. Eusebius himself\ncopied it with all the reverence he would necessarily feel for his\nhero, Origen; and by means of his copy, or of copies made by his\ndirection, it became the basis of that recension of the New Testament\nknown as the Alexandrine. St. Jerome was well acquainted with the\nlibrary of Caesarea, and often mentions the _\"Codices Adamantii\"_\nwhich he was privileged to consult there; and we need not remind the\nreader of the well-known agreement of the Latin versions with those of\nPalestine and Alexandria. Now Palestine meant--first, Jerusalem, where\nwas the celebrated library formed by St. Alexander, Origen's own\ncollege friend and an Alexandria man, as we should say, and partly\nunder Origen's influence; and, secondly, Caesarea, which inherited\nOrigen's traditions and teaching, at least equally with Alexandria, as\nwe shall see later on, and in which the originals of his works were\npreserved with religious veneration, until war and sack of Persian or\nMoslem destroyed them. Thus the work of Origen on the New Testament,\nbegun and mainly carried out during those twenty years at Alexandria,\nis living and active at this very day. But if the New Testament needed\nsetting to rights, it was correct and accurate in comparison with the\nOld. How he treated the Septuagint, and how the Hexapla and the\nTetrapla grew under nimble hands and learned heads, we must for the\npresent defer to tell.\n\n\n\n{739}\n\nFrom The Fortnightly Review.\n\nMARTIN'S PUZZLE.\n\nI.\n\n  There she goes up the street with her book in her hand,\n    And her \"Good morning, Martin!\" \"Ay, lass, how d'ye do?\"\n  \"Very well, thank you, Martin!\" I can't understand;\n    I might just as well never have cobbled a shoe!\n  I can't understand it. She talks like a song:\n    Her voice takes your ear like the ring of a glass;\n  She seems to give gladness while limping along;\n    Yet sinner ne'er suffered like that little lass.\n\nII.\n\n  Now, I'm a rough fellow--what's happen'd to me?\n    Since last I left Falmouth I've not had a fight\n  With a miner come down for a dip in the sea;\n    I cobble contented from morning to night.\n  The Lord gives me all that a man should require;\n    Protects me, and \"cuddles me up,\" as it were.\n  But what have I done to be saved from the fire?\n    And why does his punishment fall upon her?\n\nIII.\n\n  First, a fool of a boy ran her down with a cart.\n    Then, her fool of a father--a blacksmith by trade--\n  Why the deuce does he tell us it hah broke his heart?\n    His heart!--where's the leg of the poor little maid!\n  Well, that's not enough; they must push her downstairs,\n    To make her go crooked: but why count the list?\n  If it's right to suppose that our human affairs\n    Are all order'd by heaven--there, bang goes my fist!\n\nIV.\n\n  For if angels can look on such sights--never mind!\n    When you're next to blaspheming, it's best to be mum.\n  The parson declares that her woes weren't design'd;\n    But, then, with the parson it's all kingdom-come.\n  \"Lose a leg, save a soul \"--a convenient text;\n    I call it \"Tea doctrine,\" not savoring of God.\n  When poor little Molly wants \"chastening,\" why, next--\n    The Archangel Michael might taste of the rod.\n\n{740}\n\nV.\n\n  But, to see the poor darling go limping for miles\n    To read books to sick people!--and just of an age\n  When girls learn the meaning of ribbons and smiles,--\n    Makes me feel like a squirrel that turns in a cage.\n  The more I push thinking, the more I resolve:\n    I never get further:--and as to her face,\n  It starts up when near on my puzzle I solve,\n    And says, \"This crush'd body seems such a sad case.\"\n\nVI.\n\n  Not that she's for complaining: she reads to earn pence;\n    And from those who can't pay, simple thanks are enough.\n  Does she leave lamentation for chaps without sense?\n    Howsoever, she's made up of wonderful stuff.\n  Ay, the soul in her body must be a stout cord;\n    She sings little hymns at the close of the day,\n  Though she has but three fingers to lift to the Lord,\n    And only one leg to kneel down with to pray.\n\nVII.\n\n  What I ask is, Why persecute such a poor dear,\n    If there's law above all? Answer that if you can!\n  Irreligious I'm not; but I look on this sphere\n    As a place where a man should just think like a man.\n  It isn't fair dealing! But, contrariwise,\n    Do bullets in battle the wicked select?\n  Why, then it's all chance-work! And yet, in her eyes,\n    She hold's a fixed something by which I am check'd.\n\nVIII.\n\n  Yonder ribbon of sunshine aslope on the wall,\n    If you eye it a minute, 'll have the same look:\n  So kind! and so merciful! God of us all!\n    It's the very same lesson we get from thy book.\n  Then is life but a trial? Is that what is meant?\n    Some must toil, and some perish, for others below:\n  The injustice to each spreads a common content;\n    Ay! I've lost it again, for it can't be quite so.\n\nIX.\n\n  She's the victim of fools: that seems nearer the mark.\n    On earth there are engines and numerous fools.\n  Why the Lord can permit them, we're still in the dark;\n    He does, and in some sort of way they're his tools.\n  It's a roundabout way, with respect let me add,\n    If Molly goes crippled that we may be taught:\n  But, perhaps, it's the only way, though it's so bad;\n    In that case we'll bow down our heads, as we ought.\n\n{741}\n\nX.\n\n  But the worst of _me_ is, that when I bow my head,\n    I perceive a thought wriggling away in the dust,\n  And I follow its tracks, quite forgetful, instead\n    Of humble acceptance: for, question I must!\n  Here's a creature made carefully--carefully made\n    Put together with craft, and then stampt on, and why?\n  The answer seems nowhere: it's discord that's play'd.\n    The sky's a blue dish!--an implacable sky!\n\nXI.\n\n  Stop a moment. I seize an idea from the pit.\n    They tell us that discord, though discord, alone,\n  Can be harmony when the notes properly fit:\n    Am I judging all things from a single false tone?\n  Is the universe one immense organ, that rolls\n    From devils to angels? I'm blind with the sight.\n  It pours such a splendor on heaps of poor souls!\n    Suppose I try kneeling with Molly to-night.\n\nGEORGE MEREDITH.\n\n------\n\nTranslated from Der Katholik.\n\nTHE TWO SIDES OF CATHOLICISM.\n\n[Third and concluding Article.]\n\n\nIV. THE HEART OF THE CHURCH.\n\nChrist approves himself as the head of the Church inasmuch as her\nindividual members are subject to his guidance, and live and move in\nhim.  [Footnote 151] This protracted influence of Christ is exercised\nby means of an innate harmonizing and vivifying principle of the\nChurch. We have arrived at the heart of the Church. Our ancient\ntheology bestows this epithet on the Holy Ghost.  [Footnote 152]  The\nChurch receives the Holy Ghost through Christ. Such is the doctrine of\nScripture, clearly expressed. Jesus promises his disciples to send\nthem after his departure the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth, in whom\nthey will find a compensation for the Master. For it is the function\nof the Spirit to testify of Christ, and to bring all things to the\nremembrance of the Church, whatsoever Jesus has said. Thus are all\nthings taught unto the Church. This efficacy, which has the glory of\nChrist for its aim, the Holy Ghost derives from the fulness of\nChrist's Godhead, _de meo accipiet._ The Holy Ghost was not given\nuntil after Jesus was glorified. Christ being exalted, and having\nreceived the Holy Ghost promised of the Father, sheds forth the Spirit\nupon the Church. Even the prior inspiration of the apostles was the\nresult of an act of Christ. Jesus breathed on them and said unto them,\nReceive ye the Holy Ghost.\n\n  [Footnote 151: St. Thomas, iii. 93, a. 6.]\n\n  [Footnote 152: _Ibid, a. 1, ad. S: Caput habet manifestam eminentiam\n  respectu caeterorum exteriorum membrorum; sed cor habet quandam\n  influentiam occultam. Et ideo cordi comparatur Spiritus sanctus, qui\n  invisibiliter ecclesiam viviflcat et unit._]\n\nThe Spirit acts as the heart of the Church under the control and\ninfluence of the head. The fundamental theological reason of this is\nnot difficult of demonstration. The external relations {742} of the\nseveral divine persons, or their relations to the works of God, such\nas the one just described of the Holy Ghost to the Church, are\nintimately connected with the intro-divine relations of the members of\nthe most Holy Trinity to each other. It is in this sense that Holy\nWrit makes mention of a _mission_ of the Son and of the Spirit. The\nexpression implies that the person concerning whom it is used,\noccupies toward the remaining divine persons a position admitting of\nthe giving of a mission by them or one of them, that is to say, of a\nparticular work done by the one by the power and at the delegation of\nthe other. For one person of the Trinity to act in a mission,\ntherefore, it is requisite that the power and the will to act must\nemanate from the person conferring the mission. Thus Jesus says that\nhis doctrine is not his own, but the doctrine of him by whom he was\nsent. But one person of the Trinity can be a recipient from another in\nso far only as the recipient issues from the giver for ever and ever,\nor only in respect of the eternal procession. It follows that a divine\nperson can receive a mission only in emanating from another, that is\nto say, none but the _personae productae_, the Son and the Holy Ghost,\ncan be sent; while, on the other hand, only the _personae\nproducentes_, the Father and the Son, can confer a mission. Hence the\nfundamental reason why the sway of the Spirit in the Church is\nexercised under the influence of Christ, is to be found in the manner\nof the eternal procession, _i.e._, in the coming of the Spirit from\nthe Father and the Son.\n\nThe essence of Christianity consists in spiritual intercourse and\nspiritual influence. As distinguished from the old covenant, the\ncharacteristic of the New Testament dispensation consists in this:\nthat it is done by the agency of the Holy Ghost, sent down from\nheaven. The Spirit of Christ was in the prophets; but the same Spirit\nmanifests a new activity since the mission from heaven. When the\napostle desires to make the true foundation of faith clear to the\nGalatians, he contents himself with asking them whence they had\nreceived the Spirit? By its descent the blessing of Abraham came on\nthe Gentiles through Jesus Christ, in fulfilment of the prophecies.\nThe pouring out of the Holy Ghost is the crowning work of Christ's\nmediation.\n\nBut what is the badge of this more profuse dispensation of the Spirit,\nthus recognized in Scripture as the peculiar mark of Christianity?\nUnder the ancient covenant, answers St. Gregory of Naziance, the Holy\nGhost was present only by its efficacy ([Greek text]); now it abides\namong us [Greek text] _i.e._, in its essence, or _substantialiter_, as\nour theologians phrase it. The efficacy of the Spirit in the prophets\nis described by St. Cyril of Alexandria as a mere irradiation [[Greek\ntext]]; they received only the effulgence of the light, as those who\nfollow a torch-bearer [[Greek text]]; while the Spirit in proper\nperson enters into the souls of those who believe in Christ, and\ndwells therein [Greek text]. It is only since the ascension of Christ\nthat the inhabitation of the Spirit in the souls of men has reached\nits completion as [Greek text]. This is the reason assigned by St.\nCyril for the declaration of the Lord that he that is least in the\nkingdom of heaven is greater than John the Baptist, than whom there\nhath not risen a greater among them that are born of women. He\ninterprets the kingdom of heaven here referred to to be the impartment\n[Greek text] of the Holy Ghost. From this interpretation he deduces\nthe reason wherefore the humblest citizen of the kingdom of heaven is\nabove the Baptist. For the latter is born of woman, the former of God.\nIn consequence of this regeneration we are partakers of the divine\nnature, which St. Cyril interprets to mean neither more nor less than\nthe dwelling of the Holy Ghost in our souls.   [Footnote 153 ]\n\n  [Footnote 153: _Comment, in Joann. Evangel._, lib. 5. _Oper Lutet_,\n  1638, A. IV., p. 474 et seq. ]\n\nAs the head of the Church, the Son {743} of man, being lifted up from\nthe earth, draws all men unto him. The Scripture concludes the\nnarration of the miraculous events of the first Christian Passover and\nof their immediate results with the remark that the Lord added to the\nChurch daily such as should be saved. Therefore, immediately after the\noutpouring of the Holy Ghost, began the daily increase of the Church\nthrough the fructifying influence of the grace of its head. They were\nmultiplied in proportion as they walked in the comfort, the [Greek\ntext], of the Holy Ghost. By one Spirit the Church of Christ is\nbaptized into one body, which Spirit overflows it and saturates it\nwith its essence. In him we were sealed as the possession of Christ,\nand we know that he abideth in us by the Spirit which he hath given\nus. On being received into the Church the members are built into an\nedifice, the foundation of which has its cornerstone in Christ. By\nthis incorporation they are united into a mansion of God in the\nSpirit. In so far as we are joined unto the Lord we are one spirit\nwith him, and our bodies are temples of the Holy Ghost.\n\nOn account of its intimate relations with Christ, the Spirit is called\nthe Spirit of Christ. Even the Lord himself is directly called the\nSpirit. By him, the Spirit of the Lord, we are transformed into his\nimage, the image the Lord. Thereby the Spirit evinces itself the\nprinciple of our liberty.\n\nThe main result of the action of the Spirit in the Church is,\ntherefore, the union of the latter and of her individual members with\nChrist, the Christ who is within us. The union between Christ and the\nChurch is effected by the Spirit, who acts as the connecting link,\nwhile Christ himself is the efficient cause of the union, in so far as\nhe sends his Spirit to accomplish it. How, then, is the inhabitation\nof the Spirit, which is identical with that of Christ, in the Church\nbrought about? The answer to this question involves results decisive\nof the present investigation.\n\nIf the Church were an unattained ideal, according to the Protestant\nacceptation, the promise of Christ to be with his followers even unto\nthe end of the world would admit of no more profound interpretation\nthan that, after his personal departure, the Lord would continue to\noccupy the minds of his disciples, thus giving their thoughts a right\ndirection through all time. The presence of Christ in the visible\nChurch would no longer be vouchsafed by a _substantial_ pledge, making\nthe repletion of the Church with Christ, which is the ideal of that\ninstitution, a historical reality even at the present day, in so far\nas the pledge is actually present. If, on the other hand, the latter\nview is the only scriptural one, then the true Church is not to be\nhanded over exclusively to the future and to the realm of ideas. She\nis herself within the sphere of reality, she belongs to the living\npresent, if the inmost principle of her being is even now actually at\nwork, as a gift coeval with her establishment, not the mere object of\nsearch and speculation.\n\nThe idea of Catholicism presupposes one thing more. Such a principle\ndwelling in the Church as a reality must necessarily exercise its\nfunctions in a single individual image only. Both of these positions\nare the necessary results of the teachings of Holy   Writ.\n\nThe Scriptures describe the Holy Ghost, by whom the love of God is\nshed abroad in our hearts, as something conferred upon us, _per\nspiritum sanctum qui datus est nobis_. In the capacity of abiding in\nour souls as something bestowed upon us, as _donum_, the fathers\ndistinguish a personal attribute of the Holy Ghost, having its\nfoundation in the peculiar manner of its eternal emanation from the\nFather and Son. This emanation is wrought as a common infusion of\nbeing from Father and Son, as an intro-divine overflowing of love.\n[Footnote 154] Together {744} with the Holy Ghost that is given unto\nus, that is to say, by means of the love shed abroad in our hearts\nthrough him, the two other persons of the Trinity likewise come and\ntake up their abode within our souls. The unity of the three divine\npersons is not only the antetype of the unity of the Church, but is at\nthe same time its fundamental principle. In his high sacerdotal\ninvocation the Lord prays that all those who believe through the word\nmay be one, even as the Father is in him and he in the Father; and\nthat we may be one in the Father and the Son, _ut et ipsi eis nolis\nunum sint_. The unity of the Father and the Son, who take up their\nabode within us simultaneously with the Holy Ghost, is the foundation\nof our own ecclesiastical unity. There is the fundamental, the\nultimate principle of Catholicism. In it, through the Holy Ghost, we\nhave a fellowship with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.\n\n  [Footnote 154: _St. Augustinus, de Trinit._, lib. v., cap. 14:\n  _Exiit enim non quomodo natus, sed quomodo datus; et ideo non\n  dicitur filius._ Cap. 15: _Quia sic procedebat ut esset donabile,\n  jam donum erat et antequam esset cui daretur_. Cap. 11: _Spiritus\n  sanctus ineffabilis est quaedam Patris Filiique communio. . . . hoc\n  ipse proprie dicitur, quod illi communiter: quia et Pater spiritus\n  et Filius spiritus et Pater sanctus et Filius sanctus. Ut ergo ex\n  nomine, quod utrique convenit, utriusque communio significetur,\n  vocatur donum amborum Spiritus sanctus._]\n\nThe other functions ascribed to the Spirit by Holy Writ are also of\nsuch a nature as to constrain us to assume that the essence of the\ntrue Church is a reality even at this day. By the Holy Ghost we\nreceive even now an earnest of the inheritance in store for us. Its\ntestimony assures us that we are the children of God. We have become\nsuch even now, and through him. We are born of the Spirit. The renewal\naccomplished by him is a bath of regeneration, the putting on of a new\nman. In the hearts of believers he is a well of water springing up\ninto everlasting life. In this sense our justification may be regarded\nas a glorification in the germ. Christ has anointed the Church with a\nchrism which abides and exerts itself in her as a permanent teacher.\n\nIt is an entire misapprehension of the creative power of Christianity\nto ascribe to the Spirit of Christ which governs the Church no more\nprofitable efficacy than the barren, resultless chase of an ideal\nwhich constantly eludes realization. The very idea that a law of\nsteady development is to be traced in Christianity itself, this very\nfavorite view of all the advocates of an ideal Church, ought to have\nled to a more profound appreciation of the essence and history of the\nChurch. If the Church is to undergo a development, the realization of\nher ideal should not be postponed to the end of time. What is its\ncourse in history? This point is decisive of our position respecting\nthe ideal Church.\n\nThe doctrine relies upon Matt, xviii. 20. Here the Catholic\nacceptation of a realization of the essence of the Church,\nhistorically manifested, would appear to be directly excluded. The\npassage adduced makes Christ abide among us, and accordingly makes the\ntrue Church come into being simply in consequence of the casual\nassemblage of two or three, so that it takes place in his name--a\ncondition the performance or breach of which is a matter by no means\npatent to the senses. But these words are to be read in connection\nwith what precedes them. Verses 17 and 18 allude to the authority of'\nthe Church as historically manifest. The resolutions of that authority\nare ratified in heaven, and are valid before God. For--such is the\nlogical thread of the discourse of Jesus--what the Church, as\nhistorically manifested, ordains, is at the same time ordained by the\nHoly Ghost dwelling within her. That such is actually the case, the\nLord then proceeds to show by the concluding illustration. The\nagreement of two is alone sufficient to secure a fulfilment of the\nprayer: for where two or three are assembled together in the name of\nChrist, there is he in the midst of them: how much more amply then is\nthe presence and the countenance of Christ assured to the entire\nChurch, and to the organ intrusted with the execution of her {745}\npower!  [Footnote 55] True, Christ is present even where only two or\nthree are assembled in his name; but the result of his presence\ncorresponds to the extent of the assembly. There Christ simply effects\nthe fulfilment of the common prayer. That the arbitrary concourse of a\nfew individuals in the name of Christ is the realization of the\nessence of the Church, nowhere in the whole passage is there a word to\nconfirm such an interpretation.\n\n  [Footnote 155: This is the interpretation of this passage by the\n  council of Chalcedon, in its missive to Pope Leo the Great. Compare\n  _Ballerini, op. S. Leonis_ t. i., p. 1087.]\n\nThe advocates of the ideal Church also cite Eph. v. 27.  [Footnote\n156] There the Church is called holy and without blemish, not having\nspot or wrinkle; a description supposed to be applicable exclusively\nto the Church that is to be, and by no means to the Church as it is.\nThe remark is an idle one, and does not touch the real question. In\nour view it is the work of the present to lay the foundation for the\nfuture glory of the Church. This position is fully borne out by the\nwords of Scripture. For in verse 26 the apostle points out the\nsanctification of the Church as the immediate object of the sacrifice\nof Christ, and at the same time indicates the means by which the\nChurch is to be sanctified. This is done by the washing of water,\nwhich owes its purifying efficacy to the simultaneous utterance of the\nword. The presentation of the Church in unblemished holiness and\nglory, the object of the sacrificial death of Christ, is therefore\ngradually effected in the present world in proportion as the\npurification by the sacrament, under the continued influence of\nChrist, exerts its efficacy in he Church.\n\n  [Footnote 156: Hase, _Handbuch der prot. Polemik_ (Manual of\n  Protestant Polemics), p. 42. ]\n\nIf the apostle were here speaking simply of a remote future holiness\nof the Church, his whole course of reasoning would lose its point. The\nlove of Christ is here presented to husbands and wives as a model for\ntheir own connubial relations. As the self-sacrifice of Christ for the\nChurch has for its object the sanctification of the latter, so the\nmutual self-devotion of husbands and wives is to invest their lives\nwith a higher grace. It is not the mere act of the self-sacrifice of\nChrist which is to be emulated in marriage. No admonition would be\nneeded for such a purpose. Marriage is necessarily a type of this\nrelation. The discourse of the apostle tends, on the contrary, to\nrecommend the motive of the sacrifice of Christ, and its influence\nupon the sanctification of the Church, to husbands and wives for\nimitation. How feeble, how little calculated to fortify the admonition\nof the apostle, would be their reference to the relation of Christ to\nthe Church, if the sanctification of the Church by Christ, thus held\nup to husbands and wives for emulation, were something totally unreal,\na mere creature of reflection! If the purpose of the sacrifice of\nChrist, the sanctification of the Church, were still unattained, how\ncould husbands and wives be expected to make their intercourse bear\nthose moral fruits by which it is to approve itself a type of the\nrelation of Christ to the Church?\n\nThe holiness of the Church, then, has its origin in the sacraments.\nBut that which makes the Church holy appertains to her essential\ncharacter. It follows that this character also is evolved by means of\nthe sacraments. This proves, finally, that this evolution of the\ncharacter of the true Church is only possible in a single, individual\nhistorical manifestation, that is to say, only within, or at least by\nthe agency  [Footnote 157] of, that visible body politic which is in\npossession of the sacraments.\n\n  [Footnote 157: The means of grace administered by the Church\n  sometimes exert their influence beyond the pale, _i.e._, outside of,\n  her historical image. This is seen in the validity of the baptism of\n  heretics. ]\n\nProtestantism is untrue to its own principle in representing the\nadministration of the sacraments according to their institution as an\nindex of the true Church. The whole force of this position lies in the\npresumption of a {746} distinct historical organization as the\nnecessary exponent of the inward essence of the true Church. A\ncontrary doctrine is in danger of bestowing the name of the true\nChurch on a society which may possibly be composed exclusively of\nhypocrites. The inference is obvious. If the essence of the true\nChurch is only to be found in the domain of the mind, or if it even\nremains a mere ideal, where is the guarantee that the mantle of the\nsacramental organization covers that silent, invisible congregation of\nspirits in which alone the Protestant looks for the essence of the\ntrue Church? The reformer's idea of the Church is here entangled in a\ncontradiction in terms. On the principle of justification by faith\nalone, the character of the true Church must be wholly expressed in\nsomething incorporeal. And yet the true Church is to be recognized by\nthe use of the sacraments according to their institution. Where is the\nconnecting link between the external and the internal Church? The\ncongruence of the Spirit and the body of the Church, if it occurs, is\npurely accidental. The visible Church, taken by itself, is a mere\nexternal thing, possibly void of all substantial essence. The doctrine\nof _sola fides_ is incapable of a profound appreciation of the visible\nChurch. This, taken in connection with the old Protestant theory that\nthe phase of the Church manifested in preaching and in the sacraments\nis of the essence of the Church, makes it clear that the attempt of\nthe reformers to spiritualize Christianity leads on the contrary to a\nmaterialization of the idea of the Church.\n\nThe modern Protestant theology was far from being deterred by its\nreverence for the reformers from laying bare this unsound portion of\ntheir system. They attempted to make up for it by the well known\ntheory of the ideal Church, which begins by renouncing, in entire\nconsistency with the Protestant principle of justification by faith\nalone, every outward manifestation of the essence of the Church.\n\nThe manifold forms in which Christianity becomes palpable as a power\nin history are here treated as something purely accidental, easily\ncapable of severance from the essence of the true Church. How does\nthis explanation comport with the doctrine of Scripture just\nexpounded?\n\nThe Church of Christ, says Holy Writ, receives her unseen bridal\nornaments by means of the palpable sacraments. In consequence of their\nefficacy she conceals the germs of her future glory under the guise of\nher temporal image. The most profound and super-sensual characteristic\nof the Church is, therefore, closely though mysteriously allied with\nthe palpable exterior. It is not our present task to show how this\nalliance is formed. We simply inquire into the foundation of this\nnecessary combination of the spirit and the form of the Church. This\nfoundation we claim to discover in the sublimity of the principle\nheretofore recognized by us as the marrow, the heart of the Church.\n\nIf that which constitutes the heart of the Church is supernatural, and\nbeyond the reach of the natural powers of the human mind, its\nimpartment and preservation necessarily presuppose a peculiar\ninfluence of God upon man, different from the creative power. Under\nthese circumstances, the precise method of the divine influence\npervading the Church is only to be learned with certainty from\nrevelation. And here we find the most explicit teachings on this\nsubject. According to the testimony of Scripture, the Lord promotes\nthe growth of the Church by means palpable to the senses. This\nsuggests inquiry into the laws under which these means of grace find\ntheir application. Those laws are derived from the object of their\ninstitution. It consists in the adhibition of instrumentalities in the\nproduction of a divine effect. Consequently the means employed, or the\nsacraments, can manifest their efficacy only under certain conditions\ndivinely ordained.\n\nThe correct understanding of the {747} mutual relations subsisting\nbetween the spirit and the body of the Church is further assisted by\nreference to another idea also derived from the Church. The regular\ngrowth of the Church is made intelligible to us as a self-edification\nin love. The means required for the attainment of this purpose have\nbeen given into the hands of the Church herself. For this end Peter\nreceived the keys of the kingdom of heaven. He is not only the thread\nof the historical development of the Church, but the interior\norganization also necessarily presupposes a union with Peter. The\norgans of this organization are the sacraments. But they manifest\ntheir saving efficacy on those only who have not knowingly interrupted\nthe chain of union between themselves and Peter, and their use is\ntotally void of effect if the party by whom they are administered is\nnot actuated by the desire of doing that which is done in sacramental\nceremonies by the Church, united with Peter (_intentio faciendi quod\nfacit ecclesia._)\n\nThe inmost principle, the heart of the Church, is inseparably\nconnected with these visible actions, which are efficaciously\nadministered only according to the intention and in the name of the\nvisible Church, and in virtue of their efficacy the latter approves\nherself as holy. Thus the present inquiry leads to the same result\nalready reached by other investigations. The spirit and the body of\nCatholicism are not to be separated. The connecting link which binds\nthem together is Peter, the bearer of the keys of the kingdom of\nheaven, who still lives in his successors. But the fountain-head of\nthis necessary relationship is in the vital principle of the Church,\nin her supernatural principle.\n\nThe idea of a supernatural principle, and that of the papacy, together\nconstitute the principle of Catholicism. In the former we behold its\nfundamental essence, in the latter the cement of its historical unity,\nas well as the connecting link between the interior and the exterior\ncatholicity of the Church.\n\n------\n\nFrom The Month.\n\nSONNET.\n\nUNSPIRITUAL CIVILIZATION.\n\n  We have been piping, Lord; we have been singing;\n  Five hundred years have passed o'er lawn and lea,\n  Marked by the blowing bud and falling tree,\n  While all the ways with melody were ringing:\n  In tented lists, high-stationed and flower-flinging,\n  Beauty looked down on conquering chivalry;\n  Science made wise the nations; laws made free;\n  Art, like an angel ever onward winging,\n  Brightened the world. But, O great Lord and Father!\n  Have these, thy bounties, drawn to thee man's race,\n  That stood so far aloof? Have they not rather\n  His soul subjected? with a blind embrace\n  Gulfed it in sense? Prime blessings changed to curse\n  'Twixt God and man can set God's universe.\n\nAUBREY DE VERE.\n\n------\n\n{748}\n\nFrom The Month\n\nCONSTANCE SHERWOOD.\n\nAN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.\n\nBY LADY GEORGIANA FULLERTON.\n\n\nCHAPTER XI.\n\nDuring the two years which followed the Duke of Norfolk's death I did\nonly see my Lady Surrey once, which was when she came to Arundel\nHouse, on a visit to her lord's grandfather; and her letters for a\nwhile were both scanty and brief. She made no mention of religion, and\nbut little of her husband; and chiefly touched on such themes as Lady\nMargaret's nuptials with Mr. Sackville (Lord Dorset's heir) and\nMistress Milicent's with Sir Hammond l'Estrange. She had great\ncontentment, she wrote, to see them both so well married according to\ntheir degree; but that for herself she did very much miss her good\nsister's company and her gentlewoman's affectionate services, who\nwould now reside all the year at her husband's seat in Norfolk; but\nshe looked when my lord and herself should be at Kenninghall, when he\nleft the university, that they might yet, being neighbors, spend some\nhappy days together, if it so pleased God. Once she wrote in exceeding\ngreat joy, so that she said she hardly knew how to contain herself,\nfor that my lord was coming in a few days to spend the long vacation\nat Lord Sussex's house at Bermondsey. But when she wrote again,\nmethought--albeit her letter was cheerful, and she did jest in it\nsomewhat more than was her wont--that there was a silence touching her\nhusband, and her own contentment in his society, which betokened a\nreserve such as I had not noticed in her before. About that time it\nwas bruited in London that my Lord Surrey had received no small\ndetriment by the bad example he had at Cambridge, and the liberty\npermitted him.\n\nAnd now, forsaking for a while the theme of that noble pair, whose\nmishaps and felicities have ever saddened and rejoiced mine heart\nalmost equally with mine own good or evil fortune, I here purpose to\nset down such occurrences as should be worthy of note in the more\nobscure sphere in which my lot was cast.\n\nWhen I was about sixteen, my cousin Kate was married to Mr. Lacy;\nfirst in a secret manner, in the night, by Mr. Plasden, a priest, in\nher father's library, and the next day at the parish church at\nHolborn. Methinks a fairer bride never rode to church than our Kate.\nHer mother went with her, which was the first time she had been out of\ndoors for a long space of time, for she feared to catch cold if the\nwind did blow from the north or the east; and if from the south she\nfeared it should bring noxious vapors from the river; and the west,\ninfection from the city, and so stayed at home for greater safety. But\non Kate's wedding day we did all protest the wind blew not at all, so\nthat from no quarter of the sky should mischief arise; and in a closed\nlitter, which she reckoned to be safer than a coach, she consented to\ngo to church.\n\n\"Marry, good wife,\" cried Mr. Congleton, when she had been magnifying\nall the dangers she mostly feared, \"thou dost forget the greatest of\nall in these days, which doth hold us all by the neck, as it were. For\nhearing mass, as we did in this room last night, we do all run the\nrisk of being hanged, which should be a greater peril methinks than a\nbreath of foul air.\"\n\n{749}\n\nShe, being in a merry mood, replied: \"Twittle twattle, Mr. Congleton;\nthe one may be avoided, the other not. 'Tis no reason I should get a\ncold to-day because I be like to be hanged to-morrow.\"\n\n\"I' faith,\" cried Polly, \"my mother hath well parried your thrust,\nsir; and methinks the holy Bishop of Rochester was of the same mind\nwith her.\"\n\n\"How so, Polly?\" quoth her father; and she, \"There happened a false\nrumor to rise suddenly among the people when he was in the prison, so\nI have heard Mr. Roper relate, that he should be brought to execution\non a certain day; wherefore his cook, that was wont to dress his\ndinner and carry it daily unto him, hearing of his execution, dressed\nhim no dinner at all that day. Wherefore, at the cook's next repair\nunto him, he demanded the cause why he brought him not his dinner.\n'Sir,' said the cook, 'it was commonly talked all over the town that\nyou should have died to-day, and therefore I thought it but vain to\ndress anything for you.' 'Well,' quoth the bishop merrily, 'for all\nthat report, thou seest me yet alive; and therefore, whatsoever news\nthou shalt hear of me hereafter, prithee let me no more lack my\ndinner, but make it ready; and if thou see me dead when thou comest,\nthen eat it thyself. But I promise thee, if I be alive, by God's\ngrace, to eat never a bit the less.'\"\n\n\"And on the day he was verily executed,\" said Mistress Ward, \"when the\nlieutenant came to fetch him, he said to his man, 'Reach me my furred\ntippet, to put about my neck.' 'O my lord!' said the lieutenant, 'what\nneed you be so careful of your health for this little time, being not\nmuch above in hour?' 'I think no otherwise,' said this blessed father;\n'but yet, in he mean time, I will keep myself as well as I can; for I\ntell you truth, though I have, I thank our Lord, a very good desire\nand a willing mind to die at this present, and so I trust of his\ninfinite mercy and goodness he will continue it, yet I will not\nwillingly hinder my health one minute of an hour, but still prolong\nthe same as long as I can by such reasonable ways as Almighty God hath\nprovided for me.'\" Upon which my good aunt fastened her veil about her\nhead, and said the holy bishop was the most wise saint and\nreasonablest martyr she had yet heard of.\n\nKate was dressed in a kirtle of white silk, her head attired with an\nhabiliment of gold, and her hair, brighter itself than gold, woven\nabout her face in cunningly wrought tresses. She was led to church\nbetween two gentlemen--Mr. Tresham and Mr. Hogdson--friends of the\nbridegroom, who had bride-laces and rosemary tied about their silken\nsleeves. There was a fair cup of silver gilt carried before her,\nwherein was a goodly branch of rosemary, gilded very fair, and hung\nabout with silken ribbons of all colors. Musicians came next; then a\ngroup of maidens bearing garlands finely gilded; and thus we passed on\nto the church. The common people at the door cheered the bride, whose\nfair face was a passport to their favor; but as Muriel crept along,\nleaning on my arm, I caught sound of murmured blessings.\n\n\"Sweet saint,\" quoth an aged man, leaning on his staff, near the\nporch, \"I ween thine espousals be not of earth.\" A woman, with a child\nin her arms, whispered to her as she past, \"He thou knowest of is\ndead, and died praying for thee.\" A man, whose eyes had watched her\npainfully ascending the steps, called her an angel; whereupon a beggar\nwith a crutch cried out, \"Marry, a lame angel!\" A sweet smile was on\nher face as she turned toward him; and drawing a piece of silver from\nher pocket, she bestowed it on him, with some such words as\nthese--that she prayed they might both be so happy, albeit lame, as to\nhobble to heaven, and get there in good time, if it should please God.\nThen he fell to blessing her so loud, that she hurried me into the\nchurch, not content to be thanked in so public a manner.\n\n{750}\n\nAfter the ceremony, we returned in the same order to Ely Place. The\nbanquet which followed, and the sports succeeding it, were conducted\nin a private and somewhat quiet fashion, and not many guests invited,\nby reason of the times, and Mr. Congleton misliking to draw notice to\nhis house, which had hitherto been but little molested, partly for\nthat Sir Francis Walsingham had a friendship for him, and also for his\nsister, Lady Egerton of Ridley, which procured for them greater favor,\nin the way of toleration, than is extended to others; and likewise the\nPortuguese ambassador was his very good friend, and his chapel open to\nus at all times; so that priests did not need to come to his house for\nthe performance of any religious actions, except that one of the\nmarriage, which had taken place the night before in his library.\nHowsoever, he was very well known to be a recusant, for that neither\nhimself, nor any belonging to him, attended Protestant worship; and\nSir Francis sometimes told him that the clemency with which he was\ntreated was shown toward him with the hope that, by mild courses, he\nmight be soon brought to some better conformity.\n\nMr. Lacy's house was in Gray's Inn Lane, a few doors from Mr. Swithin\nWells's; and through this proximity an intimate acquaintanceship did\narise between that worthy gentleman and his wife and Kate's friends.\nHe was very good-natured, pleasant in conversation, courteous, and\ngenerous; and Mrs. Wells a most virtuous gentlewoman. Although he (Mr.\nSwithin) much delighted in hawking, hunting, and other suchlike\ndiversions, yet he so soberly governed his affections therein, as to\nbe content to deprive himself of a good part of those pleasures, and\nretire to a more profitable employment of training up young gentlemen\nin virtue and learning; and with such success that his house has been,\nas it were, a fruitful seminary to many worthy members of the Catholic\nChurch. Among the young gentlemen who resided with him at that time\nwas Mr. Hubert Rookwood, the youngest of the two sons of Mr. Rookwood,\nof Euston, whom I had seen at the inn at Bedford, when I was\njourneying to London. We did speedily enter into a somewhat close\nacquaintanceship, founded on a similarity of tastes and agreeable\ninterchange of civilities, touching the lending of books and likewise\npieces of music, which I did make fair copies of for him, and which we\nsometimes practiced in the evening; for he had a pleasant voice and an\naptness to catch the trick of a song, albeit unlearned in the art,\nwherein he styled me proficient; and I, nothing loth to impart my\nknowledge, became his instructor, and did teach him both to sing and\nplay the lute. He was not much taller than when I had seen him before;\nbut his figure was changed, and his visage had grown pale, and his\nhair thick and flowing, especially toward the back of the head,\ndiscovering in front a high and thoughtful forehead. There was a great\ndeal of good young company at that time in Mr. Wells's house; for some\nCatholics tabled there beside those that were his pupils, and others\nresorted to it by reason of the pleasant entertainment they found in\nthe society of ingenuous persons, well qualified, and of their own\nreligion. I had most days opportunities of conversing with Hubert,\nthough we were never alone; and, by reason of the friendship which had\nexisted between his father and mine, I allowed him a kindness I did\nnot commonly afford to others.\n\nMr. Lacy had had his training in that house, and, albeit his natural\nparts did not title him to the praise of an eminent scholar, he had\nthence derived a great esteem for learning, a taste for books, of the\nwhich he did possess a great store (many hundred volumes), and a\ndiscreet manner of talking, though something tinctured with\naffectation, inasmuch as he should seem to be rather enamored of the\nwords he uttered, than careful of the {751} substance. Hubert was wont\nto say that his speech was like to the drawing of a leaden sword out\nof a gilded sheath. He was a very virtuous young man; and his wife had\nnever but one complaint to set forth, which was that his books took up\nso much of his time that she was almost as jealous of them as if they\nhad been her rivals. She would have it he did kill himself with study;\nand, in a particular manner, with the writing of the life of one\nThomas a Kempis, which was a work he had had a long time on hand. One\nday she comes into his library, and salutes him thus: \"Mr. Lacy, I\nwould I were a book; and then methinks you would a little more respect\nme.\" Polly, who was by, cried out, \"Madam, you must then be an\nalmanac, that he might change every year;\" whereat she was not a\nlittle displeased. And another time, when her husband was sick, she\nsaid, if Mr. Lacy died, she would burn Thomas a Kempis for the killing\nof her husband. I, hearing this, answered that to do so were a great\npity; to whom she replied, \"Why, who was Thomas a Kempis?\" to which I\nanswered, \"One of the saintliest men of the age wherein he lived.\"\nWherewith she was so satisfied, that she said, then she would not do\nit for all the world.\n\nMethinks I read more in that one year than in all the rest of my life\nbeside. Mine aunt was more sick than usual, and Mistress Ward so taken\nup with the nursing of her, that she did not often leave her room.\nPolly was married in the winter to Sir Ralph Ingoldby, and went to\nreside for some months in the country. Muriel prevailed on her father\nto visit the prison with her, in Mistress Ward's stead, so that\nsometimes they were abroad the whole of the day; by reason of which, I\nwas oftener in Gray's Inn Lane than at home, sometimes at Kate's\nhouse, and sometimes at Mistress Wells's mansion, where I became\ninfected with a zeal for learning, which Hubert's example and\nconversation did greatly invite me to. He had the most winning tongue,\nand the aptest spirit in the world to divine the natural inclinations\nof those he consorted with. The books he advised me to read were\nmostly such as Mistress Ward, to whom I did faithfully recite their\ntitles, accounted to be not otherwise than good and profitable, having\nlearned so much from good men she consulted thereon, for she was\nherself no scholar; but they bred in me a great thirst for knowledge,\na craving to converse with those who had more learning than myself,\nand withal so keen a relish for Hubert's society, that I had no\ncontentment so welcome as to listen to his discourse, which was\nseasoned with a rare kind of eloquence and a discursive fancy, to\nwhich, also, the perfection of his carriage, his pronunciation of\nspeech, and the deportment of his body lent no mean lustre. Naught\narrogant or affected disfigured his conversation, in which did lie so\nefficacious a power of persuasion, and at times, when the occasion\ncalled for it, so great a vehemency of passion, as enforced admiration\nof his great parts, if not approval of his arguments. I made him at\nthat time judge of the new thoughts which books, like so many keys\nopening secret chambers in the mind, did unlock in mine; and I mind me\nhow eagerly I looked for his answers--how I hung on his lips when he\nwas speaking, not from any singular affection toward his person, but\nby reason of the extraordinary fascination of his speech, and the\ninterest of the themes we discoursed upon; one time touching on the\nhistories of great men of past ages, at another on the changes wrought\nin our own by the new art of printing books, which had produced such\ngreat changes in the world, and yet greater to be expected. And as he\nwas well skilled in the Italian as well as the French language, I came\nby his means to be acquainted with many great writers of those\nnations. He translated for me sundry passages from the divine play of\nSignor Dante Alighieri, in which {752} hell and purgatory and heaven\nare depicted, as it were by an eye-witness, with so much pregnancy of\nmeaning and force of genius, that it should almost appear as if some\nspecial revelation had been vouchsafed to the poet beyond his natural\nthoughts, to disclose to him the secrets of other spheres. He also\nmade me read a portion of that most fine and sweet poem on the\ndelivery of the holy city Jerusalem, composed by Signor Torquato\nTasso, a gentleman who resided at that time at the court of the Duke\nof Ferrara, and which one Mr. Fairfax has since done into English\nverse. The first four cantos thereof were given to Mr. Wells by a\nyoung gentleman, who had for a while studied at the University of\nPadua. This fair poem, and mostly the second book thereof, hath\nremained imprinted in my memory with a singular fixity, by reason that\nit proved the occasion of my discerning for the first time a special\ninclination on Hubert's side toward myself, who thought nothing of\nlove, but was only glad to have acquired a friend endowed with so much\nwit and superior knowledge, and willing to impart it. This book, I\nsay, did contain a narration which bred in me so great a resentment of\nthe author's merits, and so quick a sympathy with the feigned subjects\nof his muse, that never before or since methinks has a fiction so\nmoved me as the story of Olindo and Sophronisba.\n\nMethinks this was partly ascribable to a certain likeness between the\nscenes described by the poet and some which take place at this time in\nour country. In the maiden of high and noble thoughts, fair, but\nheedless of her beauty, who stood in the presence of the soldan, once\na Christian, then a renegade, taking on herself the sole guilt,--O\nvirtuous guilt! O worthy crime!--of which all the Christians were\naccused, to wit, of rescuing sacred Mary's image from the hands of the\ninfidels who did curse and blaspheme it, and, when all were to die for\nthe act of one unknown, offered herself a ransom for all, and with a\nshamefaced courage, such as became a maid, and a bold modesty\nbefitting a saint--a bosom moved indeed, but not dismayed, a fair but\nnot pallid cheek--was content to perish for that the rest should\nlive;--in her, I say, I saw a likeness in spirit to those who suffer\nnowadays for a like faith with hers, not at the hands of infidels, but\nof such whose parents did for the most part hold that same belief\nwhich they do now make out to be treason.\n\nHubert, observing me to be thus moved, smiled, and asked if, in the\nlike case, I should have willed to die as Sophronisba.\n\n\"Yes,\" I answered, \"if God did give me grace;\" and then, as I uttered\nthe words, I thought it should not be lawful to tell a lie, not for to\nsave all the lives in the world; which doubt I imparted to him, who\nlaughed and said he was of the poet's mind, who doth exclaim, touching\nthis lie, \"O noble deceit! worthier than truth itself!\" and that he\nthought a soul should not suffer long in purgatory for such a sin.\n\"Maybe not,\" I answered; \"yet, I ween, there should be more faith in a\nsole commitment to God of the events than in doing the least evil so\nthat good should come of it.\"\n\nHe said, \"I marvel, Mistress Constance, what should be your thoughts\nthereon if the life of a priest was in your hands, and you able to\nsave him by a lie.\"\n\n\"Verily,\" I answered, \"I know not, Master Rookwood; but I have so much\ntrust in Almighty God that he would, in such a case, put words into my\nmouth which should be true, and yet mislead evil-purposed men, or that\nhe shall keep me from such fearful straits, or forgive me if, in the\nstress of a great peril, I unwittingly should err.\"\n\n\"And I pray you,\" Hubert then said, as if not greatly caring to pursue\nthe theme, \"what be your thought concerning the unhappy youth Olindo,\nwho did so dote on this maiden that, fearful of offending there where\nabove {753} all he desired to please, had, greatly as he loved, little\nhoped, nothing asked, and not so much as revealed his passion until a\ncommon fate bound both to an equal death?\"\n\n\"I thought not at all on him,\" I answered; \"but only on Sophronisba.\"\n\nAt which he sighed and read further: \"That all wept for her who,\nalbeit doomed to a cruel death, wept not for herself, but in this wise\nsecretly reproved the fond youth's weeping: 'Friend,' quoth she,\n'other thoughts, other tears, other sighs, do beseem this hour. Think\nof thy sins, and God's great recompense for the good. Suffer for his\nsole sake, and torment shall be sweet. See how fair the heavens do\nshow, the sun how bright, as it were to cheer and lure us onward!'\"\n\n\"Ah!\" I exclaimed, \"shame on him who did need to be so exhorted, who\nshould have been the most valiant, being a man!\" To the which he\nquickly replied:\n\n\"He willed to die of his own free will rather than to live without her\nwhom he jewelled more than life: but in the matter of grieving love\ndoth make cowards of those who should else have been brave.\"\n\n\"Me thinks, rather,\" I answered, \"that in noble hearts love's effects\nshould be noble.\"\n\n\"Bethink you, Mistress Constance,\" he then asked, \"that Sophronisba\ndid act commendably, insomuch that when an unlooked-for deliverance\ncame, she refused not to be united in life to him that had willed to\nbe united to her in death.\"\n\n\"You may think me ungrateful, sir,\" answered; \"but other merits\nmethinks than fondness for herself should have won so great a heart.\"\n\n\"You be hard to content, Mistress Constance,\" he answered somewhat\nresentfully. \"To satisfy you, I perceive one should have a hard as\nwell as a great heart.\"\n\n\"Nay,\" I cried, \"I praise not hardness, but love not softness either.\nYou that be so learned, I pray you find the word which doth express\nwhat pleaseth me in a man.\"\n\n\"I know not the word,\" he answered; \"I would I knew the substance of\nyour liking, that I might furnish myself with it.\"\n\nWhereupon our discourse ended that day; but it ministered food to my\nthoughts, and I fear me also to a vain content that one so gifted with\nlearning and great promise of future greatness should evince something\nof regard beyond a mutual friendship for one as ignorant and young as\nI then was.\n\nSome months after Kate's marriage, matters became very troublesome, by\nreason of the killing of a great store, as was reported, of French\nHuguenots in Paris on St. Bartholomew's day, and afterward in many\ncities of France, which did consternate the English Catholics for more\nreasons than one, and awoke so much rage in the breasts of\nProtestants, that the French ambassador told Lady Tregony, a friend,\nof Mistress Wells, that he did scarce venture to show his face; and\nnone, save only the queen herself, who is always his very good friend,\nwould speak to him. I was one evening at the house of Lady Ingoldby,\nPolly's mother-in-law, some time after this dismal news had been\nbruited, and the company there assembled did for the most part\ndiscourse on these events, not only as deploring what had taken place,\nand condemning the authors thereof,--which, indeed, was what all good\npersons must needs have done,--but took occasion thence to use such\nvile terms and opprobrious language touching Catholic religion, and\nthe cruelty and wickedness of such as did profess it, without so much\nas a thought of the miseries inflicted on them in England, that--albeit\nI had been schooled in the hard lesson of silence--so strong a passion\novercame me then, that I had well nigh, as the Psalmist saith, spoken\nwith my tongue, yea, young as I was, uttered words rising hot from my\nheart, in the midst of that adverse company, which I did know, them to\nbe, if one had not at {754} that moment lifted up his voice, whose\npresence I had already noted, though not acquainted with his name; a\nman of reverent and exceedingly benevolent aspect; aged, but with an\neye so bright, and silvery hair crowning a noble forehead, that so\nmuch excellence and dignity is seldom to be observed in any one as was\napparent in this gentleman.\n\n\"Good friends,\" he said, and at the sound of his voice the speakers\nhushed their eager discoursing, \"God defend I should in any way differ\nwith you touching the massacres in France; for verily it has been a\nlamentable and horrible thing that so many persons should be killed,\nand religion to be the pretence for it; but to hear some speak of it,\none should think none did suffer in this country for their faith, and\nbloody laws did not exist, whereby Papists are put to death in a\nlegal, cold-blooded fashion, more terrible, if possible, than the\nsudden bursts of wild passions and civil strife, which revenge for\nlate cruelties committed by the Huguenots, wherein many thousand\nCatholics had perished, the destruction of churches, havoc of fierce\nsoldiery, and apprehension of the like attempts in Paris, had stirred\nup to fury; so that when the word went forth to fall on the leaders of\nthe party, the savage work once begun, even as a fire in a city built\nof wood, raged as a madness for one while, and men in a panic struck\nat foes, whose gripe they did think to feel about their throats.\"\n\nHere the speaker paused an instant. This so bold opening of his speech\ndid seem to take all present by surprise, and almost robbed me of my\nbreath; for it is well known that nowadays a word, yea a piece of a\nword, or a nod of the head, whereby any suspicion may arise of a\nfavorable disposition toward Catholics, is often-times a sufficient\ncause for a man to be accused and cast into prison; and I waited his\nnext words (which every one, peradventure from curiosity, did likewise\nseem inclined to hear) with downcast eyes, which dared not to glance\nat any one's face, and cheeks which burned like hot coals.\n\n\"It is well known,\" quoth he, \"that the sufferings which be endured by\nrecusants at this time in our country are such, that many should\nprefer to die at once than to be subjected to so constant a fear and\nterror as doth beset them. I speak not now of the truth or the falsity\nof their religion, which, if it be ever so damnable and wicked, is no\nnew invention of their own, but what all Christian people did agree\nin, one hundred years ago; so that the aged do but abide by what they\nwere taught by undoubted authority in their youth, and the young have\nreceived from their parents as true. But I do solely aver that Papists\nare subjected to a thousand vexations, both of bonds, imprisonments,\nand torments worse than death, yea and oftentimes to death itself; and\nthat so dreadful, that to be slain by the sword, or drowned, yea even\nburned at the stake, is not so terrible; for they do hang a man and\nthen cut him down yet alive, and butcher him in such ways--plucking out\nhis heart and tearing his limbs asunder--that nothing more horrible can\nbe thought of.