{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_53935/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_53935","id":"gutenberg_53935","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/53935","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Journals","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Catholic Church -- Periodicals"],"text":"[Transcriber's notes: This text is based on text and image files\nfrom the Internet Archive and\nhttp://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/moajrnl/browse.journals/cath.1867.html.\nPage numbers are shown in curly braces, such as {123}. They have been\nmoved to the nearest sentence break.]\n\n{i}\n\n  The Catholic World.\n\n  _Monthly Magazine_\n\n  of\n\n  General Literature and Science\n\n  ------\n\n  Vol. V., NO. 25\n  April to September 1867.\n\n  ------\n\n  New York:\n\n  The Catholic Publication House,\n  126 Nassau Street.\n  ----\n  1867\n\n{ii}\n\n  John A. Gray & Green\n\n  Printers,\n\n  16 & 18 Jacob Street, New-York/\n\n{iii}\n\n    Contents.\n\n  Athlone and Aughrim, 119.\n  Ancor-Viatt, a New Giant City, 135.\n  An Old Quarrel, 145.\n  A Naturalist's Home, 189.\n  Animals, The Souls of, 510.\n  Americus Vespucius and Christopher Columbus, 6ll.\n  An Irish Saint, 664.\n\n  Birds, Architecture of, 349.\n  Bible, Protestant Attacks upon the, 789.\n  Bride of Eberstein, The, 848.\n\n  Church and State, 1\n  Conversions to the Catholic Church, Dr. Bacon on, 104\n  Conscience, The Revenge of, 236.\n  Catholic Doctrine and Natural Science, 280.\n  Cousin, Victor, 338.\n  Church and the Roman Empire, The, 362.\n  Christianity and Social Happiness, 414.\n  Congresses, Catholic, 433.\n  Crucifix of Baden, The, 480, 672.\n  Catholic Church and Modern Art, The, 546.\n  Christianity and its Conflicts, 701.\n\n  Decimated, 794.\n\n  Early Rising, 754.\n  Eberstein, The Bride of, 848.\n\n  Father Ignatius of St. Paul, 174.\n  Father of Waters, The, 354.\n  Flavia Domitilla, The Two Lovers of, 386, 529, 651, 815.\n  Fathers of the Desert, Sayings of, 814.\n\n  Godfrey Family, The, 34.\n\n  Holy Sepulchre, Procession in the Church of, 232.\n  He went about Doing Good, 258.\n\n  Ireland, Invasions of, by the Danes, 768.\n  Ireland, The Churches of, 828.\n\n  Lady of La Garaye, 227.\n  Lectures and Conferences among the Ancients, 289.\n  Libraries of the Middle Ages, 397.\n  Lorraine, Lakes of, 522\n\n  Miscellany, 140, 284, 428, 570, 714, 856.\n  Mediaeval Universities, 207.\n  Mercersburg Philosophy, 253.\n  Mortality of Great Capitals, 422.\n  Minor Brethren, The, 495.\n  Marriage, Indissolubility of, 567, 634.\n  Moore, Sir Thomas, 633.\n  Missionary Journey in South America, Scenes from, 807.\n  Miner, The, 852.\n\n  Paris, A Talk about, 97.\n  P\u00e8re Hyacinthe, Sketch of, 382.\n  Papacy Schismatic, Guett\u00e9e's, 463, 577.\n  Plants, The Struggle for Existence among, 538.\n  Procter, Adelaide Ann, 553.\n  Parisian Problems, Solution of some, 691.\n  Playing with Fire, 697.\n  Paris, Old, 824\n\n  Ritualism, 52.\n  Robert; or, The Influence of a Good Mother, 66, 194.\n  Rationalism, Lecky's History of, 77.\n  Rome or Reason, 721.\n\n  Sister, The Story of, 15.\n  Spain, Modern Writers of, 26.\n  Spain, Impressions of, 160, 320, 443, 594, 738.\n  Speech, Visible, 417.\n\n  The Birds' Friend, 268.\n  Time-Measurers, 271.\n  Three Leaves from an Old Journal, 627.\n  Thermometers, 707.\n  Tuscan Peasants and the Maremna, 710.\n  Tetzel, John, 838.\n\n  Verheyden's Right Hand, 309.\n\n  Wandering Jew, The, 761.\n\n  ----\n\n    Poetry.\n\n  A Dream, 94.\n  Asperges Me, 134.\n  At Threescore, 235.\n  A Family Motto, 257.\n  Abide in Me, 767.\n\n  Blessed Sacrament, Praises of the, 347.\n  Beams, 753.\n\n  Confiteor, 206.\n  Columbus, 525.\n  Charles the X. at the Convent of Yuste, 671.\n\n  Forebodings, 494.\n\n  Gladiators' Song, The, 521.\n\n  Hidden Crucifixion, The, 159.\n\n  Il Duomo, 608.\n\n  Kettle Song, 51.\n\n  Looking Down the Road, 172.\n  Laudate Pueri Dominum, 413.\n  Leaf of Last Year, This, 545.\n\n  May, A Fancy, 318.\n  Mary's Dirge, 631.\n  Mea Culpa, 690.\n\n  Napoleon, The Death of; 379.\n\n  Olive Branches in Gethsemane, 14\n\n  Planting of the Cross, 139.\n\n{iv}\n\n  Regret, 442.\n  Rhoda, 784.\n\n  Sleep, My Tears in, 193.\n  Sir Ralph de Blanc-Minster, 460.\n\n  The Church and the Sinner, 25.\n  The Cross, 65.\n\n  Under the Violets, 663.\n\n  Wasted Vigil, The, 823.\n\n------\n\n    New Publications.\n\n  Art of Illuminating, Practical Hints on, 144\n  American Boys and Girls, 430.\n  Antoine de Boneval,574.\n  Appleton's Annual Cyclopaedia, 719.\n\n  Bible, Literary Characters of, 576.\n  Barbarossa, 719.\n  Beauties of Faith, 720.\n\n  Catholic Tracts, 142, 715.\n  Christian Love, Three Phases of, 144.\n  Cunningham's Catholic Library, 144.\n  Christian Unity, Lectures on, 287.\n  Catholic Anecdotes, 576.\n  Christianity and its Conflicts, 576.\n  Critical and Social Essays, 718.\n  Cummiskey's Juvenile Library, 720.\n  Coaina, 720.\n\n  De Guerin, Maurice, Journal of, 288.\n  D\u00f6llinger's First Age of Christianity, 716.\n\n  \u00c9tudes Philologiques sur Quelques Langues Sauvages de l'Amerique, 575.\n  Frithiof's Saga, 431.\n  Fronde's History of England, 573.\n  First Historical Transformations of Christendom, 717.\n  Fathers and Sons, 718.\n  Faber's Notes, 719.\n\n  L'Echo de la France, 143.\n  Labor, Sermon on the Dignity and Value of, 431.\n\n  M\u00fchlbach's Historical Romances, 285.\n  Moore's Irish Melodies, 432.\n  Monks of the West, The, 715.\n  Manual of the Lives of the Popes, 720.\n  Melpomene Divina, 859.\n\n  Poems, Miss Starr's, 716.\n\n  Roman Pontiffs, Lives and Times of, 576.\n\n  St. Dominic, Life of, 288.\n  Student of Blenheim Forest, The, 574.\n  Studies in English, 574.\n  Stories of the Commandments, 720.\n  Science of Happiness, 860.\n  Studies in the Gospels, 860.\n\n  Tracts, Catholic, 142, 715.\n  Three Phases of Christian Love, 144.\n  The Man with the Broken Ear, 720.\n\n------\n\n{1}\n\n  The Catholic World.\n\n  Vol. V., NO. 25--April 1867.\n\n\n      Church And State. [Footnote 1]\n\n    [Footnote 1: Essay on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism,\n    considered in their fundamental Principles. By Donoso Cortes, Marquis\n    of Valdegamas. From the original Spanish. To which is prefixed a sketch\n    of the Life and Works of the Author, from the Italian of G. E. de\n    Castro. Translated by Madeleine Vinton Goddard. Philadelphia:\n    Lippincott and Co. 1862. 16mo. PP. 835.]\n\n\nThe political changes and weighty events that have occurred since, have\nalmost obliterated from the memory the men and the revolutions or\ncatastrophes of 1848 and 1849. We seem removed from them by centuries, and\nhave lost all recollection of the great questions which then agitated the\npublic mind, and on which seemed suspended the issues of the life and death\nof society. Then an irreligious liberalism threatened the destruction of\nall authority, of all belief in revelation, and piety toward God; and a\nrampant, and apparently victorious, socialism, or more properly,\nanti-socialism, threatened the destruction of society itself, and to\nreplunge the civilized world into the barbarism from which the church, by\nlong centuries of patient and unremitting toil, had been slowly recovering\nit.\n\nAmong the noble and brave men who then placed themselves on the side of\nreligion and society, of faith and Christian civilization, and attempted to\nstay the advancing tide Of infidelity and barbarism, few were more\nconspicuous, or did more to stir up men's minds and hearts to a sense of\nthe danger, than the learned, earnest, and most eloquent Donoso Cortes,\nMarquis of Valdegamas. He was then in the prime and vigor of his manhood.\nBorn and bred in Catholic Spain at a time when the philosophy of the\neighteenth century had not yet ceased to be in vogue, and faith, if not\nextinct, was obscured and weak, he had grown up without religious fervor, a\nphilosophist rather than a believer--a liberal in politics, and disposed to\nbe a social reformer. He sustained The Christinos against the Carlists, and\nrose to high favor with the court of Isabella Segunda. He was created a\nmarquis, was appointed a senator, held various civil and diplomatic\nappointments, and was in 1848 one of the most prominent and, influential\nstatesmen in Spain, I might almost say, in Europe.\n\nThe death of a dearly beloved brother, some time before, had very deeply\naffected him, and became the occasion of awakening his dormant religious\nfaith, and turning his attention to theological studies. His religious\nconvictions became active and fruitful, and by the aid of divine grace\nvivified all his thoughts and actions, growing stronger and stronger, and\nmore absorbing every day.\n{2}\nHe at length lived but for religion, and devoted his whole mind and soul to\ndefend it against its enemies, to diffuse it in society, and to adorn it by\nhis piety and deeds of charity, especially to the poor. He died in the\nhabit of a Jesuit at Paris, in May, 1853.\n\nSome of our readers must still remember the remarkable speech which the\nMarquis de Valdegamas pronounced in the Spanish Cortes, January 4, 1849--a\nspeech that produced a marked effect in France, and indeed throughout all\nEurope, not to add America--in which he renounced all liberal ideas and\ntendencies, denounced constitutionalism and parliamentary governments, and\ndemanded the dictatorship. It had great effect in preparing even the\nfriends of liberty, frightened by the excesses of the so-called liberals,\nred republicans, socialists, and revolutionists, if not to favor, at least\nto accept the _coup d'\u00e9tat_, and the re-establishment of the Imperial\n_r\u00e9gime_ in France; and it, no doubt, helped to push the reaction that\nwas about to commence against the revolutionary movements of 1848, to a\ndangerous extreme, and to favor, by another sort of reaction, that\nrecrudescence of infidelity that has since followed throughout nearly all\nEurope. It is hardly less difficult to restrain reactionary movements\nwithin just limits than it is the movements that provoke them.\n\nThe new American Cyclopedia says Donoso Cortes published his Essay on\nCatholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism in French. That is a mistake. He\nwrote and published it in Spanish, at Madrid, in 1851. The French work\npublished at Paris, the same year, was a translation, and very inferior to\nthe original. A presentation copy by the distinguished author of the\noriginal Spanish edition of 1851 to the late Mr. Calderon de la Barca--so\nlong resident Spanish minister at Washington, and who was his life-long\npersonal and political friend--is now in my possession, and is the very\ncopy from which Mrs. Goddard, now the noble wife of Rear Admiral Dahlgren,\nmade the translation cited at the head of this article. Mr. Calderon--a\ngood judge--pronounced the work in Spanish by far the most eloquent work\nthat he ever read in any language; and I can say, though that may not be\nmuch, that it far surpasses in the highest and truest order of eloquence\nany work in any language that I am acquainted with. In it one meets all the\npower and majesty, grace and unction of the old Castilian tongue, that\nnoblest of modern languages, and in which Cicero might have surprised\nhimself.\n\nThe work necessarily loses much in being translated, but Mrs. Goddard's\ntranslation comes as near to the original as any translation can. It is\nsingularly faithful and elegant, and reproduces the thought and spirit of\nthe author with felicity and exactness, in idiomatic English, which one can\nread without suspecting it to be not the language in which the work was\noriginally written. There is scarcely a sentence in which the translation\ncan be detected. It must have been made _con amore,_ and we can\nrecommend it as a model to translators, who too often do the work from the\noriginal language into no language. The following, from the opening pages,\nis a fair specimen of the thought and style of the author, and of the\nclearness, force, and beauty of the translation:\n\n  \"Mr. Proudhon, in his Confession, of a Revolutionist, has written these\n  remarkable words: 'It is surprising to observe how constantly we find all\n  our political questions complicated with theological questions.' There is\n  nothing in this to cause surprise, except it be the surprise of Mr.\n  Proudhon Theology being the science of God, is the ocean which contains\n  and embraces all the sciences, as God is the ocean in which all things\n  are contained. All things existed, both prior to and after their\n  creation, in the divine mind; because as God made them out of nothing, so\n  did he form them according to a model which existed in himself from\n  eternity.\n{3}\n  All things are in God in a profound manner in which effects are in their\n  causes, consequences in their principles, reflections in light, and forms\n  in their eternal exemplars. In him are united the vastness of the sea,\n  the glory or the fields, the harmony of the spheres, the grandeur or the\n  universe, the splendor of the stars, and the magnificence of the heavens.\n  In him are the measure, weight, and number of all things, and all things\n  proceed from him with number, weight, and measure. In him are the\n  inviolable and sacred laws of being, and every being has its particular\n  law. All that lives, finds in him the laws of life; all that vegetates,\n  the laws of vegetation; all that moves, the laws or motion; all that has\n  feeling, the law or sensation; all that has understanding, the law of\n  intelligence; and all that has liberty, the law of freedom. It may in\n  this sense be affirmed, without falling into Pantheism, that all things\n  are in God, and God is in all things. This will serve to explain how in\n  proportion as faith is impaired in this world, truth is weakened, and how\n  the society that turns its back upon God, will find its horizon quickly\n  enveloped in frightful obscurity. For this reason religion has been\n  considered by all men, and in all ages, as the indestructible foundation\n  of human society. _Omnis humana societatis fundamentum convellit qui\n  religionem convellit_, says Plato in Book 10 of his laws. According to\n  Xenophon (on Socrates), \"the most pious cities and nations have always\n  been the most durable, and the wisest.\" Plutarch affirms (contra Colotes)\n  'that it is easier to build a city in the air than to establish society\n  without a belief in the gods.' Rousseau, in his Social Contract, Book\n  iv., ch. viii., observes, 'that a State was never established without\n  religion as a foundation.' Voltaire says, in his Treatise on Toleration,\n  ch. xx., 'that religion is, on all accounts, necessary wherever society\n  exists.' All the legislation of the ancients rests upon a fear of gods.\n  Polybius declares that this holy fear is always more requisite in a free\n  people than in others. That Rome might be the eternal city, Numa made it\n  the holy city. Among the nations of antiquity the Roman was the greatest,\n  precisely because it was the most religious. Cesar having one day uttered\n  certain words, in open Senate, against the existence of the gods, Cato\n  and Cicero arose from their seats and accused the irreverent youth of\n  having spoken words fatal to the Republic. It is related of Fabricius, a\n  Roman captain, that having heard the philosopher Cineas ridicule the\n  Divinity in presence of Pyrrhus, he pronounced these memorable words:\n  'May it please the gods, that our enemies follow this doctrine when they\n  make war against the Republic.'\n\n  'The decline of faith that produces the decline of truth does not\n  necessarily cripple, but certainly misleads the human mind. God, who is\n  both compassionate and just, denies truth to guilty souls, but does not\n  deprive them of life. He condemns them to error, but not to death. All an\n  evidence of this, every one has witnessed those periods of prodigious\n  incredulity and of highest culture that have shown in history with a\n  phosphorescent light, leaving more of a burning than a luminous track\n  behind them. If we carefully contemplate these ages, we shall see that\n  their splendor is only the inflamed glare or the lightning's flash. It is\n  evident that their brightness is the sudden explosion of their obscure\n  but combustible materials, rather than the calm light proceeding from\n  purest regions, and serenely spread over heaven's vault by the divine\n  pencil of the sovereign painter.\n\n  \"What is here said of ages may also be said of men. The absence or the\n  possession of faith, the denial of God or the abandonment of truth,\n  neither gives them understanding nor deprives them of it. That of the\n  unbeliever may be of the highest order, and that of the believer very\n  limited; but the greatness of the first is that of an abyss, while the\n  second has the holiness of a tabernacle. In the first dwells error, in\n  the second truth. In the abyss with error is death, in the tabernacle\n  with truth is life. Consequently there can be no hope whatever for those\n  communities that renounce the austere worship of truth for the idolatry\n  of the intellect. Sophisms produce revolutions and sophists are succeeded\n  by hangmen.\n\n  \"He possesses political truth who understands the laws to which\n  governments are amenable; and he possesses social truth who comprehends,\n  the laws to which human societies are answerable. He who knows God knows\n  these laws; and he knows God who listens to what he affirms of himself,\n  and believes the same. Theology is the science which has for its object\n  these affirmations. Whence it follows that every affirmation respecting\n  society or government, supposes an affirmation relative to God; or, what\n  is the same thing, that every political or social truth necessarily\n  resolves itself into a theological truth.\n\n  \"If everything is intelligible in God and through God, and theology is\n  the science of God, in whom and by whom everything is elucidated,\n  theology is the universal science. Such being the case, there is nothing\n  not comprised in this science, which has no plural; because totality,\n  which constitutes it, has it not. Political and social sciences have no\n  existence except as arbitrary classifications of the human mind. Man in\n  his feebleness classifies that which in God is characterized by the most\n  simple unity. Thus, he distinguishes political from social and religious\n  affirmations; while in God there is but one affirmation, indivisible and\n  supreme.\n{4}\n  He who speaks explicitly of what thing soever, and is ignorant that he\n  implicitly speaks of God; and who does not know when he discusses\n  explicitly any science whatever, that he implicitly illustrates theology,\n  has received from God simply the necessary amount of intelligence to\n  constitute him a man. Theology, then, considered in its highest\n  acceptation, is the perpetual object of all the sciences, even as God is\n  the perpetual object of human speculations.\n\n  \"Every word that a man utters is a recognition of the Diety, even that\n  which curses or denies God. He who rebels against God, and frantically\n  exclaims, 'I abhor thee; thou art not!' illustrates a complete system of\n  theology, as he does who raises to him a contrite heart, and says, 'Lord,\n  have mercy on thy servant, who adores thee.' The first blasphemes him to\n  his face, the second prays at his feet, yet both acknowledge him, each in\n  his own way; for both pronounce his incommunicable name.\"\n\nThe work shows no great familiarity with the writings of the later\ntheologians, and no fondness for the style and method of the schools, but\nit shows a profound study of the Fathers, and a perfect mastery of\ncontemporary theories and speculations. The author is a man of the\nnineteenth century, with the profound thought of an Augustine, the\neloquence of a Chrysostom, and the tender piety of a Francis of Assissium.\nHe has studied the epistles of St. Paul, and been touched with the\ninspiration of that great apostle's burning zeal and consuming charity. He\nobserves not always the technical exactness of modern theological\nprofessors, and some French _abb\u00e9s_ thought they detected in his\n_Ensayo_ some grave theological errors, but only because they missed\nthe signs which they were accustomed to identify with the things signified,\nand met with terms and illustrations with which they were unfamiliar. But\nhe seizes with rare sagacity and firmness the living truth, and presents us\ntheology as a thing of life and love.\n\nThe principles of the essay are catholic, are the real principles of\nChristianity and society, set fourth with a clearness, a depth, a logical\nforce, a truthfulness, a richness of illustration and an eloquence which\nhave seldom, if ever, been surpassed. But some of the inferences be draws\nfrom them, and some of the applications he makes of them to social and\npolitical science are not such as every Catholic even is prepared to\naccept. The author was drawn to religion by domestic afflictions, which\nsaddened while they softened his heart, and he writes, as he felt, amid the\nruins of a falling world. All things seemed to him gone or going, and he\nlooked out upon a universal wreck. His spirit is not soured, but his\nfeelings are tinged with the gloom of the prospect, and while he hopes in\nGod he well-nigh despairs of the world, of man, of society, of\ncivilization, above all, of liberty, and sees no means of saving European\nsociety but in the dictatorship or pure despotism acting under the\ninspiration and direction of the church. He was evidently more deeply\nimpressed by what was lost in the primitive fall or original sin than by\nwhat in our nature has survived that catastrophe. He adored the justice of\nGod displayed in the punishment of the wicked, justified him in all his\ndealings with men, but he saw in his providence no mercy for fallen\nnations, or a derelict society. This life he regarded as a trial, the earth\nas a scene of suffering, a vale of tears, and found in religion a support,\nindeed, but hardly a consolation. The Christian has hope in God, but is a\nman of sorrows, and his life an expiation. Much of this is true and\nscriptural, and this world certainly is not our abiding place, and can\nafford us no abiding joy. But this is not saying that there are no\nconsolations, no abiding joys for us even in this life. Consolations and\njoys a Christian has in this world, though they proceed not from it. It can\nneither give them nor take them away; yet we taste them even while in it.\nThis world is not the contradictory of the world to come; it is not heaven,\nindeed, and cannot be heaven, yet it is related to heaven as a medium, and\nthe medium must partake, in some measure, of both the principle and the\nend.\n\n{5}\n\nThe great merit of the essay is in deducing political and social from\ntheological principles. This is undoubtedly not only the teaching of the\nchurch, but of all sound philosophy; and what I regard as the principal\nerror of the book is the desire to transfer to the state the immobility and\nunchangeableness which belong to the church, an institution existing by the\ndirect and immediate appointment of God. The author seems to be as\nunwilling to recognize the intervention of man and man's nature in\ngovernment and society as in the direct and immediate works of the Creator.\nHe is no pantheist or Jansenist, and yet be seems to me to make too little\naccount of the part of second causes, or the activity of creatures; and\nsometimes to forget, or almost forget, that grace does not supersede\nnature, but supports it, strengthens it, elevates it, and completes it. He\nsees only the Divine action in events; or in plain words, he does not make\nenough of nature, and does not sufficiently bring out the fact that natural\nand supernatural, nature and grace, reason and faith, earth and heaven, are\nnot antagonistic forces, to be reconciled only by the suppression of the\none or the other, but really parts of one dialectic whole, which, to the\neye that can take in the whole in all its parts, and all the parts in the\nwhole, in which they are integrated, would appear perfectly consistent with\neach other, living the same life in God, and directed by him to one and the\nsame end. He, therefore, unconsciously and unintentionally, favors or\nappears to favor a dualism as un-christian as it is unphilosophical. God\nbeing in his essence dialectical, nothing proceeding from him can be\nsophistical, or wanting in logical unity, and one part of his works can\nnever be opposed to another, or demand its suppression. The one must always\nbe the complement of the other. Christianity was given to fulfil nature,\nnot to destroy it. \"Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the\nprophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.\" (St. Matt. v. 17.)\n\nThe misapprehension on this subject arises from the ambiguity of the word\n_world_. This word is generally used by ascetic writers not to\ndesignate the natural order, but the principles, spirit, and conduct of\nthose who live for this world alone; who look not beyond this life; who\ntake the earth not as a medium, but as the end, and seek only the goods\nthis world offers. These are called worldly, sensual, or carnal-minded\npeople, and as such contrast with the spiritually minded, or those who look\nabove and beyond merely sensible goods--to heaven beyond the earth, to a\nlife beyond the grave, a life of spiritual bliss in indissoluble union with\nGod, the end of their existence, and their supreme good as well as the\nsupreme good in itself. In this sense there is a real antagonism between\nthis world and the next; but when the world is taken in its proper place,\nand for what it really is, in the plan of the Creator, there is no\nantagonism in the case; and to despise it would be to despise the work of\nGod, and to neglect it would be not a virtue, but even a sin. This world\nhas its temptations and its snares, and as long as we remain in the flesh\nwe are in danger of mistaking it for the end of our existence, and\ntherefore it is necessary that we be on our guard against its seductions.\nBut the chief motive that leads souls hungering and bursting for perfection\nto retire to the desert or to the monastery is not that they may fly its\ntemptations, or the enemies to their virtue, for they find greater\ntemptations to struggle against and fiercer enemies to combat in solitude\nthan in the thronged city; it is the love of sacrifice, and the longing to\ntake part with our Lord in his great work of expiation that moves them.\nSimply to get rid of the world, to turn the back on society, or to get away\nfrom the duties and cares of the world, is no proper motive for retirement\nfrom the world, and the church permits not her children to do it and enter\na religious order so long as they have duties to their family or their\ncountry to perform.\n{6}\nNothing could better prove that the church does not suffer us to contemn or\nneglect the natural or temporal order, or regard as of slight importance\nthe proper discharge of our duties to our families, our country, or natural\nsociety. The same thing is proved by the fact that the process for\ncanonization cannot go on in a case where the individual has not fulfilled\nall his natural duties, growing out of his state or relations in society.\n_Gratia supponit naturam_.\n\nIn consequence of his tendency to an exclusive asceticism, a tendency which\nhe owed to the unsettled times in which he lived, and the reaction in his\nown mind against the liberalism be had at one time favored, Donoso Cortes\ncountenanced, to some extent, political absolutism; and had great influence\nin leading even eminent Catholics to denounce constitutionalism,\nlegislative assemblies, publicity, and free political discussion, as if\nthese things were un-catholic, and inseparable from the political atheism\nof the age. There was a moment when the writer of this article himself,\nunder the charm of his eloquence, and the force of the arguments he drew\nfrom the individual and social crimes committed in the name of liberty and\nprogress, was almost converted to his side of the question, and supported\npopular institutions only because cause they were the law in his own\ncountry. But without pretending that the church enjoins any particular form\nof civil polity, or maintaining the infallibility or impeccability of the\npeople, either collectively or individually, a calmer study of history, and\nthe recent experience of our own country, have restored me to my early\nfaith in popular forms of government, or democracy as organized under our\nAmerican system, which, though it has its dangers and attendant evils, is,\nwherever practicable, the form of government that, upon the whole, best\nconforms to those great Catholic principles on which the church herself is\nfounded.\n\nBut the people cannot govern well, any more than kings or kaisers, unless\ntrained to the exercise of power, and subjected to moral and religious\ndiscipline. It is precisely here that the work of Donoso Cortes has its\nvalue. The reaction which has for a century or two been going on against\nthat mixture of civil and ecclesiastical government which grew up after the\ndownfall of the Roman empire in the west, and which was not only natural\nbut necessary, since the clergy had nearly all the learning, science, and\ncultivation of the times, and to which modern society is so deeply indebted\nfor its civilization, has carried modern statesmen to an opposite extreme,\nand resulted in almost universal political atheism. The separation of\nchurch and state in our age means not merely the separation of the church\nand the state as corporations or governments, which the popes have always\ninsisted on, but the separation of political principles from theological\nprinciples, and the subjection of the church and ecclesiastical affairs to\nthe state. Where monarchy, in its proper sense, obtains, the king or\nemperor, and where democracy, save in its American sense, is asserted, the\npeople, takes the place of God, at least in the political order. Statolatry\nis almost as prevalent in our days as idolatry was with the ancient Greeks\nand Romans.\n\nEven in our own country, it may be remarked that the general sympathy is\nwith anti-Christian--especially anti-papal insurrections and revolutions.\nWe should witness little sympathy with the Cretans and Christians of the\nTurkish empire, if they were not understood to be schismatics, who reject\nthe authority of the pope in spirituals as well as in temporals. Yet, prior\nto the treaty of Paris in 1856, the Greek prelates were, under the Turkish\nsovereignty, the temporal lords of their people, and the design of that\ntreaty, so far as relates to the Eastern Christians, was to deprive them of\nthe last remains of temporal independence, and to complete the conquest of\nMahomet II. The complete subjection of religion to the state is called\nreligious liberty, the emancipation of conscience.\n{7}\nOur American press applauds the Italian ministry for laying down the law\nfor the Italian bishops, restored their sees, from which the state exiled\nthem, and prescribing them their bounds, beyond which they must not pass.\nThe Italian State does not, as with us, recognize the freedom and\nindependence of the Spiritual order, but at best only tolerates it. It\nasserts not only the freedom and independence of the state in face of the\nchurch, but its supremacy, its right to govern the church, or at least to\ndefine the limits within which it may exist and operate.\n\nThis is what our age understands by the separation of church and state. If\nit foregoes, at any time or place, the authority to govern the church, it\nstill holds that it has the right to govern churchmen the same as any other\nclass of persons; that the civil law is the supreme law of the land; and\nthat religion, when it happens to conflict with it, must give way to it.\nThe law of the state is the supreme law. This is everywhere the doctrine of\nEuropean liberals, and the doctrine they reduce to practice wherever they\nhave the power, and hence the reason why the church visits them with her\ncensures. Many devout believers think the separation of church and state\nmust mean this, and can mean nothing else, and therefore that the union of\nchurch and state must mean a return to the old mixture of civil and\necclesiastical government of the middle ages. Hence a Donoso Cortes and a\nBaron Ricasoli are on this point in singular accord. Our American press,\nwhich takes its cue principally from European liberals, takes the same\nview, and understands both the separation and the union of church and state\nin the same sense.\n\nYet the American solution of the mutual relations of church and state is a\nliving proof, a practical demonstration that they are wrong. Here the state\ndoes not tolerate the church, nor the church either enslave or tolerate the\nstate, because the state recognizes the freedom or conscience, and its\nindependence of all secular control. My church is my conscience, and my\nconscience being free here, my church is free, and for me and all\nCatholics, in the free exercise of her full spiritual authority. Here it is\nnot the state that bounds conscience, but conscience that bounds the state.\nThe state here is bound by its own constitution to respect and protect the\nrights of the citizen. Among these rights, the most precious is the right\nof conscience--the right to the free exercise of my religion. This right\ndoes not decide what the civil law shall be, but it does decide what it\nshall not be. Any law abridging my right of conscience--that is, the\nfreedom of my church--is unconstitutional, and, so far, null and void.\nThis, which is my right, is equally the right of every other citizen,\nwhether his conscience--that is, his church--agrees with mine or not. The\nCatholic and the Protestant stand on the same footing before the law, and\nthe conscience of each is free before the state, and a limit beyond which\nthe civil law cannot extend its jurisdiction. Here, then, is a separation\nof church and state that does not enslave the church, and a union of church\nand state that does not enslave the state, or interfere with its free and\nindependent action in its own proper sphere. The church maintains her\nindependence and her superiority as representing the spiritual order, for\nshe governs those who are within, not those who are without, and the state\nacts in harmony, not in conflict with her, because it confines its action--\nwhere it has power--to things temporal.\n\nThe only restriction, on any side, is, that the citizen must so assert his\nown right of conscience as not to abridge the equal right of conscience in\nhis fellow-citizen who differs from him. Of course the freedom of\nconscience cannot be made a pretext for disturbing the public peace, or\noutraging public decency, nor can it be suffered to be worn as a cloak to\ncover dissoluteness of manners or the transgression of the universal moral\nlaw; when it is so made or worn it ceases to be the _right_ of\nconscience, ceases to be conscience at all, and the state has authority to\nintervene and protect the public peace and public decency.\n{8}\nIt may, therefore, suppress the Mormon concubinage, and require the Latter\nDay Saints to conform to the marriage law as recognized by the whole\ncivilized world, alike in the interests of religion and of civilization.\nBut beyond this the state cannot go, at least with us.\n\nIt may be doubted whether this American system is practicable in any but a\nrepublican country--under a government based on equal rights, not on\nprivilege, whether the privilege of the one, the few, or the many.\nDemocracy, as Europeans understand it, is not based on equal rights, but is\nonly the system of privilege, if I may so speak, expanded. It recognizes no\nequal rights, because it recognizes no rights of the individual at all\nbefore the state. It is the pagan republic which asserts the universal and\nabsolute supremacy of the state. The American democracy is Christian, not\npagan, and asserts, for every citizen, even the meanest, equal rights,\nwhich the state must treated as sacred and inviolable. It is because our\nsystem is based on equal rights, not on privilege--on rights held not from\nthe state, but which the state is bound to recognize and protect, that\nAmerican democracy, instead of subjecting religion to the state, secures\nits freedom and independence.\n\nDonoso Cortes can no more understand this than can the European democrat,\nbecause he has no conception of the equal rights of all men before the\nstate; or rather, because he has no conception of the rights of man. Man,\nhe says, has no rights; he has only duties. This is true, when we speak of\nman in relation to his Maker. The thing made has no right to say to the\nmaker, \"Why hast thou made me thus?\" Man has only duties before God,\nbecause he owes to him all he is, has, or can do, and he finds beatitude in\ndischarging his duties to God, because God is good, the good in itself, and\nwould not be God and could not be creator if be were not. But that man has\nno rights in relation to society, to the state, or to his fellow man, is\nnot true. Otherwise there could be no justice between man and man, between\nthe individual and society, or the citizen and the state, and no injustice,\nfor there is no injustice where no right is violated. Denying or\nmisconceiving the rights of man, and conceiving the state as based on\nprivilege, not on equal rights, the Spaniard is unable to conceive it\npossible to assert the freedom and independence of the state, without\ndenying the freedom and independence of the church.\n\nBut, if republican institutions based on equal rights are necessary to\nsecure the freedom and independence of the church, the freedom and\nindependence of the church, on the other hand, are no less necessary to the\nmaintenance of such institutions. I say, _of the church_, rather than\nof religion, because I choose to speak of things in the concrete rather\nthan in the abstract, and because it is only as concreted in the church\nthat the freedom and independence of religion can be assailed, or that\nreligion has power to protect or give security to institutions based on\nequal rights. The church is concrete religion. Whether there is more than\none church, or which of the thousand and one claimants is the true church,\nis not now the question. The answer of the Catholic is not doubtful. At\npresent I am treating the question of equal rights, and asking no more for\nthe church before the state than for the several sects. Of course, I\nrecognize none of the sects as the church, but I am free to say that I\nregard even the lowest of them as better for society than any form of\ndownright infidelity. There is something in common between Catholics and\nthe sects that confess Christ as the Son of God, incarnate for our\nredemption and salvation, which there is not, and cannot be, between us and\nthose who confess not Christ at all. But this is a digression.\n\n{9}\n\nEqual rights must have a foundation, something on which to stand. They\ncannot stand on the state or civil society, for that would deny them to be\nrights at all, and reduce them to simple privileges granted by the state\nand revocable at its will. This is precisely the error of the European\nliberals, who invariably confound right with privilege. All European\nsociety has been, and still is to a great extent, based on privilege, not\nright. Thus in England you have the rights--more properly, the privileges\nor franchises--of Englishman, but no rights of man which parliament is\nbound to recognize and protect as such. There is no right or freedom of\nconscience which the state must respect as sacred and inviolable; there is\nonly toleration, more or less general. In the new kingdom of Italy there\nare the privileges and franchises of Italians, and, within certain limits,\ntoleration for the church. Her bishops may exercise their spiritual\nfunctions so long as they do not incur the displeasure of the state. The\nsupremacy of the state is asserted, and the ecclesiastical administration\nis at the mercy of the civil. It is so in every European state, because in\nnone of them is the state based on equal rights. The United States are the\nonly state in the world that is so based. Our political system is based on\nright, not privilege, and the equal rights of all men.\n\nThe state with us rests on equal rights of all men; but on what do the\nequal rights themselves rest? What supports or upholds them? The state\ncovers or represents the whole temporal order, and they, therefore, have\nnot, and cannot have, their basis or support in that order. Besides the\ntemporal there is no order but the spiritual, covered or represented by the\nchurch. The equal rights, then, which are with us the basis of the state,\ndepend themselves on the church or spiritual order for their support. Take\naway that order or remove the church, or even suppress the freedom and\nindependence of the church, and you leave them without any support at all.\nThe absolutism of the state follows, then, as a necessary consequence, and\nmight usurps the place of right. Hence political principles must find their\nsupport in theology, and the separation of church and state in the sense of\nseparating political from theological principles is as hostile to the state\nas to the church, and to liberty as to religion. It is not easy to\ncontrovert this conclusion, if we consider whence our rights are derived,\nand on what they depend for their reality and support. These rights, which\nwe do not derive from the state or civil society, and hold independently of\nit, among which the Declaration of Independence enumerates \"life, liberty,\nand the pursuit of happiness,\" which it asserts to be \"inalienable,\" whence\ndo we hold them but from God, our Creator? This is what is meant when they\nare called the natural rights of man. They are called natural rights,\nbecause rights held under the natural law, but the natural law in the sense\nof the jurists and theologians, not in the sense of the physicists or\nnatural philosophers--a moral law addressed to reason and free-will, and\nbinding upon all men, whatever their state or position; not a physical law,\nlike that by which clouds are formed, seeds germinate, or heavy bodies tend\nto the centre of the earth; for it is a law that does not execute itself\nand is not executed at all without the action of the reason and will of\nsociety. It is necessarily a law prescribed by the Author of nature, and is\ncalled the natural law, the law of natural justice, or the moral law, in\ndistinction from the revealed or supernatural law, because promulgated by\nthe supreme Lawgiver through natural reason, or the reason common to all\nmen, which is itself in intimate relation with the Divine Reason.\n\n{10}\n\nThese natural equal rights are the law for the state or civil authority,\nand every law of the state that violates them violates natural justice, and\nis by that fact null and void; is, as St. Augustine says, and St. Thomas\nafter him, \"Violence rather than law,\" and can never be binding on the\ncivil courts, though human courts not unfrequently enforce such laws. Not\nbeing derived from the state or civil society, these rights are evidently\nnot in the temporal order, or the same order with the state, and therefore\nmust have, as we have seen, their basis in the spiritual order, that is, in\ntheology, or have no basis at all.\n\nThe existence of God as the creator and upholder of nature, I do not here\nundertake to prove; for that has been done in the papers on _The Problems\nof the Age_, which have appeared in this magazine. I am not arguing\nagainst atheism in general, but only against what is called political\natheism, or the doctrine that theology, and therefore the church, has\nnothing to do with politics. The state, with us, is based on the equal\nrights, not equal privileges, of all men; and if these equal rights have no\nreal and solid basis beyond and independent of civil society, the state\nitself has no real basis, and is a _chateau d'Espagne_, or a mere\ncastle in the air. Hence political atheism is not only the exclusion of the\nchurch from politics, but the denial of the state itself, and the\nsubstitution for it of mere physical force. Political atheism cannot be\nasserted without atheism in general, without, in fact, denying all\nexistence, and, therefore, of necessity, all right. Political atheism is,\nthen, alike destructive of religion and politics, church and state, of\nauthority and liberty. Deny all right independent of the state, and the\ncitizen can have no right not derived from the state, which denies all\nliberty; deny all right independent of the state, the state itself can have\nno right to govern, unless the state itself be God, which would be\nstatolatry, alike absurd and blasphemous.\n\nThe rights of the state and of the citizen, alike must be derived from God,\nand have a theological basis, or be no rights at all, but words without\nmeaning. There is then no such separation between politics and theology as\nEuropean democracy asserts. Such separation is unphilosophical, and against\nthe truth of things. It has been so held in all ages and nations of the\nworld. All the great theologians, philosophers, and moralists of the human\nrace have always held polities to be a branch of ethics, or morals, and\nthat branch which treats of the application of the catholic principles of\ntheology to society, or the social relations of mankind. The permanent,\nuniversal, and invariable principles of civil society are all theological\nprinciples, for there are no such principles outside of theology, and the\noffice of the state is to apply these principles only to what is local,\ntemporal, and variable. It is evident then that principles, properly so\ncalled, lie in the theological order, and come within the province of the\ntheologian, not of the statesman, and are therefore to be determined by the\nspiritual society, not by the civil.\n\nIt is, then, the spiritual not the temporal, religion not politics, that\nasserts and maintains these rights, and religion does it in asserting and\nmaintaining the right of conscience, which is the right of God, and the\nbasis of all rights. The right of conscience is exemption from all merely\nhuman authority--a right to be held by all civil society as sacred and\ninviolable; and is the first and impassable barrier to the power of the\nstate. The state cannot pass it without violence, without the most\noutrageous tyranny. It is then religion, not the state, that asserts and\nmaintains freedom; for the state when it acts, acts as authority, not as\nliberty. So, on the other hand, is it religion that asserts and maintains\nthe authority, I say, not the force, of the state. The authority of the\nstate is its right to govern. In respect to civil society itself, it is\nliberty; in respect to citizens, it is authority. Being a right on the part\nof the state or society, it, like all other rights, lies in the spiritual\norder, and is equally sacred and inviolable.\n{11}\nReligion, then, while it makes it the duty of the state to recognize and\nprotect the rights of the individual citizen, makes it the duty of the\nindividual citizen to recognize, respect, and defend the rights of the\nstate or society. The duty in both cases is a religious duty, because all\nright is held from God, and only God can enjoin duty, or bind conscience.\nDeny God, and you deny religion; deny religion, and you deny all duty and\nall right;--alike the rights and duties of the state and the rights and\nduties of the individual citizen, and, therefore, alike both liberty and\nauthority, which being correlatives can never exist the one without the\nother. There is no denying this conclusion without denying reason itself.\n\nBut religion, as an abstract theory, is powerless, as are all abstractions,\nand exists only as concreted, and religion in the concrete is the church.\nIn the state and in the individual, God operates indeed, but mediately,\nthrough natural or secondary causes; but in the church immediately, for the\nchurch is his body, and her vitality is the Holy Ghost, who dwells in her,\nand is to her something like what the soul is to the body, _forma\ncorporis_. Religion without the church is a theory or a vague sentiment;\nreligion concreted in the church is a living reality, a power, and is\nefficient in vindicating both rights and duties, and affording a solid\nsupport to both liberty and authority. The sects, as far as they go, are\nconcrete religion, but not religion in its unity and integrity. They are\nbetter than nothing; but lacking the unity and catholicity of truth, and\nbeing divided and subdivided among themselves, they can very imperfectly\nperform the office of religion or the Catholic Church. They are unable to\nmake head against material force, and to maintain with any efficiency the\nrights of the spiritual against the encroachments of the temporal, or to\nprevent the state from asserting its own absolute supremacy. They exist not\nby a recognized right, but by state tolerance; they are suffered to exist\nand are protected, because they become auxiliaries of the state in its\nefforts to break the power and influence of the church, whose authority in\nspirituals is more repugnant to them then is state supremacy. Hence we find\nthat wherever, except in the United States, the spiritual power is broken\nand divided into a great variety of sects, the state claims to be supreme\nalike in spirituals and temporals; and it is very doubtful if the freedom\nand independence of the spiritual order could long be preserved even in our\ncountry should our sectarian divisions continue. These divisions are\nalready generating a wide-spread indifference to religion, almost a\ncontempt for it; while there are manifest and growing tendencies to extend\nthe authority of the state beyond its legitimate bounds into the domain of\nindividual liberty. The unity and catholicity of the church, representing\nthe unity and catholicity of the spiritual order, will soon be seen to be\nnecessary to preserve our free institutions.\n\nIt was concrete religion, in its unity and catholicity embodied in the\nchurch as an institution, that was able during the middle ages to assert\nthe freedom and independence of the spiritual order, which is only another\nterm for the freedom and independence of conscience, against the political\norder. She was thus constituted a living reality, a concrete power, and the\npowers of the earth had to reckon with her. Constituted as society then\nwas, she needed and exercised more positive power in the temporal order\nthan was agreeable to her, or than is necessary in a society constituted\nlike ours. The republic, then, was pagan, and sought to be supreme\neverywhere and in everything, or in other words, to subject the spiritual\norder to the temporal, as it was in pagan Rome, and for the most part\ncontinued to be even in Christian Rome of the East, till its conquest by\nthe Turks. Hence the relation between Peter and Cesar, between the pope and\nemperor, was ordinarily that of antagonism.\n{12}\nIt was necessary that the pope should be clothed with a power that could\ncontrol princes, and force them to respect the rights of conscience, or the\nindependence of the church, which to be sufficient must be positive as well\nas negative. The temporal authority, or the authority of the church over\nthe temporal, claimed and exercised over secular princes seeking to combine\nin themselves both the imperial and the pontifical power, was no\nusurpation, and rested on no grant of civil society, or _jus\npublicum_, as has sometimes been asserted, but grew out of the necessity\nof the case; its justification was in its necessity to maintain her own\nindependence in spirituals, or the freedom of conscience. It was her right\nas representing the spiritual order, and would be her right still in a\nsimilarly constituted society, and the modern world is reaping in its\nadvanced civilization the fruits of her having claimed and exercised it.\n\nThe necessity for claiming and exercising that power in a society\nconstituted as is the American does not exist, because in our society the\nstate frankly concedes all that she was in those ages struggling for. There\nwas nothing which Gregory VII., Innocent III., Boniface VIII., and other\ngreat popes struggled for against the German emperors, the kings of France,\nAragon, and England, and the Italian republics, that is not recognized here\nby our republic to be the right of the spiritual order. Here the old\nantagonism between church and state does not exist. There is here a certain\nantagonism, no doubt, between the church and the sects, but none between\nthe church and the state or civil society. Here the church has, so far as\ncivil society is concerned, all that she has ever claimed, all that she has\never struggled for. Here she is perfectly free. She summons her prelates to\nmeet in council when she pleases, and promulgates her decrees for the\nspiritual government of her children without leave asked or obtained. The\n_placet_ of the civil power is not needed, is neither solicited nor\naccepted. She erects and fills sees as she judges proper, founds and\nconducts schools, colleges, and seminaries in her own way, without let or\nhindrance; she manages her own temporalities, not by virtue of a grant or\nconcession of the state, but as her acknowledged right, held as the right\nof conscience, independently of the state. Here she has nothing to conquer\nfrom the state, for the civil law affords her the same protection for her\nproperty that it does to the citizen for his; and therefore all that she\ncan seek in relation to the constitution of our civil society, is that it\nshould remain unaltered.\n\nTrue, the sects have before civil society the same freedom that she has,\nbut the state protects her from any violence they might be disposed to\noffer her. They are not permitted to rob her of her churches, desecrate her\naltars, molest her worship, or interfere with her management of her own\naffairs. Their freedom in no respect whatever abridges hers, and whatever\ncontroversy she may have with them, it is entirely on questions with which\ncivil society has nothing to do, which are wholly within the spiritual\norder, and which could not be settled by physical force, if she had it at\nher command, and was disposed to use it. Lying in the spiritual order, they\nare independent of the state, and it has no right to interfere with them.\nThere is nothing, then, in the freedom of the sects to interfere with the\nfullest liberty of the church, so long as the state recognizes and protect\nher freedom and independence as well as theirs. There is nothing, then,\nthat the church can receive from civil society, that she has not in the\nUnited States, and guaranteed to her by the whole force of the civil\nconstitution.\n\n{13}\n\nIt is one of the mysteries of Providence that what the popes for ages\nstruggled for and still struggle for in the old world, and in all parts of\nthe new world originally colonized by Catholic states, should for the first\ntime in history be fully realized in a society founded by the most\nanti-papal people on earth, who held the church to be the Scarlet Lady of\nthe Apocalypse. Surely, they builded better than they knew. But explain it\nas you will, such is the fact. The United States is the only country in the\nworld where the church is really free. It would seem that both state and\nchurch had to emigrate to the new world to escape the antagonisms of the\nold, and to find a field for the free and untrammeled development of each.\nIt is idle to fear that the church will ever seek to disturb the order\nestablished here, for she supports no principle and has no interest that\nwould lead her to do it. Individual Catholics, affected by the relations\nthat have subsisted between church and state in the old world, and not\naware that the church has here all that she has ever struggled for against\nkings and princes, may think that the church lacks here some advantages\nwhich she ought to have, or may think it desirable to reproduce here the\norder of things which they have been accustomed to elsewhere, and which in\nfact the church has submitted to as the best she could get, but has never\nfully approved. These, however, are few, and are soon corrected by\nexperience, soon convinced that the real solution of the questions which\nhave so long and often so fearfully agitated the nations of Europe, has\nbeen providentially obtained by the American people. The church has no wish\nto alter the relation that exists with us between her and the state.\n\nBut there is a very important question for the American people to ask\nthemselves. With the multiplicity of sects, the growing indifference to\nreligion, and the political atheism consciously or unconsciously fostered\nby a large portion of the secular press and but feebly resisted by the\nreligious press, will they be able to reserve the freedom and independence\nof the spiritual order, or protect the equal rights on which our political\ninstitutions are founded? Instead of asking, as some do, are the presence\nand extension of the church dangerous to our institutions, should they not\nrather ask, is she not necessary to their safety? The higher question to be\naddressed to the sects undoubtedly is, can men save their souls without the\nchurch? but in addressing politicians and patriots, it is not beneath the\nCatholic even to ask if the republic, the authority of the state, and the\nliberty of the citizen, both of which rest on the freedom and authority of\nconscience, can be saved or preserved without her? Are not the unity and\ncatholicity which she asserts and represents, and which the sects break and\ndiscard, necessary to maintain the freedom and independence of the\nspiritual order against the constant tendency of the political order and\nmaterial interests to invade and subject it?\n\nThis is the great question for American patriots and statesman, and I have\nwritten in vain, if this article does not at least suggest the answer.\nHitherto almost everywhere Catholics have found themselves obliged to\ncontend against the civil power to gain the freedom and independence of\ntheir church, and at the same time, in these later centuries, to sustain\nthat power, even though hostile to liberty, in order to save society from\ndissolution. Here they have to do neither, for here church and state,\nliberty and authority, are in harmonious relation, and form really, as they\nshould, but two distinct parts of one whole; _distinct_, I say, not\n_separate_ parts. There is here a true _union_, not _unity_,\nof church and state--a union without which neither the liberty of the\ncitizen nor the authority of the state has any solid basis or support. The\nduty of the Catholic on this question is, it seems to me, to do his best to\npreserve this union as it is, and to combat every influence or tendency\nhostile to it.\n\n{14}\n\nDonoso Cortes demonstrates most clearly that religion is the basis of\nsociety and politics, but he is apparently disposed to assert the unity of\nchurch and state, with European liberals, but differing from them by\nabsorbing the state in the church, or by virtually suppressing it; while\nthey would suppress the church or absorb her in the state. My endeavor in\nwhat I have written has been to preserve both, and to defend not the unity,\nbut the union of church and state. This union in my judgment, has never\nexisted or been practicable in the old world, and I do not believe it is\neven yet practicable there, and consequently, I regard whatever tends there\nto weaken the political influence of the church as unfavorable to\ncivilization, and favorable only to political atheism, virtually asserted\nby every European state, unless Belgium be an exception. But here the union\nreally exists, in the most perfect form that I am able to conceive it; and\nfor the harmonious progress of real civilization, we only need the church,\nthe real guardian of all rights that exist independently of civil society,\nto become sufficiently diffused or to embrace a sufficient number of the\npeople in her communion; to preserve that union intact, from whatever\nquarter it may be assailed.\n\nThis, we are permitted to hope, will ere long be the case. The sects,\nseeing their freedom and independence require its maintenance, must in this\nrespect make common cause with us; and hence the spiritual power is\nprobably already nearly, if not quite strong enough to maintain it against\nany and every enemy that may arise. As to the controversy between the\nchurch and the sects, I do not expect that to end very soon; but truth is\nmighty and in the end will prevail They will, no doubt, struggle to the\nlast, but as the state cannot intervene in the dispute, and must maintain\nan open field for the combatants, I have no doubt that they will yield at\nlast, because the church has the truth in its unity and integrity, and they\nhave it only as disunited or broken in scattered fragments. Reason demands\nunity and catholicity, and where reason is free, and assisted by grace, she\nmust win the victory.\n\n------\n\n    Original\n\n    On The Olive-branches In The Garden Of Gethsemane.\n\n\n  Unto the spreading olive-branches thus spake I:\n    \"Emblems of peace!\n  Why do ye mock His bitter grief?\n  He cometh here to seek relief:\n    And ye His woes increase!\"\n\n  When for the silent trees my Jesus made reply:\n    \"It should be so;\n  To men the sign of peace and life,\n  To Me should be of death and strife,\n    Who save them by My woe.\"\n\n------\n\n{15}\n\n    Translated from Le Correspondant\n\n    The Story of A Sister.\n    by Augustin Cochin.\n\nWould you wish to see happiness realized on earth? It reigned in the palace\nof Simonetti at Rome, in the family of the ambassador of France, in the\nmonth of May, 1830. The ambassador was the Count de la Ferronaya. He had\nbeen for a long time ambassador in Russia, where his character, his natural\ngifts, his integrity, had triumphed over the reserve and _hauteur_ of\nthe Emperor Nicholas, who treated him as a friend. He was also the friend\nof the King of France, who, in 1828, appointed him minister of foreign\naffairs. Handsome, brilliant, brave, intelligent, he bore in his heart and\nin his appearance the qualities which constitute the true French gentleman.\nHe had married the niece of the devoted, faithful Duchess of Tourzel, who\naccompanied the king and queen to Varennes as governess to their children.\nThree boys and four girls were the result of this happy marriage. This\nfamily, endowed with birth, rank, and so many gifts of this world, were\nunited at Rome, under the most beautiful sky, in the most beautiful month\nof the year, in the sunny brightness of an unclouded existence. The\nrevolution of July, 1830, having wrested the monarchy from the Bourbons,\nthe Ferronays were not unhappy. God had not yet taken everything from them,\nhe had only taken their riches. The father, by his fidelity, had grown in\npublic respect; his sons and daughters had been prepared by a solid\neducation for industry and self-sacrifice. For fifteen years the parents\nhad enjoyed uninterrupted prosperity, but they had not forgotten their days\nof exile; and when poverty overtook them they met her as an old friend,\nmeekly bowing to the hand from whom all changes come. They went to live in\nretirement at Castellamare, where their house was the image of their life,\na small chamber and a magnificent view, a radiant horizon seen from a\nnarrow dwelling. Soon after we find them at Chiaja, gay, happy, the\nbrothers quitting home for an active life, the sisters loving each other\ndevotedly, gathering flowers in Lady Acton's garden to wear them at the\nnext ball, presented at court, deprived of their fortune, but still happy;\ntasting the pleasure that we find in traveling, and that we ought to find\nin the journey of life--the pleasure which consists in admiring ardently\nwhat we do process without the vanity of personal possession. However, this\ndelightful life was not exempt from danger: a stranger has too much\nliberty; he is not subject to the supervision of relatives, friends,\nneighbors, or rivals, who exercise a control which, though often trying, is\nmore often useful. Diplomatic families, above all, accustomed to be treated\nwith consideration, to form transient acquaintances, passing from court to\ncourt, from St. Petersburg to London, from London to Rome, live in a\ncosmopolitan world, the most delightful, the most amusing, but by far the\nmost dangerous. The family of M. de la Ferronays had not long escaped this\ndanger, which was rendered still more seductive under the charming sky and\nin the luxurious climate of Italy. However, we do not pretend that this\nstory introduces us to exceptional creatures; this is not a voyage to the\ncountry of the angels; we are still upon earth with common mortals. Albert,\none of the younger brothers, was the first to perceive the dangers of this\ntoo self-indulgent life, and he had the courage to escape from it.\n{16}\nHe was a brave heart in a frail body; be was capable of making a mistake,\nbut utterly incapable of excusing an unworthy action by an unworthy\ndoctrine. Providence gave him the support of two friends, who drew him at\neighteen from the enervating influences which he held in such horror, and\nthe elevating power of whose example transformed the child into a man. Both\nsurvived him. M. Rio had been placed in the foreign office by M. de la\nFerronays; he refused to change his opinions to please M. Polignac, or to\nabjure his oath to satisfy M. Guizot. M. de Polignac and M. Guizot,\nrespecting his courage and firmness, had not forsaken him; and making use\nof his leisure to gratify his tastes as well as to show his gratitude, he\nbegged his old chief to allow him to return to his son the favors that he\nhad received from himself, and to permit him to take Albert to be his\ncompanion in that delightful journey among the churches and classical\nassociations of Italy, to which we owe his great work on Christian Art. The\nother friend, the Count de Montalembert, was younger, his heart was filled\nwith love of the church and of liberty; and devoting himself to their\nservice, with an eloquence and activity which nothing could tire, he\narrived in Italy to rejoin MM de Lamennais and Lacordaire. They set out all\nthree for Rome in the month of January, 1832, and nothing appears more rare\nand more touching than the position of the gifted trio who arrived in the\neternal city, the first in search of beauty, the second in pursuit of\ntruth, and the third going unconsciously to encounter the pure love of his\nlife. At St. Petersburg M. de la Ferronays had become acquainted with the\nfamily of the Count d'Alopeus, Russian minister at Berlin, whose daughter,\nAlexandrine, was much attached to Albert's sisters. After the death of her\nhusband, in 1831, the Countess d'Alopeus came to Rome, and the young people\nmet for the first time on the 1st of January, 1832.\n\nWe must read in Le Recit d'une Soeur, or rather in the story of\nAlexandrine, a journal which begins at this date, the origin, the progress,\nthe incidents, and the development of the pure, innocent love of\nAlexandrine and Albert de Ferronays; those conversations which touch so\ndeeply the heart; the friendship which changes into a warmer sentiment the\nname of brother which no longer satisfies; and at last the words \"I love\nyou\" whispered on the steps of St. Peter's one beautiful evening in spring.\nA journey to Naples united the two families at Vomero, in the pretty villa\nof Trecase. We passed the greatest parts of our evenings on the terrace.\nEverything was enchanting; the two gulfs, the shores, Vesuvius, the sky\ngleaming with stars, the air breathing perfume above all to love--to love,\nyet to be able to speak of God. Delightful and innocent hours, who would\nwish to efface you from these pages, and who would wish not to have known\nyour happiness!\n\nBut I hear stern voices cry out in alarm, lest this book should fall into\nthe hands of young girls. \"This book,\" they say, \"is not written for them.\"\nIs it then necessary because we are Christians, to cast down our eyes and\nblush, when we hear those sacred words:  Reason, love, liberty? What would\nlife be without these words? Ah! you may allow your daughters' eyes,\nwithout fear, to wander over these brilliant pages, if they will only turn\nthe leaves, and read to the end, to learn the uncertainty of  human hope,\nthe length of human suffering, the gentle consolations of faith, and the\nbeauty of this holy union of tenderness and purity, under the protection of\nGod.\n\nIn the month of November, it was thought better that Albert and Alexandrine\nshould separate. They were engaged, but one was without fortune, the other\nwas a Protestant. Their friends wished them to reflect, to try the strength\nof their attachment. It was absence without pain, full of hope. After three\nmonths Albert came back.\n{17}\nThe same family life recommenced, full of little home scenes; _na\u00efve_,\ntender, sweet. This continued for three more months, short but happy, sunny\ndays without clouds; and doubtless the beauty of nature, the enchantment of\nan innocent affection, the presence of God, formed a paradise around and\nabove them.\n\n\"On Holy Thursday,\" wrote Alexandrine, \"my mother allowed me to go with my\nfriends, to _Tenebrae_ at the chapel of the palace, to hear the\ncharming music. In spite of my frivolity, the beautiful chapel, the\nsinging, and above all, perhaps, the happiness of praying with Albert,\ninspired me to such a degree, that I prayed with gentleness and\nrecollection. I was pleased to have the air of a Catholic. M. de La\nFerronays took us there, and the return on foot was delightful. It was\nbright moonlight, and the air was heavy with the perfumes of spring. We\nwent into several churches to pray before the holy tomb. Albert and I threw\nourselves upon our knees, one besides the other, on the pavement of the\nchurch. I remember that I felt an indescribable calm; and I don't know what\nI asked from God, but I felt that we both implored his protection for us,\nand that, we felt it realized.\" The two families separated on the 30th of\nApril. Alexandrine went with her mother to Germany, Madame de Ferronays\ntook her two oldest daughters and Albert to France, and their father placed\nthe two youngest in the convent de la Trinit\u00e9 du Mont at Rome. They left\nNaples together, but separated at Civita Vecchia. Albert not feeling well,\nhis father kept him with him; leaving him at the inn, while he took his\nwife and children to the wharf for embarkation. He embraced them, following\nwith his eyes the receding vessel, sending kisses from afar to the\nfast-fading shadows; and then when the last faint smoke of the steamer\ndisappears in the circle of the horizon, he sighs, oppressed with a weight\nto which all are familiar, the heavy weight of loneliness which is\ninseparable from farewell words to those we love. He returned silently and\nsadly to the inn, where a frightful spectacle met his eyes. Albert is\ndying! They are bleeding him; one moment later he would be dead. It is\nnecessary to read for oneself in his own words, the letters of a father to\na mother. A father alone, a stranger in an inn, beside the deathbed of his\nchild. \"We were kept in an agony of suspense from three o'clock until\nseven. At seven the perspiration which, until then, had resisted all our\nefforts, this welcome perspiration showed itself, and became excessive. O\nmy friend! with what faith, with what fervor of gratitude, I thanked\nheaven! How everything changes its nature and aspect when we nurse an\ninvalid whom we love! The physicians say that this dreadful crisis will\nre-establish his health. He is saved! O my God! I Frank thee! for today I\ncan feel only joy. O all you who are loved by heaven! give thanks for me,\nand ask God to smite me, but to spare my poor children.