\"\n\n\"They be traitors who are so used,\" cried one gentleman, somewhat\nrecovering from the surprise which these bold words had caused.\n\n\"If to be of a different religion from the sovereign of the country be\na proof of treason,\" continued the venerable speaker, \"then were the\nHuguenots, which have perished in France, a whole mass and nest of\ntraitors.\"\n\nA gentleman seated behind me, who had a trick of sleeping in his\nchair, woke up and cried out, \"Not half a one, sirs; not so much as\nhalf a one is allowed,\" meaning the mass, which he did suppose to have\nbeen spoken of.\n\n\"And if so, deserved all to die,' continued the speaker.\n\n\"Ay, and so they do, sir,\" quoth the sleeper. \"I pray you let them all\nbe hanged.\" Upon which every one {755} laughed, and the aged gentleman\nalso; and then he said,\n\n\"Good my friends, I ween 'tis a rash thing to speak in favor of\nrecusants nowadays, and what few could dare to do but such as cannot\nbe suspected of disloyalty to the queen and the country, and who,\nhaving drunk of the cup of affliction in their youth, even to the\ndregs, and held life for a long time as a burden which hath need to be\nborne day by day, until the wished for hour of release doth come--and\nthe sooner, the more welcome--have no enemies to fear, and no object\nto attain. And if so be that you will bear with me for a few moments,\nyea, if ye procure me to be hanged to-morrow\" (this he said with a\npleasant smile; and, \"Marry, fear not, Mr. Roper,\" and \"I' faith,\nspeak on, sir,\" was bruited round him by his astonished auditors), \"I\nwill recite to you some small part of the miseries which have been\nendured of late years by such as cannot be charged with the least\nthought of treason, or so much as the least offence against the laws,\nexcept in what touches the secret practice of their religion. Women\nhave, to my certain knowledge, been hung up by the hands in prisons\n(which do overflow with recusants, so that at this time there\nremaineth no room for common malefactors), and cruelly scourged, for\nthat they would not confess by which priest they had been reconciled\nor absolved, or where they had heard mass. Priests are often tortured\nto force them to declare what they hear in confession, who harbor\npriests and Papists, where such and such recusants are to be found,\nand the like questions; and in so strenuous a manner, that needles\nhave been thrust under their nails, and one man, not long since, died\nof his racking. O sirs and gentle ladies, I have seen with mine own\neyes a youth, the son of one of my friends--young Mark Typper, born of\nhonest and rich parents, skilful in human learning, having left his\nstudy for a time, and going home to see his friends--whipped through\nthe streets of London, and burnt in the ear, because, forsooth, a\nforward judge, to whom he had been accused as a Papist, and finding no\nproof thereof, condemned him as a vagabond. And what think you, good\npeople, of the death of Sir Robert Tyrwit's son, who was accused for\nhearing of a mass at the marriage of his sister, and albeit at the\ntime of his arrest in a grievous fever, was pulled out of the house\nand thrust into prison, even as he then was, feeble, faint, and\ngrievously sick? His afflicted parents entreat, make intercession, and\nuse all the means they can to move the justices to have consideration\nof the sick; not to heap sorrow upon sorrow, nor affliction on the\nafflicted; not to take away the life of so comely a young gentleman,\nwhom the physicians come and affirm will certainly die if he should be\nremoved. All this is nothing regarded. They lay hold on the sick man,\npull him away, shut him up in prison, and within two days next after\nhe dies. They bury him, and make no scruple or regard at all. O sirs,\nbethink you what these parents do feel when they hear Englishmen speak\nof the murders of Protestants in France as an unheard of crime. If, in\nthese days, one in a family of recusants doth covet the inheritance of\nan elder brother--yea, of a father--he hath but to conform to the now\nestablished religion (I leave you to think with how much of piety and\nconscience), and denounce his parent as a Papist, and straightway he\ndoth procure him to be despoiled, and his lands given up to him. Thus\nthe seeds of strife and bitter enmity have been sown broadcast through\nthe land, the bands of love in families destroyed, the foundations of\nhonor and beneficence blown up, the veins and sinews of the common\nsociety of men cut asunder, and a fiendly force of violence and a\ndeadly poison of suspicion used against such as are accused of no\nother crime than their religion, which they yet adhere to; albeit\ntheir fortunes be ruined by fines and their lives in {756} constant\njeopardy from strenuous laws made yet more urgent by private malice.\nMy friends, I would that not one hair of the head of so much as one\nHuguenot had been touched in France; that not one Protestant had\nperished in the flames in the late queen's reign, or in that of her\npresent majesty; and also that the persecution now framed in this\ncountry against Papists, and so handled as to blind men's eyes and\nwork in them a strange hypocrisy, yea and in some an innocent belief\nthat freedom of men's souls be the offspring of Protestant religion,\nshould pass away from this land. I care not how soon (as mine honored\nfather-in-law, and in God too, I verily might add, was wont to say),--I\ncare not how soon I be sewn up in a bag and cast into the Thames, if\nso be I might first see religious differences at an end, and men of\none mind touching God's truth.\"\n\nHere this noble and courageous speaker ceased, and various murmurs\nrose among the company. One lady remarked to her neighbor: \"A\nmarvellous preacher that of seditious doctrines, methinks.\"\n\nAnd one gentleman said that if such talk were suffered to pass\nunpunished in her majesty's subjects, he should look to see massing\nand Popery to rear again their heads in the land.\n\nAnd many loudly affirmed none could be Papists, or wish them well, and\nbe friends to the queen's government, and so it did stand to reason\nthat Papists were traitors.\n\nAnd another said that, for his part, he should desire to see them less\nmercifully dealt with; and that the great clemency shown to such as\ndid refuse to come to church, by only laying fines on them, and not\ndealing so roundly as should compel them to obedience, did but\nmaintain them in their obstinacy; and he himself would as lief shoot\ndown a seminary priest as a wolf, or any other evil beast.\n\nI noticed this last speaker to be one of those who had spoken with\nmost abhorrence of the massacres in France.\n\nOne lady called out in a loud voice that Papists, and such as take\ntheir part, among which she did lament to see Mr. Roper, should be\nashamed so much as to speak of persecution; and began to relate the\ncruelties practised upon Protestants twenty years back, and the\nburning at Oxford of those excellent godly men, the bishops of London\nand Worcester.\n\nMr. Roper listened to her with an attentive countenance, and then\nsaid:\n\n\"I' faith, madam, I cannot choose but think Dr. Latimer, if it be he\nyou speak of, did somewhat approve of such a method of dealing with\npersons obstinate touching religion, when others than himself and\nthose of his own way of thinking were the subjects of it, if we judge\nby a letter he wrote in 1538 to his singular good friend the Lord\nPrivy Seal Cromwell, at the time he was appointed to preach at the\nburning at Smithfield of Friar Forest of Greenwich, a learned divine I\noften did converse with in my young years.\"\n\n\"What wrote the good bishop?\" two or three persons asked; and the lady\nwho had spoken before said she should warrant it to be something\npious, for a more virtuous Protestant never did live than this holy\nmartyr.\n\nWhereupon Mr. Roper: \"This holy bishop did open his discourse right\nmerrily, for in a pleasant manner he thus begins his letter: 'And,\nsir, if it be your pleasure, as it is, that I shall play the fool in\nmy customable manner when Forest shall suffer, I would wish my stage\nstood near unto Forest; for I would endeavor myself so to content the\npeople that therewith I might also convert Forest, God so helping.'\nAnd further on he doth greatly lament that the White Friars of\nDoncaster had access to the prisoner, and through the fault of the\nsheriff or jailers, or both, he should be allowed to hear mass and\nreceive the sacrament, by which he is rather comforted in his way than\ndiscouraged. And _such is his foolishness_, this good {757} doth\nhumbly say, that if Forest would abjure his religion, he should yet\n(for all his past obstinacy) wish him pardoned. O sirs, think you that\nwhen at Oxford this aged man, seventeen years after, did see the\nflames gather round himself, that he did not call to mind what time he\npreached, playing the fool, as he saith, before a man in like agonies,\nand never urged so much as one word against his sentence?\"\n\n\"Marry, if he did not,\" said one, whom I take to have been Sir\nChristopher Wray, who had been a silent listener until then, \"if his\nconscience pricked him not thereon, it must needs have been by the\nsame rule as the lawyer used to the countryman, who did put to him\nthis question: 'Sir, if my cow should stray into your field and feed\nthere one whole day, what should be the law touching compensation\ntherefor?' 'Marry, friend, assuredly to pay the damage to the full,\nwhich thou art bounden at once to do.' 'Ay,' quoth the countryman;\n'but 'tis your cow hath strayed into my field.' Upon which, 'Go to, go\nto,' cries the lawyer; 'for I warrant thee that doth altogether alter\nthe law.'\"\n\nSome smiled, and others murmured at this story; and meanwhile one of\nthe company, who from his dress I perceived to be a minister, and\nmoreover to hold some dignity in the Protestant Church, rose from his\nplace, and crossing the room, came up to Mr. Roper (for that bold\nspeaker was no other than Sir Thomas More's son-in--law, whose great\ncharity and goodness I had often heard of), and, shaking hands with\nhim, said: \"I be of the same mind with you, friend Roper, in every\nword you have uttered tonight. And I pray to God my soul may be with\nyours after this life, and our end in heaven, albeit I should not sail\nthere in the same boat with thou.\"\n\n\"Good Mr. Dean,\" quoth Mr. Roper, \"I do say amen to your prayer.\" and\nthen he added somewhat in a low voice, and methinks it was that there\nis but one ship chartered for safety in such a voyage.\n\nAt the which the other shook his head and waved his hand, and then\ncalling to him a youth not more than twelve or thirteen years old, his\nson, he did present him to Mr. Roper. I had observed this young\ngentleman to listen, with an eagerness betokening more keenness for\ninformation than is usually to be found in youths of his years, to the\ndiscourses held that evening. His father told Mr. Roper that this his\nson's parts and quick apprehension in learning did lead him to hope he\nshould be one day, if it pleased God, an ornament to the church. Mr.\nRoper smiled as he saluted the youth, and said a few words to him,\nwhich he answered very readily. I never saw again that father or that\nson. The one was Dr. Mathews, whom the queen made Bishop of Durham;\nand the other, Toby Mathews, his son, who was reconciled some years\nago, and, as I have heard from some, is now a Jesuit.\n\nThe venerable aspect of the good Mr. Roper so engaged my thoughts,\nthat I asked Lady Tregony, by whose side I was sitting, if she was\nacquainted with him, and if his virtue was as great as his appearance\nwas noble. She smiled, and answered that his appearance, albeit\nhonorable and comely, was not one half so honorable as his life had\nbeen, or so comely as his mind. That he had been the husband of Sir\nThomas More's never-to-be-forgotten daughter, Margaret, whose memory\nhe so reverently did cherish that he had never so much as thought of a\nsecond marriage; and of late years, since he had resigned the office\nof sub-notary in the Queen's Bench to his son, he did give his whole\nsubstance and his time to the service of the poor, and especially to\nprisoners, by reason of which he was called the staff of the\nsorrowful, and sure refuge of the afflicted. Now, then, I looked on\nthe face of this good aged man with a deeper reverence than\nheretofore. Now I longed to be favored with so {758} much of his\nnotice as one passing word. Now I watched for an opportunity to\ncompass my desire, and I thank God not without effect; for I do count\nit as a chief blessing to have been honored, during the remaining\nyears of this virtuous gentleman's life, with so much of his\ncondescending goodness, that if the word friendship may be used in\nregard to such affectionate feelings as can exist between one verging\non four-score years of age and of such exalted merit, and a foolish\ncreature yet in her teens, whom he honored with his notice, it should\nbe so in this instance; wherein on the one side a singular reverence\nand humble great affection did arise almost on first acquaintance, and\non the other so much benignity and goodness shown in the pains taken\nto cultivate such good dispositions as had been implanted in this\nyoung person's heart by careful parents, and to guard her mind against\nthe evils of the times, that nothing could be greater.\n\nMr. Roper chancing to come near us, Lady Tregony said somewhat, which\ncaused him to address me in this wise:\n\n\"And are there, then, maidens in these days not averse to the sight of\ngray hairs, and who mislike not to converse with aged men?\"\n\nThis was said with so kindly a smile that timidity vanished, and\nconfidence took its place.\n\n\"Oh, sir,\" I cried, \"when I was not so much as five years old, my good\nfather showed me a picture of Sir Thomas More, and told me he was a\nman of such angelic wit as England never had the like before, nor is\never like to have again, and of a most famous and holy memory; and\nmethinks, sir, that you, being his son-in-law, who knew his doings and\nhis mind so well, and lived so long in his house, must needs in many\nthings resemble him.\"\n\n\"As to his doings and his mind,\" Mr. Roper replied, \"no man living\nknoweth them so well, and if my mean wit, memory, and knowledge could\nserve me now, could declare so much thereof. But touching resemblance,\nalas! there was but one in all the world that represented the likeness\nof his virtues and perfections; one whom he loved in a particular\nmanner, and who was worthiest of that love more than any creature God\nhas made.\"\n\nHere the good man's voice faltered a little, and he made a stop in his\ndiscourse; but in a little while said that he had thought it behoved\nhim to set down in writing such matters concerning Sir Thomas's life\nas he could then call to remembrance, and that he would lend me the\nmanuscript to read, which I did esteem an exceeding great favor, and\none I could not sufficiently thank him for. Then he spoke somewhat of\nthe times, which were waxing every day more troublesome, and told me\nhe often called to mind a conversation he once had with Sir Thomas,\nwalking along the side of the Thames at Chelsea, which he related in\nthese words:\n\n\"'Now would to God, my son Roper,' quoth Sir Thomas, 'I were put in a\nsack, and presently cast into the Thames, upon condition that three\nthings were well established throughout Christendom.' 'And what mighty\nthings are those, sir?' I asked. Whereupon he: 'Wouldst thou know, son\nRoper, what they be?' 'Yea, marry, sir, with a good will, if it please\nyou,' quoth I. 'I' faith, son, they be these,' he said: 'The first is\nthat, whereas the most part of Christian princes are at mortal wars,\nthey were all at peace; the second that, whereas the church of Christ\nis at present sorely afflicted with so many heresies, it were settled\nin perfect uniformity of religion; the third that, where the matter of\nthe king's marriage is now come in question, it were, to the glory of\nGod and the quietness of all parties, brought to a good conclusion.'\n'Ay, sir,' quoth I, 'those were indeed three things greatly to be\ndesired; but'--I continued with a certain joy--'where shall one see a\nhappier state than in this realm, that has so Catholic a prince that\nno heretic {759} durst show his face; so virtuous and learned a\nclergy; so grave and sound a nobility; and so loving, obedient\nsubjects, all in one faith agreeing together?' 'Truth it is indeed,\nson Roper,' quoth he; and in all degrees and estates of the same went\nfar beyond me in commendation thereof. 'And yet, son Roper, I pray\nGod,' said he, 'that some of us, as high as we seem to sit on the\nmountains, treading heretics under our feet like ants, live not the\nday that we would gladly be at league and composition with them, to\nlet them have their churches quietly to themselves, so that they would\nbe contented to let us have ours quietly to ourselves.' After I had\ntold him many considerations why he had no cause to say so: 'Well,'\nsaid he, 'I pray God, son Roper, some of us will live not to see that\nday.' To whom I replied: 'By my troth, sir, it is very desperately\nspoken.' These vile terms, I cry God mercy, did I give him, who,\nperceiving me to be in a passion, said merrily unto me, 'It shall not\nbe so; it shall not be so.' In sixteen years and more, being in the\nhouse conversing with him, I could not perceive him to be so much as\nonce out of temper.\"\n\nThis was the first of many conversations I held, during the years I\nlived in Holborn, with this worthy gentleman, who was not more pleased\nto relate, than I to hear, sundry anecdotes concerning Sir Thomas\nMore, his house, and his family.\n\nBefore he left me that day, I did make bold to ask him if he feared\nnot ill consequences from the courageous words he had used in a mixed,\nyea rather, with few exceptions, wholly adverse, company.\n\n\"Not much,\" he answered. \"Mine age; the knowledge that there are those\nwho would not willingly see me roughly handled, and have power to\nprevent it; and withal no great concern, if it should be so, to have\nmy liberty constrained, yea, my life shortened by a few years, or\nrather days,--doth move me to a greater freedom of speech than may\ngenerally be used, and a notable indifference to the results of such\nfreedom.\"\n\nHaving whispered the like fears I had expressed to him to Lady\nTregony, she did assure me his confidence was well based, and that he\nhad connexions which would by no means suffer him to be thrown into\nprison, which should be the fate of any one else in that room who had\nspoken but one half, yea one tenth part, as boldly as he had ventured\non.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XII.\n\nIt was some time before I could restore myself to my countenance,\nafter so much moving discourse, so as to join with spirit in the\nsports and the dancing which did ensue among the young people that\nevening. But sober thoughts and painful themes after a while gave\nplace to merriment; and the sound of music, gay tattle, and cheerful\nsteps lured me to such enjoyment as youth is wont to take in these\nkinds of pastimes. It was too much my wont to pursue with eagerness\nthe present humor, and drink deeply of innocent pleasure wherein no\nharm should exist if enjoyed with moderation. But like in a horse on\nwhose neck the bridle is cast, what began in a gentle ambling ends in\nwild gallopping; so lawful merriment, if unrestrained, often ends in\nwhat is unbeseeming, and in some sort blameable. So this time, when\ndancing tired, a ring was formed for conversation, and the choice of\nthe night's pastime yielded to my discretion; alack, rather to my\nimprudence and folly, methinks I might style it. I chose that\narguments should be held by two persons of the company, turn by turn,\nand that a judge should be named to allot a reward to the worthiest,\nand a penance to the worst. This liked them all exceedingly, and by\none consent they appointed me to be judge, and to summon such as\nshould dispute. {760} There were there two young gentlemen which\nhaunted our house, and Lady Ingoldby's also. One was Martin Tregony,\nLady Tregony's nephew, an ill-favored young man, with manners worse\nthan his face, and so apish and foppish in his dress and behavior,\nthat no young woman could abide him, much less would receive his\naddresses, or if she did entertain him in conversation, it was to make\nsport of his so great conceit. He had an ill-natured kind of wit, more\nsharp than keen, more biting than sarcastic. He studied the art of\ngiving pain, and oftentimes did cause shamefaced merit to blush. The\nother was Mr. Thomas Sherwood, who, albeit not very near in blood to\nmy father, was, howsoever, of the same family as ourselves. He had\nbeen to the English College in Douay, and had brought me tidings a\nshort time back of my father and Edmund Genings' safe arrival thither,\nand afterward came often to see us, and much frequented Lady Tregony's\nhouse. He had exceedingly good parts, but was somewhat diffident and\nbashful. Martin Tregony was wont to make him a mark, as it were, of\nhis ill-natured wit, and did fancy himself to be greatly his superior\nin sharpness, partly because Mr. Sherwood's disposition was retiring,\nand partly that he had too much goodness and sense to bandy words with\nso ill-mannered a young man. I pray you who read this, could aught be\nmore indiscreet than, in a thoughtless manner, to have summoned these\ntwo to dispute? which nevertheless I did, thinking some sport should\narise out of it, to see Master Martin foisted in argument by one he\ndespised, and also from his extravagant gestures and affected\ncountenances. So I said:\n\n\"Master Tregony, your task shall be to dispute with Master Sherwood;\nand this the theme of your argument, 'The Art of Tormenting.' He who\nshall describe the nicest instances of such skill, when exercised by a\nmaster toward his servant, a parent to his child, a husband to his\nwife, a wife to her husband, a lover to his mistress, or a friend to\nhis friend, shall be proclaimed victorious; and his adversary submit\nto such penance as the court shall inflict.\"\n\nMaster Sherwood shook his head for to decline to enter these lists;\nbut all the young gentlemen and ladies cried, he should not be\nsuffered to show contempt of the court, and forced him to stand up.\n\nMaster Martin was nothing loth, and in his ill-favored countenance\nthere appeared a made smile, which did indicate an assurance of\nvictory; so he began:\n\n\"The more wit a man hath, the better able he shall be at times to\ntorment another; so I do premise, and at the outset of this argument\ndeclare, that to blame a man for the exercise of a talent he doth\npossess is downright impiety, and that to wound another by the\npungency of home-thrusts in conversation is as just a liberty in an\ningenious man, as the use of his sword in a battle is to a soldier.\"\n\nMr. Sherwood upon this replied, that he did allow a public\ndisputation, appointed by meet judges, to come under the name of a\nfair battle; but even in a battle (he said) generous combatants aim\nnot so much at wounding their adversaries, as to the disarming of\nthem; and that he who in private conversation doth make a weapon of\nhis tongue is like unto the man who provokes another to a single\ncombat, which for Christians is not lawful, and pierces him easily who\nhas less skill in wielding the sword than himself.\n\n\"Marry, sir,\" quoth Master Martin, \"if you dobring piety into your\ndiscourse, methinks the rules of just debate be not observed; for it\nis an unfair thing for to overrule a man with arguments he doth not\ndare to reply to under pain of spiritual censures.\"\n\n\"I cry you mercy, Master Martin,\" quoth the other; \"you did bring in\n_im_piety, and so methought piety should not be excluded.\" At the which\nwe all applauded, and Martin began to perceive his adversary to be\nless {761} contemptible than he had supposed.\n\n\"Now to the point,\" I cried; \"for exordiums be tedious. I pray you,\ngentlemen, begin, and point out some notable fashion wherewith a\nmaster might torment his servant.\"\n\nUpon which quoth Martin: \"If a man hath a sick servant, and doth note\nhis fancy to be set on some indulgence not of strict necessity, and\nshould therefore deny it to him, methinks that should be a rare\nopportunity to exercise his talent.\"\n\n\"Nay,\" cried Master Sherwood, \"a nicer one, and ever at hand\nafterward, should be to show kindness once to a dependent when sick,\nand to use him ten times the worse for it when he is well, upbraiding\nhim for such past favors, as if one should say: 'Alack, be as kind as\nyou will, see what return you do meet with!'\"\n\nThis last piece of ingenuity was allowed by the court to surpass the\nfirst. \"Now,\" I cried, \"what should be the greatest torment a parent\ncould inflict on a child?\"\n\nMartin answered: \"If it should be fond of public diversion, to confine\nit in-doors. If retirement suits its temper, to compel it abroad. If\nit should delight in the theatre, to take it to see a good play, and\nat the moment when the plot shall wax most moving, to say it must be\ntired, and procure to send it home. Or, in more weighty matters,--a\ndaughter's marriage, for instance,--to detect if the wench hath set her\nheart on one lover, and if so, to keep from her the knowledge of this\ngentleman's addresses; and when she hath accepted another, to let her\nknow the first had sued for her hand, and been dismissed.\"\n\nHere all the young gentlewomen did exclaim that Master Sherwood could\nby no means think of a more skilful torment than this should prove. He\nthought for an instant, and then said:\n\n\"It should be a finer and more delicate torment to stir up in a young\ngentlewoman's mind suspicions of one she loved, and so work on her\nnatural passions of jealousy and pride, that she should herself, in a\nhasty mood, discard her lover; and ever after, when the act was not\nrecallable, remind her she herself had wrought her own unhappiness,\nand wounded one she loved.\"\n\n\"Yea, that should be worse than the first torment,\" all but one young\nlady cried out; who, for her part, could better endure, she said, to\nhave injured herself than to be deceived, as in the first case.\n\n\"Then do come husbands,\" quoth Mr. Martin; \"and I vow,\" he cried, \"I\nknow not how to credit there be such vile wretches in the world as\nshould wish to torment their wives; but if such there be, methinks the\nsurest method they may practise is, to loving wives to show\nindifferency; to such as be jealous, secrecy; to such as be pious,\nprofaneness; and the like in all the points whereon their affections\nare set.\"\n\n\"Alack!\" cried Mistress Frances Bellamy, \"what a study the man hath\nmade of this fine art! Gentlewomen should needs beware of such a one\nfor a husband. What doth Master Sherwood say?\"\n\nWhereupon he: \"Methinks the greatest torment a husband might inflict\non a worthy wife should be to dishonor her love by his baseness; or if\nhe had injured her, to doubt her proneness to forgive.\"\n\n\"And wives,\" quoth Mistress Southwell,--\"what of their skill therein,\ngentlemen?\"\n\n\"It be such,\" cried Martin, \"as should exceed men's ability thereof to\nspeak. The greatest instance of talent of this sort I have witnessed\nis in a young married lady, whose husband is very willing to stay in\nhis house or go abroad, or reside in town, or at his seat in the\ncountry, as should most please her, so she would let him know her\nwishes. But she is so artful in concealing them, that the poor man can\nnever learn so much as should cause him to guess what they may be; but\nwith a meek voice she doth reply to his asking, 'An it please you,\nsir, let it {762} be as you choose, for you very well know I never do\noppose your will.' Then if he resolve to leave town, she maketh not\nmuch ado till they have rode twenty or thirty miles out of London.\nThen she doth begin to sigh and weep, for that she should be a most\nill-used creature, and her heart almost broken for to leave her\nfriends, and be shut up for six months in a swamp, for such she doth\nterm his estate; and if she should not have left London that same day,\nshe should have been at the Lord Mayor's banquet, and seen the French\nprinces, which, above all things, she had desired. But some husbands\nbe so hard-hearted, if they can hunt and hawk, 'tis little count they\nmake of their wives' pleasures. Then when she hath almost provoked the\ngood man to swear, she hangeth down her head and saith, 'Content you,\nsir--content you; 'tis your good fortune to have an obedient wife.'\nAnd so mopes all the time of the journey.\"\n\nWhilst Martin was speaking, I noted a young gentlewoman who did deeply\nblush whilst he spoke, and tears came into her eyes. I heard afterward\nshe had been lately married, and that he counterfeited her voice in so\nprecise a manner, so that all such as knew her must needs believe her\nto be the wife he spoke of; and that there was so much of truth in the\npicture he had drawn, as to make it seem a likeness, albeit most\nunjust toward one who, though apt to boast of her obedience, and to\nutter sundry trifling complaints, was a fond wife and toward lady to\nher dear husband; and that this malice in Mr. Tregony, over and above\nhis wonted spite, was due to her rejection of his hand some short time\nbefore her marriage. Master Sherwood, seeing the ungracious\ngentleman's ill-nature and the lady's confusion, stood up the more\nspeedily to reply, and so cut him short. \"I will relate,\" he said, \"a\nyet more ingenious practice of tormenting, which should seem the\nhighest proof of skill in a wife, albeit also practised by husbands,\nonly not so aptly, or peradventure so often. And this is when one hath\noffered to another a notable insult or affront, so to turn the tables,\neven as a conjuror the cards he doth handle, that straightway the\noffended party shall seem to be the offender, and be obliged to sue\nforgiveness for that wherein he himself is hurt. I pray you, gentlemen\nand ladies, can anything more ingenious than this practice be thought\non?\"\n\nAll did admit it to be a rare example of ability in tormenting; but\nsome objected it was not solely exercised by wives and husbands, but\nthat friends, lovers, and all sorts of persons might use it. Then one\ngentleman called for some special instance of the art in lovers. But\nanother said it was a natural instinct, and not an art, in such to\ntorment one another, and likewise their own selves, and proposed the\nbehavior of friends in that respect as a more new and admirable theme.\n\n\"Ah,\" quoth Master Martin, with an affected wave of his hand, \"first\nshow me an instance of a true friendship betwixt ladies, or a sincere\naffection betwixt gentlemen; and then it will be time for to describe\nthe arts whereby they do plague and torment each other.\"\n\nMr. Sherwood answered, \"A French gentleman said, a short time since,\nthat it should be a piece of commendable prudence to live with your\nfriend as looking that he should one day be your enemy. Now we be\nwarranted, by Master Tregony's speech, to conclude his friendships to\nbe enmities in fair disguise; and the practices wherewith friends\ntorment each other no doubt should apply to this case also; and so his\nexceptions need in no wise alter the theme of our argument. I pray\nyou, sir, begin, and name some notable instance in which, without any\napparent breach of friendship, the appearance of which is in both\ninstances supposed, one may best wound his friend, or, as Mr. Tregony\nhath it, the disguised object of his hatred.\"\n\nI noticed that Master Martin glanced {763} maliciously at his\nadversary, and then answered, \"The highest exercise of such ability\nshould be, methinks, to get possession of a secret which your friend,\n_or disguised enemy_, has been at great pains to conceal, and to let\nhim know, by such means as shall hold him in perpetual fear, but never\nin full assurance of the same, that you have it in your power to\naccuse him at any time of that which should procure him to be thrown\ninto prison, or maybe hanged on a gibbet.\"\n\nA paleness spread over Master Sherwood's face, not caused, I ween, by\nfear so much as by anger at the meanness of one who, from envy and\nspite, even in the freedom of social hours, should hint at secrets so\nweighty as would touch the liberty, yea, the life, of one he called\nhis friend; and standing up, he answered, whilst I, now too late\ndiscerning mine own folly in the proposing of a dangerous pastime,\ntrembled in every limb.\n\n\"I know,\" quoth he,--\"I know a yet more ingenious instance of the\nskill of a malicious heart. To hang a sword over a friend's head, and\ncause him to apprehend its fall, must needs be a well-practised\ndevice; but if it be done in so skilful a manner that the weapon shall\nthreaten not himself alone, but make him, as it were, the instrument\nof ruin to others dearer to him than his own life,--if, by the\nappearance of friendship, the reality of which such a heart knoweth\nnot, he hath been to such confidence as shall be the means of sorrow\nto those who have befriended him in another manner than this false\nfriend, this true foe,--the triumph is then complete. Malice and hatred\ncan devise naught beyond it.\"\n\nMartin's eyes glared so fearfully, and his voice sounded so hoarse, as\nhe hesitated in answering, that, in a sort of desperation, I stood up,\nand cried, \"Long enough have these two gentlemen had the talk to\nthemselves. Verily, methinks there be no conqueror, but a drawn game\nin this instance.\"\n\nBut a murmur rose among the company that Master Sherwood was\nvictorious, and Master Tregony should do penance.\n\n\"What shall it be?\" was asked; and all with one voice did opine Master\nSherwood should name it, for he was as much beloved as Master Tregony\nwas misliked. He (Sherwood), albeit somewhat inwardly moved, I ween,\nhad restrained his indignation, and cried out merrily, \"Marry, so will\nI! Look me in the face, Martin, and give me thy hand. This shall be\nthy penance.\"\n\nThe other did so; but a fiendly look of resentment was in his eyes;\nand methinks Thomas Sherwood must needs have remembered the grasp of\nhis hand to forgive it, I doubt not, even at the foot of the scaffold.\n\nFrom that day Martin Tregony conceived an implacable hatred for Master\nSherwood, whom he had feigned a great friendship for on his first\narrival in London, because he hoped, by his means and influence with\nhis aunt, to procure her to pay his debts. But after he had thrown off\nthe mask, he only waited for an opportunity to denounce him, being\nprivy to his having brought a priest to Lady Tregony's house, who had\nalso said mass in her chapel. So one day meeting him in the streets,\nhe cried out, \"Stop the traitor! stop the traitor!\" and so causing him\nto be apprehended, had him before the next justice of the peace;\nwhere, when they were come, he could allege nothing against him, but\nthat he suspected him to be a Papist. Upon which he was examined\nconcerning his religion, and, refusing to admit the queen's\nchurch-headship, he was cast into a dungeon in the Tower. His lodgings\nwere plundered, and L25, which he had amassed, as I knew, who had\nassisted him to procure it, for the use of his aged and sick father,\nwho had been lately cast into prison in Lancaster, was carried off\nwith the rest. He was cruelly racked, we heard, for that he would not\nreveal where he had heard mass; and kept {764} in a dark filthy hole,\nwhere he endured very much from hunger, stench, and cold. No one being\nallowed to visit him--for the Tower was not like some other prisons\nwhere Mistress Ward and others could sometimes penetrate--or afford\nhim any comfort, Mr. Roper had, by means of another prisoner, conveyed\nto his keeper some money for his use; but the keeper returned it the\nnext day, because the lieutenant of the Tower would not suffer him to\nhave the benefit of it. All he could be prevailed upon to do was to\nlay out one poor sixpence for a little fresh straw for him to lie on.\nAbout six months after, he was brought to trial, and condemned to die,\nfor denying the queen's supremacy, and was executed at Tyburn,\naccording to sentence, being cut down whilst he was yet alive,\ndismembered, bowelled, and quartered.\n\nPoor Lady Tregony's heart did almost break at this his end and her\nkinsman's part in it; and during those six months--for she would not\nleave London whilst Thomas Sherwood was yet alive--I did constantly\nvisit her, almost every day, and betwixt us there did exist a sort of\nfellowship in our sorrow for this worthy young man's sufferings; for\nthat she did reproach herself for lack of prudence in not sufficient\ndistrust of her own nephew, whom now she refused to see, at least, she\nsaid, until he had repented of his sin, which he, glorying in, had\ntold her, the only time they had met, he should serve her in the same\nmanner, and if he could ever find out she heard mass, should get her a\nlodging in the Tower, and for himself her estate in Norfolk, whither\nshe was then purposing to retire, and did do so after Master\nSherwood's execution. For mine own part, as once before my father's\napprehended danger had diverted my mind from childish folly, so did\nthe tragical result of an entertainment, wherein I had been carried\naway by thoughtless mirth, somewhat sicken me of company and sports. I\nwent abroad not much the next year; only was often at Mr. Wells's\nhouse, and in Hubert's society, which had become so habitual to me\nthat I was almost persuaded the pleasure I took therein proceeded from\na mutual inclination, and I could observe with what jealousy he\nwatched any whom I did seem to speak with or allow of any civility at\ntheir hands. Even Master Sherwood he would jalouse, if he found me\nweeping over his fate; and said he was happier in prison, for whom\nsuch tears did flow, than he at liberty, for whom I showed no like\nregard. \"Oh,\" I would answer, \"he is happy because, Master Rookwood,\nhis sufferings are for his God and his conscience' sake, and not such\nas arise from a poor human love. Envy him his faith, his patience, his\nhope, which make him cry out, as I know he doth, 'O my Lord Jesu! I am\nnot worthy that I should suffer these things for thee;' and not the\ncompassionate tears of a paltry wench that in some sort was the means\nto plunge him in these straits.\"\n\nIn the spring of the year which did follow, I heard from my father,\nwho had been ordained at the English College at Rheims, and was on the\nwatch, he advertised me, for an opportunity to return to England, for\nto exercise the sacred ministry amongst his poor Catholic brethren.\nBut at which port he should land, or whither direct his steps, if he\neffected a safe landing, he dared not for to commit to paper. He said\nEdmund Genings had fallen into a most dangerous consumption, partly by\nthe extraordinary pains he took in his studies, and partly in his\nspiritual exercises, insomuch that the physicians had almost despaired\nof his recovery, and that the president had in consequence resolved to\nsend him into England, to try change of air. That he had left Rheims\nwith great regret, and went on his journey, as far as Havre de Grace,\nand, after a fortnight's stay in that place, having prayed to God very\nheartily for the recovery of his health, so that he might return, and,\nwithout further {765} delay, continue his studies for the priesthood,\nhe felt himself very much better, almost as well as ever he was in his\nlife; upon which he returned to his college, and took up again, with\nexceeding great fervor, his former manner of life; \"and,\" my father\nadded, \"his common expression, as often as talk is ministered of\nEngland and martyrdom there, is this: _'Vivamus in spe! Vivamus in\nspe!_'\"\n\nThis letter did throw me into an exceeding great apprehension that my\nfather might fall into the hands of the queen's officers at any time\nhe should land, and the first news I should hear of him to be that he\nwas cast into prison. And as I knew no Catholic priest could dwell in\nEngland with out he did assume a feigned name, and mostly so one of\nhis station, and at one time well noted as a gentleman and a recusant,\nI now never heard of any priest arrested in any part of England but I\nfeared it should be him.\n\nHubert Rookwood was now more than ever at Mr. Lacy's house, and in his\nlibrary, for they did both affection the same pursuits, albeit with\nvery different abilities; and I was used to transcribe for them divers\npassages from manuscripts and books, taking greater pleasure, so to\nspend time, than to embroider in Kate's room, the compass of whose\nthoughts became each day more narrow, and her manner of talk more\ntasteless. Hubert seemed not well pleased when I told him my father\nhad been ordained abroad. I gathered this from a troubled look in his\neyes, and an increasing paleness, which betokened, to my now observant\neyes, emotions which he gave not vent to in words at all, or leastways\nin any that should express strong resentment. His silence always\nfrighted me more than anger in others. He had acquired a great\ninfluence over me, and, albeit I was often ill at ease in his company,\nI ill brooked his absence. He was a zealous Catholic, and did adduce\narguments and proofs in behalf of his religion with rare ability. Some\nof his writings which I copied at that time had a cogency and\nclearness in their reasons and style, which in my poor judgment\nbetokened a singular sharp understanding and ingenuity of learning;\nbut in his conversation, and writings also, was lacking the fervency\nof spirit, the warmth of devout aims, the indifferency to worldly\nregards, which should belong to a truly Christian soul, or else the\nnobleness and freedom of speech which some do possess from natural\ntemper. But his attainments were far superior to those of the young\nmen I used to see at Mr. Wells's, and such as gave him an\nextraordinary reputation amongst the persons I was wont to associate\nwith, which contributed not a little to the value I did set on his\npreference, of which no proofs were wanting, save an open paying of\nhis addresses to me, which by reason of his young age and mine, and\nthe poorness of his prospects, being but a younger son of a country\ngentleman, was easy of account. He had a great desire for wealth and\nfor all kind of greatness, and used to speak of learning as a road to\nit.\n\nIn the spring of that year, my Lord Surrey left Cambridge, and came to\nlive at Howard House with his lady. They were then both in their\neighteenth years, and a more comely pair could not be seen. The years\nthat had passed since she had left London had greatly matured her\nbeauty. She was taller of stature than the common sort, and very fair\nand graceful. The earl was likewise tall, very straight, long-visaged,\nbut of a pleasant and noble countenance. I could not choose but admire\nher perfect carriage, toward her lord, her relatives, and her\nservants; the good order she established in her house; the care she\ntook of her sister's education, who in two years was to be married to\nLord William Howard; and her great charity to the poor, which she then\nbegan to visit herself, and to relieve in all sorts of ways, and was\nwont to say the angels of that old house where God had been served by\nso many prayers and alms must needs assist her in her care for {766}\nthose in trouble. My lord appeared exceedingly fond of her then. One\nday when I was visiting her ladyship, he asked me if I had read the\nlife of that sweet holy Queen Elizabeth of Hungary; and as I said I\nhad not met with it, he gifted me with a copy fairly printed and well\nornamented, which Mr. Martin had left behind him when he went beyond\nseas, and said:\n\n\"Mistress Sherwood, see if in this book you find not the likeness of a\nlady which you mislike not any more than I do. Beshrew me, but I fear\nI may find some day strange guests in mine house if she do copy the\npattern herein set down; and so I will e'en send the book out of the\nhouse, for my lady is too good for me already, and I be no fitting\nhusband for a saint, which a very little more of virtue should make\nher.\"\n\nAnd so he laughing, and she prettily checking his wanton speech, and\nsuch sweet loving looks and playful words passing between them as\ngladdened my heart to see.\n\nSome time after, I found one day my Lady Surrey looking somewhat grave\nand thoughtful. She greeted me with an affectionate kiss, and said,\n\n\"Ah, sweet Constance, I be glad thou art come; for methinks we shall\nsoon leave London.\"\n\n\"So soon?\" I answered.\n\n\"Not _too_ soon, dear Constance,\" she said somewhat sadly.\n\nI did look wistfully in her sweet face. Methought there was trouble in\nit, and doubt if she should further speak or not; for she rested her\nhead on her hand, and her dark eyes did fix themselves wistfully on\nmine, as if asking somewhat of me, but what I knew not. \"Constance,\"\nshe said at last, \"I have no mother, no sister of mine own age, no\nbrother, no ghostly father, to speak my mind to. Methinks it should\nnot be wrong to unbosom my cares to thee, who, albeit young, hast a\nthoughtful spirit, and, as I have often observed, an aptness to give\ngood counsel. And then thou art of that way of thinking wherein I was\nbrought up, and though in outward show we now do differ, I am not\ngreatly changed therein, as thou well knowest.\"\n\n\"Alack!\" I cried, \"too well I do know it, dear lady; and, albeit my\ntongue is silent thereon, my heart doth grieve to see you comfortless\nof that which is the sole source of true comfort.\"\n\n\"Tis not that troubles me,\" she answered, a little impatiently. \"Thou\nart unreasonable, Constance. My duty to my lord shapes my outward\nbehavior; but I have weighty cares, nevertheless. Dost thou mind that\npassage in the late duke our father's letter to his son and me?--that\nwe should live in a lower degree, and out of London and from the\ncourt. Methinks a prophetic spirit did move him thus to write. My lord\nhas a great heart and a generous temper, and loves to spend money in\nall sorts of ways, profitable and unprofitable, as I too well observe\nsince we have been in London. And the queen sent him a store of\nmessages by my Lord Essex, and others of his friends, that she was\nsurprised not to see him at court; and that it was her highness's\npleasure he should wait upon her, and she shall show him so much favor\nas he deserves, and such like inducements.\"\n\n\"And hath my lord been to court?\" I asked.\n\n\"Yea, he hath been,\" she answered, sighing deeply. \"He hath been\nforced to kiss the hand which signed his father's death-warrant.\nConstance, it is this which doth so pain me, that her majesty should\nthink he hath in his heart no resentment of that mishap. She said to\nmy Lady Berkeley some days since, when she sued for some favor at her\nhands, 'No, no, my Lady Berkeley; you love us not, and never will. You\ncannot forgive us your brother's death.' Why should her grace think a\nson hath less resentment of a father's loss than a sister?\"\n\nWilling to minister comfort to her touching that on which I did,\nnevertheless, but too much consent to her thinking, I said, \"In my\nlord's case, he must have needs appeared to mislike {767} the queen\nand her government if he stayed away from court, and his duty to his\nsovereign compelleth him to render her so much homage as is due to her\nmajesty.\"\n\n\"Yea,\" cried my lady, \"I be of the same mind with thee, that if my\nlord do live in London he is in a manner forced to swim with the tide,\nand God only knoweth into what a flood of troubles he may thus be led.\nBut I have prevailed on him to go to Kenninghall, and there to enjoy\nthat retired life his father passionately wished him to be contented\nwith. So I do look, if it please God, to happy days when we leave this\ngreat city, where so many and great dangers beset us.\"\n\n\"Have you been to court likewise, dear lady?\" I asked; and she\nanswered,\n\n\"No; her majesty doth deny me that privilege which the wife of a\nnobleman should enjoy without so much as the asking for it. My Lord\nArundel and my Lord Sussex are mad thereon, and swear 'tis the gipsy's\ndoing, as they do always title Lord Leicester, and a sign of his\nhatred to my lord. But I be not of their mind; for methinks he doth\nbut aid my lord to win the queen's favor by the slights which are put\non his wife, which, if he doth take patiently, must needs secure for\nhim such favor as my Lord Leicester should wish, if report speaks\ntruly, none should enjoy but himself.\"\n\n\"But surely,\" I cried, \"my lord's spirit is too noble to stomach so\nmean a treatment of his lady?\"\n\nA burning blush spread over the countess's face, and she answered,\n\n\"Constance, nobility of soul is shaped into action by divers motives\nand influences. And, I pray thee, since his father's death and the\nloss of his first tutor, who hath my lord had to fashion the aims of\nhis eager spirit to a worthy ambition, and teach him virtuous\ncontentment with a meaner rank and lower fortunes than his birth do\nentitle him to? He chafes to be degraded, and would fain rise to the\nheights his ancestors occupied; and, alas! the ladder which those who\nbeset him--for that they would climb after him--do ever set before his\neyes is the queen's majesty's favor. 'Tis the breath of their\nnostrils, the perpetual theme of their discourse. Mine ears sometimes\nache with the sound of their oft-repeated words.\"\n\nThen she broke off her speech for an instant, but soon asked me if to\nconsult fortune-tellers was not a sin.\n\n\"Yea,\" I answered, \"the Church doth hold it to be unlawful.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" she replied, \"I would to God my lord had never resorted to a\nperson of that sort, which hath filled his mind with an apprehension\nwhich will work us great evil, if I do mistake not.\"\n\n\"Alas!\" I said, \"hath my lord been so deluded?\"\n\n\"Thou hast heard, I ween,\" my lady continued, \"of one Dr. Dee, whom\nthe queen doth greatly favor, and often charge him to cast her\nhoroscope. Some time ago my lord was riding with her majesty and the\nmost part of her court near unto this learned gentleman's house at\nMortlake, which her highness, taking notice of, she must needs propose\nto visit him with all her retinue, in order, she said, to examine his\nlibrary and hold conference with him. But learning that his wife had\nbeen buried only four hours, her majesty would not enter, but desired\nmy Lord Leicester to take her down from her horse at the church-wall\nat Mortlake and to fetch the doctor unto her, who did bring out for\nher grace's inspection his magic-glass, of which she and all those\nwith her did see some of the properties. Several of the noblemen\nthereunto present were greatly contented and delighted with this\ncunning witchery, and did agree to visit again, in a private manner,\nthis learned man, for to have their nativities calculated; and my\nlord, I grieve to say, went with them. And this cheat or wizard, for\nmethinks one or other of those names must needs belong to him,\npredicted to my lord that he should be in great danger to be\noverthrown by a woman. And, I {768} ween, good Constance, there was a\ncraft in this most deep and deceptive, for doth it not tend, whichever\nway it be understood, to draw and urge onward my lord to a careful\nseeking to avoid this danger by a diligent serving and waiting on her\nmajesty, if she be the woman like to undo him, or else to move him to\nthe thought that his marriage--as I doubt not many endeavor to\ninsinuate into his mind--should be an obstacle to her favor such as\nmust needs mar his fortunes? Not that my lord hath breathed so much as\none such painful word in my hearing, or abated in his kind behavior;\nbut there are others who be not slow to hint so much to myself; and, I\npray you, shall they not then deal with him in the same manner, albeit\nhe is too noble and gentle to let me hear of it? But since that day he\nis often thoughtful when we are alone, and his mind ever running on\nmeans to propitiate her majesty, and doth send her many presents, the\nvalue of which should rather mark them as gifts from one royal person\nto another than from a subject to his prince. O Constance, I would\nKenninghall were a thousand miles from London, and a wild sea to run\nbetween it and the court, such as could with difficulty be crossed;\nbut 'tis vain wishing; and I thank God my lord should be willing to\nremove there, and so we shall be in quiet.\"\n\n\"God send it!\" I answered; \"and that you, my sweet lady, may find\nthere all manner of contentment.\" Then I asked her ladyship if she had\ntidings of my Lady l'Estrange.\n\n\"Yea,\" she answered; \"excellent good tidings, for that she was a\ncontented wife to a loving husband. Sir Hammond,\" she said, \"hath a\nmost imperious temper, and, as I hear, doth not brook the least\ncontradiction; so that a woman less mild and affectionate than\nMilicent should not, I ween, live at peace with him. But her sweet\ntemper doth move her to such strict condescension to his humors, that\nshe doth style herself most fortunate in marriage and a singular happy\nwife. Dost mind Master Chaucer's tale of the patient Grizzel, which\nPhil read to me some years back, soon after our first marriage, for to\ngive me a lesson on wifely duty, and which I did then write to thee\nthe story of?\"\n\n\"Yea, well,\" I cried; \"and that I was so angered at her patience,\nwhich methought was foolish, yea, wicked in its excess, that it did\nthrow me into a passion.\"\n\nMy lady laughed and said, indeed she thought so too; but Milicent, in\nher behavior and the style of her letters, did mind her so much of\nthat singular obedient wife, that she did sometimes call her Grizzel\nto her face. \"She is now gone to reside with her husband,\" she said,\n\"at a seat of his not very far from Lynn. 'Tis a poor and wild\ndistrict; and the people, I hear, do resort to her in great numbers\nfor assistance in the way of medicine and surgery, and for much help\nof various sorts. She is greatly contented that her husband doth in\nnowise impede her in these charitable duties, but rather the contrary.\nShe is a creature of such natural good impulses and compassionate\nspirit that must needs show kindness to all who do come in her way.\"\n\nThen my lady questioned me touching Muriel and Mistress Ward, and Kate\nand Polly, who were now both married; and I told her Kate had a fair\nson and Polly a little daughter, like to prove as sharp as her mother\nif her infant vivacity did not belie her. As to Muriel and her guide\nand friend, I told her ladyship that few were like to have speech with\nthem, save such as were in so destitute a condition that nothing could\nexceed it. Now that my two elder cousins had left home, mine uncle's\nhouse was become a sort of refuge for the poor, and an hospital for\ndistressed Catholics.\n\n\"And thou, Constance,\" my lady said, \"dost thou not think on\nmarriage?\"\n\nI smiled and answered I did sometimes; but had not yet met with any\none altogether conformable to my liking.\n\n{769}\n\n\"Not Mr. Hubert Rookwood?\" she said smiling; \"I have been told he\nhaunts Mrs. Lacy's house, and would fain be admitted as Mistress\nSherwood's suitor.\"\n\n\"I will not deny,\" I answered, \"but that he doth testify a vast regard\nfor me, or that he is a gentleman of such great parts and exceedingly\nwinning speech that a gentlewoman should be flattered to be addressed\nby him; but, dear lady,\" I continued, opening my heart to her, \"albeit\nI relish greatly his society, mine heart doth not altogether incline\nto his suit; and Mr. Congleton hath lately warned me to be less free\nin allowing of his attentions than hath hitherto been my wont; for, he\nsaid, his means be so scanty, that it behoveth him not to think of\nmarriage until his fortunes do improve; and that his father would not\nbe competent to make such settlements as should be needful in such a\ncase, or without which he should suffer us to marry. As Hubert had\nnever opened to me himself thereon in so pointed a fashion as to\ndemand an answer from me, I was somewhat surprised at mine uncle's\nspeech; but I found he had often ministered talk of his passion for\nme--for so he termed it--to Kate and her husband.\"\n\n\"And did it work in thee, sweet one, no regrets,\" my lady asked, \"that\nthe course of this poor gentleman's true love should be marred by his\nlack of wealth?\"\n\n\"In truth no, dear lady,\" I replied; \"except that I did notice, with\nso much of pain as a good heart must needs feel in the sufferings of\nanother, that he was both sad and wroth at the change in my manner.\nAnd indeed I had always seen--and methinks this was the reason that my\nheart inclined not warmly toward his suit--that his affection was of\nthat sort that doth readily breed anger; and that if he had occasion\nto misdoubt a return from me of such-like regard as he professed, his\nlooks of love sometimes changed into a scowl, or something nearly\nresembling one. Yet I had a kindness toward him, yea, more than a\nkindness, an attachment, which methinks should have led me to\ncorrespond to his affection so far as to be willing to marry him, if\nmine uncle had not forbade me to think on it; but since he hath laid\nhis commands upon me on that point, methinks I have experienced a\nfreedom of soul and a greater peace than I had known for some time\npast.