\" During this time\nMademoiselle Alopeus had arrived in Rome, and was once more amid the scenes\nand associates where she first met Albert, when she learned that, instead\nof returning to France, he was dying at Civita Vecchia. In despair, she\nwrote to him, and wished to fly to him; she could not do so, and she\nquitted Rome without seeing him, feeling that he was only more dear to her\nbecause she had so nearly lost him. \"At Viterbo,\" she writes, \"where we\nslept, I heard them speak of the death of a young man, whose body was\nexposed in the neighboring church; this distressed me. I could not bear to\nhear anything that reminded me that Albert could die.\"\n\n\n  Eugenie To Alexandrine.\n\n\"I pray for you, for you and Pauline, for Pauline and you. I do not mention\nAlbert. Albert is comprehended in you; it is the same prayer. God has loved\nhim; God has spared him. God will bless him, and to bless him is to bless\nyou. With what fervor have I repeated my favorite prayer that God would\ntake my share of happiness and unite it to yours, that you may have a\ndouble portion.\n{18}\nThis desire realized would insure my bliss.\" In order that nothing might be\nwanting in this union of noble souls, Albert, just convalescent, writes to\nhis friends, Montalembert and Rio, letters full of energy and confidence.\nCalm and serenity succeeded to this anxiety and disquiet. We find the two\nfamilies united at Rome in September, 1833, where the young sister, Olga,\nmakes her first communion. They then went to Naples, where Albert met them,\nlooking so well that his health had never seemed so perfectly established.\nIt was Alexandrine's health which, at this time, gave them cause for\nanxiety. Her mind was distressed, though she did her best to conceal her\ntrouble. Her mother had not failed during their travels in Germany to\nrepresent to her Albert's bad health and his poverty. Happily he had\nrecovered his health, but he was still poor. I do not know what prudent\nparents will say, but I agree with Monsieur de la Ferronays, who wrote thus\nto his wife: \"They will be poor, but they will be truly happy. I have\nneither the courage nor the wish to oppose them; you will not be more cruel\nthan I am.\" Alexandrine was still suffering. She was lying sadly on the\nsofa one evening at twilight, when her sister came to her, and told her\nthat her wishes were realized; that she might look upon Albert as her\nfuture husband. These joyful tidings worked her cure--happiness is the best\nmedicine. The marriage of Monsieur and Madame Albert de la Ferronays was\npreceded by that of the Countess d'Alopeus with the Prince Paul Lepoukhyn.\nMany dreary months of waiting elapsed, but I will not resume the letters at\nthis period--one word is sufficient. Lovers are always permitted to repeat\nthe same things. It was at this time that the sad revolt of M. de Lamennais\ntook place, and Albert causelessly, but nobly anxious, writes thus to his\nfriend: \"Let us throw ourselves at the foot of the cross, which is the\nfoundation of the church, not to undermine her, but to support and defend\nher; but, above all, I pray you do not commit yourself to M. de Lamennais.\nYou know the happiness which is to be mine in the spring; but I will\npostpone it and fly to you if you wish me to do so.\" To these enthusiastic\nwords his friend replied: \"There is not a word in your letter which does\nnot accord with all I have thought and desired. I used every effort to\ninduce M. de Lamennais to do as I have done--to bow to the inscrutable\ndispensations of providence; and humbly, and with docility, to await the\nwill of heaven.\" But we must leave the two friends to return to the\npreparations for the marriage, which was at last celebrated on the 17th of\nApril, 1834. In the evening a carriage took Albert and Alexandrine to\nCastellamare. They were handsome, talented, good, and happy, and they\nloved.\n\nBlissful dream! which as yet knew no awakening. If we could judge of life\nby outward appearances, we would believe that these bright anticipations\nwould last for ever. All the family rejoined the newly married couple at\nCastellamare. \"A staircase, embowered by vines and roses, led to the pretty\nhouse, the ground floor of which, occupied by Albert and Alexandrine,\nopened by large windows into the garden. Charles and Emma occupied the\nfirst floor; my parents, Fernand, my sisters and myself the second, and at\neach story these terraces communicated by outside staircases. We were\nalways in communication by these terraces, and were only too glad of an\nexcuse to be together, for never was a family more perfectly, more happily\nunited.\" The sister who painted this little picture, which seems bathed in\nsunlight, added to the happiness of all during this pleasant summer, by her\nmarriage; and her younger sister, Eugenie, melancholy and enthusiastic,\noverpowered with happiness, exclaimed, \"Oh! if life is so delightful, what\nmust be the joy of heaven; death is then better than all!\"\n{19}\nFrom Castellamare they went to Sorrento, thence to Rome, then to Pisa,\nwhere they spent the winter, and where they were joined by their faithful\nfriend, like themselves young, intelligent, and amiable. \"You can imagine,\"\nwrote Albert to his sister, \"that he does not render our life less\ncharming.\" \"He left us in tears,\" writes Alexandrine. This friend was the\nCount de Montalembert. From Pisa M. and Madame de la Ferronays embarked for\nNaples in the month of March, and thence a month later for Malta, _en\nroute_ for the east. This journey was full of amusing and piquant little\nincidents. Friendship and affection followed them wherever they went. What\ndelight to visit Castellamare, Sorrento, Pisa, Naples, Malta, Smyrna,\nConstantinople, Odessa, Vienna, Venice, at twenty years of age with hearts\nfull of love! \"The dim light of my lamp falling on her dear head--is not\nthis worth all the world?\" writes Albert. Alexandrine was filled with\nenthusiasm on returning to Italy. \"O dear Italy!\" she cries, \"I return to\nthee for the ninetieth time, and always with renewed pleasure.\" But alas!\nthis journey, made under these happy auspices, resembled the course of the\ninhabitant of the seas whom the harpoon of the fisherman has wounded, and\nwho plunges and escapes in agitation and affright, carrying the iron in his\nside. The health of Albert and the religion of Alexandrine were the two\npoisons hidden under this smiling exterior. Ten days after his marriage,\nAlbert in putting his handkerchief to his mouth, drew it away covered with\nblood. At Pisa he was better, at Constantinople quite well, at Rouen he was\nat death's-door. At Venice he was again better, and the husband and wife\nwent together to Lido.\n\nWhile the wife was disturbed for the health of her husband, he was\ntrembling for more important interests. From the commencement of their\nlove, Albert's most ardent desire had been to see Alexandrine kneel at the\nsame altar, and practice the same faith, as himself. This hope seemed sure\nof realization when they married, for God was ever with them in their\nhappiest hours; since their marriage a feeling of delicacy had kept them\nsilent on the great subjects of conversion. Albert did not wish that\nAlexandrine should be constrained by her affection for him, and she feared\nfor herself the same powerful influence. She was not willing to sacrifice\nher reason to the dictates of her heart, and dreading the displeasure of\nher mother, she dreaded still more the censures of conscience. She desired\nto submit to conviction, and to resist the pleadings of her love. We\nrecognize here the transparent sincerity of a character of which Albert\nsaid truly, \"I never saw in her the slightest affectation.\"\n\nThus Albert's health and Alexandrine's religion agitated them both with a\nconstant, silent anxiety, which introduces something tragical and sorrowful\ninto their history. Being prevented by his health from devoting himself to\nthe service of his country and his church, Albert had concentrated all his\ndesires on the establishment of truth in the heart dearest to him. Nothing\ncould be more touching than Alexandrine's care for Albert's health. The\ncharming Swede, the graceful daughter of the North, the belle of the\nNeapolitan _f\u00eates_, was transformed into the attentive nurse, hiding\nher fears, and accepting disagreeable duties. Shut up in a sick room,\nclosing with her delicate fingers the curtains, while Albert was asleep,\nweeping while he slept, and, smiling when he woke. At this cruel moment\nhope is absent; sorrow extends still more and more her heavy icy hand over\nthis hitherto so happy pair. Albert, at Venice, became so ill that they\nsent for his family. They come, they see him, he is dying, but he is\nconsumed with an irresistible desire to revisit his country. They set out\nin a carriage at short journeys. They leave Venice the 10th of April, and\narrive in Paris on the 11th of May.\n{20}\nOn the 26th Albert is established 13 Rue de Madame, in a hired room near\nthe Luxembourg. He is a little better and much happier, for he is in\nFrance, surrounded by his friends. They are young, they are good, they are\nhappy--why then, death, sickness, and the crushing sorrow of approaching\nseparation? Why all this anguish at once--conversion refused to the prayers\nof Albert--recovery refused to the tears of Alexandrine? O God! where art\nthou? Thou art absent when they all wait for thee. Thou wert the witness of\ntheir innocent love, the author of their union. Thou wert with them when\nthey were happy, and now they suffer, they cry, and thou dost not hear, and\nyet they have had days of perfect happiness and a youth without clouds.\nThou didst create them. Thou hast forsaken them.\n\nThou permittest that they should be afflicted, and when they cry, thou wilt\nnot answer. Why didst thou say by thy prophet, \"Before they call I will\nanswer. As they are yet speaking, I will hear.\" Thy promises but add to\ntheir sufferings the pain of disappointed hope. O God! where art thou? With\ntheir hearts wrung by the same sorrow, the disciples were walking on the\nroad to Emmaus, when meeting a stranger they confided to him their trouble.\n\"We hoped that it was he who would have redeemed Israel, and to-day is the\nthird day since these things were done.\" They did not know that God was\npresent, though hidden from them in the silence of the little chamber,\nwhere these poor Jews, who represent too well our patience so soon\nexhausted, and our unworthy dejection, were sadly assembled together.\nSuddenly their hearts awoke and they recognized in the breaking of bread\nthis ever-present God who gives himself to us as the pledge of future\nimmortality. The miracle of the little cottage of Emmaus is enacted every\nday, and was visible at the death-bed of Albert de La Ferronays. Already at\nVenice, during the night of the 6th of March, Albert appeared oppressed in\nhis sleep, and Alexandrine, overwhelmed by the agony of the coming\nseparation, watched by his bed. \"At half-past five,\" she writes, \"the color\nleft his lips, he spoke with effort and desired me to send for his\nconfessor. 'Has it come to this? Has it come to this?' I cried; then I\nadded at the same moment, 'now I am a Catholic.' In pronouncing these\nwords, firmness, if not happiness, filled my heart.\" On the 14th of March\nshe wrote to her mother a truly sublime letter, which I will quote at\nlength. \"From love and respect to you, my mother, I have not inquired into\nthe claims of the Catholic religion for fear that I should find it true,\nand I should be forced to embrace it. But now I am possessed with an\nirresistible desire to belong to the same faith as my Albert. At no price,\nhowever, not even to soften the death-bed of my husband, would I act\ndisloyally toward God. Be assured, I shall not act without conviction. Dear\nmother, allow me to be instructed, and when you meet again your poor\nwidowed daughter, ah! you will not repine at her being a Catholic. If the\nCatholic Church had no other advantage over ours than that she prays for\nthe dead, I should prefer her.\" On his side Albert, with his dying hand,\ntraced in his journal these words, which were his last: \"O Lord! I implored\nthee by day and by night, Give her to me, grant me this joy if it only\nlasts for one day. Thou heardest me, O God! why should I complain. My\nhappiness was complete, if it was short, and now thou hast granted the rest\nof my prayers, and my dear one is about to enter the bosom of the church,\nthus giving me the assurance that I shall see her again in that happy home\nwhere we shall both be lost in the beatific vision of thy boundless love.\"\nOn the 27th of May, 1836, Madame de Ferronays knelt before an altar,\narranged in her husband's room, on which the Abb\u00e9 Martin de Mourien\ncelebrated mass, and made her profession of the Catholic faith.\n{21}\nOn the night of the 5th or 7th of June, she received her first communion at\nthe same mass where Albert received his last. I will describe this pathetic\nscene in the words of Alexandrine herself. \"Albert was in bed, be had not\nbeen able to rise. I knelt beside him, I took his hand, it was thus that we\ncommenced the mass of Abb\u00e9 Gerbert. As the mass advanced, Albert made me\nlet fall his hand, this dear hand that was to me so sacred that in the most\nsolemn hour of life I felt that I did not offend God in retaining it.\nAlbert drew it from me, exclaiming, 'Go, go, belong only to God.' The Abb\u00e9\nGerbert addressed a few words to me before giving me communion, then be\ngave it to Albert, then again I took his beloved hand; we expected every\nmoment would be his last.\" No book could contain, no imagination could\ndepict a scene more tenderly, more profoundly pathetic. At this point we\nread no more, we weep; it is to thee, O God! that the soul turns, to thee\nthat the soul ascends, to thee who truly and really wert present in his\nchamber of suffering, walking so to speak on the waves of death, and\nsaying, \"Fear not, I am with thee.\" O my Protestant brethren: it is to you\nthat this page seems to be dedicated; it is you who have formed the\ncharacter of this young girl; it is to you that she owes the habit of\nliving in the presence of God, to you she owes the loyalty, the perfect\nsincerity of her intentions and the zeal with which she purifies her\nconscience; at each moment guarding it as a stainless mirror which must\never reflect the image of God. She followed _you_ on the road to\nEmmaus, where Jesus explained to his disciples the sacred Scriptures; but\nlike the disciples she has thrown down the book, it could not satisfy her;\nshe has followed God to his holy table. By the bed of death, on the edge of\nthe yawning abyss of irreparable separation, hymns and words disappear like\nuseless sounds and barren discourses. Famished for hope and for\nconsolation, the soul has need of stronger food. She must tear down the\nveil, and lay hold of God. O my Protestant brethren! read this history of a\nChristian, who was yours until the moment when stretching out her\ndespairing hands toward nothingness, she came to us to be united in God\nwith her dying husband. Read the sad but striking description of the days\nthat follow the first communion. It is to you that I would dedicate the\nstory of this sublime agony, accompanied so tenderly by the church to the\nlast sigh of the passing soul.\n\nOn the 27th of June, after two years of married life, at twenty-two years\nof age, Albert returned to God!\n\nIs not this sad enough? Why should we continue after such scenes? What new\nspectacle can move us? We have known the bride, the wife. We are going to\nfollow the widow; to follow her from the extremity of human sorrow, to\nconsolation, even to joy and love, reformed again in God. The only\ndifference between the widow of India burned in the ashes of her husband\nand the Christian widow, is that the Christian is consumed more slowly. She\nwaits for death, instead of seeking it; from the first day of bereavement\nan invisible fire, which nothing can extinguish, saps the spring of her\nlife.\n\nThe first moments are the most cruel, but they are not the hardest to\nendure; when one can say yesterday, the day before yesterday, it is only\nabsence, it is not the abyss of an irreparable adieu.\n\n\n    Alexandrine to Pauline.\n      \"Boury, July 10, 1836.\n\n  \"Pauline--Pauline! I could have written to you on the 29th of June, had I\n  not been occupied with other things. I repeat, I could have done it. God\n  has given me the power to do and to endure much far beyond all I ever\n  believed possible, for have I not seen the eyes of Albert close in death?\n  have I not felt his hand grow cold for ever? Eugenie will tell you that\n  God has granted me that which I asked of him. He died resting in my arms,\n  my hand in his.\n{22}\n  Alone, and very quietly, I closed his dear eyes, deprived of sight, and\n  perhaps of feeling. I whispered close into his ear the name so beloved,\n  Albert! I had nothing more tender to say to him than this word which\n  expressed everything I felt. I wished that the last sound which should\n  fall upon his ear should be my voice, growing fainter and fainter until\n  it was lost in the distance and darkness of that gloomy passage, which\n  leads at last into the light. Alas! my voice, like myself, was obliged to\n  remain on the confines, obliged for the first time to be separated from\n  him. O Pauline! I was strong then, unnaturally strong. I was still\n  stronger for three days, then I commenced to grow weaker and weaker, and\n  each morning I seemed feebler than the night before.\"\n\nThis estimable widow of twenty years, always ardent and always perfectly\nnatural, expresses a truth even in her first sensations. Little by little\nsorrow intensifies, courage fails, despair commences. The sympathy of\nfriends, which had until then a little occupied, distracted, and deadened\nthe pain, without healing it, becomes colder and more distant, and the soul\nis enveloped in the icy shades of silence and solitude.\n\n\n    Alexandrine to Pauline.\n\n  \"To tell me at my age that all happiness is passed, that makes me\n  shudder, and yet my only rest will be to feel entirely inconsolable, for\n  I should loathe myself if I felt that I could again enjoy the amusements\n  of life, or look upon the world otherwise than I do now. Albert was to me\n  the light which colored everything. With him pearls, jewels, pretty\n  rooms, beautiful scenery, appeared to me lovely. Now, nothing charms me.\n  I have but one wish, to know where he is. To see if he is happy, if he\n  loves me still; to share all things with him _now_ as I promised to\n  do on earth before God.\"\n\nYes, the faithful widow sees nothing, she is ever with the absent; it is\nnot he who is dead, it is the world which has gone from her, which is\nshrouded in darkness. But in the long weary hours, when she listens to the\nplaintive murmurings of her own heart, the Christian widow hears another\nvoice of heavenly music, and angels whisper in her ear those gentle words,\n\"Blessed are those who weep, for they shall be comforted.\" \"Blessed are the\npure in heart, for they shall see God.\" It is not only in heaven that pure\nhearts see God, they see him everywhere on earth, in all objects, in all\ncreatures--in all events they recognize him, they contemplate him. An\nunexpected brightness is introduced little by little into this desolate\nlife. The world is colored anew; obscured by sorrow, it is transfigured by\nfaith.\n\nShe who is afflicted is not consoled, she is accepted, supported; from this\nday a miracle commences. She whose affections have been riven, seeks to\nlove again in making friends for him whom she has lost, in interesting for\nhim the saints whom she invokes, the poor whom she assists. Some days after\nthe death of Albert, Alexandrine sold a beautiful pearl collar, a relic of\nhappy days, and she wrote:\n\n  \"Pearls! symbol of tears!\n   Pearls! tears of the sea,\n   Gathered with tears in the depths of the ocean,\n   Worn often with tears in the midst of the pleasures of the world;\n   Resigned to-day with tears in the greatest of human sorrows,\n   Go, dry tears, by changing into bread.\"\n\nThe love of the poor became for this young Christian a sublime\nconsolation--the love of Jesus Christ in the persons of the poor--the love\nof the poor in the thought of Albert. To love the unhappy when we are\nunhappy is an exquisite sign of perfection in our poor human nature, but a\nsign happily very common. Is it not much more difficult when we suffer to\nlove the happy--not to be impatient of their pleasures, to lend ourselves\nto them, and though our own hearts are for ever shut against joy, to be\nable to rejoice with those who rejoice? Le R\u00e9cit d'une Soeur shows us the\nChristian widow in the midst of her family, among her young sisters and\nbrothers, smiling, amiable, communicating, no doubt, by her presence to the\npleasures of the house the tinge of melancholy which ever belongs to the\njoys or earth.\n\n{23}\n\nThe commencement of the second volume of Madame Craven's history is\noccupied with the _tableau_ of the interior of her family, who were\nunited at the Chateau of Boury during the years 1836, '37, and '38, which\nfollowed the death of M. Albert de la Ferronays. Obliged, by the diplomatic\ncareer of her husband, to change frequently her residence--to go from\nNaples to Lisbon, to London, to Carlsruhe, to Brussels--Madame Craven was\nalmost always separated from her parents and her sisters. To this\nseparation we owe the correspondence which serves today to interest and\nconsole us.\n\nThe description of the interior of the Chateau de Boury, depicted in these\nletters, resembles a conversation, where each speaks in his turn and with\nhis own peculiar accent. But I will pass over this family picture to return\nto Madame Albert de la Ferronays, the principal character in my story.\n\nIn the month of October, 1837, they removed the body of Albert to Boury, in\norder to bury it in a sepulchre, where they had arranged two places without\nseparation.\n\n  \"Yesterday, alone with Julia, by the aid or a little ladder, Alexandrine\n  descended into the excavation in order to touch and to kiss, for the last\n  time, the coffin in which is enclosed all that she loves. In doing this\n  she was on her knees in her own tomb. On the stone she had engraved:\n  'What God hath put together, let no man put asunder.'\"\n\nIn 1838 she rejoined her mother in Germany, where she spent the second\nanniversary of the 29th of June. From Ischl she wrote to her sister a\ntouching description of the death of a young priest, who died of\nconsumption eleven months after his ordination. From Germany Madame de la\nFerronays went to Lumigny, from thence to Boury; and when the family\nresolved to pass the winter of 1839 in Italy, she returned with a sad\ndelight to this beautiful country, where she had been so happy. She wished\nto revisit all the scenes of her past happiness--to see again the rocks,\nthe trees, the mountains, which had been witnesses of her felicity--not\nwithout tears, but without complaining; with the sweet serenity of perfect\nresignation. \"It is here,\" she said, \"that I have been so full of bliss\nthat this world and life appeared too beautiful.\" After the description of\nthe second journey to Italy, there follows the account of the successive\ndeaths of M. de la Ferronays and the young daughters, Olga and Eugenie. At\nthis time, always absolutely sincere, incapable in anything of being\ncarried away by feeling, Alexandrine thought of entering a convent; she\nrelinquished the idea, but resolved to live in poverty for the poor. From\nthis day she dreams no more, she writes no more, she acts. Her love\nexpresses itself in joyous accents, in words of heavenly sweetness,\naccompanied by austere virtues. It is the miracle and the triumph of true\npiety, What is this? demands a disdainful world. Who is this devotee,\ndraped in black, who ventures out in the most inclement season, laden with\nbundles? Has she paralyzed her heart? Does she love no one? Is she a piece\nof mechanism, passing from the dreary garret to the dark cellar in the poor\nneighborhood which surrounds her? No; this widow is a great lady, bearing\none of the oldest names of France. She is going to visit the dying, to\nsupply them with clothes and food, to teach their ignorant children; and on\nher return she takes her pen, and from this heart, which you believe cold\nand frozen, flow forth these words: \"O my dear sister! can I fill you with\njoy and courage in writing? Would that it were in my power; you do not know\nhow I love you, but you will know in eternity, where we shall enjoy each\nother's love fully and completely.\"\n\n{24}\n\nThis devotee paid a visit to another devotee, an old Russian lady, of whom\nshe writes: \"I have seen Madame Swetchine; this delightful, excellent woman\ntold me that we ought not to speak ill of life, for it is full of beauty;\nand yet this woman, so tender and so pious, is overwhelmed with moral and\nphysical suffering. She said to me, 'I love what _is_, because it is\ntrue; I am contented.' The longer I live the more I wish to have my heart\nfilled with love, and only with love.\" Of all Alexandrine's former\npleasures, the sole relaxations she permitted herself were music and\nreading. Part of her time she spent in Paris in the hospitals, which she\nentered with the joyous, animated air of a young girl who sets out for a\n_f\u00eate_, or a warrior who returns from battle. She ended by hiring a\nlittle room in the Rue de S\u00e8vres in order to live more plainly. Her\nsisters, in looking into her wardrobe, found that it contained nothing. She\nhad robbed herself to give to the poor. This noble woman had but one cause\n--the cause of God. She became the generous servant, almost the soldier of\nthe church, interesting herself in the cause of freedom, contributing to\nforeign missions, seconding the educational projects of her friend, M. de\nMontalembert; and, from the quiet of her little chamber, giving forth her\nmoney and her prayers for the service of God. Madame Craven, in a letter,\ndated the 31st of July, thus writes: \"The evening of my departure from\nBoury we went into the cemetery to pray. Alexandrine knelt beside Albert's\ntomb, on the spot which, twelve years before, had been prepared for\nherself. I was on my knees, by Olga. The night was warm and beautiful. As\nwe strolled slowly home, I turned and admired the setting sun, which was\nembellishing, with its many colored rays, this sad spot. 'I love the\nsetting sun,' I exclaimed. 'Since my sorrow,' replied Alexandrine, 'the\nsetting sun makes me sad. It is the precursor of night. I do not like the\nnight. I love the morning and the spring--they bring before me the reality\nof life that never ends. Night represents to me darkness and sin; evening\nthe transitory nature of the world; but morning and spring give me promise\nof the resurrection and renewal of all things.' As we continued our walk,\nAlexandrine said: 'Rest assured that all that pleases us most upon earth is\nbut a shadow; that the reality is alone in heaven. What is there upon earth\nso sweet as to love? And I ask you if it is not easy to conceive that the\nlove of the divine love ought to be the perfection of this sweetness?--and\nis not this the love of Jesus Christ? I should never have been comforted if\nI had not learnt that this love exists for God, and is everlasting.' I\nreplied, 'You are very happy so to love God.' She answered me--and her\nwords, her expression, her attitude will remain ever engraved on my\nmemory--'O Pauline! should I not love God? should I not be transported\nwith joy when I think of him? How can you imagine there is any merit in\nthis, even that of faith, when I think of the miracle that he has wrought\nin my soul? I loved, and desired the joy of earth--it was given to me. I\nlost it, and I was overwhelmed with despair. Yet, to-day my soul is so\ntransformed that all the happiness I have ever known pales and grows dim in\ncomparison with the felicity with which God has filled my soul.' Surprised\nto hear her speak thus, I said: 'If you had offered to you a long life to\nbe spent with Albert, would you accept it?' She replied, without\nhesitation. 'I would not take it.' This was our last conversation, and as I\nsaw her then I see her now, with a flower of jessamine in her hand, her\nface lighted up with heavenly beauty; and so she will ever appear to me\nuntil I meet her again where there will be no more parting.' Alexandrine\ndied some months after, on the 9th of February, 1848.\n\nIf the angels could die, they would die as she did. Her last words to\nAlbert's mother were: \"Tell Pauline it is so sweet to die.\"\n\n{25}\n\nOn the 14th of November of the same year, Madame de la Ferronays rejoined\nher husband, her son, and her three daughters. On the tombs of Albert,\nAlexandrine, Olga, and Eugenie, and of their father and mother, one single\nepitaph is necessary. It comprehends their life; it is the epitome of their\nfaith; it is the conclusion, the explanation, the design of this book:\n\"Love is stronger than death.\"\n\n------\n\n      Original\n\n      The Church And The Sinner.\n\n\n    The Church\n\n  Prithee, why continue eating,\n    Child, the husks of swine?\n  Thou thy soul art only cheating\n    With this food of thine.\n\n\n    The Sinner.\n\n  Other food hath long been wasted,\n    Mother, by my sin;\n  All its empty joys are tasted,\n    Sorrows now begin.\n\n\n    The Church.\n\n  Hadst thou not a loving Father,\n    Child, and happy home?\n  There with him have rested, rather\n    Shouldst thou than to roam.\n\n\n    The Sinner.\n\n  Yes; but he his now degraded\n    Son would never know;\n  From his memory I have faded,\n    Mother, long ago.\n\n\n    The Church.\n\n  Child, the Father ne'er forgetteth\n    Whom he called his son,\n  To him naught but pride now letteth\n    Not thy feet to run.\n\n\n    The Sinner.\n\n  Worthy for his lowly servant\n    Am I not, I know;\n  Yet with love and sorrow fervent\n    Will arise, and go!\n\n------\n\n{26}\n\n    From The Dublin University Magazine.\n\n    Modern Writers Of Spain.\n\nThe literary portion of English and French people take little interest\nabout what philosophers and romance writers are doing on the outer borders\nof Europe. Scarcely does an editor of a literary journal direct his\nsubscribers' attention to the current literature of Russia, Norway, Spain,\nor Portugal. The most universally-read Englishman would be puzzled if you\nasked him who is the Dickens or the Braddon of Transylvania, or if anything\nworth reading has lately appeared in the Portuguese province of Alentejo.\nThanks to the talents and the genial disposition of Frederica Bremer, and\nthe vigorous and original character of Emily Carlen's novels, and the\ninterest excited for Norse literature by William and Mary Howitt, we have\nbecome familiarized with the popular literature of Sweden. Worsae and\nAndersen have made us attend to literary sayings and doings among the\nmeadows and beech woods and _havns_ of the Danish Isles. The efforts\nof Count Sollogub and one or two other enlightened Russians have failed to\ndispel our apathy on the subject of native Russian literature, and at this\nmoment we can recollect among the contents of our own reviews and magazines\nfor five or six years back, only two notices of the productions of living\nSpanish novelist or romancist. Either we (English and French) are too much\nabsorbed in our own literature, and consequently negligent of that of our\nneighbors, or those neighbors are producing nothing worthy [of] notice, and\nin either case our efforts will scarcely turn public attention into a new\nchannel. Our intention is merely to advert to some literary features in the\nlife of the Spain of the present day. We shall not find her altogether\nneglectful of the claims of her children who are at the moment striving to\nadd to her literary renown.\n\n\n  Cervantes Remembered Too Late.\n\nThere is something very saddening in those solemnities held in honor of\ndeparted genius. We see much time taken from necessary business, much\neloquence wasted--often with a side glance toward self-glorification, and\nmuch money thrown away, which, if once timely and prudently used, would\nhave relieved the anxieties and cheered the existence of the ill-favored\nson of genius.\n\nIn the article on Cervantes which appeared in the University for August,\n[Footnote 2] allusion was made to his imprisonment and harsh treatment in a\ncertain town of La Mancha. It is the same whose name, he says, in the\ncommencement of Don Quixote, he does not choose to remember. It has been\nascertained that this village of unenviable reputation is Argamasilla; and\nthe very house where he resided against his will, and dreamily arranged the\nplan of his prose epic, has been identified. The Infanta Don Sebastian has\npurchased it, with a view to its preservation, and a patriotic and spirited\nprinter, Don Manuel de Ribadeneira, has obtained permission to work off two\nimpressions there of the Life and Adventures of the ingenious Hidalgo, Don\nQuixote. One is, in the Paris idiom, an edition of luxury, intended for the\nlibraries and _salons_ of the great, the other a carefully executed\nbut low-priced edition for the populace.\n\n    [Footnote 2: See Catholic World for October, 1886.]\n\n{27}\n\nThe English cannot be accused of having neglected their own Cervantes in\nhis need. He appears to have united to his comprehensive and mighty genius,\ngood business habits, consulted the tastes of his public while endeavoring\nto improve them, watched the behavior of his door-keepers, and though\nprobably not a rigid self-denier, made his outlay fall far short of his\nincome, and enjoyed some years of life in respectable retirement. So his\ncountrymen feeling no remorse on his account, show their respect for his\nmemory by eating and drinking heartily on stated occasions, and boring each\nother with stereotyped speeches. When suitable days for jubilees or\ncentenaries or tercentenaries arrive, they take more trouble on themselves.\nThey journey to a small town in Warwickshire, and celebrate the event in as\ntiresome a fashion as if they were members of the \"British Association for\nbettering the Universe,\" under all the inconveniences of crowded rooms,\ncrowded vehicles going and coming, and dear hotels. They manage matters of\nthe kind in Spain with a difference.\n\nSome years since a statue was erected to Cervantes in front of the Congress\nbuilding, and the historian, Antonio Cavanilles, took occasion to mention\nthe opinion of the ghost of the great Spaniard on the matter in a dialogue\nheld between them.\n\n  \"During my life they left me in poverty. Now they raise statues which are\n  of no manner of use to me, and they never celebrate a mass for the repose\n  of my soul--a thing of which I have much need.\"\n\nWhether the Marquis of Molins, the same gentleman who superintended the\neditions of Don Quixote at Argamasilla, took this appeal to heart or not,\nit is certain that since the year 1862 a solemn high mass and office have\nbeen celebrated for the above-mentioned purpose before the Royal Academy of\nMadrid. M. Antoine de Latour, [Footnote 3] in his \u00c9tudes Litt\u00e9raires sur\nl'Espagne Moderne, has left an account of one of these solemnities, some\nparticulars of which are worth being presented.\n\n    [Footnote 3: This gifted and agreeable writer was born at Sainte Yrieix\n    (Haute Vienne) in 1818, and educated at the college of Dijon. He held\n    professorships at the College Bourbon and the college Henri Quatre.\n    Louis Philippe confided to him the education of the young Duc de\n    Montpensier, and in 1848 he shared the exile of the house of Orleans.\n    He made his literary _d\u00e9but_ in poetry, his other productions\n    being an Essay on the History of France in the Nineteenth Century, an\n    Account of the Duc de Montpensier's Journey to the East, and and essays\n    on Luther, Racan, Vertot, Malherbe. &c. He has resided for a\n    considerable time in Spain, and written four or five works Spanish\n    subjects.]\n\nIn 1616 Cervantes was interred in the church of the Convent of the\nTrinitarians, where his daughter had taken the veil. Some fifteen years\nafterward the community removed to the site now occupied by them, and the\nimpression is strong that in the removal the remains of the poet were\nbrought to their own house, his daughter being alive, or but recently dead\nat the time. In the chapel of their convent the annual solemnity takes\nplace on the 16th April. The convent stands in the street called after\nCervantes' contemporary and dramatic rival, Lope de Vega. We proceed with\nM. de Latour's account of what he witnessed.\n\nOur visitor found the chapel hung with black cloth trimmed with gold\nfringe. In the centre was a catafalque on which rested the habit of St.\nFrancis borne by Cervantes during the last three years of his life, a\nsword, prison-fetters, a crown of laurel, and a copy of the first edition\nof Don Quixote. At each corner of the catafalque stood a disabled soldier,\nand at each side, and extending the whole length of the chapel, ran two\nlines of seats for the members of the various academies.\n\nAt the lower end of the chapel, on seats connecting the extremities of the\nlong rows mentioned, sat the Alcaid, the rector of the University, and the\ncur\u00e9 of Alcala de Henares, Cervantes' birthplace, where the record of his\nbaptism was discovered some time since.\n\n{28}\n\nAmong the remarkable personages met to celebrate the occasion, M. de Latour\nnoticed the Marquis de Molins, its institutor; M. Hartzembuch, a dramatic\npoet, an idolizer of Cervantes, and the zealous superintendent of the two\nArgamasilla editions of the Don; Ventum de la Vega, the Marquis de Santa\nCruz, whose ancestor fought at Lepanto, and Antonio Cavanilles, the eminent\nhistorian before mentioned. Seated behind the academicians were the most\nillustrious ladies of Spain, all appropriately attired in mourning dress.\n\nThe Archbishop of Seville celebrated high mass, the different parts of\nwhich were accompanied with music as old as the days of Cervantes himself.\nThe distinguished composer, Don Francisco Asenjo Barbieri, had sought these\npieces out with much trouble, some of them having for a long time been only\nheard in the Sistine chapel at Rome. We subjoin the openings of some of\nthese, with the authors and dates.\n\n_Regem cui omnia vivunt_ (the king by whom all things live) was\ncomposed by Don Melchior Robledo, chapel master in Saragossa in 1569, the\nsame year when Cervantes' little collection of elegiac poems on Queen\nIsabel appeared.\n\n_Domine in furore tuo_ (Lord (rebuke) me not in thy fury) was the\ncomposition of Don Andres Lorente, organist in Alcala de Henares,\nCervantes' birthplace. He himself probably heard it sung there in his\nyouth.\n\n_Versa est in luctum cithara mea_ (my harp has changed to sorrow) was\ncomposed for the funeral of Philip II. by Don Alfonso Lobo.\n\n_Libera me_ (deliver me), the composition of Don Matias Romero, Chapel\nMaster to Philip III., dates from about the death of Cervantes.\n\nDon Francisco de Paula Benavides, the young bishop of Siguenza, preached\nthe sermon. Taking his text from St. Paul, \"Being dead he still speaketh\nthrough faith,\" he proceeded with the panegyric of the great-souled poet\nand soldier, and of all the illustrious dead who have honourcd Spain by\ntheir writings. He did not neglect to interest the nuns, who were listening\nwith all their might behind their lattices. Their order had been\ninstrumental in restoring the brave Saavedra to his country, and to their\nexertions Spain and the world were in part indebted for the Don Quixote and\nthe Exemplary Novels. They possessed the remains of the poet in their\nhouse, and thus bound to his memory they must not omit the care of his\nsalvation to their prayers. The delivery of the discourse, according to M.\nLatour, was marked with a noble simplicity, and a manner combining\nsweetness with vigour.\n\nNext morning he returned to the convent, hoping to be gratified with the\nsight of Cervantes' tomb. Alas! he learned that when the remains were\ntransferred from the old house, sufficient attention was not paid to keep\nthem apart from those of others who were removed along with them. So,\nthough it is morally certain that the present convent of the Trinitarians\nguards all that remains of the body, once so full of life and active\nenergy, they are now undistinguishable from the relics of the nameless\nindividuals who had received interment in the same building.\n\n\n    The Modern Novel:\n    Donna Caecelia De Faber.\n\nWe are not to imagine Spain insensible to the merits of her living gifted\nsons and daughters, and ever employed in shedding tears over the tombs of\nher Cervantes, her Lope de Vega, or her Mendoza. No. She possesses living\nwriters whose names are not only known from Andalu\u00e7ia to Biscay, but are\neven spoken of in Paris _salons_. The most distinguished among these\nis the lady who chooses to style herself _Fernan Caballero_, her real\nname being Caecilia de Faber, her birthplace Alorges in Switzerland, and\nher father, M. Bohl de Faber, a Hamburgh merchant, and consul for that city\nat Cadiz.\n\n{29}\n\nShe has been married more than once, and thus enabled to combine experience\nwith natural ability in her pictures of life and manners. Through the favor\nof the queen she holds apartments in the Alcazar of Seville, and the\nsplendid old Moorish city could not possess a writer better qualified to\npaint the manners of the little-doing, much-enjoying people of that\nsouthern paradise, Andalul\u00e7ia, and the delights of the happy climate, where\nlife is not only supportable, but enjoyable at very small expense.\n\nBesides happily seizing and vividly sketching what takes place among the\naristocracy of Seville in their Patios [Footnote 4] and Tertulias (reunions\nin their _salons_), this authoress has made herself thoroughly\nacquainted with the circumstances and characters and peculiar customs of\nthe country laborers and shepherds. Melodramatic situations abound in some\nof them, and perhaps these are more relished by her Spanish readers than\nothers whose chief merit consists in truthful and picturesque tableaux of\nthe order of things among which they are placed, and which consequently\npossesses no novelty for them. We can readily conceive how French and\nEnglish students of her novels and romances would prefer this latter class\nfor their entertainment. Who would not rather listen to a couple of\nAndalu\u00e7ian peasants discussing the clime and people of Britain than to some\nterrible, exciting though undignified, domestic tragedy? (_A_. is\ndissuading _B_. from making the voyage to Britain.)\n\n  \"_A_. The earth is there covered with so deep a crust of snow that\n  people are buried in it.\n\n  \"_B_. Most Blessed Mary! But they are quiet folk, and do not carry\n  stilettoes.\n\n  \"_A_. They have no olives, no gaspacho, [footnote 5]   and must put\n  up with black bread, potatoes, and milk.\n\n  \"_B_. Much good may it do them.\n\n    [Footnote  4: The Patios are the interior flagged courts surrounded by\n    colonnades from the roof of which lamps are suspended. In the centre of\n    the court is a fountain surrounded by shrubs in fruit or flower. Seated\n    on sofas in the corridor, or on carpets near the fountain, the princely\n    owners enjoy an elysium during hot weather.]\n\n    [Footnote 5: Soup made up of olive oil, vinegar, spices, etc.]\n\n  \"_A_. The worst is, there are neither monks nor nuns there; the\n  churches are few, and the walls of them as bare as if they were\n  hospitals; no private chapels, no altars, no crucifixion.\n\n  \"_B_. Oh, my sun, my white bread, my church, my Maria Santissima, my\n  delightful land, my Dios Sacramentado! How could I think to change you\n  for that land of snow, of black bread, of bare-walled churches, of\n  heretics? Horrible!\"\n\nFernan Caballero enters with warm-hearted sympathy into the pleasures and\ntroubles of her country people. Few could read without interest her sketch\nof the peasants returning at evening from their work. We fancy Sancho Panza\nand a neighbor coming home to meet the greeting of Tereza and his children,\nhimself mounted on _Dapple_, while the little foal frolics about,\nunconscious of its own future life of labor. Sancho carries a basket of\nfruit and vegetables covered with the sappy maize stalks, which will\nfurnish a delightful supper to the patient _burra_. Sancho's neighbor\nis riding beside him, and you will hear in a quarter of an hour of their\nconversation more proverbs than John Smith and Tom Brown would quote in\nseven years. The burras quicken their pace as they approach the village,\nfor the children of both men are running to meet them, while their wives\nare looking out for them from the porches of their doors. Sancho dismounts\nand sets his younger child on Dapple, while his elder frolics about her and\nmakes free with her ears. Sancho's neighbor gets his youngest into his lap,\nwhile one of the elder boys takes the halter and the other gambols about\nwith the trusty house dog, asses and dog being much better treated than if\ntheir lot lay in Berkshire or Donegal.\n\nWith their innumerable rhymed proverbs, their chatty propensities, their\nhappy clime, fine country, facility of procuring a livelihood, few wants,\nand lively and happy temperaments, the Andalu\u00e7ian peasants afford suitable\nsubjects to Fernan Caballero's pencil.\n{30}\nThey see in the many natural advantages they possess, the goodness of God\nand the favors of the saints; and their pious legends, in connection with\nevery object round them, are innumerable. \"Toads and serpents are useful in\nabsorbing the poisonous exhalations of the earth; the serpent attempted to\nbite the Holy Infant on the journey into Egypt, so Saint Joseph appointed\nhim to creep on his belly thenceforth. Some trees have the privilege of\npermanent foliage because they sheltered the HOLY FAMILY on the same\njourney. The Blessed Virgin hung the clothes of the Infant Jesus on a\nrosemary bush to dry, so its sweetest perfume and brightest blossoms are\nreserved for Friday. The swallow plucked some of the thorns out of the\nSaviour's crown, therefore he is a favorite bird with all Christians, while\nthe owl is obliged to keep his eyes shut and whimper out, '_cruz,\ncruz,_' because he irreverently stared at our suffering Lord on the\ncross. The hedgehog should be well treated, because he presented to the\nBlessed Virgin some sweet apples on the tips of his prickles, while the\nearwig is deservedly hated for boring his way into, and effectually\nspoiling the nicest of them.\" Most of these poetically develop fancies are\nor were familiar with the Roman Catholic peasantry of Ireland, and probably\namongst the populace of moat continental countries.\n\nPerhaps the most powerful of our authoress's stories is La Gaviota (the\nsea-gull), giving the career of a selfish, ill-disposed country girl,\ngifted with some beauty and a fine voice. She obtains a gentle German\ndoctor for husband, is patronized by a duke, trained for the office of a\nprima donna, becomes fascinated by a bull fighter, proves false to her\nestimable husband, and ends badly of course. Devout and moral as the\nauthoress undoubtedly is, she does not avoid strong and exciting situations\nno more than Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe or Mrs. Oliphant. Such is the scene\nwhere the betrayed husband sees her seated beside the bullfighter among his\nunedifying associates, and that other of the death of her paramour by a\nfurious animal in the arena before her eyes, and these are matched by\npassages in the Alvareda Family.[Footnote 6] This story, which is entirely\noccupied with country folk, and incidents of the war in Buonaparte's time,\nand scenes of brigandage, is next to La Gaviota in power. The match-making\nscene between the garrulous and saving Pedro and his relative that is to\nbe, the _Tia_ Maria, fully as provident as himself, might have\nhappened in a country farmhouse in Wexford or Carlow, and would have been\ndescribed by Banim or Griffin or Carleton, nearly in the same terms.\n\n    [Footnote 6: A translation of this story was given in The Catholic\n    World of last year, as Perico the Sad; or, The Alvareda Family.]\n\nThe Andalusians are as partial to bantering each other as the natives of\nKilcullen or Bantry, but all is taken in good humor.\n\nIn reading the country business in this and others of our authoress's tales\nwe have been forcibly reminded of corresponding pictures so truthfully\npainted in Adam Bede. We could scarcely fancy such a piece of extravagance\nas the following to be uttered by a Spanish lady, till assured of the fact\nby Fernan Caballero. _Casta_ wishes to induce her elderly lover, Don\nJudas Taddeo Barbo, to cease his persecutions. He does not read, and\nentertains feelings of repugnance to literary ladies in general; so she\ntakes him into her confidence.\n\n  \"'Yes, yes I am a poet, but do not mention it, I beg. Some of my works\n  are printed, but I have put the names of my friends to them. Martinez de\n  la Rosa's poems are mine, not his. I have also tried my hand on\n  theatrical pieces. The Consolations of a Prisoner, attributed to the Duke\n  de Rivas, is my composition.'\n\n  \"'Who would have suspected a lady, so young, so beautiful, so womanly, so\n  attractive? Why, a writing woman ought to be old, ugly, and slovenly--a\n  man-woman!'\n\n  \"'All prejudices, Don Judas. Have you read my Tell?'\n\n  \"'Miguel Tell, the Treasurer? No. I never read; it injures my sight.'\n\n{31}\n\n  \"'Well I must read an extract from my great historical work on William\n  Tell, not Miguel the Treasurer.' (Here poor Don Judas began to meditate\n  an escape, the very thing the lady wished.)\n\n  \"'William Tell, my hero, was a native of Scotland who refused to bow down\n  to the beaver hat of the English General, _Malbrun_, set up on a\n  high pole. Out of this circumstance arose the thirty years' war, at the\n  end of which Tell was proclaimed King of England under the title of\n  William the Conqueror. He brought disgrace on his royal name by causing\n  his wife, the beautiful Anne Boleyn, to be beheaded. Struck with remorse\n  he sent his son Richard Lion-heart on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. On\n  his return he was imprisoned for his great admiration of Luther, Calvin,\n  Voltaire, and Rousseau, members of the Revolutionary Directory which put\n  the pious King Louis XIV. to death. About that time Don Pedro the Cruel\n  established the inquisition in Spain to prevent such proceedings in his\n  kingdom, and thus he obtained his surname'\"\n\nPoor Don Judas was terrified by the erudition of the cunning lady, who thus\ngot rid of him.\n\nThe collected works of this lady have been printed at the expense of the\nqueen. It is only seventeen or eighteen years since she began to write,\nand, if we can trust the accuracy of foreign biographers, she is now in her\nseventieth year. Two volumes of selections from her works entitled The\nCastle and Cottage in Spain, have appeared in an English dress.\n\n\n    Rustic Tales: Don Antonio De Trueba.\n\nThe writer next to be noticed, by birth a Biscayan peasant, is now or was\nlately a sub-editor of a newspaper. Don Antonio de Trueba y la Quintana was\nborn 24th December, 1821. In the preface to one of his works he presents\nthis picture of his birthplace and his early life.\n\n  \"On the slope of one of the mountains of Biscay stand four white houses\n  nearly hidden in a wood of walnut and chestnut trees, and which cannot be\n  seen at any distance till winter has deprived the trees of their foliage.\n  There I passed the first fifteen years of my life.\n\n  \"In the valley is a church whose spire pierces the surrounding canopy of\n  foliage, and is seen above the chestnut and ash trees. In this church\n  they celebrate two masses, one at the rising of the sun, the other two\n  hours afterward.\n\n  \"We, the young boys of the hamlet rose every Sunday with the song of the\n  birds, and went down to the early mass, singing and jumping over the\n  bushes. The elders of the families attended the later devotions. While\n  the fathers and grandfathers were so occupied, I took my seat under a\n  cherry tree opposite the door, and had a full view of the entire vale\n  till it approached the shore. I was soon joined by four or five young\n  girls with cheeks as blooming as the cherries which hung over our beads,\n  or the red ribbons which bound the long braids of their hair. They would\n  request me to make some verses for them to sing in the evening to the\n  accompaniment of the basque tambourine, when the young would be dancing,\n  and the aged looking on in sympathy with their enjoyment.\"\n\nDon Antonio was already a poet, though his material sources of information\nand inspiration were very easily counted. His library consisted of the\nFueros (Customs) of Biscay, Samanego's Fables, Don Quixote, a book of\nballads, and two or three volumes of the Lives of the Saints. At fifteen\nyears of age (1836), the Carlist cause gathering the youth of Biscay to its\nside, Antonio's parents not being enthusiastic partisans of that party,\nsent their son to a distant relative in Madrid, who could do nothing better\nfor the future poet and novelist than employ him in his hardware shop to\ntake down door-hinges, pokers, and frying-pans for his customers.\n\nFor ten tedious years did our poet in embryo do the duty of a shopman by\nday, treat himself the to a book when be could, and spend in study great\npart of the time that should be given to sleep. Bad business or failure\nobliged him at the end of the time mentioned to look out for other\noccupation, and since that time he has been connected with journalism, the\nevenings still being devoted to poetry and romance.\n\nThe ordinary vehicle in which the nameless poets of Spain utter their\nthoughts to the people is the quatrain, in which the second and fourth\nlines rhyme after a fashion, the accented vowels corresponding without\nexception, the consonants when it pleases Apollo. This is what they call\nthe _Romance_, and in which Trueba has endeavored to improve the taste\nof the people by a genuine poetic feeling, and perfection in the structure\nof the verse.\n\n{32}\n\nBut our Biscayan thought a poet's life incomplete without the sympathy\nwhich only a loving and intelligent wife can afford. So he incurred the\nexpense of a household, as well as gave support to his aged parents. Along\nwith laboring at the public press and writing and publishing Los Cantares,\nhe found time to compose his Rose-colored Tales, all concerned with the\nordinary life of the country in which his boyhood was passed, and all seen\nthrough that softly colored magic medium through which mature age loves to\nlook back to the period of careless hopeful youth. These stories are called\nThe Resurrection of the Soul, The Stepmother, From our Country to Heaven.\nThe Judas of the House, and Juan Palamo. All end happily, all are imbued\nwith the purest morality, and breathe an atmosphere in which live the best\nfeelings of our nature.\n\nWhile writing the dedication of them to his wife, he was enlivened by the\nanticipation of a visit they would shortly make to his natal village.\n\n  \"While I write this, the most cherished wish of my life is about to be\n  gratified. Before the July sun withers up the flowers, the breezes and\n  the flowers of my native hills shall cool our foreheads, and perfume our\n  hair. The venerable man who honors himself and thee in calling thee his\n  daughter, is now going from house to house in the village, and telling\n  the companions of my boyhood, while tears of joy find their way down his\n  check, 'My children are coming; my son is about revisiting his native\n  valleys as lovingly as he bade them adieu twenty years ago.'\n\n  \"And our father and our brothers are thinking on us every moment, and\n  doing all in their humble means to beautify and cheer the apartments\n  destined for us. Every time they come to the windows, they expect to see\n  my form on the hillock where they caught the last site of me seventeen\n  years ago.\"\n\nAlas! what disappointments wait on such pleasant anticipations! Paying a\ntardy visit to the scenes so lovingly and pleasurably remembered, the\ncareworn elderly man finds dear old houses levelled; new, raw ones reared\non their site; old paths and ways deserted, and new roads laid down; new\nand uninteresting topics filling up conversation, the once fresh and fair\nromantic boys and girls now common-place husbands and wives, except such as\nhave been removed by death or change of residence. His former comrades,\nyouths and maids once buoyant with bright hopes, are now gray-haired and\nwrinkled, or distressed, or departed, and of the revered and loved old\npeople of long ago not one has been left to bid him welcome. There are now\nno ties to detain him in his long regretted native place; he hastens back\nto his ordinary colorless occupation and cares, rendered agreeable or\ntolerable by habit, and wishes he had not gone on that sorrowful journey.\n\nIn the greater part of these tales figures the Indian, that is, one who has\nspent some time in Mexico or the West Indies, and returns to cheer or\ndisturb the former companions of his early life. The narratives are made up\nof simple village annals, loves and jealousies, injustices and their\npunishments, generous deeds and their recompenses, constancy sharply tried\nand victorious, unions at the threshing floors, Sunday morning devotions,\nSunday evening recreations, troubles of good housewives with their\nplay-loving little boys, and all the worries and comforts and joys and\ngriefs that attend on the lives of those whose lot is to cultivate the\nearth, the cur\u00e9 always filling the office of the good fairy in household\ntales.\n\n\n    Satire: Don Jose Gonzalez De Tejada.\n\nDon Jos\u00e9 Gonzalez de Tejada may be taken as the representative man of the\nliving Spanish satirists. Few looking on the steady, easy-going, fat, and\nflorid young man with good-nature playing about the corners of his mouth,\nwould suspect the keen spirit of satire which inspires his verses.\n{33}\nMaking use of the romance form before explained, he celebrated in the\npublic papers the late triumphs of his country over the Moors, and these\nverses were in every one's mouth. In his satires he never condescends to\npersonalities. He lashes selfishness, rage for wealth, worldliness, lack of\npatriotism, etc. He calls his collection \"Anacreontic Poems of the latest\nFashion,\" but they have nothing of the genuine Anacreontics but the form.\nThe classic student, or even the reader of Moore's translation, recollects\nthe bibulous old poet's direction to the painter about his mistress's\nportrait. Here is the Spanish equivalent:\n\n  \"Figure to me, O photographer of my soul!\n  the beauty who holds me in thrall.\n\n  \"As to countenance, let her be dark or fair,\n  to me it's all the same.\n\n  \"But let sparkling diamonds give lustre to her tresses,\n  and two golden lamps hang from her ears.\n\n  \"Let her neck be dark, or possess the whiteness of alabaster,\n  but for decency's sake cover it with pearls or sapphires.\n\n  \"Let her graceful form be shrouded with rich valuable stuffs.\n  A rich binding always enhances the value of books.\n\n  \"While she rolls along in her _cal\u00e8che_ my\n  attention is occupied with her rich liveries\n  and the cost of the equipage.\n\n  \"Happy he who, prancing along by the carriage,\n  or seated by her side, cigar in mouth,\n  can exclaim, 'All that surrounds me is mine!'\n\n  \"Paint her for me in ball costume, at the mass,\n  or the _retiro_, ever richly dressed,\n  ever surrounded by opulent charms.\n\n  \"But alas! her greatest charms you cannot\n  see to portray--her father's crowns!\n  On these is my heart fixed.\"\n\nDon Jos\u00e9 is somewhat old fashioned in his notions. He does not attribute\nall the qualities of and overruling Providence to the mere progress of\nscience and the additions to our corporal conveniences. Here is his vision\nof the origin of printing:\n\n  \"Turning the earth into a sponge with his tears,\n  man presented himself all dreeping at the throne of Jupiter.\n\n  \"And cried, 'Good evening, O powerful god,\n  maker of stars, of worlds, and of domestic fowl!\n\n  \"Thou createdst us one day from nothing\n  mixed with a little mud; thou hast bestowed\n  on us genius enveloped in a soft covering of flesh.\n\n  \"'The world is a cage, and each of us a\n  parrot climbing and balancing himself over\n  his neighbor's head.\n\n. . . . .\n\n  \"'Thou hast bestowed us ears which to\n  the deaf are a mere ornament, and a tongue,\n  best gift of all.\n\n  \"'Placed between the teeth she gives\n  them to understand that unless she lies, they\n  can have nothing to chew.\n\n  \"'But alas! in our time she is incapable to\n  express all that the fruitful brain conceives\n  and brings forth.\n\n  \"'Lengthen it then the third of a perch, or\n  give it for aid an additional organ.\n\n  \"'Juppy made a grimace, and the affrighted\n  hills sunk, and the poles trembled.\n\n  \"'Well,' said the deity, always prodigal of gifts,\n  'I shall convert into tongues sundry vile things of this lower world.\n\n  \"'Of old shirts, of disgusting rags, I shall\n  make gay clothes for the press,\n  flesh and blood for the daily paper.\n\n  \"'In the feathered garb of the goose are\n  cannons sufficient to win treasures.\n\n  \"'Let your arms cease to brandish the war-like steel,\n  and turn inert and fat bodies of men into sieves.\n\n  \"'Iron fashioned into slender tongues\n  which sing along the paper, shall there engrave\n  the conceptions of genius.\n\n  \"'And in order that you may attain the steepest summits,\n  I shall furnish your heads with pride and envy in abundance.\n\n  \"'Advance, throw shame behind, flatter the proud,\n  copy, deride, calumniate, and be\n  sure to burn incense in your own honor.\n\n  \"'I have spoken.' And he added, rubbing his chin,\n  'Henceforth you are a man; hitherto you were but an ape.'\"\n\n\n    History: Don Antonio Cavanilles.\n\nDon Antonio Cavanilles, an advocate and member or the Academy, has\ndistinguished himself by his yet unfinished history of Spain, an\ninteresting narrative, evincing the most patient research, and attractive\nfrom the adjuncts of customs and phases of the different eras, and personal\ntraits of the historical personages. Don Modesto Lafuente is engaged on\nanother history of the same country. Don Antonio belongs to the school of\nLivy and Herodotus, Don Modesto writes in the spirit and with the pen of a\nManchester radical.\n\n{34}\n\n    The Drama: Don Adelardo Lopez De Ayala.\n\nZealous as the first historian for the preservation of the heroic and\nunselfish character of the genuine Hidalgo, Don Adelardo Lopez de Ayala\nwrites his drama of \"So Much per Cent,\" in which he excites unmeasured\ncontempt for the greed of gold, and the rage of speculation, whose visit to\nthe old soil of chivalry the author deprecates with all his might.\n\nDon Gaspar Bono Serrano, a brave and devout military chaplain, once\nattending the wounded in Don Carlos's camp, and an Arragonese by birth, has\ngiven the lie to the public impression that no poet is born outside of\nCastile and Andalul\u00e7ia.\n\nWhile it must be owned with regret that pestilent French novels have found\ntheir way in abundance across the Pyrenees, the native literature of Spain,\nwith scarce an exception, maintains its ancient _prestige_ for\nChristian morality. Long may the word continue to be said!\n\nWant of space prevents any notice of the _feuilleton_ and the drama of\nSpain at the present day, and other literary topics interesting the Spanish\ncapital. An instance of the interest taken in sound fictional literature in\nhigh quarters is furnished by the publication of the complete collected\nnovels of Fernan Caballero, and of Antonio Trueba at the expense of the\nQueen. Meanwhile Fernan, or rather Do\u00f1a Caecilia, (_n\u00e9e_) de Faber,\ndwells in the Royal Alcazar of Seville in apartments granted by her queen,\nemploys herself writing an educational work for the junior portion of the\nroyal family, and enjoys an extensive view from her windows over the old\nMoorish buildings, the Guadalquiver, and the charming Andalu\u00e7ian landscape\nthrough which it winds.\n\n------\n\n    Original.\n\n    The Godfrey Family; or, Questions Of The Day\n\n  Chapter XXVIII.\n\nWith a woman's tact, Adelaide set to work to provide some powerful\nattraction for her father; and luckily the proposed formation of a\nscientific society brought many men of his own way of thinking to town just\nthen: and among them Mr. Spence, and a lord or two of \"promotion of\nknowledge\" celebrity. Having managed thoroughly to interest her father in\nthis society, Adelaide told him that sea-air would benefit Hester's health,\nthat she intended to go with her for a few weeks to try it, that meantime\nMr. Spence would keep him company in the house, which Lucy Fairfield would\ntake charge of. To this Mr. Godfrey, though somewhat taken by surprise,\nassented: he had already, at Adelaide's request, invited Mr. Spence to\nspend a few weeks with him; but that gentleman was not exactly well pleased\nto find on his arrival that the ladies were already preparing for\ndeparture. He had intended to win a bride during his visit, thinking that\neven if Hester proved obdurate, he might have a chance with the fair young\nwidow. But the carriage was already at the door. \"I shall send the carriage\nback, father, in a day or two;\" said Adelaide. \"I do not care to have my\nhorses at a livery stable; Hester and I are going to rusticate, ride\ndonkeys, climb hills, and throw pebbles into the sea: we take only Norah\nwith us, and you will have to see that the carriage horses are duly\nexercised every day.\" She waved her hand in adieu, giving no time for\nreply. The gentlemen could only bow their assent. Mr. Godfrey was too well\nacquainted with Adelaide's imperious temperament to think of disputing her\ncommands; he had long learned to respect even her eccentricities. Was she\nnot a duchess?\n\n{35}\n\nThe journey went on well enough the first day, but on the second, Adelaide\nsurprised her retinue by sending them back with the carriage, telling them\nshe would proceed onward with a hired vehicle. The coachman and footman\nlooked as if they would like to remonstrate, but it had been proved to be\nsomewhat dangerous to argue with this very positive lady, accustomed to\nobey no will except her own. They submitted in silence, therefore, though\nmuch against their inclination. \"Now,\" said Adelaide, when they had\ndeparted, \"we can enjoy the luxury of being ourselves, unencumbered by\nstate and trappings. Hester, do you think you can teach Norah to call me\nplain 'ma'am,' for a little while, till we return home? I am again Adelaide\nGodfrey, that name will tell nothing and will enable us to act as we like,\nobserved by any.\"\n\nIt was not found difficult to initiate Norah into the idea that the great\nduchess wanted to lay aside her dignity for a while, for the truth was\nNorah's difficulty had ever been to get herself to say \"your grace,\" on\nrequisite occasions. These preliminaries settled, the ladies proceeded on\ntheir journey, took ready furnished lodgings in H----, and prepared to lead\nthe quiet life of the middle classes of society when out on a \"bathing for\nhealth\" excursion.\n\nThe location of the Catholic chapel was soon examined, the priest's house\ncommunicating with it. In neat straw bonnets trimmed with white, and plain\nmuslin dresses, Adelaide and Hester assisted at the daily mass. In the\npriest they recognized at once the Abb\u00e9 Martigni, and in the noble-featured\nyouth who knelt by his side Adelaide traced the likeness, now first\nbecoming dear to her, of her late husband. A day or two elapsed ere she\ncould summon courage to call at the house. At length the moment arrived for\nthe looked-for visit; the sisters had, however, scarcely gained entrance to\nthe outer court, when their attention was attracted by loud sobs from a\nlittle boy and girl, who stood weeping as if their hearts would break. The\nabb\u00e9 was speaking to the woman with whom they came; he then turned to the\nchildren, and patting them on the heads, said tenderly: \"I will come\ndirectly, my poor children.\" He turned hastily away without receiving his\nvisitors. Adelaide took the boy's hand kindly. \"What is the matter?\" she\nasked. The boy could not speak for weeping, but the woman answered: \"His\nmother, my lady, poor Biddy, shure, she has fallen from her seat, on to the\nstone pavement, while she was cleaning the windows of a large house in\nQueen street, and they say she must die.\"\n\nAdelaide whispered, \"take me to your mother;\" the boy looked at the woman;\n\"aye,\" said she, \"do you and Sissy go home with the ladies, I will wait to\nshow his reverence the way.\" Led by Adelaide and Hester, the girl and boy\nthreaded back the way to their wretched home, and entered it some time\nbefore the priest arrived. In one of those dreary places of large cities\ncalled a \"blind alley\"--where the houses nearly meet in the upper stories,\nand where the sunshine of heaven is excluded; surrounded by bad smells, and\nthe very atmosphere of which makes us shrink and shudder as we enter the\ndamp and dirty houses, the inhabitants of which are for the most part very\ndirty also--here in a cellar, darker even than its neighbors, lay a poor\nwidow with four children weeping around her. The woman was barely sensible;\nher brain and spine were injured; the doctor had said she could not live\ntill night; two women, neighbors, were with her trying \"to get sense out of\nher,\" as they said. It was the first time the sisters had ever witnessed\nsuch a scene. The very walls were covered with dirt; the floor was partly\nbrick, and where these were broken away, the foot slipped into holes of the\nbare earth; the windows were so covered with dust and cobwebs it was\ndifficult to find out what they were made of.\n{36}\nOn a low pallet, on a dirty straw-bed, with no blankets, no sheets, naught\nsave one dirty coverlet, lay a figure with long, dark, lank hair, almost\ncovering her face and person. Adelaide approached, but the woman heeded her\nnot; her large dark eyes were set: she moaned from time to time, but spoke\nnot. \"Where do you feel pain?\" kindly inquired the lady. \"Oh I bless you,\nmy lady, she cannot spake,\" said one of the women. \"The Lord be praised,\nhere comes his reverence,\" said the other. \"May the sweet Jesus lend her\nher senses a few minutes, to let her spake to the priest!\" The abb\u00e9\nentered; he looked very grave; he sat down on the bed (there was no other\nseat in the room) to examine the pulse and breathing of the patient. He\nspoke to her. She answered not. \"Try to rouse her,\" he said to the women.\nThey called to her: \"Biddy, dear, shure here's his reverence. Biddy, won't\nyou spake to the priest?\" She continued unconscious. \"Have you a\nsmelling-bottle?\" he said to Adelaide. \"We must bring her to consciousness,\nI wish I had some _eau-de Cologne_.\" \"I will fetch you some,\" laid\nAdelaide.\n\nThe sisters went out and purchased the _eau-de-Cologne_, also bread\nand refreshments for the children; and then in that damp, unwholesome den,\nthe duchess watched long hours by the side of the unfortunate woman. She\nwas unattended too, for Hester had grown faint, and Adelaide had insisted\non her going home, and the abb\u00e9 had left for a while. At length\nconsciousness returned, and the poor mother opened her eyes again. The\npriest was immediately sent for, as he had desired to be, and the first\nwords she whispered betrayed a consciousness of his presence, for they\nwere: \"Bring me my God! O my sweet Jesus, come!\" The room was cleared for a\nfew moments. Biddy had been a faithful member of the church--she was a\nmonthly communicant, and the last sacraments brought unspeakable\nconsolation to her. She had remained silent and in prayer for some time. A\nchange came over her, and she motioned the father to come near to her. \"I\nam dying, father, and but for one thought it were sweet to die. My\nchildren--oh! my children! I have struggled--father, you know I have\nstruggled to keep them in the true faith, to make them love Jesus and Mary;\nand _now_, must they go to the scoffers? must they hear their faith\nlaughed at? O my God! O my Jesus! have pity on my children! Mary, my\nmother, send a mother to my children. Let me come to thee in love and not\nin fear. O mother of God, pity my children!\" Agony caused the drops to\nstand on the poor woman's brow; tears streamed down her cheeks; her hands\nwere clasped convulsively together; it was as though the soul were anxious\nto depart, but delayed in order to plead with heaven in favor of the dear\nlittle ones it left behind. There was a solemn pause within that dreary\nchamber. The dim candle seemed to take a bright unearthly light. The\nspirits of all were hushed in awe. Surely angels were hovering near,\nwhispering to the mother that her prayer was heard, for a smile broke over\nthe features, the hands unclenched themselves, peace overshadowed the room;\nand then, as if moved by a power she could not withstand, Adelaide came\nforward and knelt down in solemnity by the dying woman's side. Taking\nwithin her own that now almost lifeless hand, she said: \"I promise you, my\nsister, before God and this holy priest, that I will take care of your\nchildren while I live, and that they shall be carefully brought up in the\nholy Catholic Faith.\" The woman's eyes were no longer sensible to sight,\nbut her spirit beard the promise. \"I thank thee, O my God!\" she uttered.\nShortly after a ray of indescribable rapture lighted up her features,\n\"Jesus, Mary, I come!\" she said; and the soul had flown to its home in the\nbright, bright realms of everlasting bliss.\n\n\u00b7 \u00b7 \u00b7 \u00b7 \u00b7\n\n{37}\n\n\"This must be a pauper's funeral,\" said Adelaide, as she rose from her\nknees. \"Father, I am a stranger here; will you appoint some one to see to\nit?\" She placed her purse in his hand as she spoke. The father looked at\nher. \"Surely I have seen you before,\" he said; \"your face is familiar to\nme, but I cannot remember where we met.\" Adelaide blushed. \"I will see you\nafter the funeral,\" she said; \"meanwhile, may I ask you to point out some\nwoman to go home with me, and take charge of these children? I will pay her\nwell for her trouble.\" The abb\u00e9 sent for a woman; a coach was called, and\nAdelaide took the poor children to her lodgings. Here they were fed,\nwashed, clothed in neat mourning, and made ready to do the last sad honors\nto their mother's remains.\n\nA large concourse of Irish neighbors attended the funeral, though of course\nall eyes were attracted to the stranger ladies, who walked up the aisle\nwith a child at each side of them. The priest was evidently moved as he\nturned to address the assembly; and ever and anon his eye would glance to\nAdelaide, as if trying in vain to make out who she was. His discourse was\non the history of poor Bridget, who lay before them. It ran something after\nthis fashion: \"My friends, as we pass through life, and the actions and\nthoughts of _real_ human beings come under our notice, one reflection\nseems to strike us more forcibly than all the rest; it is this: that the\n_real_ heroism of the earth is often overlooked, not only by the world\nat large, but also by the actors themselves. The greatest acts of virtue\nare performed by those who are unconscious of their greatness--the\ngreatest works done in this miserable world are done by those who never\ndream that they are heroines at all. A lady is thought wondrously\ncondescending if, from charity, she sit for a few hours in an atmosphere\nwhich the poor one she is tending endures always. She is deemed charitable\nif, from her abundance, she bestows alms on the naked and starting. Now,\nall this is _well_, very well; I would encourage such efforts to the\nutmost; they bring a blessing both to the giver and receiver: but for\nheroism, it is oftenest with the sufferer. I will relate to you a history\nwith which I have only been made acquainted within these few hours. I had\nit from the lips of a friend who arrived from Ireland two days ago, in\nsearch of her who now lies before us. Bridget Norton was the daughter of an\nIrish farmer, who was somewhat better off than the majority; the farm-house\nwas well kept; the dairy was a picture of neatness. Everything around the\nplace was so fixed that they added to the completeness of the landscape.\nBridget was a fine handsome girl, sought after by many, and unfortunately\namong her suitors was one base enough to vow revenge for the preference she\ngave to the man she married. Bad times came; the rejected suitor became\nagent for the landlord, and he perpetually harassed Norton for cash on\nevery possible pretense; while he made base proposals to the wife, which\nwere rejected with the scorn they deserved, and the rage of the deceiver\nincreased. The landlord was unluckily a proselytizer. He conferred great\ngifts to all who would go to the English church, but was relentless against\nall who held out. Young Norton took sick; when he was at the worst, the\nagent found a flaw in his lease, and served an ejectment on the family at\nthe very time that the husband was unable to leave his bed. Then his cattle\ndied, some said by poison, and his crops failed. The man sank under these\nreverses, and died. The landlord made many offers to Bridget of assistance\nif she would send her children to his school and to church, and the agent\ncontrived many species of persecution to get her into his power. Bridget\nfled to Liverpool, and by sheer hard work contrived to maintain her family\ndecently for some time; but her persecutor traced her, followed her,\nblackened her character, so that she lost her employment.\n{38}\nAgain she fled, but sickness overtook her ere she had made herself known;\nshe lost one of her children by sickness also, and, lastly, was compelled\nto sell her little furniture to buy bread; last week she moved to the\ncellar where she died. You know in what state she was found there. Yet\nthroughout these trials her confidence in God never has faltered; she has\nfor the last five years suffered hardship, penury, want, and persecution.\nAmid all she has kept faithful to God, forgiven her enemy, and taught her\nchildren the catechism. They have often wanted food, but never missed their\nprayers; they have often been clothed in rags, but never neglected a mass\nof obligation. This, for one brought up as Bridget had been to love\nneatness and take pride in appearing respectable, argues no small victory\nover human respect. But the love of God was deeply rooted in her heart; she\nknew that exercise elicits virtue; she felt herself at school to an\nall-wise Father, who appointed for her the lessons best suited to bring out\nthat unfailing trust which was conspicuous in her character, and which, in\nspite of her many trials, bore her cheerily throughout them all. Yes,\ncheerfulness was (as is attested by all who knew her) Bridget's most\namiable characteristic, and it proceeded from her implicit trust in God.\nShe had a martyr's courage and a martyr's love, and I think it would be\nrisking little to suppose that even now she may be wearing in heaven the\nmartyr's crown. Yet she passed through the world unnoticed, and certainly\nwas not counted among its heroines.\"\n\n\n  CHAPTER XXIX.\n\nImmediately after the funeral Adelaide called on the abb\u00e9, according to her\npromise. She was accompanied by Hester.\n\n\"Well,\" said the good father as soon as the preliminary compliments had\npassed, \"as you have taken possession of four of my spiritual children, to\nwhom I am in some sort a guardian, you must allow me to ask your name and\nstate. You are a stranger in this city, it appears.'\n\n\"I am. My name is Adelaide: I am a widow.\"\n\n\"And the name of your husband?\"\n\n\"My husband was the late Duke of Durimond.\"\n\nThe father started: he looked again. \"That accounts for my fancy,\" he said.\n\"I was sure I had seen you before. I recognize you perfectly now:' but what\ncan bring your grace hither, and in this guise?\"\n\n\"Father,\" said Adelaide, \"I came to apologize to you for my conduct on that\ndreary occasion that you know of; to beg your pardon and your prayers.\"\n\nThe good priest raised the lady, for Adelaide had knelt to him as she\nuttered the last words. \"You have my prayers, my child,\" he said; \"you have\nlong had them: it was his last request that I should daily pray for you.\nAnd as for pardon, such an act of humility would redeem a worse offence. Be\nat peace, I beg of you.\"\n\n\"And did the duke really interest himself on my account?\"\n\n\"He did, and most sincerely; it was a constant topic with him. He ever\nmaintained that, with your nobility of character, you must eventually\nfollow in your brother's footsteps. I presume I may conclude you have now\ndone so.\"\n\n\"Not so, father. Hester (whom you probably also recognize) and myself are\nbut inquirers as yet, and the difficulty is that our inquiry must not be\nsuspected just now. We came to request assistance from your charity; but we\nbeg you not to name us otherwise than as ladies of your acquaintance. The\nMisses Godfrey will pass unheeded by, but if you address me as your grace\nagain, you will bring upon us the attention we are trying to avoid.\"\n\n\"I will try to remember Miss Godfrey; it will be a little difficult, I\nfear, but I need not tell you my services are at your disposal.\"\n\n{39}\n\n\"This is indeed returning good for evil,\" said Adelaide.\n\n\"Do not speak of it; good has already come of that to which you allude, as\nis usually the case if we wait long enough. Let the past be past. But\nsurely I have seen you both at mass; you have, then, lost your prejudice\nagainst the church.\"\n\n\"Indeed, yes,\" said Adelaide. \"Our great regret is that we have not faith.\nThe system which you propose is beautiful in all its bearings. It is our\ntorment to feel that all that is beautiful in poetry or in art, nay, even\nin ethics, belongs to Catholicity, yet we do not belong to it. A hall of\nsculpture representing the Catholic ideal, as the figures of the duke's\npantheon represent the pagan myth, would form the most sublime elucidation\nof the high triumphs of soul over self that could be imagined. There is no\nact of heroism, mental, moral, or physical, that would not find a\nrepresentative in some authenticated historic personage. From martyrdom\nendured to maintain the truth of alleged facts, to voluntary poverty chosen\nas the best preservative of the disposition to receive and maintain truth,\nthere is a regular chain of virtue personified. There is a reality about\nCatholicity (in books at least) which we find nowhere else.\"\n\n\"Where is your difficulty, seeing that you admit all this?\"\n\n\"I can hardly explain it, yet it seems to shape itself thus: Why, if men\nare so blessed with a divine religion, is the world so bad? History gives\nus saints, sublime ones, who make our very souls thrill with the recital of\ntheir unselfish spirt, exemplified in act; but, on the other hand, the same\nhistory tells us of multitudes of bad men for one good one. The men who\nattempted to poison St. Benedict, were monks, men who had renounced all for\nChrist; and the multitudes were Catholic up to the fifteenth century, yet\nwhat fearful struggles for power, and indulgence of luxury in high places,\nand of crime among all, high and low! Most of the saints were reformers,\ncombating with their fellow-Catholics for virtue; and now, are all\nCatholics unselfish, unworldly?\"\n\n\"It seems,\" said Hester, \"that a very definite amount of good has been\nachieved by Christianity, in giving an impetus to the spirit of the masses\nto claim intellectual rights by the recognition of man's spiritual equality\nbefore God; and to strip off illegitimate uses of power from the sense of\njustice thus evolved. It has also placed our sex on a footing permitted by\nno other religion--this is much, very much; but here it seems to stop, and\nthese are but indirect results. Religion professes to inculcate higher\nmotives than the improvement of earthly position, desirable as this may be.\nMen are now selfish in their avowed principle, and this, I think, must\nultimately destroy all that has been achieved. Self-gratification as a\nmotive, and the only motive recognized, must lead back to want of\ndiscipline, and from that the step to barbarism is easy. Only under the\nChristian dispensation has labor been honored; in all other civilizations,\nslaves, captives of the sword and spear, have performed by compulsion the\nwork of tilling the soil and so forth; and yet men now seek to avoid labor,\nthe real labor of producing, as if they still thought it fit for slaves\nonly; any other kind of occupation is preferred, as more noble. If this is\nthe result of eighteen hundred years of Christian teaching, I own it\npuzzles me. Where are the direct results of unselfishness and of corporal\nsacrifice for the attainment of spiritual good, that books teach us to\nexpect?\"\n\n\"These are very painful facts,\" said the abb\u00e9, \"which distress the heart of\nmany a Catholic priest; but with reference to their influence on faith, I\nthink a little reflection will explain most of the phenomena without\nprejudice to such souls as are earnestly seeking truth. We must remember\nthat there was a time when whole nations suddenly assumed the name of\nChristians under the influence of the ruling powers.\n{40}\nThe majority of these people were not only ignorant, but many did not care\nto learn high spiritual truths; the conversion was necessarily partial,\neven that which was genuine. But because all divine truth is positive and\nco-relative to natural truth, some degree of enlightenment followed even in\nthe natural order; and worldly minds, who had no affinity for spiritual\nrevelations laid hold, notwithstanding this, of the types that presented\nspiritual truths, and, finding they bore an earthly signification also (as\nall real enlightenment does, the body being the mate for the soul), they\nseized on the lower meaning, and hence the civilization of that ilk. This\nis not wrong, but it is defective; as far as it is moral, it is the\nmaterial expression of a spiritual idea; but it does not touch the first\nstep of the ladder by which we rise to God--it is the lesser influence of a\nprinciple comprehending affinities of an infinitely higher character.\"\n\n\"But this does not explain the corruption in high places.\"\n\n\"Power and greatness and wealth do not confer spirituality; no, nor does\nintellect. When the church grew wealthy and powerful, many a wolf entered\nin sheep's clothing for the sake of the perquisites. The miracle is that\nthe church survived such destructive influences, not that she suffered by\nthem.\"\n\n\"And the more immediate trouble with the present conduct of Catholics?\"\n\n\"May be referred to similar causes. They inherit their religion without\ngiving its real conditions a thought; to this may be added the fact that,\nfor the last three hundred years, the attention of immense numbers has been\ndirected to polemics instead of to the requirements of religion. There have\nbeen so many disputes about which is the true faith, that practically faith\nhas been assumed to mean 'holding a correct intellectual creed.' Now,\nwithout derogating, in the least degree, from the importance of holding the\nright faith, even in this light, it is certain that these controversies\nhave drawn the soul from that more serious business to which a right\nintellectual creed is but the first step, though an important, a very\nimportant one. The object of religion is, the union of the soul to the will\nof God. This is an individual matter, one which cannot be laid hold of\n_en masse_, but must be personally brought home to every individual.\nTo effect this, there must be;\n  1. Desire of good--real, earnest, sincere.\n  2. Prayer for good, arising from the firm conviction that in God\n     only resides all good--from him only all good can come.\n  3. Co-operation in act, including not only correct moral action,\n     but a constant endeavor to instruct ourselves, more and more, in\n     divine lore, with an earnest zeal of rising continually in spiritual\n     life.\nNow, if you examine these conditions, you will find that few observe them,\ncompared with the numbers who bear the name of Catholics--and the power of\nCatholicity must he judged of by its effect on those who observe its\nprecepts, not by the multitudes who conform by halves, or by less than that\nproportion, to its teachings. You would not judge of the effect of a\nmedicine by those who keep it in their houses, but by those who take it.\"\n\n\"Are not those Catholics, then, who do not act up to their religion?\"\n\n\"In as far as they neglect their religion they are imperfect Catholics. It\nwould, however, be very dangerous for us to judge how far their\nimperfections arise from culpability on their part. All men are wounded by\nthe fall in some shape or other; some have this faculty impaired, some\nthat; consequently there will be gradations of virtue apparent everywhere,\nthe cause of which we cannot fathom, and the delinquencies of which we\ncannot judge. As regards judgment, all we have to do with is with\nourselves; our faculties, great or little, with imperfections greater or\nless, must, as far as in us lies be devoted to God--be improved for him--be\nexercised in accordance with his will as manifested to us. 'This do and ye\nshall live.'\"\n\n{41}\n\n    Chapter XXX.\n\n    An Interview And A Letter.\n\nIt were superfluous to reiterate the instructions given by the good abb\u00e9 to\nthe neophytes under his guidance; where the instructor is learned, patient,\nand gentle, and the learner docile and humble, the result may be easily\npredicted. One day, in the course of conversation, the abb\u00e9 said to\nAdelaide: \"If you are looking for examples in Christian life, I could name\none living in this neighborhood, living so simple and beautiful a life,\nthat those who have the happiness of knowing her, half believe her to be an\nangel in disguise.\"\n\n\"I think I know whom you mean,\" said Adelaide; \"already have I paused at\nthe threshold of her dwelling, wishing to enter, but hardly knowing whether\nI dared.\"\n\n\"She will be glad to see you. She has a better memory than I; she\nrecognized you at church, and has interested herself warmly in your\nconversion.\"\n\nThus encouraged Adelaide ventured on the visit. The greeting between the\ntwo ladies was that of _sisters_; they wept together, clasping each\nother's hand in silence. We pass over the exciting scene. Adelaide was\ncompletely fascinated by all she saw. For the first time in her life she\nfelt that glow of thrilling interest that binds heart to heart, and makes\nus know what real love is, when that love is founded in God. Ellen was one\nof those happy temperaments, so rare on earth, that seem formed to dispense\nthe sunshine of happiness on all who came under their influence. Heaven\nseemed to have descended to earth to dwell with her, and in that heaven she\nhad learned to live--out of herself altogether. Her life was passed in\ndoing good, but, so unconsciously to herself was that good done, that she\nseemed but to be following her own pleasure all the time. The one great\nsorrow of her life surmounted, she had resigned herself (no! resignation\nwould not express the depth of her devotedness); rather had she thrown her\nwhole being into the profound abyss of the mystery of God, seeking only his\nwill, mysterious as it was to her. She came at last to live as a child on\nthe daily promise, forming no plans, asking nothing of the morrow, but ever\nseeking to pour out her great love in making others happy. The poor, the\nsick, the wretched, were her friends, her children, the objects of her\ntenderness, and her presence was to them as a ray of sunshine to lighten\nevery woe. There are few Ellens on this weary earth, for nature and grace\nseemed to combine in her to diffuse their charms. Those who knew her asked\nthemselves, where was her share of the original taint, \"of that trail of\nthe serpent which is over us all\"? Though Adelaide's senior by many years,\nshe had so youthful, so buoyant an expression, albeit chastened by the\natmosphere of purity and sanctity in which she moved, that you could not\nconnect the idea of _age_ with her frame at all. Adelaide felt that\nshe had obtained a friend, a sister, a guide for the future, and a\nfriendship was quickly cemented between the two that ended but with life.\n\nMeantime the hour approached when the sisters were to be received into the\nchurch. Hester was not a little agitated as she thought of the effect that\nwould be produced upon her father: it was as much as Adelaide and Ellen\ncould do with their united efforts to calm her fears. Adelaide's firm mind\nbade her take her resolution according to her conviction, and face the\nconsequences like a soldier.\n\n\"Yes, if they were consequences to myself,\" sighed Hester; \"but my future,\nwill it not suffer from it? Suppose he should sicken as my mother did!\"\n\n\"Dear Hester,\" said Ellen, \"you must leave off trusting yourself, in this\nmanner, and apprehending consequences, as if you had the control of events.\nDo you not believe God reigns omnipotent?\"\n\n\"Why, yes, certainly I do.\"\n\n\"Then let your first offering to him be a practical recognition of that\nbelief; trust him for your father as well as for yourself.\"\n\n{42}\n\nHester had had deeds prepared, restoring, as best she might, the property\nwhich had been appropriated to her experiments, to its former destination.\nTo her father during life was the income of the estate assigned; to her\nbrother the reversion. For herself she reserved only that portion which she\nhad a right to consider as her share.\n\nThe deeds were handed to Eugene for his inspection the night on which he\narrived at the abb\u00e9's abode, on the day previous to that on which the\nceremony was to take place.\n\n\"This was not necessary,\" he said to the abb\u00e9, \"I had already given up my\nright, and was reconciled to the result.\"\n\n\"That is a question for you to settle with your sister, my young friend,\"\nsaid the abb\u00e9. \"The young lady has acted on her own sense of what was\nfitting in the matter. She did not consult me, and if she had I should have\ndeclined interference in family matters; but I think you will hurt her\nfeelings if you make objections. Wait at least till her mind is more\ncomposed; she is just now agitated on her father's account: best let the\nfirst excitement pass away, ere you disturb her mind again.\"\n\nThe ceremony was a private one, for it was a matter yet to be considered\nhow to break the matter to Mr. Godfrey. After its performance, the brother\nand sisters were yet in consultation about the advisability of setting out\nat once for London, when a courier was announced from the Marquis de\nVilleneuve, with a letter to Hester. The young lady glanced over the\ncontents, then suddenly rose, and locked herself in her own room. Eugene\ninvited the man to wait. But it was some hours ere Hester admitted even her\nsister to her apartment. Thus ran the letter:\n\n  To Miss Hester Godfrey.\n  \"Most Honored Lady:\n\n  I have been many times at H*** lately, but dared not ventured to see you,\n  although from some words which my friend the abb\u00e9 let fall, I rejoiced to\n  learn that the object of your visit was the realization of anticipations\n  I had long indulged in. I have long felt convinced that a mind so earnest\n  as yours must finally seek refuge in the ark of the true church. I dared\n  not disturb your retreat; I dared not intrude on the visible work of God.\n  But let me be the first to offer my congratulations; let me now express\n  the high regard, esteem, nay, may I use a softer word, and say love, with\n  which I have long regarded you.\n\n  \"Lady, I will not speak to you in the language of passion; for a long\n  time past I have had to keep my feelings under control, for deep as has\n  been my admiration of yourself I dared not make you aware of it while the\n  obstacle of faith stood between us. A Catholic man seeks in marriage a\n  HELP-MEET for him, a partner in joy, a soother in sorrow, a confidant and\n  co-operator in his views, a companion and a friend under every reverse.\n  To set out with diverse sustaining powers would mar this idea in the\n  outset, to say nothing of the want of that special blessing which God\n  confers on those he himself joins together.\n\n  \"Dear lady, when I came to Europe some few years ago, it was with the\n  special intention of taking back a wife. When my friend De Meglior in\n  that most solemn hour before his death confided to me the care of his\n  daughter, I thought the companion I sought for was found; but Euphrasie\n  soon showed herself so visibly the elected bride of heaven that all my\n  anxiety was quickly directed to preserving her from sacrilege. You then\n  came before me, with your earnest mind, your indomitable courage, your\n  high intellect and intensity of zeal. From that time my heart was no\n  longer my own, though I dared not give utterance to its desires. The\n  obstacle which stood between us is removed, yet I dare not venture into\n  your presence without your sanction; I should feel a repulse too keenly.\n\n  \"Lady, my father was an enthusiast like yourself. He went to America in\n  the hope of doing his part to sanctify the career of intelligence and of\n  liberty opened for the first time in the world's history for the laboring\n  classes as a body. He helped to build churches, to found schools in\n  conjunction with ecclesiastical authority, and did whatever a secular\n  could do to guide a movement which he respected and sympathized with, but\n  one which he felt would be exposed to great peril, unless that divine\n  principle which is the true source of government both in the family and\n  in the state, could be brought to bear upon it.\n{43}\n  He feared that 'liberty' on a mere rationalistic principle, that is,\n  standing on purely human strength, severed from the divine idea which\n  gave it being, would, however beautiful in its poetry, soon degenerate\n  into license; soon succumb beneath the empire of passion, and be led to\n  tolerate laws subversive of true progress. It was the aim of his life to\n  inculcate that 'Truth is one;' that the human idea cannot be disjoined\n  from the divine idea without fatal results; that real earthly happiness,\n  through differing in intensity, is the same in essence as that we look to\n  enjoy hereafter in heaven. That all earthly intelligence, an earthly\n  beneficence which seeks permanence, must be founded on the repression of\n  such inordinate desire as impede and frustrate the development and\n  employment of our higher faculties. For all beauty, harmony, and love\n  must be brought out in accordance with that law of the spirit, which he\n  has given us, as our rule of action, we being children of the spirit.\n\n  \"The working out of this purpose is the legacy which my dear father,\n  lately deceased, has bequeathed unto his children. To this purpose I have\n  consecrated myself; and because I know your high power of intellect,\n  because I have witnessed your zeal, your energy, your devotedness to\n  good, I ask you to become the help-meet to carry out this purpose.\n\n  \"In all ages of the church, since the first miracle was performed at the\n  request of Mary, woman's aid has been in requisition for high purposes.\n  The conversion of every nation of Europe is associated with the name of a\n  woman, and woman gives the tone to society in every Christian land. I\n  feel then that without the aid thus specially appointed for man, my\n  father's purposes would lose more than half the influence necessary to\n  carry them out. But working together, under the sanction of the church,\n  surely two earnest minds might hope to effect something. If we cannot\n  make an impression on a world of infidelity, it will yet be something if\n  we are allowed to instill into the minds of Catholic children, that\n  'Credo' means something more than an intellectual assent to a series of\n  metaphysical dogmas. If we can assist the self-sacrificing pastors of the\n  church in rehabilitating the idea of the divine institution of the family\n  and of the state which is fast vanishing beneath the crude notions of\n  human progress which sanction so easily the dissolution of sacred\n  ties--if we can throw whatever influence we do possess into the right\n  scale, we shall then have ample reason to begin a rejoicing which shall\n  last for ever. For there is the promise that however gloomy the\n  appearance, error shall not ultimately prevail, and happy are they who\n  here on earth shall have formed the royal guard of honor around the\n  citadel of Truth, who shall have stood as sentinels appointed to watch\n  beneath its glorious standard, when the combat is at highest.\n\n  \"Dear lady, may I hope you will think this an object worthy of your\n  ambition? may I hope you will regard with favor one who has loved you so\n  long, though he dared not confess it until to-day?\n\n  \"One word from you will bring me to your feet. May I hope that word will\n  be spoken?\n\n    Edward De Villeneuve.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Adelaide, when at length she gained admission, and had taken\nthe letter from her sister's unresisting hand, \"I think you have kept the\ncourier waiting long enough, and 'tis not a long answer the poor man wants,\nsince one word is all he asks.\"\n\n\"What will my father say, Adelaide?\"\n\n\"The old marquis was my father's most dearly loved friend. He will accept\nthe son for the father's sake; the question is, will you accept him?\"\n\n\"I have never thought of marrying at all.\"\n\n\"No, but you admire this gentleman. Your eyes, your voice betray you. I\nshall send him the one word he asks for so prettily.\"\n\n\"You will do no such thing;\" but Adelaide had glided from the room, and\nshortly after Eugene set forth with the courier in quest of his friend,\nwhom he finally succeeded in persuading to return with him, without\nawaiting a response to his missive.\n\nIt is not our intention to present to our readers the details of the scenes\nthat followed within the next few weeks; we leave to their more vivid\nimaginations to fancy the arguments by which M. de Villeneuve won the\nconsent of his ideal lady. A few days more, and he was travelling to London\nwith Eugene to obtain the formal consent of Mr. Godfrey.\n\n\"Is that the secret of Hester's dejection?\" thought the father, and that\nthought made his consent the readier.\n\n\"But how can you, so staunch a member of the church, resolve to marry a\nheretic?\"\n\n\"Hester it no heretic,\" replied the marquis.\n\n\"Love covers all faults, I see,\" said Mr. Godfrey, smiling. \"Well, settle\nthat matter between yourselves, only you must put no constraint on Hester\non the score of religion. She is a spoiled child, and would ill brook\nopposition; it would break her heart if it came from one she loved.\"\n\n{44}\n\nThe arrival of the carriage which brought Hester and the duchess back to\nthe mansion, put an end to the colloquy, and at the next consultation with\nthe ladies the marquis suggested that, seeing Mr. Godfrey had already laid\nhold of the wrong idea, it was as well to let time undeceive him in a\nnatural way. \"Your English law,\" said he, \"compels marriage to be legalized\nby the English establishment. We will receive the sacrament of marriage\nprivately in the morning and legalize it in your drawing-room afterward,\nbefore an English minister.[Footnote 7] After Hester is once my wife, Mr.\nGodfrey will not take it to heart that she should follow her husband's\nreligion, even if he inquire about the matter.\" And thus the matter was\nmanaged, and the marquis and his lovely bride were already on the point of\nstarting on their wedding tour, when a startling missive from Annie threw\nall the circle in commotion. Sir Philip Conway had been thrown from his\nhorse while hunting, and had broken his neck. But his wickedness had\noutlived him; he had left orders in his will that his wife should be\ndebarred access to his house, or to his children, further providing that\nneither of those children should inherit one acre of land or one shilling\nof his property unless they were brought up apart from their mother.\nAnnie's letter was dated from a hotel near to her late husband's\ndwelling-house.\n\n    [Footnote 7: This was the case before the passing of the Catholic\n    Emancipation Bill.]\n\n\"I doubt their power to enforce that will,\" said Eugene, as be handed the\nletter to his father, after reading it aloud.\n\n\"And so do I,\" said Adelaide; \"at all events, Annie shall have her\nchildren, property or no property.\"\n\nThe marquis, Hester, all the party present expressed in varied tones their\nindignation, and Mr. Godfrey, borne along by the current of family opinion,\nat length joined in the resolve to see Annie replaced in possession of the\nchildren _coute qui coute_. The wedding trip took the direction of Sir\nPhilip's dwelling, and as soon as it was ascertained that the funeral was\nover, Adelaide, with that determination that marked her character, drove up\nto the house, accompanied by the party comprising her father, brother, the\nmarquis, and Hester. She demanded to see the children. The dowager Lady\nConway appeared with her daughter. The duchess bowed, and requested to see\nthe children.\n\nThe lady hemmed--hesitated--did not know. \"The children were under the\nguardianship of Mr. Brookbank,\" she said; she supposed he must be\nconsulted.\n\nThe name seemed to strike the marquis. \"What Brookbank?\" he asked.\n\n\"He was Sir Philip's agent and man of business, and is left his executor.\"\n\n\"Is he any relative to the family at Estcourt?\"\n\n\"Why, yes, it is the same family; they have moved here.\"\n\nThe entrance of the gentleman in question put an end to the questioning,\nbut the marquis kept a sharp eye upon him.\n\nWith smooth, bland words and deprecating gestures, Alfred Brookbank\nproceeded to explain to the duchess that it was his duty, his very painful\nduty, to deny her grace's request at the present moment, until measures had\nbeen taken to secure the due and legal administration of Sir Philip's will.\nAdelaide's indignant remonstrances were unheeded, and a very painful\nfeeling was pervading the party, when suddenly M. de Villeneuve rose and\nsaid: \"Mr. Brookbank, may I beg the favor of a few words in private?\"\nAlfred rose, and led the way to another apartment. Half an-hour elapsed;\nthe party awaited the event in silence. Alfred did not return, but the\nmarquis did, and with him entered the two children and their nurse,\nequipped for a drive.\n{45}\nWith a bow, the marquis addressed the ladies of the house: \"Mr. Brookbank\nhas consented to entrust the guardianship of these two children to me for\nthe present. I have the honor to wish you good morning.\" His wife and the\nrest of the party rose at his signal, and departed, carrying off the\nchildren with them.\n\n\"Now,\" said he, when they were once more together, \"let no one ask me how\nthis was managed, because I have passed my word that so long as Lady Conway\nis not molested in her custody of these children, I will explain nothing. I\ndo not know how the law will decide respecting the property; Mr. Godfrey\nwill, perhaps, see to that. But I wish Lady Conway and her children could\nbe prevailed upon to cross the Atlantic with us; I fear leaving that fellow\nany legal power, when I am out of the way to hold him to the bargain he\nmade with me to-day.\"\n\n\"I will go with you, Annie, if you like to take the trip,\" said Eugene.\n\n\"And Euphrasie and the dear nuns are going,\" said Annie; \"I am willing to\ntravel in such good company.\"\n\n. . . . . .\n\n\n    Chapter XXXI.\n\n    America.\n\nTwo years have passed since the events happened which we last presented to\nour readers: it is on the other side of the Atlantic that our view now\nopens, but the friends we greet are of those we left behind.\n\nThe scene is in a beautiful extensive garden, well planted with trees;\nbehind, on an eminence, rises a large white house with numerous piazzas\nwhich contrast pleasingly with the green sward and shrubs before it. The\nslope before the house is covered with groups of children weaving garlands,\nfor it is a holiday, the feast of St. Aloysius; and all the schools have\nfreed their pupils great and small. Feeling the privilege of the day, the\nchildren have bounded into the grounds of their patrons, M. and Madame de\nVilleneuve. They knew that a strawberry festival was preparing for them,\nand on their parts were anxious to be busy. Festoons were hung from pillar\nto pillar. The large refectory was opened, and the walls garlanded; merry\nvoices were singing childish hymns and songs, and good humor was visible\neverywhere.\n\nThe grounds were very spacious; far away might be seen grown persons in\nholiday-trim; lads and lasses preparing the tables, and a band of music\nsending up, every now and then, cheery notes to gladden all around.\n\nIn yonder silent glade too, half hid by the thickness of the foliage,\nEugene Godfrey is walking with his young bride; they are not yet past the\nhoneymoon, and are bound for England. To-morrow is the day fixed for their\ndeparture, and the lady-bride; formerly Elise de Villeneuve, the youngest\nand fairest daughter of the house of De Villeneuve, is sentimentalizing\nvery prettily her regrets at leaving, perhaps for ever, the paternal\nmansion.\n\nClotilde de Villeneuve, who has already entered as a postulant at the\nconvent which is visible on that eminence to the right--rising majestically\nabove the world and backed in the distance by the interminable forest; from\nwhich it is separated by that lovely series of lakes which lie at the foot\nof the hill on which the building stands--Clotilde de Villeneuve has for\nthis one day consented to break inclosure that she may bid good-by to the\nyoung sister she brought up so carefully since her mother died.\n\nThere is another lady there, looking fairer and younger than when we saw\nher last, giving directions in a very pleasing tone; and ever and anon\nlooking back, a little anxiously perhaps, to see what two young girls were\ndoing with a something in a bundle of white muslin, which seemed very\nanimated, and which the nurses are trying to kill with kindness.\n\n{46}\n\nThe pastor approaches, a fine old man with mild eyes, white hair, and a\nvery benevolent aspect. All the little ones rise and courtesy, and Hester,\nyes, our old friend Hester, comes forward to greet him affectionately.\n\n\"Where is your husband, my dear lady?\" asked the good priest, after\nreturning the preliminary greeting.\n\n\"Well, I hardly know, he has been on the _qui vive_ all day, here and\nthere and everywhere. I hardly know where he is now. Do you want him\nparticularly, father? You seem uneasy.\"\n\n\"Let us go in out of this hot sun,\" said the pastor, wiping his forehead.\n\nThey adjourned to the parlor, which opened on both sides to a piazza shaded\nby climbing plants, and thus promised a cool retreat. Hester handed the old\ngentleman a refreshing drink, for he seemed weary and excited. On setting\ndown the glass, be whispered: \"Are we alone here? Is anyone listening?\"\n\n\"Not that I am aware of.\" said Hester, glancing in all directions. \"I see\nno one, father, what is the matter?\"\n\n\"There is mischief brewing in the city yonder; I want to see your husband.\nFor the last six weeks there has been a strange man there, of singular\neloquence, fomenting discord about Catholics, getting up a no-popery cry,\nuttering fearful scandals concerning the convent; to-night the people\nthreaten to burn it down.\"\n\n\"Can this be true? Who is your informant?\"\n\n\"My man Walter. It seems he knew the stranger in England.\"\n\n\"I know Edward has been annoyed with reports of some plots, but he thought\nas little about it as he could; he never harmed any body, and cannot\nimagine any body would harm him.\"\n\n\"This is a religions or rather a fanatical plot. What the purpose is, it is\ndifficult to discover. The designer means something dark, you may be sure,\nthe multitude are but his tools. He has used all the plea he could find;\nhave not your committees refused many applications to receive pupils?\"\n\n\"Yes, Edward acts on his father's plan, and he says the old marquis always\ninsisted that a child was more formed by his companions than by his\nteachers; that one dissipated worldly companion would contaminate a school.\nIt seems he loved real children, and hated the little bits of affectation,\naping men and women, which we now so often see; so Edward will positively\nnot have a child in the schools unless he knows the home influence they are\nunder. In fact, our schools are not only exclusively Catholic, those we\ncall normal schools are open only to picked Catholics. Edward wants them to\nturn out good and efficient teachers of practical Catholicity, and before\nhe receives a pupil he not only exacts certain promises from the children,\nbut from the parents also, as to the influence they will exercise from a\ndistance. As long as they attend his schools they are under certain\nrestrictions, at home as well as abroad.\"\n\n\"All this is good for the children, but it has made enemies. Those out of\nthe pale pretend something must be wrong in so exclusive a system; they are\njealous of advantages from which their children are excluded.\"\n\n\"But a great deal of the influence exerted is purely religious; how can we\nbring that influence to bear on such as are not Catholics, or who are\nworldly Catholics, who come merely for secular advantages?\"\n\n\"I am not saying you are not right; I only say you have made enemies.\"\n\n\"I believe my husband would rather give up the schools than compromise his\nprinciples. He has been intimately acquainted with the management of some\nCatholic schools in which all parties were admitted: the rule was to all\nalike, it was difficult to make a distinction. Children, non-Catholics,\nwere admitted to religious societies, services, and processions.\n{47}\nHe has a very firm conviction that the result was that they were led to\nbelieve that assisting with due outward decorum, without the internal\nfeeling of reverence, was all that Catholicity required; while the\nCatholics themselves, seeing others without faith were thus admitted,\nnaturally ceased to regard faith as so essential a matter as the sermons\nheard in church proclaim it to be, and became liberal Catholics when they\nretained their faith at all. My husband knows he is called bigoted, but I\ndo not think it has changed his feeling. He thinks the Catholic school a\nsacred place; and the soul of a little baptized child a thing to be guarded\nwith reverential awe.\"\n\n\"Yes, I know De Villeneuve's reverence: he should have lived in the times\nwhen the catechumens were driven out of the church before the sacred\nmysteries could be performed.\"\n\n\"Indeed, father, I have seen his whole frame quiver with terror when any\none, Catholic or non-Catholic, behaved irreverently in the presence of the\nblessed sacrament. He maintains that the worldliness of the age springs\nfrom the want of this reverence.\"\n\n\"He may be right, but meantime we must provide for the present safety. Your\nbrother is not gone?\"\n\n\"No, he starts to-morrow. I will send for him to come and see you.\"\n\nM. de Villeneuve was not to be found, for the very cause that brought the\npriest to his dwelling. He was in earnest conference with the priest's man\nWalter on the subject of the projected attack. \"Are you sure it was your\nbrother that you saw?\"\n\n\"Quite sure, sir.\"\n\n\"You did not let him see you?\"\n\n\"I did not; I was very careful on that point.\"\n\n\"And you are sure they fixed tonight?\"\n\n\"Quite sure, but if disappointed tonight they will try some other night.\"\n\n\"Did you hear of any one person marked out for any special object.\"\n\n\"There will be an attempt made to carry off Lady Conway and her children.\"\n\n\"I suspected as much. Well, we must be prepared; I will row Lady Conway\nacross the lake, and you can drive her up the country to neighbor\nFriendly's house, without anyone suspecting the matter. Be silent and\ncautious, I will prepare watches secretly. You get home as quickly as you\ncan from the drive.\"\n\n\"I will, sir.\"\n\nThe _f\u00eate_ passed off without any alarm: no one would have dreamed\nthat an attack was expected. The nuns one by one left the convent, which\nwas supposed to be the object aimed at by the attack, and let the watchers\nguard the dwelling, while they took refuge at M. de Villeneuve's mansion.\nThey dared not alarm the inmates of the school-house, which they thought\nwas left out of the plot, lest their plan of safety should be frustrated.\nBut an armed band watched over its safety in the hovels, and wherever they\ncould be stationed unseen.\n\nIt was a dreary watch, though a lovely night; the round, full moon threw\nits splendid light over hill and and valley, lake and forest glades. Not a\nsound was heard. The watchers did not trust themselves to speak, lest they\nshould give the alarm outside. Eleven, twelve, one, two; shall we wait\nlonger? Yes, there is a sound outside; the out-houses are already on fire,\nand the school-house and the convent--all at once. A whole multitude of\nrioters are in the grounds; they force the convent doors, and, to their\nsurprise, are met by armed men.\n\n\"Save, save the children,\" is the cry; \"let everything go, even the\nprisoners, till they are saved.\" There is no engine, the city is so far\naway, and rioters are all around; but ladders had been prepared during the\nday, and everyone was soon in requisition. But the fire seemed then the\nleast evil, for as each young lady was borne from the flames a mob\nsurrounded her, and a fight ensued for possession. It was a terrible scene,\nthe more terrible as it was impossible to get the children and teachers\ntogether to see if all were there.\n{48}\nThere was no resource but to fire on the assailants, and accordingly a\nvolley was discharged. This sobered the people somewhat; they loosed their\nhold and fled. One man, with a few followers, lingered awhile, apparently\nvery anxious still to examine the parties saved; he was observed and seized\nby a strong hand and bound. Alfred Brookbank was the prisoner of his\nbrother Walter.\n\nAnd now are the pupils all saved? for the house is burning fast. How\nanxiously they were counted! What a relief to find them all there! There\nwere no lives lost, and but that the building had been fired in many places\nat once, that could have been saved by the valiant arms who were there to\ndefend it. But the evil work had been done effectually, the convent and\nschool-house were level with the ground. Many of the valuables had been\nremoved the day before; but the furniture was destroyed. The newspapers\nsaid it was the work of the mob; yes, but that mob was excited by one man's\nrevengeful soul, which had animated the spirit of that mob to frenzy.\nAmericans are too generous to make war upon defenceless women, unless\nincited thereto by some false tale of wickedness.\n\nTo bring the poor frightened children into the house, and to send to the\ncity for police, occupied nearly all the night, and part of the next day;\nand then they took time to examine the prisoner who had been cast bound\ninto the cellar. He was crest-fallen and terror-smitten at last! He knew\nthe tale of terror his brother would have to tell; the quarrel about the\nestate; the offer to compromise; the attempt to drown him by throwing him\nover-board near the falls; and, finally, the belief on Alfred's part that\nthe crime had been consummated when a body, disfigured and shapeless, had\nbeen picked up below the falls. He did not wait long in jail to have this\nand a long catalogue brought out against him--he died by his own hand.\n\nWalter Brookbank wandering, restless, and dissipated, had been seized with\nfever in a wretched hovel, where he was found by some poor Catholics, who\nbrought the priest (then on a mission in that district) to see him. The\npriest had him tended and cared for till he was well, then invited him to\nhis house, and converted him to a Christian life; redeemed him doubly,\nfirst from the death of this life, then from that of the next. Walter had\nbeen grateful, and preferred to live henceforth as servant of the church,\nthan to re-encounter the perils of the world by claiming his inheritance;\nit passed by default to his mother and sisters.\n\nOur tale draws to its conclusion.\n\nThe multitude who, deceived by Alfred Brookbank's inflammatory tongue, had\nfired the convent, slunk away to their homes, ashamed, at length, of having\nexpended all their energy in a cowardly attack on defenceless women and\nchildren. Would I could say they repented and endeavored to repair the\nmischief; but it was not so, the convent was rebuilt, but it was by\nCatholic money, by Catholic hands, and by Catholic hearts; and save the\nring-leader, who, as we have seen, judged himself, the perpetrators of the\ndastardly deed remained unsought for by the authorities, undiscovered and\nunpunished.\n\nThis event checked for a while the work of the good society which M. de\nVilleneuve had founded, and of which he was the president and the \"animus.\"\nThis society was composed of enlightened Catholic fathers and mothers, who\nwere fervent in their desires of establishing high Catholic education on a\nfirm and practical basis. It was a committee formed to aid the practice of\nthose precepts delivered by the zealous pastors of the church; to examine\nthe books put into the hands of children, and to have them written, if none\nsuitable were found, on the subjects required; to discuss all points of\ndiscipline recommended to them by the teachers, and provide that the\nfinancial department should not harass those who had charge of the\nintellectual department.\n{49}\nThey were outside co-operators in the good work of education; valuable\ncoadjutors in a matter in which it concerns every good Catholic to interest\nhimself, for society is made up of individuals, and on the good training of\nthose individuals depends the public welfare.\n\nTheir schools comprised both sexes; I will now speak of the girls only, as\nit was the matter in which our friend Hester most interested herself, for\nthe reason that she thought that the formation of good women, wives and\nmothers, is lost sight of in the fashionable circles of our large cities.\nShe had discovered that the fathers and husbands (men of large wealth and\nof thriving business) were, through the extravagance and non-domesticity of\ntheir families (more particularly of their wives and daughters), leading a\nlife of torture under the appearance of prosperity; and that young men,\nwith incomes of from $1,500 to $2,000 a year, shrank from marrying, because\nof the extravagance and selfishness they daily witnessed among the ladies.\n\"Now,\" said Hester, with something of her old positiveness, \"if this is so,\nthe responsibility of the shame and degradation of so many unfortunate\nwomen lies at the door of the rich and honored ladies who turn aside from\nthem in disgust, and the education of true women must be the basis of the\nrenovation of society: for to woman's influence is confided the happiness\nof the family, as to family influence is committed the guardianship of the\nstate. Where the family is out of joint, the state will be out of joint\ntoo. O my dear Edward! I now comprehend the prophecy you think so much of:\n'That the worship of the blessed mother of God will be in after times one\nsuch as is not dreamed of in the present age of disruption. The blessed\nVirgin is the example of all womanhood; the family of Nazareth the true\ntype of the Christian family; labor, purity, intelligence, submission, such\nmust be the watchwords of all womanly training; such will form happy\nhouseholds and forward true progress.'\"\n\nThe objects of the educational institutions at Villeneuve were in strict\naccordance with these views; they comprised several classes, and in each\nclass were several departments.\n\nThe highest was that of a boarding-school, regulated by the nuns\nthemselves; it was within the enclosure, though apart from the convent, and\nhaving its own allotted grounds. It was a normal school, the object of\nwhich was to prepare efficient school teachers for the parochial schools\nthroughout the country. No pupil could enter this establishment under\nfifteen years of age, or for a shorter period than three years; and if at\nthe end of that time she had won her diploma, she was expected for the two\nyears following to place herself at the disposal of the church, to teach\nany parochial school that might require such assistance. Besides the\nthorough course of instruction given during these three years, to enable\nthe pupils to fulfil their duties efficiently as school-teachers, and to\nkeep pace with the secular knowledge required by the age, the pupils were\nrequired to do all their own work: they took it by turns to provide for the\nhousehold; the cooking, washing, every part of the household work, and\nmaking their own clothes, were all done by themselves; so that at the end\nof the five years, when their term of teaching had expired, they were ready\nto become either efficient members of society, fit to perform the duty of\nwife, mother, or teacher, or to enter religion, should such prove to be\ntheir vocation.\n\nThe second class of schools were named the probation schools; these, in\ntheir various departments, received children of all ages under fifteen, but\nCatholics only. The parents of the children attending these schools were\nrequired to give a guarantee that, during the children's attendance at\nthese schools, they should not be allowed to read either novels or any\nother books not approved by the committee, nor attend any place of\namusement disapproved by the church.\n{50}\nIn fact, during their attendance at school, it was a part of the labor of\nthe directors to provide suitable relaxation within the school grounds,\nthat they might the more easily discourage all dissipation outside. There\nwere also regulations concerning deportment and dress, which formed very\nefficient aids in inculcating Christian manners, but the details of which\nit is not necessary to give here.\n\nThese schools are supposed to be the Christian schools _par\npre-eminence_. The young ladies of the first-named schools were much\nsought as wives, when their excellence became known; most of them could\nhave married rich men, had they chosen to marry out of the church, but\nthis, I need hardly say, they refused to do. Many entered teaching\nsisterhoods, and proved very efficient members of the society which they\njoined.\n\nThe children of the second series were, on the other hand, simple, joyous,\naffectionate, pious, and obedient. The age for childhood was renewed, and\nthe results were very pleasing.\n\nBesides these, the committee prevailed on M. de Villeneuve to establish\n(after the incendiary fire) general schools open to the community at large.\nIn these schools the routine was Catholic; none but Catholic books were\nadmitted, and as much Catholic training was introduced as the public mind\nwould bear. These institutions were thronged, for the teachers were\nefficient, and the discipline much approved of. These were the best\nremunerating schools of the series. But M. de Villeneuve could never be\nbrought to be satisfied with the results, and only in deference to the\nwishes of his friends did he tolerate them at all. His chief care was to\nprevent children from these schools being admitted to serve in the church\nor to take part in religious processions, until they had been well proved,\nand then he wished them removed to the Christian schools before he\npresented them to the pastor. Many thought the man a monomaniac, he had so\ngreat a horror of sacrilege, or indeed of witnessing any irreverence in the\nchurch at all. Strangely enough, his wife Hester saw in this only an\nadditional virtue, which she endeavored to assist her husband in enforcing,\nas indeed she did in all his regulations.\n\nA week or two after the fire, when the excitement had somewhat subsided,\nEugene took his young wife to England. He found that Adelaide had been so\nbusy during the past two years in providing orphan asylums, refuges, and\nhospitals, and so forth, that Mr. Godfrey had been very frequently alone,\nand this rendered him very glad to welcome his pretty, gentle\ndaughter-in-law, and he persuaded Eugene to establish himself at Estcourt\nHall, that he himself might have a home for his old age. In due time he\nlearnt to amuse himself with his, little grand-children, utterly forgetful\nthat they were members of a hated church. I never heard that be became a\nCatholic himself.\n\nEugene soon found interest and employment in aiding the Catholic movement\nwhich first agitated for emancipation, and then employed earnest minds in\nco-operating with the declared will of the church, to give efficiency to\nthe measures which soon after provided a Catholic hierarchy for England.\n\nAs soon as Mr. Godfrey's comfort was provided for in Eugene's household,\nAdelaide united her efforts to those of Ellen, and together they\nestablished a society, which in after years developed itself as one of the\nmany orders of Mercy which bless the great city of London. Without a\nuniform, though living under a rule, these ladies and their associates\nperform countless deeds of charity and kindness, the origin of which is\noften unknown to the recipients. Few among that saintly community are more\nanxious to obey, or to humble themselves, than the once proud duchess.\nGenerous to all, to herself alone she became sparing and non-indulgent, and\nif the voice of praise, often publicly lauding her, met her ear in private,\nshe would say, with a sigh, \"Ah! how easy is all this, to give when we have\nmore than we want, and to love those who spend their life in toil for the\ncomfort and luxury of the wealthy.\n{51}\nBut to love God as Bridget Norton loved him; to trust him when nothing but\nclouds and darkness were around; to face starvation, disgrace, and all, in\ntrust that God would bring up those dear little ones for himself--this is\nheroism. Oh! talk not of the goodness of the rich; they are great people in\nthis world of false show, but Bridget Norton called down the angels to\nwitness her death and bear her noble martyr soul to heaven.\"\n\n. . . .\n\nAnnie's children rewarded her care; the boy became a worthy priest, and the\ngirl, after witnessing the consecration of her brother, requested\npermission to enter the convent in which she was brought up. Mother and\ndaughter received the veil on the same day. All efforts to recover the\nproperty for the children proved fruitless. But they had long since learned\nthat happiness does not consist in wealth.\n\n------\n\n    Original\n\n\n    Kettle Song.\n\n\n    Sing, kettle, sing!\n    Busily boil away!\n  My goodman to the field has gone,\n    The children are out at play.\n\n    Sing, kettle, sing!\n    Sing me a merry song!\n  You and I have company kept\n    This many a year along.\n\n    Sing, kettle, sing!\n    I'll join with a low refrain--\n  Needle and thread drawn through my work,\n    Like steadily falling rain.\n\n    Sing, kettle, sing!\n    The far-off fancies come,\n  But never a sad or a weary thought\n    Along with your cheery hum.\n\n    Sing, kettle, sing!\n    The hearth is swept and clean,\n  And the tidy broom in the corner stands\n    Like a little household queen.\n\n    Sing, kettle, sing!\n    Evening is drawing nigh,\n  The shadows are coming down the hill\n    And coming up in the sky.\n\n{52}\n\n    Sing, kettle, sing!\n    Shadows are on the wall--\n  The last stitch done! a merry shout!\n    And here are the rovers all!\n\n    Sing, kettle, sing!\n    By the merry candle-light,\n  And you and I'll keep company\n    Again to-morrow night!\n\n           Fanny Fielding.\n\n-------------\n\n    Original.\n\n    Ritualism.\n\n    by John R. G. Hassard.\n\n\nIn one of the up-town streets of New-York there is a Protestant Episcopal\nChurch dedicated to St. Alban. It is externally a plain, unattractive\nlittle building of brick and stone, in the early English style, with a\nmodest little porch, and a sharp high roof, surmounted by a belfry and a\ncross. Within there is little to be seen in the way of ornament about the\nbody of the church. The seats are plain benches rather than pews, and are\nfree to all comers. But any one who should enter St. Alban's, not knowing\nto what denomination it belonged, and should look toward the sanctuary,\nwould be very apt to fancy for a moment that he had got into a Catholic\nChurch. Let us imagine ourselves among the crowd of curious spectators who\nfill the edifice of a Sunday morning. In place of the reading-desk\nconspicuous in most Protestant meeting-houses, there is a very\nproper-looking altar set back against the chancel wall, and ornamented with\na colored and embroidered antependium. Behind it, instead of a painting,\nthere is an illuminated screen-work, with inscriptions in old English\necclesiastical text, not much easier to be read than if they were in Latin.\nWhere the tabernacle ought to be, stands a large gilt cross; on each side\nof it are vases and ornaments. On a shelf which runs along the wall back of\nthe altar there are candlesticks, three tall ones at each side, and two\nothers just over the altar itself. We see altar-cards, such as are used at\nmass; a burse for holding the corporal; and a chalice covered with a veil,\nthe color of which varies with the season of the ecclesiastical year. Today\nnot being a festival, the hue is green. At one end of the altar is a big\nbook on a movable stand. At the epistle side is a credence table with a\nsilver paten, on which is the wafer-bread for communion, and with vessels\nof wine and water that might be called cruets if they were only a little\nsmaller. The pulpit stands just outside the railings on the left. There is\na little raised desk on it for the preachers's book or manuscript, and this\ndesk is covered with a green veil. Opposite the pulpit on the right hand\nside is a lectern with a bible on it. The lectern likewise has green\nhangings. On one side of the sanctuary is a row of stalls, precisely like\nthose we see in some of our cathedrals and seminary-chapels. On the other\nare benches for the choristers. The organ is in a recess just behind them,\nand the organist sits in the chancel, in full view of the people, with his\nback to the instrument. He wears a white surplice, and presents altogether\na very respectable and ecclesiastical appearance.\n\n{53}\n\nThe appointments of St. Alban's being so very much like those of a real\nchurch, we shall not be surprised to find the service almost equally like a\nreal mass. At the appointed hour an acolyte in cassock and surplice lights\nthe two candles on the altar. Then we hear a chorus of male voices--\nprincipally boys--intoning a chant, and presently a procession issues from\nthe vestry door and files into the chancel. First comes a lad wearing a\nblack cassock and short surplice, and carrying a cross on a tall staff.\nThen follow the chanters, men and boys, similarly attired; then one or two\nclergymen, or perhaps theological students, also in cassock and surplice;\nnext two little boys in red cassocks; and finally two officiating\nministers, wearing long albs. The \"priest\" has a green stole, crossed on\nhis breast, and confined at the sides by a cincture; the \"deacon's\" stole\nis worn over the left shoulder. The clerks take their places in the stalls;\nthe singers proceed to their benches. The cross-bearer kneels at one side\nof the altar; the \"priest\" kneels at the foot of the steps, with the deacon\nbehind him and the acolytes at his side. The service about to be performed\nis not the \"Order of Morning Prayer\" prescribed by the prayer-book, but\nsimply the communion service. The officiating minister (for the sake of\nconvenience let us call him what he calls himself--the priest; though\nwithout, of course, admitting his sacerdotal character) chants a short\nprayer, very much in the style of the chanting we hear at mass, and the\nchoir respond \"Amen.\" Then the litany is chanted antiphonally, by one of\nthe clergy and the choristers alternately; it is in the main a translation\nof that part of our litany of the saints in which we address Almighty God\ndirectly, without asking the intercession of his blessed. This over, the\nministers and acolytes retire in the same order in which they entered, and\nthe organist plays a voluntary, during which the other six altar-candles\nare lighted. When the clergy return the priest is seen in a green maniple\nand chasuble. The latter differs from the vestment worn by the Catholic\npriest at mass only in being less stiff in texture, pointed behind, and\ncovering the arm nearly to the elbow; and instead of being embroidered with\na cross on the back it is marked with a figure nearly resembling the letter\nY. With hands clasped before his breast the priest now ascends the steps,\nand standing before the altar, with his back to the people, goes on with\nthe second part of the service. We need not describe it, for it is\nprincipally translated from the missal. The words are all repeated in a\ntone which is half reading and half chanting, and whenever the minister\nsays \"Let us Pray,\" or \"The Lord be with you,\" he turns round to the people\nlike a priest chanting \"Oremus\" or \"Dominus Vobiscum.\" The epistle and\ngospel are read by the deacon. The sermon follows; a rather vague and wordy\ndiscourse, chiefly remarkable for the frequent and affectionate use of the\nterm \"Catholic.\" The preacher begins by saying \"In the name of the Father,\nand of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,\" and the more devoutly disposed of\nthe congregation thereupon cross themselves. After the sermon comes the\nmost solemn part of the service, taken nearly verbatim from the canon of\nthe mass; and at the commencement a great many of the congregation who\napparently are not communicants, leave the church with reverential faces,\nas if they supposed the old law forbidding catechumens to witness the more\nsacred mysteries were still in force. But the curious spectators, who\ncompose a large proportion of the audience, are under no such scruple about\nremaining.\n\n{54}\n\nWe need not describe the order of the service in detail, because the words\nare almost exactly those to which we are ourselves accustomed, and the\nceremonies come as close to those of the mass as it is possible to make\nthem come. Whenever the ministers or attendants pass before the altar they\nmake a low bow to the cross. As the time of consecration approaches, the\ndeacon goes to the corner of the altar, and the acolytes bring him there\nthe bread and water and wine, which he hands to the priest, the wine and\nwater being mixed in the chalice. The prayer of consecration (a translation\nof our own) is chanted like the rest of the service, until the priest\nreaches the words, \"This is my body,\" etc., \"This is my blood,\" etc.;\nthose, suddenly dropping his voice, he repeats in a low voice, bending\nover, and immediately afterward lifting up the elements on high. The\nattendants, during this ceremony, hold up the corners of his vestment.\nAfter the consecration all make genuflections, instead of bows, when they\nhave occasion to pass before the altar.\n\nAfter receiving communion himself, the priest administers it to the deacon\nand clergy and the altar boys. The people then approach the railing and the\npriest gives them the consecrated wafer, using the formula prescribed in\nthe Catholic and the Protestant Episcopal liturgies alike--\"The body of our\nLord Jesus Christ,\" etc.; but with each morsel of bread before he gives it\nhe makes the sign of the cross, which is a striking innovation in the\nProtestant service. The deacon follows with the chalice. Before the\ncommunion, however, a general confession is recited, and then the priest,\nturning toward the people with great solemnity, repeats the form of\nabsolution, making the sign of the cross as he does so with outstretched\narm. After communion the celebrant scrapes the crumbs from the paten into\nthe chalice, and takes the ablutions at the corner of the altar exactly as\nthe priest does at mass. And when the congregation is dismissed at the\nclose, it is with a blessing and the sign of the cross, just as we are\ndismissed after the _Ite, Missa est_ at the end of the mass.\n\nOn specially solemn occasions incense is used at St. Alban's, and various\nother ceremonies are performed which have been borrowed from the Catholic\nritual. For example, candles are placed about the corpse when the burial\nservice is read.\n\nWe have described a service at St. Alban's, because that is the church in\nwhich the ritualistic ideas, as they are called, are carried out to the\nfullest development they have thus far attained in the United States. But\nthe rector and congregation of St. Alban's are by no means the only persons\nof the Protestant Episcopal denomination who entertain those ideas. They\nare only a little more advanced in their views than the majority of the\nHigh Church Episcopal party. There are many places in New York where Sunday\nservices are conducted more or less in conformity with the practices of the\nritualists; and antiphonal chanting and other popish abominations have been\nintroduced, even into sober old Trinity Church itself. The number of those\nwho believe that divine service ought to be conducted with a more elaborate\nceremonial than any Protestant sect has thus far admitted is rapidly\nincreasing, and among them are many of the most distinguished and\ninfluential of the Episcopal clergy.\n\nBut if so many strange things are done in our own country, they are nothing\nto the innovations which are rapidly gaining ground in the Church of\nEngland. The ritualistic movement in Great Britain is not so much the\nstruggle of an enthusiastic party for change or reform as it is the\nspontaneous working of a logical doctrinal development which is gradually\nspreading throughout the community. There is a struggle attending it; but\nit is the struggle of the let-alone party for its repression, not of the\napostles of ritualism for its extension. And in spite, perhaps partly in\nconsequence, of the bitterness of the opposition, the number of churches in\nwhich the good old Catholic ceremonies are revived in their ancient\nsplendor is, daily augmenting, and the zeal of the congregations is\nincreasing.