\"\n\n\"'Tis well then as it is,\" my lady said; and after some further\ndiscourse we parted that day.\n\nIt had been with me even as I had said to her. My mind had been more\nat ease since the contending would and would not, the desire to please\nHubert and the fear to be false in so doing, had been stayed,--and\nmostly since he had urged me to entertain him as a friend, albeit\ndefended to receive him as a lover. And that peace lasted until a\nday--ay, a day which began like other days with no perceptible\npresentiment of joy or sorrow, the sun shining as brightly, and no\nmore, at its rise than on any other morning in June; and the\nthunder-clouds toward noon overshadowing its glory not more darkly\nthan a storm is wont to do the clear sky it doth invade; nor yet\nevening smiling again more brightly and peacefully than is usually\nseen when nature's commotion is hushed, and the brilliant orb of day\ndoth sink to rest in a bed of purple glory; and yet that day did\nherald the greatest joys, presage the greatest anguish, mark the most\nmighty beginnings of most varied endings that can be thought of in the\nlife of a creature not altogether untried by sorrow, but on the brink\nof deeper waters than she had yet sounded, on the verge of such\npassages as to have looked forward to had caused her to tremble with a\ntwo-fold resentment of hope and of fear, and to look back to doth\nconstrain her to lay down her pen awhile for to crave strength to\nrecount the same.\n\n[TO BE CONTINUED]\n\n--------\n\n{770}\n\nFrom Chambers's Journal.\n\nTERRENE PHOSPHORESCENCE.\n\n\nIt has been suggested that light, heat, magnetism, and electricity are\nonly the effects of motion among the molecules of matter. Our earth is\nbut an aggregation of atoms, and every substance upon which we lay our\nhands is in like manner formed of infinitesimal particles, so small as\nto baffle microscopic investigation. When we consider that animalcula\nhave been discovered so minute that it would take a million of them to\nform a grain of sand, it is evident that motion _as_ motion among the\nultimate particles of matter is beyond man's powers of observation.\nPhysical investigations have led us to believe that these atoms have\nan action or circulation of their own, and as this action of necessity\nescapes our eye, it is not irrational, when looking for some evidence\nof this disturbance, to attribute to it physical forces for which we\ncannot satisfactorily account, yet which appertain to the earth. Thus\nhas arisen the hypothesis above stated; and intimately connected with\nthose forces (heat, electricity, etc.) is phosphorescence, a power on\nwhich the examinations of twenty years have thrown little light, and\nwhich still remains of doubtful origin.\n\nThe power in minerals, plants, and animals of producing light is\napparently a consequence of these objects being under the direct\ninfluence, permanently, or for a time, of heat, light, or electricity,\nas some substances become phosphorescent after insolation, or exposure\nto the sun's rays; others, from heat: others, by having an electric\ncurrent passed through them; and lastly, some give forth a phosphoric\nlight of their own, without any appreciable warmth. Whatever may be\nthe cause of this property, it is found to pervade all parts of\ncreation: the atmosphere, the common stones by the wayside, the\nflowers in cottage gardens, and the humble insects or worms crawling\nat our feet, can shed around a faint glimmer of light. The earth\nitself is occasionally, if not always, self-luminous, as are other of\nthe heavenly bodies. Venus, Jupiter, the moon, and comets, are\nconjectured to have a certain portion of phosphoric light, which is\nindependent of and unborrowed from the sun. The luminosity of the\nearth is made evident to us on starless, moonless nights. We may not\nhave thought of it, but still it is certain that light surrounds us\nfrom some source or other in varying quantities, on such nights as are\nabove described; for our movements are very different, even when\nwalking in the open air on the darkest nights, from what they would be\nin a cave, or when groping in a room with closed shutters. This phase\nof phosphorescence, and also that of faint flickering clouds against\nthe horizon, is distinct from meteorological phosphorescence, which\nbranch of the subject includes luminous rain, fog, dust,\n_ignis-fatuus_, northern and southern lights. A shower of dust which\nfell during an eruption of Vesuvius in 1794, had a faint luminosity in\nthe dark, distinctly visible on the sails of vessels on which it had\nfallen. Many instances are recorded of rain producing sparks as it\ntouched the ground, and Arago collected the authentic accounts of this\nphenomenon. In June, 1731, an ecclesiastic near Constance described\nthe rain during a thunder-storm as falling like drops of red-hot\nliquid metal; and it is observable that most of these sparkling\nshowers seem to have occurred during thunder-storms, or when the air\nwas highly charged with electricity.\n\nBut complete mystery still surrounds the cause of luminous fogs and\nmists, {771} which are of rare occurrence. Of these there are few well\nfounded accounts, and the most recent instance of one was, we believe,\nin 1859, continuing for a succession of nights. It lasted from then\n18th to the 26th of November, and, in the absence of any moon, so\nilluminated the heavens as to render small objects distinctly visible\nin the sitting room of M. Wartenan of Geneva, whose description of it\nwill be found in the _Comptes Rendus_ of the Academy of Sciences,\nParis, for December, 1859. It was not a wet fog, but a sort of dry\nmist, so impenetrable as to render invisible the banks of the river\nLeman, but at the same time diffusing sufficient phosphoric light to\nmake small objects clear as on a moonlight night. This was also\ntestified by persons travelling on foot from Geneva to Annemasse,\nbetween the hours of 10 and 12 P.M. Another famous instance was in\n1783, when a dry fog, lasting for a month, covered the northern parts\nof America, and Europe from Sweden to Africa. It resembled moonlight\nthrough a veil of clouds, and was equally diffused on all sides,\nmaking objects visible at a distance of six hundred yards. Being, as\nit were, a deep mass of phosphoric vapor, reaching to the summit of\nthe highest mountains, no storms of rain or wind seemed to affect it;\nbut in Europe it was thought to emit an unpleasant sulphurous smell.\n\nAnother feature of meteorological phosphorescence is that of luminous\nappearances at sea, quite distinct from the luminosity of the ocean\nitself as produced by marine animalcula. Mrs. Somerville gives the\nfollowing interesting description of one of these phosphoric\nphenomena: \"Captain Bonnycastle, coming up the Gulf of St. Lawrence on\nthe 7th of September, 1826, was roused by the mate of the vessel in\ngreat alarm from an unusual appearance. It was a starlight night, when\nsuddenly the sky became overcast in the direction of the highland of\nCornwallis country, and an instantaneous and intensely vivid light,\nresembling the aurora, shot out of the hitherto gloomy and dark sea on\nthe lee-bow, which was so brilliant that it lighted every thing\ndistinctly, even to the mast-head. The light spread over the whole sea\nbetween the two shores, and the waves, which before had been tranquil,\nnow began to be agitated. Captain Bonnycastle describes the scene as\nthat of a blazing sheet of awful and most brilliant light. A long and\nvivid line of light, superior in brightness to the parts of the sea\nnot immediately near the vessel, showed the base of the high,\nfrowning, and dark land abreast; the sky became lowering and more\nintensely obscure. Long tortuous lines of light showed immense numbers\nof very large fish darting about, as if in consternation. The\nsprit-sail-yard and mizzen-boom were lighted by the glare, as if\ngas-lights had been burning directly below them; and until just before\ndaybreak, at four o'clock, the most minute objects were distinctly\nvisible. Day broke very slowly, and the sun rose of a fiery and\nthreatening aspect. Rain followed. Captain Bonnycastle caused a bucket\nof this fiery water to be drawn up: it was one mass of light when\nstirred by the hand, and not in sparks, as usual, but in actual\ncoruscations. A portion of the water preserved its luminosity for\nseven nights. On the third night, scintillations of the sea\nreappeared; in the evening the sun went down very singularly,\nexhibiting in its descent a double sun; and when only a few degrees\nhigh, its spherical figure changed into that of a long cylinder, which\nreached the horizon. In the night the sea became nearly as luminous as\nbefore; but on the fifth night the appearance entirely ceased. Captain\nBonnycastle does not think it proceeded from animalcula, but imagines\nit might be some compound of phosphorus, suddenly evolved, and\ndisposed over the surface of the sea; perhaps from the exuviae or\nsecretions of fish connected with the oceanic salts, muriate of soda\nand sulphate of magnesia.\"\n\n{772}\n\nQuite distinct from luminous mists is another species of phosphoric\nphenomenon in the shape of luminous bodies of considerable size and\nbrilliancy. We find Arago saying, in 1838, \"that great luminous\nmeteors, similar to lightning in their nature, show themselves\nsometimes at the surface of the globe, even when the sky does not\nappear stormy.\" An instance of this is given by a Mr. Edwards, as\nhaving been seen by him when crossing Loch Scavig in a boat at night.\nIn this instance, a light swept rapidly over the face of the water,\nresembling the light in a cabin window, but moving with great\nrapidity. It passed near the boat, and caused much consternation among\nthe boatmen, who viewed it as something supernatural; but it was soon\nout of sight, following a curved course. A far more startling\noccurrence was seen by the ship _Montague_ when \"a few minutes before\nmid-day, and in perfectly serene weather, a large bluish globe of fire\nrolled up to the ship, the _Montague_, and exploded, shattering one of\nthe masts. This globe of fire appeared as large as a millstone.\" This\nappearance does not seem to have had the swiftness of motion we should\nexpect if it had been a species of globular lightning, but rather\nresembled a gigantic _ignis-fatuus_, which sometimes takes a globular\nform, and although generally attributed to the combustion of\nphosphuretted hydrogen gas, may and does arise from certain electrical\nconditions of the atmosphere. A remarkable _ignis-fatuus_ is described\nby Dr. Shaw in his travels in the Holy Land. He observed it on Mount\nEphraim, and it followed him for more than an hour. \"Sometimes it\nappeared globular, at others it spread itself to such a degree as to\ninvolve the whole company in a pale inoffensive light; then it\ncontracted itself, and suddenly disappeared, but in less than a minute\nwould appear again; sometimes running swiftly along, it would expand\nitself over two or three acres of the adjacent mountains.\"\n\nWe will not dwell on other instances of _ignis-fatuus_, a phenomenon\nso common as to be known to all. But although this form of\ngas--phosphuretted hydrogen--has been long known as luminous, it is\nonly since 1859 that gases in general have been discovered to possess\nphosphoric qualities when exposed to the sun's light. It is a\nremarkable fact, but one which has been proved, that, with the\nexception of metals, nearly all terrestrial bodies appear luminous\nwhen taken into the dark after insolation or exposure to the sun. They\nabsorb so much light as to give it back again when removed from its\ninfluence, and this property is opposed to electricity, for we find\nthat good conductors of that fluid are not liable to insolated\nphosphorescence. The first discovery of this property was made by\nViscenzo Cascariolo, a shoemaker of Bologna, who, loving alchemy, and\nseeking gold, found in his ramble a heavy stone, from which he hoped\nand longed to produce the precious metal. Failing in this, he found\nwhat till then was unknown, that sulphuret of baryta would \"absorb the\nsun's rays by day, to emit them by night.\" From him this substance has\nreceived the name of Bologna stone; and this first discovery has been\nfollowed by others, which prove that phosphoric light may be produced\nby heat, friction, cleavage, and many other forces beside insolation.\nSome diamonds shine in the dark after a few minutes' exposure to the\nsun; others cannot be made phosphorescent by heat if uncut, but when\npolished, or submitted to two or three electric discharges, easily\nbecome luminous. So slight a heat is required to call forth this\nlight-giving property in some substances, that rare kinds of\nclorophane shine in a dark room from the mere warmth of the hand; and\nother substances are phosphorized by the slightest friction. Thus Dana\nsays: \"Merely the rapid motion of a feather across some specimens of\nsulphuret of zinc will often elicit light more or less intense from\nthis metal.\"\n\nSeveral simple and amusing experiments may be made to show the {773}\nphosphorescence of minerals. The power of cleavage to produce light is\nseen when sugar is broken in a mortar. If a sufficient quantity is\nground rapidly in the dark, the whole will appear a mass of fire. If\nphosphuretted hydrogen is evolved by throwing phosphuret of calcium\ninto water, each bubble as if rises will fire spontaneously on\ncombining with the air. But the most elegant production of light is\nthe result of an experiment by Professor Pontus in 1833: \"He showed\nthat a vivid spark is produced when water is made to freeze rapidly. A\nsmall glass, terminating in a short tube, is filled with water; the\nwhole is covered with a sponge or cotton-wool imbibed with ether, and\nplaced in an air pump. As soon as the experimenter begins to produce a\nvacuum, the ether evaporates, and the sponge or cotton-wool descends,\nthe temperature of the water rises rapidly. But some instants before\ncongelation takes place, a brilliant spark, perfectly visible in the\ndaytime, is suddenly shot out of the little tube that terminates the\nglass globe.\"\n\nBefore passing on to the consideration of animal phosphorescence, let\nus glance at the luminosity of plants. This is found in many\nphanerogams and cryptogams. In the latter, it is well known, from\nbeing found frequently in mines, where the fungus _mycelium_ is seen\nspreading its web-like growth, and diffusing a tranquil light,\nsufficiently strong to read by, as some have affirmed. The most\nbeautiful instance of this is found in the mines in Hesse, where the\ngalleries for supplying air are illumined with this soft phosphoric\nlight. No example of phosphorescence among sea-weed has been known,\nbut the delicate little moss _Schistostega osmundacea_ is luminous.\nAmong phanerogams, or ordinary plants, are many examples of\nphosphorescence. Several kinds of garden nasturtiums, sun-flowers,\nFrench and African marigolds, yellow lilies, and poppies, have been\nseen to emit either sparks or a steady light. By some it is thought\nthat it is produced when the pollen flies off and is scattered over\nthe petals, but it is invariably noticed on warm tranquil evenings,\nwhen there is electricity in the atmosphere. It is observed that\nnearly all the flowers proved to be phosphoric are of a yellow color,\nbut the cause of this has not been ascertained. The leaves of an\nAmerican plant (_OEnothera macrocapa_) have been seen, during a severe\nstorm of thunder and lightning, to emit brilliant flashes of light,\nand this is, we believe, the only plant as yet discovered with\nphosphoric foliage. M. Martins of Montpellier has noticed that the\njuice of the _Euphorbia phosphorea_, when rubbed on paper, appears\nluminous in the dark, or when heated. But the most remarkable instance\nis that of the common potato emitting a brilliant light: Mr. Phipson\nstates that a soldier of Strasburg thought that the barracks were, on\none occasion, on fire, from the light which was found to proceed from\na cellar full of potatoes. It is a question whether they were in a\nstate of decomposition, and if so, it differs slightly from the\nluminosity of decaying wood, which is usually caused by the presence\nof phosphoric fungi.\n\nTo attempt to enumerate the animals of inferior organism which are\nphosphoric would be impossible, as almost every known zoophyte is\npossessed of this light-giving quality; and perhaps no branch of the\nsubject has received so much attention as that which concerns animals,\nfrom the fact of the phosphorescence of dead animal matter and insects\nbeing phenomena of daily occurrence. On the former, very early\nobservations were made. In 1592, Fabricius d'Acquapendente relates the\nastonishment of three Roman youths who found the remains of their\nEaster lamb shining like candles in the dark. Nearly a century later,\nRobert Boyle described the phosphorescence of a neck of veal \"as a\nvery splendid show,\" and in a paper in the _Philosophical\nTransactions_ tried to {774} account for it. It is found that flesh\nwill continue luminous about four days.\n\nAmong the insect-world there are numerous light-giving members. The\ncommon glowworm needs no description, and the _lantern_ flies of the\ntropics are almost as well known. Tropical regions abound with these\nfire-flies, seventy kinds of which are found in South America and the\nsouthern states of the northern continent. Some of them emit the light\nfrom the abdomen, others from the head. The famous _Fulgora\nlanternaria_, or lantern-fly of Linnaeus, produces the light from the\nlong transparent horn or proboscis curving upward from the head. The\nlight of one of these is sufficiently bright to read a newspaper by,\nand two or three of them in a bottle is the common form of lamp. The\nnatives also light their way on a dark night by tying one or two at\nthe end of a stick. The _Noctua psi_, a little gray night-flying moth,\nis luminous, as also are some kinds of caterpillars; and the cricket\nand \"daddy long-legs\" have the same property attributed to them by\nsome naturalists. The reader cannot fail to have noticed that there is\nno instance recorded of any larger animal producing phosphoric light.\nInvisible animalcula and insects are numerous, and of late years the\ncommon earthworm, or _Lambricus_, has been proved beyond doubt to have\na phosphoric power; but beyond this, and the crawling centipede\n(_Scolopendra_), there is no animal with light-giving power. The\ngleaming light seen in the eyes of cats, dogs, and wild animals has\nbeen called phosphoric; but this is doubtful, and more nearly\nresembles some phase of reflected light. Humboldt, and later the\nnatural historian, Reuger, speak of a monkey, _Nyctipithecus\ntrivirgatus_ as having eyes so brilliant as to illumine objects some\ninches off.\n\nBut this is the only case of at all probable phosphoric light.\nPerhaps, in this very instance, it arose from some peculiar physical\ncondition of the animal; in the same way as the scintillation in the\neyes of one or two human beings was found connected with extreme\ndelicacy of constitution. The phenomenon of brilliant colors being\nperceived on a person pressing his eye, or on the injury of the optic\nnerve, is called by Mr. Phipson _subjective_ phosphorescence, but this\nis only an undeveloped hypothesis.\n\nOld dames and superstitious northerners speak of _Elf-candles_ as\npreceding death; and of the fact of human bodies during life\nexhibiting phosphoric light there is no doubt, but it also depends on\nthe state of the body, and does not signify the sure approach of\ndeath. A lady in Italy is described by Bartholin as producing\nphosphoric radiation when her body was gently rubbed with dry linen,\nand more than one instance of pale light surrounding sick persons is\nrecorded on good authority. This portion of the science of\nphosphorescence is involved in the same mystery as the previously\ndescribed branches; theories are suggested; but no real satisfactory\nexplanation is found for the different kinds of luminosity. We will\nclose this article with an account given by Dr. Kane of an\nextraordinary case of phosphorescence on the human body which occurred\nin the polar regions. It was on the night of January 2, 1854, that the\nparty sought shelter from an icy death-dealing wind in an Esquimaux\nhut. Exhaustion, added to the intense cold, induced sleep, but as the\ndoctor was composing himself for the night, he was aroused by an\nexclamation that the fire was out. To try and relight it was the\ninstant endeavor of Dr. Kane and his man. The latter failing, the\ndoctor, in despair, sought to do so himself. \"It was so intensely\ndark,\" says he, \"that I had to grope for it (the pistol with which\nthey strove to produce a spark), and in doing so touched his hand. At\nthat instant, the pistol became distinctly visible. A pale bluish\nlight, slightly tremulous, but not broken, covered the metallic parts\nof it--the barrel, lock, and trigger. The {775} stock, too, was\nclearly discernible, as if by the reflected light, and to the\namazement of both of us, the thumb and two fingers with which Petersen\nwas holding it, the creases, wrinkles, and circuit of the nails\nclearly defined upon the skin. The phosphorescence was not unlike the\nineffectual fire of the glowworm. As I took the pistol, my hand became\nilluminated also, and so did the powder-rubbed paper when I raised it\nagainst the muzzle. The paper did not ignite at the first trial; but\nthe light from it continuing, I was able to charge the pistol without\ndifficulty.\"\n\n------\n\nFrom The Month.\n\nCIVILIZATION IN THE FIFTH CENTURY.\n\n\nThe name of Ozanam was already celebrated in the world of letters, and\nhe had published some portions of his historical course, when he died,\nin the midst of his unfinished labors. His early death is a fresh\nproof of the truth of the old adage, _Ars longa, vita brevis_, and the\ninterest of his short autobiography is intense. He tells us of\nhimself: \"In the midst of an age of scepticism God gave me the\nblessing of having a Christian father and a religious mother; and he\ngave me for my first instructress a sister full of intelligence, and\ndevout, like the angels whom she has gone to join. But, in the course\nof time, the rumors of an infidel world reached even to me, and I knew\nall the horror of those doubts which weigh down the heart during the\nday, and which return at night upon the pillow moistened with tears.\nThe uncertainty of my eternal destiny left me no repose. I clung with\ndespair to the sacred dogmas, and I thought I felt them give way in my\ngrasp. It was then that I was saved by the teaching of a priest well\nversed in philosophy. He arranged and cleared up my ideas. I believed\nfrom that time with a firm faith, and, penetrated with the sense of so\nrare a blessing, I vowed to God that I would devote my life to the\nservice of that truth which had given me peace. Twenty years have\npassed away since that time. Providence has done everything to snatch\nme from business and to fix me in intellectual labors. The combination\nof circumstances has led me to study chiefly religion, law, and\nletters. I have visited the places which could afford me information.\nThe historian Gibbon, as he wandered on the capitol, beheld issuing\nfrom the gates of the basilica of Ara Coeli a long procession of\nFranciscans, who marked with their sandals the pavement trodden by so\nmany triumphs. It was then that, inspired by indignation, he formed\nthe design of avenging antiquity thus outraged by Christian barbarism,\nand he conceived the plan of a History of the Fall of the Roman\nEmpire. I too have seen the monks of Ara Coeli tread the ancient\npavement of Jupiter Capitolinus, and I rejoiced at it, as the victory\nof love over strength; and I resolved to write the history of progress\nin those ages where philosophy finds only decadence; the history of\ncivilization in barbarous times, the history of thought escaping the\nshipwreck of letters, _forti tegente brachio_\" (Pref., pp. 2, 5.)\n\nThe professor relates himself, with all the vigor of his intellect,\nthe great and glorious plan of history which was the object of his\nlife, in a letter dated Jan. 25, 1848: \"This will be the literary\nhistory of barbarous times, the history of letters, and consequently\n{776} of civilization, from the Latin decadence, and the first\nbeginning of Christian genius, to the end of the thirteenth century. I\nshall make it the subject of my lectures during ten years, if it is\nnecessary, and if God prolongs my life. The subject would be\nadmirable, for it would consist in making known this long and\nlaborious education which the Church bestowed on modern nations.\" He\nthen marks the salient points of his picture--the intellectual state\nof the world at the commencement of Christianity--the _monde barbare_\nand its irruption into civilized society, and met by the labors of\nBoethius, Isidore of Seville, Ven. Bede, and St. Boniface, who carried\nthe torch of learning from one country to another, and handed it down\nto Charlemagne. Then follow the crusades, and then the three glorious\ncenturies of the middle ages, when St. Anselm, St. Bernard, Peter\nLombard, Albert the Great, St. Thomas, and St. Bonaventure achieved\nfor the world of intellect all that the Church and state acquired from\nGregory VII., Alexander III., Innocent III. and IV., Frederic II., St.\nLouis, and Alfonso X. He gives a _resume_ of the events which\ninfluenced modern history, and ends by saying, \"My labors would be\ncompleted by _la Divina Commedia_, the greatest monument of a period,\nof which it may be called an abridgment, and of which it is the\nglory.\" \"This is proposed to himself by a man who was near dying, a\nyear and a half ago, and who is not yet wholly recovered. But I depend\nentirely on the goodness of God, in case he is pleased to restore my\nhealth and preserve to me the love for these noble studies with which\nhe has inspired me.\" (Pref., pp. 3-6.)\n\nSuch was the object and occupation of his life from the age of\neighteen, when he was an obscure student, to the time when he\npronounced, as professor, the lectures which contained the labors of\ntwenty years. Happily for himself, he had learnt early the result of\nlabor. When he was twenty years of age, he wrote, \"We exist on earth\nonly to accomplish the will of God. This will is fulfilled day by day;\nand he who dies, leaving his task unfinished, is, in the sight of the\ndivine maker, as far advanced as he who has had time to bring his to\ncompletion.\"\n\nIt was at Pisa, April 23, 1853, that M. Ozanam wrote a prayer so\nsolemn, as well as so touching, that his friend, Father Ampere, seems\nto hesitate whether it ought to be laid before the public. His\nhesitation was conquered by the desire of making what is so excellent\nknown, and he publishes the soliloquy of the dying man:\n\n\"I have said, 'In the midst of my days I shall go down to the gates of\ndeath,' etc. (Canticle Ezek.)\n\n\"This day is completed my fortieth year: more than half the ordinary\nspan of life. I am, however, dangerously ill. Must I, then, quit all\nthese possessions which thou thyself hast given me, my God? Wilt thou\nnot, O Lord, accept a part of the sacrifice? Which of my ill-regulated\naffections shall I offer up to thee? Wilt not thou accept the\nholocaust of my literary self-love, my academical ambition, my\nprospects for study, in which, perhaps, there is mingled more pride\nthan zeal for truth? If I sold the half of my books and gave the price\nof them to the poor, and if I restricted myself to fulfilling the\nduties of my office, and consecrated the rest of my life to visiting\nthe poor and instructing apprentices and soldiers, Lord, would this be\na sufficient satisfaction, and wouldst thou leave me the happiness of\nliving to old age with my wife, and completing the education of my\nchild? Perhaps, O my God, this is not thy will. Thou wilt not accept\nthese selfish offerings. Thou rejectest my holocaust and my\nsacrifices. It is myself whom thou requirest. It is written in the\ncommencement of the book that I must do thy will, and I have said, O\nLord, I come.\"\n\nIt is with a solemn interest that we turn to the fragments of that\nwork to which Ozanam devoted his life and {777} energies, and we find\nit to be the history of modern Europe. He himself lays down the three\nelements of history. \"First, chronology, which preserves the general\nsuccession of events; then legend, which gives them life and color;\nand then philosophy, which fills them, as it were, with soul and\nintelligence.\"\n\nIn the childhood of the world, when the desire of knowledge was fresh\nand strong, all pagan histories began with the siege of Troy, and all\nChristian histories from Adam and Eve. Authors gained fame by\nchronicles of all past events, because it satisfied the natural\ncuriosity of man to know the antecedents of his country or race. As\ntime went on, history became the expression of popular feelings; and\nwhat took place generally may be inferred from what we know of our own\ncountry. The British monk, Geoffrey of Monmouth, wrote of Arthur, the\nchampion of the faith and the model of chivalry; and the Venerable\nBede wrote of the saints among his own Saxon countrymen; then came,\nwith the evils of the reformation, a reverence for what was ancient,\nand Stow wrote of Catholic England with a fidelity which ranked him\namong the benefactors of his country. But then also egotism began.\nEach must think for himself, and appropriate the results of former\nlabors; each must analyze, or generalize, or criticise; and perhaps it\nis true that the original writer is he who gives to the world his own\nview of things, and not the things themselves. If he is unselfish and\nloves truth for itself, he is a poet; if he subjects truth to his own\nviews, he writes of history, but he does not write history; facts\nbecome subservient to theories, and he mentions only a few, as\nnecessary illustrations of his own system. The reader yawns over the\nsuccession of kings and events, and chooses for his guide the infidel\nHume, the philanthropic Mackintosh, or the Hanoverian Macaulay. The\nfashion of the present day is the idolization of nature. This has made\nart pre-Raphaelite, and poetry euphuistic. History, too, is perhaps\nbecoming a laborious restoration of the past. With a taste for detail\nwhich is truly Gothic, the popular historian must reproduce his\ncharacters with their own features, costume, and _entourage_, and the\nlong forgotten personages, as if restored to life by the genius of Sir\nWalter Scott, must walk about the stage in mediaeval garb. History has\ngone through nearly the same phases on the continent until the period\nof the reformation. Then in Catholic countries--as France, Spain, and\nItaly--arose a more reasoning but a grave and instructive school of\nhistory, which preserved past events as a deposit of the ages of\nfaith; and latterly, since excitement is become necessary to all, and\nthe speculations of German literature have taught almost all to think,\nthe French and German historians have adopted the philosophy of\nhistory. The German school takes a naked problem and proves it by a\nseries of abstractions. We read Schlegel and Guizot, and we find,\ninstead of facts or dates or persons, a sort of allegorical\npersonification of civilization, liberty, progress, etc. This is\nrather declamation than narration, and those among the learned who\nvalue antiquity have found the art of realizing not the externals but\nthe spirit of the past. Thus when Ozanam, as the professor of foreign\nliterature at Paris, writes of the middle ages, the persons whom he\nnames are, for the moment, living, not petrified, as in the\nstereoscope, but thinking, speaking, and acting, as if the writer\ncould open a bright glimpse into the eternal world, where St. Denys,\nSt. Bernard, St. Bonaventure, and St. Thomas still contemplate the\nauthor and giver of all they knew. And when he speaks of the\nsuccession of events, it seems as if we passed from the midst of a\ncrowded procession, jostling along the dusty highway, to an eminence\nfrom which we see the points of its departure and arrival, the\ndistinguished persons, the great objects, and the direction of the\nmarch, and that we {778} not only see but understand and sympathize\nwith the spirit of the undertaking. The thought is from above, but it\nbecomes our own. For he not only classifies and generalizes, but he\nchristianizes his glimpses into history. His pictures are indeed only\nillustrative of his principles; but when he introduces a person or a\nfact, he speaks of them with such intimacy of knowledge that it\ncreates a keen curiosity as well as a consciousness of ignorance in\nthe reader. But the reader of Ozanam must be already a historian\nbefore he can appreciate the benefit of having his knowledge\nclassified and animated by a living principle, as well as vivified and\nrendered distinct, as the objects in a dull landscape by a beam of\nsunshine.\n\nThe mission of Ozanam seems to be the destruction of those errors as\nto the value of the knowledge possessed in the middle ages, which have\nexisted since the renaissance.\n\nIt was natural that when the calamities of Europe were so far past as\nto permit the development of the intellectual faculties, men should be\nelated by their new powers, and undervalue the painful labors of men\ninterrupted by violence and crime. Maitland, by the evidence of his\nown reading, saw the injustice of this, and said wittily, that \"by the\ndark ages were meant the ages about which we are in the dark.\" But he\ncould see only the outward face of mediaeval knowledge, and missed its\nvivifying spirit--the faith of the Church. Ozanam had the gift of\nfaith, and traces with a firm hand the progress of human intellect,\noften concealed and limited, but always advancing, and often breaking\nout in power and glory when some sainted pope or doctor of the Church\nexplained the principles of religion and philosophy.\n\nBut it would be presumptuous to anticipate Ozanam himself, whose own\nwords as well as his very life itself have given a _resume_ of his\ngreat object. It is at the conclusion of a lecture that he thus\naddresses the students:\n\n\"It is not my intention to follow out into its minor details the\nliterary history of the fifth century. I only seek in it that light\nwhich will clear up the obscurity of the following ages. Travellers\ntell us of rivers which flow underneath rocks, and which reappear at a\ndistance from the place where they were lost to the view. I trace up\nthe stream of these traditions above the point where it seems to be\nlost, and I shall endeavor to descend with the stream into the abyss,\nin order to assure myself that I really behold the same waters at\ntheir outlet. Historians have opened a chasm between antiquity and\nbarbarism. I have attempted to replace the connections which\nProvidence has never suffered to fail in time any more than in space,\netc. I should not brave the difficulties of such a study, gentlemen,\nif I were not supported, nay, urged onwards, by you. I call to witness\nthese walls, that if ever, at rare intervals, I have been visited by\ninspiration, it was within their circuit; whether they have given back\nsome of the glorious echoes with which they have formerly rung, or\nwhether I have felt myself carried away by your ardent sympathies.\nPerhaps my design is rash; but you must share the responsibility. You\nwill make up the deficiency of my strength. I shall grow old and\ngray-haired in the labor, if God permits; but the coldness of age\nshall not gain upon me so far as that I shall not be able to return,\nas this day, in order to renew the young vigor of my heart in the\nwarmth of your youthful days.\"\n\nIt is in his lecture on pagan empires that Ozanam lays down the\nprinciple on which his views of mediaeval history are based: \"Each\nepoch has a ruin and a conquest--a decadence and a renaissance.\" The\ngreatest epoch of the world's history is that when all that was given\nto man at his creation was exchanged for a better nature at his\nredemption. This truth of destruction and regeneration is repeated\nover and over again through all created things--the seed must die\nbefore the {779} new grain can live. As each individual must be\nchanged from the excellence of what he is still by nature to a\nheavenly model, so nations must be changed, and institutions perish\nand revive, and the great republic of letters, founded before the\nflood and perfected in Greece and Rome, must die and be regenerated in\nthe Christian Church. The first decadence is that of pagan Rome.\n\nIt is impossible to represent by quotations the grand but terrible\npicture which Ozanam draws of paganism, in its glory, its worldly\nsplendor, and its spiritual darkness. He does full justice to the\nexcellence of every art and science which the heathens attained; but\nhe shows that while the court of Augustus was the model of refinement\nand civilization, the altars were smoking with incense to devils, who\nwere the personifications of every vice, and the rites of the temples\nwere incantations and abominations. An audience of Christian students\ncould not bear the too revolting details.\n\nHis object was the same as that of the great author of\n\"_Callista_\"--to destroy the prestige which still invests all that is\nclassical. Rome was in truth a majestic empire, and even St. Jerome\ntrembled at its fall: _\"Elle est captive la cite qui mit en captivite\nle monde.\"_\n\nSt. Augustin was not a Roman, and was less overpowered by the terror\nof its fall. In the midst of the outcries which accused Christianity\nas the cause of the ruin which involved the world by the evident\nvengeance of heaven, the saint wrote his \"City of God,\" and developed\nfrom the creation of the world to the times in which he lived the\ngreat Christian law of _progress_. A new empire--that of\nconscience--was to rule all nations. In this new empire strength and\ncourage were of no avail, and women were as powerful as men in\nconverting the world. Clotilde converted the heathen Franks, and\nTheodolind the Arian Lombards. The holy bishop St. Patrick converted\nin his lifetime the whole Irish nation; and the holy monk St. Benedict\nfounded in the desert of Cassino the monastic armies of the Church;\nwhile St. Gregory, from his bed of sickness, headed the battle of\ncivilization against barbarism. The victory was complete, and every\nconverted country sent forth its missionaries to form Christian\ncolonies.\n\nThus fell the _power_ of Rome, but not her _influence_, for the great\ninfluence of paganism was the excellence of its literature. Though the\nAugustan writers were no more, yet Ammianus Marcellinus wrote history\nwith the spirit of a soldier, and Vegetius wrote the precepts of the\nart of conquering. Symmachus was thought to rival Pliny in his\nletters; and, at the same time, Claudian, the last and not the least\nof Latin poets, succeeded Lucan in those historical epics so popular\nat Rome. He celebrated the war of Gildo and the victories of Stilicho\nover the Goths in verses equal to the \"_Pharsalia;_\" and his\ninvectives against Eutropius and Rufinus, in defense of Stilicho his\npatron, are still considered masterpieces. He ignored not only\nChristianity but Christian writers, though St. Ambrose was at Milan\nand St. Augustin at Carthage, and wrote gravely of mythology in an age\nwhen few pagans believed its fables. He was an Egyptian by birth, and\ntrained in the schools of Alexandria, and was patronized by the\nChristian emperor Honorius, who erected to him--as to the best of poets--\na statue in Trajan's Forum. Yet Claudian had truly pagan morals; he\npraised the vices of his patron Stilicho, and when he was murdered he\nwrote a poem to his enemy; \"he misused both panegyric and satire, the\npowers of a good understanding and a rich fancy and flowing\nversification, which place him, after an interval of three hundred\nyears, among the poets of ancient Rome.\" But while Claudian celebrated\nthe conflict of Rome with the barbarians, he perceived not the mighty\nwar between Christianity and paganism; and while our Lord and his\nblessed Mother {780} triumphed over the idols and their temples, he\nwasted his poetry in their praise; and when he recited a poem in the\npresence of Honorius and the senate, he spoke to them as if they\nbelieved in mythology. Ozanam gives one remarkable proof of the hold\nover men's minds retained by paganism. When Honorius took possession\nof the palace of Augustus on Mount Palatine, he assembled the senate,\nand in the presence of all these great persons, many of whom were\nChristian, Claudian unrolled the parchment whereon his verses were\nwritten in letters of gold, and addressed Honorius as resembling\nJupiter conquering the giants. And again, when he had the office of\nshowing the splendors of Rome to Honorius, when he visited it for the\nfirst time (404), he spoke of the city as a pagan in the language of\nidolatry. And the poet Rutilius, though born in Gaul, idolized Rome.\n\"Rome was the last divinity of the ancients. Mother of men and gods\"\n(he calls her, as he wrote his \"Itinerary to Gaul\"), \"the sun rises\nand sets in thy dominions; thou hast made one country of many\nnations--one city of the world. Thy year is an eternal spring; the\nwinter dares not stay thy joy.\" So powerful was the influence of pagan\nRome over a foreigner; and that influence may be yet better perceived\nin the Christian poet Sidonius Apollinaris, who, though brought up,\nlike Ausonius, in the Gallic schools, and sound in faith, could not\nwrite hexameters without mythology. The only language of poetry was\npagan; and when he wrote to St. Patient, bishop of Lyons (who fed his\npeople in famine), he compared him to Triptolemus.\n\nThe first antagonist of the Church, in her task of regenerating\nsociety, was paganism; the second, barbarism. Charlemagne constructed,\non the ruins of the Roman empire, an empire of enlightened\nChristianity; but another decadence followed. The Normans sacked\nmonasteries, and burned the Holy Scriptures, together with Aristotle\nand Virgil. The Huns destroyed the very grass of the fields. The\nLombards seemed to be sent for the destruction of all that was left of\nhuman kind. Ozanam says, \"Providence loves to surprise.\" The monks who\nescaped the Norman pirates preached to them amidst the ashes of their\nmonasteries, and the Normans became Christians. Then arose the\nbasilicas of Palermo and Monreale in Sicily, and the churches of\nItaly, Normandy, and England. St. Adalbert converted the Huns, and\nthey defended Christendom against the vices of Byzantium and the\ninvasions of Mohammedans. On the ruins of the Roman empire arose the\nkingdoms of France, Germany, and Italy. Of this new empire, feudality\nand chivalry were the opposite elements. Feudality was the principle\nof division, chivalry that of fraternity; and these remodelled\nsociety.\n\nThe calamities attending this final disruption of the empire\ninterrupted study, and learning was confined to the islands of Great\nBritain and Ireland, from whence missionaries carried not only\nreligion but learning into the countries where they were almost\nextinguished by the Goths. Germany had three great\nmonasteries--Nouvelle Corbie, Fulda, and St. Gall. At this last\nmonastery was preserved the classic literature. Monks studied grammar\nand wrote AEneids. The royal Hedwige introduced the study of Greek at\nSt. Gull; and Ozanam relates it in one of those graphic incidents\nwhich are worth volumes. A new period began with Gregory VII. When he\nsaid, \"Lord, I have loved justice, and hated iniquity; wherefore I die\nin exile,\" a bishop replied, \"You cannot die in exile, because God has\ngiven you the earth for your jurisdiction, and the nations for your\ninheritance.\" Then followed the crusades, that wonderful and\nprovidential means by which the civilization of the East was brought\ninto the service of the Western Church. They destroyed feudalism; for\nall who fought gained glory, whether serf or noble. {781} Chivalric\npoetry arose. Germany had its Niebelungen, Spain its Cid. Then arose\nthe arts around Giotto and the tomb of St. Francis. Christian\narchitecture was not Roman. The small temples and large amphitheatres,\netc., were replaced by large churches, public halls, schools and\nhospitals, a small town round a large cathedral. There were three\ncapitals: Rome, the seat of the Papacy; Aix-la-Chapelle, the seat of\nempire; and Paris, of the schools.\n\nHow paganism perished is perhaps one of the most useful lectures in\nthe course, as it bears upon the doubts which are still felt by some\nas to the use of pagan books in Christian education. Ozanam shows that\nthe monks preserved by transcribing the works of Seneca and Cicero,\nand that St. Augustin brought Plato and Aristotle into Christian\nschools; that St. Augustin, St. Jerome, and St. Basil preserved the\nheathen poets till Christian poets had learnt their art; nay, how the\nChurch protected the Gallic bards and German scalds, and taught them\nto sing the praises of God. St. Gregory preserved the Saxon temples,\nand even adapted their rites and festivals to be used in Christian\nworship, that what had been perverted to the service of devils might\nbe restored to God.\n\nThe contrast--the abyss--between the middle ages and the renaissance\nhas been exaggerated. There was literary paganism in the ages of\nfaith. The troubadours sang of mythology, and the language of idolatry\nwas purified by its application to the praises of the martyrs, as is\nshown in the poems of St. Paulinus. When the Church emerged from\npersecution, the Roman schools became Christian; and when the Lombards\nthreatened to plunge Christendom in darkness, there were two lamps\nstill burning in the night--episcopal and monastic teaching; and in\nthese, by degrees, the pagan books and pagan literature were replaced\nby Christian works, in which, however, there were still abundant\ntraces of their pagan masters.\n\nIt is in a fragment that Ozanam speaks of the way in which the\nvaluable part of antiquity was preserved. \"When winter begins, it\nseems as if vegetation would perish. The wind sweeps away the flowers\nand leaves; but the seeds remain. The providence of God watches over\nthem. They are defended by a husk against the cold, and have wings\nwhich bear them to congenial places, where they spring again. So, when\nthe ages of barbarism came, the winter of human nature, it seems as if\npoetry and all the vegetation of thought would perish; but it was\npreserved in the dry questions of the schools through three or four\ncenturies; and when the time and place came, the man of genius was\nraised up, and in his hands they grew again. Such was St. Thomas of\nAquin, the champion of dogmatism; and St. Bonaventure, of mysticism;\nand Christendom had its own philosophy.\" Perhaps we do not realize\nsufficiently the despair which was the lot of reflecting heathens.\nThey sought the aid of philosophy to console them \"for hopeless\ndeterioration from a golden to an iron age; but philosophy could only\nteach that the world was perishing, and that the pride of man must\npreserve him from erring and perishing with its possessions. The\nheathens knew not the idea of progress; but the gospel teaches and\ncommands human perfectibility, and says to each, Be ye perfect; and to\nall, Let the Church grow into the fulness of Christ.\" It was faith,\nhope, and charity which produced progress.\n\nAnd, first, faith set free the human mind from the ignorance of God.\nIdolatry was not only that men gave to devils the worship which they\nowed to God; it was the love of what is mortal and perishable, instead\nof what is spiritual and eternal; it sunk mankind into materialism and\nsensuality. \"Painters and sculptors represented only corporeal beauty:\nthere was no expression in the figures of Phidias or Parrhasius.\"\nOzanam shows how Christian art used what is material {782} only as\nsymbolism, and expressed by form and color what is invisible and\ncelestial; while poetry was rescued from degradation, and became what\nit really is, the noblest aspiration after truth of which man in his\npresent state is capable. Philosophy was freed from the trammels of\nfalse systems, and speculated securely and deeply on the divine and\nhuman nature. \"Origen formed in the Catechetical schools of Alexandria\nthe science of theology,\" and in \"the golden age of this new science\nSt. Jerome taught exegesis, St. Augustin dogmatic, and St. Ambrose\nmoral theology. St. Anselm was tormented by the desire of finding a\nshort proof that God exists, and with him began metaphysics.\" These\nwere the rich treasures which lay concealed in the scholastic teaching\nof the middle ages.\n\nAs theology and Christian philosophy had sprung from faith, so hope\nextended knowledge, because men labored with fresh vigor in improving\nscience. \"The course of ages offers no grander spectacle than that of\nman taking possession of nature by knowledge.\" In the seventh century\nthe Byzantine monks pierced the steppes of Central Asia, and passed\nthe wall of China; monks took the message of the Pope to the Khan\nbefore Marco Polo visited the East; and monks, in the eighth century,\nvisited Iceland and even America. It was the calculations of the\nmiddle ages which emboldened Columbus to discover a new world and new\ncreation; and when Magellan sailed round the globe, \"man was master of\nhis abode.\" He goes on: \"When man had conquered the earth, he could\nnot rest; Copernicus burst through the false heavens of Ptolemy; the\ntelescope discovered the secrets of the stars, and calculation\nnumbered their laws and orbits in the abyss of heaven. Woe be to those\nwho are led away by such a sight from God! The stars told his glory to\nDavid, and so they did also to Kepler and to Newton.\"\n\nIt was by the third and greatest of the theological virtues, charity,\nthat the moral as well as the intellectual nature of man was\nregenerated, though the change was wrought, perhaps, by slower\ndegrees. Slavery of the most revolting kind--that slavery which\nignores the soul and the reason, as well as the social rights of the\nslave, was replaced by liberty, oppression and injustice by laws which\nare still based upon the letter of the Roman laws; but administered\nwith the equity of the Christian code. Cruelty and indifference to\nhuman life, as shown in the national passion for gladiatorial games,\nwas replaced by gentleness and all good works; and the luxury of\npalaces, baths, etc., was replaced by gorgeous churches and hospitals.\nEducation, which had been restricted to the few, was thrown open to\nall by free schools and by Christian preaching. Above all, the\ndaughters of Eve, who were degraded below the condition of the very\nslaves, were raised to be helps-meet for Christians, either by the\nsacrament of marriage or by the holiness of virginity.\n\nIn speaking of the reconstruction of intellectual action in the\ncivilization of Western Christendom, Ozanam has a grand and striking\nthought, that the first step to this was uniformity of language. The\nconfusion of tongues which began at Babel was silenced throughout the\nworld by the universal use of the Latin language, which was adopted by\nthe Church; and that language, which was formed to express all the\npassions and vices, as well as the strength and intelligence of man,\nconveyed, by the words of St. Gelasius and St. Gregory, the most\nsublime devotion; by those of St. Jerome, the deep senses of the Holy\nScriptures; and when the Christian intellect was free to develop\nitself, there arose that Christian eloquence in preaching the gospel\nwhich influenced, for the first time, all ranks and all dispositions\nof men.\n\nThe present edition of the author's works is conducted by friends who\nunderstood and valued his object, and {783} who were able to fill up,\nwithout blemishing, the unfinished parts of his lectures. Nothing can\nbe done more faithfully, or in better taste; but there are many blanks\ntoo wide to be filled even by such skilful hands. Ozanam says himself,\nthat the two poles of his work are the \"Essays on the Germans before\nChristianity,\" and that on Dante. These form the third and fourth\nvolumes. In the fifth volume is his \"Essay on the Franciscan Poets;\"\nand that on Dante closes the series. We have confined ourselves to the\nsubject-matter of the first and second volumes, which contain the\nlectures on the civilization of the fifth century, and which suffice\nto show the lofty Christian philosophy with which Ozanam beholds the\ncourse of modern history. More than this it would be difficult to\nshow. The lectures themselves are fragments; ideas snatched from the\nrapid flow of his eloquence, and that eloquence itself could feebly\nexpress the thoughts which visited his mind, and the impressions of\nglory which left no trace but sensation. There is no chronology, no\nsuccession. He fixes his eyes on the fifth century--he penetrates its\nmysteries, and the secret influences which it sends forth to after\ntimes. He speaks of what he sees; and we learn that the world of\nChristendom has had its decadence and renaissance, yet that progress\ncontinues. The crimes of the middle ages conceal that progress, and so\ndo the troubles of the present time. _O passi graviora, dabit Deus hic\nquoque finem_.\n\n------\n\nFrom Chambers's Journal.\n\nTHE BELLS OF AVIGNON.\n\n  Avignon was a joyous city,\n  A joyous town with many a steeple,\n  Towers and tourelles, roofs and turrets,\n  Sheltering a merry people.\n  In each tower, the bells of silver,\n  Bronze or iron, swayed so proudly,\n  Tolling deep and swinging cheerly,\n  Beating fast and beating loudly.\n\n  One! Two! Three! Four! ever sounding;\n  Two! Four! One! Three! still repeating;\n  Five! Seven! Six! Eight! hurrying, chasing;\n  Bim-bom-bing-bang merry beating.\n  All the day the dancing sextons\n  Dragged at bell-ropes, rising, falling;\n  Clanging bells, inquiring, answering,\n  From the towers were ever calling.\n\n  Cardinals, in crimson garments,\n  Stood and listened to the chiming;\n  And within his lofty chateau\n  Sate the pope, and beat the timing.\n  Minstrels, soldiers, monks, and jesters\n  Laughed to hear the merry clamor,\n  As above them in the turrets\n  Music clashed from many a hammer.\n\n{784}\n\n  Avignon was a joyous city:\n  Far away across the bridges,\n  'Mong the vine-slopes, upward lessening,\n  To the brown cliffs' highest ridges,\n  Clamored those sonorous bells;\n  In the summer's noontide wrangling,\n  In one silver knot of music\n  All their chimes together tangling.\n\n  Showering music on the people\n  Round the town-house in the mornings;\n  Scattering joy and jubilations,\n  Hope and welcome, wrath and scornings;\n  Ushering kings, or mourning pontiffs;\n  Clanging in the times of thunder,\n  And on nights when conflagrations\n  Clove the city half asunder.\n\n  Nights and nights across the river,\n  Through the darkness starry-dotted,\n  Far across the bridge so stately.\n  Now by lichens blurred and blotted,\n  Came that floating, mournful music,\n  As from bands of angels flying,\n  With the loud blasts of the tempest\n  Still victoriously vieing.\n\n  Who could tell why Avignon\n  All its bells was ever pealing?\n  Whether to scare evil spirits,\n  Still round holy cities stealing.\n  Yet, perhaps, that ceaseless chiming,\n  And that pleasant silver beating,\n  Was but as of children playing,\n  And their mother's name repeating.\n\n  One! Two! Three! the bells went prattling,\n  With a music so untiring;\n  One! Two! Three! in merry cadence,\n  Rolling, crashing, clanging, firing.\n  Hence it was that in past ages,\n  When 'mid war those sounds seemed sweeter,\n  _La Ville Sonnante_ people called it,\n  City sacred to Saint Peter.\n\n  Years ago! but now all silent,\n  Lone and sad, the grass-grown city,\n  Has its bell-towers all deserted\n  By those ringers--more's the pity.\n  Pope and cardinal are vanished,\n  And no music fills the night-air;\n  Gone the red robes and the sable;\n  Gone the crosier and the mitre.\n\n------\n\n{785}\n\nFrom The Lamp.\n\nALL-HALLOW EVE; OR, THE TEST OF FUTURITY.\n\nBY ROBERT CURTIS.\n\n\nCHAPTER X.\n\nIt is not to be wondered at that two persons, equally clever in all\nrespects, and having a similar though not identical object in view,\nshould have pretty much the same thoughts respecting the manner of\ncarrying it out, and finally pursue the same course to effect their\npurpose. But the matter involves some nicety, if not difficulty, when\nit so happens that those two persons have to work upon each other in a\ndouble case. It is then a matter of diamond cut diamond; and if, as I\nhave suggested, both are equally clever, the discussion of the subject\nbetween them would make no bad scene in a play. Winny wanted to find\nout something from Kate Mulvey, and at the same time to hide something\nfrom her. Kate Mulvey was on precisely the same intent with Winny\nCavana in both ways; so that some such tournament must come off\nbetween them the first time they met, with sufficient opportunity to\n\"have it out\" without interruption.