\n{55}\nRitualism in England is not what Punch is so fond of representing it--a\nmere system of ecclesiastical millinery, born of the sick brains of foolish\nand fanciful young curates; but it is a genuine expression of the sentiment\nof a respectable minority of the Protestant laity. The numerous\nprayer-books and similar works, prepared for the use of laymen under\nritualistic inspiration, are sold by _millions_ of copies. One\nentitled \"The Churchman's Guide to Faith and Piety,\" contains formulas for\nmorning and evening prayer, with an examination of conscience; devotions\nfor saints' days; instructions for systematic sacramental confession, and\nfor devoutly receiving the holy Eucharist and assisting at the sacred\nmysteries; and _prayers for the faithful departed_. The real presence\nand the sacrificial character of the holy Eucharist are expressed in the\nclearest possible manner. There are several hand-books of devotion toward\nthe blessed sacrament, and manuals of religious exercises in honor of\ncertain particular manifestations of the divine goodness, such, for\ninstance, as the passion of our Saviour. A collection of \"Hymns, Ancient\nand Modern,\" of which it was stated some time ago that over one and a half\nmillions of copies had been sold, contains simply the principal hymns of\nthe Breviary, and in a work entitled \"An Appendix to the Hymnal Noted,\" the\nadvanced Puseyite will find complete directions for using those hymns in\npublic worship, according to the rubrics of the Breviary. An English\npublisher has just announced a new manual containing \"the offices of prime\nand compline and the vigils for the dead; the forms of blessing and\nsprinkling holy water; the _Missa in nocte Nativitatis Domini_; the\nLenten litanies; the blessing of the ashes and the palm branches; the\nwashing of the altars and the _Maundy_; the benediction of the fonts\non Holy Saturday, and the like: translated from the Latin, with an\nintroduction and explanatory notes, and illustrated with extracts from the\nconsuetudinary of the church of Sarnm and the plain-song of the Mechlin\noffice-books.\"\n\n\"Matins\" and \"vespers\" are chanted in many of the English churches by\nchoristers robed in surplices and ranged on each side of the chancel. The\nGregorian tones are used to a great extent. The officiating clergyman wears\na cope on festival days, and it has been the custom until lately to incense\nthe altar during the chanting of the _Magnificat_. The most complete\nreturn, however, to the practice of the ancient church is seen in the\ncelebration of the Eucharist. All the Catholic vestments--the amice, alb,\ncincture, maniple, stole, and chasuble--have been restored. The regulations\nof the rubrics respecting different colors for different days and seasons\nare followed. Sometimes the celebrant is attended by a deacon and a\nsubdeacon, acolytes, and censer bearers; and the use of candles on the\naltar is very common. Even in churches where candles, incense, and colored\nvestments are unknown, the Introit, taken from the Roman missal or the\nmissal of Salisbury, is frequently chanted at the beginning of the service,\nand it is a very common practice to add to the regular liturgy contained in\nthe Book of Common Prayer various prayers taken from the ordinary and the\ncanon of the mass. For example, the minister often prefixes to the service\nthe psalm _Judica me, Deus_ with the antiphon, the _Confiteor_,\netc., which we hear every day at mass. So, too, when the celebrant is\nplacing the bread and wine on the altar, he borrows our offertory and the\nprayers which follow it, his own liturgy not having furnished him with\nanything appropriate to the occasion. The Anglican office sets down no\nprayers for the priest's own communion; he, therefore, supplies the\nomission by reciting in a low voice the _unde et memores_ of the\nmissal.\n\n{56}\n\nThe use of crucifixes and images, and especially the image of the blessed\nvirgin, holding her divine Son in her arms, is by no means uncommon among\nthe more advanced ritualists; and some clergymen are in the habit of\nblessing objects of devotion, such as medals and crosses, and even of\nblessing holy water. A correspondent of a London newspaper writes a letter\nof indignant complaint about the Christmas celebrations this season, at\nsome of the \"advanced\" churches, in one of which he declares that\n\"numberless tapers shed their halo of glory upon a veritable\n_Bambino_,\" or figure of the infant Saviour lying in the manger. An\nAnglican Missal has been published at Oxford, containing the order of the\nCommunion service, without any other part of the Liturgy. This service is\ncommonly spoken of as the \"mass,\" and we even hear of \"high mass,\" and \"low\nmass,\" to say nothing of matins and vespers. A few weeks ago we read an\naccount in an English paper of a nuptial mass in one of the ritualistic\nchurches. The faithful address their ministers as Father John, Father\nPeter, or whatever the Christian name may be, and talk of their\n\"confessors\" and \"spiritual directors\" with all the composure of genuine\nCatholics.\n\nThe following description of a service at St. Alban's in London in holy\nweek, is taken from an English newspaper:\n\n  The altar on Maundy Thursday was vested in white and the holy Eucharist\n  was solemnly celebrated at 7 A.M. when many of the members of a\n  confraternity attached to the church communicated. After the morning\n  service the altar was entirely stripped of all its vestings and ornaments\n  except the candlesticks, and so remained until Easter eve. On Good\n  Friday, there was a meditation at 8 A.M., which was well attended. The\n  church was full at 10.30, when matins and the ante-communion office were\n  said. The sermon was followed by the chanting of the Reproaches, and the\n  hymn _Pange Lingua_. At 2 P.M., after the singing of the litany, the\n  Rev. A. H. Mackonochie preached the three hours' agony, the order of\n  which was as follows: (1.) One of the words of our Lord on the cross, was\n  chanted by the choir; (2.) A short sermon on the word was next\n  pronounced; (3.) All knelt in silent meditation, the organ playing\n  softly; (4.) A hymn was sung. This order was observed for each of the\n  words on the cross, the whole service lasting three hours and a half. At\n  3 o'clock, the hour of our Lord's death, the bell was tolled for five\n  minutes, while all knelt in silence. Even-song, or vespers, took place at\n  7 P.M. The sermon was followed by the chanting of the _Stabat Mater_\n  and _Miserere_. A meditation on the taking down from the cross\n  closed the evening. All through the day the bell was tolled solemnly, and\n  most of the congregation appeared in mourning. On Easter eve there was\n  service at 9 P.M. The church was elaborately decorated for the coming\n  festival with white and scarlet hangings, hot-house flowers, and candles.\n  The service opened with a procession, the chanters singing the old Easter\n  hymn _O filii et filiae_, and three of the attendants carrying\n  banners. Then vespers were chanted, and after the reading of the second\n  lesson the sacrament of baptism was administered to twenty-eight persons.\n  On Easter Sunday the Eucharist was celebrated at 7, 8, and 9 A.M.; at\n  10.30, matins were sung; and at 11.15 there was a grand Easter service\n  which we suppose the high and dry \"Anglo-Catholics\" would call high mass.\n  The ministers and attendants, with lights and banners, entered in\n  procession, while the choristers chanted the hymn _Ad Caenam Agni_.\n  As soon as they reached the altar, the Introit was sung, and the \"mass\"\n  or communion service, was then celebrated in the usual manner, another\n  breviary hymn, the _victimae Paschali_, being chanted at the\n  offertory.\n\nIn an account of the holy week services at St. Philip's, Clerkenwell, we\nread that on Palm Sunday the altar was vested in black, the cross veiled\nwith crape, and the retable strewn with palm branches.\n{57}\nThe choir, bearing palms, entered the church, singing the hymn \"Ride on,\netc.,\" preceded by the processional cross which was also veiled with crape.\nAt a church in the diocese of Manchester recently, the services for Good\nFriday began at midnight, with a litany and sermon. At 6 A. M. there was a\nlitany again, with a second sermon. At 9 A. M. followed matins and a\nsermon; at noon a special service and sermon; at 3 P. M. litany and sermon;\nat 6, evensong, and sermon, at 9, litany, sermon and benediction. The\nChurch Times, a ritualist periodical, remarked that it was \"cheering to\nfind the Catholic view of the observance of the great fast so admirably\ndeveloped in a diocese so terribly over-ridden by Puritanism.\"\n\nSome of our readers may remember the circumstances attending the funeral of\nthe Rev. John Mason Neale at East Grinstead, England, in August 1866. Dr.\nNeale was well known as the author of some admirable translations of\nBreviary hymns, as one of the most earnest apostles of ritualism, and as\nthe founder of a convent of women. The burial ceremonies, in the chapel of\nSackville College, included what might be called a high mass of requiem,\nwith priest, deacon, and sub-deacon, habited in magnificent vestments of\nblack silk trimmed with silver; an assistant priest; and a master of\nceremonies, or _ceremoniarius_. The service commenced with the introit\n\"Grant them eternal rest, O Lord.\" After the epistle the _Dies Irae_\nwas chanted in Grergorian melody, as the gradual. When choir and\ncongregation assembled after communion in the college quadrangle, there to\nform themselves into a procession, one of the clergy repeated the prayer,\n_Deus, qui nobis sub sacramento mirabili_, which is always chanted in\nthe Catholic church at the benediction of the blessed Sacrament. In the\nprocession, besides clerks, chanters, acolytes, and cross-bearer, appeared\nthe \"sisters of the third order;\" novices; \"sisters of the second order\" in\nwhite veils edged with blue; \"professed sisters;\" the mother superior,\nassistant mother, and mistress of novices of Dr. Neale's convent; superiors\nof other orders; \"brothers associate;\" etc. The corpse \"was vested in\ncassock, surplice, and black stole; a crucifix was in his crossed hands,\nthe same one which he was in the habit of having before him when hearing\nconfessions.\" In an appendix to a virulent little treatise against\nritualism by the Rev. Robert Vaughan, D.D., [Footnote 8] there are\ndescriptions of services in several of the advanced churches; and the\nauthor says: \"This is the course of things in a large number of our city\nand suburban churches over the kingdom; and not a few churches in our\nsmaller towns, and even in our villages, do their best, as before\nintimated, toward imitating the example set them by their more fashionable\nand wealthy neighbors. The editor of The Church Times filled some thirty\ncolumns of that journal with such reports as we have cited, relating to the\ncelebrations of last Easter, and stated that the accounts he had published\nwere 'only a small selection from the overwhelming mass' which had reached\nhim,\" Proof enough that the movement, as we said before, is very widely\nextended and essentially popular.\n\n    [Footnote 8: Ritualism in the English Church in its Relation to\n    Scripture, Piety, and Law. By Robert Vaughan, D.D. 12mo. London: 1866.]\n\nEverybody remembers the commotion raised a year or two ago by an\nenthusiastic gentleman named Lyne who called himself \"Brother Ignatius,\"\nand made a very foolish and unfortunate attempt to establish a Protestant\norder of Benedictines in England. But other efforts to introduce religious\ncommunities into the Church of England have been more prosperous, and there\nare now at least 400 or 500 members of various sisterhoods, who take vows,\nsome for life, some for three years. [Footnote 9]\n\n    [Footnote 9: Sisterhood have obtained a precarious footing in the\n    United States. There is one in New York, whose members wear a costume\n    suggested somewhat of the cloister and somewhat of the mantua-maker's\n    shop. They have neat little things, between caps and veils, on their\n    heads; make-believe rosaries hanging from their girdles; and black\n    bombazine gown's distended to fashionable dimensions by means of\n    hoop-skirts.]\n\n{58}\n\nIn all cases there is a novitiate of one or two years, and it is said that\nwomen who take the vows almost always adhere to them. Brotherhoods are not\nat all flourishing, but there is a loud call for them among the ritualists,\nand we see no reason to doubt that they will soon follow in the general\nprogress of the Catholic revival. Of the number of congregations in which\nritualistic practices are followed, we have no exact account; but a\ndisinterested authority in which we have confidence estimates the number of\nthe clergy who entertain the advanced views at about 2000. Among them are a\nfew of the bishops, the most prominent being Dr. Wilberforce, bishop of\nOxford, and Dr. Hamilton, bishop of Salisbury. Indeed, the rapid progress\nof the new ideas seems to have thrown the thorough-going Protestants into a\nfever of alarm. Courses of lectures are got up to counteract the growing\nspirit, and monster petitions and memorials are presented to the bishops by\nthe clergy and people of their dioceses. A remonstrance with five hundred\nsignatures has been laid before the Bishop of Salisbury; a memorial with\ntwo thousand and three hundred names has been presented to the Bishop of\nGloucester; and four hundred and twenty-three of the clergy of London have\nunited in a protest. Colored vestments are worn in twelve of the London\nchurches, incense is used in six, and colored stoles have been introduced\nin three, which have not yet adopted the full \"Eucharistic vestments.\"\n\nNot very long ago a grand exhibition of ecclesiastical ornaments and\nvestments from churches of the establishment in  various parts of the\nkingdom was held at Norwich. Eucharistic (that is, colored) vestments were\ncontributed by a hundred churches, and it was estimated that there were two\nhundred and fifty or three hundred other churches in which they were\nhabitually used. The number is probably now larger. Many of these vestments\nwere of extraordinary richness. There were silks and velvets covered with\ndelicate and elaborate embroideries, and bedecked with a literal profusion\nof diamonds, pearls, and various precious stones. One chasuble, not\njeweled, was valued at \u00a3220, Or $1,100. There were crosiers, mitres,\nstoles, and superb crimson copes--all in use at the present day--not to\nspeak of numerous relics of antiquity, even relics of the saints and the\ntwelve apostles, and a fragment of the true cross.\n\nThe confessional in the Anglican Church is not an innovation by any means;\nbut under the protecting wings of ritualism it is assuming much greater\nprominence than it has ever enjoyed before. In St. Alban's, New-York, you\nwill not find a confessional box; but you may make a confession there, if\nyou feel so disposed, and the reverend pastor is ready to absolve penitents\nwith the usual formularies. At St. Alban's in London, however, they do\nthings in a much more complete style, with a box and a grating, and all the\nother Catholic accessories--with the trifling exceptions of sacerdotal\ncharacter and jurisdiction on the part of the confessor. An Anglican\nminister of Protestant proclivities, named Ormiston, recently made an\nexperimental visit of investigation to the Rev. Mr. Mackonochie's\nconfessional at St. Alban's, and at a meeting of the National Protestants\nInstitute on the 28th of January last, was cruel enough to tell all that\nhappened there. He went on one of the days set apart for receiving the\nconfessions of men, took his turn with a number of others who were waiting,\nand in course of time found himself in the confessional box, peering\nthrough a hole at the Rev. Mr. Mackonochie, who was vested in a surplice\nand purple stole. Mr. Ormiston stated that he wished to make a \"special\"\nconfession, and was thereupon requested to kneel. He could not bring\nhimself to do this, but he made believe do it--probably he squatted--and\nthen proceeded to his unbosoming. The Rev. Mr. Mackonochie must have been\nrather unpleasantly amazed by what followed.\n{59}\nPulling out a written paper Mr. Ormiston read, in a loud tone so as to be\nheard by the people outside, this humble confession of sins: \"I have but\ntoo imperfectly discharged my solemn ordination vow of being ready with all\nfaithful diligence to banish and drive away all erroneous and strange\ndoctrines contrary to God's word,' and _especially the damnable doctrine\nnow maintained by those priests in the Church of England, commonly called\n'Puseyites,' together with their popish practices_, whereby they are\nseeking to dethrone the blessed gospel of God's free grace, and to set up\nin its stead the 'burning lies' of anti-christ.\" He asked for absolution,\nbut Mr. Mackonochie could not be persuaded of his penitence (though the\nsinner vowed that he never was more sorry in his life), and refused to give\nit. So Mr. Ormiston handed his card to the confessor, and came away, \"bowed\ndown and crushed,\" as he said, \"with a sense of the evil which this awful\nsystem is working.\"\n\nThe question of the legality of the ritualistic innovations, or, to speak\nmore accurately, of these restorations of ancient practice, has been before\nthe law courts and the houses of convocation, but thus far without decided\nresult. The Church Union in England, have published the opinions of nine\neminent lawyers to whom the matter was referred, including Sir R.\nPhillimore, Sir Fitzroy Kelly, Sir W. Bovill, and Mr. Coleridge, all of\nwhom are in favor of the legality of the \"Eucharistic vestments,\" six in\nfavor of two lights on the altar during the communion service, four in\nfavor of wafer bread, and all more or less against the incensing of\n\"persons or things.\" A committee of the lower house of convocation made a\nreport on these subjects, which was presented to the upper house last June;\nand in view of the position taken by the authors of this report, and of the\nlegal opinions above referred to, as well as the opposition of Dr. Tait,\nbishop of London, to the practices therein condemned, the rector of St.\nAlban's, Holborn, has felt himself compelled to discontinue, under protest,\nthe objectionable manner of using incense, and the elevation of the bread\nand wine at the consecration. In an address to his congregation on the\nfeast of the Epiphany, be declares his persuasion that the house of\nconvocation is wrong, but he thinks it better to yield. \"I must tell you,\"\nhe adds, \"for your own satisfaction, that the less obtrusive elevation\nindicated in the words of the prayer-book, 'here the priest is to take the\npaten into his hand,' and 'here he is to take the cup into his hand,' is\nquite sufficient for the ritual purpose, that, namely, of making the\noblation of the holy sacrifice to God. The use of incense will now be\ndiscontinued at the beginning of the service, at the gospel, and at the\noffertory. Before the consecration prayer the censer will be brought in. At\nthe consecration, incense will be put into it by the thurifer, but it will\nnot be used, as at present, 'for censing persons and things.' This is a\nmode of using incense allowed by the ecclesiastical opinion, and not\ndisallowed by the legal one.\"\n\nSome time ago a number of prominent clergymen and laymen of the American\nEpiscopal Church, addressed a letter to Bishop Hopkins of Vermont, asking\nhis opinion \"whether an increase of ritualism would be advisable,\" or\nwhether it was best to be satisfied with \"the ordinary average of present\nparochial practice\"? The reply of Bishop Hopkins is contained in a little\nvolume published last year.[Footnote 10] It is an elaborate defence of the\nlawfulness and reasonableness of the ritualistic practices, though it\ndeprecates any authoritative infringement on the liberty which the\nEpiscopal body has heretofore exercised in such matters.\n{60}\n\"I incline to regard it as most probable,\" the bishop says, \"that this\nritualism will grow into favor by degrees until it becomes the prevailing\nsystem. The old, the fixed, and the fearful, will resist it. But the young,\nthe ardent, and the impressible will follow it more and more. The spirit of\nthe age will favor it because it is an age of excitement and sensation. The\nlovers of 'glory and of beauty' will favor it, because it appeals with far\nmore effect to the natural tastes and feelings of humanity. The rising\ngeneration of the clergy will favor it, because it adds so much to the\nsolemn character of their office and the interest of their service in the\nhouse of God.\" And as for the effect of the movement upon the low\nchurchmen, he believes that it will only become a more marked distinction\nbetween parties which have long existed, and which might well be allowed to\nappear in a more decided form without danger to the peace and prosperity of\nthe denomination.\n\n    [Footnote 10: The Law of Ritualism. By the Rt. Rev. John Henry Hopkins,\n    D.D., LL. D., Bishop of Vermont. New York: Hurd & Houghton.]\n\nAs might be supposed, Bishop Hopkins says a great many sensible things\nabout ritualism in general, though their application to the particular case\nbefore him is not always of the clearest. The ceremonial part of divine\nworship is not, he declares, a matter of indifference. God gave the most\nexplicit instructions for the performance of public worship under the\nLevitical law. He described the tabernacle that was to be erected in the\nwilderness and the temple of Solomon which succeeded it, giving minute\ndirections for the fashioning of all their parts; for the incense, the\ngolden censers, the candlesticks, and the rich priestly vestments that were\nto be used when the descendants of Aaron approached his presence. And under\nthe new dispensation this beautiful and elaborate system, so often\npronounced by Almighty God \"an ordinance for ever,\" was not swept wholly\nout of existence, though certain parts of it passed away into a higher and\nmore extensive form of divine arrangement. The animal sacrifices ceased,\nbecause they were only types of the great sacrifice which the cross of\nChrist fulfilled. The restriction of the priesthood to the family of Aaron\nwas abolished, because the new covenant was not restricted to a single\nnation, like the old, but was made with all the peoples of the earth. The\nrest of the Mosaic law, Dr. Hopkins argues, remained in force. His argument\nis not a good one, for it would lead him to absurdities. If the old ritual\nwas not abolished, why do modern Christians not observe it? What authority\nhave they for omitting all the more onerous parts of the ceremonial, and\nretaining only the rich garments and lights and fragrant incense, which\nplease the senses without imposing any particular burden? If ritualism had\nno better argument in its favor than the book of Leviticus, there would be\nlittle to say in its defence. Dr. Vaughan, who reasons that ritualism is\nunlawful in the Christian church, because there is no book of rites in the\nNew Testament corresponding to the book of Leviticus in the old, is as\nlogical as Dr. Hopkins. The Bishop of Vermont, however, is apparently\nsensible that there must be some authoritative enactment on the subject;\nthat God, either by his church or by some other inspired mouthpiece, must\nhave abolished or modified the Jewish ritual, and substituted a new one, or\nelse we ought still to observe the full Mosaic ceremonial, on the principle\nthat laws are binding until they are repealed. To us, Catholics, the case\nis clear enough. We have the authority of the church of God for all we do;\nshe abolished the old Jewish rites, and she ordained the Christian\nceremonial. And Dr. Hopkins is sensible enough of the importance of this\nauthorization, for he tries to apply it to his own denomination, and\nthereby, of course, admits that the church has uniformly followed the\nrightful practice, and that the Protestant sects have been all wrong.\n{61}\nHe shows, from the writings of the early fathers and from other ancient\ndocuments, that the term \"altar\" was constantly used in primitive times in\nconnection with the celebration of divine services; that the altars were\nboth of wood and or stone, and that hence there is no reason for the\nrestriction which many Protestants would lay upon the Lord's Table; that it\nshould be \"an honest table, with legs to it;\" and that candles and incense\nwere habitually used at the celebration of the divine mysteries. A much\nmore important matter, Bishop Hopkins says, is the use of oil or chrism in\nconfirmation; and this, he admits, \"is plainly stated by Tertullian to have\nbeen the established practice in the year 200.\" And he quotes a remarkable\npassage from Bingham's\" Antiquities of the Christian Church\" (a Protestant\nwork), to the effect that \"it was this unction at the completion of baptism\nto which they [the early Christians] ascribed the power of making every\nChristian, in some sense, partaker of a royal priesthood, which is not only\nsaid by Origen, but by Pope Leo, St. Jerome, and many others.\" His remarks\non the subject of sacerdotal vestments are not less striking. He mentions\nthe proofs brought forward by Baronius, that St. James the Just, first\nbishop of Jerusalem, and St. John the Evangelist \"wore the golden ornament\nwhich was prescribed for the mitre of the high priest in the Mosaic\nritual.\" He refers to Constantine's gift of \"a rich vestment, embroidered\nwith gold,\" to Macarius, bishop of Jerusalem, to be worn by him in the\ncelebration of the sacred offices. He cites ancient decrees concerning the\n_orarium_, or stole, and the different manner in which it was to be\nworn by priests and by deacons; mentions the ring and staff prescribed for\na bishop; and especially refers to the fact that black, as the symbol of\nsin and mourning, was everywhere excluded. Bishop Hopkins brings forward\nthese things by way of showing the multitude of points of conformity\nbetween the early Christian and the ancient Jewish ritual; but they do not\nseem to have awakened in his mind the question, \"Which, then, is the true\nChristian church?\" nor does he perceive that, however strongly they may\nsupport the Catholic practice, they do little good to the Episcopalians.\nThe first Church of England men understood the propriety of ritualistic\nmagnificence a great deal better than their descendants do. When they cast\noff faith and obedience they did not at the same time cast off the rich\npriestly robes, nor put out the altar lights, nor stop the swinging of\ncensers and chanting of psalms. The ritual of the primitive Protestants was\nhardly less gorgeous than that of mother church herself. When Archbishop\nParker was consecrated in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, he wore \"a long\nscarlet gown and a hood, with four torches carried before him: Bishop\nBarlow had a silk cope, being to administer the sacrament; four\narch-deacons, who attended him, wearing silk copes also.\" And a puritanical\nProtestant, Thomas Sampson, complained to Peter Martyr in 1550 that the\nministry of Christ was banished from the English court, because the image\nof the crucifix was allowed there, with lights burning before it. Dr.\nHopkins is at pains to show that the custom and unrepealed law of the\nChurch of England justify the use of a processional cross, two lights on\nthe altar, incense, surplice, alb, girdle, stole, dalmatic, tunicle,\nchasuble, cope, amice, cape or tippet, maniple, hood, and cassock; that the\nuse of oil in confirmation and extreme unction, and of _prayers for the\ndead_, which are found in the first Prayer-book of Edward VI., though\nthey were subsequently omitted from the liturgy, has never been prohibited\nand is still lawful. We suspect that to many Protestants this statement\nwill be a little startling.\n\nIt will not be more startling, however, than a view of what the liturgy of\nthe Church of England was in the first years of her heresy, and what,\naccording to the ritualistic party, it ought rightly to be now.\n{62}\nIt seems to be generally admitted that what is known as the first\nPrayer-book of Edward VI., published in 1549, is the standard to which the\nceremonial of the Establishment ought to be referred; that whatever was\nsanctioned or permitted under the rubrics of that work may be lawfully used\nor done now; and that the subsequent revisions of the Prayer-book, inasmuch\nas they have authoritatively condemned none of the ancient forms and\nexpressions of doctrine embodied in that earlier ritual, have no\nrestrictive force upon the liberty of the modern revivers of old Catholic\npractices. Let us see, then, what the first Prayer-book of Edward. VI. was,\nin its order of the communion service, the present battle-ground of\nritualism.\n\nThis portion of the liturgy was entitled, \"The Supper of the Lord and the\nHoly Communion, commonly called the Mass.\" It is divided into \"the\nOrdinary,\" and \"the Canon.\" The first part begins with the Lord's Prayer;\nand then follow the Collect for purity, the Introit (now omitted), the\n_Kyrie Eleison_, the _Gloria in Excelsis, Dominus Vobiscum_,\nCollects for the day and for the king, the Epistle, Gospel, and Nicene\nCreed, the sermon, Exhortation, Offertory, and Oblation; _Dominus\nVobiscum, Sursum Corda_, the Preface, and the _Sanctus_. The canon\nnow consists of one long prayer of consecration, but in the Prayer-book of\n1549 it comprised many other parts copied pretty closely from the missal;\nand the confession and absolution, which are now transferred to an early\npart of the ordinary, came in their proper place immediately before the\ncommunion. After communion were the _Agnus Dei_ and Post-Communion,\nthe Collects, and other prayers and ceremonies, very much as we have them\nin the mass. The rubric of 1549 says: \"When the clerks have done singing\nthe _Sanctus_, then shall the priest or deacon turn himself to the\npeople and say, 'Let us pray for the whole state of Christ's church;'\" to\nwhich the present office adds the words, \"militant here on earth.\" An able\npaper in a collection of essays by advanced ritualists, published in London\nlast year, [Footnote 11] argues from this that prayers for the dead\nformerly had place and are still allowable in the English liturgy. If this\nbe not so, the author says, \"we shall find ourselves placed in a dilemma\nwhich to a Catholic mind is inexpressibly painful. For.... it follows that\nthe liturgy of the English Church is the only living liturgy, the only\nknown extant liturgy which is wanting in remembrance of its faithful\ndeparted. From which dilemma we may devoutly say, Good Lord, deliver us.\"\n\n    [Footnote 11: The Church and the World: Essays on Questions of the Day.\n    By various writers. First series. Edited by the Rev. Orby Shipley, M.\n    A. Longmans, Green, Reader and Dyre. 1866.]\n\nIn the consecration prayers there is an important part found in the book Of\n1549, but now left out, of which the same writer says: \"We can scarcely too\ndeeply deplore the loss, or earnestly desire that it may be restored to\nus.\" This is the invocation of the Holy Ghost, and it reads as follows:\n\"Hear us, O merciful Father, we beseech thee, and with thy holy spirit and\nword vouchsafe to bl+ess and sanc+tify these thy gifts and creatures of\nbread and wine, that they may be to us the body and blood of thy most\ndearly beloved son Jesus Christ.\" Here we have not only an authorization\nbut an explicit direction for the use of the sign of the cross, at which\nmany good Episcopalians shudder nervously as at a diabolical popish\ninvention. It was left out of the later Prayer-books, but never prohibited.\n\nBefore the communion there is a formula of invitation which the minister is\nto read to the people, bidding them to the Lord's table. In the present\nPrayer-book it contains nothing which calls for special remark; but in that\nof 1549 it embraced the following passage: \"And if there be any of you\nwhose conscience is troubled and grieved in anything, lacking comfort or\ncounsel, let him come to me, or to some other discreet and learned priest,\ntaught in the law of God, and confess and open his sin and grief secretly\n.... _that of us he may receive comfort and absolution_,\" etc.\n\n{63}\n\nThe writer of the essay above quoted favors not only a return to the old\nEdwardian liturgy, but a revival of various other usages to which we need\nnot more particularly refer than by saying that they all have a genuine\nCatholic flavor. He sees no reason, apart from prejudice, why Anglicans\nshould not call their communion service by \"the old English word 'Mass;\"\nand he deprecates the Protestant custom of consuming at once all the bread\nand wine which are blessed for the Lord's Supper, without reserving any for\nthe visitation of the sick. \"Those who minister among the lowest poor in\nmissionary work,\" he says, \"can bear witness how distressing oftentimes are\ncelebrations in the crowded and sick rooms of a town population.\" And he\nquotes an instance in which the Eucharist had to be consecrated for a dying\nman who occupied one corner of a crowded room tenanted by several other\nfamilies. In another corner crouched a woman of the vilest class, and\nduring the consecration unclean insects were crawling over the \"fair white\nlinen cloth\" upon which the elements were laid. Can we wonder that to a\nminister who believes in the Real Presence, and in his own power to\nconsecrate, a celebration such as this must seem like profanation?\n\nIf there were nothing in this ritualistic revival but an attempt to borrow\nthe rich robes of faith and dress up in them the shrunken form of heresy,\nit would hardly be worth our attention. It is little to us whether the\nhuman laws of the realm of England permit the ministers of the Established\nChurch to stand with their backs to the congregation or not; whether they\nmay legally burn candles in daylight, or swing censers, or chant their\nprayers instead of saying them, or wear colored and embroidered vestments\ninstead of the plain surplice and the black gown. Since they have taken the\nliberty to discard faith and obedience, one would think it of little matter\nthat they should discard ceremonies also. After they have lost the\nsubstance, why should they care for the form? If they could abolish, for\ninstance, the celibacy of the clergy, they had surely as good a right to\nabolish a red or green chasuble. Indeed, to be logical, they ought to\nordain, alter, and abolish just what they please. But it is impossible not\nto see that there is a great deal more in this movement than a mere\nstriving after beautiful and impressive forms. There is first a reawakening\nof the Catholic idea of public worship, and a rejection of the common\nProtestant theory. It is the Protestant principle, not always expressly\nacknowledged, but practically acted upon, that the primary object of a\nreligious service is the edification of the people; it is the Catholic idea\nthat the chief purpose of that service is the worship of Almighty God. The\nEnglishman, Thomas Sampson, whose complaint to Peter Martyr touching lights\nand crucifixes, we quoted just now, says in the same letter: \"What hope is\nthere of any good when our friends are disposed to look for religion in\nthose dumb remnants of idolatry, and not in the _preaching_ of the\nlively word of God?\" And what is it but a recognition of this principle\nwhich causes most of the Protestant sects to lay such stress upon sermons\nas to make them the predominating feature of every service, and often gives\ntheir public prayers such a doctrinal and exhortatory character that they\ncan hardly be distinguished from sermons except by the substitution of the\nphrase \"Almighty God\" for \"Beloved brethren\"? Now, the ritualists, whatever\ntheir shortcomings, are at any rate free from this absurdity.\nSermon-hearing or meditation, says one of their late writers, may be\nsalutary enough in its proper time and place, but it is not worship. Here,\nno doubt, is a great advance in the right direction.\nBut this is not all.\n{64}\nAn essay \"On the Eucharistic Sacrifice\" in The Church and the World gives\nthe Catholic doctrine still more explicitly, and acknowledges \"that\nChristian worship is really the earthly exhibition of Christ's perpetual\nintercession as the sole high priest of his church, the sole acceptable\npresenter of the one worship of his one body in heaven and in earth, and\nthat as such it culminates in his own mysterious presence, in and by the\nsacrament of his most precious body and blood.\"\n\nIn this recognition of the true functions of the Christian ministry, the\ntrue character of the worship which ought to be offered in God's holy\ntemple, we may suppose the ritualists to be pretty well agreed. But\ndoctrinally, they may be divided into two classes. With the one class, a\ngorgeous ritual is merely the gratification of an aesthetic or antiquarian\ntaste; with the other it is the logical development of an advance in\ndoctrine. The one class would bring back the practice of the Anglican\nChurch to what it used to be in old days; the other would imitate the rites\nand ceremonies which were followed in the Catholic Church ages before\nAnglicanism was heard of.\n\nThe second class is, we believe, the more numerous, as it certainly is by\nfar the more important of the two. Its views are set forth with frankness\nand decided ability in the volume which we have already quoted; and we are\ncertain that no one can read these essays without feeling that the\nritualists are legitimate successors of the tractarians of thirty years\nago, and that there is promise of as much good from the agitation which\nthey are leading as came from the great movement of Dr. Newman and Dr.\nPusey. \"Ritualism,\" says one of the essayists, \"is not employed as a\nside-wind, by which to bring in certain tenets surreptitiously, but as the\nnatural complement of those tenets after they have been long and sedulously\ninculcated.\" The burning of candles and incense is of very little moment,\nconsidered as a mere form, but it is of great moment when it is done as the\nritualists do it for the sake of rendering honor to the real presence of\nour Lord. It is of no consequence what order of words or what gestures or\nwhat dress the Anglican minister uses in reading the communion office,\nbecause he has not the priestly character, and if he followed literally the\nmissal itself, he could not celebrate a valid mass. But if he comes as\nclose to the missal as he can, by way of testifying that he believes in the\ndoctrines stated and symbolized in the missal; if he imitates the\nceremonies of the daily Christian sacrifice, in order to show his belief in\nthe sacrificial character of the Eucharist, that fact becomes of serious\nimportance, and indicates a genuine progress toward truth, at which every\ngood Catholic ought to rejoice. The practice of auricular confession is not\nnew in the Anglican Church; but it acquires additional significance when it\nis spoken of, as it is in the Church and the Word, by the name of \"the\nsacrament of penance,\" for the Church of England recognizes no sacraments\nexcept baptism and the supper of the Lord.\n\nIf there is any name which a genuine ritualist really hates it is that of\nProtestant. The avowed purpose of the advanced school is to unprotestantize\nthe Church of England; and the writer just quoted speaks of having found\ncomfort at a time of spiritual doubt and trial, in the belief that the\nEnglish Church was still a part of the Catholic Church, \"unless she sinned\nsufficiently at the reformation to justify Rome in cutting her off.\" \"Our\nplace is appointed us,\" says the same essayist, \"among Protestants and in a\ncommunion deeply tainted in its practical system by Protestant heresy; but\nour duty is the expulsion of the evil, and not flight from it, any more\nthan it is a duty for those to leave the Roman Church who become conscious\nalso of abuses within her system.\" The Church of England indeed, has but a\nweak hold upon the faith or affection of the ritualists of this school.\n{65}\nWe find the XXXIX. Articles spoken of as \"those Protestant articles\ntacked on to a Catholic liturgy, those forty stripes save one, as some have\ncalled them,\n\nlaid on the back of the Anglican priesthood;\" and in the same book we are\ntold that \"the universal church, and not the Church of England, is becoming\nthe standard to which doctrine and practice must be conformed, and the\nadvantages in many respects of other divisions of it over our own are\nbecoming recognized.\" Prepared as many of these men are to accept the\ndoctrines of the church in every particular except the supremacy of the\nPope and the immaculate conception of the blessed Virgin, and to follow her\ndiscipline even to clerical celibacy, religious vows, and sacramental\nconfession, can we doubt that there is hope of their overcoming the\nremaining obstacles to their conversion, and that the London Weekly\nRegister is right when it calls this \"the most important religious crisis\nthat England has witnessed since the so-called Reformation.\"\n\nAnd even in the vagaries of the other branch of ritualists, the church\nmilliners, if we may be allowed the expression, who imagine they are\nbringing back their errant sect to the honest life of old, when they copy\nthe forms and ceremonies, the lights and vestures, the incense and the\nchants of the primitive liturgy, without conforming to the doctrines which\nthese observances are intended to symbolize; who set up as their standard\nof conformity not the universal church as she has been through all ages,\nbut the Anglican establishment as it was in its infancy, before it had\nquite forgotten Catholic truth and propriety; even in the hollow ritualism\nof this school, we say, there is cause for gratification. Unlike the\nbuilders of material temples, who must work up from base to summit, these\necclesiastical architects can sometimes construct their foundation after\nthe superstructure is finished. The mere copying of sacred forms is apt to\nlead them to the sacred faith and spirit; and, any way, it is something\ngained to know that one can bend before a crucifix without breaking the\ncommandments, and that frankincense is not an abomination in the sight of\nthe Lord.\n\n------\n\n    Original.\n\n    The Cross.\n\n\n  O Tree, how strong thy branches are,\n  To bear such wondrous, weighty fruit!\n     \"_He_ strength imparts.\"\n\n  Than all, thy fruit is sweeter far.\n  What genial soil doth feed thy root?\n     \"Men's loving hearts.\"\n\n------\n\n{66}\n\n    Translated from the French.\n\n\n    Robert; Or, The Influence Of A Good Mother.\n\n    Chapter VII.\n\n    \"To be an artist . . . .\n     It is his hope, his faith, his ambition.\"\n\n\nGenius, however great, will not make a man famous unless he works for fame.\nRobert felt this and had strength, perseverance, and courage to labor, for\nhe was poor and of obscure name, and he knew what he could do, and was\ndetermined to do it. But, like all who struggle through this life, he had\nhis depressions and his griefs, which he bore bravely; and if\ndiscouragement ever glided into his soul, he instantly resorted to prayer,\nand peace and repose would then spread their wings over him. He imposed\nupon himself the strict obligation of never wasting a moment of time, and\nchained himself to his work, as a galley slave is chained; accepting his\npresent life, mercenary and prosaic as it is, with perfect resignation and\nhappiness, feeling that God has made it thus, and that he must be thankful\nfor it. Existence was a happiness to him, for his heart was good, and duty\nwas to him perfect joy; and knowing he was necessary to the happiness of\nMadame Gaudin, he devoted himself to her as a son. By degrees her strength\nreturned, and at last she was able to resume the management of the\nhousehold, which placed more time at Robert's disposition, and his mind,\nrid of these cares, regains its elasticity and primitive vigor. Artistic\nreveries come back, the fire of creative inspiration fills his soul, and he\nstands before his canvas, on which the faint outlines of the Virgin are\ntraced. Then another dream seizes him, and hours and days and weeks of\npatient labor are necessary to faithfully bring out his ideas, and at first\nall is chaos; but slowly the canvas becomes animated, and finally Robert,\nlike Pygmalion, stands in ecstasy before his work. His body trembles with\nenthusiasm, his eyes moisten, his knees give way under him--and why this\nemotion? He has faithfully presented the scene where, between God and his\nmother, his happy childhood was passed. The picture is astonishingly and\nwonderfully true. Here stands out boldly the savage grandeur of Ecorcharde,\nwith its rugged sides and deep ravines--there the valley through which the\nsilver waters of the Dordogne run--the village of Bains--the church spire,\nthe rectory--and all the crowning glory of this mountain, its woods and\nsombre verdure. There the little house where Robert had lived for twelve\nyears, and, at the extremity of the valley, the peak of Sauci, which\nmajestically crowned the whole. The memory of the young artist is faithful,\nand he forgets nothing. Standing on a clearing on the mountain side is a\nwoman, and a child is playing near her; it is Robert and his mother. The\nsun is just sinking below the horizon, and sheds upon the scene the glory\nof its waves of gold and purple. Each day Robert gave many hours to this\npicture, in which he relived his childhood's days; and, when completed, it\nwas a perfect masterpiece of grace and taste, and finished with much care.\nHis touch was fresh and bold--the animals that reposed in the valley were\nperfect, the trees of exquisite foliage, and the lights and shades of\ndelicious harmony.\n\nOne morning the young painter was at work, bringing out a stronger effect\nof light on his picture, when a loud knock at the door drew him from his\nwork. He opened it, and standing before him was his late master.\n\n{67}\n\n\"Where have you been, my dear Robert?\" asked the illustrious artist; \"I\nhave been so uneasy about you. Tell me why you have not been in my studio\nfor so long a time?\"\n\nRobert, touched by this mark of interest, given with so much affability and\nsimplicity, replied by a recital of the painful position in which he had\nbeen thrown by the sickness of Madame Gaudin, and told in such warm terms\nof her generous conduct to him, that the artist did not know which to\nadmire most--the lively gratitude of the one, or beautiful devotion of the\nother.\n\nThe artist grasped his hand, and, pressing it warmly, said, \"You have done\nyour duty, and can never reproach yourself with ingratitude.\" Then, turning\ntoward the picture, he explained, \"Can this be your work? It is wonderful?\"\nAfter a few moments, in which he was perfectly absorbed, he said, \"Robert,\nyou are ignorant of your talent; you know more than I do, and must be a\ngreat painter ere long.\" Then, clasping the stupefied young man in his\narms, be pressed him to his heart in a generous transport of admiration.\n\nMadame Gaudin, who had gone out to buy provisions for the day, stopped at\nthe open door to ask what it could all mean; and when she understood what\nthey were speaking about, she felt a great joy, and exclaimed, \"I knew it;\nI knew he would be a great painter.\" Her excess of happiness made her steps\na little trembling and uncertain; and, without caring for the presence of\nthe stranger, she said to Robert, \"God will bless thee, my boy; God will\nrecompense thy Christian virtues, and all the affection thou hast had for a\npoor old woman like me.\" Then, noticing the artist, she said, \"I cannot\nhelp it; excuse me, sir, but I must embrace him, I must press him to my\nheart, and then I will be content.\"\n\nRobert yielded to her caresses in a manner which attested better than words\nthe sincerity of his attachment for the worthy woman.\n\nThe approbation and praises given his work by his master made a profound\nimpression on the mind of Robert.\n\n\"My dear boy,\" said the artist, \"I will buy your picture at a good price.\nEach one of us should aid others to find the road on which he has gathered\nthe flowers of fortune. God has blessed my work and made me rich, but I\ncannot enjoy the favors of fortune alone; I must aid others, and share with\nthem the riches that God has loaned me. My purse, my credit, my protection\nare yours to-day, and I want you to use them without hesitation, for I\ncherish you as a pupil and love you as a friend. When I pay the debt of\nlife, I hope to endow a great painter. Work, then, my boy; work for glory;\nyou are now on the road to fame, and it will lead you to fortune.\" Before\nleaving he put in Madame Gaudin's hand a well-filled purse, and said, \"Keep\nsilence; say nothing of this to Robert.\"\n\nRobert had another joy on this eventful day. Toward night he was going on\nan errand for Madame Gaudin, and near the Pont Neuf, by the Place Dauphine,\nhe heard the voice of a man uttering a kind of lament for Napoleon. The\nvoice was loud and strong, and in its modulations there was so much sorrow\nthat he hastened toward the man, to see if his features verified a\nsuspicion that came across his mind. He knew he had seen this man before.\nHe was a street singer; and the longer he listened to him, the more\nconvinced was he in his belief. Soon his eyes were fixed on a large wound\nin his forehead, and, no longer doubting, he called out, \"O Cyprien! my\ngood Cyprien!\" at the same time holding out his hand.\n\n\"Pardon--excuse me--I do not know you.\"\n\n\"But are you not Cyprien Hardy, ex-grenadier of the Imperial Guards?\" said\nRobert.\n\n\"I am no other person; but I can't remember to have seen you before.\"\n\n{68}\n\n\"I remember you,\" said Robert, with expression. \"The little orphan that you\ntook before the palace at Fontainebleau and conducted to Paris, although\neight years ago, has not forgotten his protector and friend, and now wishes\nto shake hands with him; you will not refuse me that pleasure surely?\"\n\n\"Ah! truly no--a thousand times no--I cannot refuse. Touched there,\" said\nhe, putting his hand on his heart, \"I know it is Robert who speaks to me;\nmy little Robert, grown to be a man. You have changed much, young man, and\nso have I; but that does not matter; I have suffered cruelly. Oh my loved\nemperor! if I could only go to him.\"\n\n\"Come with me,\" said Robert; \"we can talk entirely as we please when alone;\ncome with me and I will take you to a person who knows you already, and\nwho, I am certain beforehand, will be glad to see you.\"\n\nThe idle and curious people who were standing by when this touching\nrecognition took place all walked off and left the place clear to our\nfriends.\n\n\"A thousand thunders, Mister Robert, you are no prouder now in Paris than\nwhen we came in together, but you walk too fast for my old legs.\"\n\n\"Pardon me, Cyprien,\" said he, stopping quickly, \"but I am so anxious to\nget you home that I forget you may be fatigued and may need my arm. Take\nit, my friend, for it is sure, like my affection for you; take it and we\ncan walk faster. I am afraid Madame Gaudin will be uneasy if I stay out so\nlong, and I do not like to give her the least uneasiness.\"\n\n\"Oh!\" said the soldier, stretching up, for he was bent more by grief than\nyears, \"you are a worthy young man, and not proud at all. You do not blush\nto give your arm to a brigand of the Loire; for that is what we poor\nsoldiers who regret our emperor are called. But tell me, who is this Madame\nGaudin--what in the deuce do you call her?\"\n\n\"Gaudin, my good Cyprien.\"\n\n\"Gaudin! Oh! well, I suppose she is some particular person, is she?\"\n\n\"She is a good and excellent woman, to whom I owe all that I am, and who\nhas made every sacrifice for me, and whom I love with all my heart.\"\n\n\"Ah! I understand; it is a widow that wants to catch you?\"\n\n\"Oh! no, my good Cyprien,\" said Robert, laughing; \"it is a person that you\nknow, the old housekeeper of the lamented Abb\u00e9 Verneuil. You know the\npriest who gave me so sweet a welcome when I arrived in Paris, and who\nplaced me at the house of Madame de Vernanges?\"\n\n\"Yes, yes; it comes back to my memory now, and I took a bitter hatred\nagainst her the day I pulled the door bell at the cur\u00e9's. She looked at me\nwith a pair of eyes that shone like balls of fire, because I twisted my\nmustache when I spoke to her. Well, what has become of the priest?\"\n\n\"Alas! he is dead, and much too soon for me. Oh! it was one of my dark\ndays, Cyprien.\"\n\n\"The same as mine for my emperor. I weep for him as you weep for the cur\u00e9.\"\n\n\"We have good reason, my friend, to remember such men, and to forget them\nwould be to forget ourselves.\"\n\n\"So you tell me, old Gaudin is living with you?\"\n\n\"No, no; I should have told you I lived with the dear, good woman; for\nsince the death of the abb\u00e9 this generous woman has provided for all my\nwants, spent for me her hard savings, and in every way tried to console me\nfor what I had lost. Yes, my friend, this good Madame Gaudin pushed forward\nmy taste for drawing and painting; and I thank her from the depths of my\nheart, and can say without vanity that these sacrifices have not been lost.\nI am rejoiced that I can give her some happiness, and it may be that in the\nturning of the wheel of fortune I may gain wealth, and all that I have and\nall that I may ever have shall be hers, for she has done everything for\nme.\"\n\n{69}\n\n\"Certainly,\" said Cyprien, \"and I embrace the good woman with my heart,\"\nmounting slowly as he said it, the four steps that led to their house.\nRobert had gone in ahead of him and returned with Madame Gaudin, who\nreceived the old soldier kindly, and feasted him as a friend, making his\nlonely and bruised heart feel happier than it had for a long time. After\nsupper Robert asked him to tell them all that had happened him since they\nlast met.\n\n\"There is but one subject for me, my dear Robert,\" said he, \"and that is my\nemperor. I have so much joy and so much sorrow when I pronounce this\ncherished name; I am so moved when I recall the days when fortune abandoned\nhim, that it is almost better for me not to revert to the subject; but,\nsince you wish it, I will commence. When we had seen the last of the Little\nCorporal, and I found I could do nothing more for him, I commenced singing\nhis praises through the streets, even at the risk of being imprisoned; and\nnow he is dead,\" said he, with a melancholy air--\"died on that lonely rock\nwhere he was held a captive, and the only hope I have left is in heaven.\"\n\nHe looked so tired now that Robert made him go to bed, and before he was up\nin the morning ran out and brought him suitable clothes, so that when he\nawakened he found new ones instead of the rags he had laid on his bed. \"I\nwant Cyprien to stay with me,\" said Robert, \"for he has been a faithful\nsoldier, and I am young, and can work for us both;\" but it was a difficult\nmatter to get his consent for this arrangement, and he had to tell him many\ntimes that he would be so useful to him, and that he really needed him\nbefore he would accept the offer. Finally he agreed to become an inmate of\nthe modest household. He mixed colors for the young painter, rendered\nlittle services to Madame Gaudin, who did all she could to aid Robert to\nmake him happy. From this time God seemed to open to him the treasures of\nthe choicest favors, and to spread them in profusion on the head of the\nyoung painter. Warmly recommended to the world by the great artist who had\nbeen his master, esteemed for his excellent conduct, and justly appreciated\nfor his talent, which was now burning in all its lustre, he could look\nforward to a happy future. His mother's prediction was being gradually\naccomplished, and this aided him. Whenever he sat down to composing, he\nfirst implored the assistance of God, with the firm belief that it would\nnot be refused; and it was not, for the blessed Lord crowns with benefits\nthose who serve him with love. Nothing gives courage like the certainty of\nsuccess; and, full of an indefatigable ardor for his art, he worked hard,\ndisdaining the vain pleasures of the world, and his labor was recompensed.\nAs he advanced in age, the love of his art consumed him the more, and in\nplace of the wild enthusiasm he felt at first he was filled with a deep and\nserious sentiment, and wanted to study the old masters under the bright sky\nof Italy. The only drawback he had ever had to his dreams of studying there\nwas the thought of leaving Madame Gaudin alone; but now that Cyprien was\nwith her, he would keep her company during his absence. He was too firmly\nconvinced of the old man's affection to doubt for a moment that he would\nfail to fulfill any instructions he might give him; but before leaving\nFrance he wished to visit his native mountain, and pray on the grave of his\nmother. He was now twenty-one years of age, and had not forgotten the\npackage he was to receive when he attained his majority, and which he felt\nsure contained some instructions from his well-beloved mother, which it\nwould he a pleasure for him to obey. After quieting his fears about Cyprien\nand poor Madame Gaudin, he wiped away the tears of the good woman, embraced\nher tenderly, and, after receiving Cyprien's promise to take good care of\nthe charge confided to his friendship, Robert set out for l'Auvergne.\n\n{70}\n\n    Chapter VIII.\n\n    * * * * * *\n\n    \"She sleeps--all is silent now,\n      No more heart-beats.\"\n\n\nThe most touching and beautiful affection in the world is that for parents,\nfor their homes, and their graves. A child who reveres his mother's memory\nwill keep his name free from blemish; for a good name is a precious\nheritage, and the remembrance of virtues in either father or mother will\nshield against bad actions like an impenetrable buckler. But, alas! a\nveneration for the names of our fathers is no longer in honor among men.\nFamily homesteads are ruthlessly destroyed by those who forget that every\nstone is sacred to some tender memory; and it seems now that cool\nindifference has replaced that sweet affection which of old united parents\nand children. How common a thing it is in the present day to see children\ndisrespectful to those who have given them birth; and to what can this\nperversion of heart, which chills all natural feelings, be attributed but a\nwant of religious training, that sanctifying, purifying power which is\nbased upon God's holy will and divine commandments; and faith, hope, and\ncharity, the celestial virtues which ought to fill all hearts?\n\nWith Robert, advancing years had not weakened in his soul the tender\nveneration be avowed for the memory of his mother and her virtues. It was\nto the principles she had instilled into his mind that he was indebted for\nhis present prosperity and happiness, for, though genius is the inestimable\ngift of God, it needs guidance and consecration; and all the pious\nsentiments which were afterward developed in his soul were from the seeds\nsown by that angel mother.\n\nRobert took the road to Clermont, and could have flown the entire distance,\nso eager was he to get to his old home. And again and again doubts would\nfill his mind as to whether he would find the loved grave; whether pitiless\ntime would not in nine years, have effaced the letters which traced the\nname of his mother? Clermont at last appeared in the distance, then the\nvillage of Bains, and then he was at the door of the rectory, standing with\na beating heart to see a loved face, but the door is opened by a strange\npriest, from whom he learns that the venerable cur\u00e9 whom he sought was\ndead, but in dying he left instructions to his successor; begging that\nMadame Dormeuil's grave should not be neglected, which gave Robert but\nanother proof of his imperishable love. After obeying the first wish of his\nheart and visiting his mother's grave, he obtained the papers which\nconcerned him, and, opening them with emotion, read as follows:\n\n  \"My dear son: I did not wish you to know the contents of these papers\n  until you were twenty-one, because it seemed to me that before this time\n  you would hardly comprehend them, and I thought it best to wait until you\n  had experience and maturity of judgment. You know we are rarely willing\n  to take the experience of others for our instruction; believing that what\n  shipwrecked them we would have been wise enough to have avoided; that we\n  would have acted better, reasoned better, than those who have preceded us\n  on the perilous sea called the world. The blind lead the blind, and when\n  we fall we are astonished. It is so with all men. Being feeble, they\n  think they are strong; being dependent, they think they are free; being\n  powerless, they think they are creatures of genius. But thou, my dear\n  child, wilt have more strength than those who repose in themselves the\n  care of their conduct, and do not invoke God to light them with his\n  divine rays. In the moment of trial they fall; it happened so to me, my\n  son, when I took my own feeble reason for my guide. But, though I have no\n  grave faults to reproach myself for, it is not the less true that I have\n  compromised thy future, and forgotten my duties as a wife and my duties\n  as a Christian, for I have not been indulgent and forgetful of injuries.\n{71}\n  To-day, by God's grace, I am calm. I judge myself more severely then he\n  will judge me, and I feel guilty and cannot excuse myself to thy eyes, by\n  my youth, inexperience, and the isolation in which I found myself, when I\n  claimed the right of breaking the links which I ought to have respected\n  for my son. But it was my fault, and I will have the courage to tell you\n  all--to confess all my sins, and then ask for pardon. Dormeuil is not thy\n  name, my child; it is mine, the name of my father, a plebeian name, but\n  without blemish. Thy name is De Verceil, and thy father is the Count\n  Sosth\u00e8ne de Verceil. At ten years of age, I lost my father; my mother\n  died in giving me birth, and I was left to the charge of an aunt who was\n  my only relative. This worthy woman was not rich, but an annuity left her\n  by her husband and the revenue from some savings placed her above want,\n  and her kind heart pitied my orphanage, and she shared everything with\n  me. I owe to her five years of happiness, and oh! that it were more; her\n  counsels and her tenderness would have spared me the regrets I feel at\n  this hour. She had placed me in a school of great renown, wishing, she\n  said, to leave me, in lieu of fortune, a good education. Notwithstanding\n  my plebeian name I had a crowd of friends of rich and noble heritage, for\n  youth never thinks of the differences in rank or the prerogatives of\n  birth; and it was thus that I became the friend of an amiable young girl,\n  Helena de Verceil. Her brother came to see her often, and, as we were\n  inseparable, I was generally present at these visits. I was a simple and\n  candid girl, and these traits made a profound impression on the young\n  count, and when I left the school some months after Helena I continued to\n  see him from time to time, at his sister's house, for she was married\n  immediately after leaving school. Young, ardent, impetuous, and unused to\n  any resistance, the count fell easily into the snare which was held out\n  to his inexperience by an irresistible tenderness. His passion, far from\n  calming, grew stronger each day, and he resolved to overcome all\n  obstacles and ask to marry me, although his age and his tastes were far\n  from this grave determination. With his fortune and hand, he came to beg\n  my aunt's consent, and to pray that she would not defer his happiness.\n  Overwhelmed with joy at so brilliant and advantageous an offer for her\n  niece, she gave her consent, for in all her dreams for the daughter of\n  her cherished brother she had never caressed so sweet an illusion as\n  this. She accepted it with the more gratitude as she knew she had a\n  mortal malady which would soon leave me alone, in the midst of the\n  manifold dangers that assail youth. In taking for his wife an obscure and\n  poor girl the count was alienated from all his family, and his proud and\n  noble parents would not pardon this unworthy _mesalliance_. He\n  could, they said, have married a woman of rank and wealth, but this\n  unprofitable union to the eyes of people blinded by their titles,\n  whatever may have been the qualities of heart, was nothing and worse than\n  nothing. He could obtain no favor from them, after putting so dark a spot\n  on their escutcheon. These humiliations and insults would have had no\n  effect upon me, could I have been consoled by the tender affection of my\n  aunt, who saw but too late that wealth does not give happiness; and in\n  less than two years after my marriage I was called to mourn her loss. The\n  love of the count was soon extinguished, and men are very apt to be\n  ungrateful and cruel when they cease to love. His conduct soon proved\n  that he had only formed for me an ephemeral attachment, but I loved him\n  above everything, and with all the energy of my soul; and this love\n  increased when I became a mother, and I dared to believe that this title\n  imposed by nature, and so dear to most men, would touch the heart of my\n  husband, but the paternal sentiment could not triumph over the aversion\n  the count felt for her whom, in a moment of insensate passion, he had\n  taken for his wife.\n{72}\n  For one moment a ray of joy burned in his eyes when he saw that he had an\n  inheritor; it was the pride of having a son, nothing more. He soon left\n  my side, and I saw no more of him, except in the rare moments he\n  consecrated to thee. Carried away in a round of pleasures, stifling in\n  the noise of revelry the cries of conscience, regretting his liberty,\n  furious at finding himself tied to a woman who was the only obstacle to\n  his ambitious desires, be wished to give the half of his fortune to get\n  clear of me; he overwhelmed me with reproaches, and flew into furious\n  rages about my being the cause of his misfortunes.\n\n  \"One day, after a fit of fury, in which he had treated me most cruelly,\n  he said, 'I do not wish you to nourish this child any more; I am not\n  going to have him raised by you!' These words struck me dumb. I had you\n  in my arms, my dear Robert, and I resolved to keep you there, and fly\n  with you to where he could not find me. I had laid by the sum of four\n  thousand francs, which my aunt had left me, and some savings from my\n  father's pension, with the jewels my husband gave me at our marriage.\n  These I sold, and that, added to the rest, made ten thousand francs. I\n  filled a trunk with the clothing which was absolutely necessary for us,\n  leaving behind all luxuries, and all ornaments and jewels, save a\n  portrait of thy father, which is in a small medallion set in pearls, and\n  may aid you to recognize him. All my preparations being made, I waited\n  until the servants had gone to their evening meal, and then, with a\n  thousand precautions, left by a stairway which led to the vestibule. It\n  was scarcely night when I came out and found a stage to take my baggage\n  and myself. I did not know at first where to go, but I wanted to fly far\n  from the city where I had suffered so much, and to assure myself of\n  keeping my child; this was my only thought, my only desire. In thinking\n  over where I should go, I remembered that my parents were originally of\n  l'Auvergne, and in my childhood I had heard my father describe this part\n  of France, and, above all, the baths of Mount Dore. I hesitated no\n  longer, taking the road to Clermont, but filled with the most horrid\n  fears. Each time the stage stopped I fancied I saw the angry figure of\n  thy father, and that he jerked thee from my arms. What I suffered during\n  this journey I can never express to you. A thousand terrors, shudderings,\n  and anguishes of all kinds agitated me, until I feared I should lose my\n  reason. If anyone looked at me, I thought they knew my secret, and was\n  ready to scream with horror. The gallop of a horse made me tremble and\n  think I was overtaken, and my emotion would have betrayed me had the\n  passengers been interested in watching my movements. Every unknown person\n  I suspected as an enemy, and the remembrance of those hours of my life is\n  still so vivid that they even now fill me with horror. However, I arrived\n  at Clermont without accident, and remained there long enough to inform\n  myself of the chances of being able to find a small house to let, in the\n  neighborhood of the baths of Mount Dore. Here the first years of thy life\n  were passed, and no remarkable event has ever troubled our happy\n  solitude. What I have most dreaded was that I might have to return to the\n  world, but God spares me this; he will take me soon. Thou canst now judge\n  of my anguish at the thought of being separated from thee, and the\n  desolation of my soul, that I know will soon leave thee alone in the\n  world. O my child! in this hour, when my love redoubles its strength and\n  struggles against death to enjoy some moments more of thy sweet society,\n  I weep bitterly at the loneliness I have made for thee. I may, perhaps,\n  exaggerate my wrongs; I may have acted badly; but when the moment comes\n  when I will appear before my sovereign Judge, to render an account for\n  all my actions, if I reproach myself with voluntarily throwing off the\n  yoke which weighed me down, I will say also, with the same frankness,\n  that I rejoice to have raised thee far from the world's corruptions and\n  would rather leave thee alone in life than surrounded by wicked men.\n{73}\n  I have tried to instil good principles into thy mind, and I know that\n  thou fearest and lovest God and will cherish my memory, and the heart is\n  the talisman that will preserve thee from evil. I have the firm\n  conviction that thou wilt never forget the sublime teachings of religion,\n  and that it will ever guide thee in the right way. Pardon me, my son, for\n  having deprived thee of thy father's caresses and protection; and as I\n  have need of thy indulgence, I will be indulgent to others, and efface\n  all remembrance of what I have suffered, and will think only of the\n  happiness thou hast given me. Then, if it pleases God that thou shouldst\n  ever find thy father, tell him that I pardoned him long ago, but that I\n  never forgave myself for my conduct to him. Tell him that to the last\n  hour of my life I regretted I could not make him happy; and, if remorse\n  should fill his heart, console him, my child, be to him an angel of\n  mercy, be prodigal of thy cares and tenderness, for repentance is a\n  second baptism; it is the regeneration of the soul. When thou wilt read\n  the lines I now trace with trembling hand, it will be long after I have\n  bid adieu to the transitory things of time. Thou wilt be a man and\n  subject to passions. If thou art pure, God be blessed a thousand times;\n  if thou art feeble, repent sincerely and call upon God to assist thee.\n  Respect, above all things, the purity of affection. Hold out thy hand to\n  help all who need encouragement and pity. A word of compassion does more\n  good than severity and reproach. What can I say more, but what thou\n  knowest better than I do? for I have seen little of the world, and what I\n  have seen makes me regard it with horror. Flee from the wicked, from whom\n  nothing can be gained and all lost. Whatever career you may choose, fill\n  it with honor and credit. Happiness consists neither in feasting nor the\n  brilliancy of riches; it is in the life within, in doing good and making\n  others happy, and in laying up treasures in heaven. Recall often the\n  sweet and peaceful joys of thy childhood, the twelve years of thy life\n  which will forever be engraven in thy heart. May these simple pleasures\n  inspire thee with wisdom to choose between the burning, wasting pleasures\n  of a vain world, and the pure joys of retirement.\"\n\nThus finished the letter.\n\n  \"O my precious mother!\" cried Robert, raising his eyes toward heaven, \"if\n  thou wert living, I would say to thee, with lively gratitude, 'Thou hast\n  done well;' for, if I am exempt from the passions of youth, it is to thy\n  tender care that I owe it; it is to thy love and thy virtues that I am\n  indebted for that peace of mind which makes my whole life happy. O my\n  good mother! thy memory will ever be for me a precious talisman, and thy\n  least desires and wishes will be sacred orders for thy son; and I swear\n  by thy revered memory to try and find my father, if the Lord will permit\n  me.\"\n\nTo the confession of his mother were joined the register of the birth of\nRobert and the marriage of Mlle. Stephanie Dormeuil with the Count Sosth\u00e8ne\nde Verceil. Though Robert had the right to take his father's name, be did\nnot wish it. He preferred the more humble one of his mother, and hoped, by\nhis talent, to raise it above the noble one of his father; to efface its\noriginal plebeianism under a crown of fame. This was the generous idea of a\ngood son, who wished to avenge the contempt his mother had received from\nhis noble grandparents. He had now but this desire, and determined the\nmaternal name should be cited among the illustrious.\n\nAfter one more visit to the grave of his mother, and another to his loved\nmountain, the little house, and all the place, which spoke so eloquently of\nher, he set out for the classic land of Italy, the cradle of the arts and\nsciences.\n\n{74}\n\n    Chapter IX.\n\n    \"A man may lose in a moment\n    His glory, empire, and dazzling throne.\"\n        --Victor Hugo.\n\n\nRobert, after having lingered long on the shores of Lake Geneva, in the\ncity and its environs, so rich in natural beauties, and having admired the\ngrandeur of the Alps, and, above all, Mount Blanc, the Jura, and Mount\nSal\u00e8re, arrived at Saint Ren\u00e9, a small village at the foot of the Great St.\nBernard. This was the 20th of May, 1824.\n\nThe young painter wished to pass the night at the convent with the monks,\nso he asked for a guide, but was told that they only started in the morning\nto take travellers to that high point, and the innkeeper advised him to\nwait until the next day; but he was not willing to take this advice, as\ntime was so precious to him that a day passed in inaction was an\nirreparable loss. So be started out through the village to look for a\nguide, but the man had told him the truth--there was not a guide to be\nfound. Robert expressed so much regret at his disappointment to a worthy\nold man that he replied:\n\n\"If it were any other day Joseph would conduct monsieur better than anyone\nelse, for be was the oldest guide, but unfortunately he could not do it,\nfor it was the 20th of May, and this day he always spends at church in\npraying for his benefactor. But if you will go to his house you can see\nhim; it is down there,\" at the same time pointing to a pretty little\ncottage with a garden in front. \"A famous history, monsieur, that of\nJoseph, and if he goes up with you, be will tell it you, and I must not\ntake up more of your time.\"\n\n\"I am much obliged for your information, my good man, and will try and put\nit to profit.\" Then he took the road toward the house, and soon reached it,\nbut imagine his disappointment to find it closed! As he was turning to\nleave, he met a man of about fifty years of age, with a woman, still fresh\nand beautiful, leaning on his arm, and they seemed to be absorbed in each\nother; and in looking at them Robert forgot for a moment the guide he was\nseeking. They stopped at the gate, and were about entering it when he\nasked, \"Is this the man Joseph of whom I was told--the guide up the\nmountain?\"\n\n\"At your service, sir,\" replied he. \"I am the person; do you wish to be\ntaken there?\"\n\n\"I do, but they told me at the village that you could not be induced to go\non the 20th of May, but I thought I would ask for myself, and I assure you\nI will be very grateful if you can make this sacrifice in my favor, for I\nhave the greatest desire to pass the night with the good monks.\" His\namiable and polite manner had won the favor of the guide, but still he was\nundecided. Robert, seeing his hesitation, begged him to give his consent.\n\n\"It seems a little late to start,\" said the guide, reflecting and looking\nas if he did not care to go.\n\n\"Oh, we can walk fast,\" said Robert gayly.\n\n\"Well, I find I must give up to you,\" said he, half sadly, half smiling.\n\"Come in the house, sir, while I change my clothes, and you may flatter\nyourself with having gained a victory. It has been many years since I put\nmy foot on the mountain on the anniversary of this great day. It has been\ntwenty-four years since then.\"\n\nRobert was looking at a picture while he spoke, representing Napoleon\nmounted on a mule, climbing up the Saint Bernard, escorted by a guide.\n\n\"Aye, aye,\" said Joseph with emphasis, \"this is my history--that guide who\nwalks by the side of the first consul is me, I had the honor of conducting\nhim.\"\n\n\"Indeed,\" cried Robert, \"oh! do tell me about it. If my poor Cyprien was\nonly here, how delighted he would be to hear of the emperor he loves so\nmuch.\"\n\n\"Is this Cyprien one of his faithful soldiers, sir?\"\n\n{75}\n\n\"Yes, and he is more than that; he is one of those soldier heroes who would\ngive the last drop of their heart's blood for the emperor. I have had the\nhappiness, with God's aid, to have saved from misery this noble wreck of\nimperial glory, for he was indeed miserable when he lost his emperor.\"\n\n\"Well, my good young man, that decides me at once, for, since you have\nsaved one of the old soldiers of the emperor, I can refuse you nothing, for\nI loved him also, and had good reasons for so doing. We will start, and on\nthe way I will tell you to whom I am indebted for this pretty little house,\nso good a wife, and children, that make all my joy. We must go rapidly, or\nwe will run the risk of a storm, for we have only time to arrive before\nnight, and in our mountains storms come up very suddenly.\" Then turning to\nhis wife, he embraced her and said, \"Don't be uneasy, Margaret, I will\nreturn to-morrow.\" They walked briskly, and soon left the village behind\nthem, and the guide commenced his history.\n\n\"Twenty-four years ago, our valley was not so peaceful as it now is. It was\ninvaded by French troops, whose tumult was rather a strange contrast to the\nusual noise of the mountains--the roar of the tempest and the moving of\nthe avalanches. The guides all became worn out with fatigue, and one\nmorning I was ordered out. I did not receive the order with much pleasure,\nbut I was young, poor, and unfortunately in love with the most beautiful\ngirl in the valley. The officer whom I was to guide wore a three-cornered\nhat, and enveloped in a sort of gray riding coat. He had with him two other\ngentlemen, but be rode first, and I was at his side. He was rather\nsingular, and did not seem to know or care where he was, though we were\nabove frightful precipices which gave the bravest a vertigo, but he was as\ntranquil as if on a lounge in his chamber. It seemed so strange to me that\nhe had no fear and was so silent. But after awhile he spoke to me,\nquestioned me about my life, my pleasures, my troubles. His manner was so\nwinning that I told him everything, and when on the chapter of my loves\ntold him I would die if I could not marry Margaret.\n\n\"Well,\" said he, smiling, \"why not marry her then?\"\n\n\"For a very simple reason,\" I replied. \"I am poor and she is rich, and I\ncannot obtain the prize until I have a house and garden.\"\n\nHe listened eagerly, then questioned me a great deal, and at last fell into\na a reverie, and remained silent and absorbed, until we arrived at the\nconvent, where the good monks came out to receive us. I did not pay much\nattention to this, I was so chagrined. A little time after, the officer\ncame to me with a letter, which he directed me to take to the headquarters\nof the army, on the other side of the mountain. I went and returned in the\nevening from Saint Pierre with the answer. Imagine my surprise and\nmortification when I found that the person with whom I had spoken so\nfamiliarly was none other than the first consul, and his companions were\nGeneral Duroe and Secretary Bourrienne. I was terrified, thinking I should\nbe thrown into prison for daring to speak so familiarly to my superior.\nWhat an end to my fears! The first consul gave me for my trouble a house,\ngarden, and money, so that all my dreams were in an instant realized. I\ncould now marry Margaret, and I was so completely overcome with joy that I\nthought it was a miracle. This great man did all for me, and you can now\nsee why I love the emperor, and why all my happy remembrances are dated\nfrom the 20th of May.\n\nThis was only one of the many kind acts of Napoleon during his glorious\nlife; and if we are electrified in reading of his high military deeds, how\nmuch more touching are those simple charities which show the beauty of his\nsoul, and the goodness and generosity of his heart, that will ever render\nhis memory immortal.\n\n{76}\n\nJoseph had related with so much spirit and animation his astonishing\nadventure, and Robert had listened with such eagerness, that neither\nthought of hastening their steps. The guide had necessarily consumed more\ntime in relating it than we take, and night was fast coming on. The sun had\nlong gone down, and the guide listened uneasily to a kind of rolling noise\nthat sounded like distant thunder.\n\n\"The deuce!\" he cried, \"it will not be long before it is upon us. It is the\nvoice of the storm; don't you hear it? Oh! mercy! we have lost time, and I\nhave been the cause of it. O holy Virgin, come to our help!\"\n\nRobert could not conceive the cause of his fright, but, stopping to listen,\nhe felt the same terror. \"O Lord my God, protect me!\" was his simple\nprayer, which gave him strength to follow the guide, and the consciousness\nof danger gave them wings.\n\nA violent wind filled the air with the snow that was loosened by the\nmildness of the atmosphere, and it was so thick that they could scarcely\nsee. Then the tempest flapped its strongest wings, and moved huge masses of\nsnow, which threatened at each moment to ingulf them. These frightful\navalanches, these precipices, these abysses without bottom, these peaks\nalmost lost to sight, these eternal glaciers, and the imminent peril which\nappeared on all sides, and presented, above all, the image of death; all\nthese sublime horrors, which freeze with fear the heart of guilty man,\nRobert contemplated with joyous tranquillity. Before the awful majesty of\nthis grand scene, he adored God, whose powerful hand can raise the anger of\nthe elements or calm them at his pleasure. But the tempest increased so\nmuch in fury that he was obliged to concentrate all his faculties to\npreserve his equilibrium. The snow was blinding, and the guide, in terror\nof making false steps that might plunge them into some abyss, went along\nhesitatingly, lamenting and believing they were lost. More uneasy for the\nguide than himself, in their alarming position, Robert tried to raise his\ncourage by speaking of his wife and children, when in an opening of the\npath a large sign appeared.\n\n\"Oh! we are saved:\" said the guide in a faltering voice, and, with a hand\nmade stronger by hope, rang a large bell, which had a clear, vibrating\nsound.\n\nThis was the signal of distress that told the good monks that travellers\nneeded their help. But in the raging of the storm the sound of the bell is\nnot heard at the convent, and, numbed with cold and fatigue, Joseph swoons\non the snow. Robert tries to warm him and bring him back to consciousness,\nbut without avail, and at last he is seized with vertigo and dreadful\nshiverings, and his numbed limbs refuse to take him further. But the\nstrength of his soul is greater than his body, and he falls breathing a\nprayer to God. Not a sound but the noise of the elements is heard, and the\nsliding of the snow that covers their inanimate bodies, and threatens to\nleave no trace of them.\n\n\"O God! will you let the orphan, whom you have taken under the wings of\nyour love, perish in this mountain solitude? Will not his pious invocation\nbe carried to your throne by the angel of prayer?\"\n\nListen! The liberators come; the snow is scratched away with precaution,\nand they are found by the noble dogs, gifted with almost sublime instincts\nwhich they consecrate to man, with a devotion and fidelity that puts to\nshame many of the human species. Yes; it was \"Help\" and \"Saviour\" who had\nfound the spot where Robert and the guide lay, and breathed on their hands\nand faces to try to relieve them; but, being unable to do it, they made the\nmountain re-echo with their barks, which brought out the monks, whom they\nguided to the spot. The bodies were then carried to the convent, and after\na few hours restored to consciousness; and the kind monks heartily gave\nthanks that they were permitted to rescue from certain death two of their\nfellow-beings. Could any mission be more noble than theirs; any devotion\nmore self-sacrificing?\n{77}\nImpossible; and in all the known world they are honored for their sublime\nvirtues, and acknowledged as noble martyrs of Christian charity.\n\nRobert passed eight days at the convent, and on each one saw the touching\npiety and indefatigable solicitude of the monks. The last few days he made\nseveral excursions over the mountain, where perpetual winter reigns; and\nwas dazzled by the lustre of the immense glaciers, and the glory of his\nlonely surroundings. He sometimes thought if he were not an artist he would\nconsecrate the remainder of his life to the practice of charity, but his\nlove of art was too strong, and sunny Italy held out such attractions that\nbe was lured on, carrying with him the benediction and good wishes of those\nnoble men who had brought him back to life.\n\n\n------\n\n    From the Dublin Review\n\n\n    Lecky's History Of Rationalism.[Footnote 12]\n\n    [Footnote 12: History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of\n    Rationalism in Europe. By W. E. Lecky, M.A., London: Longmans, Green &\n    Co.]\n\n\nIt has been said by a very high authority that the study of history is\ndestined to assume a new aspect, from the application to it of a higher\norder of minds and a more philosophical method of treatment. We are passing\nout of the age of speciality into the age of generalization. Innumerable\nobservers have collected facts, and innumerable speculators have multiplied\ntheories; and we now seem to have arrived at that period when it becomes\nthe proper function of the thinker to co-ordinate the stores of knowledge\nwhich have been set apart for him by others; evolve laws from the multitude\nof instances; separate the truth from the falsehood of conflicting\ntheories; conjoin effects with their causes, and trace the half-revealed\nand far-reaching relations between distant and apparently unconnected\nphenomena. The influence of such a spirit--long felt in the less\ncomplicated sciences--is now, even in England, beginning to act on those\nwhich are more intricate. For history the time is rapidly passing away\nduring which a great but much erring thinker could say that it was the\nunfortunate peculiarity of the history of man that, although its separate\nparts had each been handled with considerable ability, hardly anyone had\nhitherto attempted to combine them into a whole, or to ascertain the way in\nwhich they are connected with each other. On the contrary, he said, a\nstrange idea prevailed among historians that their business was merely to\nnarrate events; so that, according to the notion of history in his day\nprevalent, any writer who, from indolence of thought or from natural\nincapacity, was unfit to deal with the highest branches of knowledge, had\nonly to pass some years in reading a certain number of books, and then he\nwas, _ipso facto_, qualified to be a historian. The time is fast\ncoming when those dreary and monotonous narratives of court intrigues and\nparty cabals will exist only to memorialize an age when the history of\nkings was substituted for the history of nations, and the consideration of\nthe actions of a few individuals for the exposition of the life of the\nwhole social organization.\n{78}\nHistory is growing to be less of a chronicle and more of a science; her\noffice is no longer thought to be confined to the registration of a few\nsuperficially prominent facts; but the discovery, by a scientific\ninduction, of historical laws, and the investigation of causes, is chiefly\naimed at; and, as the circumstances which have to be taken into account in\nsuch a method of writing history are often dismissed by the older school of\nwriters as almost unworthy of notice, and are, moreover, exceedingly\nnumerous and of almost infinite complication, a far wider and more\ndiversified range of learning and a far greater power of analysis than were\nformerly either required or expected are supposed in the historian.\n\nIt would be idle to imagine that the influence of this more philosophical\nway of writing history will not extend, or has not extended, to theology.\nOne of its first results has been the unpremeditated vindication by\nnon-Catholic writers of the mediaeval church. And that naturally; for the\naction of the church in the middle ages was founded on their social state,\nand it was therefore only when history descended into the bosom of society\nthat she could receive a fuller meed of justice. The Catholic Church has\nbeen more philosophically treated, and her primary attribute, that she is a\nkingdom, more perfectly realized; while a flood of light has been thrown on\nthe historical character of Protestantism, and to that farrago of heresies\nthe conclusions arrived at have been almost uniformly unfavorable. Nor must\nwe suppose that it will affect only the treatment of the external history\nof Christianity, and leave untouched the history of its dogmas. It has\neffected, and will hereafter, to a still greater extent effect, that both\nCatholic doctrines and heretical opinions will be studied not only, as\nheretofore, in their objective aspect--with respect to their evidence and\nconnections one with another--but more and more in their subjective aspect,\nas to their influence on the minds of those who hold them. We have, to a\ngreat extent, yet to see the results of a profound and extensive study of\ndogmas in this light; but to study them in this light is undoubtedly the\ntendency of the present age. We have thus opened to us a field of\ninvestigation almost new, and in its nature very different from the beaten\ntracks in which controversialists have hitherto followed one another.\nWhatever be the results that may be thus finally arrived at, there cannot\nbe a doubt but that they will be fraught with immense advantage to the\ncause of truth; and in the course of any researches that may be made into\nthe subjective influence of individual dogmas a number of facts hitherto\nbut little attended to--will be brought forward from the most various\nsources; so that it will exceedingly behove those who have to attend to the\ndefence of Christianity to make sure that these are truly alleged and\nrepresented.\n\nMr. Lecky, as we have before noticed, endeavors to apply to religious the\nmore advanced method or secular history. He attempts to trace the\nsubjective influence of religious opinions, the manner in which they\nmutually affected each other, and in which they acted or were reacted on by\nthe other influences of their time. He does not pay much attention to the\nquestion of _evidence_, or to the arguments by which they were\nsupported, except in so far as the use of particular arguments or lines of\nargument affords him some indication of the temper of the times of which he\nwrites. The very idea of his work--a history of religious\nopinions--compelled him to attend to this rather than to the alleged\nevidence of particular doctrines: the latter being the proper province of\nthe theologian as the former is of the historian. But from this necessary\none-sidedness of his work Mr. Lecky seems to have been led into a\ncorresponding one-sidedness of mind. Every one will grant that education,\ndisposition, the opinions, and, still more, the tone of those around us\nmake it exceedingly difficult to treat religious questions on the sole\nground of evidence; and Catholics are continually urging this against the\nProtestants who, by their denial of the infallibility of the church,\nmultiply indefinitely the number of questions which have to be thus\ndecided; but Mr. Lecky goes further, and says that there really is not\nsufficient evidence for us, situated as we are, to come to a reliable\nconclusion at all.\n{79}\nIt is natural, therefore, that he should now and then take occasion to sift\nsupposititious evidence and fallacious arguments; and in several places he\nstates with great force the nature and logical value of the reasons given\nagainst some or other of the old doctrines now denied by Protestants. An\ninstance of this may be interesting to our readers; the subjoined passage\nis taken from his second chapter On the Miracles of the Church:\n\n  \"If we ask, what are the grounds on which the cessation the of miracles\n  is commonly maintained; they may, I suppose, be summed up such as\n  follows:\n\n  \"Miracles, it is said, are the divine credentials of an inspired\n  messenger announcing doctrines which could not otherwise be established.\n  They prove that he is neither an imposter nor an enthusiast; that his\n  teaching is neither the work of a designing intellect nor of an\n  overheated imagination. From the nature of the case, this could not be\n  proved in any other way. ... Miracles are, therefore, no more improbable\n  than a revelation; for a revelation would be ineffectual without\n  miracles. But, while this consideration destroys the common objection to\n  the gospel miracles, it separates them clearly from those of the Church\n  of Rome. The former were avowedly exceptional; they were designed to\n  introduce a new religion, and to establish a supernatural message. The\n  latter were simply means of edification; they were directed to no object\n  that could not otherwise be attained, and they were represented as taking\n  place in a dispensation that was intended to be not of sight but of\n  faith. Besides this, miracles should be regarded as the most awful and\n  impressive manifestations of divine power. To make them habitual and\n  commonplace would be to degrade if not to destroy their character, which\n  would be still further abased if we admitted those which appear trivial\n  and puerile. The miracles of the New Testament were always characterized\n  by dignity and solemnity; they always conveyed some spiritual lesson, and\n  conferred some actual benefit, besides attesting the character or the\n  worker. The mediaeval miracles, on the contrary, were often trivial,\n  purposeless, and unimpressive; constantly verging on the grotesque, and\n  not unfrequently passing the border.\n\n  \"Such is, I think, a fair epitome of the common arguments in favor of the\n  cessation of miracles; and they are undoubtedly very plausible and very\n  cogent; but, after all, what do they prove? Not that miracles have\n  ceased, but that, _supposing_ them to have ceased, there is nothing\n  surprising or alarming in the fact. ... This is the full extent to which\n  they can legitimately be carried. As an _\u00e0 priori_ proof, they are\n  far too weak to withstand the smallest amount of positive testimony.\n  Miracles, it is said, are intended exclusively to accredit an inspired\n  messenger. But, after all, what proof is there of this? It is simply an\n  hypothesis, plausible and consistent it may be, but entirely unsupported\n  by positive testimony. Indeed, we may go further, and say that it is\n  distinctly opposed by your own facts. ... You must admit that the Old\n  Testament relates many miracles which will not fall under your canon. ...\n  But the ecclesiastical miracles, it is said, are often grotesque; and\n  appear _prim\u00e2 facie_ absurd, and excite an irresistible repugnance.\n  A sufficiently dangerous test in an age when men find it more and more\n  difficult to believe any miracles whatever. A sufficiently dangerous test\n  for those who know the tone that has been long adopted, over an immense\n  part of Europe, toward such narratives as the deluge or the exploits of\n  Samson, the speaking ass or the possessed pigs! Besides this, a great\n  proportion of the ecclesiastical miracles are simply reproductions of\n  those which are recorded in the Bible; and if there are mingled with them\n  some that appear manifest impostures, this may be a very good reason for\n  treating these narratives with a more jealous scrutiny, but is certainly\n  no reason for maintaining that they are all below contempt. The Bible\n  neither asserts nor implies the revocation of supernatural gifts; and if\n  the general promise that these gifts should be conferred may have been\n  intended to apply only to the apostles, it is at least as susceptible of\n  a different interpretation. If these miracles were actually continued, it\n  is surely not difficult to discover the beneficial purpose which they\n  would fulfil. They would stimulate a languid piety; they would prove\n  invaluable auxiliaries to missionaries laboring among barbarous and\n  unreasoning savages, who, from their circumstances and habits of mind,\n  are utterly incapable of forming any just estimate of the evidences of\n  the religion they are called upon to embrace. .... To say that these\n  miracles are false because they are Roman Catholic is to assume the very\n  question at issue.\"--Vol. i. pp. 173-177.\n\n{80}\n\nThere is nothing, indeed, that is particularly new in this reasoning; our\nreaders must have frequently seen or heard it urged against Protestants;\nbut it is valuable in Mr. Lecky's history, as showing the view taken of the\nordinary Protestant arguments by the higher class of anti-Catholic writers.\nIn a similar manner he disposes of the vulgar arguments against magic and\nsorcery in a passage which, however, is, we regret to say, too long for\nquotation (Vol. i. pp. 9-16). He there concludes by saying that the\nevidence on that subject is so vast and so varied, that it is impossible to\ndisbelieve it without what, on any other subject, we should consider the\nmost extraordinary rashness. The subject was examined in tens of thousands\nof cases, in almost every country in Europe, by tribunals which included\nthe acutest lawyers and ecclesiastics of the age, on the scene and at the\ntime when the alleged acts had taken place, and with the assistance of\ninnumerable sworn witnesses. As condemnation would be followed by a fearful\ndeath, and the accused were, for the most part, miserable beings whose\ndestruction can have been an object to no one, the judges can have had no\nsinister motives in convicting, and had, on the contrary, the most urgent\nreasons for exercising their power with the utmost caution and\ndeliberation. The accusations were often of such a character that all must\nhave known the truth or falsehood of what was alleged. _The evidence is\nessentially cumulative._ Some cases, it is added, may be explained by\nmonomania, others by imposture, others by chance coincidences, and others\nby optical delusions; but, when we consider the multitudes of strange\nstatements that were sworn to and registered in legal documents, he\nconfesses that it is very difficult to frame a general rationalistic\nexplanation which will not involve an extreme improbability.\n\nAnd now, passing to another subject, even Catholics may find in the\nfollowing passage something worthy of being dwelt on:\n\n  \"The world is governed by its ideals, and seldom or never has there been\n  one which has exercised a more profound and on the whole a more salutary\n  influence than the mediaeval conception of the Virgin. For the first time\n  woman was elevated to her rightful position, and the sanctity of weakness\n  was recognized as well as the sanctity of sorrow. No longer the slave or\n  toy of man, no longer associated only with ideas of degradation and of\n  sensuality, woman rose, in the person of the Virgin Mother, into a new\n  sphere, and became the object of a reverential homage of which antiquity\n  had had no conception. Love was idealized. The moral charm and beauty of\n  female excellence was for the first time felt. A new type of character\n  was called into being; a new kind of admiration was fostered. Into a\n  harsh and ignorant and benighted age this ideal type infused a type of\n  gentleness and of purity unknown to the proudest civilizations of the\n  past. In the pages of living tenderness which many a monkish writer has\n  left in honor of his celestial patron; in the millions who, in many lands\n  and in many ages, have sought with no barren desire to mould their\n  character into her image; in those holy maidens who, for the love of\n  Mary, have separated themselves from all the glories and pleasures of the\n  world, to seek in fastings and vigils and humble charity to render\n  themselves worthy of her benediction; in the new sense of honor, in the\n  chivalrous respect, in the softening of manners, in the refinement of\n  tastes displayed in all the walks of society; in these and in many other\n  ways we detect its influence. All that was best in Europe clustered\n  around it, and it is the origin of many of the purest elements of our\n  civilization,\"--Vol. i. pp. 234-235.\n\n\"But,\" he is pleased to add, \"the price, and perhaps the necessary price,\nof this was the exaltation of the Virgin as an omnipresent deity of\ninfinite power as well as of infinite condescension.\" Here we have an\nexample of the extraordinary mistakes which are occasionally made by Mr.\nLecky. We by no means accuse him of intentional misrepresentation; and in a\nwork of nearly a thousand pages, of which there is scarcely a page without\na note, and scarcely a note without six or seven references or quotations,\nit was impossible but that some inaccuracies should creep in. But he\nunfortunately often uses a looseness and generality of reference which\nmakes his notes almost useless to anyone desirous of verifying them, and\nhis inaccuracies, some of which bear with them an appearance of great\ncarelessness, are incredibly frequent; while we desiderate in him that\nfulness of theological knowledge which a writer ought to possess who\ncriticises dogmatic systems so dogmatically as he does.\n{81}\nIn the present case he actually seems to think that the Blessed Virgin was\nregarded as an omnipresent deity because it was believed that she could\nhear prayers anywhere addressed to her. But the teaching of Catholic\ntheologians makes a very great difference between the omnipresence of God\nand the manner in which the Blessed Virgin and the saints are cognizant of\nthe prayers poured out to them on earth. The Scotists ordinarily teach that\nGod reveals to the saints in glory whatever it is expedient that they\nshould know; the Thomists that they see in the vision of God the prayers\nand the necessities of men; some have urged the elevation and expansion of\neven their natural faculties consequent on their entrance into the state of\nglory; but none have ever supposed them to be present, as God is, to the\nwhole created universe. Mr. Lecky, proceeds to state that before the belief\nthat a finite spirit could hear prayer wherever offered was firmly\nestablished, it was believed that at least they hovered round the places\nwhere their relics had been deposited, and there, at least, attended to the\nprayers of their suppliants. In support of this assertion he quotes the\nfollowing words as from St. Jerome: \"Ergo cineres suos amant animae\nmartyrum, et circumvolant eos, semperque praesentes sunt; ne forte si\naliquis precator advenerit absentes audire non possint,\" to which he gives\nthe extraordinary reference, \"Epistolae, 1. iii. c. 13.\" These words indeed\noccur in St. Jerome; but they occur as the sarcasm of an opponent which St.\nJerome gives only in order to refute it. The passage is quoted from\nVigilantius in St. Jerome's book against that heretic; but the saint\nhimself calls it a \"portent worthy of hell,\" and argues, in reply to the\nidea expressed in it, that we cannot set laws to God; that the martyrs\nfollow the Lamb wheresoever he goeth; that the demons wander over the whole\nworld; and are the martyrs to be shut up in a box? As to the Blessed Virgin\nbeing regarded as a deity of infinite power and infinite condescension,\nthose Catholic writers who in their devotional writings have spoken the\nmost strongly of her power, have merely said that God will never refuse her\nanything she asks, and that she will never ask anything inconsistent with\nhis Providence. Mr. Lecky shows in many other places the grossest ignorance\nof Catholic theology. He quotes, in evidence of the present belief of the\nRoman Church in demoniacal possession, a ritual which, he says, \"is used in\nthe diocese of Tarbes.\" He need not have gone to an obscure provincial\nritual for proof of his assertion; he will hardly find any Catholic\ntheologian who denies it; and the most used, and best known of our modern\ntheological writers has devoted a special chapter to the subject (Perrone,\nDe Deo Creatore, Part I., c. v.) The doctrine of punishment by a material\nfire \"still lingers,\" he tells us, \"in the Roman Catholic manuals for the\npoor.\" If by this he meant that it does not remain also among theologians,\nthis is not true; Perrone, one of the most moderate, calls it, \"sententia\ncommuniter reccpta.\" (De Deo Creatore, Part III., c. vi. a. 3.)\n\nIn the latter part of his chapter \"on the Developments of Rationalism,\" Mr.\nLecky has put forward an opinion that the doctrine of the material\ncharacter of the penal fire is closely connected with the ancient opinion,\nthat the soul is in some sense material. The doctrine of a material fire\nbecame, he says, the foundation of all opinion that the soul is of a\nmaterial nature; and he refers to Tertullian, citing De Anima, c. viii.\nThis assertion is, however, utterly without foundation. It nowhere appears\nthat this was the chief foundation on which this error was rested. Far from\nmaking this material conception of punishment the chief ground of his\nargument, Tertullian, in the passage quoted by Mr. Lecky, does not argue\nfrom the materiality of the fire at all.\n{82}\nWhat he does argue from is the corporeal manner in which Abraham, Dives,\nand Lazarus, are represented in the Gospel; from Abraham's bosom the tongue\nor Dives, and the finger of Lazarus; and he mentions the \"ignis\" merely in\nan incidental manner, and not to argue from its material nature, but to\nfound his reasoning on the general proposition that whatever is susceptible\nof \"fovela\" or of \"passio\" must be corporeal. It is, of course, quite\nconceivable that a writer, who believed the soul to be of a material\nnature, might argue from the commonly received opinion of a material fire;\nbut the origin of this opinion was in fact quite different. Some of those\nwho held it even believed the \"fire\" of hell to be metaphorical. But before\nthe advent of Christianity the minds of the people had been constantly and\npersistently directed to the sensible and the material; from the ranks of\nthe people Christianity was recruited; and it is not wonderful if somewhat\nof their former habits of thought clung to those who were converted. It was\nonly by degrees, and after a patient and silent opposition to prevailing\nhabits of thought, that Christianity succeeded in spiritualizing religious\nconceptions; and the time which elapsed before this had been effected--a\nperiod of more than three hundred years--was one of no little confusion in\nthis regard. But no one seems to have been led into the error of supposing\nthe human soul to be material by the notion of a material fire. Some\nbelieved this to be the case because they could not see how it could\npossibly be otherwise; they were unable to rise to the idea of a spirit,\nproperly so called; they could not conceive anything to be real, and not\nmaterial. That this was the case, in particular, with Tertullian, cannot be\ndoubted, whether we consider his way of speaking in the whole book _De\nAnien\u00e2_, in the book _Adv. Praxeam_, c. xi., and in the _De Carne\nChristi_, c. xi., or the pre-eminently sensuous and realistic character\nof his mind. The Platonic philosophy was another foundation of this opinion\nrespecting the human soul. Some writers who were especially attached to\nPlatonism, as Origen, explained the Platonic doctrine of emanation as\nmeaning that God alone is a pure Spirit, all beings proceeding from God\nhaving a trace of materiality greater or less as they are more or less\nremoved from him. They therefore believed all created spirits to be in some\nsense material; and forms of expression which may seem properly to belong\nto this opinion remained, as is often the case, long after the opinion\nitself had vanished. But the source of the whole error was, as is evident,\nthe materialized method of conception of pre-Christian times.\n\nBut Mr. Lecky goes much further than this. He tells us that this opinion of\nthe materiality of the human soul--which, if we except at most two or\nthree writers, had certainly died out in the sixth, if not in the fifth\ncentury--was the dominant opinion in the middle ages:\n\n  \"Under the influence of mediaeval habits of thought, every spiritual\n  conception was materialized, and what at an earlier and a later period\n  was generally deemed the language of metaphor, was universally regarded\n  as the language of fact. The realizations of the people were all derived\n  from paintings, sculpture, or ceremonies that appealed to the senses, and\n  all subjects were therefore reduced to palpable images. The angel in the\n  last judgment was constantly represented weighing the souls in a literal\n  balance, while devils clinging to the scales endeavored to disturb the\n  equilibrium. Sometimes the soul was portrayed as a sexless child, rising\n  out of the mouth of the corpse. But, above all, the doctrine of purgatory\n  arrested and enchained the imagination. ... Men who believed in a\n  physical soul readily believed in a physical punishment, men who\n  materialized their view of the punishment, materialized their view of the\n  sufferers.\n\n  \"We find, however,\" he proceeds, \"some time before the reformation,\n  evident signs of an endeavor on the part of a few writers to rise to a\n  purer conception of the soul.\" And he goes on to attribute this to \"the\n  pantheistic writings that flowed from the school of Averrhoes;\" and to\n  ascribe to the Cartesian philosophy \"the final downfall of the\n  materialistic hypothesis.\" Vol. i. pp. 373-378.\n\n{83}\n\nIt is not too much to say that the whole of this is entirely unsupported by\nevidence. Anyone who likes to glance over the Coimbricenses _De\nAnim\u00e2_, the beginning of the second book of the Sentences, the questions\n_De Anim\u00e2_ in the Summa of St. Thomas, the recapitulation of the\nscholastic theology on that subject in the third volume of Suarez, or the\nvery earliest treatises _De Angelis_, will see that, far from there\nbeing merely \"a few writers\" who maintained the spirituality of the soul,\nthe notion of immateriality was as well defined in the dominant scholastic\nphilosophy as ever it was by Descartes; whose doctrine that the essence of\nthe soul is thought, was clearly stated by the scholastics in the sense\nthat intellection can only belong to the spiritual, and not to the material\nand the extended. [Footnote 13] The manner in which the Scholastics\nexplained the punishment of a spiritual being by a material fire affords us\na test-question on this subject. _Did_ their \"intense realization\" of\nthis doctrine lead them to infer the materiality of the soul? Certainly\nnot. On the contrary; _because_ all thoroughly realized the\nspirituality of the soul, all felt this difficulty regarding the manner of\nits punishment; but, although there was sufficient diversity among them as\nto its explanation, not one had recourse to the materialistic hypothesis.\n\n    [Footnote 13: See St. Thomas Contra Gentiles, 1.2, c. 49, 50, 51, 65,\n    cf. 66, where an immense number of arguments, in great part, of course,\n    drawn from the philosophy of the day, is heaped up to prove the\n    spirituality of the soul.]\n\nNor is Mr. Lecky correct in stating that the Arabian philosophy had a\nspiritualizing influence on philosophy and theology. That philosophy\neminently favored the \"_multiplicatio entium sine necessitate_,\" than\nwhich nothing is more unspiritualizing. Some of those who held it expounded\nthe doctrine of matter and form in a manner dangerous to the spirituality\nof the soul. [Footnote 14] They held the perilous doctrine of emanation,\nand it would be quite a mistake to suppose that the description of error\nwhich they taught had any conformity of spirit with the poetical and\nsentimental pantheistic theories of the present day.\n\n    [Footnote 14: See  St. Thomas, Op. de Angelis, cap 5.]\n\nIt is chiefly from the character of the then religious art, which (of\ncourse) represented spiritual subjects by material symbols, that Mr. Lecky\nargues that the middle ages materialized all spiritual conceptions. Thus,\nin a note to p. 232, vol. 1., he speaks thus:\n\n  \"The strong desire natural to the middle ages to give a palpable form to\n  the mystery of the Incarnation, was shown curiously in the notion of a\n  conception by the ear. In a hymn, ascribed to St. Thomas \u00e0 Becket, occur\n  the lines:--\n\n    \"Ave Virgo, Mater Christi,\n     Quae per aurem concepisti,\n       Gabriele nuntio.\"\n\n  And in an old glass window, now I believe in one of the museums of Paris,\n  the Holy Ghost is represented hovering over the Virgin in the form of a\n  dove, while a ray of light passes from his beak to her ear, along which\n  ray an infant Christ is descending.\"--Langlois, _Peinture sur\n  Verre_, p. 157.\n\nAnd our readers will remember remarks of a like bearing in the quotation\nlast given. Such criticisms are, however, to us merely evidence of so many\ncurious misapprehensions. They merely show that an acquaintance with the\nhistory of religious art is but a very inadequate preparation for writing\nthe history of religious dogmas. It is perfectly impossible to represent\nspiritual things in painting and sculpture otherwise than by material\nimages. Nothing is more common than so to represent them even among\nProtestants of the present day; nothing was more common in the Old\nTestament, the very stronghold of the ancient anthropomorphites. We feel no\ninclination to deny that it is exceedingly difficult for the poor and the\nignorant to rise to the conception of a spirit, and almost all mankind\nrepresent to themselves even the very Deity under some refined material\nimage; but when such representations occupied a prominent position in\npublic worship, there was an opportunity, and that frequently made use of,\nof correcting an untruthful imagination.\n\n{84}\n\nWe have no hesitation in saying that there is far more unconscious\nanthropomorphism among the Protestant than among the Catholic poor. The\ndoctrines of revelation make known a world akin to, yet not the same as,\nthis; they tell of an order of things itself unseen, but possessing\ncounterparts and shadows here. It is, therefore, not wonderful that there\nexists a constant tendency to forget that these are but imperfect types and\nsymbols, and to remodel the truths of faith into conformity with what we\nsee around us. To correct this tendency is one of the functions of the\nscience of theology; and the conclusions of theology, infiltrating among\nthe people, keep them from sinking into earthly and anthropomorphic views\nof religion, these conclusions being communicated by the ordinary resources\nin the hands of the church, which, certainly, are far more efficacious in\nthe Catholic than in the Protestant system. Indeed, of all the reproaches\nwhich have been directed against the theology of the middle ages, that of\nbeing in its spirit gross and material is one of the most unfounded and the\nmost unjust. With far greater truth might such a reproach be directed\nagainst the Protestant theology of the last three centuries. In the middle\nages, theology had a code and a standard of her own; she was the queen of\nthe sciences; she regulated and moulded the ideas of the time. Now,\ncondemned to occupy a subordinate position, she is content to take her\nideas from those current in the world, and to use her terms, not in their\nproper and theological signification, but in the meanings derived from the\nmanner of their present use in physical science and in common life. An\nexample of this occurs in the case of the word _person_, the loss of\nthe theological meaning of which among Protestants has confused, if not\nobliterated, the doctrine of the Trinity. In Protestantism, the belief of\nthe people lives chiefly by a tradition propagated through no recognized\ntheological channel; a tradition which, consequently, daily grows more\nfeeble and less definite; which is continually becoming more and more\ncorrupted, more low, and earthly, and anthropomorphous. Look at the common\nProtestant idea of the happiness of the blessed. The great Catholic\ndoctrine which places the essence of the beatitude of man, not in a\nprolongation and refinement of the pleasures of this world, not even in the\nsight of Christ's humanity, but in that vision of God as God which is\nemphatically called beatific, had almost faded out of sight. They look\nforward to an earthly millennium, which is little better than a\nglorification of commerce, material prosperity, and natural virtue, to be\nsucceeded by a heaven of which the joys very much resemble those which some\nCatholic theologians with Suarez [Footnote 15] assign to infants who die\nwithout baptism. But against the reproach of lowness and materialism of\nconception being ever directed against the theologians of mediaeval times,\nthe doctrine of the beatific vision, which they so fully and so beautifully\nevolved, stands a perpetual protest. For in what was this coarseness and\nlowness of thought more likely to appear, than in their conception of the\ngreatest happiness of man? Or who were more likely to teach what is far\nremoved from vulgar and worldly conceptions than men who placed the sum of\nall happiness in the vision and fruition of divine essence, which,\naccording to them, could be seen by no corporal eye, [Footnote 16] and in\nwhich was, they said, that joy which eye had not seen nor ear heard,\nneither had it entered into the heart of man to conceive? The whole of the\nscholastic treatise _De Deo Uno_ is but another magnificent protest\nagainst such an accusation.\n{85}\nThe heresy of Gilbert Porretanus [Footnote 17] would never be condemned by\nthe Protestants of the present day; nor has ever the conception of the\ndivine simplicity in perfection been so fully realized as it was by those\nmuch-abused theologians. The mediatorship of our blessed Lord is now\ncommonly apprehended by Protestants in a manner which makes a real\ndifference of character between the father and son; but no one who knows\nanything of the scholastic doctrine of the Trinity and the Incarnation can\nimagine that these theologians would have tolerated for a moment a notion\nso frightfully heretical. With respect to psychology, the scholastic age\nsaw the death of Traducianism; and anyone who has attended to the earlier\nscholastic opinions respecting the manner in which spirits suffer in the\npenal fire, will have seen that they are of a more \"spiritual\" tendency\nthan those of most Protestant theologians. [Footnote 18]\n\n    [Footnote 15: De Peccato Originall.]\n\n    [Footnote 16: St. Thomas, in ima & q.12, a. 3; and other older authors\n    in Sent. i. 1, d.1, & l. 4, d.49]\n\n    [Footnote 17: Lombardus in Sent. i. 1, d.33, 34; and the commentators\n    _ad loc_.]\n\n    [Footnote 18: Sensation and \"sensitive imagination\" appeared to the\n    scholastic to be of sole material a character, that they would not\n    admit that these and other sensitive affections can exist in a separate\n    spirit; and, consequently, those theologians who explain the punishment\n    of separate spirits by the analogy of the soul and body, were compelled\n    to admit that the pain must be different in kind from the \"passio\n    conjuncti.\"]\n\nMr. Lecky's criticisms on the opinion that the penal fire is literal and\nmaterial, and on the supposed general materialism of religious conception\nin the middle ages, have led us into somewhat of a digression. We have yet,\nhowever, one more remark to make. While he concedes that after the time of\nAverrhoes \"a few writers\" endeavored to rise to a more spiritual manner of\nconceiving the truths of faith, he asserts that in the preceding period,\nbefore his influence and that of such sects as the Beguins had begun to be\nfelt, the state of things was infinitely worse. From the sixth to the\ntwelfth century materialism in religion was absolutely dominant. That the\nperiod preceding the advent of the scholastic epoch was one of great\ndepression of theological science, cannot be doubted; and the amount of\nwhat may in a general way be called anthropomorphism current at any period\nis to a great extent conditioned by the want of general cultivation. But it\nis very easy to overrate this depression. The episcopal and synodical\nletters, for instance, which were exchanged concerning the subject of\nadoptionism do not present to us theological science at, by any means, a\nlow ebb. The same may be said respecting the controversy in the ninth\ncentury on the Eucharist; and the controversy on Predestination, if it do\nnot reveal any large amount of historical learning, at least exhibits\nconsiderable activity of mind. Such of the writings of authors of that\nperiod as the present writer has looked into, show an amount of learning\nand acuteness which was certainly unexpected by him. That period was\nnecessarily uncritical; but we regard the taste for allegorizing, then as\nformerly prevalent, to be an indication of something very different from a\ndegraded and material habit of thought. The great teacher of the\npre-scholastic age was St. Augustine, one of the most spiritual of the\nfathers; and the writer who was chosen to supplement him was St. Gregory\nthe Great, who went farther than, and improved on, St. Augustine himself.\nAnd, as to the religious art of that period, Mr. Lecky has himself alluded\nto a peculiarity which, strangely enough, seems to have given him no\ndisquietude as to his general conclusion. In that period, he says:\n\n  \"We do not find the smallest tendency to represent God the Father.\n  [Footnote 19] Scenes, indeed, in which he acted were frequently depicted,\n  but the First Person of the Trinity was invariably superseded by the\n  Second. Christ, in the dress and with the features appropriated to him in\n  the representations of scenes from the New Testament, and often with the\n  monogram underneath his figure, is represented creating man, condemning\n  Adam and Eve to labor, ... or giving the law to Moses. With the exception\n  of a hand sometimes extended from the cloud, and occasionally encircled\n  with a nimbus, we find in this period no traces in art of the Creator.\n{86}\n  At first we can easily imagine that a purely spiritual conception of the\n  Deity, and also the hatred that was inspired by the type of Jupiter,\n  would have discouraged artists from attempting such a subject, and\n  Gnosticism, which exercised a very great influence over Christian art,\n  and which emphatically denied the divinity of the God of the Old\n  Testament, tended in the same direction; but it is very unlikely that\n  these reasons can have had any weight between the sixth and the twelfth\n  centuries. For the more those centuries are studied, the more evident it\n  becomes that the universal and irresistible tendency was then to\n  materialize every spiritual conception, to form a palpable image of\n  everything that was reverenced, to reduce all subjects within the domain\n  of the senses.\"--(Vol. i. pp. 224-5.)\n\n    [Footnote 19: We cannot ourselves, as Catholics, admit that there is\n    necessarily the smallest impropriety or inexpediency in picture or\n    sculptured representations of God the Father (See Denzinger, n. 1182\n    and 1482); yet we may fairly argue that the absence of such, at the\n    period in question, disproves Mr. Lecky's assertion that the dominant\n    tendency of that period was anthropomorphous.]\n\nThe most celebrated of the theologians of the middle ages is undoubtedly\nSt. Thomas Aquinas. St. Thomas, however, comes in for an extra share of\nmisrepresentation. At p. 72, vol. ii., we read of him, that he was one of\nthe ablest writers of the fourteenth century--he died in the thirteenth--\nand that \"he assures us that diseases and tempests are the direct acts of\nthe devil, that he can transport men at his pleasure through the air,\" and\nthat \"omnes angeli, boni, et mali, ex naturali virtute habent potestatem\ntransmutandi corpora nostra.\" Now all this is precisely what St. Thomas\ndenies. In the first place, anyone would imagine from the manner in which\nour author writes, that the great mediaeval theologian imagined that, in\nthe ordinary course of things, diseases and tempests are produced by\nSatanic agency. St. Thomas never taught any such thing, but over and over\nagain refers both the one and the other to natural causes. [Footnote 20]\n\n    [Footnote 20: V.g., Comm. in Ps. xvii., and in Arist. Meteor. i. 2,\n    lect xvi.; cf. Summa, i. 2, q. 50, a. 2.]\n\nMr. Lecky ought to have written \"may be;\" but the meaning of the words\nwould have been very different, and their point would have been taken away.\nSecondly, while St. Thomas teaches, in accordance with Holy Writ, that the\ndemons can exercise power over material things, he also teaches that they\ncannot directly change the qualities of things, nor produce any\npreternatural change except local motion: nor that at their pleasure; for\nit is a principle with him that God does not permit them to do all that\nwhich they have _per se_ the power of doing. [Footnote 21]\n\n    [Footnote 21: Questiones de Malo, q. 16, art. 9, etc.; Questiones de\n    Potentia Dei, q 6. art. 5.]\n\nThirdly, as to their natural power of transmuting our bodies. We have not\nbeen able to find the exact words quoted above, but many similar phrases\noccur in the _objections_ in the ninth article of the _Quaestio de\nDaemonibus_, which, it is sufficient to say, St. Thomas solves by\nsaying:\n\n  But on the other hand, St. Augustine [Footnote 22] says \"Non solum animam\n  sed nec corpus quidem nulla ratione crediderim daemonom arte vel\n  potestate in brutalia lineamenta poese converti.\" ... I reply that, as\n  the apostle says, \"all things made by God in order,\" whence, as St.\n  Augustine says, \"the excellence of the universe is the excellence of\n  order. ... and therefore Satan always uses natural agents as his\n  instruments in the production of physical effects, and can so produce\n  effects which exceed the efficacy of the natural agents; [Footnote 23]\n  but he cannot cause the form of the human body to be changed into that of\n  an animal, because this would be contrary to the order established by\n  God; and all such conversions are, therefore, as Augustine shows in the\n  place quoted, according to phantastical appearance rather than truth.\n\n    [Footnote 22: De Civ. Dei. 1. 18, c. 88.]\n\n    [Footnote 23: I.e., which exceeds their ordinary effects, because he\n    can use them more skillfully (cf. ad. 11).]\n\nAt p. 350 of vol. I., Mr. Lecky tells us that the mediaeval writers taught\nthat God would make the contemplation of the sufferings of the lost an\nessential elements in the happiness of the blessed. He does not know of\nwhat he writes. It was taught that the essential element in their happiness\n--the _Essentia Beatitudinis_,--is the vision of God; all else\naccessory and subordinate. In a note to justify his assertion, he adds\nthese words:--\"St. Thomas Aquinas says, 'Beati in regno coelesti videbunt\npoenas damnatorum ut beatitudo illis magis complaceat.'\" The quotation is\nnot accurate.\n{87}\nAfter quoting Isaias, ult. 24, be says, \"Respondeo dicendum ad primam\nquestionem qu\u00f2d a beatis nihil subtrahi debet quod _ad perfectionem\nbeatitudinis_ eorum pertineat: _unumquodque autem ex comparatione\ncontrarii magis cognoscitur_, quia contraria juxta se posita magis\nelucescunt; et ide\u00f2, ut beatitudo sanctorum eis magis complaceat, _et de\ne\u00e1 uberiores gratias Deo agant_, datur eis ut poenam impiorum perfecte\nintueantur.\" [Footnote 24] The passage of St. Thomas, as given by Mr.\nLecky, is just one of those which may very well bear either of two\nmeanings. It might mean something very repulsive and very cruel. But the\nunmutilated passage can bear but one interpretation. St. Thomas does not\nsay that they rejoice in the sufferings themselves; but that they are\npermitted to see them, in order that they may feel yet more intensely how\nprecious is their own beatitude, and thank God the more heartily for their\nown escape.\n\n    [Footnote 24: supplementum ad tertiam partem Summa, q.94, a. 1.]\n\nIn a note to his chapter on the Industrial History of Rationalism, Mr.\nLecky charges St. Thomas with what is nothing less than moral obliquity.\nThe Duchess of Brabant, he says, had a scruple of conscience about\ntolerating the Jews. She therefore consulted St. Thomas; \"who replied,\namong other things that the Jews were doomed to perpetual servitude, and\nthat all their property being derived from usury might lawfully be taken\nfrom them.\" Mr. Lecky is inaccurate both as to the confiscation of their\nproperty and as to the perpetual servitude. St. Thomas does not say that\nall their property was derived from usury, and it would, indeed, have been\nrather a rash judgment in him to say so. But the Duchess of Brabant had\napparently desired to impose new burdens on the Jews, and in writing to St.\nThomas had stated that all their property seemed to be derived from usury;\nto which he replied, that _if this were so_, they might lawfully be\ncompelled to make restitution. Nor does this by any means imply that all\ntheir property was to be taken away from them, as appears from St. Thomas's\nletter among his opuscula, [Footnote 25] and from his general doctrine\nrespecting restitution. [Footnote 26] With respect to the perpetual\nservitude what St. Thomas does say is this: \"_Although according to the\nlaws_ the Jews be, or were, through their own fault doomed to perpetual\nservitude, and thus princes could appropriate their possessions as their\nown, yet this is to be understood leniently, so that the necessaries of\nlife be by no means taken from them. _But since we ought, as the apostle\ndeclares, to walk honestly in the sight of those who are without, of Jews\nand Gentiles, and the Church of God, as the laws declare, compulsory\nservice is not to be required of them, which they were not wont to perform\nin time past._\" He goes on to say that if ill-gotten goods were taken\nfrom the Jews, it would be unlawful for her to retain them, but they would\nhave to be restored to those from whom they had been unjustly taken; and\neven under these conditions he declines to sanction any proceeding against\nthem, but only \"si nihil aliud obsistat.\" Mr. Lecky also quotes, he says,\nthe Histriones of St. Thomas. What the Histriones of St. Thomas are, we\nhave not, we confess, the most remote idea.\n\n    [Footnote 25: Opusc. xxii, in calce Opusculi de Regimine Principum.]\n\n    [Footnote 26: Summa, 2, 2, q. 61-62, etc.]\n\nMr. Lecky professes to give the analyses of various theological beliefs and\ntones of thought which have prevailed in other times. Of these, however, he\nhas had but little or no practical experience. He consequently puts before\nus only certain restricted points of view, which have strongly impressed\nthemselves on his mind in the course of his studies and meditations. We are\nhurried along by his words as by a flood; but while the effects which some\nparticular doctrine possibly _might_ produce if it were held alone are\nvividly set before us, he totally loses sight of those other doctrines,\nwhich were organically connected with it, and modified and regulated its\naction. To evade one difficulty be falls into another: he concentrates his\ngaze on a point that he may see more clearly; but, confining it there,\nloses sight of those harmonies and contrasts, which make up the beauty of\nthe whole. In one direction this defect has had very great influence.\n{88}\n\"Veritas\" is, it is said, \"in medio;\" the present age has gone wrong all on\none side; and Mr. Lecky, who is an advanced disciple of the present age,\nconsequently considers that preceding ages have gone wrong all on the\nother. He sees that there is a very great difficulty in adequately\nrealizing phases of thought so very different from those which now prevail.\nAnd, because of this, he expends his strength on the points of difference,\nneglecting for their sake things nearer to his apprehension; and the very\nnatural consequence is that he gives us a distorted and exaggerated picture\nin which the common elements are not sufficiently brought out.\n\nAn instance of this occurs in his treatment of the subject of eternal\npunishment. The general organization and want of order which pervades his\nwork is quite insufficient to account for the pertinacity with which he\nagain and again recurs to the subject. Like the whole anti-Christian party,\nand very naturally, he detests the doctrine with his whole spirit; and he\nallows this detestation to color his whole views of the middle ages. He\nattributes to its influence whatever he finds, or imagines himself to have\nfound, of a hard, cruel, and repulsive character in their theory and\npractice. He begins by misrepresenting the character of the doctrine\nitself. He separates it from the conditioning doctrines which were taught\nalong with it, and which regulated and directed its influence. He dwells\nalmost entirely on the terrible side of the then existing Christianity, and\nalmost altogether neglects the operation of the concurring principle of\nlove, the opposite pole of the Christian motives. And then he concludes\nthat to its influence was due the severity of punishments in the middle\nages. A universal terrorism was produced. The sense of the divine mercy was\ndestroyed. The sufferings of the lost were at first regarded with horror;\nbut as men became more used to the thing, the horror was changed to\nindifference, and the indifference to a barbarous delight in the\ncontemplation and even the infliction of pain. It will not require many\narguments to show that such a method of treatment is monstrous. Mr. Lecky\nought to have noticed that the causes which in the middle ages led to\npeculiar stress being laid on the doctrine of eternal punishment, were\ncauses external to, and mostly in direct opposition, to the church; and\nthat their tendency was met by a corresponding realization of an opposite\npole of Christian feeling.\n\nWe cannot better introduce what\nwe have to say on the severity of punishments,\nand the alleged callousness\nof disposition in mediaeval times, and,\nindeed, on Mr. Lecky's whole criticism\nof the subject of eternal punishment,\nthan by a passage from a most able\nwriter:\n\n  \"One of the effects of civilization (not to say one of the ingredients in\n  it) is, that the spectacle, and even the very idea, of pain, is kept more\n  and more out of sight of those classes who enjoy in their full the\n  benefits of civilization. The state of perpetual personal conflict,\n  rendered necessary by the circumstances of former times, and from which\n  it was hardly possible for any person, in whatever rank of society, to be\n  exempt, necessarily habituated everyone to the spectacle of harshness,\n  rudeness, and violence, to the struggle of one indomitable will against\n  another, and to the alternate suffering  and infliction of pain. These\n  things, consequently, were not as revolting even to the best and most\n  actively benevolent men of former days, as they are to our own; and we\n  find the recorded conduct of those men frequently such as would be\n  universally considered very unfeeling in a person of our own day. They,\n  however, thought less of the infliction of pain, because they thought\n  less of pain altogether. When we read of actions of the Greeks and\n  Romans, or of our own ancestors, denoting callousness to human suffering,\n  we must not think that those who committed these actions were as cruel as\n  we must become before we could do the like. The pain which they\n  inflicted, they were in the habit of voluntarily undergoing from slight\n  causes; it did not appear to them as great an evil as it appears, and as\n  it really is, to us, nor did it in any way degrade their minds.\"\n  [Footnote 27]\n\n    [Footnote 27: J.S. Mill, Dissertations and Discussions; Art\n    Civilization.]\n\n{89}\n\nThe scale, in fact, according to which degrees of pain were computed, was\nmuch less minute then than now. This arose from the imperfect subdivision\nof labor in society, and the consequently more frequently recurring\nnecessity of personally putting forth powers of endurance and of action;\nfrom the continual wars and commotions; from the imperfection of the\nmechanical appliances which now alleviate suffering; from a sterner and\nrougher manner of living, necessitated by the undeveloped state of the\nsocial arts; from the intimate intermingling of the civil and the military\nlife, arising out of the feudal system; and from a multitude of other\ncauses. To these, however, we must add another of far more potent\ninfluence. The inchoate mediaeval nations were only emerging from a state\nof barbarism; and the associations of that barbarism still tenaciously\nclung to them in the gloomy superstitions common among northern nations, in\ncruel ordeals, in internecine warfare, in the whole texture of their social\nand national traditions. The causes referred to by Mr. Mill were in\noperation almost as much in the civilization of Greece and Rome as in the\nmiddle ages; but this circumstance, which is one on which we need not\ndilate, increased, and must have increased, to an enormous extent the\nactivity of the tendencies on which be remarks. If indeed, there were two\nnations exactly alike in every particular, except that the one believed\neternal punishment and set small store by pain, so as severely and even\nbarbarously to punish offenses, while the other did neither of these\nthings--we should in that case plausibly assert a direct causal connexion\nbetween holding the eternity of future punishment and a hardness and\ncallousness of temper. But we cannot argue in this free and easy manner,\nwhere the instances from which we have to make our induction are so\nmultifariously different as are the social condition of the present day and\nthe social condition of mediaeval times. We must not thus arbitrarily\nsingle one from out of a multitude of causes. Reasoning from the known\nprinciples of human nature, we can say with all confidence that the causes\njust enumerated must have operated, and operated very powerfully, to\nproduce many and severe punishments, the carelessness for and of suffering,\nthe trials by ordeal and by torture, which existed at the period of which\nwe write. And thus we also see that those representations of the torments\nof the lost, on which Mr. Lecky expends such a vast amount of rhetoric,\nmust have produced these effects immeasurably less than they would now\nproduce; far more powerful means had to be resorted to then to produce an\namount of feeling for which gentler methods now suffice.\n\nNor has Mr. Lecky fairly represented the doctrine of eternal punishment in\nitself. To contemplate the infliction of pain naturally produces, he says,\na callousness and hardness of feeling. This statement embodies only a half\ntruth, and the reasoning founded on it is in the highest degree fallacious.\nWhen the Catholics of ancient times contemplated the anguish of the lost,\nthe habits which they endeavoured to form were habits of horror for the sin\nwhich entailed that anguish. There is a great difference between thus\nactively contemplating suffering, and beholding it merely in a passive\nmanner, and with a view to some other end. The surgical operator, the\npublic executioner, the soldier, who look at it in this latter light, may\nand do in time become hardened and indifferent. But it is far otherwise in\nthe former case; and there is a great difference between reflecting on the\npains of others, and reflecting on the pains which may one day be our own.\nIt is reasonable and natural to suppose, and is found to be in reality the\ncase, that one who contemplates the sufferings of others merely and purely\nas of others, and habitually avoids referring them in any way to himself,\nwill in the end become hard and cruel.\n{90}\nBut the very essence of sympathy consists in an unconscious association of\nourselves with others in their sufferings. The Calvinist, therefore, the\nbeliever in \"assurance,\" who fancies himself to be one of the elect, and\nfrom his security safely thinks of all the torments of the reprobate as\nthings in which it would be sinful for him even for a moment to imagine\nthat he can have part, may but grow callous at the thought of hell--may\neven delight to think of it, and revel in the representation of the anguish\nthere. But such a spirit is altogether opposed to the whole bent of\nCatholic meditation on that subject. The Catholic, when he meditates on\nthese torments, thinks of them as of others, only that the thought may more\nvividly come home to himself; he thinks of them as of what he may one day\nhave to endure. And again, the thought of our own personal suffering can\nmake us hard and firm only when we consider it as a thing not to be\navoided, but to be braved. It is almost a truism to say, that those men are\nof all the most soft and timid, who are continually representing to\nthemselves means of escape from vividly imagined dangers. And no Catholic\nwould meditate on these torments that he might nerve himself to brave them,\nbut that he might seek means to avoid them. Catholics, of course, accept,\non the ground of God's Word, that awful doctrine of our faith which we are\nnow contemplating. So far as they argue for it from reason at all, they say\nthat this doctrine is the necessary sanction of the moral law; and the\nforce of that argument will be felt by none more strongly than by Catholics\nthemselves, who, from holding the existence both of a future temporal and\nof a future eternal punishment for sin, are better able to judge what\neffects would be likely to be produced, if hell were, in the common\nteaching, resolved into a kind of purgatory. But it must never be forgotten\nthat in the Catholic religion the doctrine of eternal punishment, is taught\nunder certain accompanying conditions, which intimately affect its\npractical bearing. The first of these conditions is the doctrine of\npurgatory, of which M. Comte thus speaks:\n\n  Il serait facile de reconna\u00eetre que l'institution, si am\u00e8rement\n  critiqu\u00e9e, du purgatoire fut, au contraire, tr\u00e8s-heureusement introduite,\n  dans la pratique sociale du Catholicisme, \u00e0 titre d'indispensable\n  correctif fondamental de l'eternit\u00e9 des peines futures; oar, autrement,\n  cette \u00e9ternit\u00e9, sans laquelle les prescriptions religieuses ne pouvaient\n  \u00eatre efficaces, e\u00fbt \u00e9videmment d\u00e9termin\u00e9 souvent ou un rel\u00e2chement\n  funeste, ou un effroyable d\u00e9sespoir, \u00e9galemeut dangereux l'un et l'autre\n  pour l'individu et pour la soci\u00e9t\u00e9, et entre lesquels le g\u00e9nie Catholique\n  est parvenu \u00e0 organiser cette ing\u00e9nieuse issue, qui permettait de graduer\n  imm\u00e9diatement, avec une scrupuleuse pr\u00e9cision, l'application effective du\n  proc\u00e9d\u00e9 religieux aux convenances de chaque cas r\u00e9el. [Footnote 28]\n\n    [Footnote 28: Philosophie Positive, vol. v. p. 269 (Ed. 1864).]