\n\nYou have seen that Winny had determined to sound her friend Kate, as\nto how her land lay between these two young men. If Kate had not made\na like determination as to sounding Winny, she was, at all events,\nready for the encounter at any moment, and had discussed the matter\nover and over in her own mind. Their mutual object, then, was to find\nout which of the young men was the real object of the other's\naffections; and up to the present moment each believed the other to be\na formidable rival to her own hopes.\n\nWinny was not one who hesitated about any matter which she felt to\nrequire immediate performance; and as she knew that some indefinite\ntime might elapse before an opportunity could occur to have her chat\nout with Kate Mulvey, she was resolved to make one.\n\nHer father's house, as the reader has seen in the commencement, was\nnot on the roadside. There was no general pass that way; and except\npersons had business to old Cavana's or Mick Murdock's, they never\nwent up the lane, which was common to both the houses of these rich\nfarmers. It was not so with the house where Kate Mulvey resided. Its\nfull front was to the high-road, with a space not more than three\nperches between. This space had been originally what is termed in that\nrank of life \"a bawn,\" but was now wisely converted into a\ncabbage-garden, with a broad clean gravel-walk running through the\ncentre of the plot, from the road to the door. It was about half a\nmile from Cavana's, and there was a full view of the road, for a long\nstretch, from the door or window of the house--that is, of Mulvey's.\n\nIt was now a fine mild day toward the end of November. Old Mick\nMurdock's party had ceased to be spoken of, and perhaps forgotten,\nexcept by the few with whom we have to do. Winny Cavana put on her\neveryday bonnet and her everyday cloak, and started for a walk.\nBully-dhu capered round her in an awkward playful manner, with a\ndeep-toned howl of joy when he saw these preparations, and trotted\ndown the lane before her. As may be anticipated, she bent her steps\ndown the road toward Mulvey's house. She knew she could be seen coming\nfor some distance, and hoped that Kate might greet her from the door\nas she passed. She {786} was not mistaken; Kate had seen her from the\nfirst turn in the road toward the house, and was all alive on her own\naccount. She had tact and vanity enough, however,--for she had plenty\nof time before Winny came alongside of the house,--to slip in and put\non a decent gown, and brush her beautiful and abundant hair; and she\ncame to the door, as if by mere accident, but looking her very best,\nas Winny approached. Kate knew that she was looking very handsome, and\nWinny Cavana, at the very first glance, felt the same fact.\n\n\"Good morrow, Kate,\" said Winny; \"that's a fine day.\"\n\n\"Good morrow kindly, Winny; won't you come in and sit down awhile?\"\n\n\"No, thank you; the day is so fine, I'm out for a walk. You may as\nwell put on your bonnet, and come along with me; it will do you good,\nKitty.\"\n\n\"With all my heart; step up to the house, and I'll be ready in two\ntwos.\" But she was not so sure that it would do her good.\n\nThe girls then turned up to the house, for Kate had run down in her\nhair to shake hands with her friend. Winny would not go in, but stood\nat the door, ordering Bully-dhu not to growl at Captain, and begging\nof Captain not to growl at Bully-dhu. Kate was scarcely the \"two twos\"\nshe gave herself until she came out ready for the road; and the two\nfriends, and the two dogs, having at once entered into most amicable\nrelations with each other, went off together.\n\nWinny was resolved that no \"awkward pause\" on her part should give\nKate reason to suppose there was anything unusual upon her mind, and\nwent on at once, as if from where she had left off.\n\n\"The day was so fine, Kate,\" she continued, \"that I was anxious to get\nsome fresh air. I have been churning, and packing butter, every day\nsince Monday, and could not get out. Biddy Murtagh is very clean and\nhonest, but she is very slow, and I could not leave her.\"\n\n\"It is well for you, Winny, that has the butter to pack.\"\n\n\"Yes, Kate, I suppose it will be well for me some day or other; but as\nlong as my poor father lives--God between him and harm!--I don't feel\nthe want of anything.\"\n\n\"God spare him to you, Winny _mavourneen!_ He's a fine hale old man,\nand I hope he'll live to be at the christening of many a grandchild.\nIf report speaks thrue, Winny dear, that same is not unlikely to come\nround.\"\n\n\"Report does not always speak the truth, Kate; don't you know that?\"\n\n\"I do; but I also know that there's seldom smoke without fire, and\nthat it sometimes makes a good hit. And sure, nothin's more reasonable\nthan that it's right this time. Tom's a fine young fellow; an' like\nyourself, sure, he's an only child. There wasn't such a weddin' this\nhundred years--no, nor never--in the parish of Rathcash, as it will\nbe--come now!\"\n\n\"Tom is a fine young man, Kate; I don't deny it--\"\n\n\"You couldn't--you couldn't, Winny Cavana! you'd belie yoursel' if you\ndid,\" said Kate, with a little more warmth of manner than was quite\npolitic under the circumstances.\n\n\"But I don't, Kate; and I can't see why _you_ need fly at me in that\nway.\"\n\n\"I beg your pardon, Winny dear; but sure everybody sees an' knows that\nyou're on for one another; an' why not?--wasn't he as cross as a bag of\ncats at his father's party because he let 'that whelp' (as he called\nhim) Edward Lennon take you out for the first dance?\"\n\n\"Emon-a-knock is no whelp; he couldn't call him a whelp. Did he call\nhim one?\"\n\n\"Didn't you hear him? for if you didn't you might; it wasn't but he\nspoke loud enough.\"\n\n\"It is well for him, Kate, that Emon did not hear him. He's as good a\nman as Tom Murdock at any rate. {787} He didn't fall over the poker\nand tongs as Tom did.\"\n\n\"That was a mere accident, Winny. I seen the fung of his pump loose\nmyself; didn't I help to shut it for him, afther he fell?\"\n\n\"You were well employed indeed, Kate,\" said Winny sneeringly.\n\n\"You would have done it yourself if he axed you as he did me,\" replied\nKate.\n\n\"Certainly not,\" said Winny.\n\nSo far they seemed both to have the worst of it, in spite of all their\ncaution. What they wanted was to find out how the other's heart stood\nbetween these two young men, without betraying their own--which latter\nthey had both nearly done.\n\nThere was a pause, and Kate was the next to speak.\n\n\"Not but I must admit that Emon-a-knock is a milder, better boy in\nsome respects than Tom. He has a nicer way with him, Winny, and I\nthink it is easier somehow to like him than to like Tom.\"\n\n\"Report says you do, Kate dear.\"\n\n\"But you know, Winny, report does not always spake thrue, as you say\nyourself.\"\n\n\"Ay, but as you said just now, Kate, it sometimes makes a good hit.\"\n\n\"Well, Winny, I wish you joy at all events, with all my heart. Both\nyour fathers is anxious for your match; an' sure, when the two farms\nis joined in one, with you an' Tom, you can live like a lady. I\nsuppose you'll hould your head too high for poor Kate an' Emon-a-knock\nthen.\"\n\nThere was a sadness in Kate's tone as she said this, which, from\nignorance of how matters really stood, was partly genuine, and, from\nanxiety to find it out, was partly assumed.\n\nBut she had turned the key and the door flew open. Winny could fence\nwith her feelings no longer.\n\n\"Kate Mulvey,\" she exclaimed, \"do not believe the reports you hear\nabout me and Tom Murdock. I'm aware of what you say about his father\nand mine being anxious to unite the farms by our marriage. I don't\nwant to say anything against Tom Murdock; but he'll never call me\nwife. There now, Kate jewel, you have the truth. I'll be well enough\noff, Kitty, without Tom Murdock's money or land; and when I really\ndon't care for him, don't you think it would be much better and\nhandsomer of him to bestow himself and it upon some nice girl without\na penny\" (and she glanced slyly at Kate, whose cheeks got rosy red),\n\"than to be striving to force it upon one that doesn't want it--nor\nwish for it? And don't you think it would be much better and handsomer\nfor me, who has a nice little fodeen, and must come in for my father's\nland,--God between him and harm!--to do the same, if I could meet with\na nice boy that really cared for myself, and not for my money? Answer\nme them questions, Kate.\"\n\nKate was silent; but her eyes had assumed quite a different\nexpression, if they had not altogether turned almost a different\ncolor. The weight of Winny's rich rivalry had been lifted from her\nheart, and so far as that obstacle had been dreaded, the coast was now\nclear. Of course she secretly agreed in the propriety of Winny's\nviews, and it was only necessary that she should now do so openly.\n\n\"You didn't answer me them questions yet, Kate.\"\n\n\"Well I could, Winny, if I liked it; but I don't wish to have act,\nhand, or part in setting you against your father's wishes.\"\n\n\"You need not fear that, Kitty; my father won't force me to do what I\nreally do not wish to do. He never put the matter to me plainly yet,\nbut I expect it every day. He's always praising Tom Murdock, and\nhinting at the business, by saying he wishes he could see me\ncomfortably settled; that he is growing old and is not the man he used\nto be; and all that. I know very well, Kate, what he means, both ways;\nand, God between him and harm! I say again; but he'll never see me Tom\nMurdock's wife. {788} I have my answer ready for them both.\"\n\n\"Well, Winny, as you seem determined, I suppose I may spake; and, to\ntell you the truth, I always thought it would be a pity to put them\ntwo farms into one, and so spoil two good establishments; for sure any\none of them is lashings, Winny, for any decent boy and girl in the\nparish; an' what's more, if they were joined together tomorrow, there\nis not a gentleman in the county would think a bit the better of them\nthat had them.\"\n\n\"Never, Kitty, except it was some poor broken-down fellow that wanted\nto borrow a couple of hundred pounds, and rob them in the end. And\nnow, Kitty, let us be plain and free with one another. My opinion is\nthat Tom could raise you--I won't say out of poverty, Kate; for,\nthanks be to God, it is not come to that with you, and that it never\nmay--but into comfort and plenty; and that I could, some day, do the\nsame, if I could meet with a nice boy that, as I said, would care for\nmyself and not for my money. If Tom took a liking to you, Kitty, you\nmight know he was in earnest for yourself; I _know_ he's only put up\nto his make-belief liking for me by his own father and mine. But,\nKitty dear, I'm afraid, like myself, you have no fancy for him.\"\n\n\"Well, Winny, to tell you the truth, I always believed what the\nneighbors said about you an' him; an' I tried not to think of him for\nthat same reason. There's no doubt, Winny dear, but it would be a fine\nmatch for me; but I know he's out an' out for you: only for that,\nWinny, I could love every bone in his body--there now! you have it\nout.\"\n\n\"He'll soon find his mistake, Kate dear, about me. I'm sure the thing\nwill be brought to a point before long between us, and between my\nfather and me too. When Tom finds I'm positive, he can't be blind to\nyour merits and beauty, Kitty--yes, I will say it out, your\nbeauty!--you needn't be putting your hand to my mouth that way;\nthere's no mistake about it.\"\n\n\"Ah, Winny, Winny dear, you're too lenient to me entirely; sure I\ncouldn't sit or stand beside you in that respect at all, an' with your\nmoney; sure they'll settle it all between themselves.\"\n\n\"They may settle what they like, Kitty; but they can't make me do what\nI am determined not to do; so as far as that goes, you have nothing to\nfear.\"\n\n\"Well, Winny dear, I'm glad I know the truth; for now I won't be\nafeard of crossing you, at any rate; and I know another that wouldn't\nbe sorry to know as much as I do.\"\n\n\"Who, Kitty? tell us.\"\n\n\"Ah, then now, Winny, can't you guess? or maybe it's what you know\nbetter than I do myself.\"\n\n\"Well, I suppose you mean Emon-a-knock; for indeed, Kitty, he's always\non the top of your tongue, and the parish has it that you and he are\npromised. Come now, Kitty, tell us the truth. I told you how there was\nno truth in the report about me and Tom Murdock, and how there never\ncould be.\"\n\nIf this was not leading Kate Mulvey to the answer most devoutly wished\nfor, I do not know what the meaning of the latter part of the sentence\ncould be. It was what the lawyers would call a \"leading question.\" The\nexcitement too of Winny, during the pause which ensued, showed very\nplainly the object with which she spoke, and the anxiety she felt for\nthe result.\n\nKate did not in the least misunderstand her. Perhaps she knew more of\nher thoughts than Winny was aware of, and that it was not then she\nfound them out for the first time; for Kate was a shrewd observer. She\nhad gained her own object, and it was only fair she should now permit\nWinny to gain hers.\n\n\"Ah, Winny dear,\" she said, after a contemplative pause, \"there never\nwas a word of the kind between us. {789} You know, Winny, in the first\nplace, it wouldn't do at all--two empty sacks could never stand; and\nin the next place, neither his heart was on me, nor mine on him. It\nwas all idle talk of the neighbors. Not but Emon is a nice boy as\nthere is to be found in this or any other parish, and you know that,\nWinny; don't you, now?\"\n\n\"Kitty dear, there's nobody can deny what you say, and for that\nself-same reason I believed what the neighbors said regarding you and\nhim.\"\n\n\"Tell me this now, Winny,--you know we were reared, I may say, at the\ndoor with one another, and have been fast friends since we were that\nheight\" (and she held her hand within about two feet of the ground, at\nthe same time looking fully and very kindly into her friend's face),--\n\"tell me now, Winny dear, did it fret you to believe what you heard?\nCome now.\"\n\n\"For your sake, and for his, Kitty, it could not fret me; but for my\nown sake--there now, don't ask me.\"\n\n\"No, _avourneen_, I won't; what need have I, Winny, when I see them\ncheeks of yours,--or is it the sun that cum suddenly out upon you,\nWinny _asthore?_\"\n\n\"Kate Mulvey, I'll tell you the truth, as I believe you have told it\nto me. For many a long day I'm striving to keep myself from liking\nthat boy on your account. I think, Kate, if I hadn't a penny-piece in\nthe world no more than yourself, I would have done my very best to\ntake him from you; it would have been a fair fight then, Kitty; but I\ndidn't like to use any odds against you, Kitty dear; and I never gave\nhim so much as one word to go upon.\"\n\n\"I'm very thankful to you, Winny dear; an' signs on the boy, he\nthought you were for a high match with rich Tom Murdock; an' any\nprivate chat Emon an' I ever had was about that same thing.\"\n\n\"Then he has spoken to you about me! O Kitty, dear Kitty, what used he\nto be saying of me? do tell me.\"\n\n\"The never a word I'll tell you, Winny dear. Let him spake to\nyourself; which maybe he'll do when he finds you give Tom the go-by;\nbut I'm book-sworn; so don't ask me.\"\n\n\"Well, Kitty, I'm glad I happened to come across you this morning; for\nnow we understand each other, and there's no fear of our interrupting\none another in our thoughts any more.\"\n\n\"None, thank God,\" said Kitty.\n\nBy this time the girls had wandered along the road to nearly a mile\nfrom home. They had both gained their object, though not in the\nroundabout _sounding_ manner which we had anticipated, and they were\nnow both happy. They were no longer even the imaginary rivals which it\nappears was all they had ever been; and as this light broke upon them\nthe endearing epithets of \"dear\" and \"jewel\" became more frequent and\nemphatic than was usual in a conversation of the same length.\n\nTheir mutual confidences, as they retraced their steps, were imparted\nto the fullest extent. They now perfectly \"understood each other,\" as\nWinny had said; and to their cordial shake-hands at the turn up to\nKate Mulvey's house was added an affectionate kiss, as good as if they\nswore never to interfere with each other in love-affairs.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XI.\n\nWinny Cavana, as far as her own feelings and belief were concerned,\nhad not made a bad morning's work of it. Hitherto she had supposed\nthat Kate Mulvey had forestalled her in the affections of\nEmon-a-knock. The neighbors had given them to each other, and she\nfeared that Emon was not free from the power of her charms. With these\ndoubts, or almost with this belief, upon her mind, she could not have\nmet her father's {790} importunities about Tom Murdock with the same\ncareless and happy determination which matters, as they now stood,\nwould enable her to do. Being assured, from her conversation with\nKate, that there was nothing between her and Emon, she could \"riddle\"\nmore easily some circumstances and expressions which, to say the least\nof it, were puzzling, with a belief that these two persons were\nmutually attached. Winny knew now how to reconcile them; and the view\nshe took of them was anything but favorable to her father's wishes or\nTom Murdock's hopes.\n\nShe could not hope, however,--perhaps she did not wish,--for any\ninterview with Emon just then, when her change of manner, emanating\nfrom her knowledge of facts, might draw him out, for her heart now\ntold her that this would surely come. She had some fears that her\nfather might sound her about Emon, and she wished to be able to say\nwith a clear conscience that he had never spoken, or even hinted at\nthe subject, to her; but she was determined, nevertheless, to act\ntoward her father, and subsequently toward Tom Murdock, as if her\ntroth and Emon's had been already irrevocably plighted. She was in\nhopes that if she had an interview with her father upon the subject of\nTom Murdock in the first instance, the unalterable dislike which she\nwould exhibit to the match might save her the horrible necessity of\ngoing through the business with the man himself. But poor Winny had\nsettled matters in her own mind in an order in which they did not\noccur; and it so happened that, although she thought her heart had\ngone through enough excitement for one day, and that she would, for\nthe rest of that evening, hide beneath the happiness which was\ncreeping over her, yet she was mistaken.\n\nTom Murdock had seen her pass down the road; and hastily putting on\none of his best coats and his very best hat, he followed her,\ndetermined to have good news in return for his father's advice; but he\nwas disappointed. Before he could overtake her, he perceived that she\nhad been joined by Kate Mulvey, and that they went coshering away\ntogether. Of course he saw that it was \"no go,\" as he said, for that\ntime; but he would watch her returning, when he could not fail to meet\nher alone.\n\n\"Hang me,\" said he, as he saw them walking away, \"if I don't think\nKate Mulvey is the finest girl of the two, and very nearly as handsome\nas ever she was--some people say handsomer. If it was not for her\nmoney, and that grand farm she'll have, I'd let her see how soon I\ncould get a girl in every other respect as good, if not better, than\nshe is. Look at the two of them: upon my faith, I think Kate is the\nlightest stepper of the two.\"\n\nTom paused for a few moments, if not in his thoughts, at least in the\nexpression of them; for all the above had been uttered aloud. Then, as\nif they had received a sudden spur which made him start, he muttered\nwith his usual scowl, \"No, no; I'll follow it up to the death if\nnecessary. That whelp shall never have it to say that Tom Murdock\nfailed, and perhaps add, where he did not. I'll have her, by fair\nmeans if I can; but if not, by them five crosses,\" and he clasped his\nhands together, \"she shall be mine by foul. Sure it is not possible\nthey are going to meet that whelp this blessed moment!\" And he dogged\nthem at so long a distance behind that, even if their conversation had\nbeen less interesting, they would not have been aware of his stealthy\nespionage.\n\nWhen they turned to return, he turned also, and was then so far before\nthem that, with the bushes and the bends in the road, he could not be\nperceived. Thus he watched and watched, until, to his great\nsatisfaction, he saw them part company at Kate's house. Winny Cavana,\nas we have seen, had still some distance to walk ere she reached the\nlane turning up to her father's; and Kate having gone in and shut the\n{791} door, Tom strolled on, as if by mere accident, until he met\nWinny on the road.\n\nTom was determined to be as mild and as bland, as cordial and\ngood-natured, as possible. He felt there had always been a sort of\nundefined snappish battle between him and Winny; and he had the\nhonesty of mind, as well as the vanity, to blame his own harsh and\nabrupt manner for this. Perhaps it arose no less from a consciousness\nof his personal advantages than from a belief that in his position as\nan only son, and heir to his father's interest in a rich and\nprofitable farm, he had no great need of those blandishments of\nexpression so generally requisite in making way to a young and\nunhackneyed heart. He resolved, therefore, upon this occasion to give\nWinny no cause to accuse him of uncouthness of manner; neither was he\ninclined to be uncouth when he beheld the glowing beauty of her face,\nheightened, as he thought, solely by the exercise of her walk; but not\na little increased, without his knowledge of the fact, by the new\nlight which had just dawned upon the horizon of her hopes.\n\nHer heart bounced in her bosom as she saw him approach.\n\n\"Good morning, Winny,\" he said, holding out his hand.\n\n\"Good morrow kindly, Tom,\" she replied, wishing to be civil, and\ntaking it. She knew she was \"in for it,\" as she expressed it to\nherself; but encouraged \"by the hope within her springing,\" and\nsoftened by the anticipation of its fulfilment, she was determined to\nbe kind but firm.\n\n\"Have you been walking far, Winny? Upon my life, it seems to agree\nwith you. It has improved your beauty, Winny, if that was possible.\"\n\n\"Tom, don't flatter me; you're always paying me compliments, and I\noften told you that I did not like it. Beside, you did not let me\nanswer your question until you begin at your old work. I walked about\na mile of the road with Kate Mulvey.\"\n\n\"Kate Mulvey is a complete nice girl. You are not tired, Winny, are\nyou?\"\n\n\"Ah, then, what would tire me? is it a mile of a walk, and the road\nunder my feet? I could walk to _Boher-na-Milthiogue_ and back this\nminute.\"\n\nBy this time they had come to the end of the lane turning up to\nRathcash House.\n\n\"I'm glad to find you are not tired, Winny. You may as well come on\ntoward the cross; I have something to say to you.\"\n\n\"And welcome, Tom; what is it?\"\n\nWinny felt that the thing was coming, and she wished to appear as\ncareless and unconscious as possible. When she recollected all Kate\nMulvey had said to her, she was just in the humor to have it over.\nUpon reflection, too, she was not sorry that it should so happen\nbefore the grand passage between her and her father upon the same\nsubject. She could the more easily dispose of the case with him,\nhaving already disposed of it with Tom himself. She therefore went on,\npast the end of her own lane; and Tom, taking this for an unequivocal\ntoken in his favor, was beginning to get really fond of her--at least\nhe thought so.\n\n\"Well, Winny, I'm very glad I happened to meet you, and that you seem\ninclined to take a walk with me; for to tell you the truth, Winny, I\ncan't help thinking of you.\"\n\n\"Perhaps you don't try, Tom.\"\n\n\"True for you, Winny dear; I wouldn't help thinking of you if I could,\nand I couldn't if I would.\"\n\n\"Is that the way with you, Tom?\"\n\nBut Winny did not smile or look at him, as he had hoped she would have\ndone.\n\n\"You know it is, Winny dear; but I can keep the truth, in plain\nEnglish, from you no longer.\"\n\n\"See that now! Ah, then, Tom, I pity you.\"\n\nAnd Tom could not tell from her manner, or from the tone of her voice,\nwhether she was in earnest or {792} only joking. He preferred the\nformer.\n\n\"Well, Winny Cavana, if you knew how much I love you, you would surely\ntake pity on me, my own _colleen dhass_.\"\n\n\"Faith, Tom, I believe it's in earnest you are, sure enough.\"\n\n\"In earnest! Yes, Winny, by the bright sky over me--and it is not\nbrighter than your own eyes--I am in earnest! It is a long day now\nsince I first took to loving you, though it was only of late you might\nhave picked it out of my looks. Ah, Winny dear, if you hadn't a\npenny-piece but yourself, I would have spoken to you long ago. But\nthere was a great deal of talk among the neighbors about the joining\nof them two farms together, and I was afraid you might think--\"\n\n\"I understand. You were afraid I might think it was my money and the\nfarm you were after, and not myself. Was not that it, Tom?\"\n\n\"Just so, Winny. But I am indeed in earnest, and for yourself alone,\nWinny dear; and I'm willing to prove my words by making you my wife,\nand mistress of all I have coming Shraftide, God willing.\" And he took\nher by the hand.\n\nShe withdrew it at once, after a slight struggle, and replied, \"Tom\nMurdock, put such a thing totally out of your head, for it can never\nbe--never, by the same oath you swore just now, and that is the blue\nheaven above me!\" And she turned back toward the lane.\n\n\"I cross, Winny. Don't say that. I know that your father and mine\nwould both be willing for the match. As to what your father would do\nfor you, Winny _mavourneen_, I don't care a _boughalawn lui_; for I'm\nrich enough without a cross of his money or his land. My own father\nwill make over to me by lawful deed, the day you become my wife, his\nhouse and furniture, together with the whole of his land and cattle.\nYour father, I know, Winny, would do the same for you, for he has but\nyourself belonging to him; and although your fortune or your land has\nnothing to say to my love, yet, Winny, dear, between us, if you will\nconsent to my prayer, for it is nothing less, there's few grandees in\nthe country could compare to you,--I'll say nothing for myself, Winny\ndear, only say the word.\"\n\n\"No, Tom, I'll say no word but what I'm after saying; and you are only\nmaking matters worse, talking of grandeur and riches that way. You\nwould only be striving at what you would not be able for, nor allowed\nto keep up, Tom, and as for myself, I'd look well, wouldn't I? stuck\nup on a new sidecar, and a drawn bonnet and feathers, coming down the\nlane of a Sunday, and the neighbors thronging to mass,--aping my\nbetters, and getting myself and yourself laughed at. Devil a one, Tom,\nbut they'd call you Lord _Boher-na-Milthiogue_. No, Tom; put it out of\nyour head; that is my first and last word to you.\" And she hastened\nher step.\n\n\"No, Winny, you won't leave me that way, will you? By all the books\nthat were ever shut and opened, you may make what you please of me.\nI'll never ask to put yourself or myself a pin's-point beyond what we\nalways were, either in grandeur or anything else. But wouldn't it be a\nfine thing, Winny dear, to have our children able to hold up their\nheads with the best in the county, in a manner?\"\n\n\"Ay, in a manner, indeed. No, Tom; they would never be anything but\nthe Murdocks of Rathcashmore--grandchildren of ould Mick Murdock and\nould Ned Cavana, the common farmers.\"\n\n\"And what have you to say against old Mick Murdock?\" exclaimed Tom,\nbeginning to feel that his suit was hopeless, and flaming up inwardly\nin the spirit which was most natural to him.\n\n\"Nothing indeed, Tom; you need not be so angry, I meant no offence; I\nsaid as much against my own father as against yours, if there was\nanything against either. But we must soon {793} part now, Tom, and let\nus part friends at all events, living as we do within a stone's-throw\nof each other.\" She held out her hand, but he took it coldly and\nloosely. He felt that his game was up.\n\n\"Take my advice, Tom Murdock\"--this was the second time she had found\nit necessary to overcome her antipathy to pronounce the name--\"take\nmy advice, and never speak to me again upon the subject. Sure, there's\nmany a fine handsome girl would be glad to listen to you; and I'll now\nask you one question before we part. Wouldn't it be better and fitter\nfor you to bestow yourself and your land upon some handsome young girl\nwho has nothing of her own, and was, maybe, well inclined for you, and\nto rise her up to be independent, than to be striving to force\nyourself and it upon them that doesn't want your land, and cannot care\nfor yourself? Why don't you look about you? There's many a girl in the\nparish as handsome, and handsomer, than I am, that would just jump at\nyou.\"\n\nWinny had no sooner uttered these latter words than she regretted\nthem. She did not wish Tom Murdock to know that she had overheard him.\nShe was glad however to perceive that, in his anger, he had not\nrecognized them as a quotation from his conversation with his father\nat the gate.\n\nThere was a silence now for a minute or two. Tom's blood was 'up; his\nhopes of success were over, and he was determined to speak his mind in\nan opposite direction.\n\n\"Have I set you thinking, Tom?\" said Winny, half timidly.\n\n\"I'm d--d but you have, Winny Cavana; and I'll answer your question\nwith one much like it. And would not it be better and fitter for\n_you_--of course it would--to bestow yourself and your fortune and your\nland upon some handsome young fellow that has nothing but his day's\nwages, and was well inclined for you, and to rise him up out of\npoverty, than to spoil a good chance for a friend by joining yours to\nthem that has enough without it? Why didn't you follow up your first\nquestion with that, Winny Cavana?\" And he stopped short, enjoying the\nevident confusion he had caused.\n\nWinny thought, too, for a few moments in silence. She was considering\nthe probability of Tom Murdock's having overheard her conversation\nwith Kate Mulvey from behind some hedge. But the result of her\ncalculations was that it was impossible.\n\nShe was right. It was a mere paraphrase of her own question to him,\nand only shows how two clever people may hit upon the same idea, and\nexpress it in nearly the same language. And the question was prompted\nby his suspicions in the quarter already intimated.\n\n\"Yes, I see how it is,\" he exclaimed, breaking the silence, and giving\nway to his ungovernable temper. \"But, by the hatred I bear to that\nwhelp, that shall never be, at all events. I'll go to your father this\nmoment, and let him know what's going on--\"\n\n\"And who do you dare to call 'a whelp,' Tom Murdock? If it be Edward\nLennon, let me tell you that his little finger is worth your whole\nhead and heart--body and bones together.\"\n\n\"There, there--she acknowledges it. But I'll put a spoke in that\nwhelp's wheel,--for it was him I called a whelp, since you must\nknow,--see if I don't; so let him look out, that's all.\"\n\n\"I have acknowledged nothing, Tom Murdock. A word beyond common\ncivility never passed between Edward Lennon and myself; and take care\nhow you venture to interfere between my father and me. You have got\nyour answer, and I have sworn to it. You have no right to interfere\nfurther.\"\n\nBy this time they had reached the end of the lane again; and Winny,\nwith her heart on fire, and her face in a flame, hurried to the house.\nFortunately, her father had not returned {794} from the fields, and\nrushing to her own room, she locked the door, took off her bonnet and\ncloak, and \"threw herself\" (I believe that is the proper expression)\nupon the bed. Perhaps a sensation novelist would add that she \"burst\ninto an agony of tears.\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XII.\n\nWinny lay for nearly an hour meditating upon the past, the present,\nand the future. Upon the whole she did not regret what had occurred,\neither before or after she had met Tom Murdock, and she cooled down\ninto her accustomed self-possession sooner than she had supposed\npossible.\n\nOne grand object had been attained. Tom Murdock had come to the point,\nand she had given him his final and irrevocable answer, if she had\ntwenty fathers thundering parental authority in her ears. A spot of\nblue sky had appeared too in the east, above the outline of Shanvilla\nmountain, in which the morning-star of her young life might soon\narise, and shine brightly through the flimsy clouds--or she could call\nthem nothing but flimsy--now which had hitherto darkened her hopes.\nWhat if Tom Murdock was a villain?--and she believed he was: what\ndared he--what could he do? Pshaw, nothing! But, oh that the\npassage-of-arms between herself and her father was over! \"Then,\"\nthought she, \"all might be plain sailing before me.\"\n\nBut, Winny, supposing all these matters fairly over,--and the battle\nwith your father is likely to be as cranky and tough upon his part as\nit is certain to be straightforward and determined upon yours,--there\nwill still be a doubtful blank upon your mind and in your heart, and\none the solution of which you cannot, even with Kate Mulvey's\nassistance, seek an occasion to fill up. Ah, no, you must trust to\nchance for time and opportunity for that most important of all your\ninterviews. And what if you be mistaken after all, and, if mistaken,\ncrushed for ever by the result?\n\nLet Winny alone for that. Women seldom make a bad guess in such a\ncase.\n\nWinny's mental and nervous system having both regained their ordinary\ndegree of composure, she left her room, and proceeded through the\nhouse upon her usual occupations. She was not, however, quite free\nfrom a certain degree of anxiety at the anticipated interview with her\nfather. He had not in any way intimated his intention to ask certain\nquestions touching any communication she might have received from Tom\nMurdock, together with her answers thereto; and yet she felt certain\nthat on the first favorable occasion he would ask the questions,\nwithout any notice whatever. She had subsided for the day, after a\nvery exciting morning upon two very different subjects. Yes; she\ncalled them different, though they were pretty much akin; and she\nwould now prefer a cessation of her anxiety for the remainder of that\nafternoon at least.\n\nSo far she was fortunate. Her father did not come in until it was very\nlate; and being much fatigued by his stewardship of the day, he did\nnot appear inclined to enter upon any important subject, but fell\nasleep in his arm-chair after a hasty and (Winny observed)\nscarcely-touched dinner.\n\nWinny was an affectionate good child. She was devotedly fond of her\nfather, with whose image were associated all her thoughts of happiness\nand love since she was able to clasp his knees and clamber to his lap.\nEven yet no absolute allegiance of a decided nature claimed the\ndisloyalty of her heart; but she felt that the time was not far\ndistant when either he must abdicate his royalty, or she must rebel.\n\n{795}\n\n\"It is clearly my duty now,\" she said to herself, \"not to delay this\nbusiness about Tom, upon the chance of his being the first to speak of\nit: to-morrow, before the cares and labors of the day occupy his mind,\nand perhaps make him ever so little a bit cross, I will tell him what\nhas happened. I am afraid he will be very angry with me for refusing\nthat man; but it cannot be helped: not for all the gold they both\npossess would I marry Tom Murdock. I shall not betray his sordid\nvillany, however, until all other resources fail; but I know my father\nwill scorn the fellow as I do when he knows the whole truth--but ah, I\nhave no witness,\" thought she, \"and they will make a liar of me.\"\n\nIf the old man could have ever perceived any difference in the kind\nand affectionate attention so uniformly bestowed upon him by his fond\ndaughter, perhaps it might have been upon that night after he awoke\nfrom a rather lengthened nap in his easy chair.\n\nWinny had sat during the whole time gazing upon the loved features of\nthe sleeping old man. She could not call to mind, from the day upon\nwhich her memory first became conscious, a single unkind or even a\nharsh word which he had uttered to her. That he could be more than\nharsh to others she knew, and she was now in her nineteenth year;\nfifteen clear years, she might say, of unbroken memory. She could\nremember her fifth birthday quite well, and so much as a snappish word\nor a commanding look she had never received from him; not, God knows,\nbut he had good reason, many's the time, for more than either. And\nthere he lay now, calm, and fast asleep, the only one belonging to her\non the wide earth, and she meditating an opposition in her heart to\nhis plans respecting her--all, she knew, arising from the great love\nhe had for her, and the frustration of which, she was aware, would vex\nhim sore. \"Oh, Tom Murdock, Tom Murdock, why are you Tom Murdock? or\nEmon-a-knock, why did I ever see you?\" was the conclusion to this\ntrain of thought, as she sat still, gazing on her sleeping father.\n\nThen a happier train succeeded, and a fond smile lit up her handsome\nface. \"Ah no, no! I am the only being belonging to him, the only one\nhe loves. The father who for nearly twenty years never spoke an unkind\nword--and if he had reason to reprove me did so by example and\nrequest, and not the rod--has only to know that a marriage with Tom\nMurdock would make me miserable to make him spurn him, as I did\nmyself. As to the other boy, I know nothing for certain myself about\nhim, and I can fairly deny any accusation he may make; and I am\ncertain he has been put up to it by old Murdock through his son. Yet\neven on this score I'll deny as little as I can.\"\n\nHere it was her father awakened; and Winny had only time to conclude\nher thoughts by wondering how that fellow dare call Emon \"a whelp.\"\n\n\"Well, father dear,\" she said, \"you have had a nice nap; you must have\nbeen very tired. I wish I was a man, that I might help you on the\nfarm.\"\n\n\"Winny darlin', I wouldn't have you anything but what you are for the\nworld. I have not much to do at all on the farm but to poke about, and\nsee that the men I have at work don't rob me by idling; and I must say\nI never saw honester work than what they leave after them. But, Winny,\nI came across old Murdock shortly after I went out, and he came over\nmy land with me, and I went over his with him, so that we had rather a\nlong walk. I'll engage he's as tired as what I am. I did not think his\nfarm was so extensive as it is, or that the land was so good, or in\nsuch to-au-op caun-di-shon.\" And poor old Ned yawned and stretched\nhimself.\n\nWinny saw through the whole thing at once. The matter of a marriage\nbetween herself and Tom Murdock, and a union of the farms, had\ndoubtless been discussed between her father and old Mick Murdock, and\na final arrangement, so far as they were concerned, had been arrived\nat. A hitch upon her part she was certain neither {796} of them had\never dreamt of; and yet \"hitch\" was a slight word to express the\nopposition she was determined to give to their wishes.\n\nShe knew that if her father had got so far as where he had been\ninterrupted by the yawn when he was fresh after breakfast, the whole\nthing would have come out. She was, however, a considerate girl; and\nalthough she knew there was at that moment a good opening, where a\nword would have brought the matter on, she knew that the result would\nhave completely driven rest and sleep from the poor old man's pillow\nfor the night, tired and fatigued as he was. She therefore adroitly\nchanged the conversation to his own comforts in a cup of tea before he\nwent to bed.\n\n\"Yes, _mavourneen_\" he said, \"I fell asleep before I mixed a tumbler\nof punch, and I'll take the tea now instead; for, Winny, my love, you\ncan join me at that. Do you know, Winny, I'm very thirsty?\"\n\n\"Well, father dear, I'll soon give you what will refresh you.\"\n\nWhile Winny was busying herself for the tea, putting down a huge\nkettle of water in the kitchen, and rattling the cups and saucers\nuntil you'd think she was trying to break them, the old man wakened up\ninto a train of thought not altogether dissimilar to that which Winny\nherself had indulged in over his sleeping form.\n\nWinny was quite right. The whole matter had been discussed on that day\nbetween the old men during their perambulations round the two farms;\nthe respective value and condition of the land forming a minute\ncalculation not unconnected with the other portion of their\ndiscourse--settlements, deeds of conveyance, etc., etc., had all been\ntouched upon.\n\nWinny was right in another of her surmises, although at the time she\nscarcely believed so herself. Old Murdock, taking his cue from Tom,\ntold old Ned that if he found Winny at all averse to marrying Tom, he\nwas certain young Lennon would be at the bottom of it--at least Tom\nhad more than hinted such to him.\n\nOld Ned was furious at this, declaring that if Tom Murdock was never\nto the fore, his daughter should never bestow his long and hard\nearnings upon a pauper like that, looking for a day's wages here and\nthere, and as often without it as with it; how dare the likes of him\nlift his eyes to his little girl! But he'd soon put a stop to that, if\nthere was anything in it, let what would turn up. Every penny-piece he\nwas worth in the world was in his own power, and there was a very easy\nway of bringing Miss Winny to her senses, if she had that wild notion\nin her head.\n\nPoor old Ned, in his indignation for what he thought Winny's welfare,\nforgot that she was the only being belonging to him in the world, and\nthat when it came to the point he would find it impossible to put this\nthreat of \"cutting her off\" into execution.\n\nOld Murdock was delighted with this tirade against young Lennon, whom\nhe looked upon as the only real obstacle to Tom's acquisition of land\nand money, to say nothing of a handsome wife.\n\n\"Be studdy with her, Ned,\" said he, \"she has a very floostherin' way\nwid her where you're concerned; I often remarked it. Don't let her\ncome round you, Ned, wid her pillaverin' about that 'whelp,' as Tom\ncalls him.\"\n\n\"An' he calls him quite right. If he daars to look up to my little\ngirl, he'll soon find out his mistake, I can tell him.\"\n\n\"Nothin' would show him his mistake so much as to have Tom's business\nan' hers settled at Shraft, Ned.\"\n\n\"I know that, Mick; an' with the blessing I'll spake to her in the\nmornin' upon the subjict. I dunna did Tom ever spake to herself,\nMick?\"\n\n\"If he didn't he will afore to-morrow night; he's on the watch to meet\nwith her by accident; he says it's betther nor to go straight up to\nher, an' maybe frighten her.\"\n\n\"Very well, Mick; I'll have an eye to them; maybe it would be betther\n{797} let Tom himself spake first. These girls are so dam' proud; an'\nI can tell you it is betther not vex Winny.\"\n\nOf course these two old men said a great deal more; but the above is\nthe pith of what set old Ned Cavana thinking the greater part of the\nnight; for the tea Winny made was very strong, and, as he said, he was\nthirsty, having missed his tumbler of punch after dinner. He fell\nasleep, however, much sooner than he would have done had the sequel to\nhis plans become known to him before he went to bed.\n\n\n\n[TO BE CONTINUED.]\n\n------\n\nFrom The Book of Days.\n\nYOUNG'S NARCISSA.\n\n\nThe Third Night of Young's Complaint is entitled Narcissa, from its\nbeing dedicated to the sad history of the early death of a beautiful\nlady, thus poetically designated by the author. Whatever doubts may\nexist with respect to the reality or personal identity of the other\ncharacters noticed in the \"Night Thoughts,\" there can be none whatever\nas regards Narcissa. She was the daughter of Young's wife, by her\nfirst husband, Colonel Lee. When scarcely seventeen years of age she\nwas married to Mr. Henry Temple, son of the then Lord Palmerston.\n[Footnote 158] Soon afterward, being attacked by consumption, she was\ntaken by Young to the south of France in hopes of a change for the\nbetter; but she died there about a year after her marriage, and Dr.\nJohnson tells us, in his \"Lives of the Poets,\" that \"her funeral was\nattended with the difficulties painted in such animated colors in\nNight the Third.\" Young's words in relation to the burial of Narcissa,\neliminating, for brevity's sake, some extraneous and redundant lines,\nare as follows:\n\n  [Footnote 158: By a second wife, grandfather of the present\n  Premier.]\n\n  \"While nature melted, superstition raved;\n  That mourned the dead; and this denied a grave.\n  For oh! the curst ungodliness of zeal!\n  While sinful flesh retarded, spirit nursed\n  In blind infallibility's embrace,\n  Denied the charity of dust to spread\n  O'er dust! a charity their dogs enjoy.\n  What could I do? what succor? what resource?\n  With pious sacrilege a grave I stole;\n  With impious piety that grave I wronged;\n  Short in my duty: coward in my grief!\n  More like her murderer than friend, I crept\n  With soft suspended step, and muffled deep\n  In midnight darkness, whispered my last sigh.\n  I whispered what should echo through their realms,\n  Nor writ her name whose tomb should pierce the skies.\"\n\nAll Young's biographers have told the same story from Johnson down to\nthe last edition of the \"Night Thoughts,\" edited by Mr. Gilfillan,\nwho, speaking of Narcissa, says \"her remains were brutally denied\nsepulture as the dust of a Protestant.\" Le Tourneure translated the\n\"Night Thoughts\" into French in 1770, and, strange to say, the work\nsoon became exceedingly popular in France, more so probably than ever\nit has been in England. Naturally enough, then, curiosity became\nexcited as to where the unfortunate Narcissa was buried, and it was\nsoon discovered that she had been interred in the Botanic Garden of\nMontpellier. An old gate-keeper of the garden, named Mercier,\nconfessed that many years previously he had assisted to bury an\nEnglish lady in a hollow, waste spot of the garden. As he told the\nstory, an English clergyman came to him and begged that he would bury\na lady; but he refused, until the Englishman, with tears in his eyes,\nsaid that she was his only daughter; on hearing this, he (the\ngate-keeper), being a father himself, consented. Accordingly the\nEnglishman brought the dead {798} body on his shoulders, his eyes\nraining tears, to the garden at midnight, and he there and then buried\nthe corpse. About the time this confession was made, Professor Gouan,\nan eminent botanist, was writing a work on the plants in the garden,\ninto which he introduced the above story, thus giving it a sort of\nscientific authority; and consequently the grave of Narcissa became\none of the treasures of the garden, and one of the leading lions of\nMontpellier. A writer in the \"Evangelical Magazine\" of 1797 gives an\naccount of a visit to the garden, and a conversation with one Bannal,\nwho had succeeded Mercier in his office, and who had often heard the\nsad story of the burial of Narcissa from Mercier's lips. Subsequently,\nTalma, the tragedian, was so profoundly impressed with the story that\nhe commenced a subscription to erect a magnificent tomb to the memory\nof Narcissa; but as the days of bigotry in matters of sepulture had\nnearly passed away, it was thought better to erect a simple monument,\ninscribed, as we learn from \"Murray's Handbook,\" with the words:\n\n  \"Placandis Narcissae manibus,\"\n\nthe \"Handbook\" adding, \"She was buried here at a time when the\natrocious laws which accompanied the Revocation of Nantes, backed by\nthe superstition of a fanatic populace, denied Christian burial to\nProtestants.\"\n\nStrange to say, this striking story is almost wholly devoid of truth.\nNarcissa never was at Montpellier. That she died at Lyons we know from\nMr. Herbert Crofts's account of Young, published by Dr. Johnson; that\nshe was buried there we know by her burial registry and her tombstone,\nboth of which are yet in existence. And by these we also learn that\nYoung's \"animated\" account of her funeral in the \"Night Thoughts\" is\nsimply untrue. She was not denied a grave:\n\n  \"Denied the charity of dust to spread\n  O'er dust,\"\n\nnor did he steal a grave, as he asserts, but bought and paid for it.\n\nHer name was not unwrit, as her tombstone still testifies. The central\nsquare of the Hotel de Dieu at Lyons was long used as a burial place\nfor Protestants; but the alteration in the laws at the time of the\ngreat Revolution doing away with the necessity of having separate\nburial places for different religions, the central garden was\nconverted into a medical garden for the use of the hospital. The\nProtestants of Lyons being of the poorer class, there were few\nmemorials to move when the ancient burying place was made into a\ngarden. The principal one, however, consisting of a large slab of\nblack marble, was set up against a wall, close beside an old Spanish\nmulberry-tree. About twenty years ago the increasing growth of this\ntree necessitated the removal of the slab, when it was found that the\nside which had been placed against the wall contained a Latin\ninscription to the memory of Narcissa. The inscription, which is too\nlong to be quoted here, leaves no doubt upon the matter. It mentions\nthe names of her father and mother, her connection with the noble\nfamily of Lichfield, her descent from Charles II., and concludes by\nstating that she died on the 8th of Oct., 1736, aged 18 years. On\ndiscovering this inscription M. Ozanam, the director of the Hotel de\nDieu, searched the registry of the Protestant burial, still preserved\nin the Hotel de Ville at Lyons, and found an entry, of which the\nfollowing is a correct translation: \"Madam Lee, daughter of Col. Lee,\naged about eighteen years, wife of Henry Temple, English by birth, was\nburied at the Hotel de Dieu at Lyons, in the cemetery of persons of\nthe Reformed religion of the Swiss nation, the 12th of Oct., 1736, at\neleven o'clock at night, by order of the Prevot of merchants.\"\n\"Received 729 livres 12 sols. Signed, Para, priest and treasurer.\"\nFrom this document, the authenticity of which is indisputable, we\nlearn the utter untruthfulness of Young's recital. True, Narcissa was\nburied at night, and most probably {799} without any religious\nservice, and a considerable sum charged for the privilege of\ninterment, but she was not denied the \"charity their dogs enjoy.\"\nCalculating according to the average rate of exchange at the period,\n729 livres would amount to thirty-five pounds sterling. Was it this\nsum that excited a poetical imagination so strong as to overstep the\nbounds of veracity? We could grant the excuse of poetical license had\nnot Young declared in his preface that the poem was \"real, not\nfictitious.\" The subject is not a pleasing one, and we need not carry\nit any further; but may conclude, in the words of Mr. Cecil, who,\nalluding to Young's renunciation of the world in his writings when he\nwas eagerly hunting for church preferment, says: \"Young is, of all\nother men, one of the most striking examples of the sad disunion of\npiety from truth.\"\n\n----\n\nFrom The Dublin Review.\n\nMADAME DE MAINTENON.\n\n\n_Madame de Maintenon et sa Famille. Lettres et Documents inedits._ Par\nHONORE BONHOMME. Paris: Didier. 1863.\n\n\n_Histoire de Madame de Maintenon, et des principaux Evenements du Regne\nde Louis XIV_. Par M. le DUC DE NOAILLES, de l'Academie Francaise.\nTomes 4. Paris: Comon. 1849-1858.\n\n\n_The Life of Madame de Maintenon_. Translated from the French. London:\nLockyer Davis. 1772.\n\n\n_The Secret Correspondence of Madame de Maintenon with the Princess des\nUrsins, from the original manuscripts in the possession of the Duke of\nChoiseul_. Translated from the French. 3 vols. London: Whittaker. 1827.\n\n\nMemorial de Saint-Cyr. Paris: Fulgence. 1846.\n\n\nFemale characters have, for good or ill, played a larger part on the\nstage of French history than of English. We have no names which\ncorrespond in extensive influence to those of Mesdames de Sevigne, de\nMaintenon, de Genlis, and Recamier; while the extraordinary power,\nboth political and social, exercised by royal mistresses in France,\nfinds no parallel in England, even in the worst days of courtly\nprofligacy. Nor is it easy to say to what cause this difference\nbetween the two countries is to be ascribed. It may be that public\nopinion has been brought to bear more fully on individual action here\nthan in France, and acts as a more powerful restraint; and it may be\nalso that extreme prominence in society is repugnant to the more\nmodest and retiring habits of Englishwomen. There is no lady in our\nannals who has occupied a position similar to that of Madame de\nMaintenon in relation to royalty except Mrs. Fitzherbert; but she,\nthough highly distinguished for her virtues, was altogether wanting in\nthose intellectual endowments which adorned that gifted woman who won\nthe esteem and fixed the affections of Louis XIV. Many circumstances\ncombined to make her the most striking example of female ascendency in\nFrance; and the object of this paper will be to trace the causes which\nled to it, as well as to her being, to this day, an object of\nnever-failing interest to the French people. Like all great women, she\nhas had many virulent detractors and many ardent eulogists; but we\nshall endeavor to avoid the {800} extremes of both, more especially as\nM. Bonhomme is of opinion that her biography has still to be written.\nIf there were no higher consideration, self-respect alone would demand\nscrupulous impartiality in a historical inquiry; and we are the less\ntempted to depart from this rule in the present instance because we\nare convinced that in Madame de Maintenon's history there is ample\nscope for the most chivalrous vindication of her fame, and that, as\ntime goes on, and the materials relative to her contemporaries are\ncollated, her apparent defects will lessen in importance, and her\ncharacter stand out in fairer proportions and clearer light. It needs\nonly to compare recent memoirs of her with the jejune attempts of the\nlast century, to perceive how much her cause gains from fuller and\ncloser investigation. The Due de Noailles has rendered good service to\nthe literature of his country by his voluminous history of this lady,\nconducted as it is on the sound and admirable principle of making the\nsubject of the biography speak for herself. There is no historical\npersonage about whom more untruths have been circulated; and, after\nall that has been said and written, the only way to know her is to\nread her correspondence.\n\nLord Macaulay speaks of Franchise de Maintenon in terms so pointed,\nthat they well deserve to be quoted at the outset:\n\n\"It would be hard to name any woman who, with so little romance in her\ntemper, has had so much in her life. Her early years had been passed\nin poverty and obscurity. Her first husband had supported himself by\nwriting burlesques, farces, and poems. When she attracted the notice\nof her sovereign, she could no longer boast of youth or beauty; but\nshe possessed in an extraordinary degree those more lasting charms,\nwhich men of sense, whose passions age has tamed, and whose life is a\nlife of business and care, prize most highly in a female companion.\nHer character was such as has well been compared to that soft green on\nwhich the eye, wearied by warm tints and glaring lights, reposes with\npleasure. A just understanding; an inexhaustible yet never redundant\nflow of rational, gentle, and sprightly conversation; a temper of\nwhich the serenity was never for a moment ruffled; a tact which\nsurpassed the tact of her sex as much as the tact of her sex surpasses\nthe tact of ours; such were the qualities which made the widow of a\nbuffoon first the confidential friend, and then the spouse, of the\nproudest and most powerful of European kings. It was said that Louis\nhad been with difficulty prevented by the arguments and vehement\nentreaties of Louvois from declaring her Queen of France.\" [Footnote\n159]\n\n  [Footnote 159: \"History of England,\" chap, xi., 1689.]\n\nThe romance of her life began with her birth, which took place on the\n27th of November, 1635,  [Footnote 160] in the prison of Niort, where\nher father was confined. His life had been full of adventure and\ncrime, and he was unworthy of the faithful and affectionate wife who\nshared his imprisonment. He changed his religious profession several\ntimes, but at the moment of Frances' birth he called himself\nProtestant. The child accordingly was baptized in the Calvinist church\nof Niort, though her mother was a Catholic, and was placed under the\ncharge of her aunt, Madame de Vilette, at Murcay, about a league from\nthe prison. The prisoner, Constant d'Aubigne, was at length released,\nand being disinherited by his father for his ill conduct, embarked a\nsecond time for America about the year 1643,  [Footnote 161] taking\nwith him his wife and children. Little Frances suffered so much from\nthe voyage that at one time she was thought to be dead, and a sailor\nheld her in his arms, ready to sink her in a watery grave. \"_On ne\nrevient pas_\" as the Bishop of Metz said long after {801} to Madame de\nMaintenon, _\"de si loin pour pen de chose.\"_   [Footnote 162]\n\n  [Footnote 160: \"_Bonhomme_,\" p. 235.]\n\n  [Footnote 161: _Ibid._, p. 230. ]\n\n  [Footnote 162: \"One does not return from so far but for a great object.\"]\n\nNotwithstanding her father's evil example, there was enough in Frances\nd'Aubigne's ancestral remembrances to have dazzled her imagination in\nafter life. Her aunt, who had been her earliest instructress, was a\nzealous Protestant; and her grandfather, Agrippa d'Aubigne, as a\nsoldier, a historian, and a satirical poet, was one of the first men\nof his day. He had served Henry IV. in various capacities, and was\nused to address his royal master so freely as to reproach him for his\nchange of religion. One day, when the king was showing a courtier his\nlip pierced by an assassin's knife, d'Aubigne said, \"Sire, you have as\nyet renounced God only with your lips, and he has pierced them; if you\nrenounce him in heart, he will pierce your heart also.\"\n\nFrances' father died in Martinique, having lost all he had gained by\ngambling. Madame d'Aubigne therefore returned to France, and devoted\nherself to the education of her child. She made her familiar with\n\"Plutarch's Lives,\" and exercised her in composition. She would gladly\nhave kept the task of instruction to herself, but poverty constrained\nher at last to resign Frances with many fears into the hands of her\naunt, Madame de Vilette. The effect of this transfer was her becoming\nimbued with Calvinist tenets; and when, through the interference of\nthe government,  [Footnote 163] she was removed from Madame de\nVilette's care, and made over to a Catholic relative, she proved very\nrefractory, and persisted in turning her back to the altar during\nmass. Various means of persuasion were tried in vain; and it was not\ntill the Ursuline sisters in Paris took her in hand that her scruples\nvanished, and she consented to abjure her errors and to believe\nanything except that her aunt Vilette would be damned. In after-life\nshe used often to say that her mother and several of the nuns had been\nvery injudicious and severe with her, and that, but for the kindness\nand good sense of one lady in the convent, she should probably never\nhave embraced the Catholic faith.\n\n  [Footnote 163: \"_Duc de Noailles,\" tome_ I., p. 77.]\n\nOnly a few years passed before she had to choose between a conventual\nlife and a distasteful marriage. Her mother was dead, and \"the\nbeautiful Indian,\" as she was called, was left almost without\nresources. She had become acquainted with the comic poet Scarron, and\noften visited him. He was five-and-twenty years older than herself,\nand hideously deformed. A singular paralysis, caused by quack\nmedicines, had deprived him of the use of his limbs, his hands and\nmouth only being left free. His satirical pieces had been very\npopular, and, though fixed to his chair, he received a great deal of\ncompany, and joked incessantly. He was much struck by Frances\nd'Aubigne, and appreciated her talents the more highly because mental\nculture was rapidly advancing, and the conversation in drawing-rooms\nbegan to be rational. His offer of marriage was accepted by her, for\n\"she preferred,\" as she said, \"marrying him to marrying a convent.\" In\nthe summer of 1652 she became his bride. Such a union deserved a place\nin one of his own farces, and gave little promise of happiness or\nvirtue. But the consequences were far different from what might have\nbeen expected. A change for the better had taken place in public\nmorals, and Madame Scarron had no sooner a house of her own than she\ntook a prominent part in the movement. She carefully tended her\nhelpless spouse; brushed the flies from his nose when he could not use\nhis fingers, and administered to him the opiate draught without which\nhe could not sleep. She received his guests with a dignity beyond her\nyears, and her conduct was regulated on a plan of general reserve. No\none dared address her in words of double signification; and one of the\nyoung men of fashion who frequented the house declared that he {802}\nwould sooner think of venturing on any familiarity with the queen than\nwith Madame Scarron. People saw that she was in earnest. During Lent,\nshe would eat a herring at the lower end of the table, and retire\nbefore the rest. So young and attractive, in a capital of brilliant\ndissipation, and with such a husband as Scarron, her example could not\nbut have an effect. Meanwhile she cultivated her mind, and learned\nItalian, Spanish, and Latin. She knew not what might be required of\nher, for Scarron's fortune was dwindling away, and he had been\ncompelled to resign the prebend of Mans. He was a lay-ecclesiastic,\nand, like many literary men of that day, bore the title of abbe.\nPoverty again stared her in the face, and the servant who waited at\ntable had often to whisper, \"Madame, no roast again to-day!\" Devoted\nto her husband's sick chamber, she avoided society abroad, and wrote,\nonly two years after her marriage, letters which might have come from\nan aged saint on the brink of eternity. \"All below is vanity,\" she\nsaid, \"and vexation of spirit. Throw yourself into the arms of God;\none wearies of all but him, who never wearies of those who love him.\"\n\nHer enemies have strongly contested her virtue at this period, and\nappealed to her intimacy with Ninon de Lenclos in proof of their\nallegations. This modern Leontium certainly frequented Scarron's\ndrawing-room and also (such were the dissolute manners of the age)\nthat of most other celebrities in Paris. But the unhappy woman herself\nhas left behind her an unquestionable testimony to Madame Scarron's\npurity. \"In her youth,\" she says, \"she was virtuous through weakness\nof mind: I tried to cure her of it, but she feared God too much.\" She\nhad, of course, many admirers, and she must needs have gone out of the\nworld not to have them. But to be admired and courted is one thing, to\nyield and sin mortally is another. It might be wished that Madame\nScarron's name had never been mixed up with that of Ninon, to whom\nvirtue was \"_faibleese d'esprit_\" but the freedom of her conduct must\nnot be tried too severely by the stricter laws of propriety which\nprevail among us now. She never forgot Ninon, corresponded with her at\ntimes, aided her when she was in distress, and was consoled by her\ndying like a Christian at the age of 90.  [Footnote 164 ] She who had\nboasted that Epicurus was her model gave the closing years of her life\nto God.  [Footnote 165]\n\n  [Footnote 164: In 1705.]\n\n  [Footnote 165: \"_Duc de Noailles,\" tome_ i., p. 206.]\n\nMadame Scarron's resistance to the importunities of Villarceaux was\nwell known, and is thus alluded to by Bois-Robert in verses addressed\nto the marquis himself:   [Footnote 166]\n\n  \"Si c'est cette rare beaute\n  Qui tieut ton esprit enchaine,\n  Marquis, j'ai raison de te plaindre;\n  Car son humeur est fort a craindre:\n  Elle a presque autant de fierte\n  Qu'elle a de grace et de beaute.\"\n\n  [Footnote 166: \"Marquis, if it is this rare beauty who holds you in\n  chains, I have reason to pity you; for she as of a temper much to be\n  feared. She has almost as much pride as she has grace and beauty.\"]\n\nBut those who follow the course of Madame de Maintenon's interior life\nknow perfectly well how to interpret what Bois-Robert called\n\"haughtiness,\" and Ninon \"weakness of mind.\" It is a matter of no\nsmall importance to rescue such characters from the foul grasp of\ncalumny. Gilles Boileau was the only one of her contemporaries while\nshe was young who dared to throw out any suspicion against her honor,\nbut this he did evidently to avenge himself on Scarron, against whom\nhe had a mortal pique.\n\nA new era was dawning on France. Richelieu and Mazarin had by their\npolicy prepared the triumphs of monarchy; Turenne and Conde had\ndisplayed their genius in war; the great ministers and captains waited\nfor the moment when their master should call them to his service; and\narts and letters were ready to embellish all with their rich coloring.\nLouis XIV. really mounted the throne in 1660, and the glory and\ngreatness of France rose {803} with him. Pascal, Moliere, La Fontaine,\nand Boileau published their works almost at the same time. Racine\npresented to the king the first-fruits of his master mind, and the\nvoice of Bossuet had already been heard from the pulpit. Scarron\nforesaw the brilliancy of the epoch, but he saw also that his own end\nwas nigh. \"I shall have,\" he said, \"no cause for regret in dying,\nexcept that I have no fortune to leave my wife, who deserves more than\nI can tell, and for whom I have every reason in the world to be\nthankful.\" Humorous to the last, he made a jest of his sufferings,\nand, when seized with violent hiccough, said if he could only get over\nit, he would write a good satire upon it. He died perfectly himself,\nand was not even for a moment untrue to his character. A few seconds\nbefore his end, seeing those around him in tears, he said, \"You weep,\nmy children; ah! I shall never make you cry as much as I have made you\nlaugh.\" He had but one serious interval to give to death--that in\nwhich Madame Scarron caused him to fulfil his religious duties. He had\nalways been a Christian, and neither in his writings nor in his\nconversation had allowed anything prejudicial to religion to escape\nhim. A chaplain came every Sunday to say mass at his house. \"I leave\nyou no fortune,\" he said to his wife when dying, \"and virtue will\nbring none: nevertheless be always virtuous.\" The point of this\nadmonition must be gathered from the corruption of the times. Her\nmother's last words also had sunk deep into Frances' memory, for she\nhad warned her \"to hope everything from God and to fear everything\nfrom man.\" Scarron died in 1660, and was soon forgotten. His name\nwould now scarcely be known, nor would any at this day be conversant\nwith his comedies and satires but for the exalted position which his\nwidow subsequently attained. His immediate successors obeyed\nunconsciously the epitaph which he had himself composed, and made no\nnoise over the grave where poor Scarron took his \"first night's rest.\"\n\n  \"Passants, ne faites pas de bruit,\n  De crainte que je ne m'eveille;\n  Car voila la premiere nuit\n  Que le pauvre Scarron sommeille.\"   [Footnote 167]\n\n  [Footnote 167: \"Poor Scarron his first night of sleep enjoys: Hush,\n  passers-by, nor wake him with your noise!\"]\n\nWas there ever a more pathetic joke?\n\nWhen Mazarin died in 1661, the young king summoned his council and\nsaid, \"Gentlemen, I have hitherto allowed the affairs of state to be\nconducted by the late cardinal; henceforward I intend to govern\nmyself, and you will aid me with your advice when I ask it.\" From that\nday, the face of society in France rapidly changed. Then, as Voltaire\nsays, the revolution in arts, intellect, and morals which had been\npreparing for half a century took effect, and at the court of Louis\nXIV. were formed that refinement of manners and those social\nprinciples which have since extended through Europe. The example long\nset by the Hotel de Rambouillet in Paris was followed by many others,\nand numerous _salons_ which have since become matter of history united\nall that was most brilliant in genius and talent with much that was\nestimable for worth and even piety.\n\nThe first ten years of Madame Scarron's widowhood were passed in the\nmidst of these elegant and intellectual circles. The assemblies of\nMadame de Sevigne, Madame de Coulanges, Louvois' cousin, and Madame\nde Lafayette, the novelist, were, with the hotels of Albret and\nRichelieu, those which she principally frequented. She was in great\ndistress, and her friends tried to obtain for her the pension her\nhusband had once enjoyed. But Cardinal Mazarin was inflexible. He\nremembered the \"Mazarinade,\" in which Scarron had satirized him, and\nrefused to grant any relief to his charming widow. But she would be\nbeholden to none for a subsistence. She retired into the {804} convent\nof the Hospitalers, where a relation lent her an apartment, and lived\nfor some time on a pittance she had hoarded. The queen-mother then\nbecame interested in her behalf, and a pension of L50 a year was\nassigned her. \"Henceforward,\" she said in a letter to Madame d'Albret,\n\"I shall be able to labor for my salvation in peace. I have made a\npromise to God that I will give one fourth of my pension to the poor.\"\nShe now removed to the Ursuline convent, where she lived simply and\nmodestly, but visited constantly, and received, as the sisters\ncomplained, \"a furious deal of company.\" Her dress was elegant, but of\ncheap materials, and she managed by rare economy to keep a maid, pay\nher wages, and have a little over at the end of the year. She might\nhave accepted the Marechal d'Albret's offer of a home in her hotel,\nbut she preferred entire independence in her own humble asylum. Many a\npage could we fill with accounts of the friendships she formed at this\nperiod. To epitomize her life is in one respect a painful task, for\nthe records we possess respecting her are equally interesting and\ncopious. She has found at last a biographer worthy of her, and it is\nto the Due de Noailles' volumes we must refer those who long for\nfurther details than our space allows us to give. He is the ablest\nchampion of her honor that has yet appeared, and refutes triumphantly\nthe calumnies of the Duc de Saint Simon by which so many have been\ndeceived.\n\nAt the Hotel d'Albret Madame Scarron often met Madame de Montespan,\nwho soon after became the mistress of Louis. The two ladies had many\ntastes in common, and an intimacy sprang up between them. How\nstrangely they became related to each other afterward we shall\npresently see. Meanwhile Madame Scarron was overtaken by another\nreverse. The queen-mother died in 1666, and with her the pension\nceased. Many splendid mansions were eager to receive and entertain\nher, but she declined them all as permanent abodes. A rich and\ndissolute old man proposed to marry her, and her friends unwisely\nseconded his overtures; but she was proof against them, and wrote to\nNinon to express her gratitude, because the voice of that licentious\nwoman alone was raised in approval of her conduct. She was indignant\nat the comparison her friends made between the unworthy aspirant and\nher late husband, and avowed her readiness to endure any hardships\nrather than sacrifice her liberty, and entangle herself in an\nengagement which conscience could not approve. Constrained, therefore,\nby want, she was about to expatriate herself, and follow in the train\nof the Duchesse de Nemours, who was affianced to the King of Portugal.\nIt was a sore trial, for none are more attached to their country, none\nendure exile with less fortitude, than the French. She saw Madame de\nMontespan once more; it was in the royal palace, and that incident\nchanged her destiny. The future rivals met under conditions how\ndifferent from those which were one day to exist! Madame de Montespan,\nthough not yet the king's mistress, was already in high favor, and the\npatroness of that poor widow who was afterward, by winning Louis'\nesteem, to supplant her in his affections, and become, all but in\nname, Queen of France. Through her mediation the forfeited pension was\nrestored, and we find her name in the list of ladies invited to a\ncourt fete in 1688. Nevertheless, her troubles withdrew her very much\nfrom the world, and she thought for a time of adopting a religious\nhabit. Indeed, it is not impossible that she might actually have done\nso, had she not been made averse to the step by the severity of her\nconfessor, the Abbe Gobelin. With a view of mortifying her ambition to\nplease and be admired, he recommended her to dress still more plainly,\nand be silent in company. She obeyed, and became so disagreeable to\nherself and others that she sometimes felt inclined to {805} renounce\nher habits of devotion.  [Footnote 168] She retired, however, to a\nsmall lodging in the Rue des Tournelles, lived more alone, and, as she\nwrote to Ninon, \"read nothing but the Book of Job and the Maxims.\"\n\n  [Footnote 168: _\"Duc de Noailles,_\" tome i., pp. 310-12.]\n\nHere fortune came to her relief. The infidelities of Louis XIV. are\nunhappily too well known. Suffice it in this place to say that Madame\nde Montespan bore him a daughter in 1669, and a son, afterward the Duc\ndu Maine, in 1670. Circumstances required that the existence of these\nchildren should be concealed, and their mother, in whose heart the\nvoice of conscience was never stifled, bethought her of the good\nMadame Scarron as one who was well fitted to take charge of their\neducation. Accordingly, she was sounded on the subject. The king's\nname was not mentioned, but she was informed that the secret regarding\nthe children was to be kept inviolate. She hesitated, refused,\nreconsidered the matter, and at last consented on condition that the\nking himself should command her services. The office was far from\ndishonorable in the eyes of the world. Madame Colbert, the minister's\nwife, had been intrusted with two of his majesty's children by Madame\nde la Valliere. It was not on this point that Madame Scarron was\nanxious, but she feared lest she should give scandal and entangle her\nconscience by a seeming indulgence to such immorality. Louis at last\nrequested that she would be as a mother to his babes. They were placed\nwith a nurse in an obscure little house outside the walls of Paris.\nMadame Scarron was to live as before in her own lodgings, but without\nlosing sight of the infants. It was a point of honor with her to\nobserve the utmost secrecy. She visited each of them separately, for\nthey were kept apart, and passed in and out disguised as a poor woman,\nand carrying linen or meat in a basket. Returning home on foot, she\nentered by a private door, dressed, and drove to the Hotel d'Albret or\nRichelieu to lull suspicion asleep. When the secret was at length\nknown, she caused herself to be bled lest she should blush.  [Footnote\n169] In two years' time the number of children had increased, and a\ndifferent arrangement was adopted. A large house was purchased in the\ncountry, not far from Vaugirard, and Madame Scarron, now enjoying a\ncertain degree of opulence, established herself there, and gave all\nher time to the task of education. She was lost to the world, and her\nfriends deeply lamented her disappearance. But she was sowing the seed\nof her future greatness. The king, who had a great love for his\nchildren, often saw her when he visited them; the aversion he had felt\nfor her at first gradually melted away; he admired her tender and\nmaternal care of his offspring, contrasted it with the comparative\nindifference of their own mother, greatly increased her pension, and,\nhaving legitimized the Duc du Maine, the Count de Vexin, and\nMademoiselle de Nantes in 1673, soon after appointed them with their\ngouvernante a place at court. Thus, step by step, without her own\nseeking, she was led on to exercise a higher and most salutary\ninfluence on the king's moral character, till, in reward of her\nlong-tried virtue, she was ultimately to fix his wandering affections\nand effect his conversion; an object which for so many years she had\nregarded as the end of her being. She was nearly forty years of age\nwhen she entered on her duties in the palace; and, in that difficult\nand trying position, she set the glorious example of one who was\nguided in all things by principle, and who thought that the highest\ntalents were best devoted to leading an irreproachable life. She had a\nwork before her, and it was great. She contributed to withdraw the\nking from his disorderly habits, to restore him to the queen, and to\nbring about a reformation of morals in a quarter where it {806} had\nbeen most wantonly retarded by the royal example. The king, in that\nday, was all in all. The ideal of the government was royalty. The\nFronde had died away, and with it the power of the nobles. That of the\npeople, in the sense in which it is now generally understood, was\nunknown; even infidels and scoffers scarcely dreamed of it. The\nmonarch, like Cyrus  [Footnote 170] and the Caesars, believed himself\nsomething more than man. Diseases fled at his touch, and he virtually\nset himself above all laws, human and divine. It needed the eloquence\nof a Bossuet to convince Louis that a priest had done his duty in\nrefusing absolution to the mother of his illegitimate children,\n[Footnote 171] The success of his arms enhanced his self-esteem, and\nthe atmosphere of his court was so tainted with corruption that Madame\nScarron often sighed for retirement, and resolved to flee from so\nperilous and painful a promotion. Her intercourse with Madame de\nMontespan was chequered with stormy dissensions, and the jealousy of\nthe latter became almost insupportable. The education of the children\nwas a constant subject of contention, and Madame Scarron, who knew\nthat they would be ruined if left to their mother, was not disposed to\nyield any of her rights. But the Duc du Maine was the idol of his\nfather and mother, and this served to attach them both to the\nincomparable gouvernante, who loved the boy with an affection truly\nmaternal.\n\n  [Footnote 169: \"_Deuxieme Entretien a Saint-Cyr._\" ]\n\n  [Footnote 170: \"Herodotus, Clio,\" cciv.]\n\n  [Footnote 171: \"_Duc de Noailles,\" tome_ i., p. 316.]\n\nBeing disgusted with the court, and having received from the king a\npresent of 200,000 francs, she bought in 1674 the estate of Maintenon,\nabout thirty miles from Versailles, with the intention of retiring\nthither. But a rupture between the king and his favorite mistress was\nat hand, and on this circumstance hinged Madame Scarron's future\ncareer.\n\nIn spite of his profligacy, Louis XIV. was at bottom religiously\ndisposed. His serious attention to business proved him to be a man of\nthought and reflection, and, when the great festivals came round, it\ngrieved him not to be in a condition to fulfil his religious duties.\nThe sermons of Bourdaloue during the Lent of 1675 touched him, and the\nexpostulations of Bossuet in private deepened their effect. He\nresolved to dismiss Madame de Montespan, and departed to join the army\nwithout seeing her. \"I have satisfied you, father,\" he said to\nBourdaloue: \"Madame de Montespan is at Clagny.\" \"Yes, sire,\" replied\nthe preacher; \"but God would be better satisfied if Clagny were\nseventy leagues from Versailles.\" Meanwhile Madame Scarron, with the\nDuc du Maine, went to Bareges, and, as the king had, before creating\nher a marchioness, graciously called her, in presence of his nobles,\nMadame de Maintenon, we shall henceforward speak of her by the name\nwhich she bears in history. The three most important personages in our\ndrama were now separated. The king, at the head of his army, received\nthe letters of Bossuet, conjuring him to persevere in his promises of\namendment, while Madame de Montespan, in her retreat, was pressed by\nthe same fervid eloquence to return to the path of virtue. But the Duc\ndu Maine was everywhere entertained as the king's son, and fetes that\nvied with each other in splendor awaited him and his gouvernante\neverywhere. So popular was the king, so loyal his people, that his\nvice passed for virtue or innocent gallantry.\n\nBareges was not then what it has now become. A few thatched cottages\nand one house with a slated roof were all it could boast. Madame de\nMaintenon and her sick charge, the little duke, had but one room,\nmeanly furnished, where he slept by her side. The place was then\nscarcely known; but the physician Fagon had discovered it during his\nexcursions among the Pyrenees, and, by making Madame de Maintenon\nacquainted with the {807} efficacy of its baths, he raised it to\nimportance and secured for himself fortune and renown. Here she\nreceived many letters from the king in attestation of his friendship;\nand returning hence, she visited Niort and the prison where she was\nborn, the aunt she had so tenderly loved, and the Ursuline convent\nwhere she had first been schooled and supported by charity. Attentions\nwere lavished on her in every quarter, and many valuable records of\nher family fell into her hands. Among these was the life of her\nillustrious grandfather, Agrippa d'Aubigne, written by himself.\n\nHer reception by the king was more cordial than ever; but the high\nfavor in which she stood did not break her resolution to renounce a\ncourt life as soon as circumstances should permit. She corresponded\nregularly with the Abbe Gobelin, and often expressed her willingness\nto follow implicitly his advice. Madame de Montespan regained her\nascendancy, at least in appearance; but many thought that the king was\nfast becoming weaned from her, through the new influence. Madame de\nMaintenon exerted daily a more manifest empire. Everything, as Madame\nde Sevigne wrote in 1676, yielded to her. One attendant held the\npommade before her on bended knee, another brought her gloves, and a\nthird lulled her to sleep. She saluted no one; but those who knew her\nbelieved that she laughed in her heart at these formalities. \"I desire\nmore than ever,\" she said to M. Gobelin, \"to be away from this place;\nand I am more and more confirmed in my opinion that I cannot serve God\nhere.\" Madame de Montespan, during some years, continued to be the\nrecognized favorite; but the beautiful Fontanges divided with her the\nunenviable distinction till, having just been made a duchess, she died\nin the flower of her youth. But amidst all this levity, Louis paid the\nsevere Madame de Maintenon the most delicate attentions, which failed\nnot to excite the utmost indignation in the breast of the royal\nmistress. At length, in 1680, the dauphin espoused the daughter of the\nElector of Bavaria, and Louis, anxious to retain Madame de Maintenon\nin the service of the court, made her lady of the bed-chamber to the\ndauphiness. In this honorable office she was set free from the bondage\nshe had endured. She had now nothing in common with Madame de\nMontespan; and she exchanged the apartments she had occupied for\nothers immediately over those of the king, where he could visit her at\nwill, and, by her lively and flowing conversation, refresh his mind\nwhen weary with business, or jaded with pleasures that had long since\nbegun to pall. Surrounded by minions of every sort, it was something\nnew to him to be addressed freely and without any selfish view. This\nwas the secret of Madame de Maintenon's power over his heart, and he\nconfessed the potency of the spell. Madame de Montespan was visited\nless and less, and Louis passed hours every day in the apartments of\nthe dauphiness, where he found also her lady of the bed-chamber. A\ncabal was formed by the deserted mistresses and some profligate\nministers against the new and truly estimable object of Louis' favor;\nbut their machinations failed. The sovereign at last broke his chains,\nand Madame de Montespan, like Ninon and La Valliere, made profit of\nthe time which was allowed to her for repentance, but which had been\ndenied to Fontanges. The miserable death-bed of that young creature,\ndistracted by remorse, but still clinging passionately to her unlawful\nlove, deeply affected the king,  [Footnote 172] and is said to have\npowerfully contributed to reclaim him from his evil habits. The benign\ninfluence of Madame de Maintenon reunited him to the long abandoned\nqueen, who, with all her exalted piety and Christian virtue, was\ndeficient, it must be confessed, in tact and discernment, as well as\nin those intellectual {808} gifts which would have made her an\nacceptable companion to Louis; while her strict devotional practices\nand retiring habits--habits which her native modesty and timidity of\ncharacter, combined with her husband's neglect, tended to confirm--may\nhave had no small share in increasing his estrangement. His evenings\nwere now frequently spent with her; and every member of the royal\nfamily was delighted with the happy change, and grateful to her by\nwhom it had been brought about. The king himself found the paths of\nvirtue to be those of peace, and the finer parts of his character were\ndisplayed to advantage. He had naturally a kind and feeling heart, and\nwas by no means that monster of selfishness and formality which\nhistorians so often make him.  [Footnote 173]\n\n  [Footnote 172: _Gabourd, \"Histoire de France,\" tome_ xiv., p. 453,\n  note. ]\n\n  [Footnote 173: _\"Duc de Noailles,\" tome_ ii., p. 28.]\n\nAfter the peace of Nimeguen, Louis XIV., having seen his enterprises\neverywhere crowned with victory, became intoxicated with his own\ngreatness, and arrogant toward foreign powers. But the counsels of\nMadame de Maintenon tended to restrain his ambition and modify the\ndefiant tone of his government. She well knew that such an attitude,\nbeside being wrong in itself, was the certain forerunner of formidable\ncoalitions. However lightly she might have thought of the Prince of\nOrange, if singly matched with the greatest potentate of Europe, she\nwisely judged his talents and prowess capable of inflicting great\ninjury on France if he were in union with exasperated allies. While\nher hand thus nearly touched the helm of state, it was busy as ever in\ndispensing private charities; and it was about this time also that she\nfounded an establishment at Rueil which was the origin of \"Saint-Cyr.\"\n\"For the first time,\" she said, in a letter to her brother, [Footnote\n174] \"I am happy.\"\n\n  [Footnote 174: 20th February, 1682.]\n\nIn 1683 the queen died, and Louis, who had become convinced of her\nmerits too late, wept over her when expiring and said, \"It is the\nfirst trouble she has ever caused me.\" Madame de Maintenon, who had\nstaid with her to the last, was about to retire, when the Duc de la\nRochefoucauld, taking her by the arm, drew her toward the king,\nsaying, \"It is no time, madame, to leave him: he needs you in his\npresent condition.\" Her position at court was now very embarrassing.\nShe was aware of the king's predilections, and he was no less\npersuaded that she could be attached to him by none but virtuous ties.\nThe dauphiness requested her to accept the place of lady of honor, but\nshe steadily refused. Was it indeed that she aspired higher? Could she\nfancy for one moment that Louis would exalt her to the rank of his\nwife? An anecdote related by Madame de Caylus would lead us to suppose\nthat the thought had crossed her mind, and that the king himself had\nperhaps given her some pledge of his intentions. Madame de Caylus was\nastonished at her declining a post of such high dignity. \"Would you,\"\nasked her aunt, \"rather be the niece of a lady of honor, or the niece\nof one who refused to be such?\" Madame de Caylus replied that she\nshould look upon her who refused as immeasurably higher than her who\naccepted: on which Madame de Maintenon kissed her. She had given the\nright answer. Madame de Montespan was still at court with her\nchildren, but her day was gone by; and she whose silent influence had\nwrought her overthrow never triumphed over her, and even deemed it\nprudent to abstain from any overt attempt to prevent the king's seeing\nher.\n\nThe decorations at Versailles were at this time conducted on such a\nscale as to make that spot one of the wonders of the world. All Europe\nwas curious to see its gardens or read of their matchless splendor.\nIts fountains and cascades were never to be silent, night or day, and\nthe waters of the Eure were to supply them by means of a canal and\naqueduct more than fourteen leagues in length. {809} Twenty-two\nthousand men worked on the line, which traversed the estate and valley\nof Maintenon. The aqueduct was there supported by magnificent arcades,\nand its entire cost, without counting purchase of land, was about nine\nmillions of francs. To the town of Maintenon the \"very powerful and\npious\" lady who bore its name was a great benefactress. She obtained\nfor it fairs and markets, and founded in it a hospital and schools.\nShe rebuilt, entirely at her own cost, the church and presbytery, as\nwell as those of two adjoining parishes. She brought thither Normans\nand Flemings to teach the villagers how to weave, and distributed\nabundant alms to the poor and infirm. The king staid at her chateau\nrepeatedly, and inspected the works that were rapidly advancing among\nthe hills. Racine also was her guest about this period, and was\ncharmed with his visit. Here, too, in the very house where Charles X.,\nand with him the direct Bourbon line, afterward ceased to reign, was\nprobably fixed that remarkable marriage of which we shall have much to\nrecord.\n\nMadame de Maintenon was still beautiful, though in her fiftieth year.\nShe was three years older than the king, and the influence she exerted\nover him was no matter of surprise to those who were used to watch her\nradiant eyes and face beaming with animation and intelligence. Severe\nvirtue gave additional dignity to her distinguished and graceful\nmanners, and, while she yielded to none in conversational powers, she\nwas also a good listener. The proud king found in her one to whom he\ncould bow without humiliation, and her conquest of his heart was a\nsignal triumph of moral worth. The marriage was private, and the\nsecrecy so well preserved that its date cannot be ascertained. It is\nsupposed to have taken place in 1685, and was celebrated by the\nArchbishop of Paris, in the presence of Pere la Chaise; Bontemps, a\nvalet-de-chambre, who served the mass; and M. de Montchevreuil, Madame\nde Maintenon's intimate friend. A union satisfactory to her conscience\nwas all she required, and this being obtained, she took the utmost\npains to prevent the matter becoming public. The court remained for\nsome time in ignorance of the marriage; but the fact is beyond all\ndoubt, and is dwelt on with little disguise by the Bishop of Chartres,\nin letters to the king and his wife, and by Bourdaloue in his private\ninstructions to the latter. While Saint-Simon denounces it as \"so\nprofound a humiliation for the proudest of kings that posterity will\nnever credit it,\" Voltaire, with more good sense, maintains that Louis\nin this marriage in no degree compromised his dignity, and that the\ncourt, never having any certainty on the subject, respected the king's\nchoice without treating Madame de Maintenon as queen.  [Footnote 175]\nThere is not the slightest proof that Louis ever contemplated sharing\nhis throne with her openly, and still less that her ambition extended\nso far. In the passage we quoted from Macaulay the reader will have\nobserved that he introduces the fable with \"It was said.\" He is, in\nfact, there following Saint-Simon and the Abbe de Choisy,  [Footnote\n176] whose \"Memoirs\" are, in this particular, altogether at variance\nwith Madame de Maintenon's character as revealed in her letters, with\nthe modesty and reserve which distinguished her in so high a station,\nand with the impenetrable silence she always observed with regard to\nthe fact of the king being her husband.  [Footnote 177]\n\n   [Footnote 175: _\"Siecle de Louis XIV.,\" tome_ ii.]\n\n  [Footnote 176: _Livre_ vii.]\n\n  [Footnote 177: _\"Duc de Noailles,\" tome_ ii., pp. 131-2.]\n\nThough living in the midst of the court, her elevation was, as\nVoltaire says, nothing but a retreat. She restricted her society to a\nsmall number of female friends, and devoted herself almost exclusively\nto the king. No distinction marked her in public, except that she\noccupied in chapel a gilded tribune made for the queen. {810} Louis\nspoke of her as _Madame_, and if the Abbe de Choisy may be trusted,\nBontemps, the valet, addressed her in private as \"your majesty.\" She\nwas seldom seen in the reception-halls, but the king passed all the\ntime that was not occupied with public affairs in her apartment. He\nrose at eight, surrounded by his officers; as soon as dressed, he was\ncloseted with his ministers, with whom he remained till midday; at\nhalf-past twelve he heard mass, and in passing and repassing through\nthe grand gallery, to which the public was admitted, might be\naddressed by any one who asked permission of the captain of his\nguards. After mass, he visited Madame de Montespan daily till the year\n1691,  [Footnote 178] and staid with her till dinner was announced.\nThis was ordinarily about half-past one. Madame de Maintenon, though\nshe supped in her own room, dined always at the king's table, sitting\nopposite him. Then followed shooting in the park, which was his\nfavorite amusement. Sometimes he hunted the stag, the wolf, or the\nwild boar; but from the time he dislocated his arm in 1683, through\nhis horse's stumbling over a rabbit-burrow, he seldom went to the\nchase mounted, but in a calash, which he drove himself, with some\nladies, and very often Madame de Maintenon. Banquets were spread in\nthe woods, and in the summer evenings gondolas with music plied on the\ncanal, and Madame de Maintenon's place was always in that of the king.\nAt six or seven he returned home, and worked or amused himself till\nten, the hour for supper; after which he passed an hour with his\nchildren, lawful and legitimized, his brother sitting in an arm-chair\nlike himself, the dauphin and the other princes standing, and the\nprincesses on tabourets. During winter at Versailles, a ball, a\ncomedy, or an _appartement_ followed every evening in regular\nsuccession. The _appartement_ was an assembly of the entire court, and\nsometimes ended with dancing, after music, chess, billiards, and all\nsorts of games.\n\n  [Footnote 178: _\"Duc de Noailles\" tome_ ii., p. 147, note. ]\n\nThere was nothing in Madame de Maintenon's temper opposed to the\nceaseless festivities of Versailles, Marly, and Fontainebleau. She\nheightened them, indeed, by the noble pleasures of the mind, which her\ninfluence could not fail to introduce. Her style of dress was\nexquisite, and elderly beyond what her age required; and while she\ntreated all around her with the utmost attention, she was altogether\nfree from airs of importance. She rose between six and seven, went\nstraight to mass, and communicated three or four times a week. While\nshe was dressing, one of her attendants read the New Testament or the\n\"Imitation of Jesus Christ;\" and during the rest of the day her\nmovements were regulated by those of the king. Whenever she was at\nliberty, she passed her mornings at Saint-Cyr, and Louis came to her\nregularly several hours before supper. She never went to him except\nwhen he was ill. Her income amounted to nearly four thousand pounds a\nyear of our money; and of this the larger part was given to the poor.\nIn vain the members of her family looked to her for promotion, in vain\nthey reproached her with forgetting the claims of kindred: \"I refer\nyou, madam,\" she wrote to the Princesse des Ursins, \"to the valley of\nJosaphat to see whether I have been a bad kinswoman. I may be\ndeceived, but I believe I have done as I ought, and that God has not\nplaced me where I am to persecute him continually for whom I wish to\nprocure that repose which he does not enjoy. No, madam, it is only in\nthe vale of Josaphat that the reasons for my conduct toward my\nrelatives will be apparent. Meanwhile, I conjure you not to condemn\nme.\"  [Footnote 179]\n\n  [Footnote 179: Letter of 16th February, 1710. ]\n\nThe poor and unfortunate had no cause for similar complaints. She gave\naway between two and three {811} thousand pounds a year. During the\nscarcity of 1694, having parted with all she had, she sold a beautiful\nring and a pair of horses, to supply the wants of the sufferers.\n\"Distribute my alms,\" she wrote to her steward, \"as quickly as you\ncan. Spare no pains, and repine at no difficulty. Circumstances\nrequire unusual charities. See if peas, beans, milk, and barley-meal,\nif anything, in short, will supply the place of the bread which is so\ndear. Do in my house as you would in your own family. I leave it in\nyour charge. Incite the people to courage and to labor. If they do not\nsow, they will reap nothing next year.\"\n\nShe often visited the needy, and relieved their wants with her own\nhand. She would put off buying anything for herself to the last\nmoment, and then say, \"There, I have taken that from the poor.\" Her\ncharity inspired others with the spirit of self-denial, and the king\nand his chief almoner often dispensed their bounty through her. But\nneither poor nor rich diverted her attention from Louis. To his ease,\nhis tastes, his sentiments--even when they shocked her--his time, and\nhis very friendships, she sacrificed everything. He was her vocation;\nand her own friends could not, as she said, but look upon her as dead\nto them. To her the king confided all; and thus the cares of state,\nthe perils of war, the intrigues of the court, cabals, petitions,\nprivate interests, and even family disputes, were continually rolling\ntheir din at her feet. Princes, princesses, ministers, and a crowd of\npersons anxious to secure their own interests, forced themselves upon\nher, and broke up all the pleasures of solitude and society, of study,\nmeditation, and correspondence, for which she pined. But she had\ncounted the cost, and bore with equanimity the absence of that perfect\nhappiness which she never expected to attain on earth. The honors\nwhich encircled her were brilliant fetters, and galled her no less\nbecause they glittered. \"I can hold out no longer,\" she said one day\nto her brother, Count d'Aubigne; \"I would that I were dead!\" The sense\nof duty was her abiding strength, and she derived consolation from\nreflecting that her elevation was not of her own seeking. The path by\nwhich she had been led was strange--so strange that she could not but\nbelieve she had a divine mission to accomplish. It was easy to\ninterpret her conduct in a worldly and ambitious sense; but when,\nsince the Master of the house was called Beelzebub, have the children\nof his household been rightly understood? Whatever is in the heart\ncomes out sooner or later in the writings, and those who read Madame\nde Maintenon in her letters, will be in no doubt as to what were her\nguiding principles. Always true to herself, she was an enigma to those\nonly who had not the key to her true character. The year of her\nmarriage was signalized by one of the most important legislative acts\nin the history of modern Europe. This was the revocation of the edict\nof Nantes, by which, eighty-seven years before, Henry IV. had, shortly\nafter his abjuration of Protestantism, terminated a long civil war by\ngranting to the Calvinists freedom of religious worship and admission\nto offices of state. The edict itself was as contrary to the spirit of\nthat age as it would be consonant with the ideas of this. Those who\nregarded each other respectively as idolaters and heretics had not yet\nlearned to live together in social and political brotherhood. The\npopes and saintly doctors of those times looked on such fraternity\nwith horror, and foresaw that, if it became general, indifference and\nwidespread infidelity would be its certain results. Events have\njustified their anticipations; and though it may be doubted whether\nthis or that act of intolerance, such as the revocation of the edict\nin question by Louis XIV., were wise and expedient under the\ncircumstances, it ought never to be forgotten that the establishment\nand maintenance of Catholic unity in a {812} kingdom redounds,\nabstractly considered, to the glory of a Christian prince. To this\nglory the government of Louis aspired; and while it is clear from\nMadame de Maintenon's correspondence that she took no active part in\nthe matter, it is evident also that she approved it, as did the nation\nin general. Voltaire concurs with the Duc de Noailles in exonerating\nher from the charge of having instigated the revocation and applauded\nits results. No traces of a spirit of persecution can be discovered in\nher character. Nothing can exceed the sweetness of disposition with\nwhich she reproved her brother, when governor of Cognac, for having\ntreated the Calvinists with needless severity. \"Have pity,\" she wrote,\n\"on persons more unfortunate than culpable. They hold the errors we\nonce held ourselves, and from which violence never withdrew us. Do not\ndisquiet them; such men must be allured by gentleness and love: Jesus\nChrist has set us the example.\"  [Footnote 180] Ruvigny, a Protestant,\nafterward made Earl of Galway by William III., spoke of her to the\nking as one who had a leaning to the Reformed religion; and though\nnothing could be more untrue, it shows that her zeal as a Catholic\ncould not have been intemperate. The king himself told her that her\ntenderness toward the Huguenots came, he thought, of her having\nformerly been one of them; and the historians of the French refugees\nin Brandeburg, Erman and Reclam, allow that she never advised the\nviolent measures that were used, and declare that she abhorred the\npersecutions consequent on the revocation. The authors of them, they\nadd, concealed them from her as far as possible, knowing that she\ndesired the adoption of no other means but instruction and kindness.\n[Footnote 181] In her conversations with the sisters at Saint-Cyr, her\nlanguage was always in conformity with these statements. The king, she\ntold them, who had a wonderful zeal for religion, pressed her to\ndismiss some Huguenots from her service, or oblige them to enter the\nfold of the Church. \"I pray you, sire,\" she replied, \"to let me be\nmistress of my own domestics, and manage them in my own way.\"\nAccordingly, she never pressed them to renounce their errors. She\nshowed them the more excellent way when ever she had an opportunity,\nand in good time had the satisfaction of seeing them all embrace the\nCatholic faith.\n\n  [Footnote 180: _Lettre a M. d' Aubigne_, 1682.]\n\n  [Footnote 181: _Tome_ i., p. 77.]\n\nIf, then, Madame de Maintenon applauded the revocation of the edict of\nNantes, she must not be held responsible for the forced conversions,\nthe dragonades, imprisonments, and emigration in which it issued. Her\napproval must be interpreted in the same sense as the brief addressed\nto Louis by Innocent XI.,   [Footnote 182] in which the pontiff\ncongratulated him on \"revoking all the ordinances issued in favor of\nheretics throughout his kingdom, and providing, by very sage edicts,\nfor the propagation of the orthodox faith.\" The immunities granted to\nthe Calvinists by Henry IV. involved, according to Ranke, a Protestant\nhistorian, \"a degree of independence which seems hardly compatible\nwith the idea of a state.\"  [Footnote 183] Religious dissent naturally\nengendered political disaffection. The Protestant assemblies in the\ntime of Louis XIII. endeavored to establish a kind of federal\nrepublic. Six times during that king's reign the Calvinists took up\narms. Richelieu maintained that nothing great could be undertaken so\nlong as the Huguenots had a footing in the kingdom. They formed a\ntreaty with Spain, with a view to their independence, and were\nregarded by the nation at large as a public enemy.\n\n  [Footnote 182: 13th November, 1685. ]\n\n  [Footnote 183: \"Lives of the Popes,\" vol. ii., p. 439.]\n\nZealously as Madame de Maintenon labored for the conversion of her own\nrelatives--particularly M. de Vilette and his children--it is no\nwonder that she concurred with the king, the clergy, and the people in\nthinking that the {813} time was come to withdraw from the Protestants\nof France privileges dangerous to religion and to the state, and to\nconcert more effective measures for their conversion. She held with\nBossuet that a Christian prince \"ought to use his authority for the\ndestruction of false religions in his realm, and that he is at liberty\nto employ rigorous measures, but that gentleness is to be preferred.\"\n[Footnote 184] She believed with Fenelon that the religious toleration\nwhich is necessary in one country may be dangerous in another--for the\nmild and loving prelate of Cambray agreed at bottom with the sterner\nBossuet on this subject.  [Footnote 185] Whether subsequent events\nvindicated the political expediency of the revocation; whether the\nevils it produced were not greater than the good it proposed; whether\nthose who recommended it would not, if furnished with our experience,\nhave wished it had never been carried into effect--are questions of\ngreat importance and interest, but foreign to the purpose of this\npaper.\n\n  [Footnote 184: _\"Politique tiree de l'Ecriture Sainte,\" livre_ vii.]\n\n  [Footnote 185: _\"Essai sur le Gouvernement civil,\" tome_ xxii.]\n\nWe have more than once alluded to Saint-Cyr, and it is time now to\ngive some account of the origin and nature of that noble institution,\nwhich perished with the monarchy and old aristocracy of France, on\nwhich it depended, and of which it was a support. Like most other\ngreat works, its beginnings were small. Before Madame de Maintenon was\nraised so near the throne, she used often to meet at the Chateau de\nMontchevreuil an Ursuline sister named Madame de Brinon, whose convent\nhad been ruined. Devoted to the work of education, this lady spent her\ndays in giving instruction to some children in the village. Her\nresources being very low, Madame de Maintenon intrusted her with the\ncare of several children whom she charitably maintained, and often\nvisited them and their mistress, first at Rueil, and afterward at\nNoisy, where the king placed a chateau at her disposal, and enabled\nher to enlarge the establishment. The daughters of poor gentlemen were\nthen admitted to the school. The king, returning from the chase one\nday, paid them an unexpected visit, and was so pleased with all he saw\nthat Madame de Maintenon had little difficulty in inducing him to\nextend his royal patronage much further, and provide means whereby two\nhundred and fifty young ladies, of noble birth and poor fortunes,\nmight be instructed, clothed, and fed, from the age of seven or twelve\nyears to twenty. The domain of Saint-Cyr was purchased; and twelve\nyoung persons belonging to the establishment, and destined for the\nmost part to a religious life, were selected as mistresses to direct\nthe larger institution. They entered on their duties after a noviciate\nof nine months, and were called _Dames de Saint Louis_. Their vows\nwere simple, had reference to the purpose in hand, and were not\nbinding for life. The young ladies were nominated by the king, and\nwere required to prove their poverty and four degrees of nobility on\nthe father's side. The final transfer of the revenues of the abbey of\nSt. Denis to the establishment of Saint-Cyr was not approved by the\nHoly See till after some years, in consequence of the dispute existing\nbetween Louis and the court of Rome. In 1689, however, Alexander VIII.\nformally authorized the foundation, and in the February of the next\nyear addressed a suitable brief to Madame de Maintenon, expressing the\nwarm interest he felt in her undertaking. Madame de Brinon was elected\nsuperior for life, but, as she did not altogether second the designs\nof the foundress, relaxed the rules, and introduced amusements which\nwere thought too worldly, a change became necessary. It was not\nwithout much patience on the part of Madame de Maintenon that the\ndifficulties were at last overcome. Madame de Montchevreuil, their\nmutual friend, was charged with a _lettre de cachet_ by which the king\ncommanded Madame de Brinon to quit {814} Saint-Cyr. She retired to the\nabbey of Maubisson, of which the Princess Louisa of Hanover was\nabbess, and there passed the remainder of her days in honorable\nretirement, and in the enjoyment of a small pension. She was fond of\ngreat personages, and of playing an important part, and this feeling\nled to her becoming the intermediary between Leibnitz and Bossuet, in\na correspondence which aimed at the reunion of Catholics and\nProtestants, and which, as might have been expected, produced no\nresults.\n\nAfter Madame de Brinon's departure, Madame de Maintenon devoted\nherself more and more to her important enterprise. As the young ladies\nwere educated for home and the world, not the cloister, they were\nindulged occasionally with dramatic representations. This gave rise to\ntwo of Racine's finest pieces. Having been requested by Madame de\nMaintenon to invent some moral or historical poem in dialogue, from\nwhich love should be excluded, he produced \"Esther,\" which was first\nacted at Saint-Cyr in 1689, in presence of the king. His majesty was\ncharmed; the prince wept. Racine had never written anything finer, or\nmore touching. Esther's prayer to Assuerus transported the audience.\nMadame de Sevigne only lamented that a little girl personated that\ngreat king. Numerous representations followed, and crowds of eager\nspectators, courtiers, ecclesiastics, literati, and religious sat\nbeside the ex-king and queen of England, to hear the pure and\nharmonious verses of Racine recited by the young, the innocent, and\nthe beautiful, to the richest and softest music Moreau could compose.\nThis success was but the forerunner of a still greater. At the request\nof Louis, Racine wrote another tragedy the following year--viz.,\n\"Athalie;\" in the opinion of French critics the most perfect of all\ntragedies. But the excitement attending the play of \"Esther\" had been\ntoo great to allow of a renewal of the experiment. The \"comedy,\" as it\nwas called, of \"Athalie\" was performed therefore by \"the blue class,\"\nwithout stage or costume, in presence only of the king, Madame de\nMaintenon, James II., and six or seven other persons, among whom was\nFenelon.\n\nIn the midst of such amusements, pride and frivolity crept into\nSaint-Cyr, and Madame de Maintenon became convinced that she had\nallowed its pupils more freedom than they could enjoy without abuse.\nReform was indispensable. The _Dames de Saint Louis_ took monastic\nvows under the rule of St. Augustin. No effort was spared to inculcate\npiety and make religion loved. Bossuet and Fenelon were frequently\ninvited to address the young people. One of the sermons thus delivered\nis found in the works of Bossuet, but the original manuscript is said\nto be in the handwriting of the Archbishop of Cambray. It bears, in\nfact, the impress of their twofold genius, but the pathos of its style\nstamps it as more peculiarly the production of Fenelon.  [Footnote 86]\n\n  [Footnote 186: _\"Duc de Noailles,\" tome_ iii., p. 140.]\n\nThe Duc de Saint-Simon, incapable of mastering ideas of a religious\norder, carps and jeers at Madame de Maintenon as one who thought\nherself an \"universal abbess.\" Those who carefully examine the annals\nof Saint-Cyr, and weigh the difficulties that arose from the various\ncharacters of the superiors chosen, the tendency at one time to relax\nand at another to overstrain the religious education of the pupils,\nwill arrive at the conclusion that few ladies in an exalted position,\nand in the midst of all that is most worldly, ever possessed so much\nof that wise and loving spirit of government which should distinguish\nan abbess, as the wife, friend, companion, and counsellor of Louis\nXIV. One might almost say that Saint-Cyr was the passion of her life.\nWhen at Versailles she went there daily, and often arrived at six in\nthe morning. The young ladies, scarcely yet awake, had the joy of\nseeing her beloved and {815} revered figure among them in the sleeping\napartments; and she frequently helped to dress the little ones and\ncomb their hair, with unaffected and maternal kindness. The\nunremitting attention she gave to the establishment was soon rewarded,\nand its beneficial effects on society were placed beyond all doubt.\nThe pupils and mistresses alike of Saint-Cyr were held in great\nesteem, and many of them, scattered through the kingdom, filled\nimportant educational and conventual posts; while in Hungary, Austria,\nRussia, and the Milanese, institutions were formed on its model. By\ninteresting the king in its details, and inducing him to visit it very\noften, Madame de Maintenon partly secured the other great aim of her\nexistence, namely, his amusement.\n\nOf all the errors that have, from time to time, insinuated themselves\ninto the minds of Catholics, none has worn a more plausible and poetic\naspect than Quietism. It crept into Saint-Cyr under the auspices of\nMadame de la Maisonfort, a person of a peculiarly imaginative and\nmystic temperament. She discoursed with like fluency with Racine and\nFenelon, and always appeared brimful of intelligence and devotional\nfeelings. Madame de Maintenon had received her as a friend, and hailed\nwith delight her resolution to adopt a religious habit and become one\nof the _Dames de Saint Louis_. She made her profession in 1692, and by\nmoderating her vivacity for a time deceived others, and perhaps\nherself also. Errors akin to those of Molinos were then spreading\nfast, and Madame Guyon, their chief propagandist, happened to be a\nrelation of Madame de la Maisonfort. When the former lady was arrested\nfor the first time in 1688, her kinswoman and Madame de Maintenon\ninterceded for her. After this she often visited Saint-Cyr, and\ngradually became intimate with the ladies engaged in the institution.