\n\nIn reading this quotation, it must be remembered that M. Comte was not a\nCatholic, and regarded the Catholic Church as merely a human institution.\nBut, the truths to which that unhappy thinker here draws attention, are so\nevident, that they hardly require proof. If the sole future punishment of\nsin be believed to be an eternal punishment, such as is that of hell, it is\nnot difficult to perceive what effects will follow. The timid, and those\nwho are naturally religiously minded, will form a gloomy and austere notion\nof religion, which will produce some of the effects noted by Mr. Lecky, and\nin the end, by provoking a necessary reaction, work the destruction of all\nreligion whatever. Those, on the contrary, who are irreligiously inclined,\nwill be still further moved to give up all ideas of religion as\nimpracticable, and will be disgusted by its tone and spirit; while the\ndoctrine of eternal punishment will lose its force by being applied to\nlight and trivial offences.\n\nBut we must also notice another condition of the realization of this\ndoctrine; which is provided in the Catholic system; and which, like that of\npurgatory, has been rather neglected by Protestantism.\n{91}\nIt has been noticed by some writers that the sacramental system of the\nchurch provides an admirable safeguard, and one in an especial manner\nnecessary in the middle ages, against outbreaks of fanaticism. According to\nthe teaching of the Catholic Church, the sacraments are the great means,\nchannels, and conditions of grace. And this produces a system and an order,\na definite method of procedure in the spiritual life, which, assisted by\nthe ascetical and mystical theology so minutely cultivated, abundantly\ndirects enthusiasm and represses fanaticism. And we do not doubt that if\nProtestantism, with its doctrine of private judgment and private direction,\nhad been the form of Christianity existing in the middle ages, Christianity\nwould have sunk into a condition of which paganism and the Gnostic heresies\nalone afford a parallel. But this sacramental system has also another,\nthough a co-ordinate effect. Grace is insensible and unfelt, to confound it\nwith the natural religious feelings and emotions is to make religion no\nlonger a discipline and a duty, but a sentiment. And because it is unfelt,\nit is necessary that it should ordinarily be given through some external\nand sensible rite, in order to ward off undue and pernicious doubt and\nanxiety. Now, according to Catholic teaching, while, on the one hand, it is\nimpossible for any one to know with absolute certainty what is his\nspiritual state before God; on the other hand, the doctrine of confession\nand absolution supplies all with a means of knowing, with a greater of less\namount of probability, what their real condition is. On the morally\nbeneficial tendency of the first part of this teaching it is unnecessary to\ndilate, and any scrupulosity or vain terror which, if it stood alone, it\nmight excite, is amply provided against by the second. And thus, through\nthe correlative doctrines of purgatory, of the consequent distinction\nbetween mortal and venial sins, of confession and absolution, and by means\nof its moral theology, Catholicism provides that the doctrine of eternal\npunishment shall press with greater or less force, exactly as its influence\nis more or less required. It does not leave the believer to the diseased\nimaginations of his own mind, but provides an external code to which he\nmust submit, and an external direction by which he will be guided. It\nprovides a means by which he may know whether he is or is not in a state of\nsin, and a definite remedy whereby he may extricate himself from it; while\nit holds out a hope of salvation to all, and teaches that no man ever\nexisted whose case was so desperate that he could not, if he co-operated\nwith grace, as he has the power of co-operating, look for pardon. With the\nheretical sects the case is widely different. The very name of Calvinism\ncalls up associations on which it would be painful to dwell. The\nconjunction of the doctrines of eternal punishment and necessitarianism\nmust always, even where these doctrines are but to a very inadequate extent\nrealized, produce a type of religious thought and feeling as repulsive as\nit is degrading. Of this it would be superfluous to speak. But\nProtestantism repudiates the practice of confession and the doctrine of\nabsolution. Then, indeed, wherever the eternity of punishment was realized,\nit produced a diseased and unhealthy state of mind. Anxiety, doubt, terror,\nwere necessarily the predominating feelings in the minds of men; an anxiety\nwhich could be calmed no longer now that there was no confessional, and a\ndoubt which admitted of no direction now that each man had to be almost\nentirely his own counsellor, while all were faltering and divided as to the\n\"direction of the ways of life.\" The \"doctrine of final assurance\" was,\nindeed, put forward to remedy the evil. But that doctrine only served to\naggravate it. For to one class of minds it only supplied a new cause of\nterror; and to another it gave a very fruitful occasion of cultivating a\ndisposition perhaps the most detestably proud, callous, and selfish, which\nhas ever appeared among mankind.\n\n{92}\n\nWe must not, however, be supposed to deny that, through causes the\ncharacter of which may partially be gathered from the preceding remarks,\nthe doctrine of eternal punishment was very prominent in the middle ages.\nAnd how, it will be asked, did the church of those ages meet this\nextraordinary prominence? To have met it by merely insisting on the\nblessedness of heaven, would obviously have been most inadequate. Our\nnatural constitution, and the circumstances of our life here, are such that\nour ideas of happiness, and especially of permanent happiness, are, as it\nhas often been urged, far less definite and far less acute than our ideas\nof pain; and for this reason it has been wisely brought about that what has\nbeen made known to us of the blessedness of heaven is far less definite and\ncomplete, than is what we know of the punishment of the wicked. But for\nthis very reason, the prominence of the doctrine of their eternal\npunishment could not be efficaciously met by insisting on this blessedness.\nBut there is another set of ideas and feelings directly opposed to the\ndespair and unmitigated fear which would be produced by the sole\ncontemplation of the torments of the lost; and it is a set of ideas and\nfeelings which nowhere find so natural a home as in Catholicism. From the\nmanner in which the doctrine of the Incarnation is dwelt on in the Catholic\nsystem, and from the consequently almost human character which is given to\nthe love of God and to the contemplation of the divine perfections as set\nforth in Christ, there results an ardor, an intensity, an active continuity\nof that love, which is simply incomprehensible to those who are external to\nthe machinery of the Catholic Church. If it be asked, then, how did the\nchurch of those times meet the extraordinary, development of the doctrine\nwe have been considering, the answer is patent to the most superficial\nreader of the mediaeval saints and theologians. They met it by an, at\nleast, equal development of the doctrine of divine love. St. Bernard, Hugo\nof St. Victor, St. Anselm, all especially breathe in their works this sweet\nand devout spirit. The writings of St. Bernard, and those passages of such\nexquisitely tender devotion which occur in the writings of St. Augustine,\nbecame, in particular, the texts on which succeeding writers expanded and\ndilated. A spirit of meekness and tenderness of devotion, an intense and\nfervid love of God, are the themes on which they peculiarly delight to\ndwell, and the virtues on which they peculiarly love to insist. It was this\nage that produced the Imitation; toward the close of it appeared the\nParadisus Animae: and whoever was the actual author of the former work, it\npossesses remarkable affinity with the spirit and even the style of Gerson.\nNor was this temper of mind confined to purely mystical writers. The\nwritings of St. Francis of Assisi, of St. Bridget, St. Catherine of Sienna,\nand others, attest, indeed, that the type of sanctity was, in some sense,\nchanging under its influence; but it passed on to the great theological\nteachers of the age. St. Thomas of Aquino, the best and greatest of them\nall, lived and struggled in the very midst of the conflict with infidelity\nwhich was then agitating the church, and yet even he found time to write a\nnumber of short spiritual treatises which display the most tender and the\nmost delicate devotion. This is especially seen in his book De Beatitudine.\nRichard of St. Victor wrote a work De Gradibus Violentae Charitatis, \"On\nthe degrees of violent charity.\" St. Bonaventure received the name of \"The\nSeraphic Doctor\" from the ardor of his piety; the titles of a few of his\nworks--De Septem Itineribus AEternitatis, Stimulus Amoris, Amatorium,\nItinerarium Mentis ad Deum--will be sufficient to show its character. The\ntender and loving spirit which those great doctors manifested in their\ndevotion, broke out also in their correspondence with their friends, as may\nbe perceived even from the extracts from the letters and sermons of certain\nof them which the Count de Montalembert has inserted in his Monks of the\nWest.\n{93}\nOther momenta of a more general nature show the operation of the same\ntendency. For the first time detailed lives of our blessed Lord came into\ngeneral circulation. Devotion to the passion assumed a far more prominent\nposition than before; of the spirit which animated it we have a most\ntouching example in the little book attributed to St. Juliana of Norwich.\nThe Canticle of Canticles suddenly took a place in the affections of the\npious, which even in the primitive church it had never known. St. Bernard\ncomposed on it his celebrated Sermones super Cantica, St. Bonaventure and\nRichard of St. Victor both wrote commentaries on it; St. Thomas has left us\ntwo, and it was while dictating the second of these that he passed out of\nthis world, celebrating the blessedness of divine love. Nor can we\naltogether omit to notice three devotions, two of which certainly exercised\na very considerable influence. In an age in which the spirit of love and\ndevotion to our blessed Lord had assumed such large proportions, in which\nthe doctrine of the Incarnation was for the first time completely treated\nin a scientific manner, and in which the subject of original sin was more\nprofoundly investigated, and the questions concerning the Immaculate\nConception consequently began to be cleared up and to assume a definite\nform and coherence, it was natural that a great devotion should manifest\nitself to our Blessed Lady. And of the tendency and the effects of this\ndevotion Mr. Lecky has himself spoken. The character of the devotion to St.\nJoseph, also, is sufficiently well known, and it was first, we believe,\ntreated at length by Albertus Magnus. Devotion to the Blessed Sacrament was\nto an indefinite extent stimulated by the institution of the Feast of\nCorpus Christi; and it, of a truth, is a devotion which of all others\nbreathes a spirit of tenderness and of love.\n\nWe can now only make a few concluding remarks. We have already given a\ngeneral estimate of the work, on a few points of which we have here\ntouched; for we considered it better to speak of two or three connected\nsubjects more fully, than to distract ourselves and our readers by flying\ncomments on the many and very diverse subjects there treated. We have only\nexplicitly to add what we have before implied, that we consider it a very\ndangerous book. It is all the more dangerous, because Mr. Lecky is not a\nfurious fanatic; because of his spurious candor; because of his partial\nadmissions; because of his engaging style. And in an age like the present,\nwhen the dogmatic principle is so bitterly attacked by those without, and\nsits so lightly on the necks even of believers, it is exceedingly\ndangerous. For, as was to be expected, it sets the dogmatic principle\nutterly at defiance, and from beginning to end is a continued protest\nagainst it. Mr. Lecky's idea of education, and his theory of the manner of\nformation of religious opinions, are alike thoroughly opposed to it. In\neducation he would have the bare principles of morality only, as far as\npossible, inculcated; dogma, as far as possible, excluded; and if any\namount of dogmatic teaching is unavoidably admitted, it is to be taught\nonly so as to rest as lightly as possible on the mind, and with the proviso\nthat the opinions then taught will have to be reconsidered in after life.\nWith respect to the formation of religious opinions, his book teaches a\nkind of Hegelianism. Society is continually changing, and the best thing we\ncan do is to follow the most advanced minds in society. There is an\neverlasting process, in which we can never be sure that we have definitely\nattained to the truth. The end of this, of course, is to make all opinions\nuncertain. We may know what we like best, or what the tendencies of society\nincline it and us to believe; but we can never, as to religious opinions,\nknow what is objectively true.\n\n{94}\n\nIt is not very difficult to discover what is the nature of this process\nwhich is called rationalism. In former times the religious spirit\npredominated over the secular; but from a variety of causes, and in\nparticular on account of the immense development of secular science since\nthe time of Bacon and Descartes, the secular scientific spirit has since\npredominated over the religious. And rationalism is merely one of the\nresults of this predominance; a consequence of the application to religious\nsubjects of secular habits of thought. This may manifest itself, now in one\nway, now in another; in the denial now of transubstantiation, now of the\ndoctrine of the Trinity; but its root and origin is the same: it tends (and\nthis quite takes the romance out of it) to the elimination of the religious\nideas, and it is strengthened by whatever strengthens what we have called\nthe secular scientific, or weakens the religious, spirit. Hence that\ndislike of authority and that over-clouding of the moral character of\nreligious truth; hence that distaste for the miraculous and the mysterious,\nand that tendency to put into the background, and even to deny, the\ndoctrine of grace; and if the internal wants of those who have just\n\"escaped from the wilderness of Christianity, and still have some of the\nthorns and brambles sticking to their clothes,\" make it necessary that\nsomething should be substituted for that which is being taken away--a\nbaseless and often unreal sentimentalism is substituted for honest\nreligious duty and earnest devotion. It is only too much to be feared that\nthe world will educate itself out of this also; and that, in the case of\nthose who refuse submission to the Catholic Church, the secular spirit will\nmore and more grow toward its full ascendancy, and therefore toward a total\nextinction of the already weakened religious ideas.\n\n-------\n\n  Original.\n\n  A DREAM.\n\n\n  A procession passed by in my fitful dreams,\n  So strange that it now like a nightmare seems.\n  I beheld a long line of wifeless men\n  Whom their living wives might claim again.\n  And widows and orphans who never gave\n  Husband or parent up to the grave.\n  In the hands of each of this motley train\n  Was a broken heart and a broken chain:\n  And a veil hung down over every face\n  Hiding the shame of a deep disgrace.\n  A figure they bore on a funeral bier,\n  Of a form that belonged to another sphere.\n  Not a line of humanity could I trace\n  In its ghastly, shadowy, hideous face.\n  From its jaws came a noisome, poisonous breath,\n  That hung o'er the bier like the mist of death;\n  Then spread like a pestilence through the air,\n  And husbands and wives standing here and there\n\n{95}\n\n  Its magical circle of mischief within--\n  Opened their mouths and sucked it in.\n  Then, straightway, like beasts, grovelled prone in the dust,\n  Burning with jealousy, anger, and lust.\n  I marvelled to see as I looked again\n  All these were now widows and wifeless men.\n  In their hands, like those in the funeral train,\n  Was the broken heart and the broken chain.\n  And as the strange throng passed hurriedly by,\n  They chanted this dirge with a savage cry:\n\n      Dig its grave deep.\n    Hide it well out of sight,\n    Lest it come to the light,\n    And our hearths and homes smite\n    With a curse and a blight.\n      Dig its grave deep.\n\n      Dig its grave deep.\n    Lest its treacherous smile\n    May our reason beguile;\n    Lest its rottenness vile\n    May the nation defile.\n      Dig its grave deep.\n\n      Dig its grave deep.\n    For lust and for gold\n    It has bartered and sold\n    All that dearest we hold;\n    Let its death-knell be tolled.\n      Dig its grave deep,\n\n      Dig its grave deep.\n    The land has been rife\n    With its bloodshed and strife\n    Between husband and wife.\n    Crush, crush out its life.\n      Dig its grave deep.\n\n      Dig its grave deep.\n    It has stood by the side.\n    Of bridegroom and bride\n    Whom it meant to divide,\n    And their troth falsified.\n      Dig its grave deep.\n\n      Dig its grave deep.\n    It feedeth on lies.\n    It breaketh all ties;\n    And all innocence dies\n    'Neath the glance of its eyes.\n      Dig its grave deep.\n\n{96}\n\n      Dig its grave deep.\n    'Tis an offspring of shame\n    Deserving no name;\n    From the devil it came,\n    To return to the same.\n      Dig its grave deep.\n\n      Dig its grave deep.\n    'Tis a curse and a bane:\n    Its touch is profane;\n    And brings sorrow and pain\n    In its murderous train.\n      Dig its grave deep.\n\n      Dig its grave deep.\n    'Tis a damning disgrace\n    To a people or race,\n    Who there nature abase\n    To give this thing place.\n      Dig its grave deep.\n\n      Dig its grave deep.\n    Pile earth, rocks, and stones\n    On its festering bones:\n    Naught for it atones:\n    Hell its parentage owns.\n      Dig its grave deep.\n\n  As I looked once again on what funeral bier,\n  My limbs became rigid through horror and fear;\n  For the hideous form breathed its breath in my face,\n  And spreading its arms to invite an embrace,\n  Beckoned me on with an ominous nod;\n  I cried, Fiend, avaunt! in the name of God!\n  And awoke.--On that bier I had seen the foul corse\n  Of the scourge of our country, THE LAW OF DIVORCE.\n\n{97}\n\n  Original.\n\n  A Talk About Paris.\n  By An Old Bachelor.\n\nSo much has been said, written, thought, and exaggerated about Paris, that\nlittle remains to be said, written, thought, or exaggerated about it.\nStill, keeping clear of the broad road reserved to guide-books and\ntravellers, I flatter myself that a comfortable, easy chat about it and its\ninhabitants, may not be unwelcome to my friends across the broad Atlantic.\n\nIf you hope some day to visit this great city--and what American does not\ncherish that hope?--pray that that day may not be made a dark one by the\nunceasing rain, and slippery, sloshy mud, which often usher in the winter.\nNo place so wretched as Paris in the rainy season; elsewhere one may make\nup one's mind philosophically to india rubbers, umbrellas, and the blues,\nbut here it seems a sort of personal insult when the sun does not shine,\nand brighten the long rows of while houses. Was not Paris made for\nenjoyment, light-heartedness, and sunshine? At this season, it is not\nunfrequent to hear visitors, with a grave shake of the head, declare that\nthey are really quite disappointed; that it is not at all what they had\nexpected, and that other places are much more interesting. They quarrel\nwith the emperor for his great work of regenerating and beautifying the\nParis of crooked, narrow, but picturesque memory. The changes he has\nwrought are indeed marvellous; and though he may well grumble at the\nwholesale destruction of old places, and also at the discomfort attendant\non constant pulling down and building up, yet the unprejudiced traveller\ncannot but stand amazed at all that has been done during one man's reign,\nand also feel a certain degree of gratitude for the comfort of wide,\nwell-paved streets, and well-built modern houses.\n\nMy first visit to Paris was some twenty years ago, when I was sent on my\ntravels, before settling down to a hum-drum law office. I remember well\nmany quaint nooks and corners, which I look for in vain now. Among other\nplaces, I see in my mind's eye a certain queer old tavern restaurant, famed\nfor its English dishes, its gray-haired waiters, and its cheapness; it\nstood in Rue St. Lazarre, at the head of the Chauss\u00e9e d'Antin, a wide and\npopulace thoroughfare. Here, escaping from my establishment \"de gar\u00e7on\"\nhard by, I used to find myself at about six o'clock waiting for my slice of\n\"Ros bif.\" Well I remember the old room, with its comfortable half light,\nand white-covered tables; well, too, do I remember the old gentleman who\ninvariably took the cosiest nook, and secured the paper over which he\ninvariably dozed; and the student of medicine who carved his chicken with a\nskill that made my blood run cold. But more vividly than all do I remember\na young countryman of mine, an artist, with his English wife, a young\ngirlish creature, who particularly interested me; they seemed so happy,\nmade so light of that hard struggle with poverty--which so often turns the\nstrength of young men to despair, and the love of young wives to sourness--\nthat I made an effort, notwithstanding my shyness, to become acquainted\nwith them. We have been friends ever since, and as I write, the young\nartist, having conquered in the battle of life, is both known and respected\nin his native country; as to his wife, though she certainly is no longer\ngirlish, she is as merry as ever, surrounded by her bevy of grown and\ngrowing daughters.\n\n{98}\n\nRemembering all these things, one of my first excursions was to this place,\nhoping to live these memories over again, and thereby perhaps to feel young\nonce more. But I looked in vain; on the very spot where the humble\nrestaurant stood, towers at this moment a beautiful new church, with wealth\nof statues and ornaments; it is called \"La Ste. Trinit\u00e9,\" and is the pride\nof the neighborhood. But I looked at its highly decorated white fa\u00e7ade with\na feeling of disappointment. I should so have liked another slice of that\nfamed \"Ros Bif!\" Everybody has heard about the boulevards of Paris,\nencircling the city, and intersecting it in every direction, giving it\nfresh air and beauty. Every one, too, has heard of the straight new\navenues, radiating from the Arc de Triomphe like rays from a sun, and of\nthe manifold new streets which have swallowed up so many old ones; and,\nabove all, of the wonderful opera house, which stands just opposite Rue de\nla Paix, and which is to be one of the wonders of the world. I have heard\nand read that it is almost finished, therefore conclude that it is my own\nwant of perceptive powers which makes it still appear to me like a huge,\nuniform mass; lately, however, through the breaks in the scaffolding I have\nperceived parts nearly finished, with ornaments of color and white marble,\nand from these glimpses I conclude that when the time comes, I shall be\nable to indulge in the ecstasies of admiration expected from all beholders\nof this mammoth enterprise.\n\nBut all this is not Paris, Paris of olden times, of history; it is\nbeautiful, but it is terribly new, and the old fogies of the Faubourg St.\nGermain, emerging from their narrow streets, shake their heads at the broad\nnew avenues, with their unmitigated straightness and meaningless\nuniformity.\n\nThe other night I went to hear a play now much in vogue, called La Maison\nNeuve, a capital satire on this \"Nouveau Paris,\" and full of local hits.\nBut why should I attempt to tell you anything about it? Americans know\neverything about everything, and probably while you are reading this, The\nNew House is figuring in large letters on the play bills at Wallack's, and\nmanagers \"out West\" are conning over the possibilities of adapting this\nnice little tid-bit of novelty to their stage. All the French shading, all\nthe palpable hits, will, alas! be made limpingly to apply to New-York,\nChicago, St. Louis, etc. We are a great people, there is no doubt; but do\nwe not, sometimes, in our great hurry to be ahead of everybody else, make\nlittle mistakes? In a recent conversation with some French friends, I\nmentioned that La Famille Benoiton was figuring East and West. \"Mais\ncomment! how can they understand it? even Frenchmen, if not Parisians,\nwould have difficulty! mais c'est impayable.\" I quietly replied that we\nwere a great nation, which is a convenient answer on many occasions; but\nbetween ourselves, is it not a pity that we do not aim at a little\noriginality? that we must ape Paris quite so much?\n\nBut, to return to La Maison Neuve. It was hissed at first, its satire was\nperhaps a little too piquant; but some of the thorns being removed, it\nblooms in glory, and Frenchman clap furiously at the merciless cutting up\nof Boulevard Malesherbes, and the upstart fashions of young France. From\nwhat I have seen and observed, I fancy the play is an exaggerated, but on\nthe whole a tolerably faithful picture of modern French life, with its want\nof depth, its tinsel, its sham, and its immorality. But let us leave the\ntheatre--though the charming, light, natural acting, which we heavier\nAmericans cannot imitate, make it wonderfully attractive--in turn once more\nto Paris streets.\n\n{99}\n\nAfter all, life is not in the houses, or rather slices of houses, which\npeople call apartments, but in the streets. At this season, one does not\nfeel astonished at it; every body, even the rheumatic old bachelor, feels\ntempted to leave the smoky chimney--why do French chimneys always\nsmoke?--and wander up and down peering into all the shop windows, with\ntheir wealth of beautiful things, tempting one to buy a Christmas or New\nYear's gift for every body under the sun. We must acknowledge that our\ncousins of France have a most wonderful art of displaying their merchandise\nto the best advantage. Did anyone ever imagine anything more seductive than\na French confectioner's? It is really dangerous to pass the establishments\nof Boissier and others on the Boulevard, with their beautiful display of\nboxes, caskets, vases, and quaintly dressed figures of grand ladies, etc.,\nall filled with delicious bonbons. As to the toys, there is positive genius\ndisplayed in these pleasures of a moment; indeed, these shop-keepers are\nnot only artists, they are satirists. Approach, dear ladies, look at these\ndolls, and sigh for fashion, if you can; these unimaginable gew-gaws, these\nextraordinarily long robes, which give the dear creatures the appearance of\nbeing half on the floor, and half above it, these--these ... but I lack the\nmilliner vocabulary, or I would stun you with the etceteras; then the turn\nof the head, the stare through the miniature eye-glass, and the little\ncurly dog led by a ribbon! Messieurs the shop-keepers! I bow to you, you\nare greater satirists even than those sharp-penned writers of a certain New\nYork literary review.\n\nThe other day, having reached the upper part of the Boulevard, near the\nPorte St. Dennis, I could not but stop and gaze down that long stream of\nhuman life which lay before me; not a particle of the pavement was to be\nseen, nothing but a living mass of bustling, pushing, quarreling humanity.\nAll classes, all ages, almost all countries, were there. Men in blouses.\nand men in broad-cloth; beggars and nobles; innocent children, and men with\nthe inevitable marks of an ill-spent life on care-worn faces; silk attired\ndames, and white-capped _bonnes_; loud-voiced ladies with unimaginable\nboots, and the shortest possible walking dresses; anxious mothers trying in\nvain to keep their excited little ones from running against portly\ngentlemen, or loaded _commissionaires_. Fancy all this, with a Babel\nof German, Italian, Spanish, and much more frequent English, with the noise\nof street organists and Italian harpists, the screaming of itinerant\nmerchants, the dashing of carriages, the swearing of drivers, and you will\nhave some idea of the scene. As I stood in a sheltered nook observing, I\ncould not but think of Kribble Krabble, Hans Andersen's philosopher, who\nshowed his friend what seemed to be a city full of fighting, devouring\nmonsters, in a drop of water. I wonder if from those quiet stars, so calm\nand pure, this busy scene does not also appear like that drop of ditch\nwater; whether some beings gifted with a penetrating vision denied to us,\ndo not see into the true natures of this elbowing host, and weep over the\nmonsters of cruelty, of cunning, of hypocrisy, of degradation\ndisclosed--inevitable adjuncts of a large city. Let us look again; we, less\ngifted, see only beings one much like the other, all seemingly busy in\nenjoying the gay scene around them, eagerly prying into the glittering\nshops, or passing quickly by the thousand booths that during Christmas week\ntransform the street into a real Vanity Fair. They laugh, chat, seem happy,\nand surely to be happy one must be innocent! Let us believe them so; let us\npass on, brushing by yon gaudily dressed woman, yon sinister-eyed man, and\nthank heaven that we are not cursed with the magical glass of Kribble\nKrabble. After all, do not those slashing satirists do more harm than good,\nin bringing so vividly to the light of day things that might as well be\nkept in the background? Is it not better philosophy to shut one's eyes to\nmuch that passes around one, at this season especially, for it is Christmas\ntime, when there should be peace on earth?\n\n{100}\n\nSpeaking of Christmas, reminds me to speak of the churches, which I have as\nyet neglected. Paintings, engravings, and photographs have already made the\noutside of these churches familiar to you, therefore I will not dwell on\nthat branch of the subject. Notre Dame, grand old Gothic Notre Dame, is on\nan island in the Seine. It seems to look down, in its grandeur, on both old\nand new Paris. On one side it seems sadly to recall the bloody memories of\nyears gone by; the rise and downfall of dynasties; the rise and downfall of\nfamilies still sheltered in the old streets of the old St. Germain quarter;\nthe death of the old _r\u00e9gime_, the breaking of hearts. On the other\nhand, it seems to frown on gorgeous new Paris; on the beautiful panorama of\nbuildings along the bank of the river, the Tuileries, the Louvre, the Hotel\nde Ville, etc., and beyond these, scores of new white buildings, and the\nruins of others, comparatively new, which are to give place to still finer\nones. The old church, with its quaintly carved monsters and old towers,\nseems to stand as a warning of the time that is to come, when all these\ngreat works of man shall be but vanity, and as chaff. This is a solemn\nchurch, as it should be, and gloom seems to dwell in its lofty arches.\n\nIt is the Madeleine, the beautiful, bright Madeleine, which seems to be the\nfavorite church of the Parisians. It was here that, with great difficulty,\nI found a seat on Christmas morning. As I entered the services had begun,\nand a beautifully clear boy's voice was holding a high note, while a full\norchestral band was playing the accompaniment. The church was crowded, and\nI noticed that a great many Protestants, both English and American, were\npresent. I have heard much and read much of the impropriety and want of\nrespect evinced by these in sacred places, but, except for a little more\nstaring, and perhaps some little more whispering, their conduct, as far as\nI could observe, did not differ essentially from that of their Catholic\nneighbors. In these large churches there is always an amount of bustle, and\na want of reverence, which, to an American Catholic, is, I confess, very\nshocking. The constant coming in and going out is occasioned, in some\ndegree, by the fact that often, during high mass, several low masses are\ngoing on at the side altars; but still the want of reverence evinced by\nnumbers and numbers of these French Catholics, is a fact too apparent to be\ndenied. I do not mean to say that I have not observed many who seemed to\nrealize what was going on before them, but most of these had \"old\n_r\u00e9gime_\" written on their faces. With young France it is the fashion\nto doubt, to scoff, or to be utterly indifferent, and who dares to disobey\nfashion? But let us return to the ceremony.\n\nThe altar of this famed church has often been described. The marble group\nabove it is singularly beautiful, it represents Mary Magdalen, supported by\nangels; the figures are of heroic size, and of the purest white marble. At\nthis altar ministered a large number of golden-robed priests, surrounded by\na bevy of boys in scarlet and white. Had I, too, been a Protestant,\nignorant of the deep and holy meaning hidden under these symbols, and\nseeing in them but the glitter of gold and rich colors, I dare say I\nshould, like them, have pronounced it but a gorgeous show, a theatrical\ndisplay; as it was, my thoughts flew eagerly back to a certain well\nremembered chapel across the Atlantic, where I had often assisted at the\nsame ceremony performed with a simplicity and devotion which contrasted\npleasingly with this grand high mass at the Madeleine. Persecution and\npoverty are wonderful safeguards to the virtue of man; they are, perhaps,\nalso necessary to the perfection of churches. Religion--faith--must always\nremain pure, but the professors thereof may easily be influenced by the\naccidents of wealth and splendor.\n{101}\nWhile making these reflections, and indoctrinating myself with charity\ntoward our Protestant brethren, the mass went on, and the really beautiful\nmusic filled the lofty church. But there was something discordant to my\nears in the harmony of the violins and brass instruments; to my mind the\norgan alone, that most holy of instruments, is worthy of ministering to the\nservice of God. Still, the music was beautiful, and after all true music is\nalways sacred; and when at the elevation the loud instruments held their\nbreath, and a rich barytone voice alone was heard, I had to confess that,\nwhatever its surroundings, religion and religious spirit are always to be\nfound by him who really seeks them.\n\nRemember, also, that I have been talking of the Madeleine, which is\nessentially the worldly church of Paris. At St. Roch, situated in Rue St.\nHonor\u00e9, and from whose steps the blood-thirsty crowd jeered at Marie\nAntoinette as she was being led to the Place de la Concorde, where stood\nthe awful guillotine; at Notre Dame de Lorette, and many others, there is\nless glitter, less parade, and apparently more devotion. At St. Roch, the\nbeautifully trained choir of boys, and the good music given, attract many\nProtestants; still the feeling of the church is more Catholic than that of\nthe Madeleine. Here, as elsewhere, I was struck by the vast number of\npriests in the sanctuary. I thought of our own overworked, faithful\npriests, and could not help wondering whether a little of their hard work\nwould not be good for those before me.\n\nAs I look over what I have written I find that there is no small amount of\ngrumbling and fault-finding in the foregoing pages; I smile to myself as I\ndiscover that I have fallen into the little peculiarity which I have so\noften noticed in my countrymen and countrywomen in Paris: that of finding\nfault. No American, or Englishman either, whom you may question, will utter\nten words on the subject, without abusing the French. \"There's no trust to\nbe put in them; they are a lying, mean set,\" are among the mildest\naccusations poured forth; and there certainly is some truth in the charges.\nAmericans, with the people at large, are a flock of rich fools, sent over\nby their lucky stars, on purpose to be fleeced; consequently all the\ntradespeople you employ, your servants and their ally the _concierge_,\ninvariably ask you about double as much as they would ask a Frenchman, and\nlaugh at you while pocketing your gold. The art of cheapening things, so\nwell understood by the people here, is a new experience to you. You do not\nlike to walk into a handsome shop and offer half the price asked for an\narticle, you are not accustomed to it, feel awkward; all of which the wily\nshopman sees well enough, and, of course, you end by giving the price\nrequired. But that French lady next to you, so handsomely dressed, does not\nhesitate an instant; you think she at least would have disdained that art\nof the _bourgeoisie_; not a bit of it; she insists, the clerk, bowing\nmuch more respectfully than he did to you, wraps up the article, and the\nlady sails out in triumph.\n\nBut for all this, Americans seem to find wondrous charms in this city, and\nprolong their stay for one month to two, then to six, and not unfrequently\nrush back to New York, settle up their affairs, and return to live here\npermanently, despising the French more and more every year, of course! At\nthis present moment, if all our countrymen and countrywomen, now residing\nhere, were suddenly transplanted to the western prairies, they would form\nquite a respectable sized city, which would, according to the invariable\nwestern custom, begin to defy its sister cities to show a bigger figure\nwhen the census came to be taken. But I fancy very few of these Americans,\nif the question were put to them, would be willing thus to be transported\nfor the good of their country. We are undoubtedly a very patriotic people;\nbut we believe, most devoutly, that charity begins at home.\n{102}\nAmong these same countrymen of ours I notice the names of a number of\nwell-known artists, who, I understand are well thought of in the artistic\nworld. It is pleasant to hear them praised by our cousins of France, but I\ncannot help thinking that America, still so young in art, can ill spare her\ngifted children.\n\nTalking of artists, let me tell you of a sad little incident that came\nunder my own observation. We are all dimly conscious that poverty,\nsometimes in its direst aspect, harasses the beginning or nearly all artist\nlives. We have heard that N., whose beautiful picture drew crowds at the\nlast exhibition, and who cannot fulfil all the commissions that pour in\nupon him--that the same man, not many years ago, might have starved but\nfor the aid of his fellow students; we know this, but, surrounded by\ncomforts and luxuries, it is the hardest thing in the world to realize\npoverty. We walk the streets, brush by numbers of ragged women, throw a\ncopper to a bare-footed little beggar, but how often do we in our thoughts\nfollow those poor creatures to the hovels or garrets or cellars which serve\nthem as homes? how little we can imagine the cold and damp which chill\ntheir bones, or the hunger which gnaws them! Still less do we realize, I\nthink, that beings with the education and feelings of gentlemen, should\nhave to endure these same horrors. I have before my mind, as I write, the\nface of a young man, an enthusiast in his art, who, while engaged on a long\ndreamt-of, cherished work, found that in consequence of the war in America,\nthe supplies on which he had calculated gave out. What to do? abandon his\nwork, his career perhaps? return beggared to his native western town,\nwithout the promised work which was to show that his time had not been\nwasted? Never, better starve! and starve he actually would have done, but\nfor the help of a student friend, almost as poor as himself, who shared his\ndaily loaf with him; and so the young man finished his picture, took it\nover to America, where artists who saw it, seeing that it showed more than\nordinary talent, bestirred themselves, and making up a sufficient sum, sent\nthe young man back to his studies, feeling sure that the world would hear\nof him some day. But I am wondering, let us return to Paris, and to the\nincident which I was about to relate.\n\nSome few weeks ago I was invited to dinner by some friends settled here for\nthe winter. The meeting was a pleasant one, and I left the brilliantly\nlighted, handsome rooms with a pleasing glow over me, a reflection perhaps\nfrom the good cheer which both mind and body had enjoyed. As I was passing\nthe inevitable _concierge_ lodge, the Cerberus kennel of every French\nhouse, I was stopped by the sound of plaintive voice, and looking around I\nsaw a little girl, a child of some ten years, pleading evidently for some\ngreat favor with the gruff _concierge_ himself, who, notwithstanding\nall his decided negative shakes of the head, seemed to be struggling with a\ncertain degree of pity. The child was wretchedly dressed, and her little\nhands were blue with cold, but in her upturned, pitifully old child's face,\nthere was a certain look of refinement that struck me. I approached and\nasked what the matter was.\n\n\"Ah, pardon, monsieur! it is not of my fault; orders you see must be\nobeyed, and the landlord ...\"\n\nThen he told me the story. It seemed that a month or two before he had been\na witness to the turning out from a miserable hole of a poor family; the\nfather called himself an artist, poor devil! his wife had a baby in her\narms, and there was a little girl. Seeing their utter distress, and\nremembering a couple of miserable rooms dignified by the name of\n\"Appartements de gar\u00e7on,\" but which did not let easily as they were dark\nand uncomfortable, he had asked the landlord to allow them to occupy them\ntemporarily.\n{103}\nShortly afterward the poor wife, a delicate, consumptive creature, died;\nthe baby did not survive her many hours, and the two were buried at the\nexpense of the parish, \"But now it is impossible that they stay longer, the\nrooms are let, and they must leave. What will you? monsieur perceives that\nit is not of my fault.\" Monsieur feels a pang cut to his very heart. In\nthat same house, where such a short time since he was feasting and\nlaughing, a weary heart, perhaps, was breaking, and a young child\nstruggling with sorrow that made it old.\n\nI asked the man if I might be allowed to see this unfortunate artist, and I\nsaw the child's face brighten as she slipped from his side to mine. I took\nher hand and we went up, not the broad, handsome staircase which led to my\nfriends' apartments, but a dingy flight of stairs at the back of the court.\nI was quite out of breath when we at last reached the door of this\n\"appartement de gar\u00e7on.\" The child ran in, crying out: \"Papa, papa I voici\nan monsieur qui vient te voir.\"\n\nA man dressed in miserable, ragged clothes, with a pitiful remnant of\ngentility about him, was sitting at a rickety white wood table, his face\nburied in his poor, thin hands, which I noticed were white and finely\nshaped. At the sound of his child's voice be hastily got up, and seeing me,\nbowed and offered me the only chair in the room, with a grace worthy of a\ndrawing room. I felt the tears well up to my eyes as I looked at this poor\nwreck, and thought to myself how many dead hopes and dead aspirations lay\nburied on that heart. I did not accept the chair, but held out my hand.\nSomething in the simple action, or in my face, perhaps, expressed the\nsympathy I felt; it was too much for the poor man; be threw himself on the\nbed sobbing convulsively; you see he was weakened by hunger and cold and\nsickness. I put some money in the _concierge's_ hand, and he left us,\nbowing respectfully.\n\nWhen I turned I saw that the child had thrown herself by the side of her\nfather; he was moaning, but the sobs had already ceased. I felt his\nforehead and hands, and found that he was in a raging fever. I looked\naround, the place was miserable enough, and utterly unfit to be a sick\nroom. The _concierge_ shall be gratified, thought I, they shall leave\nto-night; and sending the little girl out for a carriage, I was left alone\nwith my patient.\n\nHis face was much flushed, his eyes wild, and all my efforts to keep him\nquiet were vain; I was obliged to let him talk. I soon gathered his whole\nhistory from his incoherent words. There was nothing very new in it, it was\nthe old story of a respectable father, with a prejudice against the fine\narts; of a weary struggle first for fame, and then, forsooth, for bread; of\na foolish marriage with a girl as poor as himself, of children born to want\nand misery, of unappreciated talent, etc. There was an unfinished picture\non the easel, and several others about the room; the poor man's eager eye\nfollowed my movement as I looked at them, and he sank back comforted as I\npraised his works. Heaven forgive, the charitable falsehoods! for that\nglance sufficed to show me that I was comforting one of those wretched\nbeings who had just talent enough to conceive great things, without the\npower of executing them, which is about the saddest of sad states.\n\nThe child soon returned, and I caused my poor invalid to be transported to\nthe Hotel Dieu, until I could make some other arrangement for him; his\nlittle girl I put under the care of an honest woman who lived hard by,\nwhere she slept; the days she spent by her poor father's bed. That bed he\nnever left, the hard struggle had been too much for him; the death of his\nwife and child had been too severe a blow to the weak, loving, unfortunate\nman. Brain fever soon declared itself and one dark, sad December day, his\nlittle daughter and I followed his poor coffin to the nearest cemetery. The\nchild was very quiet, but her tearless eyes were unutterably sad.\n\n{104}\n\nI interested my friends in the sad story, and no happy mother, as she drew\nher own dear ones to her heart, refused to help this bereaved one. So, we\nmade up a purse for her, and the other day I took her to a good school\nwhere she is to remain until she is old enough to support herself, poor\nlittle orphan! As I was about to leave her, she turned and said in her\nquiet, undemonstrative way, a few words which I shall not put down here,\nbut which caused me to turn toward the door rather quickly, and to pretend\nthat I had a bad cold in my head.\n\nThis is no mere fancy sketch; I only wish it were a solitary instance.\nAlas! for the poor in this great, rich, bustling, worldly city! But we must\nbid adieu to it, with its delights, its wonderful sights, its wild\nmerriment, and its dumb misery. Adieu to it, and to you, my readers, a\nhappy, happy New-Year!\n\n\n-------\n\n    Original.\n\n    Dr. Bacon On Conversions To The Catholic Church. [Footnote 29]\n\n      [Footnote 29: A Roman Philosopher. A Review of an Article on\n      Conversion in The Catholic World. By Rev. Dr. Bacon of Yale College.\n      \"New Englander.\" January, 1867.]\n\n\nWe embrace the opportunity of saying a few words on the topics of\ncontroversy which have been started between the author of the article which\nappeared in our columns on the \"Philosophy of Conversion\" and his\ndistinguished opponent; not with the view of following up the line of\nattack opened by our able corresponded; but rather, in order to express our\nown independent judgment, as a reviewer, on the question discussed, in some\nof its important bearings.\n\nMinor questions and side issues we leave to the opinions of those who have\nread both sides, and we do not intend to meddle with them ourselves. The\ngentleman attacked by Dr. Bacon has presented his view of what\nProtestantism is, reduced to its logical elements and constitutive\nprinciples. His opponent says: \"I do not recognize that which you describe\nas genuine Protestantism.\" This is all very fair. But he proceeds to infer\nthat the \"Roman philosopher,\" as he designates the author of the essay in\nquestion, either does not know what Protestantism is, or wilfully\nmisrepresents it. The doctor also, in turn, attempts to make a statement of\nCatholic doctrine, as it appears to his mind, when reduced to its logical\nelements. We, on our part, do not recognize this as a true representation.\nWe might, therefore, with just as much reason recriminate upon Dr. Bacon\nhis own accusations. We shall not do this, however; if for no other reason,\nbecause these mutual recriminations in controversy are useless. Those who\nlove the truth can have no motive for misrepresenting the belief and\nopinions of any class of men. Sincere Catholics and sincere Protestants\nmust alike desire that the principles and grounds of both Catholicity and\nProtestantism should be placed in the clearest light possible and discussed\nupon their naked merits, with as little mixture as may be of questions\nconcerning the intellectual or moral qualifications of individuals.\n\nThe original and genuine religion of New-England was the Calvinistic\nCongregationalism of the Puritans, which still survives, with more or less\nof modifications among the Orthodox Congregationalists, and has its\nprincipal seat at New-Haven. The temper and tone of mind prevailing among\nthe clergy and members of this denomination place them at an extremely\nremote distance from the Catholic mind, and make any interchange of thought\nbetween the two very difficult.\n{105}\nWith the exception of a slight movement started, without much effect that\nwe have ever heard of, by the learned and accomplished Dr. Woods, at\nBowdoin College, there has been no tendency in this body of the clergy to\nreturn to any higher church principles than those of the Protestant\nEpiscopal denomination. It is this latter body which is the medium of\ncontact between the Catholic Church and the remoter Protestant bodies. It\nhas therefore first felt the effect of the increased inter-communication of\nthought and influence between the two great divisions of Western\nChristendom which is characteristic of our time. It is the hierarchical\nprinciple, distinguishing this body from other Protestant communions, upon\nwhich the influence of the Catholic church has been felt, and most of the\ncontroversy has taken this principle as its starting-point. Of course,\ntherefore, it is in a great measure irrelevant to the question as it stands\nbetween us and the non-episcopal communions, whether these are what is\ncalled evangelical, or liberal, in their theology. We are disposed,\ntherefore, in addressing members of these communions to give the\n_transeat_ to the whole Oxford controversy, and to allow them to think\nwhat they please of the causes which have produced the current setting from\nAnglicanism toward Rome. The controversy as between us has to be commenced\n_de novo_, and to be carried on upon an entirely different basis.\nCircumstances over which neither of us have any control, make this\ncontroversy inevitable. We will confine ourselves, for the present, in\norder to simplify the question, to the relations existing between Catholics\nand Congregationalists in the State of Connecticut. We say, then, that\nthese relations make a controversy between us inevitable, just as much as\nother circumstances and relations have made it inevitable between Anglicans\nand Catholics in England and the United States. The reason of this\nnecessity is, that we have so many things in common, and so many points of\ndifference, that we cannot remain quiescent toward each other, except from\nisolation in distinct communities, or from mutual apathy to the interests\nof Christianity. Forty years ago, when Dr. Bacon was commencing his long\nand distinguished career as a pastor in New-Haven, the question of\nCatholicity had but little living and present interest for a Connecticut\ntheologian. It was a question of by-gone ages and distant countries. There\nwas not a Catholic in New-Haven, and there were few, if any, in the state,\nexcepting a small handful at Hartford, where the first feeble parish was\ncollected in a small frame church, purchased by Bishop Fenwick from Bishop\nBrownell and dragged on rollers to a new site. We believe there were no\nCatholics at that time in Rhode-Island; there were none in Vermont, Maine\nor New-Hampshire. There were a few thousands in Massachusetts, mostly\ncongregated in Boston. The Bishop of Boston, whose diocese included all\nNew-England, had hardly half a dozen churches besides his very modest\ncathedral, or more than a dozen priests. When the saintly Cheverus went to\nBoston, his only cathedral was an old barn. As a matter of course, then,\nthe Catholic religion was looked upon merely as the religion of a few poor\nimmigrants, a bit of wreck from the institutions of the middle ages cast on\nthe New-England shore by the caprice of the waves. This habit of looking at\nthe matter has remained to a great extent unchanged, on account of the\nalmost complete social segregation of the rapidly increasing Catholic\ncommunity. That it cannot remain unchanged, however, is evident to\neveryone. There are now fifty priests, one hundred congregations, four\nreligious orders, and a population of 75,000, belonging to the Catholic\nChurch in Connecticut. Although, therefore, isolation has rendered the\nprofessors of the traditional religion of the State in a great measure\nindifferent to the religion of this new element in the population, thus\nfar, it cannot continue; and this is apparent from Dr. Bacon's own\nstatements and views, as expressed in his article.\n{106}\nApathy is also out of the question, especially as regards the clergy. It is\nevident that the religious and moral doctrines and teachings of the pastors\nof one fifth of the people of the State cannot be a matter of apathetic\nindifference to anyone who takes an interest in the religious and moral\nwelfare of his fellow citizens. It follows then, necessarily, that the\nleading clergy and theologians of the Congregational body in Connecticut\nmust engage with great application and industry in the study of the\nCatholic system of doctrine and polity, not in second-hand works, but at\nthe original and authentic sources. They must pay attention also to the\ncotemporary Catholic literature, both in the English and in foreign\nlanguages. Studying and thinking on these topics, they will necessarily\nwrite, speak, and converse upon them, and thus the same topics will engage\nthe attention of of all their brethren in the clerical profession, and of\nthe intelligent laity. We, on our part, cannot be indifferent to anything\nwritten or spoken by men of learning and high position on the great topics\nof religion. Consequently, we say, there must be controversy between us. In\npoint of fact, a little preliminary controversy has already commenced\nbetween ourselves and the organ of the New-Haven literati.\n\nWe will not indulge in any premature gratulations over victories we may\nhope to gain for the Catholic cause in controversy with the\nCongregationalists, or conversions which may be looked for from among their\nranks. We shall on both sides agree that the truth is likely to prevail in\nthe end, and that whatever conquests truth may make redound more to the\nhonor and advantage of the vanquished than of the victors. In expressing\nour satisfaction that this controversy is inevitable, we do not intend to\nindicate a desire for a _polemical_ controversy in the rigorous sense\nof the word. We do not wish to see the Catholic and Protestant pulpits\nwaging a theological artillery duel against each other; or a violent strife\nfor mastery, with all the bitter, hostile feelings which it engenders,\ninaugurated between the Catholic and Protestant portions of the population.\nOn the contrary, we have particularly in view in what we are writing at\npresent, to bring forward certain considerations tending in an entirely\nopposite direction. We desire, so far as our humble influence extends, to\nforestall controversy of the sort alluded to, and to point out what we\nconceive to be the true spirit and manner in which both sides should\napproach the subject of the differences which unhappily divide us.\n\nThere are two ways in which we may carry on controversy. One way is, for\neach side to place its own exclusive truth and right in the strongest\nlight, to affirm its doctrines in its own peculiar phraseology in the most\npositive and dogmatic manner, and to take a position as far remote from\nthat of the other side, and as unintelligible to its opponents as possible;\nmoreover, to take the worst and most unfavorable view possible of the\ndoctrines and positions of the other side, and to impute to them all the\nmost extreme consequences of their principles which seem to ourselves to\nfollow logically from them.\n\nAnother way, is to conduct controversy, not from the two opposite extremes\nof doctrine where the differences is widest and most palpable, but from\nthose middle terms in which both parties agree, and in relation to which\nthey are intelligible to each other. From these middle terms we may proceed\nto the extremes, and thus endeavor to settle the points in which we differ,\nby the aid of those in which we agree. The points of difference also, may\nbe perhaps reduced by mutual explanations, and a substantial agreement be\nproved to exist in some doctrines where there is an apparent contradiction\nin the terms used to express them.\n\n{107}\n\nIn point of fact, these terms of agreement are numerous, and include the\nmost fundamental articles of the Catholic faith. The trinity, the\nincarnation, the redemption, original sin, the regenerating, sanctifying\ngrace of the Holy Spirit, the resurrection and eternal life; the necessity\nof repentance for sin, and of good works, the canonicity of the principal\nbooks of the Old Testament, and of all those of the New Testament, their\ndivine inspiration, the obligation of believing all the truths revealed by\nGod, even if they arc super-intelligible mysteries, on the motive of the\ndivine veracity; these are all doctrines and principles in which there is a\nsubstantial agreement. Moreover, the New-Haven school has brought the\nCalvinistic doctrines in those respect in which it has modified them, into\na nearer approximation to the Catholic doctrines, than they were before. In\nregard to the cardinal point of justification, the difference is really\nless than it would appear. Although, in the New-Haven theology, faith is\nmade to include what Catholics call the theological virtue of hope, yet it\nincludes also that which we call faith, and which the Council of Trent\ndefines to be the \"root of all justification;\" that is, a firm, explicit\nbelief in those revealed truths which are necessary _ex necessitate\nmedii_, and a belief at least implicit in all other revealed truths. As\nDr. Bacon says, it is held that faith, in order to justify, must be\naccompanied by charity, or the love of God. It is our opinion, therefore,\nthat the New-Haven divines really hold that it is _fides formata_, or\nfaith informed and vivified by love which justifies, and that this doctrine\nis practically preached by the Congregational clergy generally. This is\nidentically the Catholic doctrine. In this case and in others, the sayings\nof the learned D\u00f6llinger is verified, that \"Protestants and Catholics have\ntheologically come nearer to each other.\"\n\nPerhaps we may now be able to explain to Dr. Bacon our notion of\nconversion, in a way which will make it appear not quite so repugnant to\nhis reason and feelings, as it is at present. In order to do this, we will\nresort to an illustration, which will make our meaning plain.\n\nWe suppose Dr. Bacon will admit that the Jews before the time of our Lord\ndid not generally have an explicit belief in the trinity or in the divinity\nof the Messiah; and that probably the apostles, when they were first called\ndid not have this explicit belief; although these doctrines, especially the\nlatter, are really contained in the Old Testament. Nevertheless, all who\nwere Israelites indeed were in the state of grace, and the children of God.\nLet us suppose now, the case of a pious Jew, after the ascension of our\nLord, who neither believed in Jesus as the true Messiah, nor had culpably\nand wilfully rejected his claims when sufficiently proposed to him. We\nsuppose Dr. Bacon will admit that this good man had already saving faith,\njustification, the sanctifying grace of the Holy Spirit, was spiritually\nunited to the universal church of which Christ is the head, and was united\ntherefore in faith and love with St. Peter, and all the members of the\napostolic communion. St. Peter preaches to him Jesus Christ, and he\nbelieves his word, submits to his authority as the apostle of the Lord, is\nbaptized, joins himself to the Christian community, and partakes of the\ncommunion. Let us suppose, for the sake of illustration, that this was the\ncase with Stephen, who became the first martyr.\n\nLet us now take the case of Saul of Tarsus. Without deciding positively\nwhether Saul was morally culpable or not, for his opposition to\nChristianity, we will suppose that he was so. At the time of his going to\nDamascus, he was therefore without saving faith, unjustified, destitute of\nsanctifying grace, and therefore not spiritually united with the church of\nChrist, and with St. Peter and his brethren. By the grace of God Saul\nbelieves in Jesus Christ, is baptized, and openly joins the Christian\ncommunion governed and taught by the apostles.\n\n{108}\n\nNow, in those two cases, we have instances of an interior change of the\nintellect and will followed by an exterior change of ecclesiastical\nrelations, which is properly called a conversion to Christianity. Stephen\nand Saul are treated by the apostles and elders of the church in precisely\nthe same manner, when they apply for baptism. Yet, in the former case, the\ninterior change is not a conversion of the mind from unbelief to divine\nfaith, or of the will from sin to the love of God. It is a conversion of\nthe mind from an inchoate, imperfect apprehension of the revealed object of\nfaith to a complete and perfect apprehension of the same object more\nclearly revealed. It is a conversion of the will from an implicit\ndetermination to submit to the rightful authority of the Messiah, to an\nexplicit, actual obedience to the Lord Jesus as the Son of God, the\nProphet, Priest and King of the Jews and of the Gentiles.\n\nIn the other case, conversion included in itself the renunciation of a\nproud, intellectual self-reliance which excluded the spirit of submission\nto the authority of God over the mind, and the substitution of the humble,\ndocile habit of faith; together with a change of the will or heart from a\nselfish, cruel devotion to the purely national glory of Judea to a\ndisinterested and divine love of God and all mankind.\n\nIn general terms, however, we speak of conversion from Judaism to\nChristianity in reference to all, who have been born and brought up Jews,\nand from conviction profess their belief in Jesus Christ, without\ndiscriminating among different persons, in regard to their subjective\nstate. If we should undertake to give the philosophy of this conversion, we\nshould probably suppose our subject to represent subjectively what we\nconsider to be objective Judaism, whose logical basis is a denial of the\nChrist foretold in the Old Testament, and personally made known in the new,\nas Jesus of Nazareth. We should correctly describe this conversion as a\nsurrender of the mind and will to the authority of Jesus Christ; and should\ncorrectly say that no person was thoroughly converted into a Christian, who\nmerely approved of such doctrines, and practiced such precepts of Jesus\nChrist as he might choose, or select, by his own personal judgment and\nwill; but, who did not submit his mind to all the truth which Christ has\ntaught, on the motive of his divine infallibility, and his will to all he\nhas commanded, on the motive of his divine authority.\n\nIt is plain that Stephen must have acknowledged St. Peter as the accredited\nrepresentative of Jesus Christ, through whom he received the doctrine he\nwas to believe, and the precepts he was to obey, as a Christian. The New\nTestament was yet unwritten, and the divine word could only be learned from\nthe lips or the apostles. Stephen could not, therefore, submit his mind and\nwill to Jesus Christ, except by submitting to their authority. Now, if this\nauthority has really been transmitted to the successors of St. Peter, and\nto their colleagues in the episcopate, it is plain that it is by submission\nto this authority that we are to submit the mind and will to Jesus Christ,\nwho has delegated it to them. \"He that heareth you heareth me;\" \"As my\nFather hath sent me, even so send I you,\" Therefore, when a person who has\nnot hitherto formally and explicitly recognized and submitted to this\nauthority, makes his submission to it, we call it a conversion, because it\nbetokens a real interior change of the intellect and will; accompanied by\nan exterior change of ecclesiastical relations, if he has belonged to any\nother visible communion before, or, if not, by the assumption of these\nrelations for the first time. This is without respect to his former\nsubjective state of interior relation to Christ and the church. If he had a\ndivine faith before, conversion does not include the passage from a state\nof unbelief to faith. If this faith was previously vivified by charity, it\ndoes not include the passage from a state of sin to the state or grace.\n{109}\nIf, on the contrary, he was before an infidel, or a wilful heretic, and\ndestitute of charity, conversion includes both these transitions. We do not\nlimit the application of the word conversion to a mere interior and\nexterior submission to the authority of the church. We employ it also to\ndesignate conversion from sin, and continually preach to Catholics who are\nliving in sin the necessity of being converted to a holy life. We apply the\nterm also to a change from a tepid condition of the spiritual life to a\nhabit of more fervent piety. It is used as a general term to denote any\nmarked religious change for the better, and its specific meaning must be\ndetermined by the connection in which it is employed. Its indiscriminate\nuse in denoting the act of transition from a Protestant communion to the\nCatholic church does not necessarily imply that no discrimination can be\nmade among those who make this transition. Nor does it follow that all the\nlanguage of the writer whom Dr. Bacon criticizes, can be fully verified in\nregard to all Catholic converts. Numbers of them have had from childhood a\nfirm faith in the principal Christian mysteries, and an habitual\ndetermination of the will, at least for many years, to the love of God. In\nsuch instances, what is technically called \"conversion,\" is like what we\nhave supposed the conversion of Stephen to have been, the evolution of the\nprinciple of faith and obedience into a more perfect and complete\nactuation. Stephen had _fides formata_ before he was baptized, and so\nhave converts of the kind we are describing, _fides formata_, that is\nfaith which worketh by love, before their external union to the body of the\nCatholic church is consummated.\n\nThe change which takes place in a convert of this kind, is not a transfer\nof mental allegiance from the word of God to the arbitrary, irresponsible\ndictation of a hierarchy. It is simply an increased intelligence of the\nactual contents of the word of God, and of the nature of the medium through\nwhich the knowledge of that word is transmitted. The object of faith, upon\nwhich the intellectual act of believing terminates, is the revealed truth\nconsidered as revealed, or as credible on the veracity of God. The medium\nor instrument is the testimony by which we are authentically informed of\nthe fact of revelation and of its contents. In the case supposed, the\nperson has received from the testimony of the Church, which reaches him\nthrough the Christian tradition, the knowledge of the principal facts and\nmysteries revealed by Jesus Christ. Having, therefore, a reasonable motive\nfor believing, and the aid of divine grace, he was able, when he attained\nthe use of reason, to elicit explicit acts of faith in the Trinity, the\nIncarnation, and other doctrines sufficiently proposed to him, to exercise\ncontinually the habit of faith, and to persevere in the same without any\nlapse. In this explicit faith, or faith in actual exercise, was contained\nan implicit faith in all that God has revealed, but which was not known to\nthe subject in an explicit manner. When he examined into that testimony\nthrough which the doctrine of Christ had been proposed to him, he found\nthat his undoubting belief in that testimony contained all implicit\nrecognition of the infallibility of the witness, and that he must either\ndraw the logical conclusion, or renounce the premises. He also found that\nthe article of the creed, \"I believe in the Holy Catholic Church,\" as\nrevealed in the Scripture, and explained by the living, concrete sense of\nthe primitive Christians, contains in itself the idea of infallibility.\nConvinced, therefore, that the Catholic Church, together with her testimony\nand instruction respecting the person of the incarnate God and Saviour,\ntestifies and teaches her own infallibility as a witness, teacher, and\njudge of controversies, and that this doctrine is contained in the word of\nGod, he perceives that he must believe on the veracity of God all that the\nchurch proposes to him as contained in the material object of faith, the\n_objectum materiale quod_ of theologians.\n{110}\nWhen he is further convinced that the bishop who occupies the See of Peter,\ntogether with his colleagues, constitutes the _ecclesia docens_, the\nteaching church, and that the infallible church has, therefore, proclaimed\nher doctrine in the decrees of the Council of Trent; of course, nothing\nremains for him to do but to seek admission into the fold of the Catholic\nChurch. This act has not, however, changed the essence of his faith. The\n_objectum materiale quod_ of faith need not include explicitly the\ninfallibility of the church, since all theologians maintain that the\nknowledge of God, the Trinity, and the Incarnation, is all that is\nnecessary _ex necessitate medii_, or by an absolute necessity, to\nsaving faith; and many maintain that it is the knowledge of God as the\nsupernatural rewarder which is alone to be placed in this category. Nor is\nthe infallibility of the church included in the _objectum materiale\nquo_ of faith, that is in the objective motive or determining cause of\nbelief, which is the veracity of God. Billuart and De Lugo may be consulted\non this point by any who wish to ascertain the germane sense of Catholic\ntheology. Archbishop Manning, in a letter to Dr. Pusey, on the Workings of\nthe Holy Spirit in the Church of England, has brought out this doctrine\nwith appropriate proofs and citations in a very lucid and admirable manner.\nThe letter can be found in the Catholic World for June, 1865. The same had\nbeen previously done by Father Walworth, in a sermon entitled Good\nSamaritans, published in the Volume of Paulist Sermons for 1864.\n\nThe church is the medium through which the object of faith is\nintellectually beheld, and the only medium. It is, therefore, impossible\nfor her to substitute any other material object of faith in lieu of the\ntrue object, and equally impossible that the material object of faith\nshould be seen at all through any other medium. Whoever, therefore,\nbelieves what the church proposes to his belief, necessarily believes in\nthe true object of faith, and whoever believes in the true object of faith\nnecessarily believes in it through the proposition of the church.