\nHer manuscripts were eagerly read, and a chosen few who were first\ninitiated in their mysteries inoculated others with the subtle poison,\nuntil all the novices, one confessor, the lay-sisters, and many under\ninstruction, abandoning themselves, as they believed, to the sole\nguidance of the Holy Spirit, practiced all kinds of mystic devotion,\ntalked incessantly the pious jargon of Quietism, looked down upon\nthose who could not embrace the new tenets, and strangely forgot their\nvows of obedience to superiors. Nothing was heard but the praises of\npure love, holy indifference, inactive contemplation, passive prayer,\nand that entire abandonment of one's self to God which exempts us from\ncaring about anything, and even from being anxious about our own\nsalvation.  [Footnote 187] Fenelon, by his intimacy with Madame Guyon,\nwhose director he was, lent life and vigor to these extravagant ideas.\n\n  [Footnote 187: Madame Guyon herself disowned many of the monstrous\n  conclusions of the Quietists, while her own opinions were in excess\n  of those of Fenelon.]\n\nHis elevation to the see of Cambray, in 1695, was regarded by them as\nthe triumph of their cause, and Saint-Cyr bade fair to rival Port\nRoyal as a stronghold of suspected tenets. But episcopal authority\ninterfered at last, and through the remonstrances of the Bishop of\nChartres, Madame Guyon was dismissed, and her books were forbidden.\nShe continued, however, to correspond with the inmates of Saint-Cyr;\nand when, in December, 1695, she was imprisoned anew, they exhorted\neach other to remain firm and endure the coming persecution. Bossuet\nhimself, at the request of Madame de Maintenon, now fully alive to the\ndanger, came to assist in extinguishing the nascent error, while\nFenelon, on the contrary, defended his own and Madame Guyon's opinions\nfrom what he considered to be exaggerated charges, and wrote his\nfamous _\"Maximes des Saints\"_ in opposition to Bossuet's _\"Etats d'\nOraison.\"_ It is a question whether Bossuet was not led, in the zeal\nof his antagonism, to make indefensible statements of a different\ntendency. Fenelon, in fact, charged him with so doing, and the spirit\n{816} displayed by the Bishop of Meaux in defending himself and\nprosecuting the condemnation of his former friend, does not present\nthe most pleasing incident in the great Bossuet's career. Perhaps\nFenelon has won more glory by his ready and humble submission to the\nultimate decision of the Holy See than has Bossuet by his zeal in\nprocuring a just censure on Fenelon's errors. The temper and ability\nwith which Fenelon pleaded his cause began to enlist public opinion in\nhis favor. He utterly disclaimed all participation in the errors of\nQuietism, and said he could easily have calmed the heated minds of the\nsisters of Saint-Cyr, and have brought them in all docility under\ntheir bishop's yoke.  [Footnote 188] But Bossuet invoked the authority\nof the king, the decision of his brother prelates, and the judgment of\nthe Holy See. The Bishop of Chartres, on making a personal inquiry\ninto the state of things, required that not only Madame Guyon's\nwritings, but those of Fenelon himself, should be delivered into his\nhands. Whatever the merits of the question in other respects, and\nwhatever opinion may be formed of the respective teaching of these two\ngreat men, there can be no doubt that the _\"Maximes des Saints\"_ had\nfostered prevailing errors. The king expressed great displeasure at\nthe course events had taken, and by a _lettre de cachet_ in 1698\nordered Madame de la Maisonfort and another lady to quit the\nestablishment, and all other infected persons to be removed. They\npassed the night in tears in the superior's apartment; and the next\nday Madame de Maintenon come to console the community for their loss.\nIf she erred at all throughout this perplexing affair, it was by\nover-indulgence and by forbearing too long. When her duty became clear\nand imperative, she was never undecided, nor showed any inclination to\nencourage novelties in religion.\n\n  [Footnote 188: _\"Duc de Noailles,\" tome_ iii., p. 241.]\n\nA history of Madame de Maintenon, however detailed, must always be\nwanting in those personal traits which distinguish most striking\nbiographies, and this for the simple reason that her habits and\ndisposition were retiring, and her daily effort was to throw a veil\nover herself. That her influence in the long run was enhanced by this\nmodesty, no one can doubt; yet it is not on that account the less\ntrue, that in the scenes through which she passed it is difficult to\nseize and depict her individually. We must, nevertheless, endeavor to\ngive some idea of her relations with the royal family, by some of whom\nshe was beloved, by others hated, and by all held in high\nconsideration. Monsieur, the king's brother, liked and respected her\nfor Louis' sake, to whom he was sincerely attached; but it was far\notherwise with Madame. A Bavarian by birth, she was completely German\nin her tastes, and in the midst of Parisian splendor sighed for her\nhome beyond the Rhine. She was, she said, a hermit in a crowd, and\npassed her days in utter loneliness. She was a Protestant at heart,\nintensely masculine, and had little sympathy with Madame de\nMaintenon's quiet mode of life. So fond was she of the chase, that she\ncontinued to follow it, though she had been thrown from her horse\nsix-and-twenty times. Madame de Maintenon was her special aversion,\nand this antipathy arose principally from her national prejudices\nagainst unequal marriages. The king's wife was, in her view, an\nupstart, and the credit she had obtained at court did not diminish\nthis impression. She spoke with contempt of her piety as mere\nhypocrisy, and laid to her charge every species of enormity. She had\npandered to the dauphin's profligacy; killed the dauphiness by means\nof her accoucheur; led the young Duchess of Bourgogne into sin;\nmonopolized corn during a famine to enrich herself; and never dreamed\nof anything but her own pleasures and ambition; she had poisoned\nLouvois and, nobody knew why, the architect Mansart; she, with Pere\n{817} la Chaise, had instigated the persecution of the Protestants;\nshe had set fire to the chateau of Luneville; and, from her retreat at\nSaint-Cyr, fomented conspiracies against the regent! Truly the poison\nof asps was under the lips of Madame Elizabeth of Bavaria. The\ndauphiness, on the other hand, neglected by her dissolute husband,\nmade Madame de Maintenon her friend, and found consolation in pouring\nher troubles into her ear, and listening in return to her sage and\ntender counsels. After ten years of sickness and sorrow in her married\nlife, she died of consumption in 1690. \"See,\" said the king to her\nunworthy partner, \"what the grandeur of this world comes to! This is\nwhat awaits you and me. God grant us the grace to die as holily as she\nhas done!\"\n\nThe pages of French history present few pictures more replete with\ngrandeur and interest than the retreat of the great Conde at\nChantilly. Crowned with the laurels of a hundred victories, the\nprincely veteran there gathered around him a more distinguished staff\nthan had ever sat in his councils of war--men who, endued with\nintellectual might and moral greatness, were to achieve lasting\nconquests in the realm of mind. Profoundly skilled himself in history,\nphilosophy, art, science, and even theology, he loved to entertain\nthose who, in various ways, had devoted their lives to the triumph of\nknowledge and reflection over ignorance and sensuality. All that was\nnoblest in birth and cultivated in mind met together in his\norangeries, and sauntered among his gardens and fountains. There the\nmost eminent prelates of their time were seen side by side with the\ngreatest dramatists, historians, and poets. There was Flechier and\nFleury; there La Fontaine, Boileau, and Moliere; there Rapin and Huet,\nLa Bruyere and Bossuet. There wit sparkled and wisdom shone as\nincessantly as the jets and cascades that rose and fell in light and\nmusic by night and day. Thither came often the entire court, and with\nit Madame de Maintenon, a star among stars, brilliant but retiring, to\nenhance the glory of the illustrious and aged chief. There, honored by\nthe king and closeted with him daily, as at Versailles and elsewhere,\nshe could not fail to receive the willing homage of every member of\nthe house of Conde. There, too, after the general's death, she saw her\nformer pupil, the king's daughter, Mademoiselle de Nantes, espoused to\nConde's grandson; and thus, as time went on, she watched the career of\nthose whom she had educated, and who formed the more noble alliances\nbecause the king had raised them to the rank of royal princesses.\nNever did any lady occupy a more remarkable and in some respects a\nmore enviable position than herself. \"There never was a case like it,\"\nsays Madame de Sevigne, \"and there never will be such a one again.\"\nShe united the most opposite conditions. By her union with Louis she\nwas all but queen, and by her admirable tact exerted over state\naffairs a far greater influence than belongs in general to a\nsovereign's consort. She had been the servant of that very king of\nwhom she was now the helpmate; a wise instructress to his children,\nand a mother in her affection and care. At one moment she was acting\nabbess, controlling the complicated irregularities which had crept\ninto the religious and secular economy of Saint-Cyr, and at another\nshe was mediating as peace-maker in the family quarrels and petty\njealousies of pampered courtiers, or by her sage counsels arresting\nthe ravages of war, and rescuing harmless populations from the scourge\nof fire and sword. Children loved to hear her voice, and hung upon her\nsmiles; the poor and afflicted were fain to touch the hem of her\ngarment, for they felt that virtue went forth from her; none were so\ngreat as to look down upon her; none so lowly as to think that she\ndespised them. Her sovereignty over others was that to which men\nrender the most willing obedience--the sovereignty, not merely of\nstation or {818} intellect, but of character of sterling worth, of\nwisdom learned in the school of suffering, of virtue tried like gold\nin the fire.\n\nAs Madame de Maintenon's talents and merits prevented her being lost\nin a crowd of courtiers, or in any way identified with them, so, on\nthe other hand, her affectionate disposition kept her from being\nisolated and closing herself round against any intrusion of private\nfriendship. So far from it, she had with her a select group of ladies\nwho were called her familiars, who shared with her, in a measure, the\nking's intimacy, accompanied her in her walks and drives at Marly, and\nwere her guests at the dinners and suppers she gave at Versailles and\nTrianon. They were in some sort her ladies of honor, though, like\nherself, without any visible distinction. Of these the principal were\nMadame de Montchevreuil and Madame d'Heudicourt, both old friends, and\nwith them nine others, among whom were her two nieces, Mesdames de\nMailly and de Caylus. To each of these a history attaches; for the\nconstant companions of so extraordinary a woman could not but have\nspecial attractions and remarkable qualities. There were in this\nnumber those who had drunk deeply of the intoxicating cup of worldly\npleasure, and having drained its poisonous dregs, thirsted for the\nfountain of living waters. It was Madame de Maintenon's especial care\nto encourage such friends in their heavenly aspirations, and lead\nthem, in the midst of the court, to enter the devotional life. Often\nshe called the fervent Fenelon to her assistance, and his letters\naddressed to Madame de Grammont are a lasting proof of the readiness\nwith which he answered to the call. If, as all her contemporaries\nassure us, it was impossible to combine more that was pleasing and\nsolid in conversation than did Madame de Maintenon--if, in her case,\nreason, as Fenelon expressed it, spoke by the lips of the Graces--how\nadmirable must she have appeared when she directed her powers of\npersuasion to the highest and most blessed of all ends! Neither pen\nnor pencil can adequately recall the charms which surrounded her; but\nthe captive heart of Louis and the unanimous voice of the richest and\nmost lettered court in Europe attest their reality and power. In her\nceaseless efforts to amuse the king, his immortal interests were never\nlost sight of; and if she spoke to him comparatively seldom on the\nsubject, it was because it occupied all her thoughts. Out of the\nabundance of the heart the lips are often mute.\n\nIn 1686 Louis suffered extreme pain and incurred great danger from a\ntumor, which at last required an operation. This circumstance brought\nMadame de Maintenon's capacity for nursing into full play. It was she\nwho watched by his bedside, and alleviated the sufferings of the\nnation's idol. The surgery of that day was wretched, and the operation\nfor fistula which had to be performed was attended with great danger.\nIntense solicitude prevailed through the country; for, in spite of all\nefforts to prevent anxiety, the report spread rapidly that the king's\nlife was in peril. The churches were thronged, and the people's\nattachment found vent in prayer. The royal patient alone was unmoved.\nThe _grande operation_, as it was called, had been decided on six\nweeks previously, and the evening before it was to take place he\nwalked in his gardens as usual, and then slept soundly through the\nnight, as if nothing were to happen. On waking he commended himself to\nGod, and submitted to the painful operation with the utmost coolness.\nLouvois held his hand, and Madame de Maintenon was in the room. In the\nafternoon he sent for his ministers, and continued to hold councils\ndaily, though the surgeon's knife cruelly renewed the incisions\nseveral times. \"It is in God,\" wrote Madame de Maintenon, \"that we\nmust place our trust; for men know not what they say, nor what they\ndo.\" The fourteen physicians of {819} Charles II. were still more\nunskilful in his last illness,  [Footnote 189] and justify equally the\nopinion of the Northern Farmer:\n\n  \"Doctors, they knaws nowt, for a says what's nawways true:\n  Naw soort a' koind o' use to saaey the things that a do.\"\n\n  [Footnote 189: \"The king was in a chair--they had placed a hot iron\n  on his head, and they held his teeth open by force.\" Agnes\n  Strickland's \"Lives of the Queens of England;\" vol. viii., p. 447.\n\n  \"A loathsome volatile salt, extracted from human skulls, was forced\n  into his mouth.\" Macaulay's \"History of England,\" chap. iv.. 1685.]\n\nIn the case of Louis, however, the operator Felix answered to his\nname. A cure was effected, and the kingdom was filled with\ndemonstrations of joy. \"Every one,\" as Madame de Maintenon wrote, \"was\nin raptures. Father Bourdaloue preached a most beautiful sermon.\nToward the close he addressed the king. He spoke to him of his health,\nhis love for his people, and the fears of his court. He caused many\ntears to be shed; he shed them himself. It was his heart that spoke,\nand he touched all hearts. You know well what I mean.\" After dining\nwith the citizens of Paris at the Hotel de Ville, Louis drove through\nevery quarter amid the loudest acclamations. \"The king,\" wrote his\nwife again, \"has never been in such a good humor as since he has\nwitnessed the enthusiastic love the capital bears toward him. I very\nmuch like his sentiments: perhaps they will inspire him with the\ndesign of relieving his people.\" Absolute as the sovereignty of Louis\nwas, his subjects delighted in his rule. He was the last of a long\nline who, century after century, had formed the nation out of the\nconfusion of feudal times, and had, of all kings, the best right to\nsay, if indeed he ever did say,  [Footnote 190]  _\"L'etat, c'est\nmoi!\"_\n\n  [Footnote 190: See _\"Duc de Noailles,\" tome_ iii., p. 668.]\n\nIn him the state was summed up, and the kingdom was impersonated in\nhim. The soldier expiring on the battlefield cried _\"Vive le roi!\"_\nand vessels have gone down at sea with the entire crew shouting the\nsame words; for _\"Vive le roi!\"_ was, in their minds, equivalent to\n_\"Vive la France!\"_ The government of Louis XIV., though despotic,\nwas, on the whole, marked by moderation, particularly after the death\nof Louvois; and if sometimes, seduced by the glory of foreign\nconquests and the love of regal display he forgot the interests of his\npeople and the misery his magnificence entailed on them, Madame de\nMaintenon was always near to counteract the arrogant minister, urge\ncounsels of peace, and heal the bleeding wounds of a loyal population.\nYet she was far from being a meddling politician, Her advice was not\noffered, but asked. She abstained from entering into details, and\nconfined herself to general suggestions of a moral character, dictated\nby conscience, not ambition. If she guided, or, rather, gently\ndisposed, the king to this or that measure, she was in turn guided\nherself. Her correspondence with the Abbe Gobelin, Fenelon, and the\nBishop of Chartres sufficiently proves that her highest ambition was\nto be a servant of God. That Racine, of whom she was the friend and\npatroness, should extol her in his verse  [Footnote 191] is not\nsurprising; but the satirist Boileau, be it remembered, was no less\nher eulogist. If Byron's beautiful lines on Kirke White had the more\nweight because they occurred in his most biting satire, something of\nthe same kind may be said of Boileau's testimony to Madame de\nMaintenon:\n\n  [Footnote 191: \"Esther,\" act ii., scene vii.]\n\n  \"J'en sais une, cherie et du monde et de Dieu;\n  Humble dans les grandeurs, sage dana la fortune:\n  Qui gemit comme Esther de sa gloire importune;\n  Que le vice lui-meme est contraint d'estimer,\n  Et que, sur ce tableau, d'abord tu sais nonmer.\"\n    [Footnote 192]\n\n  [Footnote 192: \"I know one beloved of God and man, who is humble in\n  her grandeur and wise in her good fortune; who groans like Esther\n  over her trying glory; whom vice itself is compelled to respect; and\n  whom, on seeing this picture, you will name in an instant.\" Satire\n  X.]\n\nThe Duc de Noailles is not the only member of the French Academy who\nhas arisen of late years to refute the calumnies of Saint-Simon. M.\nSaint-Marc Girardin has ably defended the {820} victim of his\nmalignity in the _Journal des Debats_,  [Footnote 193] and Messieurs\nRigault, de Pontmartin, Monty, Chasles, and Hocquet, have pursued\nsuccessfully the same generous and equitable course.\n\n  [Footnote 193: 4th and 16th October, 1856.]\n\nWhen James II., in December, 1688, fled from his kingdom, the\nsympathies of more than half the French people were enlisted on his\nside. Ignorant of the British constitution, they knew little of the\nperil it had incurred through the king's extraordinary extension of\nthe dispensing power, and they saw in the landing and success of the\nPrince of Orange nothing but a horrible domestic tragedy, in which,\nthrough personal ambition and hatred of the true religion, a Catholic\nsovereign was hurled from his throne by an unnatural daughter and\nson-in-law. They joined, therefore, without any misgiving, in the\ncordial reception given to the royal fugitives by Louis, and desired\nnothing so much as to make common cause with them, and take vengeance\non their foes. Madame de Maintenon was not among those who pressed\nwith all ceremony into the presence of the exiled king and queen; but\nshe visited them in private, and was received as became her station.\nThe compassion she felt for their fate, her respectful address and\nChristian consolations, so won upon Mary Beatrice, that a lasting\nfriendship was formed between the queen in name, not in reality, and\nthe queen in reality, not in name. It continued without interruption\nduring five-and-twenty years, and was cemented by unity of sentiments\nand mutual services. The ex-queen had married in her fifteenth year,\nand had overcome, by the advice of her mother and the Pope, her desire\nto devote herself to a religious life.  [Footnote 194] Whatever may\nhave been her trials in a convent, they could hardly have equalled\nthose which befel her as queen. A hundred and forty-five of her\nletters to Madame de Maintenon are extant, and the readers of Miss\nStrickland's \"Lives\" are familiar with the Chaillot correspondence, in\nwhich the desolate and sorrowful queen pours forth the fulness of her\nsensitive heart, and never tires of expressing her love and esteem for\nthat remarkable friend whom Providence has led across her thorny path.\nOften Madame de Maintenon repaired to Saint-Germain to visit her, and\nstill more frequently the latter came to Versailles to see Madame de\nMaintenon. It was some relief to escape for a time from that downcast,\ndreary court in exile, where a crowd of poor but faithful followers\ngathered around a master equally wrong-headed and unfortunate. The\nsemblance of royalty which was there kept up only increased the\nsadness of the place, and fostered those jealousies, intrigues, and\ncabals of which a banished court is so often the parent and victim.\n\n  [Footnote 194: _\"Duc de Noailles,\" tome_ iv., p. 231.]\n\nA powerful coalition, in the creation of which the Prince of Orange\nwas the chief agent, had long been menacing France, and was now\nactually formed. Louis found himself opposed to the greater part of\nEurope, for the Emperor Leopold, the Germanic and Batavian\nfederations, the kings of Spain and Sweden, and the Pope himself,\nobliged to act on the defensive, adhered to the league of Augsburg.\n[Footnote 195]\n\n  [Footnote 195: _\"Duc de Noailles,\"_ p. 253. ]\n\nThree powerful armies were sent by the king of France to the seat of\nwar. The mission of one of them was to capture Philipsburg; and from\nthe camp before that stronghold the king's brother wrote many letters\nto Madame de Maintenon, describing the operations in progress. The Duc\ndu Maine also, once her pupil, and now in his eighteenth year, wrote\nto her from time to time, and received thankfully the advice she\noffered him with all a mother's solicitude. The second of the three\narmies was charged with the devastation of the Palatinate, and\nfulfilled the part assigned it with distressing precision. If its soil\nwas not to supply the French, it must {821} furnish nought to the\nGermans. It was a perfect garden, and Duras received orders to reduce\nit to a wilderness. Half a million of human beings were warned that in\nthree days their houses would be burned and their fields laid waste.\nFiercely the flames went up from city and hamlet, and the fugitives\nsank with fatigue and hunger in the snow, or, escaping beyond the\nborders, filled the towns of Europe with squalid beggary. Every\norchard was hewn down, every vine and almond tree was destroyed. The\ncastle of the Elector Palatine was a heap of ruins; the stones of\nManheim were hurled into the Rhine. The cathedral of Spires and the\nmarble sepulchres of eight Caesars were no more; and the fair city of\nTreves was doomed to the same cruel fate. It was time for the voice of\nmercy to speak. Marshal Duras had already written to Louvois,\n[Footnote 196] to remonstrate against the barbarous orders he was\ncompelled to execute, and Madame de Maintenon herself is said to have\ninterceded with Louis for the suffering people of the Rhine. The Duc\nde Noailles, indeed, does not state this, like Macaulay,  [Footnote\n197] as matter of history, though he allows that it is probably true;\nand this variety in the views of the two historians, each anxious to\ndo justice in this particular to the king's wife, proves how difficult\nit is for even the most sagacious and unprejudiced writers to arrive\nat the exact truth in reference to bygone days. Macaulay is certainly\ninclined to attribute to Madame de Maintenon a much larger measure of\npolitical power than she really exercised; and it is curious to\nobserve the chain of pure assumptions by which, having taken it for\ngranted that she \"governed\" Louis, he arrives at the conclusion that\nshe induced him to recognize the Pretender as James III.   [Footnote\n198] In a letter written [Footnote 199] soon after the taking of\nPhilipsburg, she seems to disclaim all active interference in state\naffairs. In speaking of Louvois, she says that she never contradicted\nhim, and adds, \"People think that I govern the kingdom, and they do\nnot know that I am convinced God has bestowed on me so many favors\nonly that I may seek more earnestly the king's salvation. I pray God\ndaily to enlighten and sanctify, him.\" But it is evident how\ncompletely an earnest recommendation to Louis to spare Treves, and\nstay the ravages in the Palatinate, may have tallied with that unique\nand hallowed purpose. Have not those from whom such truculent orders\nemanate a terrible account to render? Has not she who dissuades a\nruler from an iniquitous measure done something toward saving his\nsoul?\n\n  [Footnote 196: 21st May, 1689.]\n\n  [Footnote 197: Hist., chap, xi., 1689.]\n\n  [Footnote 198: Hist, chap, xxv, 1701.]\n\n  [Footnote 199: 4th October, 1688.]\n\nThere are stories afloat respecting Madame de Maintenon, and in\neverybody's mouth, which the Duc de Noailles scarcely condescends to\nnotice. That she who always spoke and wrote of Louis in terms of\naffectionate homage should have seriously committed herself to such\nassertions, as that her daily task ever since her marriage was to\namuse a king who could not be amused, and that he was so selfish that\nhe never loved anything but himself, is an improbability as\ninconsistent with her character and policy as it is at variance with\nthe facts of the case. That in his latter years her life was\nembittered by his fretful and querulous temper, and by the fits of\npassion into which he often fell, and that in one of her letters\nwritten at that period she complains of the difficulty of amusing him,\nis undoubtedly true; but this and similar complaints ought not to be\nstretched beyond their natural meaning, and made to tell too severely\nagainst the king. When, in the early part of 1691, Louis appeared in\nthe camp before Mons, his wife, separated from him for the first time\nsince their marriage, retired to Saint-Cyr, alarmed at the dangers he\nwas about to incur, and unable to conceal her sadness. Consolatory\nletters poured in upon her from all quarters, especially {822} from\nher spiritual friends and advisers--the Abbe Gobelin, the Bishop of\nChartres, and Fenelon. But, \"the selfish monarch who could not be\namused,\" did he, amid the bustle of a siege, find time to write to a\nlady fifty-five years old, whose only business had been to amuse him\nor fail in the attempt? He did; and that not once now and then; not\nbriefly and drily, as a matter of form; not like a man who had little\nto say, and still less attachment, to the person to whom he said it.\nNo; every day in her solitude Madame de Maintenon was consoled by\nseeing a royal dragoon ride into the court-yard with a letter for her\nfrom his majesty, and almost every day with one from the king's\nbrother also. Nor was this all; the king, \"who had never loved any one\nbut himself,\" proved that there was at least one exception to this\nrule, and that he loved his wife. In 1692 she joined him at Mons, by\nhis command, in company with other ladies of the court, and followed\nhim to the siege of Namur. Amusements were not wanting in the royal\ncamp. The king and his courtiers dined to the music of timbrels,\ntrumpets, and hautboys, and he reviewed his troops in the presence of\ncarriages full of fair faces. But, with all this, he visited the\ndifferent quarters so diligently, and inspected so closely the works\nand trenches, riding continually within range of the enemy's guns,\nthat his wife had almost as much anxiety for his safety as when she\npondered at a distance the cruel chances of war.\n\nIn spite of his many faults, there was much in Louis XIV. to captivate\nthe imagination of one like Madame de Maintenon. \"No prince,\" says the\nDuke of Berwick,  [Footnote 200] \"was ever so little known as this\nmonarch. He has been represented as a man not only cruel and false,\nbut difficult of access. I have frequently had the honor of audiences\nfrom him, and have been very familiarly admitted to his presence; and\nI can affirm that his pride is only in appearance. He was born with an\nair of majesty, which struck every one so much, that nobody could\napproach him without being seized with awe and respect; but as soon as\nyou spoke to him, he softened his countenance, and put you quite at\nease. He was the most polite man in his kingdom; and his answers were\naccompanied by so many obliging expressions, that, if he granted your\nrequest, the obligation was doubled by the manner of conferring it;\nand if he refused, you could not complain.\"\n\n  [Footnote 200:  Memoirs, vol. ii.]\n\nMadame de Maintenon's campaigning life was not altogether free from\ndisagreeables. On one occasion, writing from Dinant,  [Footnote 201]\nshe relates how they encountered more difficulty in retiring from\nNamur than in approaching it. They were eleven hours and a half on the\nroad, and wholly unprovided with food. She arrived at her journey's\nend exhausted with hunger and suffering also from rheumatism and\nheadache; but, it being an abstinence day, the only repast that\nawaited her was oil-soup. The king likewise, though throughout the\ncampaign he dined ordinarily with all the sumptuousness of Versailles,\nfound himself obliged sometimes to partake of a cold collation under a\nhedge, without quitting his travelling carriage. Warfare would be an\neasy calling if such were its worst hardships.\n\n  [Footnote 201: 12th June, 1693.]\n\nIn Flanders, as in France, Madame de Maintenon continued to take the\nmost lively interest in the course of events, martial, political, and\nsocial. Proximity to the scene of action did not induce her to exceed\nthose limits of reserve which she had long since marked out for\nherself. Though informed of all that happened, and forming a sound\njudgment on almost every occurrence, though earnestly desiring peace\nrather than aggrandizement, and justice rather than glory, she\nobtruded no views of her own in the cabinet of the king, nor even\ninfluenced the choice of generals. It was her habit of close\nobservation, and her exact description {823} of all that passed, which\nmade Napoleon Bonaparte delight in reading her correspondence, and\npronounce it superior to that of Madame de Sevigne, because it had\nmore in it. Madame de Maintenon speaks in one place of her own style\nas \"dry and succinct;\" and, indeed, were it not for the piety which\nconstantly breathes through them, her letters would often read like\nthe despatches of a general. She is brief, terse, sententious; her\nmind being evidently bent on things rather than on words. As a\nletter-writer, she resembles Napoleon himself more than any other\nFrench authoress. Her style is free from that vacillation, that timid\nadoption of a definite line, which always indicates a weak thinker and\na total absence of system in the mind. Had it been otherwise, she\nwould never have stood so high in the esteem of foreign courts, nor\nwould princes and sovereigns, such as the Elector of Cologne, the Duc\nde Lorraine, and his mother, Queen Eleanor, have written to ask favors\nat her hands.\n\nThe reign of Louis XIV. lasted so long, that neither his son nor\ngrandson ever sat on the throne. If the latter, the Duc de Bourgogne,\nhad not died in his thirtieth year, he might, as the once docile pupil\nof Fenelon and Madame de Maintenon, have fulfilled his promises of\nexcellence, and have left to his successors a rich inheritance of\nwisdom. \"Telemachus\" was not composed expressly for him in vain. He\nwas born in 1682, and at an early age was affianced to Marie-Adelaide\nof Savoy. The princess was at that time only eleven years old, and\nwas, by the marriage contract, to remove to France, and be wedded in\nthe ensuing year. The union of the young couple was celebrated in\n1697, but on account of their extreme youth they continued to live\napart two years longer. During this time, Madame de Maintenon\nundertook to complete Marie-Adelaide's education. The instructress was\nworthy of a princess destined, as it was believed, to govern France.\nAll day she sat by her when sick, and Racine read Plutarch's \"Lives\"\nto her during the pauses of the night; Bossuet was her chaplain, and\nDangeau, whose manuscript memoirs of Louis' court have proved so\nuseful to historians,  [Footnote 202] was her knight of honor. She was\nthe delight of all around, and so charmed the king, that he was never\nwilling to part with her. But there were no apartments Marie-Adelaide\nso much loved to frequent as those of Madame de Maintenon. Severe as\nher admonitions often were, she possessed in the highest degree the\nart of attaching young persons to her, and inspired them insensibly\nwith taste, wisdom, and nobility of mind. She had long been convinced\nthat the education of princes was conducted, generally, in such a way\nas to prepare them for habitual _ennui_. They learned and saw\neverything in childhood, and, when grown up, had nothing fresh to see\nor learn. She withdrew her, therefore, as far as possible from the\ncourt, and submitted her to the simple and wholesome routine of\nSaint-Cyr. The princess proved extremely docile, and her amiability\nwas as striking as her diligence. The society of the religious in\nSaint-Cyr, so far from putting a constraint on her lively and winning\nways, seemed only to fit her more completely to be the pet companion\nof Louis XIV. Her sprightly talk, her opening mind, her elegant\nsimplicity, amused him in his walks and drives, in the gardens, the\ngalleries, and the chase; and while he contrived daily some new\ndiversion for the fascinating child, he could not but trace in her the\nhappy results of Madame de Maintenon's unwearied attention. She\nentered into all her childish pleasures, and even played hide-and-seek\nwith her, that she might, as she said afterward, gain her ear for\nserious truths, and by yielding all she could, have the better reason\nfor withholding what would have been hurtful. At last--nor was the\ntime long--Marie-Adelaide quitted Madame de Maintenon's embrace, and\nwith her heavenly counsels {824} graven on her memory, and given in\nwriting into her hands, bidding farewell to the hallowed cloisters of\nSaint-Cyr, and to her daily gambols and prattle with the loving and\nindulgent king, she took her place beside her destined bridegroom, and\n\"entered other realms of love.\"\n\n [Footnote 202: They were first published entire in 1856.]\n\nSuch was the woman of whom the worldly and sceptical speak jeeringly\nas the proud widow of Scarron; the intriguing, austere, ambitious\nMarquise de Maintenon; the persecutrix of Huguenots, and the despot of\nher royal spouse. They know not what they speak, nor whereof they\naffirm; for they are incapable of estimating the character of the\nrighteous. Outward acts are to them an enigma and a stumbling-block,\nbecause the soul and its guiding principles cannot be seen. A true\nChristian, such as Madame de Maintenon, is an object of faith, as is\nthe Church, and as was the Church's Lord in the days of his\nhumiliation. Seated, to say the least, on the footstool of the throne,\nand surrounded by all the pomp and circumstance of royal life, she was\nto jaundiced eyes but one in a crowd of princes and courtiers, and\ndiffering from them only in that she was more astute; but, seen as the\nprelates of Cambray and Meaux saw her--seen as her letters and\nconversations with the nuns of Saint-Cyr exhibit her--seen as the Duc\nde Noailles describes her, and \"time, the beautifier of the dead,\" has\nrendered her--she was using this world and not abusing it; seeking\nsociety only to improve it, and solitude only to pray; holding all she\npossessed in fealty to her unseen King, and making every occupation\nsubordinate to that of loosening her affections from earthly vanities,\nand fastening them wholly upon God. The Duc de Noailles' history does\nnot end with the fourth volume. It leaves Madame de Maintenon in her\nsixty-second year--two-and-twenty years before her death. To trace her\nintercourse with Louis during the long and disastrous war with Spain,\ncalled the War of the Succession--her counsels and influence during\nthe defeats by Marlborough and Prince Eugene, and the triumphant\nreprisals of Vendome and Villars--her grief at the king's death in\n1715, when she had reached her eightieth year--her retirement to the\nlong-loved shades of Saint-Cyr--her devotion and zeal heightening as\nage advanced, and the celestial goal was neared--her conversations\nwith the sisters, and her letters to the Princesse des Ursins--to\nanalyze her correspondence, and her _vade-mecum_ as published by M.\nBonhomme--to record the pillage of Saint-Cyr, and the outrage done to\nher venerable remains, as to those of the royal dead in St. Denis, by\nthe frantic revolutionists of 1792--would supply ample materials for\nanother article, but would only confirm the views already formed of\nher prevailing character and principles. Enough, perhaps, has been\nsaid to place our readers on their guard against the malice and\nfictions of the Duc de Saint-Simon and a host of detractors who rely\ntoo readily on his word, and to dispose them favorably toward a most\njudicious and remarkable history, which does honor to the French\nAcademy and the illustrious house of de Noailles.\n\n------\n\n{825}\n\n\nFrom All The Year Round.\n\nA DUBLIN MAY MORNING.\n\n\nWhen I look down on this gay May morning from a window into Great\nSackville street, where there is a huge column to Admiral Nelson, and\na golden shop-front board dedicated to O'Connell, on the site for his\nstatue, and which is by-and-by to be made into a French boulevard and\nplanted with trees--I say, on this May morning it is easy to see that\none of the many great days for Ireland has come round once more. For\nthe crowds in the great thoroughfares, and the \"boys\" sitting on the\nbridges, and the flags and streamers, and the rolling carriages, and\nthe general air of busy idleness, tell me that a great festival is\ntoward; and placards in fiercely carbuncled letters proclaim in an\nangry fit of St. Anthony's fire that the Prince of Wales is to \"OPEN\"\nsomething: which something a still greater scorbutic operation of type\ntells us is THE DUBLIN EXHIBITION OF 1865.\n\nNot without charms, and marked and special features of its own, is\nthis Dublin city--to say nothing of the fresh and fair Irish faces and\nviolet eyes which pass by in streams, or of the cheerful voices and\nthe gay laughs heard at every turn; or of the giant policemen who wear\nmoustaches and beards, and thus compete on more favorable terms with\nmilitary rivals; or of the rollicking drivers, who stand up as they\ndrive, very like the _cocchieri_ of Rome, and who look out for \"fares\"\nin a debonnaire indifferent fashion. There is a gay, busy, foreign,\nparticolored look about the place, which reminds one of a foreign\ntown. The background is composed of wide spacious streets, Grecian\nbuildings wonderfully classic in tone and shape, fitted into corners\nwith porticoes that belong _to_ the street, and under which the people\nwalk--pretty breaks where the bridges come, and the masts of shipping\nseen in the sun half way down a long, long thoroughfare. There are no\nwarehouses or ugly business associations; but all is shops and\nshopping, and color and liveliness, and carriages and walkers.\n\nI think, as I look out on this May morning, that it is curious that a\npeople popularly supposed to want \"self-reliance\" and \"independence,\"\nand who are utterly ignorant of the \"self-help\" principle, should,\nafter all, have done some few self-reliant things in this very matter\nof exhibitions. Some one tells me that many decades of years before\nglass palaces were thought of, and when the universal peace and\nbrotherhood glass palaces were mysteriously supposed to bring with\nthem were not quite believed in, this \"un-self-reliant\" people had\ntheir regular triennial exhibition of manufactures, on the French\nmodel. Further, that close on the footsteps of the Hyde Park\nExhibition came the great one of Cork, and closer again on the\nfootsteps of Cork the really great Dublin Exhibition of 1853, the\nbuilding of which cost nearly eighty thousand pounds, and which was\nremarkable for the first international collection of pictures, and for\nthe first performance of Handel on a colossal scale. Not content with\nthis, I am told that this people, who were not self-reliant, went\nfurther, had two more successful exhibitions on a smaller scale, and\nhave now finally girded themselves up for this yet more complete\neffort of 1865. Not so bad, this, for our poor wo-begone sister with\nthe harp, especially when we consider that our well-to-do Scotch\nsister has not \"fashed\" herself with such follies, justly considering\nthe margin of profit too uncertain or too slight to repay the trouble.\n{826} But this is a grim and statistical ungracious view, not all\nsuited to this Dublin May morning.\n\nIt is known, then, on this gay Dublin May morning, that the young\nprince, who in this island has always been looked to with an\naffectionate interest, has been in the city since over-night, and out\nat the pretty lodge, which lies out in the \"Phaynix.\" Hence the flags\nand the streamers. Hence, too, in front of the palace, the balconies\nfringed with scarlet, and the softened and melodious buzz of distant\nmilitary music, with the staff officers flying north and south, and\nthe regiments tramping by. But the flags grow thicker, and the\nbalconies gayer, and the music more distinct, as I find myself at the\ncorner of the great _place_, or square dedicated to St. Stephen, which\nis a good mile's walking all round, and near which I see the great\nbuilding, with the heavy porches and pillars, round which, and over\nwhich, run delicately, the light entrance of a Moorish-looking glass\ntemple--a silver howdah on the back of a gray elephant. Such is the\nrather novel design for this last comer in the long series of\nexhibitions.\n\nAfter all the miles of glass greenhouse, and the long protracted\nrepetitions of gorgeous decorated pillars and girders, I cannot but\nthink what a happy combination this is of solidity and lightness; and\nacknowledge that in these days, when Paxton Palace succeeds Paxton\nPalace with some monotony, there is something original in striking out\nthe idea of fitting the glass-house to a great solid building, with\nhuge halls, and long, cool passages, and spacious rooms, and\nsurrounding the whole with a garden, and greenery, and cascades.\n\nThere has been the usual crush and pressure, the tremendous toiling\nagainst time, to get all done; the straining of every nerve, the\nsitting up all night, the hammering and sawing, the stitching of a\nhundred workmen and workwomen, changing the utter disorder and the\nnaked deal boards and the rude planks of five o'clock last evening to\nperfect order--to the regularity of a drawing-room and acres of\nscarlet cloth. And in a crowd of light May morning dresses we drift\ninto the huge concert hall, which is to hold thousands, and to echo to\nbrass throats, and where there are the great organ, and the orchestra\nwhich holds the musical army a thousand strong: on the floor of which\nhave grown up beds upon beds of human lilies that flutter and flutter\nagain, whose flowers are white parasols and gossamer shawls. This\nhall, as a feature, is not so remarkable, for there are many great\nhalls; but at its far end it is open and crossed half way by a\ngallery: and through this opening we see far on into a Winter Garden\nand Crystal Palace, where are the light airy galleries, with the old\nfamiliar rimson labels, and the French trophies, and the bright\nobjects, and the great apse like a glass cathedral, and Mr. Doyle's\npale coloring, the faint lines of delicate green, chosen with rare\ngood taste, which in itself is a novelty.\n\nLooking out through the open end of the concert hall, and facing the\norgan, I see a grand marone velvet eastern canopy and dais, under\nwhich the Pasha of Egypt is to sit a few months hereafter and receive\nhis tribes; and on this dais are the nobles and gentlemen gathering,\nin the fine rich theatrical suits which give a coloring to a festival,\nand of which we have not half enough. Judges in scarlet and ermine,\nprivy councillors with coats that seem \"clotted\" with gold, the\nnever-failing lords-lieutenant and deputy-lieutenants, knights of St.\nPatrick, deans, doctors in scarlet, soldiers in scarlet, a lord\nchancellor all black and gold, eastern dervishes (it may be, from the\npillow-case look of their caps), a lord mayor of York, a lord provost\nof Edinburgh; in short, all shapes of particolored finery. Turning\nround for a second, I see that the black musical army has debouched\nand taken ground, and that {827} the great orchestra has spread like a\nlarge dark fan from floor to ceiling. I can see \"Ulster\" in a gorgeous\ntabard, flitting to and fro, marshalling grandees, as none so well\nknow how to marshal them, each according to his or her degree. That\nmarvellous tabard is so stiff and gorgeous, that when it is laid by,\nit surely cannot be hung up or folded or put to sleep on its back like\nother robes, but, I fancy, must stand up straight in a wardrobe on its\nend, like a steel cuirass.\n\nWe seem to riot in mayors. The eye can be feasted on mayors; they can\nbecome as the air we breathe if we so choose it. They have flowed in\nfrom every town in the three kingdoms. And it does strike one, with\nhaving such a municipal gathering brought together, that there is a\nsort of corporate expression, a kind of municipal smirk or perk, a\nkind of smiling burgess air of complacency which makes the whole of\nthis world akin. Every one, too, seems to be invested with the collar\nof the Golden Fleece.\n\nHere, also, are many known faces, who wear no scarlet nor gold nor\ncollars. Faces like that of the famous dog and animal painter whose\nfour-footed friends look down at him from the walls: faces like that\nof the Sir David who invented the most popular toy in the world: faces\nfrom the science and art: from South Kensington, which, as we all\nknow, is science and art: faces from France, from Canada, Rome, India,\nand a hundred other places.\n\nNow, I hear the hum of distant martial music, and the yet fainter but\nmore inspiriting sound of distant cheering. Then the scarlet and\nermine, the privy council clotted gold, the May morning bonnets,\nglitter and rustle with excitement. The hum and chatter of voices full\nof expectation travel on softly down the glass aisles and into the\ngreat hall. There has been a grand plunging of military troopers\noutside, a violent arrest of fiery horses pulled up suddenly, and the\nprince and a royal duke and the vice-king and all their attendants\nhave descended. From the outside, the shouting creeps in gradually,\nuntil at last it comes to its fullest pitch; when the crimson and gold\ncrowd parts a little, we see this prince standing modestly under the\nEgyptian pasha's canopy, with thirty thousand eyes upon him. At this\nmoment a speck half way up the dark orchestra, but which is a very\nskilful and most musical speck, gives a signal with what seems a white\npin, and the musical army advances with the fine Old Hundredth. The\ngrand Old Hundredth travels out in rising waves through the open end\nof the hall into the glass cathedral, then loses itself up and down in\nthe aisles. For two verses the voices do the battle by themselves;\nbut, at the third, the trumpets and the grand brass and the rolling of\nmonster drums burst out, and every syllable is emphasized with a\nstirring crash. It is like the deluge after a drought.\n\nThen the sun gets up, and the gold and colored figures cross, and\ncrowd, and flit past, as some business is being transacted under that\nEgyptian pasha's canopy; for there are addresses to be read and\nspoken, and there is much advancing and backing to be done. Now, the\nparty under the pasha's canopy breaks up for a time, and the stiff\ngold and scarlet and privy council strait-waistcoats, and the\ncorporate dressing-gowns, having formed themselves into a procession,\ntake the prince round to look at the place.\n\nAnd there is a great deal to see. There are many charming pictures,\nand among the choicest those of which the queen of Spain has stripped\nher palaces, and sent here. Is there not a hint of many a Velasquez\nmost exquisite, and of Mr. Stirling, which are worth a journey to the\nEscurial to worship? Here is many a rare Reynolds which Mr. Tom Taylor\nmight find worth making a note of, and here are walls covered with\nnoble cartoons of the severe Munich school. These, with the\nphotographs and water-colors, and mediaeval objects, are common to\nmany {828} an exhibition held before; but there is one feature\nunique--a noble sculpture gallery, artistic, charmingly lighted,\nsufficient to delight Mr. Gibson, and drive the Royal Academy to\ndespair. A sculpture-hall, on which you can look down from a\nbalustrade in a room overhead, as if into a Pompeiian court. A\nsculpture-hall, in which you can look up to an arching glass roof,\nand, half way down again, to the balustrade just mentioned, which is\ndotted with small statutes. A sculpture-hall, where I can walk round\nand think myself in a Roman palace, to which these fine objects\nbelong, and not in a temporary shed where some scattered objects that\nhave been lent are shown. For here I see that the Roman studios have\nbeen emptied of their treasures; that Miss Hosmer has sent her Faun,\nin toned yellow marble: a marvellous--if the speech be not impolite--\nwork for a woman. With Story's wonderful Judith, and a Baby Girl by\nMogni--a pendant for the now famous Reading Girl. But it is easy to\nprophesy that this Baby Girl will be photographed, and stereoscoped,\nand binocularized in a hundred ways, and watched over by policemen\nspecially, and visited by a steady crowd. This hall and its\ncontents--the like of which it is no boast to say has not been yet\nseen in these kingdoms--is the feature of this exhibition.\n\nThen, having seen all that is most curious and beautiful--in the\nfashion in which such things _must_ be seen where there is only a\nquarter of an hour to see them--the stiff' gold and crimson strands,\nwhich we call the procession, came back to the pasha's dais. And then,\nwith a crash and a smash, and a thundering of monster drums, and the\nrattle and rolling of little drums, and the sharp brassy bark of\ntrumpets, the true English national Old Hundredth, in which musical\nand unmusical--people with ears, and people without, even people with\nvoices, and people without--can join, then God save the Queen is sung.\nSung! Rather fired off! Discharged! Salvoed!\n\nAnd then the glittering mass begins to dissolve and fade away. The\nstage, which has been laid out under the pasha's canopy, gradually\nclears. At the door there is a struggle, and the scatter of new\ngravel, with the frantic leaping up behind carriages of many footmen,\nand the closing in of mounted soldiers. And then the pageant melts\naway, and the work of the day is done.\n\nAs I walk and wander from the light glass arcades to the darker\ncourts, and from the courts to the open terraces, and hear the hum of\nSaxons' voices, and from at least every third mouth the sharp \"burr\"\nof some Saxon dialect, and when I meet burly shoulders and massive\nchests which are not of the country, some out-of-place speculations\ncome into my mind, and I am tempted to make suppositions. First, I\nspeculate--of course shrinking away from the dry bones of\npolitics--whether there might not have been some mistake in the old\nand constant treatment of a people who seem cheerful and grateful for\na kind word or a kinder act, and who are \"willing\" and even clever in\ntheir way--and think whether the \"want of progress\" and want of\n\"capital\" and of \"self-reliance,\" and the want of a hundred other\nthings which puzzle and dispirit the political physician, may not in\nsome degree be laid to the account of old mistakes, old laws, old\nerrors, old harsh treatment, old jealousies and restraints, the folly\nof which is now seen and admitted, but the fruits of which remain to\nthis day?\n\nJust as the fruits of a bad education linger in a grown man, and the\nmarks of early hardship are stamped upon the face and constitution, it\nwill take many years yet, in the life of a nation, before old faults\nare worked out of its constitution. And I think--still in the walks of\nthe Winter Garden--that if my friendly Briton tell me that his\nexperience of the lower orders of Irish is that \"you can't depend upon\na word they say,\" I cannot but recollect that half a century ago they\nwere civilly slaves, without rights; {829} and that a century ago they\nwere a proscribed caste, against whom one-half the laws of the land\nwere directed. If we have found them indolent, and disinclined to\nperseverance and the making of money, have we not dim recollections of\nseeing acts of parliament passed again and again to cripple their\ntrade? A people must grow up, as a child must grow up; and it is hard\nto expect that a child whose body has suffered by an unkind or an\ninjudicious nurse, should become at once strong under better\ntreatment. Then I speculate on the mysterious relation of Irishmen to\nIrish land, through which the \"bit\" of land is as necessary as the\n\"bit\" of bread; where a tenant holds his tiny scrap, on which he pays\nhis thirty-shilling rent; and during the whole year is struggling\ndesperately to work out of this great estate a few potatoes, and fewer\nclothes for himself and family, beside the miserable thirty-shilling\nmargin for the landlord. I think how some estates have two, four, six,\neight thousand tenants of this valuable class--and think beside, in\nanswer to a natural objection, how this miserable system was created\nfor political ends, to multiply voters \"to support government,\" If the\nPalace and Winter Garden were twice as long and twice as broad, I\nshould not have half time or space enough for the speculations that\ncome crowding on me with reference to this perplexing country.\n\nAnd having made these speculations, and having gone quite round the\ngarden, I begin--in addition to my speculations--to make some rather\nwild suppositions. As, suppose that, for a mere experiment, there were\na greater spirit of charity of speech introduced into our dealings\nwith this country. Suppose that we gave the people time and reasonable\nallowance--looked on with encouragement where there was any good\nattempt made, and with indulgence where there was failure. Suppose\nthat some of our journals gave over writing \"slashing\" articles, and\nsome men desisted from speeches and bitter epigrams on the \"mere\nIrish,\" which, being copied in every cheap print, and brought to every\ncabin door, do incalculable mischief, fatally widening the breach, and\ncausing England and Englishmen to be sometimes almost hated. Suppose\nthat there were _some_ little restraint on the traditional stock\nridicule of Irish matters. Suppose that the Englishmen who visited the\ncountry carried themselves with a little less of William the Conqueror\nand Strongbow air, and suppose that--\n\nBut here are the umbrellas, and the sticks, and the gate.\n\n------\n\nFrom Chambers's Journal.\n\nSPEECH.\n\n  Be choice and frugal of thy speech alway:\n  The arrow from the engine of the thoughts\n  Once shot, is past recall; for scorn is barbed,\n  And will not out, but rankles in the wound;\n  And calumny doth leave a darkening spot\n  On wounded fame, which, as it would infect,\n  Marks its sad victim in the eyes of men,\n  Till no one dare approach and know the truth.\n\n------\n\n{830}\n\nFrom The Lamp.\n\nA VISIT TO THE GRANDE CHARTREUSE.\n\n\nOur pilgrimage to La Grande Chartreuse was an event in our lives worth\nremembering. At about half-past five on the morning of the 22d of June\nwe left Lyons. Nothing could have been more auspicious than the\nbrilliant sun and balmy air of that early morning. The birds sang\ncheerily as we walked from St. Irenee down to the railway station,\nwhere our kind friends took leave of us. The country in the\nneighborhood of Lyons was exceedingly pretty; but as we drew nearer to\nGrenoble, it became more and more attractive. The railway passes\nthrough two ranges of mountains, whose snow-capped summits stood out\nin beautiful contrast to the azure sky. Our only fellow-traveller was\na priest, who for a long time had been intent on his breviary. Amused\nperhaps at our exclamations of delight, he entered into conversation\nwith us; and we were soon very good friends. He expressed particular\ninterest in the condition of the Catholic Church in England, having\nheard that there were many conversions in consequence of the hard work\ndoing in our missions. He spoke very highly in favor of a visit to La\nGrande Chartreuse. He kindly promised always to pray for us, and the\nconversion of those we had left behind, and to remember us in the mass\nhe was about to offer. We reached Grenoble at about twenty minutes to\nten. It will not do to stop to describe the magnificent situation of\nthis old city, completely surrounded as it is with mountains, between\nthe rivers Isere and Drac. Until recently it was a frontier town; a\nvery strong one too, judging from the appearance of the citadel, piled\nfortress after fortress up the steep mountain side. The cathedral is\ninteresting, as having belonged to St. Hugo, the friend of the great\nfounder of the Grande Chartreuse.