\n\nThe first conclusion we draw from this postulate is, that the notion of\nCatholics being subject to an arbitrary authority of the hierarchy or the\npope to impose whatever articles or belief they may choose, is a pure\nmisapprehension. The church is a witness to the doctrines and facts once\nfor all revealed at her original foundation. These doctrines and facts are\non record, The testimony of the church in regard to them has been publicly\ngiven, and she cannot retract her testimony without manifestly falsifying\nher claim to be an infallible witness. As a judge of controversies, she can\nonly judge of controversies relating to these very facts and doctrines.\nThese judgments, once given, are irrevocable. They have been already\npronounced respecting all the great facts and doctrines of Christianity,\nand are on record. One who submits to these judgments knows to what he is\nsubmitting. The synopsis of all Catholic doctrine is given to him in the\ndecrees of the Council of Trent. Since that Council there has been but one\ndefinition of faith made, and that was the definition of a doctrine already\nuniversally believed before it was defined. The notion that a Catholic is\nsubject to capricious, arbitrary, and unlimited decrees binding his faith\nis altogether chimerical. There is no room for further definitions except\nin regard to certain theological questions relating to doctrines already\ndefined, and the practice of the church has proved how slow she is to limit\nthe liberty of opinion in the schools by a final decision of questions of\nthis kind. The argument from the tyrannical nature of church authority is\ntherefore a mere begging of the question in dispute between Catholics and\nProtestants. If the church, as Catholics define the church, be not\ninfallible, her judicial decisions of doctrine are tyrannical. If she is\ninfallible, they are not, and do not enslave either faith or reason.\n{111}\nIt is no tyranny over faith, to make known with unerring certainty what God\nhas revealed, or what is a deduction from that which he has revealed. It is\nno tyranny over reason to furnish it with certain universal principles and\nindisputable data, from which to make its deductions. The only real\nquestion, therefore, respects the infallibility of the church. So far as\nthe great mysteries of faith which are believed by orthodox Protestants are\nconcerned, they must admit that the Catholic Church holds and teaches them;\nis compelled by her own formal principle to hold them, because she has long\nago put on record her testimony respecting them; and can never change her\ndoctrine on any of these vital points.\n\nOur second conclusion is, that the notion of Catholic doctrine which\nconceives of it as requiring one to believe that there is no true faith or\nholiness outside of the visible communion of the See of Peter, is equally\nerroneous. All that Archbishop Manning has said of the workings of the Holy\nSpirit in the Church of England is equally applicable to the Congregational\nChurch of Connecticut. We have no just reason for regarding the original\ncolonists as formal heretics or schismatics, and even less reason for\nincluding the subsequent generations in that category. All who have lived\nand died in that faith which worketh by charity we acknowledge as the\nchildren of God and our brethren in Jesus Christ. Those now living who have\nthis _fides formata_, are spiritually united to the Holy Catholic\nChurch, the communion of saints. Consequently, if any of these shall\nhereafter enter the visible body of the church, not only will they not be\nrequired to deny the validity of their baptismal covenant with God, and to\nabjure their former spiritual life, but they will find in the tribunal of\npenance that both will be recognized.\n\nWe repeat, therefore, once more, that the proper basis on which we may\nconfer together concerning the faith, is to be found in those doctrines in\nwhich we agree, and not in those in which we differ. We may not make a\npositive judgment in regard to the interior and subjective relation of\nindividuals toward God or the true Church of God. We leave that to him who\nis the only judge of hearts and consciences. We are sure of this, however,\nthat we are bound to cultivate the spirit of Christian charity toward those\nwho profess allegiances to our common Lord, to the utmost possible extent.\nThis charity forbids us to make an arrogant and harsh judgment that they\nare, _en masse_ and by the simple fact of their outward profession,\naliens from the household of faith, or that any particular individual is\nso, unless he makes it plainly manifest in his conduct. We are agreed on\nboth sides that we are responsible to God for our belief; and bound, as\nteachers and theologians, to study conscientiously the truths of the divine\nrevelation. We have also a common interest in endeavoring to come to an\nagreement, so far as this is necessary in order to establish unity of faith\nand of ecclesiastical fellowship. Let us suppose for a moment that Dr.\nBacon represents the Congregational clergy of Connecticut, and that we have\nthe honor to represent the Catholic clergy. We shall agree that it is our\ncommon interest to defend the authenticity and inspiration of all those\nbooks of the Holy Scripture which we revere in common as canonical, and the\nhistoric truth of the Mosaic and Evangelical records, against infidel\nrationalism. Also, to solve the difficulties raised by modern science in\nrelation to the harmony between rational and revealed truth. Also, to\npreserve the faith of the people in the Trinity, the Incarnation, and other\ndoctrines which we hold in common, and which are strongly attacked by many\npopular preachers and writers in New-England. Also, to counteract the\ntendency to indifferentism and apathy in regard to religion which is so\ncommon.\n{112}\nAlso, to take all possible means to bring the mass of the people under the\ninfluence of the spiritual and moral truths of the Gospel. Also, to protect\nthe Christian ordinance of marriage from being to a great extent subverted\nby the practice of divorce. Also, to suppress intemperance, licentiousness,\nand immoralities destructive of the well-being of society. Also, to protect\nthe religious liberties and rights of all religious societies, and the\nproperty, which is devoted to religious, charitable, and scientific\npurposes. Also, to do all in our power to blend the various elements of the\npopulation into one homogeneous body, and to educate them in an enlightened\nand devoted attachment to the political principles of the founders of the\nstate.\n\nWe will not go any further with our enumeration, for fear of assuming too\nmuch in respect to the sentiments of our respected friend, Dr. Bacon. We\nspeak for our individual self alone, in saying that we cannot but deplore\nthe obstacle which is put in the way of carrying out into practical results\nour common desire for the spiritual, moral, and social well-being of the\npeople of our native and ancestral State, by the schism which exists among\nthose who profess in common so large a portion of the Christian faith. The\nspectacle presented by a divided Christianity is to us extremely painful.\nWe think it ought to be, also, to a member of the church founded by the\nPuritans. The forefathers of New-England undoubtedly intended to plant the\npure church and faith of Christ. They made the greatest sacrifices and the\nmost heroic exertions in order to do it. They expected their church to\nflourish, to remain, and to include in its fold all their posterity. They\ntook somewhat stringent measures to secure the success of their plan, and\nnotwithstanding our difference of judgment from them as to the justice or\nwisdom of their policy, we must allow that they were conscientious. Things\nhave turned out, however, quite otherwise than they sanguinely expected.\nNot to speak of the more extreme change which has taken place at the\nheadquarters of Puritanism, Connecticut is divided up among\nCongregationalists, Episcopalians, Methodists, and Baptists, to say nothing\nof the small sects which exist there. Rival colleges and seminaries have\nbeen established, and even rival schools of theology among the\nCongregationalists dispute over their respective interpretations of the\nancient standards of doctrine. Dr. Bacon and his friends have had no little\nto suffer during their public career as ministers and professors of\ntheology, from the imputation of heterodoxy, and they know well how\nfrequently and how deeply religious differences have interfered with the\npeace of families, the union of friends, and the success of religions\nefforts. The Catholic Church we say nothing about, for this has been almost\nexclusively the church of a late immigration of poor people, who have\nsought an asylum from English tyranny among the descendants of those who\nlong ago fled from that same tyranny, and so nobly broke its yoke from\ntheir necks.\n\nHowever tolerable and unavoidable such a state of things may appear to\nsome, we cannot but think that the foresight of it would have made the\nstern old Puritans of the ancient times groan in spirit. We confess that we\nsympathize with them, and that it occasions mournful thoughts to look on\nthe failure of such a high-souled undertaking as theirs. We sympathize with\ntheir strong affirmation of strict dogmatic and ecclesiastical principles,\nand with the same affirmation as made by those who have adhered to the\ndoctrine handed down from them. We cannot help looking on division\nrespecting that which pertains to the true, orthodox faith, and the\nessential terms of Christian communion, as a great evil. The complaint made\nby the late eminent president of Brown University, Dr. Wayland, of the\nextensive and growing scepticism of educated men, and the general decay of\npractical faith, must be well known to the educated religious public of New\nEngland.\n{113}\nIt is our opinion, that the separation and disagreement among the professed\nteachers of Christianity is one great cause of this, and that it breaks the\nmoral force of the evidence of Christianity in the minds of a large portion\nof the most intelligent class, and in the popular mind also. It\ndisintegrates and neutralizes that power which a united body would have,\nand which would give it an irresistible moral force against infidelity,\nirreligion, and public immorality. We cannot help longing for the time,\nwhen all those who are now disunited shall be brought together in one fold,\nprofessing one faith, exhibiting the divine truth of the religion of Jesus\nChrist by their charity and peace, training up their children from infancy\nin the practice of religion, worshipping at the same altar, participating\nin life and at the hour of death in the same holy rites, and fully\nrealizing what a Christian people ought to be.\n\nThe Puritan fathers of New-England had a foreshadowing of this state of\nthings, a foreshadowing, as we hope, of a reality to come. In our opinion,\n\"they builded better than they knew.\" We believe they were led here by the\nprovidence of God, and guided by a higher power than their own. So far as\ntheir work was merely human and defective, it was temporary and must pass\naway. So far as it was divine, it was lasting and must stand forever. They\nhave founded noble institutions of learning and general education. They\nhave transmitted a Christian tradition, which has entered into the very\nroots and fibres of intellectual and social life so strongly as to be\nineradicable. However the plant may languish, the root is still vital. Even\nthose who have wandered far beyond the region of Unitarianism into\nspeculations so vague and misty that they are almost atheistic, show in\ntheir language, habits of thought, and entire mental structure, that they\nhave come from a Christian stock. The question of questions is always, what\nis the religion of Jesus Christ and the meaning of his life and death upon\nthe earth? We hope, therefore, that the work commenced by these sternly\nearnest men may be completed. In our view of the matter, it was necessary\nfor divine Providence to interfere, after a long lapse of time, to carry\nout its own far-seeing purposes, into which this first and human plan was\nto be made to blend and lose itself. The first refugees from the spiritual\ntyranny of the British crown sought only an asylum for themselves and their\nprogeny, where they might realize their own peculiar ideal of a Christian\nstate and church, in a condition of colonial dependence on the mother\ncountry. As in the political order, the results of the colonization of\nAmerica have taken an unforeseen form and magnitude, so in the spiritual.\nRoger Williams led out a new band of _Puritanissimi_ from among the\nPuritans, which made one division among them. The Church of England\nstretched her roots also over to the virgin soil of New-England, and her\nvigorous offshoot, Methodism, followed. Rationalism, too, has run its\ncourse, as we all know, from the starting point of Channing, to the most\nadvanced position of Emerson. Finally, another race, distinct from the\nEnglish race by a difference of origin running back to the deluge, whose\norigin as a people dates from the period of the grandfather of Moses, and\nas a Christian people from the period of the Fathers of the Church, has\ntransplanted that form of Christianity which it has kept unaltered for\nfourteen centuries, to the same soil, where it grows and flourishes \"like a\ngreen bay-tree.\" It is our opinion, that the Providence of God will bring\nsomething out of this far grander and more perfect than the ideal church of\nour ancestors. We think that the blending of races will produce a more\nperfect type of manhood and a stronger people. We think, also, that the\nreligion of this people will contain all the positive qualities of the\ndifferent elements that will combine to form it.\n{114}\nCatholic dogma and discipline, which contains in itself all that is\npositive in every form of religion, will assimilate whatever is good in all\nit finds around it, integrating the noble fragments which have been rent\nfrom the great edifice of Christianity into a perfect unity with\narchitectonic skill. The collision, intershock, abrasion, and melting\ntogether of these various intellectual and spiritual forces will result in\nthe harmonizing of all into a unity in which the opposite tendencies\ncounterbalance each other. Depth and simplicity of interior life with a\nrich and varied ritualism, moral strictness and self-abnegation with a\nnoble magnificence, taste and sobriety with fervor of devotion, unwavering\northodoxy with a genuine rationalism, stability of forms with a genial\nvariety, hierarchical order with a manly liberty of personal action, form\nthe grand features of the type of Christianity destined to be realized in\nthe future. This is merely _our_ opinion, and we do not expect that it\nwill be generally received by those who will read these words at the\npresent time. We are confident, however, that their truth and force will be\nrecognized hereafter, long after we are numbered with the dead. We have no\nexpectation that the schism among those who profess the Christian name will\nbe healed in a summary manner, or as the simple result of discussion and\nconference. It must be the work of the Creative Spirit, and cannot be\naccomplished without an extraordinary communication of grace. It requires\ntime, also, and a gradual process. We have no intention of making an\narrogant claim of immediate submission to the authority of the Catholic\nChurch upon those who are not reasonably and calmly convinced of its\nlegitimate foundation. We are simply desirous of making a beginning in the\nexplanation of our own belief, in order to promote a better mutual\nunderstanding of the question at issue between us. We ask simply, what we\nare willing to concede to fair and honorable opponents, a hearing and a\ncandid consideration. The only weight we profess to give to the conversions\nout of which this discussion has arisen is a moral weight entitling the\nreasons and causes which have produced them to a serious examination. Dr.\nBacon has placed in the opposite scale the notorious fact of the great\nlosses the Catholic Church has sustained by the defection of her own\nmembers. We beg leave to suggest, however, that there is no parity between\nthe two facts he endeavors to balance against each other. Those who lapse\ninto infidelity have first extinguished their conscience. They are not\nseeking to draw near to God and to serve Jesus Christ, but to escape from\nthe dominion of both. Those who have become Protestants have not been\ninstructed and pious Catholics who were seeking for more light and grace,\nbut the offspring of parents through whose negligence or misfortune they\nhad been left to grow up without instruction or practical religion. On the\ncontrary, a large number of intelligent, well-instructed Protestants, some\nof whom were clergymen of the highest standing, like Dr. Newman, Dr.\nManning, and Dr. Ives, have been led by the very effort they have made to\ncome up to the highest standard of faith and piety presented by their\nchurch, after long and careful deliberation, to the threshold of the\nCatholic Church, and have crossed that threshold. Dr. Bacon denies that\nthis fact has any particular moment for those who are not in the _vi\u00e2\nmedi\u00e2_ of the Anglican Church, but are standing on what he deems the\nsurer foundation of the Reformed religion as established by Luther and\nCalvin. Let his exception have its full value. Nevertheless, the same thing\nhas occurred on a lesser scale in the Lutheran and other churches of\nSwitzerland and Germany. Haller, Schlegel, Hurter, and Phillips are names\nprobably not unknown to the learned Protestants of our country.\n{115}\nIn our own country, among the German Reformed Presbyterians, Dr. Nevin and\nothers have advanced to a position whose logical direction is straight into\nthe Catholic Church. The efforts of the illustrious Leibnitz in a former\ncentury, and of Guizot at the present moment, to span the chasm between\nProtestant orthodoxy and Catholicism are well known. The beginning of a\nreactionary movement of the orthodox Protestants toward Rome is indicated\nin the most terse and decisive manner by the great historian Leo, whose\nauthority is indisputable. Leo is the friend of Hengatenberg the\nillustrious vindicator of the Bible against neology; a professor in the\nProtestant University of Halle; and the author of a Text Book of Universal\nHistory, which is both a scientific masterpiece and also one of the most\nsplendid arguments for divine revelation and the truth of Christianity\nwhich this century has produced. These are his words taken from the work\njust mentioned:\n\n  \"We shall be obliged to seek for the authorization of Protestantism and\n  its mission in something widely different from church development, and\n  forced to concede that Protestantism in the main forms only an\n  exceptional case in the shape of a place of shelter from ecclesiastical\n  difficulties, and that the Roman Church, when once released from the\n  duties of her mission in other quarters, will also turn her attention,\n  not to the abolition of papal authority, but to its more distinct\n  definition, and secure it from arbitrary acts of administration, such,\n  for example, as occur in the statement of the Thomist theses regarding\n  the connection between indulgences and the doctrines of the church, and\n  in one of the decrees against the Jansenists, and then will the\n  possibility of the Protestant world returning to the church be realized.\"\n  [Footnote 30]\n\n  [Footnote 30: Univ. Geschichte, vol. iii., p.181.]\n\nWe have nothing to say on the particular point the learned historian raises\nabout doctrinal decisions of the Holy See, but have quoted his words just\nas they stand in order to show the similarity of his position to that of\nDr. Pusey, and to prove that thoughtful minds in Germany as well as in\nEngland are beginning to desire a reconciliation of the separate communions\nwith the great body of Christendom. The Catholic tendency is, therefore,\nnot one which has sprung solely out of the hierarchical and sacramental\ndoctrines preserved by a kind of semi-Catholic tradition in the high church\nschool of the Anglicans. It has a deeper seat and a wider extension. It is\nnot possible to nullify its importance by qualifying converts to the\nCatholic Church as men who have made an \"abnegation of reason, of the\nfaculty which discerns right and wrong, and even of choice and personal\nresponsibility to God,\" stifled their faculties of thinking for themselves\nand of discerning between truth and falsehood. This theory will not hold\nwater, as the judgment of the English press on the controversy between Mr.\nKingsley and Dr. Newman amply proves. The prejudice against Catholics is\nwearing away. Many, even devout Protestants, have no longer any objection\nto join in the prayers or listen to the sermons or read the books of\nCatholic priests. Catholics and Protestants are becoming connected by ties\nof blood or marriage, they mingle in the social circle, and they have\nfought side by side on the bloody battle-field. The impressions made on the\nimagination of childhood must necessarily be effaced by contact with the\nreality. The Catholic religion will become known for what it is, and its\nadvocates will receive the respectful hearing to which they are entitled.\n\nWe have all along intimated that it is not so much the mere exterior\nargument for the authority of the church, as the dogmatic theology and the\ninterior spiritual doctrine preserved and transmitted by her authoritative\nteaching, to which we desire to see the attention of our evangelical\nbrethren directed. The soul of the church is the noblest of its parts, and\nthe vivifying principle of the body. The really cardinal question at issue\nconcerns the method by which the individual soul is united with this soul\nof the church, nourished and perfected in divine knowledge and love. In\nthis is included the nature of that manifestation of itself which the soul\nof the church makes in its visible body.\n{116}\nWe have no time to go into this subject at present. Courtesy to both the\nwriters whose articles we are reviewing requires, however, that we should\nnotice some of the topics over which their polemical weapons have clashed\nso vigorously.\n\nThe writer of the article in this magazine denies that Protestants hold the\ndoctrine of the visibility of the church, while the writer in the \"New\nEnglander\" indignantly affirms that they do hold it. Both are in the right,\nbecause each has an entirely different idea of the visible church from the\nother. The Catholic idea will be found very ably exhibited in an essay on\nthe Two Sides of Catholicism, translated from the German, and published in\nsome of the earliest numbers of this magazine. Want of time and the\nnecessity of keeping our article within proper limits oblige us to leave\nthe matter without further remark, simply observing that no Catholic\ntheologian would ever think of denying that orthodox Protestants hold to a\nvisible, universal church, in the sense explained by Dr. Bacon.\n\nIn regard to justification, the first writer asserts that, according to the\nProtestant doctrine, every man who believes he is saved by Christ is by\nthat sole belief united to the invisible church, which his opponent also\nvehemently denies. It is the original, genuine Lutheran doctrine, _Sola\nfides formaliter justificat_, Faith alone formally justifies, which is\nin question. We do not think Dr. Bacon either understands or believes this\ndoctrine. The New England theology has from the beginning had a character\nof its own, in which the subjective change called regeneration, a change of\nheart, or conversion, consisting in an inward, supernatural transformation\nof the soul through the grace of the Holy Spirit, has been made very\nprominent. The Catholic formula, _Fides, una cum aliis requisitis,\ndispositive justificat_, Faith, together with other requisites,\ndispositively justifies, expresses better the spirit of this theology than\nthe Lutheran formula. That the merits of Christ are the meritorious cause\nof justification is agreed upon by all parties. The exact sense of the\nLutheran formula is difficult of apprehension and of expression in clear\nterms. As we understand it, it imports that the justification of the\nsinner, which is, in this system, a mere forensic justification, and is\nfrom eternity objectively perfect, is subjectively applied by an act of the\nmind firmly believing on Christ as the substitute and ransom of the\nparticular subject making this act. In the strict Calvinistic system, the\ndoctrine that Christ redeemed only the elect is distinctly made the basis\nof the doctrine of justification by faith alone. Saving faith, therefore,\nimplies that the subject believes that Christ died for him in particular,\nand that consequently he is entitled to the favor of God and eternal life,\nirrespective of his personal acts, although he cannot receive this favor or\nbe prepared for the happiness of heaven without the gift of a grace which\ngradually sanctifies him. Fletcher of Madely, the great theologian of the\nMethodists, wrote most ably against this Solifidian system. It has also\nbeen strongly combated within the past few months by Dr. Young, of\nEdinburgh. It is our opinion that this doctrine tends to reduce religion to\npure individualism, and thus to obliterate both dogma and church. It\nconcentrates the method of salvation into a mental or spiritual act by\nwhich Christ is apprehended in the relation of Saviour. This act is\nsupposed to be excited by a supernatural inspiration of the Holy Spirit;\nbut, as there is no test by which the reality of the inspiration can be\ncertainly verified, it reduces personal religion to a subjective sentiment.\nA subjective personal trust in and affection to Jesus Christ becomes,\ntherefore, the principal mark of a Christian and of a member of the true\nchurch. All who have this ought, therefore, to fraternize and commune\ntogether. The principle of private judgment on matters of doctrine is\nclosely connected with this principle of individualism in the relation of\nthe soul to Christ.\n{117}\nIntellectual and spiritual individualism is the metaphysical note of\nProtestantism. Spiritual illumination not being anything which can be\nverified, except by miracles, the principle of individualism has a tendency\nto eliminate it, and to substitute pure rationalism. Hence, the great\nProtestant writer Leo says, in the immediate context of the passage above\ncited from his history, that \"entire Protestantism has continually\ncomplained of its inability ever to arrive at any union as regards the\nquestion whether the Scripture is to be interpreted by reason alone or\nthrough interior illumination.\" When we talk about Protestantism, we\ninclude the whole nominal Protestant world, and do not restrict our remarks\nto the comparatively small number of faithful adherents to the old orthodox\nconfessions. We speak of the logical principles which distinguish\nProtestantism from Catholicity, as they are in their abstract essence, and\nas they work out their effects of negation and individualization. As to the\nactual, concrete condition of Protestant bodies, it is very easy to use\nloose expressions, and to make hasty generalizations, which can easily be\ncriticised. The writer attacked by Dr. Bacon may have fallen into some\ninaccuracies of this kind. They afford no ground, however, for the charge\nof either ignorance or wilful misrepresentation. We do not care to analyze\neither his statements or the counter statements of his opponent. The\nmanifest fact that a considerable body of Protestants do hold to the\ndogmatic formularies of their churches, and to strict practical rules of\nmoral and religious duty, is one which we not only acknowledge, but take a\ngreat pleasure in knowing to exist. We are glad to estimate the Christian\nfaith and piety which exist among them at its highest probable maximum.\n\nAnother point to be noticed is the estimation in which the Holy Scriptures\nare held among Catholics. This is a point of great importance in our\nestimation, and one in which it gives us great pain that the true Catholic\nsentiment should be misunderstood. Controversialists may sometimes\nexaggerate the difficulty of understanding the meaning of the Scriptures,\nwhen they are intent on proving the necessity of Catholic tradition and a\nteaching authority, or use expressions which would at first view appear to\na devout Protestant like Richard Baxter or Dr. Bacon, lacking in due\nreverence for the written word of God. It is only, however, a want of\nacquaintance with the real doctrine and spirit of the Catholic Church which\ncauses a person to be scandalized by such things. It is in the works of the\nfathers, of the doctors, of the great theologians, of the saints, that we\nfind the just and adequate expression of the mind of the church. It is\nimpossible to exaggerate the sentiment of reverence for the Holy Scriptures\nwith which these great writers are filled. It is the perennial source, pure\nand undefiled, from which their inspiration is drawn. The Bible is the work\nof God, as the firmament of heaven is his work. It has the precedence of\ndignity over tradition, decrees of councils, theology, science, literature,\nevery other work in which man concurs with the spirit of God; because in\nthe production of the Bible the Spirit of God has concurred with the spirit\nof man in a higher and more immediate manner. There is but one question to\nbe asked: How shall we ascertain the true sense of the Scripture? For, as\nsoon as it is ascertained, it demands the homage of the mind _per se_\nas the revelation of infinite truth.\n\nWe concur in what Dr. Bacon has written on this point, so far as its\ngeneral scope is concerned. He establishes all we desire to maintain,\nnamely, that the truths of revelation are not given in the form of\nsystematized dogmatic teachings in the Scripture. Therefore it is that we\nneed to be imbued with the sense of the Scripture by traditional teaching,\nand to be furnished with a dogmatic formula in which its doctrines are\nclearly defined, in order to be able easily and certainly to perceive in\ntheir sublimity and completeness the divine truths contained in it.\n{118}\nHence, the Jews, for want of this, cannot see Christ in the Old Testament.\nUnitarians cannot see the Trinity or Incarnation in the New Testament.\nCatholics, Anglicans, Congregationalists, Calvinists, Armenians,\nRationalists, Friends, Campbellites, and many others, cannot agree as to\nthe combination principle which will unlock the whole meaning of the\nScripture. We do not attribute this to the Scriptures themselves, but to\nthe incapability of the individual mind or spirit to take the place of the\ndivinely appointed, infallible witness, teacher, and judge of\ncontroversies, to whose keeping the sacred Scriptures have been committed.\nWhen faith is fixed as regards the great universal dogmas, and the canon\nauthoritatively settled, a perfect universe is opened to the student of the\nHoly Scriptures, where he may prosecute his studies uncontrolled by\nanything except reason, conscience, and a just humility. We have no\nquestion whatever that all the articles of the Catholic Faith can be\nconclusively proved by Scripture. None whatever that the principles on\nwhich sound criticism and exegesis are conducted are truly scientific. We\nbelieve that the books of Scripture are intelligible, and a perfect mine of\nintellectual, spiritual, and moral treasure. This is true, eminently, of\nthe sacred books as they are studied in their original languages. It is no\nless true, however, that its most important treasures of knowledge are\nequally open to those who can read the best versions. No book has ever been\nso many times well translated as the Bible. Let a version be warranted by a\ncompetent authority, and one may expatiate in it with as much freedom and\nconfidence that his mind is really borne up on the ocean of divine truth,\nas if he could read the Hebrew and Greek with the readiness of a Mai or a\nHengstenberg. It is, therefore, without doubt, a most excellent and\nprofitable exercise for good, plain people, able to read and understand the\nEnglish Bible, to read it continually and attentively. In proportion as one\nbecome capable of understanding the Holy Scriptures, and has the means of\nprosecuting his studies, in the same proportion will the advantage to be\ngained increase. We have no fear of any intelligent, instructed Catholic\nbeing injured by reading the Bible. Nor do we consider the very general and\nhigh esteem of King James's version among English-speaking Protestants, and\ntheir general familiarity with it, as an evil, or as an obstacle to the\nspread of Catholic doctrines. We regard that version as among the best in\nliterary excellence, and as substantially accurate. We would as soon argue\nfrom it with a Protestant as from the original texts. Indeed, we think it a\nspecial blessing of God that one version, and that one so generally\nfaithful to the true sense of the Scripture, should be almost universally\ndiffused through the English-speaking world. Would that all who have\ninherited the Christian name were firmly persuaded of the divine\ninspiration of the Scriptures and sincerely desirous to learn their true\nmeaning! With all those who acknowledge Jesus Christ to be an infallible\nTeacher sent from God, we feel that we have one firm spot to stand upon.\nWhere not only this truth is held, but, also, that he is the true and\neternal Son of God, and that the New Testament of our Lord and Saviour\nJesus Christ is so inspired by his Spirit that every statement it contains\nrespecting doctrine, morals, and the facts connected with them is\ninfallibly true, we have another firm spot broader than the first. As for\nthose who have altogether lost their footing upon even the first of these\nsolid Christian principles, we may well shudder at the magnitude and\ndifficulty of the work of their re-conversion to Christianity. Yet, this is\nthe great work really impending, unless we would see a large portion of\nChristendom swept away into infidelity, and involved in all its appalling\nconsequences.\n{119}\nFor this reason we desire with all our heart that the differences among\nthose who believe that all the hopes of the human race are contained in the\nChristian revelation should be finally settled, and that all should agree\nas to what that Christianity is, which shall be proposed to the acceptance\nof all mankind. This desire has been our motive for endeavoring to pierce\nthrough the special and personal issues of the controversy before us, and\nto bring it upon broader and more open ground. We have endeavored to get\nthe question out of a region where we conceive that misunderstanding and\nuseless contention will be interminable. There is an antecedent difficulty\nin the way which we know very well, and did know before we were so\ndistinctly reminded of it by our learned friends of New-Haven. It is the\npreconceived opinion they hold respecting the end and object which the\nadvocates of the Catholic religion have in view, and the policy according\nto which they act. We have not been sanguine enough to suppose that\nanything we can say will remove this difficulty. Until our respected\nfriends become familiar with the works of our great theologians and\nspiritual writers, and come into closer intellectual contact with the\ngeneral Catholic mind and heart, there must be a non-conducting medium\nbetween us, which will obstruct the communication of thought and sentiment.\nWe aim only to recommend this study, on grounds of reason, policy, and\nChristian charity. We have already seen its effects in many instances in\nbringing nearer together those who are widely sundered, and therefore we\nwill cherish the hope that its ultimate result may be a complete and\nuniversal reconciliation.\n\n-----\n\n    Abridged from the Dublin University Magazine.\n\n    Athlone And Aughrim.\n\n\n    Preparations for the Struggle.\n\n\nDuring the winter and spring of 1691, General Ginckel had the comfort or\nseeing the forces under his command tolerably well clothed and fed, and\nhoused in different cities and towns, while their antagonists in Connaught\nenjoyed these advantages but sparingly. Tyrconnell returned from France in\nJanuary, leaving 10,000 louis d'or at Brest to purchase provisions, etc.,\nand bringing to Limerick about 18,000. He established public confidence to\nsome extent by reducing copper crowns and half-crowns to their just value.\nHe gratified the Irish party by producing a royal patent, creating\nSarsfield Earl of Lucan, Viscount of Tully, and Baron of Rosberry.\n\nIn May of the same year arrived in the Shannon the French fleet, laden with\nprovisions, arms, ammunition, and clothing, but neither men nor money.\nHowever, what they did bring must have been a great boon to the poor\nsoldiers, whose pay, when money was available, had hitherto not exceeded a\npenny a day. With these supplies came General St. Ruth to assume the\ncommand of James's forces in Ireland, which at and from that time included\nno French soldiers. The main strength of William's, armies was concentrated\nabout Mulingar, and the Dutch commander was ably seconded by his officers--\nTalmash, Mackay, and De Ruvigny, names familiar to the readers of Richard\nAshton's play of the \"Battle of Aughrim.\" St. Ruth had for assistants\nMajors-General d'Usson and De Tesse, and Lieutenant-General Patrick\nSarsfield, but unhappily for the cause he came to maintain he assumed airs\nof reserve and superiority with the Irish nobleman, which the latter could\nill brook.\n\n{120}\n\nOn June the 6th of that eventful year the campaign may be said to have\nbegun with the march from Mullingar. We learn from \"Tristram Shandy\" that\nthe army in Flanders swore frightfully, and indeed it was not much better\nin Westmeath. We find Baron de Ginckel giving strict orders, while the army\nwas proceeding westward, that the chaplain should read prayers at the head\nof each regiment at ten in the morning, and again at seven in the evening,\nand exhort their flocks to desist from swearing, \"a vice (as Rev. Mr. Story\ncomplains) too common among us.\" \"Stealing\" seems to have been another\nprevalent weakness; the chaplain relates how \"a fellow stole a horse and\nwas hanged for it, which wrought some reformation for a time.\" The\nfollowing order implies considerable demoralization among the varied\npopulace in arms ruled by the able Dutch general: \"No sutler or other\nperson whatever should buy any ammunition, arms, or accoutrements, or any\nthing that belonged to the soldiers on pain of death; because the soldiers\nfor a little money would be apt to sell their cloaths or shoes; and if as\ngreat care were not taken of most of them as of children, they would soon\nbe in a very indifferent condition.\"\n\nThe only incident that varied their march to Athlone was the taking of the\nstrong fort of Ballymore. Mr. Story censures the commander, Myles Burke,\nfor \"not listening to the general's mild proposals.\" After vigorous\nsalutations of powder and shot on both sides, Ginckel sent a verbal demand\nto surrender within two hours or else--! Governor Burke requested the\nmessage to be conveyed to him in writing, but gained nothing by the motion.\nThe following missive was immediately sent in writing:\n\n  \"Since the governour desires to see in writing the message which I just\n  now sent him by word of mouth, he may know that if he surrenders the fort\n  of Ballymore to me within two hours, I will give him and his garrison\n  their lives and make them prisoners of war. If not, neither he nor they\n  shall have any quarter, nor another opportunity of saving themselves.\n  However, if in that time their women and children will go out they have\n  my leave.\n    \"Given in the camp, this\n    8th day of June, 1691,\n    at eight a clock in the\n    morning.\n      Bar. De Ginckell.\"\n\nThe general was not so severe in deed as in word, for though resistance\ncontinued to be made with two Turkish cannon mounted on cart-wheels, much\nbeyond the stipulated two hours, he still treated the defenders as\nprisoners of war.\n\n\n  The Siege of Athlone.\n\nOn the 19th of June the English cannon began to thunder on the devoted\noutworks of the English town of Athlone, to wit, that portion of it which\nstands on the eastern side of the Shannon. Story gives the number of the\nEnglish army at this time as eighteen thousand, well provided with all\nwarlike appurtenances. A breach was made in the indifferent defence, and\nnext day the assault was made by four thousand men. The defenders after\nlosing two hundred men made their way into the Irish town on the western\nbank, taking care to leave behind them toward their own side two wide\nchasms, below which flowed the Shannon deep and rapid. This was the amount\nof the destructive work done on the second day. St. Ruth, hearing of the\ntaking of the English town that evening, advanced within three miles of the\nstill untaken portion, having about fifteen thousand men, horse and foot,\nunder his command.\n\n{121}\n\nThe next things done were the erection of batteries on the eastern side of\nthe river, and the subsequent demolition of the eastern wall of the castle,\nand other fortifications on the Irish side, by the incessant storm of\ncannon-balls from the strong defence on the eastern bank. A horrible\nincident of this siege was connected with a mill resting on the bridge,\nwhich, being fired by the English grenades, its sixty-four defenders were\nburnt alive. Two only escaped by springing into the river.\n\nAs fast as castle walls and other fortifications were demolished, new posts\nof defence and annoyance were set up on the Irish side, and the breaches in\nthe bridge could not be floored over, owing to the unwelcome neighborhood\nof the Irish guns. The English general, weighing the difficulty of an\neffectual transit, bethought of sending a lieutenant with an exploring\nparty to examine a reported ford toward Lanesborough:\n\n  \"Where there might be an easy and undiscovered passage for most of our\n  army, while our cannon amused the enemy at the town. This party went and\n  found the pass according to information, but tho' he (the lieutenant) was\n  positively ordered to return as soon as he had passed the river, yet such\n  are the powerful charms of black cattle to some sorts of people, that the\n  lieutenant, espying a prey some distance from him on the other side, must\n  needs be scampering after them, by which means our design was discovered,\n  and the enemy immediately provided against it by throwing up strong works\n  on the other side. The lieutenant, I heard, was afterward try'd, and\n  suffer'd for it.\"\n\nGood-hearted as we imagine our chaplain to have been, he could never bring\nhimself up to the point of impartial laudation of the good qualities of his\nopponents. The ford toward Lanesborough being out of the question, the most\nvigorous efforts were made to get possession of the bridge; but the stern\ndetermination of the Irish party foiled every attempt.\n\nAt last the Irish breastwork, which prevented the English engineers from\nlaying a flooring over the now solitary chasm, was destroyed. It consisted\nin great part of fascines (fagots), which being in an unlucky moment set on\nfire by English grenades, were quickly consumed, owing to the dryness and\nheat of the weather. The opportunity was not lost, planks were thrown\nacross, and even a flooring laid on in part, when a heroic band of ten men\nof Maxwell's regiment, commanded by a sergeant, and all in armor, advanced\nfrom the western end of the bridge, and began to tear up planks and boards,\nand fling them into the river. A storm of bullets soon levelled them\ndespite their harness before they had completed the daring deed; but their\nplaces were taken by another devoted eleven. They succeeded in\nprecipitating the remaining beams into the river at the sacrifice of the\nlives of nine of their number. Two escaped, and the bridge was once more\nimpassable.\n\nThe name and fame of the historic or mythic Horatius Coeles has been\npreserved for upward of two thousand years. There is not a verse extant to\nthe praise of these score of heroic men, martyrs to their cause. Their very\nnames are lost, if we except the sergeant, and probably _Custume_, the\nname by which his memory is preserved, is either a mistake or a nickname.\n\nThe next attempt to pass the river was well arranged beforehand. It was\ndecided that at an early hour in the day efforts should be made at three\ndifferent points--the bridge, a ford lately discovered below the bridge,\nand a point still lower to be crossed on pontoons. However, the boats\nrequired more time to reach their places than was calculated on, and a\ncovered gallery, intended to facilitate the passage at the bridge, was\ndestroyed at the commencement of the advance. The Irish and English\ngrenadiers on the bridge began to fling their peculiar weapons at each\nother, and luck being with the Irish on this occasion, their grenades set\nfire to the enemy's fascines and to the covered gallery. There being a\nstrong westerly wind at the time, the flames spread rapidly, and caused\nmuch confusion.\n{122}\nSt. Ruth had received previous intimation of the design, and the flower of\nthe Irish troops were ready to receive the unwelcome visitors. Detachments\nhad poured into the garrison, and the main army remained under the cover of\nthe western ramparts of the Irish town, to rush in on the storming body if\nthey succeeded in crossing the river. The event of the strife on the bridge\nprevented the attempt by the ford or the pontoons.\n\nThis check had a very disheartening effect upon the besieging forces; for,\nthough their cannon ceaselessly continued to play on the defences of the\nIrish town, a council of war was held, wherein the difficulties of staying\nthere any longer were represented.\n\nThe council came to a wise resolution under the circumstances. It was\ndangerous to retire, it was dangerous to advance; but glory and honor might\nwait on the latter alterative, and it was adopted. The report of two\ndeserters who succeeded in coming across encouraged them in their\ncourageous resolve. They represented St. Ruth and his officers as put off\ntheir guard, and expected to hear of the retreat of the English at any\nmoment. They also reported the garrison at that moment as consisting of\nthree of the rawest regiments in the whole force.\n\nThe report was in the main correct. St. Ruth had given a large party to the\nladies and gentlemen of the country, and universal joy and negligence ruled\nin the army. The general, wishing to season the latest recruits, sent them\nto keep garrison, directing that the fortifications in the rear, chiefly\nconsisting of earth works, should be levelled, so as to afford facility for\nthe new hands to retire, if they found themselves crowded by the foe, and\nalso facility to the tried men in the camp to come to their relief under\nthe same undesirable circumstances. D'Usson represented the want of wisdom\nin the appointment of the raw hands to the post of danger, and further\nobjected to the destruction of the ramparts. The Irish chiefs did not\ncordially co-operate; and there was a palpable want of wisdom in their\ncouncils. The earthworks remained untouched, and the inexperienced soldiers\nwere set to learn their first dangerous lesson, a fierce foe in front, no\nmeans of safe retreat in the rear, and a prodigious stake depending on\ntheir firmness. [Footnote 31]\n\n\n    [Footnote 31: It is mentioned in some accounts that when these new men\n    found themselves at their posts they were unprovided with powder.\n    Having after some delay got this article, they had to apply again for\n    bullets. Captain Maxwell, to whom the application came, thinking they\n    were already provided, jestingly asked, \"Was it to shoot larks?\"]\n\nThe ford already mentioned had been tried in the first instance by three\nDutchmen in armor, the English guns firing volleys apparently at them, but\nin reality over their heads during the transit. This device protected them\nfrom the Irish bullets, as they were supposed to be deserters. However,\nwhen they turned round after a reasonably near approach to the Irish side,\nthey began to find the leaden shower pelting about their ears from that\nquarter. They made their escape with some slight wounds, the water at the\ndeepest having only reached their waists. The season was a remarkably dry\none, and that ford had never been so shallow in the memory of man.\n\nDe Ginckel and his chiefs, having come to the resolution of trying another\nbold assault, did not defer its execution till the enemy should become\napprised of their intention. The hour of relieving guard at six o'clock was\nchosen, when the Irishtown men saw nothing very unusual in the crowding of\nthe English soldiers into the garrison. Everything being minutely arranged\nbetween the Dutch general and his officers, a body of determined men moved\ntoward the ford. This was the critical movement on the success of which\ndepended the action to be taken at the other two passages. And here a\nquotation from the memoir of Patrick Sarsfield, by J. W. Cole, Esq., will\nhelp to make the state of things at that hour more clear:\n\n{123}\n\n  \"Sarsfield apprised St. Ruth of the enemy's intention. He turned a deaf\n  ear to the messenger who found him dressing for a shooting excursion,\n  laughed at the idea of bringing up the army to repel an imaginary attack,\n  and said scoffingly that his officers were tired with dancing at last\n  night's ball. Sarsfield repeated the intelligence, representing in the\n  most urgent terms that not a moment was to be lost. 'They dare not do\n  it,' said the confident Frenchman, 'and I so near,' adding that he would\n  give a thousand louis to hear that the English durst attempt to pass.\n  'Spare your money and mind your business,' was the gruff retort of\n  Sarsfield. 'I know the English better than you do. There is no enterprise\n  too desperate for their courage to attempt.'\"\n\nCol. Charles O'Kelly gives it as his opinion that the Scotch Colonel\nMaxwell \"sold the pass.\" Here is a translation of his Latin:\n\n  \"One of his legions having swam over the Lycus that afternoon, no sooner\n  came to Ororis (Ginekel) and delivered him a private message than the\n  party was immediately detached to attack the river. When the soldiers\n  called out to Maxilles for arrows (bullets), he would give them none, but\n  asked them whether they should shoot against the birds of the air. He\n  ordered the men to lie down and take their rest, saying there would be no\n  action till night. So that when the enemy entered, the soldiers for the\n  most part were asleep, and few or none in their posts. When the first man\n  of the enemy mounted the breach, be boldly asked him, 'Do you know me?'\n  whereupon he got quarter, and all the rest were put to the sword; this it\n  seems being the signal to distinguish the betrayer from the rest, and it\n  is supposed that Ororis commanded those who were upon the attack, to use\n  the officer well who should put that question. ... Lysander (Sarsfield)\n  accused him a few days before in the general's presence, and it is\n  certain it was not prudently done, after giving you such a public\n  affront, to intrust to him the command of a post of that importance, but\n  it seems Corydon (Tyrconnel) would have it so, and Pyrrhus (St. Ruth) did\n  not think fit to disoblige the viceroy.\"\n\nWe are not convinced of Maxwell's treachery, Col. O'Kelly's surmises\nnotwithstanding. He intensely disliked Tyrconnel, and this dislike was\nshared in by all who enjoyed his favor. The public accusation, and the\nimportant post intrusted soon after to the accused are the reverse of cause\nand effect. We shall presently set his behavior at the assault in a better\nlight.\n\n\n  The Passage of the Shannon.\n\nA few minutes after the tolling of the church bell at 6 o'clock P.M., the\nEnglish batteries commenced playing furiously on the town, seconded by\nnumerous volleys from marksman who were stationed on ladders placed against\nthe inside of the wall in English town. In directing this deafening uproar\nGinckel seems to have badly co-operated with Colonel Maxwell in putting the\npoor raw recruits to sleep. Simultaneously with this flourish, the trial of\nthe ford was made, to describe which we prefer the words of the\neye-witness, Story, to those of any other, including our own.\n\n  \"About 2,000 detach't men were now ready, and Major-General Mackay to\n  command them. Major-General Tettcau, the Prince of Hesse, and Brigadeer\n  La Molliner were likewise of the party, and Major-General Talmarsh went a\n  volunteer with a party of grannadeers, commanded by Collonel Gustavus\n  Hambleton. And for the greater encouragement to the soldiers, the general\n  distributed a sum of guinea's amongst them, knowing the powerful\n  influence of gold, though our armies had as little occasion for such\n  gratuities (I mean as to that point of whetting their courage) as any in\n  all the world, and have done as much without them.\n\n  \"The ford was over against a bastion of the enemies where a breach was\n  made already, and the river being try'd three days before, ... and found\n  passable; so that all things being in this order, six minutes past six a\n  clock, Captain Sandys and two lieutenants led the first party of 60\n  granadeers, all in armour and 20 a breast, seconded by another good body,\n  who all with an amazing resolution took the river, the stream being very\n  rapid and deep (?) at which time our great and small shot began to play\n  from our batteries and works on our side upon the enemies works on the\n  other, and they fired as thick as possible upon our men that were passing\n  the river, who forced their way thro fire and smoak, and gaining the\n  other bank the rest laid planks over the broken part of the bridge, and\n  others were laying the bridge of boats, by which our men passed over so\n  fast that in less than half an hour we were masters of the town. ... A\n  great many of the Irish were killed in their works, and yet its\n  observable that our men when they saw themselves really masters of the\n  town, were not at all forward to kill those at their mercy, though it was\n  in a manner in the heat of action. But the rubbish and stuff thrown down\n  by our cannon was more difficult to climb over than a great part of the\n  enemies works which occasioned our soldiers to swear and curse even among\n  the bullets themselves, upon which Major-General Mackay told them that\n  they had more reason to fall upon their knees and thank God for their\n  victory, and that they were brave men and the best of men if they would\n  swear less. ...\n{124}\n  Among the (Irish officers) were slain during the siege and attack, Col.\n  O'Gara, [Footnote 32] Col. Richard Grace, Col. Art. Oge Mackmahon, two of\n  the Mack Genness, and several others.\"\n\n    [Footnote 32: This is probably a mistake, as there is record but of one\n    Col. O'Gara in King James's forces, and he is afterward heard of at\n    Limerick. Col. Richard Grace had fought vigorously for Charles I. till\n    the surrender at Oxford in 1646. Returning to Ireland he raised at his\n    own expense a force estimated at from three to five thousand men, and\n    enjoyed the honor of having his head valued at \u00a3500 by Cromwell. In\n    1652 he was permitted to retire to the continent with a contingent of\n    1200 men. The Duke of York always treated him with the greatest\n    friendship. After the restoration his estates in the King's County and\n    were restored to him. He had defendant Athlone during Cromwell's wars,\n    and again in 1690 against Douglas. During his government of this\n    garrison he was rigid in repressing any outrages on the country people\n    by the military, and on one occasion he had 10 soldiers hung at the\n    same time from the outer wall for such offenses. He was killed the day\n    preceding the capture, and his body discovered when the English got\n    possession. His activity and energy could not be surpassed. In bringing\n    up forces from a part of Kilkenny to Athlone he walked with the men\n    seventy miles in two days. Another time he rode from Dublin to Athlone\n    and back, 116 Irish miles in twenty-four hours.]\n\nNotwithstanding the treachery imputed to Col. Maxwell, he exerted himself\ngallantly to cover the retreat of the poor recruits, who found the rear\nfortifications sadly in their way. St. Ruth, on receiving the fatal news,\nsent off Major-General John Hamilton with two brigades of infantry to drive\nout the enemy. But as the western ramparts had been considerately left for\nthe protection and comfort of this same enemy, the scrambling over these\nworks, and the subsequent driving out of the numerous and flushed forces\nbehind them, was not to be accomplished by a mere _coup de main_, and\ntwo infantry brigades. They did what in them lay. They covered the retreat\nof the fugitives, and gave the vanguard of their pursuers a warm reception.\nCol. Maxwell, now a prisoner, and a passive spectator, afterward declared\nthat he had entertained great hopes of being rescued during the short but\ndeadly strife between the combatants. St. Ruth's feelings were not to be\nenvied the night of that dismal day; for he must have been sensible that,\nowing to his contempt of the enemy, over-weaning confidence, and neglecting\nnecessary precautions, or not insisting on their execution, he wretchedly\npermitted the great stronghold of the king for whom he commanded to be\ntaken out of his bands.\n\n  \"At Ballinasloe (we quote Mr. Cole) he drew up his forces intending to\n  make a stand. Sarsfield, backed by the other general officers,\n  represented that it was madness to risk a certain defeat there by\n  engaging a superior and better disciplined army, flushed with the recent\n  conquest of Athlone; that the wiser plan would be to hold Galway and\n  Limerick with strong garrisons, to march with the remainder of the\n  infantry and all the cavalry into Munster and Leinster, intercept the\n  enemy's communications, and perhaps make a dash upon Dublin, which was\n  left in a state unprepared for resistance. St. Ruth yielded to their\n  remonstrances, and retreated to Aughrim; but here he suddenly and in evil\n  hour for his own cause changed his determination, and resolved to risk a\n  battle. He was either stung by the loss of Athlone, or prompted by\n  personal vanity which whispered to him that he was destined to\n  immortalize his name by a great victory.\"\n\nHaving made up his mind to abide the brunt of Ginckel's well-appointed and\nwell-disciplined and numerous forces, he halted his dispirited but\ndetermined troops on the hill-side of Kilcomedan, about three miles\nsouth-west of Ballinasloe.\n\n\n  The Field of Aughrim.\n\nProbably most of our readers are in the same predicament with relation to\nthis hill of dismal memory. They have not looked over that battle-field,\nand probably never will, the Great Western railway notwithstanding. So we\nborrow the graphic account of a writer who examined the ridge from end to\nend, the Danish fort on its summit, and the unlucky old castle, conversed\nwith an aged man of the village, who had long since spoken with an aged\nwoman, who when a very young girl had brought some country produce to King\nJames's soldiers, and had witnessed with terror and curiosity some of the\noccurrences of the fatal 12th of July, 1691.\n\n  \"The hill of Kilcomedan is in no part very steep. It forms a gradual\n  slope extending almost due north and from end to end, a distance of about\n  a mile and a half; and at the time of which we speak it was perfectly\n  open and covered with heath. Along the crest or this hill was perched the\n  Irish camp, and the position in which St. Ruth was resolved to await the\n  enemy extended along its base.\n\n{125}\n\n  \"The foremost line of the Irish composed entirely of musketeers, occupied\n  a series of small enclosures, and was covered in front throughout its\n  entire extent by a morass through which flows a little stream, and this\n  swamp with difficulty passable by infantry, was wholly so for cavalry.\n  Through two passes only was the Irish position thus covered assailable\n  upon firm ground, the one at the extreme right much the more open of the\n  two, and called the pass of Urrachree from an old house and demesne which\n  lay close to it, and the other at the extreme left, by the long straight\n  road leading into the town of Aughrim. This road was broken, and so\n  narrow that some annalists state that two horses could not pass it\n  abreast; in addition to which it was commanded by the castle of Aughrim,\n  then as now it is true but a ruin, but whose walls and enclosures\n  nevertheless afforded effectual cover, and a position such as ought to\n  have rendered the pass impregnable. Beyond those passes at either side\n  were extensive bogs, and dividing them the interposing morass. The\n  enclosures in which the advanced musketeers were posted, afforded\n  excellent cover, and from one to the other communications had been cut,\n  and at certain intervals their whole length was traversed by broad\n  passages, intended to admit the flanking charge of the Irish cavalry in\n  case the enemy's infantry should succeed in forcing their way thus far.\n  The main line extended in a double row of columns parallel to the\n  advanced position of the musketeers, and the reserve of the cavalry was\n  drawn up on a small plain a little behind the castle of Aughrim, which\n  was occupied by a force of about two thousand men. The Irish army\n  numbered in all, perhaps, about twenty thousand men, and the position\n  they held extended more than an English mile, and was indeed as powerful\n  a one as could possibly have been selected.\"\n\nBegging the author's indulgence for this needful theft, we own ourselves\nunable to resist the temptation of committing another, especially as, if he\nhad been under harness himself that day in the Irish camp, he would not\nhave voluntarily shared in the solemn function so vividly describes:\n\n  \"Many of our readers are doubtless aware that the field of Aughrim was\n  fought upon a Sunday, a circumstance which added one to the many\n  thrilling incidents of the martial scene. The army had hardly moved into\n  that position which was that day to be so hardly and devotedly\n  maintained, when the solemn service of high mass was commenced at the\n  head of every regiment by its respective chaplain; and during this solemn\n  ceremonial were arriving at every moment fresh messengers from the\n  outposts, their horses covered with dust and foam, with the stern\n  intelligence that the enemy were steadily approaching; and amid all this\n  excitement and suspense, in silence and bare-beaded, kneeled the devoted\n  thousands in the ranks in which they were to receive the foe, and on the\n  very ground on which they were in a few hours so desperately to contend.\n  This solemn and striking ceremonial under circumstances which even the\n  bravest admit to be full of awe, and amid the tramp and neighing of\n  horses, and jingling of accoutrements, and the distant trumpet signals\n  from the outposts, invested the scene with a wildness and sublimity of\n  grandeur, which blanched many a cheek, and fluttered many a heart with\n  feelings very different from those of fear.\"\n\n\n  The Pass of Urrachree.\n\nA thick vapor, called up from the surrounding bogs and marshes by the hot\nmorning sun, kept the rival armies concealed from each other's sight till\nabout 12 o'clock, when, all becoming clear, the men on Kilcomedan had a\nfull sight of the allied forces, commanded by eight majors-general, and\narranged in double columns, their rich appointments presenting an\nunpleasant contrast to their own much more modest if not shabby garb and\naccoutrements. As soon as General Ginckel could command a distinct view\nfrom a height toward the left of his lines, he was enabled to judge of the\nstrength of the position held by the Irish, and the skill shown in the\ndisposition of the forces adverted to above. He could see one portion of\nthe cavalry prepared to dispute the pass at Urrachree, another watching the\npass at Aughrim, the main body of horse posted below the crest of the hill,\nthe infantry still lower disposed in two columns, and he could guess the\npresence of musketeers in the ditches at the bottom of the hill, prepared\nto receive the hardy infantry who would venture across the morass to\nexchange shots with them. Sarsfield's horse beyond the brow of Kilcomedan\non the Irish left, he probably did not observe. There was the shrewd and\nfiery chief placed, with strict orders from his unfriendly superior not to\nstir from that spot till expressly ordered.\n{126}\nHad the gallant Dutchman at that moment known that St. Ruth had not\ncommunicated to any of his general officers the scheme be intended to\nobserve through the engagement, his hopes of victory would have been much\nmore sanguine. Feeling the inexpediency of commencing a general engagement,\nyet impatient of the scene of inactivity before him, he gave orders to a\nDanish captain of horse commanding sixteen men to attempt the pass of\nUrrachree. The small body was warmly received by some watching cavalry\nstill fewer in number, and though the brave officer justified the\nreputation of his country for dogged courage, his men were deserted by that\nvirtue so essential to every soldier, and \"ran like men.\"\n\nGinckel, fully aware of the importance of the pass in case a general\nengagement should take place, next directed Colonel Albert Conyngham to\ntake possession of some ditches near where one branch of the stream entered\nthe morass. The chief of this party had received orders not to advance\nbeyond the mere boundary, lest he should be intercepted, and thus bring on\na premature engagement. The Irish party, after receiving the enemy's fire\nand returning it, showed their backs, and their assailants pursued them\nbeyond the limits pointed out by the sagacious De Ginckel. An ambush had\nbeen prepared in expectation of this proceeding, and, while they were least\nexpecting it, a destructive fire was opened on them from behind cover. Many\nimmediately dismounted, and, taking advantage of a hedge, returned the fire\nwith deadly interest. They had little time to enjoy the success of this\nmove, when they were startled by the rush of a strong cavalry force\nsweeping down on them from behind the extremity of the hill, and the old\nmanor-house of Urrachree. They were obliged to retire in disorder before\nthis new enemy, but the watchful eye of the justly displeased general had\nwell marked the progress of the action, and provided for the expected\nrepulse. D'Eppinger's royal regiment of Holland dragoons came on amain to\nget between the pursuing Irish horse and the hill. But other detachments of\nIrish cavalry were at hand to frustrate this design; the Earl of Portland's\nhorse were sent to support the forcing party, and a stern combat was waged\nfor about an hour, fresh parties joining the strife from the natural\nimpatience of men of heart to remain still while blows are bandying before\ntheir eyes. At three o'clock this contention came to an end, both sides\nhaving lost several stout partisans, and the relative positions being much\nthe same as at the beginning of the skirmish.\n\nFor the next hour and a half nothing was done on either aide. The English\ngenerals were in close consultation as to whether it were better to renew\nthe attack or defer it till next morning. The brave old Scotchman, Mackay,\ndecided his fellow commanders for present action. He counselled a renewed\nand more effective attempt at Urrachree, which, causing re-enforcements to\nbe drawn from the Irish centre and the neighborhood of Aughrim, would\nenable the infantry to try the morass where it was narrowest, and also\nenable the cavalry on the right wing to force the dangerous pass at\nAughrim, watched by the garrison of the ruined castle.\n\n\n  The Morass And The Hedges.\n\nAt this time (half-past four in the evening) the main body of the English\nformed two lines directly before the morass, the generals on each side\nhaving a pretty correct idea of the state and efficiency of their foes. In\nother respects the advantage was with the allied army. There was a perfect\ncordiality and understanding between De Ginckel and his generals, and even\nin the case of his death and that of his second in command the Duke of\nWirtemberg, Mackay, or Talmash, or De Ruvigny were perfectly apprised of\nthe general plan of the action.\n\n{127}\n\nThe Danish horse and a body of infantry were ordered to the extreme left,\nwith the apparent design to out-flank the enemy on that side, and thus draw\naway from the Irish centre and left wing much of the strength there needed.\nThis body (the Dutch, to wit) kept that postilion during the remainder of\nthe battle, doing as good service as if actually engaged. Three French\nregiments, namely, those of La Melloni\u00e8re, Du Cambon, and Belcassel,\ncommenced to assail the advanced forces of the Irish in the neighborhood of\nthese inactive troops, and obliged St. Ruth to weaken his left and centre\nto support them. Except the cannonading from both sides there was no\nfighting going on until six o'clock along the entire line, except this in\nthe neighborhood of Urrachree.\n\nMackay, in order to weaken still more the Irish left wing, advised Ginckel\nto separate a considerable body of horse from Talmash's troops, who were\nwaiting for a favorable opportunity to tempt the narrow pass toward\nAughrim, and to send them toward Urrachree. This had the desired effect,\nand now preparations were made to cross the morass at the narrowest part\nand attack the Irish centre.\n\nWhile detachments of the second line of the left centre of the Irish were\nmarching to defend the pass at Urrachree, and thus leaving their late\npositions comparatively weak, four English regiments, commanded by Colonels\nErie, Herbert, Creighton, and Brewer, effected the passage of the marsh,\nand were received by a volley from the men ensconced behind the lowest\nfence. Openings (as before mentioned) being ready, these marksman, as soon\nas they were dislodged, retired behind the next shelter, and repeated the\nprocess till they had drawn the British soldiers nearly half a mile up the\nhill.\n\nNow their orders had been to wait till a much greater force had crossed at\na wider portion of the morass lower down (that is, near Aughrim, the stream\nin the centre of the morass flowing in that direction), and effected a\njunction with them. So when they saw their cunning enemies, joined by the\nmain central force, and these again backed by cavalry, all preparing to\nsweep down on them, they remembered too late the wise orders they had\nreceived. However, if the charging party were Irish wolf-hounds, the\ncharged were English bull-dogs, and determined to make courage repair evil\ndone by rashness. The gallant Colonel Erie cried out: \"There is no way to\ncome off but to be brave!\" But neither the courage of the men nor the\nability of the leaders could resist the downward charge of horse and foot,\nand the flanking bullets that rained on them. Colonels Erie and Herbert and\nsome captains were taken prisoners and rescued, and recaptured, and we are\nsorry to record that Colonel Herbert was killed while prisoner, from\napprehension of his rescue. The English did not or could not make use of\nthe fences in their downward flight, as their pursuers had done when\nenticing them upward, but were driven, as it were, by press of men till the\nsurvivors once more gained the bog.\n\nMeantime five regiments, for whose safe lodgment these rash men ought to\nhave waited, had crossed the wider part of the morass lower down, under the\ncommand of the veteran Major-General Mackay and Prince George of Hesse.\nThis fiery young warrior was ordered by his senior to keep his division\nstationary in a cornfield until he himself should have made a sufficient\n_detour_ to the right among difficult ground and to attack the enemy\nin flank while Prince George was assailing them in front.