\n\nWe made an agreement with the driver of a carriage to take us to the\nGrande Chartreuse; and he promised to take us there in about five\nhours, and put us down at the door of the convent; so, at least, we\nunderstood him. We returned to the hotel, got some refreshment, and\nstarted in an open carriage at about twelve o'clock. The road for\nseveral miles runs through a richly cultivated valley, with wooded\nmountains on either side. Everywhere the vine was trained in graceful\nfestoons, and stately walnut and chestnut trees grew along the\nroadside, shading us from the mid-day sun with their rich foliage.\nEvery now and then we caught beautiful glimpses of the distant Alps,\nabruptly rising from the green level of the valley, beyond the hills\nclad with the dark verdure of the pine forests, piled curiously one\nover another, which run the whole length of the plain, forming the\nfirst steps, as it were, of those mighty Alpine mountains which rear\ntheir magnificent heights, shrouded in eternal glaciers, behind these\ngraduated ranges. Just before reaching St. Laurent du Pont, what was\nour astonishment to hear our driver proclaim we should shortly reach\nour destination! We could not conceive how that could be, for we were\nevidently approaching a small town. How different it looked from all\nwe had read and heard of La Grande Chartreuse! Our amazement increased\nwhen the carriage was driven up in front of a small inn; the driver,\ngetting down, opened the door, and said, with evident satisfaction,\n_\"Nous voila.\"_ We demanded an explanation, and his reply was that\nthis was St. Laurent du Pont, and as far as he could take us. Here we\n{831} could either procure another carriage or mules to carry us up\nthe mountain to the monastery, which we might reach in about two\nhours.\n\nIt was difficult to suppress all the indignation one felt at being so\ncompletely taken in; and we threatened the unfortunate driver with all\nkinds of complaints on our return to Grenoble. There was nothing to be\ndone, so we agreed we had better make the best of it. It was five\no'clock, and we could not afford to waste our time in words; so we\nordered another carriage, and in a few minutes a most rickety,\nuninviting conveyance was brought to the door. St. Laurent du Pont is\nsituated at the opening of the narrow gorge leading to the wild\nsolitude where the monastery is built. The scenery was grand and\nbeautiful as we gradually began the ascent about a mile from St.\nLaurent du Pont, where the mountains closed upon our road, and the\nrocky stream of the Guiers Mort brawling beneath us. Tall pines and\nstately trees overshadowed us, rising from the almost naked rocks\nthemselves. One of the great peculiarities of the Chartreuse mountain\nis the extreme luxuriance of the vegetation, mingled as it is with the\nhuge blocks of limestone, which sometimes formed walls on either side\nof our way. We had a miserable horse, which stoutly refused to go\nbeyond a sleepy walk, the driver and the horse being of the same\ndreamy nature. We lost all patience, and got out. No language can\nadequately describe the enjoyment of that walk. The scenery, so\nsublimely wild; the sound of the rushing torrent, now far below our\nroad, filled us with awe. The pines, rising like weird giants by the\nmountain side, mile after mile; the scene changing and becoming more\nmajestic with every curve of the road. Every now and then we crossed a\nhandsomely built stone bridge, erected by the good monks, across the\ntorrent, and passed under several tunnels cut through the rock. The\nsun was declining, and nothing could exceed the beauty of the evening;\nwe had walked for nearly two hours in almost uninterrupted silence,\nfor there was that in the solemnity of the scene, as we penetrated\nfurther into the heart of the desert, which filled one's mind with\nthoughts and one's soul with feelings which could not be uttered. At\nlength, on a sudden turn in the road, the breeze wafted toward us the\nsound of the chapel-bell, ringing, we supposed, for vespers. This was\ntruly a most grateful sound to our ears, for we were weary with our\nwalk and the excitement of the scene, and longed for our journey's\nend. A few steps further, and the vast monastery lay before us. How\nsolemn and silent it looked! The tones of the bell, how sweetly\nmusical they were! To listen to them, to gaze on that gray pile, and,\nhigh above it, on the lofty snow-capped peaks of the mountains, was an\nindescribable rest. How wonderfully grand was that mountain top! and\nfar beyond the forests of pine rose still more distant mountain peaks,\nascending until they reached the very skies, now gilded with all the\nglories of a setting sun. It filled one with peace the thought of all\nthe centuries that that vast pile had lasted; of the long ages the\nvoices of the monks had mingled with the varied voices of nature in\none hymn of praise to the almighty Creator of all. We waited until the\narrival of our carriage interrupted our musings. It could go no\nfurther; so, followed by the driver carrying our baggage, we walked up\nto the door of the convent of the Soeurs de la Providence, where we\nwere most hospitably received. A friendly sister took us to our cells,\nand said supper would shortly be ready. The blazing logs of pine in a\nhuge fireplace in the refectory were most cheering, for the evening\nair was quite cold in these high regions even at the close of a hot\nJune day. A maigre supper was served at half-past seven. We were\namused to hear that it had all been cooked by the monks, and sent to\nus from the monastery, {832} where nothing but maigre is ever allowed.\n\nFrom eight to nine we walked round the monastery, following a path\nclose to the dark pine forest, which forms the background to the\nbuilding. We could look down from this height upon the cells, church,\nand little gardens of the monks. Returning toward the hospice, we met\nthe reverend mother and a sister; they took us into the little chapel\nwhere we were to hear mass the following morning. It was very plain\nand small; there was a grille in front of the altar, on which the\nblessed sacrament was not reserved. What a trial this must be to the\ngood sisters!\n\nAt half-past nine, rev. mother advised our retiring to our cells, as\nwe were to be up early the next morning, and _en route_ for St.\nBruno's chapel by half-past four. A very intelligent young guide was\nprovided us; he told us he had spent his life with the fathers, and\nhoped to live there to the end. He was extremely communicative and\nwilling to answer all our questions.\n\nThere are about forty monks in this monastery, beside several lay\nbrothers. The monks live each in his cell, which has a little garden\nattached to it. They maintain silence, excepting on Sundays and great\nfestivals, and during their Monday walk together through the desert\nfor four hours. They eat alone in their cells, excepting on Sundays;\neach one's maigre meal is passed by a lay brother from the cloister\nthrough a little turn into his cell. On Sundays they go to the choir\nat all the hours except complin; on other days they only go to sing\nmatins and lauds at midnight; for high mass and vespers; the other\nhours are recited in their cells. Women are not only excluded their\nenclosure, but even their church, under pain of excommunication. It\nwas very tantalizing to hear of their solemn midnight office, sung as\nit is in darkness; each monk takes with him into choir a dark lantern,\nand for each antiphon he does not know opens a slide which throws the\nlight on it. It must have a wonderful effect these sudden flashes of\nlight, lighting up the Chartreux, clothed in their white woollen\nhabits, with their patriarchal beards and hooded heads. Beside the\ndivine office, they say the office of our Blessed Lady, and, almost\nevery day, the office of the dead. Their library was plundered by the\nrevolutionists, and now forms the public library at Grenoble, one of\nthe finest small collections of books in France. Nearly all this we\nlearnt from our guide while walking up to the chapel of St. Bruno.\nBefore we reached it, far into the midst of a dark forest, we came to\nthe chapel called De Casalibus, erected upon the very spot where the\nfirst convent stood, which was destroyed by an avalanche. The chapel\nof St. Bruno is built over the same rock under which he dwelt, beside\na gushing spring, his only beverage, which supplies the monastery to\nthis day.\n\nThe chapel is about an hour's walk above the present monastery. It is\nvery plain, but adorned with frescoes, representing some of the early\nfathers of the order. A most beautiful altar stands at one end of it,\nof exquisitely carved Italian marbles, on which has been placed the\nsame altar-stone on which St. Bruno celebrated the holy mysteries;\nbehind this is a basso-relievo of St. Bruno, with our Blessed Lady\nappearing to him, beautifully executed. We lingered here awhile, loth\nto leave so holy a spot. The guide told us that there are frequently\nas many as sixty masses said in the Chartreuse church in one morning.\nMany hundred priests make their annual retreat here. What place,\nindeed, could they find more fitting for the repose their souls thirst\nfor! Here truly they might die to the world and all its allurements,\nand meditate in peace on the deep mysteries of God and eternity. We\ndescended the mountain to assist at the offering of the holy sacrifice\nat seven o'clock in the little chapel we had {833} visited on the\nprevious evening, It was a great joy to make our communion in this\nvast mountain solitude, where all combined to elevate the soul to God.\nWe had hoped a Carthusian would say mass, but in this were\ndisappointed, for a secular priest had been requested to do so by the\nladies of his party.\n\nAt the _Homo factus est_ of the Credo, the fathers prostrate\nthemselves on the ground, and the mode of celebrating mass is strange,\nand differs in many points from the ordinary mass of seculars. As the\nblessed sacrament was not reserved in the chapel, we preferred\nfinishing our thanksgiving beneath the blue sky on the skirts of the\nforest of pines. After breakfast we tasted the celebrated liqueur made\nby the monks from the wild mountain flowers. It was very good; there\nwas a certain charm in taking it on the spot where it was made. We had\na talk with the reverend mother, and left with her a long list of\nintentions to be given to the fathers, asking especially their prayers\nfor the conversion of England. This, we were thankful to hear, was\nfrequently an object of their devotions. Before leaving, our curiosity\nto see some of the fathers was gratified; for two came out to give\ninstructions to some workmen. We began to descend the mountain at\nabout half-past eight, arrived at St. Laurent du Pont about ten, and\nas soon as our carriage of the previous day was ready started for\nGrenoble. Once the horse came to a dead stop, and we fancied the\ndriver wished to prolong our journey as long as he could, that we\nmight have no time for making the threatened complaints on reaching\nGrenoble. As it was, we arrived there five minutes before the time\nfixed for our departure at half past-one. There was hardly a minute to\nget anything to eat beyond some fruit and bread which we took with us.\nSo the driver escaped his punishment, after all.\n\n------\n\nFrom The Reader.\n\nDEATH BY LIGHTNING.\n\n\nPeople in general imagine, if they think at all about the matter, that\nan impression upon the nerves--a blow, for example, or the prick of a\npin--is felt the moment it is inflicted. But this is not the case. The\nnerves are not the repositories of sensation; they are but the\nconductors of the motion which produces sensation. The seat of\nsensation is the brain, and to it the intelligence of any injury done\nto the nerves has to be transmitted, before that injury becomes\nmanifest in consciousness. The transmission, moreover, requires\n_time_, and the consequence is, that a wound inflicted at a portion of\nthe body distant from the brain is more tardily appreciated than one\ninflicted adjacent to the brain. By an extremely ingenious\nexperimental arrangement, Helmholtz has determined the velocity of\nnervous transmission both in warm-blooded and cold-blooded animals. In\na frog, he found the velocity to be about eighty feet a second, or\nless than one-thirteenth of the velocity of sound in air. If this\nholds good, which it probably does, in the case of a whale, then a\ncreature of this class, eighty feet long, if wounded in the tail,\nwould not, as Helmholtz has remarked, be conscious of the injury till\na second after the wound had been inflicted. But this is not the only\ningredient in the delay that occurs between the impression on {834}\nthe nerves and the consciousness of the impression. There can scarcely\nbe a doubt that to every act of consciousness belongs a determinate\nmolecular arrangement of the brain--that every thought or feeling has\nits physical correlative in that organ; and nothing can be more\ncertain than that every physical change, whether molecular or\nmechanical, requires time for its accomplishment. So that, even after\nthe intelligence of an impression, made upon a distant portion of the\nbody, has reached the brain, a still further time is necessary for the\nbrain itself to put its house in order--for its molecules to take up\nthe position necessary to the completion of consciousness. Helmholtz\nconsiders one-tenth of a second necessary for this purpose. Thus, in\nthe case of the whale above supposed, we have first one second\nconsumed in the transmission of intelligence through the sensor nerves\nfrom the tail to the head; one-tenth of a second is required by the\nbrain to become conscious of the intelligence it has received; and, if\nthe velocity of transmission through the motor be the same as that\nthrough the sensor nerves, a second would be consumed in sending a\ncommand to the tail to defend itself. Thus more than two seconds would\nelapse before an impression made upon its caudal nerves could be\nresponded to by a whale eighty feet long.\n\nNow, it is quite conceivable that an injury might be inflicted which\nwould render the nerves unfit to be the conductors of the motion which\nresults in sensation; and if such a thing occurred, no matter how\nsevere the injury might be, we should not be conscious of it. Or it\nmay be, that long before the time required for the brain itself to\ncomplete the arrangement necessary for the act of consciousness, its\npower of arrangement might be wholly suspended. In such case also,\nthough the injury might be of such a nature as to cause death, this\nwould occur not only without pain, but absolutely without feeling of\nany kind.\n\nDeath, in this case, would be simply the sudden negation of life,\naccomplished without any intervention of consciousness. Doubtless,\nthere are many kinds of death of this character. The passage of a\nmusket bullet through the brain is a case in point; and the placid\naspect of a man thus killed is in perfect accordance with the\nconclusion which might be drawn _a priori_ from the experiments of\nHelmholtz. Cases of insensibility, moreover, are not uncommon, which\ndo not result in death, and after which the person affected has been\nable to testify that no pain was felt prior to the loss of\nconsciousness.\n\nThe time required for a rifle-bullet to pass clean through a man's\nhead may be roughly estimated at one-thousandth of a second. Here,\ntherefore, we should have no room for sensation, and death would be\npainless. But there are other actions which far transcend in rapidity\nthat of the rifle-bullet. A flash of lightning cleaves a cloud,\nappearing and disappearing in less than one-hundred-thousandth of a\nsecond, and the velocity of electricity is such as would carry it over\na distance equal to that which separates the earth and moon in a\nsingle second. It is well known that a luminous impression once made\nupon the retina endures for about one-sixth of a second, and that this\nis the reason why we see a ribbon of light when a glowing coal is\ncaused to pass rapidly through the air. A body illuminated by an\ninstantaneous flash continues to be seen for the sixth of a second\nafter the flash has become extinct; and if the body thus illuminated\nbe in motion, it appears at rest at the place which it occupied when\nthe flash fell upon it. The color-top is familiar to most of us. By\nthis instrument a disk with differently colored sectors is caused to\nrotate rapidly; the colors blend together, and if they are chosen in\nthe proportions necessary to form white light, the disk appears white\nwhen the motion is sufficiently rapid. Such a top, rotating {835} in a\ndark room, and illuminated by an electric spark, appears motionless,\neach distinct color being clearly seen. Professor Dove has found that\na flash of lightning produces the same effect. During a thunder-storm\nhe put a color-top in exceedingly rapid motion, and found that every\nflash revealed the top as a motionless object with colors distinct. If\nilluminated solely by a flash of lightning, the motion of all bodies\non the earth's surface would, as Dove has remarked, appear suspended.\nA cannon-ball, for example, would have its flight apparently arrested,\nand would seem to hang motionless in space as long as the luminous\nimpression which revealed the ball remained upon the eye.\n\nIf, then, a rifle-bullet move with sufficient rapidity to destroy life\nwithout the interposition of sensation, much more is a flash of\nlightning competent to produce this effect. Accordingly, we have well\nauthenticated cases of people being struck senseless by lightning who,\non recovery, had no memory of pain. The following circumstantial case\nis described by Hemmer: On the 30th of June, 1788, a soldier in the\nneighborhood of Manheim, being overtaken by rain, placed himself under\na tree, beneath which a woman had previously taken shelter. He looked\nupward to see whether the branches were thick enough to afford the\nrequired protection, and, in doing so, was struck by lightning, and\nfell senseless to the earth. The woman at his side experienced the\nshock in her foot, but was not struck down. Some hours afterward the\nman revived, but knew nothing about what had occurred, save the fact\nof his looking up at the branches. This was his last act of\nconsciousness, and he passed from the conscious to the unconscious\ncondition without pain. The visible marks of a lightning stroke are\nusually insignificant: the hair is sometimes burnt; slight wounds are\nobserved; while, in some instances, a red streak marks the track of\nthe discharge over the skin.\n\nThe effects of a shock of artificial lightning on a gentleman of our\nacquaintance, who is very sensitive to the electric discharge, may be\nhere described. Under ordinary circumstances the discharge from a\nsmall Leyden jar is exceedingly unpleasant to him. Some time ago he\nhappened to stand in the presence of a numerous audience, with a\nbattery of fifteen large Leyden jars charged beside him. Through some\nawkwardness on his part, he touched a wire which he had no right to\ntouch, and the discharge of the battery went through his body. Here\nlife was absolutely blotted out for a very sensible interval, without\na trace of pain. In a second or two consciousness returned; the\nrecipient of the shock saw himself in the presence of his audience and\napparatus, and by the help of these external facts immediately\nconcluded that he had received the battery discharge. His\n_intellectual_ consciousness of his position was restored with\nexceeding rapidity, but not so his _optical_ consciousness. To prevent\nthe audience from being alarmed, he observed that it had often been\nhis desire to receive accidentally such a shock, and that his wish had\nat length been fulfilled. But while making this remark, the appearance\nwhich his body presented to him was that of a number of separate\npieces. The arms, for example, were detached from the trunk, and\nseemed suspended in the air. In fact, memory, and the power of\nreasoning, appeared to be complete long before the optic nerve was\nrestored to healthy action. But what we wish chiefly to dwell upon\nhere is, the absolute painlessness of the shock; and there cannot be a\ndoubt, to a person struck dead by lightning, the passage from life to\ndeath occurs without consciousness being in the least degree\nimplicated. It is an abrupt stoppage of sensation, unaccompanied by a\npang.\n\n------\n\n{836}\n\nFrom The Dublin University Magazine\n\nLONDON.\n\n\nA Dublin saunterer of antiquarian propensities pacing the flags in\nfront of Christ church, or elbowing his troublesome way down the\nnarrow defile called Castle street, can scarcely escape a certain\nsense of awe as he looks on the houses and the passengers, and darts a\nthought back through dim and troubled time till he strives to arrive\nat an idea of' the first inhabitants and the scene in which they\nplayed out their short parts.\n\nPassing over the mysterious and weak race that preceded the Gaels, he\nfancies these last in their quaint garb going about their ordinary\noccupations, or rushing to their earth mounds and dykes to repel the\nfierce Northmen. Then pass before his mind's eye the successive races\nof different speech, and different garb, and different interests--the\nDanes, Dano-Celts, and the Anglo Normans, employed in fierce struggles\nwith each other, and each looking on the events of his own times as\nparamount to all that ever agitated society till then. All now quiet\nand silent in the dust. The shopkeeper attending to his customers, the\ntippler stepping into the corner shop for a dram, and the carman\nsmoking his pipe, and giving his beast a mouthful of hay, are as\nunconscious of any personal connection with the dead generations as if\nthey had sprung full grown and furnished with clothing from the fat\nglebe of the neighboring Phoenix Park.\n\nSo would feel still more intensely an archaeologist on Tower Hill, or\nby the Fleet Ditch, or on London Bridge, if the ever hurrying and\nfeverish crowd would allow him to concentrate his thoughts on\nanything.\n\nHow it should make the feelings of the most dried up anatomy of an\narchaeologist glow, when, throwing his thoughts nearly nineteen\ncenturies back, he sees the mighty robber conducting his band, guarded\nby strong defences of bronze, and leather, and wood, to the bank of\nthe then clear river, and preparing to invest and destroy that\nill-armed but heroic body of brave men on the other side, who, in\ndefence of their weak children, and loving and high-souled wives and\ndaughters, will soon send many an armed and ruthless Roman soldier to\nshiver on the cold banks of Styx.\n\nAnd what was the profit of all the plotting, and all the unjust\nwarfare, waged by men single or in masses against those they\nconsidered their foemen? They shortened the career of their opponents,\nthey shortened their own lives. They preferred a short and turbulent\nexistence to the longer and quieter span intended for them, they\npassed away, and were either speedily forgotten, or remembered but to\nbe cursed.\n\nIt is a bewildering occupation to a stranger to contemplate a map of\nLondon in order to acquire some distinct notion of the number and\narrangement of the streets (an idea of the inhabitants is out of the\nquestion), to ponder how the countless multitude can be fed and\nclothed, and to reflect that if old mother earth should lose her\nfruit-bearing qualities for one year, how little would avail the\nbeauty, the bravery, the wit, the ingenuity, the industry, and the\nintelligence of the three million inhabitants, to prevent the circuit\nof famed London from becoming a vast charnel-house.\n\nOur earliest historians were the poets, these were succeeded by the\nromancers. Geoffry of Monmouth, translating the \"Chronicle of Kings\"\nbrought from Brittany, informed the {837} people of the twelfth\ncentury that Brutus, great-grandson of Eneas, after many voyages and\nadventures, founded a town about where the Tower has long stood, and\ncalled it New Troy. This was afterward changed to Trinobantum. Lud,\nbrother to Cassibelan, again gave it his own name--_Caer Lud_. Hence\nLudstown softened to London. Other derivations for the city's name are\nnot at all rare. From the Celtic words _Leana_, marsh or meadow;\n_Linn_, a pool; _Lung_, or _Long_, a ship; and _Dunn_, a fort, it is\neasy to make out the fort among the meadows, the fort of the pool, or\nthe fort of the ships. The sister city, Dublin, is simply black pool.\n\nAs ancient Dublin occupied at first only the hill of which the castle\noccupies the south-eastern spur, so Tower Hill, Ludgate Hill,\nCornhill, and Holborn Hill, formed the site of the original British\nDun or Duns. Hence the most interesting portion of London to an\nantiquary must include those places of strength. But as the more\neasterly eminences have much longer ceased to be fashionable than our\nFishamble and Essex streets, and the traditions of London literary\ncharacters from the time of Elizabeth date from regions further west,\nmost writers choose to expatiate on the buildings that lie between\nWhitehall and Temple Bar, and on the remarkable personages and\nincidents connected with them. Charles Knight was unable to say his\nsay concerning the modern Babylon in fewer than six royal octavo\nvolumes, and the portly octavo lately put forth by Mr. Thornbury is\nconcerned with a very small area of the city, Temple Bar being at its\nsouth-east angle, and the Strand, St. Martin's lane, Holborn, and\nChancery lane its boundaries.\n\n\nTHE STRAND.\n\nTemple Bar, that narrow neck through which the struggling sands find\ntheir way with difficulty from the Strand and the Fleet portions of\nthe great hour-glass, and which is looked on by shallow readers as a\nrelic of hoar antiquity, dates only from 1670, four years after the\ngreat fire. It forms the point of junction between the cities of\nLondon and Westminster, and in early times was only provided with\nposts, rails, and a chain. These were succeeded by a wooden house with\na narrow gate-way and a passage on one side. The present structure is\nincumbered with the statues of Elizabeth, James I., Charles I., and\nCharles II., all distinguished, according to Mr. Thornbury, by feeble\nheads, crimped drapery, and feet and hands kept whitish by the rain,\nthe non-projecting portions of the bodies rejoicing in more than a\ncentury of dark atmospheric deposits.\n\nMr. Thornbury's selection includes the long line of palaces that once\nadorned the Strand or River-bank street, the haunts of artists in St.\nMartin's lane, the traditions of Long Acre, the reminiscences\nconnected with Drury lane, and the old houses of the nobility in\nLincoln's-Inn Fields.\n\nOne of the most remarkable of the fine buildings of the Strand is that\nwhich bears the name of the ambitious brother of Jane Seymour, the\nDuke of Somerset, who boasted that he could muster retainers to the\nnumber of 10,000. To erect his palace, which, by the way, was\nunfinished at his death, he demolished the parish church of St. Mary,\nand pulled down the houses of the bishops of Worcester, Llandaff, and\nLichfield. He would also have appropriated St. Margaret's at\nWestminster, but the mob would not sanction the sacrilege. \"Moreover,\nhe destroyed a chapel in St. Paul's Church-yard, with a cloister\ncontaining the Dance of Death, and a charnel-house (burying the bones\nin unconsecrated ground).\" To crown his acts of rapine he stole the\nstone of a church of St. John near Smithfield. It is not worth\nmentioning the carrying away of the stone of the Strand Inn, it being\nthe property of the lawyers, who could afford to be robbed.\n\n{838}\n\nThe Danish consort of our Solomon I. here delighted all who had no\nobjection to spectacles, in which the handsome queen and her ladies\nmasqueraded to their own and their admirers' content. Rare Ben Jonson\nwas surely elated by the lists of royal and noble personages who\npresented his masques. From this same noble residence Charles I. had\nsome trouble in dislodging the Gallic followers of his sturdy queen,\nwith whom his hard-headed and wooden-shoe-abhorring subjects had come\nto be at deadly feud. As they were rather too tedious in \"shifting the\nhalter, and traversing the cart,\" the poor king was obliged to write\nthus to Buckingham:\n\n\n  \"STEENIE,--I have received your letter by Dick Greame. This is my\n  answer. I command you to send all the French away to-morrow out of\n  the town, if you can by fair means (but stick not long in\n  disputing), otherwise force them away, driving them away like so\n  many wild beasts until you have shipped them, and the--go with them!\n  Let me hear no answer but of the performance of my command. So I rest,\n  \"Your faithful, constant, loving friend,   C. R.\n  \"Oaking, the seventh of August, 1626.\"\n\n  \"The French inventing all sorts of vexatious delays, the yeomen of\n  the guard at last jostled them out, carting them off in nearly forty\n  coaches. They arrived at Dover after four days' tedious travelling,\n  wrangling and bewailing.\"\n\n\nQueen Henrietta taking part in a masque at Christmas in 1632-3, and\nPrynne's _Histriomastix_ happening to be published the next day, the\npoor man lost his ears for an uncomplimentary remark on women-actors,\nwhich was found in the margin, though it could not possibly have been\nwritten with any reference to the queen's appearance on that occasion.\n\nTo Somerset House returned Henrietta Maria after the restoration, and\nthere the garrulous Pepys paid his respects to her as well as to\nMadame Castlemaine. \"By-and-by, in came the king and Duke and Duchess\nof York. The conversation was not a very decorous one, and the young\nqueen (Catherine of Braganza) said to Charles, 'you lie,' which made\ngood sport, as the chuckling and delighted Pepys remarks, those being\nthe first English words he had heard her say; and the king then tried\nto make her reply, 'confess and be hanged.'\"\n\nThe most striking object in the old days of the Strand was the new\nMaypole which replaced the old one taken down by Oliver's Parliament.\nIt was of cedar wood, 134 feet high, and stood in front of the church\nof St. Mary. It was brought in two pieces from below Bridge, the\nsplicing made secure by iron bands, three crowns fastened toward its\ntop, and then the tall article was raised by twelve sailors to a\nvertical position, and firmly imbedded. The operation was happily\naccomplished under the superintendence of the Duke of York in four\nhours. Then sounded trumpets and drums; and morris-dancers in motley\nattire, and enlivened by the music of pipe and tabor, danced in glee\naround it, while thousands of throats became hoarse with loyal\nshouting. James would have found little enjoyment in the general glee,\nif he could at the moment have had a prophetic glimpse of his wife,\nwith her infant son folded to her breast, pacing along the river bank\nin doubt and fear, and watching for the friendly boat that was to\nconvey her from the unfriendly city.\n\nWhen the pole that succeeded this was obliged to abdicate, it was\npresented to Sir Isaac Newton, who again presented it to the rector of\nWanstead, and in Wanstead park it helped to support the largest\ntelescope then known.\n\nFrom this memorable if unedifying goal, Pope started the racers in the\nDunciad:\n\n{839}\n\n  \"Amidst the area wide they took their stand,\n  Where the tall maypole once o'erlooked the Strand;\n  But now, as Anne and piety ordain,\n  A church collects the saints of Drury lane.\"\n\nIn the old palace of the Savoy once lived John of Gaunt; John, King of\nFrance, the Black Prince's captive, died there; George Wither, the\npoet, is buried there; and there also was Geoffry Chaucer married.\nSimon, earl of Montfort, once lived within its precincts; but where\nkings, archbishops, and high nobles once walked and held high council,\npickles are now sold, printing types set up, and glass rolled out and\nspun.\n\nWat Tyler's mob being forbidden to plunder, and supposing a couple of\nbarrels to contain money, flung them into a great fire. The money,\nalas, was gunpowder, as in the Dunleary ballad, and blew up the great\nhall, shook down the neighboring houses, killed sundry of the social\nreformers, and reduced the palace to ruins.\n\nHenry VII. instituted within its precincts a house of refuge for every\nindigent person passing down the River-side-road, and by a natural\nprocess of abuse the poor wayfarers derived little advantages from it.\nLoiterers, sham cripples, and vagabonds of both sexes begged abroad\nall day, and came in the evening to the Savoy to sup and sleep. Edward\nVI. transferred a good portion of its revenue to Bridewell Prison and\nChrist's Hospital. Mary replaced the charity on its old footing, much\nto the enjoyment of inveterate beggars; but Elizabeth in her turn\ndisagreeably surprised the lazy inmates and the corrupt governor, and\nthey had to look out for victims in other quarters.\n\nThe building had not lost its privilege of sheltering imposture and\nknavery in the last century, having served as an asylum for fraudulent\ndebtors in Queen Anne's time; it became the darling haunt of such\nchaplains as Mr. Lever's Reverend Paul; and in 1754 we find in the\n_Public Advertiser_ this precious document put forth by them:\n\n\n  \"BY AUTHORITY.--Marriages performed with the utmost privacy,\n  secrecy, and regularity, at the ancient royal chapel of St. John the\n  Baptist in the Savoy, where regular and authentic registers have\n  been kept from the time of the reformation (being two hundred years\n  and upward) to this day, the expense not being more than one guinea,\n  the five-shilling stamp included. There are five private ways to\n  this chapel by land, and two by water.\"\n\n\nWither, the Cromwellian poet, who had a hard time of it after the\nrestoration, lies in the Savoy. Denman, petitioning for his life, used\nthis ingenious device: \"As long as Wither lives, I shall not be\nconsidered the worst poet in England.\"\n\nIt is not easy to a passenger sauntering or hurrying down the Strand\nat this day, admiring the facade of Somerset House, glancing into the\nwindows of rich shops, elbowing his way through an eager and bustling\ncrowd, and having his ears stunned by the thundering rumble of cabs,\nbusses, and wagons, to fancy it once a sandy and marshy road, and the\nfootpath very disagreeable to the feet, and interfered with by bushes\nand thickets. Three water-courses from the northern fields found their\nway across it to the river, and these were spanned by three bridges.\nThe building of Westminster Abbey encouraged the erection of the first\nhouses along the River-side-way, but the bad state of the road made a\nsubject for a petition so late as the reign of Edward II.\n\n\nPUBLISHING IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.\n\nOf the coffee-houses in the neighborhood of the Strand and Fleet\nstreet frequented by the witty and the learned from the restoration to\nthe close of last century, we shall gladly speak if our limits permit.\nMeanwhile, being on a literary subject, we must not omit to mention\nthat the father of {840} Mudie's and all other circulating libraries\nin London, was established at 132 Strand, in 1740, by a bookseller\nnamed Bathoe.\n\nHad there been such establishments in Pepys' time, they would have\nsaved him some money and some trouble. Witness his disappointment\nabout \"Hudibras:\"\n\n  \"26th of September, 1662. To the Wardrobe. Hither come Mr.\n  Battersby, and we falling into discourse of a new book of drollery\n  in use, called 'Hudibras,' I would needs go find it out, and met\n  with it at the Temple; cost me 2_s_. 6_d_. But when I come to read\n  it, it is so silly an abuse of the presbyter-knight going to the\n  wars, that I am ashamed at it, and meeting at Mr. Townsend's at\n  dinner, I sold it him for 18_d_.\" (The new book of drollery\n  continuing to be the rage), \"February 6th, 1663. To a bookseller's\n  in the Strand, and there bought 'Hudibras' again. I am resolved once\n  more to read him, and see whether I can find him an example of wit\n  or no.\" (Success very doubtful.) \"28th November. To Paul's\n  Church-yard, and there looked upon the second part of 'Hudibras,'\n  which I buy not, but borrow to read.\" (He bought it a few days\n  after, however.) \"The world hath mightily cried up this book, though\n  it hath not a good liking in me, though I had tried but (by?) two or\n  three times reading to bring myself to think it witty.\"\n\nWe find him a few days after these researches purchasing \"Fuller's\nWorthies,\" the \"Cabbala, or Collection of Letters of State,\" \"Les\nDelices de Holland,\" and \"Hudibras\" again, \"now in great fashion for\ndrollery, though I cannot, I confess, see enough where the wit lies.\"\n\nPepys' great acquaintances seem to have discovered this sore spot in\nhis mental configuration, and to have angered it oftentimes by quoting\n\"Hudibras\" at him, and chuckling over the fun, which, alas, was the\nreverse of fun to him.\n\nIt was long after the introduction of printing into the country that\nbookseller's shops became an institution. At and before the time of\nthe great fire, St. Paul's Church-yard was the chief bookselling mart.\nOn the 31st November, 1660, Pepys bought a copy of the play of Henry\nIV. in that place, \"and so went to the new theatre, and saw it acted,\nbut my expectation being too great, it did not please me as otherwise\nI believe it would, and my having a book did, I believe, spoil it a\nlittle.\"\n\nPoor Pepys! A leaf out of the scandalous chronicle of the court would\nhave interested him more than all the wit and wisdom of Shakespeare.\nHe tells us in his diary how his wife and he laughed a whole evening\nover a pamphlet written about the queen.\n\nThe fire destroyed thousands of fine works in the Church-yard; and so\nmuch was the value of books increased, that Ricaut's \"Turkey,\" 8_s_.\nbefore the fire, could not be got under 55_s._ after it.\n\nLater in time, Little Britain, from Duck-lane to the Pump, became a\nliterary quarter. When Benjamin Franklin first visited London he took\nlodgings in Little Britain at 3_s_. 6_d_, per week, next door to a\nbookseller's, from whom, as circulating libraries were not in vogue,\nhe purchased volumes, read them, sold them again to the same man, and\nbought others.\n\nA great deal of information on bookselling and other subjects that\ninterested the people near 200 years since, may be obtained from the\nperusal of the \"Life and Errors of John Dunton,\" bookseller, an\nautobiography. The son of a clergyman in Huntingdonshire, he says he\nlearned Latin so as to speak it pretty well extempore, but he could\nnot get on well with the Greek; and this, coupled with an affection\nentertained for a \"virgin in his father's house,\" such passion\ncarefully concealed from its object, completely unhinged the classical\nand clerical designs of his father on him. He became a bookseller's\napprentice, and in {841} 1685 a bookseller in his own person. He\nspeaks very disparagingly of the mere men of letters of his day. He\nsays, good simple-minded man, that what they got per sheet interested\nthem more than zeal for the advancement of literature. Very little we\nblame the poor fellows, but they were really inexcusable for\npretending to have ransacked the whole Bodleian Library, to have gone\nthrough the fathers, and to have read and digested all human and\necclesiastical history, while they had never mastered a single page in\n\"St. Cyprian,\" nor could tell whether the fathers lived before or\nafter our Saviour.\n\nThat was the golden age of sermons and pamphlets, the latter occupying\nthe place of our monthlies. Mr. John Dunton's first essay in the\npublishing line was \"The Sufferings of Christ,\" by the Rev. Mr.\nDoolittle. All the trade took copies in exchange for their own books,\na feature peculiar to the business 160 years since. John throve and\ntook a helpmate to himself, not Mrs. Mary Saunders, the virgin before\nmentioned. The beautiful Rachel Seaton, the innocent Sarah Day, the\nreligious Sarah Briscow, had successively paled the image of the\npreceding lady in the mirror of his rather susceptible heart, and at\nthe end he became the fond husband of Miss Annesley, daughter of a\nnonconformist divine. The happy pair always called each other by the\nendearing and poetic names of _Iris_ and _Philaret_, but this tender\nattachment did not prevent Philaret from leaving Iris alone, and\nmaking excursions to Ireland, to America, and to Holland, and delaying\nin those regions for long periods. These separations and distant\nwanderings did not tend to make our bookseller's old age comfortable\nand independent.\n\nDunton has left an interesting account of most of the then eminent\nbooksellers in the three kingdoms. He says that in general they were\nnot much better than knaves and atheists. He also gave information of\nthe writers he employed, the licensers of the press, etc. It would\nappear that the publishing business of the time was in a very vigorous\ncondition. The shoals of pamphlets satisfied the literary hunger of\nthose to whom, if they lived in the nineteenth century, _Athenaeums_\nand _Examiners_, _Chambers's Journals_ and _All the Year Rounds_,\nwould be as necessary as atmospheric air. The chief booksellers of\nthat day, if not to be compared with continental Alduses or Stephenses\nor Elzevirs, were men of good literary taste and much information. Of\nthe booksellers amber-preserved in the \"Dunciad,\" Dunton mentions only\nLintot and Tonson. The disreputable Curll was not known in his day.\nThis genius, embalmed in the hearts of the rascally paper-men of\nHolywell street, being once condemned for a vile publication, and\npromoted to the pillory, cunningly averted the wrath of the mob by a\nplentiful distribution of handbills, in which he stated his offence to\nbe a pamphlet complimentary to the memory of good Queen Anne. Edward\nCave, in starting the _Gentleman's Magazine_, 31st January, 1731, gave\nhealthy employment to many a pamphleteer, though he diminished the\nnumber of separate pamphlets.\n\n\n\nBEN JONSON AND LINCOLN'S INN.\n\nOur fancy to speak of books, and their writers and sellers, has led us\naside from the area marked out by Mr. Thornbury for his own\nexplorations, so we must return to bounds, within which we find\nLincoln's-Inn Fields. These inns were originally established as places\nof entertainment, where pilgrims and other travellers were hospitably\nattended by the monks. The town houses of noblemen were also called\ninns, just as in Paris they were styled hostels. The inn in question\nderives its name from the Earl of Lincoln, Henry de Lacy, to whom it\nwas granted by Edward I. Many eminent men have used chambers in\nLincoln's Inn, since it became the resort {842} of legal students. Sir\nThomas More had chambers there, and there Dr. Donne, the poetical\ndivine, attempted to study law in his seventeenth year. Dr. Tillotson\npreached to the lawyers (with what effect is not told) in 1663, our\nown Archbishop Ussher in 1647. Sir Mathew Hale was at first a wild\nstudent of Lincoln's Inn, till reclaimed by the sight of a drunkard\nseized by a fit. Shaftesbury; Ashmole, the antiquary; Prynne, of\npillory notoriety; Secretary Thurloe; Sir John Denham; George Wither,\nomitting mention of modern celebrities, all endeavored to penetrate\nthe mysteries of law and equity in this long-enduring institution.\n\nOne of the most remarkable, though not the most reputable, of lawyers\nconnected with Lincoln's Inn was Sir Edmund Saunders, who gave his aid\nto the crown while endeavoring, in 1683, to overthrow the charter of\nLondon. The following extract concerning him is taken from Granger:\n\"Sir Edmund Saunders was originally a strolling beggar about the\nstreets, without known parents or relations. He came often to beg\nscraps at Clement's Inn, where he was taken notice of for his uncommon\nsprightliness; and as he expressed a strong inclination to learn to\nwrite, one of the attorney's clerks taught him, and soon qualified him\nfor a hackney writer. He took all opportunities of improving himself\nby reading such books as he borrowed from his friends; and in the\ncourse of a few years became an able attorney and a very eminent\ncounsel. His practice in the Court of King's Bench was exceeded by\nnone. His art and cunning was equal to his knowledge, and he gained\nmany a cause by laying snares. If he was detected he was never put out\nof countenance, but evaded the matter with a jest, which he had always\nat hand. He was much employed by the king (Charles II.) against the\ncity of London in the business of the _Quo Warranto_. His person was\nas heavy and _ungain_ as his wit was alert and sprightly. He is said\nto have been a mere lump of morbid flesh. The smell from him was so\noffensive that people held their noses when he came into court. One of\nhis jests on such occasions was, 'That none could say he wanted issue,\nfor he had no less than nine on his back.'\"\n\nThe literary students of the inn, as they sit in their lonely\nchambers, or converse with their comrades, Arthur Pendennis and Mr.\nWarrington, in the pleasant grounds, delight to fancy brave old Ben\nJonson helping to raise the wall on the Chancery lane side, and\nreciting a passage from Homer. Whether Sutton or Camden sent him back\nto college to pursue his studies is not so certain. His fighting\nsingle-handed in Flanders in the sight of the two armies, and the\nsubsequent carrying away of the _\"Spolia Opima\"_ of his foeman, were\nin strict accordance with the practice of the heroes of his studies.\nHis college life and his deeds in foreign fields were all over in his\ntwenty-third year, 1597, when we find him a player and writer for the\nstage in London; his critics asserting that he walked the boards as if\nhe were treading mortar. Poor Ben, with a countenance compared to a\nrotten russet apple, and described by himself as remarkable for a\n\"mountain belly and a rocky face,\" was equally ragged in temper.\nQuarreling with a brother actor, he killed him in a duel in Hogsden\nFields, and was brought very near the gallows-foot for his non-command\nof temper. He had not the gentle character nor the expansive intellect\nof his friend, the \"Gentle Shakespeare,\" nor did his characters\nembrace entire humanity, nor did he possess the soaring and\nfar-seizing imagination of his brother poet and player, but he more\nclosely pictured the modes of society in which they moved, the social\nand politic features of the locality and the era; all those outward\nmanifestations, in fact, that distinguish the intercourse, and the\nmorals, and the character of this or that locality or time, from those\nof {843} its neighbors. Hence a better idea can be had of the scenic\nfeatures of Old London, and the costumes, the idioms, and usages of\nits people at the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the\nseventeenth century, from the literary remains of Ben Jonson than from\nthose of William Shakespeare. Aubrey remarked that \"Shakespeare's\ncomedies would remain wit as long as the English tongue is understood;\nwhile our present writers reflect so much upon particular persons and\ncoxcombeties, that twenty years hence they will not be understood.\"\n\nLondon was Ben Jonson's world; its people, such as they appeared to\nhim, the whole human race. The humorists that he knew were reproduced\nwith the utmost truth--and the class-modes and manners that came under\nhis observation were sketched from and to the life. There was local\ntruth of costume and character, but little generalization.\nIllustrative instances abound in all his plays and poems. In\nElizabeth's time, Finsbury Fields were covered with trees and\nwindmills. So we find Master Stephen (\"Every Man in his Humor\"), who\ndwells at Hogsden (Hoxton), despising the archers of Finsbury and the\ncitizens that come a-ducking to Islington Ponds. \"The Strand was the\nchief road for ladies to pass through in their coaches, and there\n_Lafoole_ in the 'Silent Woman' has a lodging to watch when ladies are\ngone to the china houses or the exchange, that he may meet them by\nchance, and give them presents. The general character of the streets\nbefore the fire is not forgotten. In 'The Devil is an Ass' the lady\nand her lover speak closely and gently from the windows of two\ncontiguous buildings. Such are a few of the examples of the local\nproprieties which constantly turn up in Jonson's dramas.\"\n\nTo those who accuse rare Ben of intemperate habits it is useless to\nobject that he lashed intemperance and the other vices of his time as\nseverely as the most rigid moralist could; there are too many\ninstances extant of the sons of Satan correcting sin in their speeches\nand writings. However, the club at the Mermaid in Friday street to\nwhich he belonged, consisted of such men as we cannot suppose to be of\nintemperate habits, nor willing to cherish a noted drunkard. For Sir\nWalter Raleigh, Shakespeare, Beaumont, Fletcher, Selden, Cotton,\nCarew, Martin, Donne, flashes of wit, and sallies of imagination, and\ntouches of genial humor, had more charms then beastly wallowing in\nliquor. Hear what Jonson himself says in his invitation to a friend to\nsupper where canary, his darling liquor, was to flow:\n\n  \"Of this we will sup free but moderately,\n  Nor shall our cups make any guilty men,\n  But at our parting we will be as when\n  We innocently met. No simple word\n  That shall be uttered at our mirthful board\n  Shall make us sad next morning, or affright\n  The liberty that we'll enjoy to-night.\"\n\nIt was to the middle aisle of the old cathedral of St. Paul's that\nJonson and others like him resorted to obtain such wayward and\ngrotesque characters as would take the attention of an audience. It\nwas the favorite lounge at the time of coxcombs, bullies, adventurers,\nand cut-purses. Here a new man, wishing to be in the height of\nfashion, would bring his tailor, and set him to mark the garb of the\nforemost gallant in vogue. Country squires anxious for a varnishing of\ncourtly polish, would be found there observing the dress and demeanor\nof the people of fashion, and afterward flinging away the produce of\ntheir good lands in entertainments shared with these envied darlings\nof the courtly goddess. _Captain Bobadil_, we may be certain, was met\namong the crowd at Paul's. Here it was that all those niceties of the\nmode which crop up through his plays were observed. In the \"Midas\" of\nLily, quoted by Charles Knight in his \"London,\" are found collected\nseveral of these distinctive marks of the courtier _comme il faut:_\n\n\"How will you be trimmed, sir? Will you have your beard like a spade\n{844} or a bodkin? A pent-house on your upper lip, or an alley on your\nchin? A low curl on your head like a bull, or dangling locks like a\nspaniel? Your mustachioes sharp at the end like shoemakers' awls, or\nhanging down to your mouth like goat's flakes? Your love-locks\nwreathed like a silken twist, or shaggy, to fall on your shoulder?\"\n\nFew dramatists in his or our days would venture to speak so fearlessly\nto his audience as honest Ben Jonson:\n\n  \"If any here chance to behold himself,\n  Let him not dare to challenge me of wrong;\n  For if he shame to have his follies known,\n  First he should shame to act 'em. My strict hand\n  Was made to seize on vice, and with a gripe,\n  Squeeze out the humor of such spongy souls\n  As lick up every idle vanity.\"\n\nOur bard was not left to struggle with the hardships of an ordinary\ntheatrical career. He was employed to compose the plots and verses of\nthe stately and splendid masques in which Elizabeth, and Anne of\nDenmark, and her \"Royal Doggie\" delighted. Had space permitted, we\nshould gladly have quoted some of the verses and stage directions of\nthese court shows. Among the rest is an Irish masque in which Dennish,\nDonnell, Dermott, and Patrick come in their long glibbs and shaggy\nmantles to present their compliments to King _Yamish_, and\ncongratulate him on the marriage of some lord or other. Having been\nroughly received by the janitors, they sounded their grievance aloud:\n\n\"_Don_.--Ish it te fashion to beate te imbashaters here? and knock\n'hem o' te head phit te phoite stick?\"\n\n\"_Der_.--Ant make ter meshage run out a ter mouthsh before tey shpeake\nvit te king?\"\n\nThey announce their intention to dance as well as that of their\nmasters, who as yet stand outside:\n\n\"_Don_.--But tey musht eene come, and daunch i' teyr mantles, and show\ntee how teye can foot te _fading_ and te _fadow_, and te phip a\ndunboyne I trow.\"\n\n\"_Der_.--Tey will fight for tee, King Yamish, and for my mishtress\ntere.\"   [Footnote: 203]\n\n  [Footnote 203: As out of all late or still living writers, not\n  natives of Ireland, there are not three who quote our\n  peasant-pronunciation correctly, so it is more than probable that\n  Jonson, acute as his observation was, mistook the pronunciation of\n  his own day.]\n\nAfter much soft-sawder about their love and their loyalty to Shamus,\nsix men and boys danced to bagpipes and other rude music. Then the\nIrish gentlemen danced in their mantles to the sound of harps; and one\nof them called on a bard to celebrate the fame of him who was to make\nErin the world's wonder for peace and plenty:\n\n  \"Advance, immortal bard; come up and view\n  The gladdening face of that great king, in whom\n  So many prophecies of thine are knit.\n  This is that James, of which long since thou sungst,\n  Should end our country's most unnatural broils.\"\n\nWould he had done so! Ben was not so blind but that he could spy out\nsome little defects in Solomon and his queen. As he could not apply\nhis talents to their correction, he recompensed himself in unmerciful\nhandling of court vices. Toward the end of James's reign he enjoyed a\ncompetent fortune, and owned an extensive library. Distress and\nillness succeeded; but Charles I. being made aware of his forlorn\ncondition, granted him an additional pension, and that tierce of\ncanary, whose successors have been drained by all poet-laureates since\nhis day. A blue marble stone lies over his remains in the north aisle\nof Westminster Abbey. The epitaph, RARE BEN JONSON, was cut in the\nflag at the order and charge of Jack Young (afterward knighted).\nEighteen-pence requited the sculptor.\n\nWhether we have improved on the feats of artists of another kind, in\nQueen Anne's reign, is questionable. At Bartholomew Fair, in the reign\nof that good-natured sovereign, a girl, of ten years, walked backward\nup a sloping rope, driving a wheelbarrow behind her. {845} Scaramouch\ndanced on the rope with two children, and a dog, in a wheelbarrow, and\na duck on his head. Our authority leaves us in some doubt as to the\nrelative positions of man, children, dog, duck, and wheel-barrow, and\nwhether the duck took position on head of dog or man. The eighteenth\ncentury was inaugurated by an intelligent tiger picking the feathers\nfrom a fowl in such style as to elicit the hearty applause of a\ndiscerning public. Continental sovereigns of our own time prefer the\nstirring spectacle of men and horses gored by sharp horned bulls. The\ntiger merely removed the feathers from the skin of the dead fowl; the\nviscera of the living quadruped follow the thrust of the bull's horn.\n\n------\n\nTranslated from Etudes Religieuses, Historiques, et Litteraires, par\ndes Peres de la Compagnie de Jesus.\n\n\nTHE ORIGIN AND MUTABILITY OF SPECIES.\n\n\n_Origines et Transformations de l'homme et des autres etres. lre\npartie. Par_ TREMAUX. Paris: Hachette. 1865.\n\nAnthropology is a recent science, and yet its votaries have produced\nnumerous treatises. The delicate questions which it raises have given\nbirth to various and contradictory opinions. The most important\nproblem of this science is that which relates to the origin of man. At\nwhat epoch did man for the first time tread the surface of our globe?\nHow did he appear? What cause produced him? Two first class scholars,\nHumboldt and Bompland, said, not long ago, \"The general question of\nthe origin of the inhabitants of a continent is beyond the limits\nprescribed to history, perhaps it is not even a philosophical\nquestion.\" Bolder than they, the anthropologists put a question a\nthousand times more complex, as to the origin of the whole human race,\nand they do not hesitate to believe that, sooner or later, science\nwill be able to answer it with certainty. As to the present, we may\nsay, _Quot capita, tot sensus;_ the most opposite ideas divide the\nworld, and _it is the main discord which pervades science._ These last\nwords are those of M. Tremaux. To remedy this confusion, the learned\ntraveller puts forth a new idea, which in his opinion should, in\nthrowing light on all the aspects of the question, cause the discord\nto vanish; trace the way we ought to follow; and at no very distant\nday arrive at a complete solution. It remains to be seen whether these\nhappy auguries will be realized, or if, on the contrary, the theory of\nM. Tremaux, added to the others, will not have the fatal effect of\nincreasing the confusion it would abolish.\n\nThe opinions relating to the origin of man may be reduced to three. In\nthe first place, we will state that of the monogenists, who behold in\nall the human types scattered over the world only races and varieties\nof the same species, and regard mankind as descending, or at least as\ncapable of descending, from a single couple primitively sprung from\nthe hands of the Creator. This opinion is evidently conformable to the\nBible narrative; this reflection will not escape the sincere\nChristian, and we must make it at the risk of exciting the pity or\nindignation of certain positivists, who reproach us with bringing into\nscientific questions prejudices and arguments which are\nextra-scientific.\n\n{846}\n\nThe opinion of the polygenists is diametrically opposed to the\npreceding. According to them, the typical differences which exist\nbetween the races of men are so decided, so profound, that they could\nnot be the result of the conditions of existence; these differences\nare then original; men, instead of belonging to a single zoological\nspecies, form a genera or even a family, the bimanous family;\ncommunity of origin is then impossible, and the account in Genesis\nmust be considered as legendary.\n\nLastly, a third school separates itself entirely from the preceding,\nand considers the question under discussion as a phase of the general\nquestion--the stability of the species. The naturalists connected with\nthis school regard the species as something essentially changeable.\nThey deduce this opinion from the examples of the endless varieties of\nforms which our domestic animals above all others present. It is\npossible, by known processes, to obtain, after several generations,\nproducts so different from the primitive type, that to judge them by\nthe form only we should believe in the existence of a new species; the\ncontinued fecundity between the two varieties alone attesting the\nspecific unity of both types. Would it not be possible, by new\nmethods, or by a better employment of the means already known, to\narrive at such a complete transformation that the fecundity between\nthe new and the primitive species should cease to exist, or at least\ncease to be unlimited? We should have thus obtained a novel species by\na simple transformation due to the forces of nature. The result which\nman might obtain at the end of several generations, nature, left to\nitself, would inevitably arrive at, after a longer or shorter time,\naccording as circumstances should be more or less favorable. This is\nadmitted by Lamark, and the two Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire; it is admitted\nalso by the English naturalist Darwin. The latter regards all animals\nactually existing as descending from four or five progenitors; an\nequal number would suffice for plants. He even adds that, guided by\nanalogy, he would willingly admit that, all organized beings, plants\nand animals, descend from one single primordial type, and that man\nshould constitute no exception to the general laws; he springs from\nthe ape or some extinct type, and thence from the primitive.\n\nIt is to this last school that M. Tremaux belongs: the title of his\nbook sufficiently shows it. He concedes the variability and the\ntransformation of the species; but separates himself distinctly from\nDarwin relative to the causes which produce this variation.\n\nM. Tremaux' book may be summed up entirely in the statement of the\ngreat law of the improvement of beings which is printed in large\nletters on the front page of the first part: \"The improvement of\ncreatures is or becomes proportionate to the degree of elaboration of\nthe soil on which they live! And the soil is in general elaborated in\nproportion as it belongs to a more recent geological formation.\" To\nprove this law, and to deduce from it every possible consequence, is\nthe object of the book.\n\nThe first requisite in judging a work is to understand its aim or end.\nThus we have endeavored to seize the sense and the bearing which the\nauthor attaches to the great law he thinks he has discovered. Such a\nsoil gives such a product, we are told. We understand this when the\ndirect fruits of the earth are in question that is, of the vegetables\nwhich draw directly from the earth the principles which should\nassimilate them. But as to animals, what influence can the soil\nexercise over them? This is what M. Tremaux should have explained, and\nwhat he has forgotten to tell us. Must we understand that the land, by\nvirtue of its chemical and mineralogical composition, possesses a\nmysterious action of an unknown nature, determining according to the\ncase the improvement or degeneracy of the species of {847} animals?\nSuch is in fact the meaning which many passages seem to attribute to\nthis law. Thus, after having shown that the causes generally assigned\ncannot explain those typical changes which nature presents, the author\nadds: \"By the action of cross-breeding, food, and climate alone, we\nshall meet with contradictions at every step. With the action of the\nsun, the whole globe exhibits the same effects.\" Since it is neither\nthrough food nor by climate that the sun acts, it is by some\nmysterious agency; and behold us thus, in the nineteenth century,\nthrown back upon occult causes. May we be permitted to observe that\nthis is not scientific?\n\nEntirely engaged in proving by facts the law which must serve as a\noasis to his system, M. Tremaux seems never to have thought of\nexplaining to himself the manner of the earth's action. Thus, beside\nnumerous places which clearly imply an immediate action, others could\nbe quoted which only attribute to the soil an indirect action due to\nthe aliments drawn from it. For example, _apropos_ of cretinism, we\nread: \"This scourge is above all endemical, because in fact those\npersons who can profit by the _products_ of another soil feel in a\nlesser degree the unfavorable results of that condition.\" And further\non: \"To avoid living permanently on a soil which produces cretinism is\nthe sole remedy, or rather the only palliative, against its pernicious\neffects on man. It is best to abandon it completely, or at least _to\nmake use of products other than those destined to feed its\ninhabitants._\" In brief, what is necessary to bring humanity to\nperfection? \"Firstly, To choose carefully those lands whose products\nare more directly intended for man. Secondly, To have recourse to\nevery proper means of improving the land. Thirdly, Planting with\nsuitable trees those lands which are unfavorable to the growth of\nhuman food. Fourthly, To subject to agriculture those forest lands\nwhich occupy a favorable soil.\"\n\nThese passages appear clear that it is not of itself, but by its\nproductions, and also doubtless through its climate, the soil acts on\nman and on the animals. This explanation is more philosophical than\nnovel.\n\nBetween the monogenists and the polygenists, the question reduces\nitself very nearly to this: Can beings differing so much as the\nEuropeans and the Bushmen, the Hottentot and the Australian, descend\nfrom the same ancestors? No, reply the polygenists; for the\ndifferences are greater than those which characterize certain species.\nIn order to meet this objection, the monogenists have had recourse to\nwhat is called the middle theory, and to that of the cross-breeds. The\nwhole of the external circumstances under which the representatives of\na species exist, constitute what is called the middle or medium, to\nwhich monogenists, supporting themselves on undoubted facts, attribute\nthe power of gradually changing the medium type of a species. The\ncrossing of many types thus modified will give birth to new forms,\nall, however, belonging to one common kind.\n\nWhere do we find the difference between this middle theory and the law\nof M. Tremaux? In nothing but a greater or less importance attributed\nto the influence of soil; and even this difference is more apparent\nthan real. The _fundamental law_ so understood--and it appears to us\nhard to understand it otherwise--constitutes no novel idea or theory;\nit is nothing more than a variation of the classic theory of the\ninfluence of media.\n\nHow is this law proved? It is impossible for us to follow the author\nin the development of his arguments. He gives proof in them of rare\nlearning, and of profound and varied knowledge of ethnography. We\nobserve the marked predilection of M. Tremaux for the soil of Africa,\nwhich he has ably described in special works. But when we have\nfinished reading him, and would give an account of his arguments and\nof their value, we do {848} not find in them all the elements of\nconviction. We know that many writers have expressed an opinion very\ndifferent from ours, but even should we be deemed too exacting, we\nmust acknowledge that an attentive perusal has not convinced us. There\nare no doubt remarkable coincidences in the work; but they are not of\na sufficiently trenchant character, and, moreover, most of the facts\nmay be explained otherwise than by the influence of soil. Let us give\nsome examples. \"We cannot meet with a single instance of a\ncivilization which has developed itself, nor even been maintained in\ncases of emigration, under adverse geological conditions.\" Nothing is\nmore natural, in fact. Why should emigrants on the way of civilization\nsettle preferentially in unfertile countries? For it must not be\nforgotten that what are here called geological conditions refer simply\nto the fertility of the soil.\n\nAnother argument extensively developed is drawn from the persistence\nof the same types in the same countries. After having examined Africa\nand Europe from this point of view, the author concludes thus: \"In\nshort, what have the migrations from the East peopling the West\nproduced? They have created Hellenes in Greece, Romans in Rome, Gauls\nin France, and children of Albion in England.\" Must we conclude, from\nthis persistence, that the conquering races have in each generation\nfelt the influence of the soil, so as to resemble after some centuries\nthe former populations? Such is the reasoning of M. Tremaux. But the\nsame fact is appealed to by polygenists, who interpret it in a\ndifferent manner. According to them, this persistence proves that the\nconquering race has always been absorbed by the indigenous; and they\ndo not fail to conclude from it that between these two races\nillimitable fecundity, the specific character of unity, is hardly ever\nrealized.\n\nWe read at the same page: \"If we pass over other continents, the same\nresults strike us on all sides. On certain points of Australia and\nAmerica, the English type is attached from the very first generation.\"\nThis fact is stated by some naturalists, but it is denied by others.\nWe can say as much of the pretended transformation of negroes. Messrs.\nReiset, Lyell, and E. Reclus tell us that they are transformed in\nabout one hundred and fifty years to approach the white type by one\nquarter of the distance which separated them from it. But American\nanthropologists, who are nearly all polygenists, resolutely affirm the\ncontrary.\n\nThus we see the facts are difficult to ascertain, and still more\ndifficult to interpret. It is one of the grand difficulties of\nanthropology. We rarely succeed in agreeing about the facts\nthemselves, which only happens in some exceptional cases supported by\nperfectly exact statistics; and many facts are not of a nature to be\nconsigned to the columns of an official register. Even in a case where\nthe facts are placed beyond doubt, they are generally of a nature to\nbe variously interpreted, and every one with preconceived ideas\ntortures them at his pleasure, and does not fail to find in them a\nconfirmation of his theories. M. Tremaux is so filled with his idea\nthat he finds proofs in support of it even in politics; and\nreciprocally, does not hesitate, in the name of geology, to counsel\nprinces on the manner of governing their subjects. For example, we\nremember the war carried on in 1848 by Hungary against Austria. At\nthat time Transylvania withdrew from the common cause and rallied to\nthe Austrian government. The emperor Francis Joseph rejoiced at this\nresult, hoping to easily propitiate the Croats; but he experienced\nfrom them an unexpected resistance, and their assembly of notables\ndeclared that Croatia should continue to share the fate of Hungary.\nUpon this M. Tremaux says: \"This would appear paradoxical if we\nconsidered only geographical positions, but consult {849} geology and\nall this will appear perfectly rational, since Transylvania reposes\nlike Austria upon a great surface of old ground; whilst Hungary,\nCroatia, and Dalmatia stand upon more recent layers.\" We leave our\nreaders to appreciate this.\n\nThe author adds: \"As to Venetia, not only is its soil of recent\nformation, but it possesses a distinct and very different nationality;\nthus each one recognizes its unalterable tendencies.\"\n\nWhat caused the sanguinary war which has just desolated America? Why,\nbecause the Southerns, dwelling on virgin soil, fought for their\nindependence and would not be governed by men from old lands. And\nreflecting that the new lands of the South are more fitted to improve\nthe races which cultivate them, M. Tremaux fears not to predict,\nnotwithstanding the unforeseen victory of the North, that \"in the\nfuture the South will govern the North, if it be not separated from\nit.\"\n\nAs to Ireland and Poland, it is again in the name of geology that our\nauthor defends their independence. Not hoping to obtain this result,\nhe at least gives the princes who govern them wise counsels for their\nguidance.\n\nLet us come to the scientific conclusions which the author pretends to\ndraw from his principle in favor of natural history in general and of\nanthropology in particular. Since the soil acts so energetically in\nthe modification of types, it is evident that the species ought to be\nessentially variable. Let a race be found isolated on a favorable\nground, without any communication with the rest of mankind, and the\nmodifications will be produced, transmitted, and increased in every\ngeneration; and, after a longer or shorter time, the new type will be\nso different from the old one, that illimitable fecundity will no\nlonger exist between them; there will only be one species the more.\nTransformations in reality are not made as rapidly as might be\nbelieved, because the isolation which we have supposed never exists.\nIt thence follows that the crossings with the primitive race, or even\nwith a race on the road to degeneracy on an imperfect soil, constantly\ncheck the effect of the superior soil. At length there is an\nequilibrium between these two causes, and then there appears a medium\ntype, which preserves its identity so long as the circumstances remain\nthe same. This necessarily happens in a period of several thousand\nyears, like our historic period. But if we take in at a glance several\nthousand ages, we shall understand that the geological changes\neffected by time on the surface of the world will cause the action of\nthe soil to prevail over the influence of crossings, in such a manner\nas to modify slowly but progressively the types and the species.\n\nStarting from these principles, what does M. Tremaux require in order\nto explain the actual state of creation? A simple _primordial cell_ or\n_utricle_, the most simply organized being, whether animal or\nvegetable matters little. If this being so simple existed at the epoch\nwhich geologists term the _Silurian period_, it is many millions of\nages past. Since then the surface of the globe has been constantly\nmodified and ameliorated, life has been constantly developed, and form\nbeen brought nearer to perfection. It is thus that even in the most\nelementary beings nature has arrived at the numerous and complicated\nforms which we know. In this manner man at his appointed hour appeared\non earth, where he strove to improve himself and is striving in that\ndirection still. M. Tremaux does not exactly admit that we are\ndescended from apes. No; but he contends that both man and ape sprang\nfrom one common source, which has now disappeared; and that whilst the\nquadruman, placed under unfavorable geological conditions, has\nsuffered from its inevitable influence and been degraded, man has on\nthe contrary, under happier influences, developed himself, and is\nbecome able, by {850} his intelligent activity, to combat those\nexternal influences. Hence his actual superiority--hence his future\nprogress.\n\nA serious objection here presents itself. Does the influence of the\nsoil perfect the _instinct_ of animals as well as their bodies? Has _it_\ngiven man that intelligence which, better than all zoological\ncharacters, especially distinguishes him from the brute creation? M.\nTremaux meets this difficulty with a reply which might have been taken\nfrom Nysten's dictionary. In his comparison \"of man with the ape,\" he\ntells us \"that M. Gratiolet divides the subject into two sections, the\none referring to organization, the other to faculties. He concedes the\nresemblances of the first, he refuses to acknowledge those of the\nsecond, without observing that _these differences in faculties_ are\nonly the consequence of a greater or less degree of organic\ndevelopment.\" This philosophical heresy does not slip by chance from\nthe writer's pen; we find it repeated in several places, nearly in the\nsame terms. Moreover, in refuting another passage from Gratiolet, he\nsays: \"I am astonished that Gratiolet does not recognize in instinct a\nrudiment of intelligence; in the constructions of the beaver, in the\nnests of birds, in the cells of bees, elements of sculpture and of\ndesign, etc.\"\n\nM. Tremaux divides the opinions of Gratiolet into two; the first part\nis serious, and is that of the learned anatomist; the second is that\nof sentiment, wherein he speaks by the same title as the philosophers\n_who develop the void of their entities_. This contempt for philosophy\nwell explains the strange ideas of our author about the intelligence\nof man and the souls of brutes. To see nothing between both but a\ndifference of organization is not philosophical. A little metaphysics\nwould spoil nothing, and it really does not require a strong dose to\nbehold the abyss which separates human intelligence, capable of\nseizing the abstract and the absolute as well as the concrete and the\ncontinent, from that of brutes, acting by instinct, able only at the\nmost to combine some sensations, without ever having any general\nideas.\n\nWe think we have now given a pretty exact epitome of M. Tremaux'\nideas. The whole work rests upon an ill defined principle, which, in\nthe sense in which we have understood it, the only one which appears\nto us to be feasible, cannot be considered new. This principle,\nalthough true in a certain sense and within certain limits, is not to\nbe proved irrefragable, as the basis of any theory should be. The\nconsequences which are sought to be drawn from the premises are not\nnecessarily contained in them, and many bear not the seal of a\nwholesome philosophy. We shall perhaps be thought a little too severe\nupon this work. We think we should be so, especially as the author is\nin many respects recommendable. _Apropos_ of the question of species,\nM. Tremaux writes: \"M. Kourens has his merits, but they lie elsewhere;\nit is in his researches on the periosteum and on the vital cord that\nhe acquires them.\" We may be allowed to use the same expressions and\nto say: \"M. Tremaux deserves well, but not herein; his actual labors\non ethnography and archaeology are very good. Read the account of his\ntravels to Soudan and into Asia Minor, and you will acknowledge him a\nman of talent and undoubted science. But as to his theoretical ideas\non the question of the species, he must not reckon upon them to\nsupport his reputation.\" Some journals may waste their incense upon\nhim; the _Constitutional_ may exclaim: \"The veil has been lifted... a\nnew law is about to unite all disputants. . the arguments of M.\nTremaux abound, and we feel only an embarrassment in choosing.\"_\nL'Independance Beige_ will join the chorus. Even the _Moniteur_ will\ngrant its approval. But all this is no set-off against the opinions of\nthe learned, and M. Tremaux knows very well that our great naturalists\ndo not {851} look upon his ideas as acceptable, or his arguments as\nconclusive.\n\nIt will be observed that we have not spoken of the Bible, although its\nnarrative appears compromised by the transformation theory. We believe\nit to be useless to mix up theology with scientific debates, at least,\nwhen it is not directly attacked. Now, M. Tremaux is far from\nattacking revelation; he does not believe his ideas reconcileable with\nGenesis; he never speaks of the Bible narrative but with the greatest\nrespect. Hence we believe it advisable to show great tolerance toward\nsciences which are still in their infancy, which require their elbows\nfree for development, and which must wander a little in unknown\ncountries, free to make a false step from time to time. It is thus\nthey will progress and arrive at the truth.\n\nWe will add one last remark on the address of the anthropologists. The\norigin of man concerns historians as much as naturalists; for this\nreason we should not, in works of this character, neglect historic\nmonuments. Of all those monuments, books are the surest. Even in\nabstracting the special value which the Bible possesses as an inspired\nvolume, it is not the less true that it is a document which must be\nconsidered, and which as a written document has an incontestably safer\nmeaning than all the fossils in the world.\n\nFor a higher reason we should beware of all theories or hypotheses\nwhich do not agree with the sacred text. The Bible no doubt is not\nintended to instruct us in the secrets of the natural order, and it is\nperhaps for that that we find in it so little relating to these\nsubjects; but the Holy Ghost, who inspired the sacred writers, could\nnot have dictated to them errors, and every assertion which would be\ncontrary to the _clear_ and _certain_ sense of a passage in it should,\nfor this reason, be rejected as untrue. When the sense is obscure or\ndoubtful, which is nearly always the case in passages relating to\nphysics, we should, we think, be very cautious, and it is prudent for\nthe learned to be on their guard, for fear of falling into very\nnumerous and grave errors.\n\n------\n\nFrom The Victoria Magazine.\n\nWISDOM BY EXPERIENCE.\n\n\nWhat a shame! What abominable interference! What cruelty! What\ntyranny! These and many other strong expressions of the same kind\nproceeded from a collection of rose-stocks planted ready for budding.\nThey were all fiercely angry and indignant, and first one and then\nanother uttered some exclamation of disgust, and then all joined in a\nchorus of maledictions on the gardener who had done them so much\ninjury. It was in the month of June that their feelings were so much\nexcited, just when the sap was most active, and they were throwing out\ntheir most luxuriant shoots. I don't know how they went on when the\ngardener first dug them up out of the hedges, and cut away all their\nside branches and left only a single straight stem. If they did not\nmake a fight for it then, it must have been because their sap was all\ndried up, and their leaves had fallen off, and they were in low\nspirits, and did not much care what became of them. But even then I\ndon't think they yielded without a struggle, and I have no doubt there\nwas a good deal of scratching and dragging back, {852} and a great\nshow of independence and sullenness. But they had not the spirits to\nkeep up resistance, and the gardener did not give them much chance,\nfor he pruned them close, and planted them in rows just far enough\napart to prevent the possibility of their having much intercourse, or\nof the evil disposed corrupting the more docile. But it was different\nin June, when, as I said, the sap was active, and their branches began\nto grow out on all sides, so that they could reach each other and even\ntake a sly pinch at the gardener or any of his friends who happened to\ncome near. And the particular irritation now was because the gardener\nhad discovered how wild they were becoming, and set resolutely about\nrestraining them. First of all he cut off all the suckers that grew\nfrom the roots, and the lower shoots, leaving only those that grew at\nthe crown of the stock, and then he put them all straight up, and\nwould not let them loll about or hang over the path--a habit they had\ngot into which was very disagreeable to those who passed by. And if\nthey would not stand upright without, he fastened them to pieces of\nboard let into the ground. This was a great grievance, but I think\nthey most rebelled at having their lower boughs cut off, for if left\nto themselves they would have spread and puffed themselves out in a\nmost ridiculous way.\n\nNow it so happened that Madame Boll, a stock of a former year which\nhad been budded, but left in its place and not removed with the rest\ninto the flower-garden, heard their exclamations of anger and\nimpatience, and having perhaps gone through some such phase of feeling\nherself, and thus gained wisdom by experience, she thought she would\ntry if she could put their case to them in a better light; so she took\nadvantage of a little lull in the storm, and said in a gentle,\nladylike tone,\n\n\"My young friends, I am very sorry to see you so unhappy; but perhaps\nif you will hear what I have got to say, you might think better of\nyour present position.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Miss Strong, who was tossing her long arms about in a\nvery excited way, only luckily she was out of reach, \"if you are going\nto take the gardener's part, and preach patience and submission, and\nthat sort of thing, I can tell you you had better keep your remarks to\nyourself, or if I can get at you, I'll spoil that neat head-dress of\nyours, which, let me tell you, is not half as pretty as hundreds in\nthe hedgerows, or as ours would have been, if we had been left to our\nown devices as we were last year;\" which tirade she ended with a\nscornful laugh in which many of the others joined.\n\nBut little Miss Wild-Rose, who was nearer, said quietly,\n\n\"Perhaps it would be as well to hear what is said on the other side;\nparticularly as, it is too hot to go on screaming and abusing people\nwho don't seem to care about it;\" and as several of the others were of\nthe same opinion, Madame Boll took courage, and said what was in her\nmind.\n\n\"Perhaps it may give you more confidence in me to know, that when I\nwas first placed here I had many of the same thoughts and feelings\nthat you appear to have. I did not know why I was taken out of the\nhedgerow, and trimmed and restrained, and not allowed to have my own\nway; and I confess I thought it very hard. Particularly I was\nindignant, as no doubt you will be when the time comes (for you have\nstill a good deal to undergo which you know nothing about at\npresent),--I was, I say, very indignant when the gardener cut a slit\nin the only shoot which he had left me, and which was growing very\nluxuriant, and I was quite proud of it; and introduced a meagre little\nbud from another tree, and made me nourish and strengthen it, though I\nknew that my own shoot would suffer by it; and so it turned out; for\nafter a while, when the bud began to grow, he cut away {853} my\nnatural shoot altogether, and left only that which had been inserted.\"\n\nHere Miss Strong broke in.\n\n\"You were very tame to submit to it. I would have banged and twisted\nabout till I had got rid of it some way or other.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" said Madame Boll, \"we shall see; you are stronger and more\nresolute than I was. All I know is, I could not help myself.\"\n\n\"Cowardly creature!\" muttered Miss Strong, scornfully. But Madame Boll\nresumed:\n\n\"I soon got used to the change, and gradually began to take an\ninterest in the bud I had adopted; and though of course Miss Strong\nmay affect to despise its beauty, I can assure you that most people\nhave a different opinion.\"\n\nWhereupon, Madame Boll gave herself airs, and coquettishly moved aside\na leaf or two, and displayed a most perfect and symmetrical rose.\n\n\"But,\" said Miss Wild-Rose and her party all in a breath, \"do you mean\nthat we shall all bear roses like that?\"\n\n\"Not all, certainly, possibly none of you exactly like, for there are\nhundreds of varieties, and many of them much more beautiful. It will\nbe just as the gardener fancies, though he is generally guided in his\nselection by the habit and vigor of the stock, I daresay he will give\nMiss Strong, who is so energetic, a bud of Gloire de Dijon, or Anna de\nDiesbach, and you, being weaker, will have Devoniensis, or Niphetos.\"\n\nMiss Strong gave a scornful toss at this, but did not vouchsafe any\nremark, though I think she felt rather complimented, and the others\nbegan to muse, since it must be so, what rose they would be likely to\nhave, and which would become them best.\n\nA little time after this it turned out just as Madame Boll had\nsaid--the gardener came one morning and began to bud the stocks, and\njust as he was preparing Miss Wild-Rose for the operation, a young\nlady came by, and asked what bud he intended for that one, for, she\nsaid, \"I want a Devoniensis, and I think it would just suit it.\"\n\n\"I have got a Devoniensis bud here,\" he said, \"and will put it in.\"\n\n\"And that tall one I think I should like for Gloire de Dijon.\"\n\n\"I will try,\" he said, \"but somehow I am half afraid I shall have some\ntrouble with it, for though vigorous it is rather awkward, and the\nthorns are very spiteful. To say the truth, I am half afraid of it,\nand have been leaving it till the last.\"\n\n\"But what,\" said the lady, \"is this in the corner? Surely it is Madame\nBoll; and such a beauty! What is it doing here?\"\n\n\"To say the truth, ma'am, I overlooked it when I planted the others\nout, and now it must remain where it is for another year.\"\n\n\"Well,\" she said, \"I hope the others will take pattern from it and do\nas well.\"\n\n\"So,\" said Madame Boll, after they were gone, \"that accounts for my\nbeing left here: I must confess I was a little mortified, for I\nthought it was a slight; but I generally find, if we wait awhile,\neverything comes right in the end, and possibly my being here has done\nyou some good, or given you comfort; and if so, instead of regret, I\nought to feel pleasure. But now, my young friends, I will tell you a\nconversation I overheard one day, between the young lady who was here\njust now and another, which your foolish behavior a short time ago\nbrought to my mind. They were talking about the children in the\nschool, and how difficult it was to make them feel the advantage of\nbeing submissive and conforming to their rules. They said they were so\nanxious to have their own way, and seemed to think it was a pleasure\nto their teachers to thwart them, or make them do what they did not\nwish, and not that it was intended for their good; and if their\nteachers thought they paid too much attention to their dress, {854}\nand wished to be smart, and wear flowers and feathers, when they ought\nrather to be adorning their minds, and beautifying their tempers, and\nenriching their understanding, they were ready to cry out, as you did\njust now, 'What tyranny!' 'How interfering!' 'Why can't they let us\ndress as we like?' But what they were particularly complaining about\non that occasion, was that the children would persist in wearing hoops\nwhich stuck out their clothes, and made them take up twice as much\nroom as they otherwise would have done. For, it seems, the benches\nwhere they sat were only large enough for them if they sat close\ntogether, which they could not do with hoops on, so they were obliged\nto tell them they could not take them into the school if they did not\nlay aside their hoops, and some of them were foolish enough to say\nthat they would not come to school if they were not allowed to wear\nhoops. Now, it struck me, this was just like your folly in wishing to\nkeep your wild-growing suckers and lower branches, when you know very\nwell that they would take away all the nourishment which is needed to\nbring the beautiful rose-buds to perfection; the bud, in your place,\nanswering to the knowledge and other excellences which it is the\nobject of education to impart to their ignorant and lawless natures,\nand which, in after years, when they are able to appreciate them, they\nprize highly, and can hardly understand what it was that made them so\naverse to go through the process necessary for their acquirement.\"\n\nA year or two afterward I saw the young lady and the gardener looking\nat a bed of beautiful roses on the lawn, and heard the young lady ask\nwhat had become of the Devoniensis she had asked him to bud.\n\n\"Don't you see it, ma'am,\" he said, \"growing against the wall? I think\nit is almost the gem of the whole garden.\"\n\n\"Oh, what a beauty!\" she exclaimed; \"and how well it has grown!\"\n\n\"Yes, ma'am,\" he said; \"it has always done well; it seemed to take to\nit kindly from the very first, and has never gone back at all. But I\nhad a good deal of trouble with this one; perhaps you may remember my\nsaying I thought it likely I should. It is that strong growing one you\nremarked at the same time when you told me to bud the Devoniensis. It\nwon't make much show this year. It wasted so much energy in putting\nout side-shoots and suckers. But I think it has got out of its bad\nways, and next year I hope it will make quite a grand tree.\"\n\n\"Oh!\" she said, \"and here is my old friend Madame Boll, I see. I am\nglad you put it here, it is well worth a good place.\"\n\n\"You hear,\" said Madame Boll, after they were gone, to her neighbor\nGloire de Dijon, \"what they say of us, and I hope you have become\nreconciled to the change, and will let the good that is in you show\nitself.\"\n\nWhereupon there seemed to come rather a lachrymose murmur from the\ndwarfed shoot of Gloire de Dijon. \"But am I not to flower at all this\nyear?\"\n\n\"Well, my dear,\" said Madame Boll, tenderly, \"I do not wish to be\nsevere or say anything to hurt your feelings, but you must know that\nyour present disappointment is the natural result of your past\nconduct. You were so determined to indulge in perverse and self-willed\nsuckers, and you never let the gardener touch you without trying to\nprick his fingers or tear his clothes. And now all you want is a\nlittle patience. Who knows but you may be allowed to bloom in the\nautumn, and perhaps win the prize at the last flower show? But if not,\nwhy it will be all right next year. Do you think it was no\nmortification to me to be neglected and almost unnoticed last year,\nand that, as it appears, entirely owing to the carelessness of others,\nand not from any fault of mine? Well, you see, I have got over it; and\nvery likely next year {855} you will have the gratification of hearing\nthe lady praise you as she did me just now. Be thankful that\nexperience with you has not come too late.\"\n\nWhen Madame Boll ended, I could see on the edge of one of her delicate\nleaves a drop of dew, and I said to myself, \"How very like a tear!\"\n\n------\n\nFrom The Month.\n\nLABORERS GONE TO THEIR REWARD.\n\n\nIn the days in which we live, more perhaps than at any other time,\neducation, the school, and the college are made the positions of vital\nimportance in the battle-field of contending principles. Services\nrendered and losses sustained on such points are, therefore, worthy of\nspecial notice, of particular gratitude, or of sorrow. In the month of\nMay of this year two souls went to their rest, both of whom had\nlabored long, signally, and successfully in the cause of Catholic\neducation--especially for the higher classes; both of whom have left\nbehind them institutions in which their spirit is enshrined: destined,\nwe trust, to continue through centuries yet to come the work, the\nbeginnings of which were committed to those whose loss we are now\nlamenting. On the 14th of May Monsignor de Ram, the restorer of\nCatholic university education in the countries over which the French\nrevolution had swept, died peacefully, but almost without warning; and\na few days later, his decease was followed by that of the reverend\nmother Madeline Sophie Barat, the foundress and first\nsuperioress-general of the congregation of the nuns of the Sacred\nHeart. Let us devote a few lines to each.\n\nMonsignor de Ram was born at Louvain, of parents distinguished for\npiety and noble descent, September 2, 1804. He early devoted himself\nto the service of the Church; was ordained priest, March 19,1827; and\nbecame at once professor in the ecclesiastical seminary of his native\ndiocese, Mechlin. He had no sooner grown up than he was struck by\nobserving that his native language, the Flemish, which of all European\ntongues most nearly resembles our own, was almost wholly without books\nof a good tendency. The reason was evident. The population by which it\nis spoken is comparatively small, and is hemmed in by others which\nspeak French, Dutch, or German. Hence it has almost sunk into a\n_patois_. Men who speak Flemish to their servants and laborers read\nand write in French. The first labors of Mons. de Ram were devoted to\nmeet this want, by publishing several very useful books in Flemish. He\nwas only thirty when the bishops of Belgium resolved to erect a\nCatholic university. The attempt could never before have been made;\nfor in Belgium, almost more than anywhere else, education had for two\nhundred years been seized by the state, and used to an irreligious\npurpose. The revolution of 1830, though not made by the Church nor in\nits interests, had given it a freedom which it never possessed before.\nThe first use made of this freedom by the bishops of Belgium was to\nerect a Catholic university, and the young and zealous priest de Ram\nwas set over it by their deliberate choice. To its service he devoted\nthe rest of his life. Beneath his care were trained during thirty\nyears a continual succession of young men, who are at this day the\nstrength of the Church in Belgium, and to a considerable degree in\nFrance. {856} England also has sent students there. Those who have had\nthe happiness of attending the meetings of the Catholic congress in\nBelgium must, we think, have been struck by the high Catholic tone of\na number of young men of the middle and higher classes, and by their\nintelligence. For those men Belgium and the Church are indebted to the\nCatholic university of Louvain, and of that university Monsignor de\nRam has, until his death, been the soul. On Friday, May 12, he\nreturned from attending a meeting of the academy of Brussels. On the\nevening of Sunday, 14th, he had entered into the unseen world. His age\nwas only sixty; and as he was willing, so it might have been expected\nthat he would be able, to continue for years to come the labors in\nwhich his life had been spent. Such was not the will of his Lord,\nwhose call he was at once ready to obey.\n\nAt Paris, on the morning of Monday, May 22, only seven whole days\nlater, the superioress of the Society of the Sacred Heart had attended\nthe mass of the community. She had completed in the preceding December\nher eighty-fifth year. Her day of labor was at last over. She was\nseized with apoplexy, and never recovered the power of speech. She\ngave, however, clear signs of intelligence, and received the viaticum,\nas well as the last unction. On the 24th the blessing of the Holy\nFather reached her by a telegraphic message. On the 25th she slept the\nsleep of the just.\n\nShe was born in December, 1779. She had an elder brother, who before\n1800 was a priest, and had joined himself to a society which was\nformed at Vienna in the latter part of the French revolution, under\nthe title of the \"Fathers of the Sacred Heart.\" The first superior of\nthis society, Father Tournely, had been a pupil of the illustrious\nFather Emery at St. Sulpice. His object seems to have been to continue\nunder another name the spirit and practices of the Society of Jesus,\nwhich had been swept away twenty years before by the insane union of\nthe monarchs of Europe with the revolutionary infidels, until times\nshould allow of its re-establishment. This, however, he did not live\nto see. His successor, Father Varin, joined it at its restoration. He\nrelates that the great desire of Father Tournely was the foundation of\na congregation of nuns devoted, under the protection of the Sacred\nHeart, to the education of young persons of their own sex. At one time\nhe had hoped to see this project carried into execution by the\nPrincess Louisa of Bourbon-Conde, who actually came from Switzerland,\nwhere she was in exile, to Vienna, to confer with him on the subject.\nBut God called her to the contemplative life, and she became a\nBenedictine. Father Tournely, however, never doubted its execution.\nWalking one day on the fortifications now destroyed, but then\nsurrounding Vienna, he said to Father Varin, alluding to this\ndisappointment, \"Dear friend, I thought this had been the work of God,\nand if it is not, I confess I do not know how to discern between the\nspirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood.\" Then, after remaining\nsilent awhile in recollection, he turned to his friend, with something\nof fire more than natural in his expression, and added: \"It is the\nwill of God. As to the occasion and the instrument, I may have been\ndeceived; but, sooner or later, this society will be founded.\" His\nfriend used to say that the impression left by these words, and the\nmanner in which they were spoken, never faded from his mind. They\nimpressed him with the same conviction; and he added, that when he\nrepeated them to his brethren, it took possession of all their minds.\n\n\"In truth,\" said Fr. Varin, \"God had not chosen for the commencement\nof this work instruments great in this world. That the glory might be\nhis alone, he was pleased that the foundation of the building should\nbe simplicity, littleness, nothingness.\"\n\nFr. Tournely died soon afterward, {857} in the flower of his age. Fr.\nVarin succeeded him, and the conclusion of the revolution enabled him\nand his brethren to return to Paris. To Paris they went in the year\n1800. It was exactly the moment when to human eyes the night seemed\ndarkest, but when the morning was ready to spring. Pius VI. died a\nprisoner in the hands of the infidel French revolutionists, August 29,\n1799. \"At this moment,\" says Macaulay, \"it is not strange that even\nsagacious observers should have thought that at length the hour of the\nChurch of Rome was come. An infidel power in the ascendant, the pope\ndying in captivity, the most illustrious prelates of France living in\na foreign country on Protestant alms, the noblest edifices which the\nmunificence of former ages had consecrated to the worship of God\nturned into temples of victory, or into banqueting-houses for\npolitical societies, or into theophilanthropic chapels; such signs\nmight well be supposed to indicate the approaching end of that long\ndomination. But the end was not yet. Again doomed to death, the\nmilk-white hind was still fated not to die. Even before the funeral\nrites had been performed over the ashes of Pius VI., a great reaction\nhad commenced, which after the lapse of [sixty-five] years appears to\nbe still in progress.\" As yet, however, no human foresight would have\nobserved the tokens of that reaction. Paris was no longer the city\nwhere the eldest son of the Church was enthroned, and where the great\nof this world were rejoiced to heap their wealth upon any new plan\nwhich promised to promote the glory of God. Still, Napoleon Bonaparte\nhad just seized the reins as first consul, and there was at least\ntoleration to priests. The community lived in a single mean room,\nwhich served them as dormitory, refectory, kitchen, and study. Here\nFr. Varin was sitting upon the edge of a very shabby bed, and by his\nside sat one of his community, Fr. Barat. \"I asked him what relations\nhe had. He said, one _little sister_. The words made a strong\nimpression upon me. I asked how old she was, and what were her powers.\nHe said she was eighteen or nineteen; that she had learned Latin and\nGreek, and translated Virgil and Homer with ease; that she had\nqualities to make a good teacher; but that for the present she had\ngone to pass some time in her family.\" Father Barat, good man as he\nwas, was not above human infirmity, and like other elder brothers,\nhowever proud he might be of his younger sister, could never fancy\nthat she was really grown up; for when he said she was about eighteen\nor nineteen, she was one-and-twenty. Two months later she came to\nParis. \"I went to see her, and found a young person of very delicate\nappearance, extremely retiring, and very timid. What a\nfoundation-stone! said I to myself, in reply to the feeling I had had\nwithin me when her brother had mentioned her to me for the first time.\nAnd yet it was upon her that it was the will of God to raise the\nbuilding of the Society of His Divine Heart. This was the grain of\nmustard-seed which was to produce the tree whose branches have already\nspread so wide.\"\n\nOn November 21, 1800, she dedicated herself to the Sacred Heart, under\nthe patronage of the Blessed Virgin, together with an intimate friend,\nMlle. Octavia Bailly, who shared her aspirations. It was the first\nstreak on the sky which told of the coming day. The day the society\nwas formed, in 1802, she became superioress of the first house, which\nwas at Amiens. In 1806, a second was founded at Grenoble; that year\nthe first general congregation elected her superioress-general. In\n1826 there were seventeen houses, and the rules were approved by Leo\nXII. Before her death she had under her rule ninety-seven houses and\n3,500 nuns. She had been superioress of the congregation for\nsixty-three years; and it is probable that the majority of the French\nladies now living who have received a religious {858} education at all\nhave received it at the hands of herself or of her children in\nreligion.\n\nHer body was taken to Conflans, where is the novitiate in the\nneighborhood of Paris. During three days her cell was visited by all\nwhom the rules of the community permitted to enter--the nuns of the\ndifferent houses in Paris, pupils present and former of all ages. Not\nonly these, but many priests were so desirous to have medals,\nchaplets, etc., touched by her remains, that two sisters, who were\ncontinually employed, were hardly able to satisfy the general desire.\n\nAt the beginning of this short notice we spoke of sorrow and a sense\nof loss as feelings natural in those interested in the great works\nundertaken by such laborers as Mons. de Ram and Madame Barat on the\noccasion of their removal from the scene of action. We need hardly do\nmore than allude to the other feelings which must at the same time\nblend with and qualify these; to the joy and exultation that must\nalways hail the close of a noble career long persevered in, from the\nthought of the rest and the crown that have been so faithfully won;\nand to the confidence that the works which those who have been removed\nfrom us have been allowed, while in the flesh, so happily to found,\npromote, and guide, will certainly not suffer by the Providence that\nhas now, as we trust, placed them where they are enabled to see,\nwithout any intervening shadow, the value of the great end for which\nthese works were undertaken, and where their power to help them on is\nto be measured, not by the feeble and inconstant energies of a will\nstill subject to failure and perversion, but by the mighty intensity\nof the intercession of those who are at rest with God.\n\n------\n\nMISCELLANY.\n\n_Mont Cenis Railway_.--Pending the completion of the great Mont Cenis\ntunnel, a temporary railway on inclined planes is to be carried along\nthe present road over the mountain. The French Government, on its\nportion of the line, will use locomotives with a peculiar mechanism,\nto produce adhesion, on a middle rail placed between the two ordinary\nrails. On the Italian side a traction carriage will be employed, which\nwill wind the carriages up by means of a drum acting on a heavy fixed\ncable laid along the line. The mechanism of the traction wagon will be\nput in motion by an endless wire rope actuated by water-wheels at the\nbase of the incline.\n\n\n\n_Homes without Hands_.--A new book by Mr. Woods, with the above title,\ngives an account of the habitations, \"which are never marred by\nincompetence or improved by practice,\" constructed by various animals,\nclassed according to their principles of construction, and illustrated\nby some excellent engravings, from drawings made expressly for the\nwork. The author first describes the homes of the burrowing mammalia,\nand then proceeds to those of the social birds and insects. The mole\nappears to take the first place in Mr. Wood's list of mammalia. \"This\nextraordinary animal does not merely dig tunnels in the ground and sit\nat the end of them, but forms a complicated subterranean\ndwelling-place, with chambers, passages, and other arrangements of\nwonderful completeness. It has regular roads leading to its feeding\ngrounds; establishes a system of communication as elaborate as that of\na modern railway, or, to be more correct, as that of the subterranean\nnetwork of metropolitan sewers.\" . . . \"How it manages to form its\nburrows in such admirably straight lines is not an easy problem,\nbecause it is always in {859} black darkness, and we know of nothing\nwhich can act as a guide to the animal.\" The real abode of the mole is\nmost extraordinary. \"The central apartment is a nearly spherical\nchamber, the roof of which is nearly on a level with the earth around\nthe hill; and, therefore, situated at a considerable depth from the\napex of the heap. Around this heap are driven two circular passages,\nor galleries, one just level with the ceiling, and the other at some\nheight above. The upper circle is much smaller than the lower. Five\nshort descending passages connect the galleries with each other, but\nthe only entrance into the keep is from the upper gallery, out of\nwhich three passages lead into the ceiling of the keep. Therefore,\nwhen the mole enters the house from one of his tunnels, he has first\nto get into the lower gallery, to ascend thence to the upper gallery,\nand so descend into the keep.\" The mole appears unequalled in\nferocity, activity, and voracity. The fox prefers to avoid the labor\nof burrowing, and avails itself of the deserted home of the badger, or\neven the rabbit; for, though it needs a larger tunnel than the latter,\nthe cunning animal finds its labor considerably decreased by only\nhaving to enlarge a ready-made burrow instead of driving a passage\nthrough solid earth.\n\nOf the weasel tribe, the badger is the most powerful and industrious\nexcavator; there are several chambers in its domicile, one of which is\nappropriated as a nursery, and is warmly padded with dry mosses and\ngrass. The rabbit, like the eider duck, lines her nursery with the\nsoft fur from her own breast; but Mr. Wood deprecates this being set\nforth as an act of self-sacrifice, and held up as an example of such\nto human beings, and declares it to be as purely instinctive as the\nact of laying eggs.\n\n\n_The Wealth of Mexico_.--M. Laur, the engineer deputed by the French\ngovernment to explore the mineral wealth of Mexico, and who has\nalready published several reports in the _Moniteur_, has completed his\ntask. These reports, according to a paragraph in the _Moniteur Belge_,\nare shortly to be published in a more extended form, giving the exact\nsituation, extent, and richness of the principal mineral veins of that\ncountry. It is hoped that under the new administration many of the old\nworkings, abandoned during the civil wars, will be resumed, and that\nthey will prove as valuable to the empire as they were during the\nearly days of the Spanish occupation.\n\n------\n\nNEW PUBLICATIONS.\n\n\nDIE HEILIGE ELIZABETH. Ein Buch fuer Christen, von Alben Stolz.\nFreiburg im Breisgau. 1865. 8vo, pp. 315.\n\nThe Life of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary. A book for Christians, by\nAlben Stolz.\n\nThe author of this new life of Saint Elizabeth is one of the popular\nCatholic writers of Germany, if not the foremost. He is the Abraham of\nSancta Clara of this century.\n\nThe principal events of the saint's life are narrated in simple and\nfamiliar language. The point treated of in each chapter is concluded\nwith a practical instruction. These are far from being dry. We would\nsuggest the translation of this book into English, were it not that it\nis, like all this author writes, thoroughly German, and exclusively\nadapted to the circumstances and difficulties of the Catholics of\nGermany. What our Catholic English reading public needs, is that some\nof our writers should take a lesson from this agreeable as well as\nedifying writer, and do for them what he is doing with so much zeal\nfor the good of his countrymen.\n\n\nWILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. By His Eminence Cardinal Wiseman. 32mo, pp. 64.\nBoston: Patrick Donahoe.\n\nThis is an American edition of the lecture of the late Cardinal\nWiseman on William Shakespeare, which appeared in THE CATHOLIC WORLD\nfor July. It contains, in addition to the lecture, an appendix, in\nwhich the eminent author makes suggestions for, and observations on,\n\"a tercentenary memorial of Shakespeare.\" {860} The cardinal suggested\na splendid edition of the great poet's works, illustrated, and printed\nin the best and most elaborate style possible. His eminence went into\nthe most minute details in regard to the manner in which such an\nedition should be illustrated, printed, bound, etc. The binding and\npaper of this little volume are excellent; but the type from which it\nis printed is too small. We are sorry Mr. Donahoe did not get it out\nin larger type. Were it not for this slight defect, the book would be\nfaultless.\n\n\nNATIONAL LYRICS. By John Greenleaf Whittier. Illustrated. 32mo, pp.\n104. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.\n\nThis is another of the cheap volumes of poetry issued by Ticknor &\nFields. It contains several of Mr. Whittier's earlier pieces, as well\nas many of his late poems. Among the latter are \"Barbara Frietchie,\"\nand \"The Poor Voter on Election Day.\"\n\n\nSYBIL: A Tragedy, in Five Acts. By John Savage. 12mo, pp. 105. New\nYork: J. B. Kirker.\n\nThis tragedy was written by Mr. Savage--well known in the literary\nworld as the author of several excellent poems, and now editor of the\nNew Orleans _Times_--some years ago, and met with a good reception in\nthe cities in which it was played. It contains many good passages of\nhigh poetical merit, and is, we should think, well adapted for the\nstage. The scene is laid in Kentucky, in the beginning of the present\ncentury, and describes society as it is supposed to have existed at\nthat time.\n\n\nA GENERAL HISTORY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH,\nFROM THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA\nUNTIL THE PRESENT TIME.\nBy M. l'Abbe J. E. Darras. With an Introduction and Notes. By the Most\nRev. M. J. Spalding, D.D., Archbishop of Baltimore. New York: P.\nO'Shea.\n\nWe have received numbers 9, 10, 11, and 12 of this excellent history.\nNumber 12 brings the work down to the pontificate of Sixtus III., 432.\n\n\nTHE MARTYR'S MONUMENT. Being the patriotism and political wisdom of\nAbraham Lincoln, as exhibited in his speeches, messages, orders, and\nproclamations from the presidential canvass of 1860 until his\nassassination, April 14, 1865. 12mo, pp. 297. New York: The American\nNews Company.\n\nThe title of this handsome volume sufficiently explains its purpose.\nThe origin of the work is set forth in the following extract from the\npreface:\n\n\"A few days after the assassination of President Lincoln, the\npublishers of the present volume received the following letter from\nthe distinguished gentleman whose name it bears:\n\n  \"_Gentlemen_: Collect and publish, in the speediest possible manner,\n  the inaugural and other addresses of Abraham Lincoln, his\n  proclamations, messages, and public letters, indeed, all he has\n  written as President, and you will contribute to the mournful\n  celebrations of the American people your share of lasting value, and\n  of far more impressive eloquence than the most fervent orator could\n  utter. You would thus make the martyr rear his own monument, which\n  no years, no centuries, could level and cause to mingle again with\n  the dust.\n    \"Your obedient,\n    \"FRANCIS LIEBER.\n    \"NEW YORK, April 18, 1865.\"\n\nThis book is got out in elegant style, and will be valuable hereafter\non account of the many documents it contains which relate to the late\ncivil war.\n\n\n_Received_: PASTORAL LETTER OF THE RT. REV. M. DOMENEC, D.D., BISHOP\nOF PITTSBURG TO THE CLERGY AND LAITY OF THE DIOCESE, PROMULGATING THE\nJUBILEE: together with the late Encyclical of the Holy Father.\nPublished at the office of the Pittsburg _Catholic_.\n\n\nTHE STORY OF THE GREAT MARCH, FROM THE DIARY OF A STAFF OFFICER.\nBy Brevet-major George Ward Nichols, aid-de-camp to General Sherman.\nNew York: Harper & Brothers.","title":"The Catholic World, Vol. 01, April to September, 1865: A Monthly Eclectic Magazine","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":564688}