\n\nThe same error as that just previously committed by the staid English\ncolonels was repeated by the impetuous young German prince. Being fired at\nand probably jeered or mocked by the ditch holders he advanced to chastise\nthem, and both parties came to such close quarters that the ends of their\nmuskets nearly touched.\n{128}\nBack went the Irish musketeers, after them pushed the assailants, new\nshelter taken, fresh shots fired, fresh dislodgments, no attention paid by\nEnglander or foreigner till they found themselves surrounded and assailed\nfront, flank, and rear, by the Irish. There was a skirmishing retreat made\ntill the corn-field was reached by the survivors, some even whose care for\nself overpowered love of fame or fighting, never stayed till they had put\nthe morass between themselves and the pestilent hedgemen.\n\nGeneral Mackay, having mastered the difficulties before him, was in hopes\nof having the Irish foe between himself and the holders of the cornfield,\nbut was thunderstruck on his return at the demoralized condition of his\nrash friends. He sent to request aid from General Talmash, and the three\nparties renewed a desperate onslaught on the musketeers who occupied the\nfences. They were received with the same determined resolution and deadly\nfire as on the two former occasions, and were obliged by the close and\nuninterrupted musket volleys and flank charges of horse to fall back on the\ncornfield, the marsh, and even to the dry ground on the eastern side on a\nline with the English batteries.\n\nThree times did the tide of battle flow and ebb across the bog on that\nmemorable afternoon, each party inspired with the dogged determination and\nhate that a struggle for life and for a darling cause inspired. Even the\nWilliamite chaplain was obliged in a manner to do justice to the bravery of\nthe Irish enemy. Describing the beginning of the attack, he says:--\n\n  \"The _Irish_ in the meantime laid so close in their ditches that\n  several were doubtful whether they had any men at that place or not, but\n  they were convinced of it at last, for no sooner were the _French_\n  and the rest got within twenty yards or less of the ditches, but the\n  _Irish_ fired most furiously upon them, which our men as bravely\n  sustained, and pressed forward, though they could scarce see one another\n  for smoak. And now the thing seemed so doubtful for some time that the\n  by-standers would rather have given it on the Irish side, for they had\n  driven our foot in the centre so far that they were got almost in a line\n  with some of our great guns planted near the bog, which we had not the\n  benefit of at that juncture, because of the mixture of our men and\n  theirs.\"\n\nDuring the continuance of this deadly strife in the centre, De Ginckel was\ndirecting the efforts of the foreign auxiliaries against the defenders of\nUrrachree. The general himself, regardless of his own safety, exposed his\nlife on more than one occasion. He was re-enforced more than once from the\nleft, but all that the greatest skill and energy on the part of himself and\nhis generals, and bravery on the part of their men could effect, were\ninsufficient to remove the Irish cavalry from their ground of vantage. Next\nto this mingled war of cavalry and infantry, and nearer the centre, the\nFrench infantry regiments of La Melloni\u00e8re, Du Camben, and Belcassel\nstruggled, like the fiery stout fellows they were, to drive the Irish\ninfantry opposed to them from their ditches. They (the French) fortified\ntheir positions when any advantage was gained by _chevaux de frise_,\nbut these were again and again taken and destroyed by their opponents.\nScarcely did any portion of the mingled peoples suffer so much in the\ndeadly struggle at Aughrim as these gallant Frenchmen. Had De Ginckel's\ncavalry, and these French infantry, succeeded in dislodging their\nopponents, they would then be in a position to take the Irish centre in\nflank, and bring the struggle to a speedy close, but this was not the mode\nin which it was the will of Providence to decide the day.\n\nWhere was St. Ruth employed during these momentous struggles? Just where he\nshould have been, in front of his camp near the crest of the hill, watching\nthe fluctuations of the battle, issuing orders, and sending aid wherever\nthey were needed. Our chaplain says that he was so pleasurably excited by\nthe charges of his central infantry to the very line of the British\nbatteries that he flung his gold-laced hat into the air, extolling the\nbravery of the Irish infantry, and exclaiming that \"he would now drive back\nthe English to the gates of Dublin.\"\n\n{129}\n\n  How the Pass of Aughrim was Forced.\n\nSo far the Irish forces were sustained in their gallant struggle; but now\nthe scale of fortune began to waiver. Their final defeat began in a quarter\nfrom which it was totally unlooked for by either themselves or their\nantagonists. The castle of Aughrim, so well garrisoned, looked on a narrow\npass crossed by the stream before mentioned, but a little to the S. E. this\nisthmus of firm land opened out to a tolerably wide space \"in the shape of\na spindle furnished with its complement of thread.\" Here at about this time\nof the fight, the extreme right of the English force planted some cannon,\nand cleared of its defenders the gorge of the isthmus just between them and\nthe space before the castle. So far a step was made in the right direction;\nthey were enabled to make the next by the stupidity or treachery of an\nofficer who had been directed to send to Urrachree a detachment from the\nsecond or rear line of the army toward the left. Along with this complement\nhe sent away a battalion from the front line; [Footnote 33] and this being\nremarked by the English officers, three infantry battalions making use of\nhurdles, slipped across the edge of the morass in front of the castle,\n[Footnote 34] and took possession of a cornfield on the Irish side. The\nIrish musketeers stationed behind the hedges in that quarter, aware of the\nwide breach in the main columns behind them, retreated after delivering one\ndischarge, and took refuge in the hollow near the castle, the post of the\nreserve cavalry. A troop of these coming to the rescue, the Englishmen took\nto the shelter of the hedges where they had little to fear from a charge.\n\n    [Footnote 33: Colonel Henry Luttrell having had to do in this transfer\n    of the front line force where they were needed, gave a color to the\n    tradition of his having \"sold the pass at Aughrim.\"]\n\n    [Footnote 34: Let it be borne in mind that the castle was on the north\n    side of the narrow road or pass, and that its defenders had before\n    their eyes the N.E. side of Kilcomedan and the morass so often\n    mentioned. The village of Aughrim lay to the west of the castle, and\n    Irish reserve force partly between castle and village.]\n\nThis successful manoeuver encouraged the passage of two other regiments\nnearer to the centre, namely, those commanded by Lord George Hamilton and\nSir Henry Belasyse, and the moment seemed favorable for the approach of the\ncavalry through the defile which they had cleared of its guards as already\nmentioned. They were accompanied by infantry, who not being restricted to\nthe narrow limit of the boggy road, were prepared to fire on all the\nvisible defenders of the occupants of the outer works of the place. After\nall, it is really difficult to account for the apparently rash movement.\nThere were 2,000 men in and about the castle, and two field-pieces were in\nreadiness to rake the pass in front. What possibility was there that a line\nof horsemen two or three abreast, unable to return the fire of the\nprotected enemy, could escape destruction? We knew that small parties of\nmen have exposed their lives as on forlorn-hope enterprises, but here were\nwhole regiments.\n\nCould it be that the leaders were aware that the danger to be incurred did\nnot exceed in degree the ordinary risks of warfare?\n\nThe chaplain says in reference to the apparent danger of the attempt:\n\n  \"The French general seeing our men attempt to do this, askt, '_What\n  they meant by it?_ and being answered that they would certainly\n  endeavor to pass there, and attack him on the left, he is said to reply\n  with an oath, 'They are brave fellows; it's a pity they should be so\n  exposed.'\"\n\nIt is very probable that the words were uttered by the general, for the\nlong file of horses and cavaliers were distant only thirty yards from the\nsheltered marksmen.\n\nThe adventurous bands owed their safety to a direct interposition of\nProvidence, to a detestable deed of treachery, or to the grossest piece of\nnegligence or stupidity in the annals of warfare.\n\n{130}\n\nWe are told that Colonel Walter Bourke, commander of the garrison, having\nsent to the camp for ammunition, four barrels of gunpowder and four of\nbullets were sent to him. But when the barrels of ball were opened, on the\napproach of the enemy, the eyes of the men engaged in the operation were\nblasted by the sight of cannon-balls! The confusion and misery of the\ndefenders, officers and men, may scarcely be comprehended. However, they\nresorted to the only means in their power. To supply ammunition they loaded\nwith buttons, with nails, with bits of stone, with their ramrods when all\nelse was expended, and did what execution they could.\n\nThe infantry regiments of Hamilton and Kirke, having found materials at\nhand, barricaded a wide opening on the east side of the castle, in order to\nprevent a charge on the cannon when passing from the Irish reserve in the\nrere, and then they took possession of a dry ditch, whence they dislodged\nthe defenders of the castle's outworks, whose ammunition was expended, and\nwho for their misfortune lived before the bayonet was invented.\n\nThe Irish reserve, hearing from the fugitives how things were going on,\nsped round to the opening on their left, through which they might charge on\nthe advancing artillery train; but there they found themselves checkmated\nby the barrier set up by the English infantry. They wheeled round, and,\nhaving made the circuit of the castle, they found themselves face to face\nwith Lord Oxford's regiment, who, under Sir Francis Compton, had already\ngained the open ground. A brisk engagement took place, and the English\ncavalry were twice driven back, but, being soon re-enforced by the horse\nand dragoons of De Rouvigny, Langston, Byerly, and Levingston, they made\ngood their footing, several being slain on both sides.\n\nIt may well be supposed that St. Ruth was not a little surprised to see the\nnarrow and dangerous passage so well and safely achieved, and the lodgment\neffected at the bottom of the hill by the English infantry. Still there was\nnothing very disheartening in all this. He was at the head of a fine body\nof cavalry; only four squadrons of the enemy had as yet effected a standing\nat the north-east extremity of the hill; he and his troopers would charge\ndown and annihilate the rash intruders; and if need were, he could easily\nsummon the brave Earl of Lucan and his horse, who had been kept inactive to\nthis moment, and dared not stir till the word was given.\n\nHere a tirade might very appropriately come in against the spite of fortune\ntoward the Irish cause, and particularly toward the aspirations of the\nsingle-minded and heroic Patrick Sarsfield. He had been kept at the fight\nof the Boyne in attendance on the king; at Aughrim he sat his horse on one\nside of Kilcomedan while the exciting battle game was being played at the\nother, and in neither case had he an opportunity of charging, or ordering\nto charge, or directing a movement, or striking a blow. A complete insight\ninto the workings of his troubled and ireful heart on these days would not\nbe desirable.\n\n\n  One Shot Decides the Victory.\n\nThe general, doomed to enjoy but a few minutes more of existence, was\nradiant with confident hope. Preparing for the final swoop, he cried, \"They\nare beaten; let us beat them to the purpose!\" He gave some directions to an\nartillery officer, placed himself at the head of his guard, and was about\nto give the command to charge when his head was blown to pieces by a\ncannon-ball!\n\nDoes not it now seem an easy thing for the next in command then to have\nsent at once to Lord Lucan, inform him of the fatal accident, and summon\nhim to take the chief command? It was a simple matter to charge on the\nadvancing columns, and through superiority in number and fresh untired\nforces render what they had effected of no avail. No. A cloak was laid over\nthe body, and it was conveyed to the rere; part of the guard accompanied\nit, and the rest soon followed.\n\n{131}\n\nThe historians do not agree on the final resting-place of the body of the\ngallant but ill-advised Frenchman, but the probability is that it was\nconveyed to Athenry and interred in its roofless church; peace to his\nmemory! [Footnote 35]\n\n    [Footnote 35: From the Green Book of Mr. O'Callachan, we extract\n    (abridged) a curious traditional passage connected with the death of\n    St. Ruth. The day before the battle, a neighboring gentlemen, by name\n    O'Kelly, presented himself before him demanding payment of sundry sheep\n    driven off his lands by the soldiers. The general refused, alleging\n    that he should not grudge food to the men who were fighting for him and\n    his country. O'Kelly persisting, the general used harsh language, and\n    the other turning to his herdsman, bade him in Irish to mark St. Ruth\n    and his appearance. \"You are robbed, master,\" said the herd, \"but\n    anyhow, ask for the skins.\" These were needed by the soldiers for bed\n    furniture, and all that master and herd obtained by the second request\n    was a preemptory order to be gone. They obeyed and sought the English\n    general, who recommended them to the care of a certain artillery\n    officer named Trench. When the passage before the castle was made,\n    Trench got his piece of ordinance fixed in an advantageous place on the\n    edge of the marsh by means of planking, and as soon as the treacherous\n    herd caught sight of St. Ruth he cried out, \"Take aim! There he is, a\n    man dressed like a bandsman.\" One wheel of the carriage being lower\n    than was requisite, Trench put his boot under it, and everything being\n    adjusted aim was taken, and O'Kelly and his herd got their revenge, and\n    the favor of the ruling powers.]\n\nHowever unaccountable it may seem, Sarsfield received no intelligence of\nSt. Ruth's death till it was too late to repair the mischance. Meanwhile\nthe English who had crossed at Aughrim found time to assist their\nstruggling friends in the centre, and the musketeers were gradually driven\nupward. The main body of Irish infantry on right of the centre were as much\ndiscouraged by the death of Rev. Dr. Stafford, an energetic chaplain, as\nthe guards had been by that of the commander-in-chief. The right wing at\nUrrachree, after incessant fighting, were obliged to retreat before the\nincreasing numbers of their assailants released from duty elsewhere, and\nthe English and Danish cavalry at Urrachree were at leisure to relieve the\nHuguenot infantry on their right from the fierce attacks of the Irish\ninfantry to whom they had been opposed.\n\nIt was now past sunset and the rout of King James's adherents had become\ngeneral, the last to retreat being the infantry next to Urrachree, who had\ndone such good service against the regiments of La Melloni\u00e8re, Du Cambon,\nand Belcassel.\n\n\n  After the Battle.\n\nThe infantry fled to the protection of the large red bog on their left, and\nthe cavalry made an orderly retreat south-west, along the road to Loughrea.\nThe poor infantry were slaughtered without mercy by the pursuing cavalry,\nbut a thick mist mercifully sent saved the lives of many. An ingenious\ndiversion in their favor was made by a brave and thoughtful officer of the\nold race of O'Reilly, who, getting on a small eminence, sounded the charge\nfor battle, and stopped for a few minutes the bloody pursuit. One skilled\nin the domestic economy of battles may explain why the Irish cavalry did\nnot combine and present a strong and effective obstacle to the English\nhorse, while the poor fellows on foot were getting away under their\nshelter. The present writer being a mere civilian can allege no sufficient\nreason. Neither does he seek to excuse the party to whom the garrison in\nthe old castle surrendered. Two thousand living men occupied the premises\nin the morning, and of these (the few killed excepted) only the commander,\nWalter Bourke, eleven officers, and forty soldiers, were granted their\nlives. To account for the absence of mercy on the English side it was\nasserted that NO QUARTER was among the instructions given to the Irish\nbefore the battle. We are not in condition to decide whether the fact was\nso or not.\n\nThe number of killed and wounded on both sides is variously estimated.\nStory says the Irish loss was 7,000. Others state it at 4,000. Captain\nParker, on the English side, says that there were slain of the allied\ntroops, about 3,000. This is a problem in the solution of which we feel no\ninterest.\n{132}\nWe are gratified by the heroism displayed on both sides, and our\ngratification would be much enhanced by finding it recorded that when\nresistance ceased, quarter was generously granted. With few exceptions this\nwas not the case. Ardent partisan as the chaplain was, we are sure that his\nbetter feelings were stirred by what he looked on \"three days after when\nall our own and some of theirs were interred.\"\n\n  \"I reckoned in some small enclosures 150, in others 120, &c., lying most\n  of them by the ditches where they were shot, and the rest from the top of\n  the hill, where their camp had been, looked like a great flock of sheep,\n  shattered up and down the countrey for almost four miles round.\"\n\nWere we sure of keeping our temper we would here commence a lay sermon on\nthe iniquity of those, whether emperors, kings, presidents, or evil\noouncillors, who for wretched objects, in which vanity or covetousness has\nchief share, arm myriads of children of the great human family against each\nothers' lives, and feel neither pity nor remorse at the sight of poor naked\nhuman remains, flung broadcast over heath, and moors, and hill-sides, like\ngrey stones, or the scattered sheep of our chaplain's illustration.\n\nThe English occupiers of the ground after the battle buried only their own\ndead, unless where the presence of the other bodies interfered with their\nconvenience, and as the inhabitants of the neighborhood had quitted their\nhomes when the expectation of a battle became strong, the bodies of the\nIrish soldiers remained above ground till nothing but the bones were left.\nWe quote an affecting incident from our chaplain relative to this sad\ncondition of things:\n\n  \"Many dogges frequented the place long afterwards, and became so fierce\n  by feeding upon man's flesh, that it became dangerous for any single man\n  to pass that way. And there is a true and remarkable story of a greyhound\n  (wolfhound?) belonging to an _Irish_ officer. The gentleman was\n  killed and stripped in the battle, whose body the dog remained by, night\n  and day; and though he fed upon other corps with the rest of the dogs,\n  yet, he would not allow them or anything else to touch that of his\n  master. When all the corps were consumed all the dogs departed, but this\n  used to go in the night to the adjacent villages for food, and presently\n  to return to the place where his master's bones were only then left. And\n  thus he continued till January following, when one of Col. Faulk's\n  soldiers being quartered nigh hand, and going that that way by chance,\n  the dog, fearing he came to disturb his master's bones, flew upon the\n  soldier, who being surprised at the suddenness of the thing, unslung his\n  piece thereupon his back and killed the poor dog.\"\n\nThough our drama cannot conclude till the articles come to be signed at\nLimerick, the fight we have endeavored to describe with full justice to\nboth parties, may be considered the catastrophe or _denouement_ of the\npiece, no engagement of its magnitude or so decisive in its results having\ntaken place afterward.\n\n\n  From Aughrim to Limerick\n\nSarsfield, at the head of the cavalry and some infantry, proceeded to\nLimerick after the defeat of Aughrim; D'Usson conducted the main body of\nthe infantry to Galway, before which city De Ginckel arrived on the 20th of\nthe month. D'Usson had but few of the qualities requisite for a good\nmilitary chief, and negotiations were entered on next day, the Irish\nevacuating the city, and the English general allowing them to proceed to\nLimerick with the honors of war, and all the conveniences in his power to\nafford them.\n\nAfter Baldearg O'Donnel had much excited the expectations of the country\nbeing freed through his valor and wisdom, he is found at this time a mere\nchief of straggling parties, a greater terror to the natives by their\nexactions than to the common enemy. He opened a correspondence with the\nEnglish general, and like some modern patriots was rewarded for the\nannoyance he had hitherto given the English Government by a valuable\npension for life.\n\n{133}\n\nSuch was not the system acted on by our brave old acquaintance, Thigue\nO'Regan, now a knight, and Governor of Sligo. Baldearg having deserted his\nold-fashioned and loyal associate, Sir Thigue found himself on the 13th of\nSeptember at the head of 600 men and provided with twelve days' food, the\ntown and part of the citadel in the enemy's hands, and 5,000 fresh men sent\nagainst him by Lord Granard ready to smash his fortifications, or starve\nhim into a sense of his condition. The little man of the long periwig, red\ncloak, and plumed hat, had a head as well as a heart. He capitulated and\nreceived all the respect due to loyalty and courage. He and his garrison\nwere conducted out with honor, their twelve days' provisions (their own\nresidue) given them, and all conveniences supplied them for their march to\nLimerick. To honor the peppery old knight, the same terms were granted to\nall the little garrisons in that country.\n\nOmitting negotiations, marches, and petty affairs, important only to those\nconcerned, we come to De Ginckel's camp at Cariganless (as our chaplain\nspells the name) in his progress to Limerick. On August 25th, the army left\nthat town.\n\n\n  Limerick's Last Defence.\n\nOn the 26th of August the besiegers of Limerick were at their posts, and on\nthe 30th the bombardment commenced. It was so severe and spread such\ndevastation within Irish town that many inhabitants took their beds and\nmigrated to the English town within the arms of the river, and Lords\nJustices and delicate ladies and sundry lovers of quiet set up their rest\ntwo miles inland in Clare. On the 10th of September forty yards of the\ndefending wall of English town were reduced to rubbish, but the arm of the\nriver was in the way, and no assault followed.\n\nSeptember 15th a bridge of boats was laid across the Shannon toward\nAnnabeg, and a large detachment of English horse and foot crossed to the\nright bank of the Shannon. These took up their station beyond\nThomond-bridge, the Irish cavalry, whose place that was, being obliged to\nremove to Sixmile-bridge. The laying of the bridge and the passage of the\ndetachment were effected through the gross negligence or treachery of\nBrigadier Clifford, who was tried by a court martial for the offence. He\nacknowledged the negligence, but stoutly denied the treason. Colonel Henry\nLuttrell [Footnote 36] proved traitor without any doubt, and was kept close\nprisoner till King James's will could be ascertained. Before that time came\nthe fortress was given up and Luttrell set at liberty. England rewarded him\nfor his intentions; and his name has since been a word of ill-omen in the\nmouths of the Irish peasantry.\n\n    [Footnote 36: This is the same Colonel Luttrell who sold the pass at\n    Aughrim, as before mentioned. Ed. C. W.]\n\n22d. De Ginckel attacked the Irish post on the Clare side of\nThomond-bridge. The three regiments of Kirke, Tiffin, and Lord George\nHamilton, overpowered Colonel Lacy with his 700 men, and when these sought\nshelter in the city, they found themselves shut out by the town major, a\nFrenchman, who feared that the foes would enter pell-mell with the friends.\nLittle quarter was given, and only 130 got the privilege of being made\nprisoners of war. This is one of those instances in which the Irish party\nsuffered so fatally from the treachery or detestable negligence of some\namong themselves.\n\nThe Duke of Tyrconnel died at the residence of D'Usson during the siege.\n\nThis was the last trial of arms between the friends of William and James in\nIreland. Next day a truce was agreed on and preliminaries of peace\ncommenced. With the \"Conditions of Limerick,\" a dismal household word with\nthe peasantry of Ireland from that hour to the present, we shall not\nmeddle. They do not come within our scope, which merely embraces the\nstirring events of the three years' campaign, our design being to present\nthese in a picturesque and interesting light, and in a spirit of genuine\nimpartiality. This being our design, we have seized on everything that\ncould reflect honor or credit on the chiefs of both parties, or the conduct\nof the common soldiers. We have found much more rancor and want of humanity\ndistinguishing both parties, the military chiefs excepted, then we could\nwish. These we have softened as much as truth would permit. No one reading\nour sketches but will, as we hope, think better of the party whose\nprinciples he repudiates, than he did before the perusal.\n\n------\n\n{134}\n\n    Original\n\n\n    Asperges Me.\n\n    by Richard Storrs Willis.\n\n\n  I\n\n  Prostrate at thy altar kneeling,\n  Not a thought or fault concealing,\n  Hear me cry with inmost feeling,\n    _Domine, asperges me!_\n  Ah! What sins I come confessing,\n  Since I last received thy blessing!\n  Yet with all this guilt oppressing,\n    Still I pled _asperges me!_\n\n  II\n\n  Sins of thought, of word, of action,\n  Many a righteous law's infraction,\n  Many an hour of wild distraction--\n    _Domine, asperges me!_\n    Oft I think can Christ forgive me--\n    With such guilt can he receive me?\n    What if my fond heart deceive me--\n      _Dare_ I plead _asperges me!_\n\n  III\n\n  Come I must, for thou dost bid me!\n  Ne'er for coming hast thou chid me!\n  From my guilt, ah! quickly rid me--\n    _Domine, asperges me!_\n  That my heavy heart grow lighter.\n  That my love for thee burn brighter,\n  That my soul than snow grow whiter,\n    _Domine, asperges me!_\n\n------\n\n{135}\n\n    From The Month.\n\n    Ancor-Viat--A New Giant City.\n\n\nIf any would-be discoverer of ancient monuments is envious of the laurels\nof Mr. Layard and other celebrities of the same class, let him at once set\nout by the overland route, and make his way as fast as he can to\nAncor-Viat. Few people have yet heard of it, but if what is said of it be\ntrue, it must be simply the most stupendous collection of magnificent\nmonuments in the world. If the traveller in Central America, who, like Mr.\nStephens, quits the beaten tracks and plunges into the depths of vast\nforests, is amazed at the ruins of Copan, Palenque, Uxmal, and Chichen,\nwith their huge truncated pyramids, palaces, corridors, and sculptured\nbas-reliefs, he would, it seems, be still more surprised if he extended his\nresearches to the Empire of Annam, and, advancing toward the utmost\nboundary of Cambodia, where it skirts Thibet, he came, mounted on an\nelephant, to the gigantic temples and forests of marble pillars which mark\nthe site of which we speak. It was thus that a French officer in the\nservice of the King of Siam recently visited the spot; and the account he\nhas given of it may be found in the Revue de l'Architecture, and is in\ngreat part reproduced in the Revue Contemporaine of December, 1866. No\nEuropean writer before him has ever mentioned it, and in reading his\nletters we must make allowances for possible exaggeration. He is a mandarin\nof the third class, and has obtained the rank of general in command of the\nSiamese army. M. Perrin (for such is his name) proposes revisiting\nAncor-Viat with a complete photographic apparatus; and when he has done\nthis, and had given us the pleasure of examining his photographs, we shall\nbe better able to judge of his veracity. Meanwhile the editor of the Revue\nContemporaine is of opinion that the clearness and simplicity of his\naccount leaves little room for doubting its truth.\n\nWhen M. Perrin first visited Ancor-Viat, he saw nothing of its ancient\nsplendor; for in \"Indian China,\" as in Central America, monuments of large\ndimensions and great beauty are often unknown to the people who dwell\nwithin a few hundred yards of them. The concourse of intelligent and\nwealthy travellers alone teaches ignorant natives the value of their own\nsurroundings. On his second journey M. Perrin's attention was directed to\nthe ruins by a curious circumstance. The King of Kokien pays a yearly\ntribute to the King of Siam in kind, and among the articles saltpetre\nfigures largely. In the whole of India beyond the Ganges--in the Birman\nEmpire, Siam, Malacca, and Annam--the people, children-like, have a\npassion for fireworks, and consequently consume a large quantity of\nsaltpetre. Now the excrement of bats and night-birds that haunt in great\nabundance the cities of the dead furnishes, it seems, a copious supply of\nthis substance, and is, in fact, as fruitful in the production of squibs\nand rockets as guano--the dung of Peruvian sea-birds--is in the cultivation\nof corn and rye. It is collected by malefactors who work in chains, and is\ndissolved in water mixed with ashes. After some days the water and ashes,\nwith the macerated dung strongly impregnated with ammonia, is passed\nthrough tight sieves, and exposed in big caldrons to the action of huge\nfires.\n{136}\nThe entire substance then evaporates leaving behind it crystals of\nsaltpetre. The East was famous of old for the manufacture of nitre; and we\nhave all have noticed how it forms spontaneously on the walls of stables,\nslaughter-houses, cellars, and the like, from the decomposition of animal\nmatter, and even from the breath and sweat of beasts.\n\nNo wonder M. Perrin was struck as a foreigner by the strange spectacle of\nconvicts collecting bird-dung. The birds of night have a strong affinity\nfor ruins, and crumbling towers and terraces are--to use an expression of\nVirgil's--\n\n  \"Dirarum nidis domus opportuna volucrum.\"\n\nIt was along the northern part of the great city of Ancor-Viat that M.\nPerrin halted frequently to watch the culprits of Cambodia plying their\nfoul task. During six days of elephant march he travelled on without coming\nto the end of the city. Here and there be penetrated into the ruins where\nexplorers had opened a passage. No one, he says, would believe him if he\ntold all be saw. The monuments, the palaces, the temples, the pillars,\nstairs, and blocks of marble pass description. The circle of the ruins was\ncomputed by the people of the country at ten or twelve leagues in diameter.\nNow considering that London, with its three millions of inhabitants,\nmeasures about eleven miles from east to west, and that Ancor-Viat by this\ncalculation covered about three times as much ground, there must have been\na pretty large concourse of human beings under the shadow of its colossal\nhalls. It may have been the capital of an empire; it may have been an\nempire in itself. There, doubtless, as in the ancient cities of Mexico, the\nrich and the great dwelt in spacious edifices, with gardens and groves\nenclosed, while the poorer sort herded together in huts like those of the\nrudest tribes of Indians. There were no parliaments and philanthropic\nsocieties then to look after the dwellings of the poor; as space was no\nobject in those days, they made up for straitened accommodation at home by\nplenty of spare room for building within the walls. Subaltern officers in\nthe British army in Ceylon, who have surveyed that island of late years,\nreport cities of enormous size, and covered in with jungle, as inviting\nexcavation. Anarajaphpoorra, they tell us, must have been larger than\nLondon, and Polonarooa (be indulgent to the spelling, ye students of\nCingalee!) contains statues of Anak height. The recumbent Buddha in the\nlast of these two cities is 24 feet in length, and the Buddhist temples,\nbuilt of a kind of granite, are huge in proportion. What bullock-power and\nelephant-power it must have required to move blocks of stone so unwieldy in\nan age when machinery and engineering were unknown! What thews must these\nTitans have had, before the time of eastern effeminacy, to build their\ntowers of uncemented ashlars piled up like \"Pelion upon Ossa\"! M. Perrin\nassures us that he saw in Ancor-Viat temples in a good state of\npreservation, but overrun with weeds and shrubs, which measured a league in\ncircuit. Pillars rose around him on every side, tall as cedars, and all in\nmarble. The stairs, though partly buried under the soil, still mounted much\nhigher than the noble flights one sees at Versailles or on the Piazza di\nSpagna at Rome. The buildings in some places were as solid as if they had\nbeen raised yesterday. According to local tradition, they are four or five\nthousand years old; and yet, but for lightning and the overgrowth of\nluxuriant vegetation, they would even at this day be perfect and intact.\n\"Oh! that I had brought a photographic apparatus with me!\" exclaims this\ntraveller. \"I assure you, whether you believe it or no, that the most\nfamous monuments ancient or modern which we can boast of are mere sheds\ncompared with what I have seen: our palaces, our basilicas, the Vatican,\nColosseum, and the like, are just dog-kennels to it, and nothing more!\"\n\n{137}\n\nIf we had never heard of the Indian cities of Central America which the\ntribes are supposed to have deserted six or seven hundred years ago, when\nwarned by their priests of the coming of the Spaniards, we might feel\ndisposed to reject M. Perrin's account as no less fabulous than the travels\nof Baron Munchausen. But when we follow the steps of Captain Del Rio and\nCaptain Du Paix, and still more those of Mr. Stephens in Chiapas and\nYucatan; when we see them working their way through dense forests in\nHonduras with fire and axe, and arriving at a wall six hundred feet long\nand from sixty to ninety in height, forming one side of an oblong enclosure\ncalled the Temple, while the other three sides are formed by a succession\nof pyramids and terraced walls that measure from thirty to a hundred and\nforty feet in height, we are not easily repelled by any report of ancient\ncities merely because the measurements in it run very high. There was a\nphase in the history of civilization when half barbarous races who knew not\nthe use of iron, delighted in constructing lasting monuments, and made up\nfor beauty of detail by huge proportions, and for writing and hieroglyphics\nby picture-painting. M. Perrin may be guilty of great exaggeration, but we\nought not to charge him with it too hastily. Modern research has more than\nverified all that the Spaniards vaguely reported of the cities of the West,\nwhere immense artificial mounds are crowned with stately palaces, and the\ndauntless industry of former races is proved by the provision they made for\nwater supply in a dry and thirsty land--by the vast reservoirs for water\nwhich have been excavated, and are found to be paved and lined with\nstone--by the pits around the ponds intended to furnish supplies or water\nwhen the upper basin was empty in the height of summer--by the wells hidden\ndeep in the rock, and reached by the patient water-carriers by pathways cut\nin the mountain to a depth or 450 feet, and conducting them to that depth\nby windings 1400 feet in length--by the long ladders, made of rough rounds\nof wood and bound together with osiers, up which the Indians carried, and\nstill carry, on their backs from these deep sources the water requisite for\nthe consumption of 7,000 persons or more, according to the size of the\nvillages, during four months of the year--and by the subterranean chambers,\nwhich the Indians of old probably used as granaries for maize, and which\nwere made, like the ingenious cisterns just spoken of, by slaves obedient\nto more intelligent masters. These and similar discoveries in America add a\ncolor of probability to the description M. Perrin has given of Ancor-Viat\nin Asia. At the same time we would rather he had not forgotten his\nphotographic machine.\n\n\"I was anxious,\" he says, \"to ascend to a temple that seemed tolerably\nperfect. There were eleven staircases, of I know not how many stairs each,\nto reach the first five only of peristyles! I began climbing at half-past\nsix in the morning, and at half-past seven I had barely been able to\nexamine two or three of the lower apartments. I was obliged to shorten my\nstay, fearing that I should have to descend the stairs while the sun was\nhot. All the walls are sculptured and ornamented. The first effect the\nruins produced on me was that of stupefaction. Yet I am not a man to cry\nout with astonishment at trifles. The following day I went up by a winding\nstaircase to the top of an immense tower situated on a height, from whence\nI enjoyed a good view of the surrounding remains. In hollows and parts\nwhere one cannot penetrate there are palaces of colossal height and\ngrandeur. I had an excellent opera-glass, and could observe the details. An\nuntold store of architectural treasures was before me, stretching as far as\nthe frontier of Cambodia, which is ten or twelve leagues off! Just think\nwhat Paris would be in ruins. Heaps of stones and ashlars scattered over a\nsurface no more than two or three leagues in diameter. Here there is on the\nground, and under the ground, marble, already hewn, enough to build after\nthe fashion of giants all the cities in the universe!\"\n\n{138}\n\nThis is indeed a climax; and one needs to pause and take breath before\nfollowing M. Perrin any further up his winding stairs. Can we attach any\ncredit to one who is so lavish in the use of words and figures? He has\nevidently a supreme disregard for nice distinctions, and ordinary measures\nof time and place. Marble enough in Ancor-Viat to build all the cities in\nthe world? _C'est un peu fort, M. Perrin._ But let us hear him to the\nend. We can believe a good deal about cities excavated or still\nunderground, for we have seen several such with our own eyes; but credulity\nitself has its limits. \"I saw,\" M. Perrin continues, \"the leg of a statue\nthe great toe of which measured eleven times my fowling-piece in the\nlength. It is in marble, like the rest of the figure; there is no other\nstones here used for building, except colored stones, which are employed as\nborders or for the eyes of statues. There are pedestals with flights of\nsteps, of which the crowning images have disappeared, as high and as large\nas St. Germain l'Auxerrois. Fancy octagonal pyramids cut short at half\ntheir proper height--all in marble, recollect. Who the devil raised all\nthis? If it was some famous dynasty, it cannot be very well satisfied with\nthe oblivion into which it has fallen, in spite of its sumptuous monuments.\nWhat are the ruins of Palenque, or even Thebes with its hundred gates, or\nof Babylon, compared with this unknown city without history and without\nname?\"\n\nNow, setting aside Thebes and Babylon, it may be well to compare what we\nreally know of Palenque with the general's singular account of Ancor-Viat.\nIt is more than a hundred years since the Spaniards first heard of it from\nthe Indians, and the reports of its extent differ as widely now as they did\nthen. The natives say the ruins cover an area of sixty miles; Du Paix and\nDel Rio seven leagues; and Waldeck about three miles. But though travellers\nare not agreed as to their extent, they are quite unanimous as to the\nremains themselves. All admit that they are \"unique, extraordinary, and\nmournfully beautiful.\" The largest building is on a mound forty feet high,\nraised by the hands of man, originally faced with stones, and measuring 310\nfeet by 260 at the base. It is richly adorned with paintings in the style\nproper to the ancient cities of Mexico; the corridors are sumptuous, the\nflights of steps broad, and the figures of giant proportions, uncouth and\nexpressive of suffering. The tallest statue, however, that has been\ndiscovered is only ten feet six inches high, by which it appears that the\nstone figures of Mexican Indians were dwarfish compared with the huge\nheroes and idols of the East. M. Perrin had been questioned about the\nexistence of religious monuments in the eastern Peninsula of India, and the\nanswers which he returned are as follows: \"Sacred stones are found here.\nSome of them are simply rocks which at some period or other were\nsufficiently soft to receive very clearly the impressions of the feet of\nmen and animals. Of this sort the one most highly venerated is that of the\nBuddhist monastery at Phrabat. An immense number of pilgrims visit it\nannually. Others are enormous monoliths raised on socles roughly quarried.\nIf there ever were any inscriptions, they have been effaced. I have also\nseen here gateways or arches of triumph built of huge stones laid one upon\nanother. What giants or what machines moved these immense blocks? They\nstand alone. Not a vestige of any building is near them. Sometimes there\nare not even any quarries to be found within a great distance. I saw two\nsuch monuments as those I now speak of among the Stiengs, when I conducted\na military expedition against them. They stood in the midst of marshy and\nalmost impassable forests, and had certainly never before been seen by any\nEuropean.\n{139}\nSome of the people of Laos had spoken to me of these remains, but I very\nnearly missed seeing them. The difficulties in the way of getting to them\nwere so great that at first I did not think they would be worth the\ntrouble. But they amply repaid me. I examined them most carefully with a\npowerful glass. They did not appear to bear any inscriptions. Even the\nluxuriant vegetation of the tropics had been unable to disjoint them. What\nroots could rend asunder these stones laid one upon the other without\ncement, and raise so heavy a weight? The side-supports were, I believe, as\nhigh as the top-stone laid across was long. The soil is evidently raised by\nthe vigorous growth that marks the vegetation of these forests. These\nremains must rest on monolith socles or on the rock, or on gigantic\nfoundations; for the ground on the surface is so soft and wet that you may\neasily thrust a cane into it up to the handle.\"\n\nWhen M. Perrin inquired of the natives who reared these monuments, they\nreplied the Gai; and by the Gai they meant some barbarous white men, who\ncame from the land of perpetual snow, who were as tall as three Siamese,\nand whose fingers and toes, though articulated, were not separate from one\nanother. They rode on horses double the size of those now seen, but bones\nof which are often found in the earth. Impious men were these Gai; they\nhunted elephants, and feasted on their flesh; they offered sacrifices of\nblood to their gods. Chinese merchants informed the general that monuments\nof the same huge description are to be found in the north and west of\nChina, and that the people there call them \"giants' stones.\" The traveller\nin Central America is, we know, sometimes amazed to find monstrous blocks\nevidently hewn by the hands of men, yet hundreds of leagues distant from\nany calcareous strata. Men in the neighborhood who are learned in other\nmatters are quite at fault when their opinion respecting them is asked.\nSome will tell you that the nature of the soil is changed from what it was\nbefore the conquest, and others that the Incas had means of transport\nunknown to us. Probably there are quarries of granite under the surface of\nthe savannas; but how the Indians could extract the stone without gunpowder\nor machinery is a problem we are unable to solve.\n\nImportant discoveries are not always due to scientific and discerning men.\nThe earliest accounts of anything new and surprising are likely to be\noverdrawn; but they are not the less valuable from this circumstance. Their\nvery exaggeration may stimulate inquiry, and thus be an advantage rather\nthan otherwise in the outset. It was a poor Tungusian fisherman who\ndiscovered the most perfect specimen of the mammoth near the mouth of the\nriver Lena, nearly seventy years ago, and his sale of the creature's tusks\nfor fifty rubles led to an accurate knowledge of the monster's structure\nand habits, as well as to a great extension of the trade in ivory derived\nfrom mammoths' tusks. General Perrin's testimony appears to us well worthy\nof attention, in spite of its being highly colored here and there. It may,\non the whole, fall far short of the reality, and may lead to the solution\nof questions of importance in oriental history.\n\n\n--------\n\n    Original\n\n    On the Planting of the Cross.\n\n  Dig deep: the tree will surely grow,\n    And spread its branches far and wide;\n  No tree had e'er such fruit to show,\n    Nor with its shade so much to hide.\n\n--------\n\n{140}\n\n\n    Miscellany.\n\n_The Cathedral Library at Cologne._--In the year 1794, when the French\nRevolutionary army advanced to the Rhine, the valuable library attached to\nthe Cologne Cathedral was conveyed for safety to Darmstadt. Among its\ntreasures are one hundred and ninety volumes, chiefly in manuscript. A\ncareful catalogue of them was made so far back as 1752, by Harzheim, a\nlearned Jesuit, under the title of \"An Historical and Critical Catalogue of\nthe Manuscripts of the Library of the Metropolitan Church of Cologne.\" This\nvaluable collection dates as far back as Charlemagne. It was commenced by\nHildebold, Archbishop of Cologne, and archchancellor of that monarch, in\nthe year 783. It was considerably increased by gifts from Pope Leo the\nThird to the Emperor Charles in 804. The Archbishops Heribertus, Evergerus,\nHanno, and their successors, continued the collection by the purchase of\nrare manuscripts and copies of ancient parchments. In the year 1568,\nHiltorp, in the preface of his work \"On Divine Offices,\" dedicated to\nArchbishop Salentin, alludes more than once to this rare collection. We\nmight quote many other authorities to authenticate the manuscripts. Jacob\nPamelius, in a work published at Cologne in 1577, entitled \"The Liturgy of\nthe Latin Church\" (who is quoted by Harzheim in his book \"The old Codexes\nof Cologne\"), distinctly gives their date and origin. The collection\nconsists of eight parts, namely: 1. Bibles; 2. The Fathers; 3.\nEcclesiastical Law; 4. Writers on Sacrifices, Sacraments, Offices of the\nChurch, and Liturgies; 5. Histories; 6. Ascetics; 7. Scholastics; 8.\nPhilosophical, Rhetorical, and Grammatical writers. Some of these\nmanuscripts are richly illuminated, and some set with precious stones. The\nfirst codex dates from the ninth century, if not earlier, which is\nindicated by the capital letters, which are in gold. The seventh codex\ncontains the Gallic, Roman, Hebrew, and Greek Psalmody, as edited by St.\nJerome--\"a most rare and valuable codex.\" The twelfth codex, in elegant\nfolio, adorned with many illuminations and annotations of the eighth\ncentury, comprises the four Gospels. Codex one hundred and forty-three\ndeserves particular mention. As frontispiece, there is a portrait of\nArchbishop Evergerus in his episcopal robes. It is richly illuminated and\nset with jewels. The above quotations, which we have translated from the\nLatin, in which language the catalogue is written, will suffice to give\nsuch of our readers as are bibliophiles some idea of a treasures which will\nshortly be restored to the shelves of the library attached to the Cologne\nCathedral. We may mention another restoration which is on the eve of\naccomplishment. The celebrated collection of pictures, known as the\nDusseldorf collection, will shortly be returned to Prussia, negotiations\nhaving already commenced for that purpose. The collection, which comprises\nsome of the finest specimens of the German and Dutch schools, is at present\nat Munich.--_All the Year Round_.\n\n\n_On the Movements of the Heart_.--In a recent memoir Dr. Sibson\ndescribes his experiments on the movements of the heart, which were made on\nthe ass under the influence of wourali, and on dogs subjected to\nchloroform. He found that the contraction of the ventricles takes please in\nevery direction toward a region of rest, which in the right ventricle\ncorresponds with the anterior papillary muscle in the left ventricle, with\na situation about midway between apex and base. Simultaneously with the\nuniversal contraction of the ventricles there is universal distention of\nboth auricles, the pulmonary artery, and the aortae. The total amount of\nblood contained in the heart and great vessels is the same during both\nsystole and diastole. During the ventricular contraction, however, the\ndistribution of the blood, lessened toward the region of the apex, balances\nitself by being increased in that of the base, since the auricles and great\nvessels are enlarged, not only toward the ventricles, but also outward and\nupward. During ventricular dilatation the reverse takes place.\n\n{141}\n\n_The Physics of a Meteorite_.-In a recent note in the proceedings of\nthe Royal Society, the Rev. Samuel Haughton, of Trinity College, Dublin,\ngives a very graphic account of the fall of an a\u00ebrolite. The fire-ball was\nseen by two peasants, who have given the following written statement of\ntheir observations; and since the facts described by these ignorant men\ncorrespond exactly with the facts theoretically believed to present\nthemselves, we think the description of the highest interest. It is headed,\nThe Statement of Eye-witnesses, and runs as follows: \"I, John Johnson, of\nthe parish of Clonoulty, near Cashel, Tipperary, was walking across my\npotato-garden at the back of my house, in company with Michael Falvy and\nWilliam Furlong, on August 12, 1865, at 7 P.M., when I heard a clap, like\nthe shot out of a cannon, very quick and not like thunder; this was\nfollowed by a buzzing noise, which continued for about a quarter of an\nhour, when it came over our heads, and, looking up, we saw an object\nfalling down in a slanting direction; we were frightened at the speed,\nwhich was so great that we could scarcely notice it; but after it fell we\nproceeded to look for it, and found it at a distance of forty yards, half\nburied in the ground, where it had struck the top of a potato-drill. We\nwere some time looking for it (a longer time than that during which we\nheard the noise). On taking up the stone we found it warm (milk warm), but\nnot enough to be inconvenient. The next day it was given up to Lord\nHawarden.\"--_Popular Science Review_.\n\n\n\n_The Earth and Moon in Collision_.--Mr. James Croll, who some time\nsince asserted that, owing to peculiar solar and lunar action, the above\nextraordinary condition will eventually take place, has just published a\npaper reasserting the truth of his proposition. The theory was opposed by\nthe astronomer royal and Professor William Thomson, who showed that, owing\nto the position of the tidal wave, the moon is drawn not exactly in the\ndirection of the earth's centre of gravity, but a little to the east of\nthat centre, and that in consequence of this she is made to recede from the\nearth. Her orbit is enlarged and her angular motion diminished. This\nargument does not, in Mr. Croll's opinion, affect his view. The conditions\ndescribed by Professor Thomson and the astronomer royal do not in the least\ndegree prevent the consumption of the _vis viva_ of the earth's motion\nround the common centre of gravity, although to a certain extent, at least,\nit must prevent this consumption from diminishing the moon's distance, and\nincreasing her angular motion. But as this consumption of _vis viva_\nwill go on through indefinite ages, if the present order of things remains\nunchanged, the earth and the moon must therefore ultimately come\ntogether.--_Ibid_.\n\n  [Transcribers note: The moon is _receding_ from the earth at about 4\n  cm. per year, based on _lunar laser ranging_ (2015).]\n\n\n_Sanskrit Library_.--Prof. Goldst\u00fccker lately communicated to a\nscientific meeting at London the intelligence he had received from Lahore\nof the existence in that city of a most extensive Sanskrit Library in the\npossession of Pandit Radha Kishen. From an examination of the catalogue\nthat had been sent to him, he was able to state that that library contained\na great many rare and valuable works, some of which had hitherto been\nsupposed to be lost. He had also been promised catalogues of similar\ncollections of Sanskrit MS. in other parts or India, of the contents of\nwhich he would keep the Society informed as they came to hand. The paper\nread was by Prof. Max M\u00fcller, \"On the Hymns of the Gaup\u00e0yanas, and the\nLegend of King Asam\u00e2ti.\" After some remarks on the proper use to be made of\nSanskrit MSS., in general, and on the principles of criticism by which the\nwriter was guided in his edition of S\u00e0yana's Commentary on the Rig-veda, he\nproceeded to show by an example the characters of the three classes of MSS.\nhe had made use of, and the manner in which the growth of legends was\nfavored by the traditional interpretation of the Vedic Hymns. He had\nselected for this purpose the four hymns of the Gaup\u00e2yanas (Mandala x.,\n57-60), and the Legend of King Asam\u00e2ti quoted by S\u00e0yana in explanation of\nthem; and then related the latter, according to the various forms in which\nit has been handed down to us, from the simple account given in the T\u00e0ndya\nBrahmana and Katy\u00e0yana's Sarv\u00e2nukrama, to the more expanded one in the\nSaty\u00e2yanaka Brahmana, the Brehaddevat\u00e0 and the Nitiananjar\u00ee. He then gives\na double translation of the hymns in question--one in strict conformity to\nS\u00e0yana's interpretation, and another in accordance with his own principles\nof translation--the latter as a specimen of what he intends to give in his\nforthcoming translation of the whole of the Rig-veda.\n{142}\nThe writer concluded with a _resum\u00e9_ of the different points of\ninterest which these hymns, though by no means fair specimens of the best\nreligious poetry of the Brahmans, present; the healing powers of the hands,\nthe constant dwelling on divinities which govern the life of man, and the\nclear conception of a soul as separate from the body--of a soul after death\ngoing to Yama Vanasvata, the ruler of the departed, or hovering about\nheaven or earth ready to be called back to a new life.--_Ibid_\n\n--------\n\n    Original\n\n    New Publications.\n\n\n  A Conversation on Union Among Christians;\n  The Gospels Door of Mercy;\n  What Shall I do to Become a Christian?\n  The Church and Children;\n  A Voice In The Night, Or Lessons of the Sick Room;\n  The Gospel Church;\n  Who is Jesus Christ?\n\n  Tracts Nos. 13-19;\n  Catholic Publication Society,\n  145 Nassau St., New-York\n\n\nThe number of Tracts issued and distributed by the Catholic Publication\nSociety through direct sales and the aid of auxiliary societies is so great\nthat its noble and zealous project must, by this time, have become a\nsubject of interest to every Catholic in the country. It is hardly one year\nsince the first steps were taken to establish it, and already over _half\na million_ Tracts have been distributed through the length and breadth\nof the land. This distribution goes on increasing; that made in the month\nof February alone amounted to _seventy-five thousand_. Large orders\nare constantly coming in for the books and tracts issued by the Society\nfrom the Rt. Rev. Bishops, the Rev. Clergy, and zealous laymen of every\ncondition of life.\n\nEncouraged by these marks of universal approbation, and accredited with the\nhigh sanction of our late Plenary Council, the Society will enter upon its\nwork this spring, upon a scale commensurate with the increasing demands\nmade upon it for its publications and the magnitude of its enterprise. A\nPublication House will be obtained, supplied with its own types and presses\nand bindery, which will enable it to conduct its operations with greater\nrapidity, and furnish its publications at the lowest possible cost. Not a\nfew have expressed themselves surprised at its present unparalleled\nsuccess, and are anxious to know by what means so much has been\naccomplished in so short a time.\n\nFor the information of the readers of the CATHOLIC WORLD, who, we are sure,\nare all deeply interested in the work, it may be stated that a good fund\nwas contributed by a number of wealthy gentlemen, principally in New York,\nthat enabled it to begin its work, and which has been increased by the\nproceeds of lectures delivered in the diocese of Boston, Albany, and\nNew-York, the aid of auxiliary societies, and the sales of tracts and\nbooks.\n\nIt cannot be denied that within even the last five years, our holy religion\nhas made great advances in the spiritual care of its own children, in the\nmultiplication of churches, the foundation of seminaries for the\npriesthood, the greater interest shown in the working of Sunday schools and\nreligious associations of both sexes, as well as in the numerous\nconversions that have been made from the different denominations of\nProtestants, and in the earnest consideration of the claims of the Catholic\nChurch manifested by the people of our country, of whom so many have\nhitherto been either indifferent to, or ignorant of it.\n\nThe Catholic Publication Society being by its very character a ready arm\nfor the diffusion of Catholic truth, must therefore commend itself to the\nwarmest sympathies and generous co-operation of every Catholic who rejoices\nto see his holy faith spreading abroad and winning a multitude of souls to\na knowledge of Christian truth and the practice of Christian virtues. In\nfact, the Society owes its existence to the ardently cherished wish of a\nlarge class for such an organization, which found an almost simultaneous\nexpression.\n{143}\nLetters of encouragement and inquiry are being constantly received from the\nvenerable bishops and clergy, heads of literary and benevolent\nassociations, superintendents of Sunday-schools, and from different\nindividuals in the humblest walks of life. The news of the enterprise has\neven penetrated to some of the most distant parts of the world; as is shown\nby a letter of sympathy containing an offer of inter-communion sent to the\nSociety by a zealous priest in Bombay, India, who had started a Publication\nSociety in that far-off city.\n\nIt may not be judged out of place to repeat here the article of the\nconstitution referring to the conditions of membership. It will show any of\nour readers who desire to become copartners in this great work, and thereby\nsecure for themselves the blessing of having aided in the \"instruction of\nmany unto salvation,\" how they may practically bring that aid to bear upon\nthe realization of their pious desires.\n\n  \"Any person paying, at one time, one hundred dollars into the treasury of\n  the Society, may by request, become a 'Patron,' and shall be entitled to\n  receive three dollars' worth of the Society's publications annually.\n\n  \"Any person paying fifty dollars at one time may become a Life Member,\n  and shall be entitled to receive two dollars' worth of the Society's\n  publications annually.\n\n  \"Any person paying thirty dollars may become a member for five years, and\n  shall be entitled to receive one dollar's worth of the Society's\n  publications for five years.\n\n  \"Persons paying five dollars at one time shall be members for one year,\n  and be entitled to receive of the Society's publications to the value of\n  half a dollar.\"\n\nIt is plain, however, that while many will be found to associate themselves\nas members of the General Society, in order to carry on the work in other\nplaces, auxiliary societies should be formed which receive all the\npublications at cost price. It is to the rapid formation of these auxiliary\nassociations that those many zealous friends of the work should turn their\nattention. The same object will also be gained by making it one of the\nlabors of Societies of St. Vincent de Paul, guilds, confraternities,\nsodalities, and the like.\n\nWe have seen many communications in which inquiries have been made in\nreference to the publication of illustrated tracts and Sunday-school books,\nand the establishment of a cheap and attractive Sunday-school paper. The\nSociety has all these objects in contemplation, and will proceed to their\nexecution as soon as the Publication House is in operation.\n\nWe would suggest, therefore, that each and every one who has this matter at\nheart, will make personal efforts to aid the Society in the establishment\nof the Publication House, by sending at once their own names as members\nwith as many more as they can procure, and take measures to found at least\none auxiliary society for home distribution in the community where they\nreside.\n\nOur people have shown the greatest interest in the diffusion of Catholic\nliterature, and are ever ready to make heroic sacrifices, if necessary, for\nany work of charity; and in the present aspect of affairs it must be\nevident that one of the most urgent calls upon our Christian zeal and love\nis that of bringing instruction home to the thousands who need it, and who,\nexperience has proved, receive it gladly. One little thought we cannot\nrefrain from expressing, suggested by a remark made in our hearing, that it\nwill be for us and our children, when time shall show us and them the happy\nfruits of this truly Apostolic work, a most consoling reflection that we\nwere among those who first encouraged and aided it, and bade it \"God speed\"\nas it started upon its high and glorious mission.\n\n\n  L'echo De La France.\n  Revue \u00e9trang\u00e8re de Science et de Litt\u00e9rature.\n  Montreal: Louis Ricard, Directeur.\n\nBy the Canadian public and the French-speaking portion of our population of\nthe States, this well-edited eclectic has, we are glad to know, received a\nhearty welcome and a liberal support. It purposes to afford its readers a\nchoice selection of articles culled from the best European magazines and\nreviews, chiefly those of France, and it certainly has accomplished its\ntask hitherto with much ability. It is not to everyone we would care to\nconfide the duty of choosing our literary repast from the current\nliterature of the day; and, to anyone at all acquainted with the French\nperiodicals, it must be evident that it would require a caterer, who is\nhimself possessed of high intellectual culture, to make from their pages a\njudicious and worthy selection of articles suited to the varied tastes of\nthe American literary public.\n{144}\nThe \"Echo de la Franco\" is happily conducted by a gentleman upon whose\njudgment and taste in this matter we can confidently rely, if we may judge\nfrom the numbers already issued.\n\nWe have only to add that it has our best wishes, and we recommend it\nespecially to the notice of the readers of the CATHOLIC WORLD who are\nacquainted with the French language.\n\n\n  Practical Hints On The Art Of Illumination.\n  By Alice Donlevy.\n  New-York: A. D. F. Randolph. 1867.\n\nTogether with this useful and elegant publication we have received a set of\nplates, designed by the same author, to illustrate the poem of Miss\nRossetti, called \"Consider.\"\n\nThe work is intended, as we are told in its preface, to instruct those who\nwish to study illumination; to assist those who, having commenced, find\nmany stumbling-blocks in the way, and require aid in the minutiae of the\nart; to furnish those who can paint, yet are unable to design with\noutlines, to illuminate, etc. This beautiful art is fast becoming with our\nyoung people a favorite recreation, and, with not a few, a remunerative\nstudy. To such as desire to engage in its pursuit, whether for pleasure or\nprofit, we heartily recommend this volume as one calculated to give them\nmuch desirable information on the subject.\n\n\n  Three Phases of Christian Love,\n  By Lady Herbert. L. Kehoe. 1867.\n\nWe have received advanced sheets of this volume, which is to be presented\nto the public in a few days. It is not our purpose to speak of it at length\nin this place, but reserve it for a more extended and appreciative review\nwhich we hope to give of it in the future pages of the CATHOLIC WORLD.\n\nIt is a remarkable book; the purity and beauty of its style fitly according\nwith the saintly biographies which the distinguished authoress has so\nhappily chosen to illustrate the three phases of a Christian woman's life\nand love. We have given as the life of St. Monica as the mother; of\nVictorine de Galard Terraube, a young French lady of rank, as the maiden;\nand of the Venerable M\u00e8re Devos, superior of the Sisters of Charity, as the\nreligious. It is a book we would wish to see placed in the hands of every\nwoman in our country; for, whatever be her position in society, or\nwhichsoever state of life she may have chosen, she will find in it an\nexample of high Christian and womanly perfection, the view of which must\nclaim her homage, and in turn exalt and refine her own character.\n\nMr. Kehoe, in republishing Bentley's superb English edition, offers us a\nvolume of equal beauty and finish. As a publication it must claim the\nattention of every connoisseur and lover of first-class books.\n\n\n  Lauretta and the Fables,\n  Compiled by the author of Philip Hartley, etc.\n\n  Alice; or, The Rose of the Black Forest.\n  By the author of Grace Morton, etc.\n\n  Three Petitions. A tale of Poland and\n  Trevor Hall. A Christmas story.\n\n  Conrad and Gertrude: the Little Wanderers.\n  Peter F. Cunningham,  Catholic Bookseller, Philadelphia.\n\nThese four 16mo volumes form a very acceptable addition to our list of\nCatholic tales for children. Their appearance is creditable to the\npublisher. We hope those who have ability and leisure will furnish a larger\nnumber of such stories for Sunday-school libraries.\n\n\n    Books Received.\n\nFrom Leypoldt & Holt. New-York.\n\n  The Journal of Maurice de Gu\u00e9rin,\n  with an essay by Matthew Arnold,\n  and a memoir by Sainte-Beuve. Edited by\n  G. S. Trebutien. Translated by Edward Thornton\n  Fisher. 1 vol. 12mo., pp. 153. Price $1.25.\n\n  Easy German Reading after a New System, by George Storme.\n  Revised by Edward A. Open. 1 vol. l2mo, pp.206. Price $1.\n\n\nFrom P. F. Cunningham. Philadelphia.\n\n  Conrad and Gertrude;\n  The Three Petitions, a Tale of Poland;\n  Alice, or the Rose of the Black Forest;\n  Lauretta and the Fables.\n  4 vols. of the Young Catholics Library,\n  pp. 143, 141, 124, 126\n  Price 50 cents each.\n\nFrom D. Appleton, New-York.\n\n  The Merchant of Berlin;\n  an Historical Novel L. M\u00fchlbach.\n  Translated from the German by Amory Coflin, M.D.\n  pp. 394. Price $2.\n\n  Berlin and San Souci; or, Frederick the Great\n  and Friends. An Historical\n  Romance. By L. M\u00fchlbach. Translated from\n  the German by Mrs. Chapman and her daughters.\n  pp. 391. Price $2.\n\nFrom J. J. O'Connor & Co., Newark.\n\n  The exclusion of Protestant Worship from the City of Rome.\n  By the Rev. George H, Doane, pastor of St. Patrick's\n  Cathedral, Newark, N.J.  Pamphlets. Price 20 cents.\n\n--------\n\n{145}\n\n    The Catholic World.\n\n    Vol. V., No. 26.--May, 1867.\n\n\n  Original.\n\n  An Old Quarrel.\n\n\nThose of our readers who have studied with the care their importance\ndemands the papers on the \"Problems of the Age\" which have appeared in this\nmagazine, can not have failed to perceive that the great questions now in\ndiscussion between Catholics and non-Catholics lie, for the most part, in\nthe field of philosophy, and require for their solution a broader and\nprofounder philosophy than any which obtains general currency outside of\nthe church. We think, also, that no one can read and understand them\nwithout finding the elements or fundamental principles of a really Catholic\nphilosophy, which, while it rests on scientific truth for its basis,\nenables us to see the innate correspondence or harmony of reason and faith,\nscience and revelation, and nature and grace--the principles of a\nphilosophy, too, that is no modern invention or new-fangled theory which is\nbrought forward to meet a present emergency, but in substance the very\nphilosophy that has always been held by the great fathers and doctors of\nthe church, and professed in Catholic schools and seminaries.\n\nYet there is one point which the writer necessarily touches upon and\ndemonstrates as far as necessary to his purpose, which was theological\nrather than purely philosophical, that, without interfering in the least\nwith his argument, already complete, may admit of a more special treatment\nand further development. We refer to the objectivity and reality of ideas.\nThe reader acquainted with the history of philosophy in the middle ages\nwill perceive at once that the question of the reality of ideas asserted by\nthe writer takes up the subject-matter of the old quarrel of the\nnominalists, conceptualists, and realists, provoked by the Proslogium of\nSt. Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury, in the eleventh century, really one\nof the profoundest thinkers, greatest theologians, and ingenious\nphilosophers of any age.\n\nSt. Anselm wished to render an account to himself of his faith, and to know\nand understand the reasons for believing in God. He did not doubt the\nexistence of God; he indeed held that God cannot be thought not to be; he\ndid not seek to know the arguments which prove that God is, that he might\nbelieve, but that he might the better know and understand what he already\nbelieved.\n{146}\nThus he says: \"Necque enim quero intelligere ut credam, sed credo ut\nintelligam. Nam et hoc credo quia nisi credidero, non intelligam.\" We\nbelieve that we may understand, and we cannot understand unless we\nbelieve--a great truth which modern speculators do not recognize. They\nreverse the process, and seek to know that they may believe, and hold that\nthe first step to knowledge is to doubt or to deny.\n\nIn his Monologium, St. Anselm had proved that God is, and determined his\nattributes by way of induction from the ideas in the human mind, but it\nwould seem not wholly to his satisfaction, or, at least, that in writing\nthat work he discovered, or thought he discovered, a briefer and more\nconclusive, method of demonstrating that God is. He had already proved by\npsychological analysis, in the way Cousin and others have since done, that\nthe human mind thinks most perfect being, a greater than which cannot be\nthought. This he had done in his Monologium. In his Proslogium he starts\nwith this idea, that of _ens perfectissimum_, which is, in fact, the\nidea of God. \"The fool says in his heart there is no God;\" not because he\nhas no idea of God, not because he does not think most perfect being, a\ngreater than which cannot be thought, but because he does not understand\nthat, if he thinks it, such being really is. It is greater and more perfect\nto be _in re_ than it is to be only _in intellectu_, and\ntherefore the most perfect being existing only in the mind is not a greater\nthan which cannot be thought, for I can think most perfect existing _in\nre_. Moreover, if most perfect being does not exist _in re_, my\nthought is greater and more perfect than reality, and consequently I can\nrise above God, and judge him, _quod valde est absurdum_.\n\nLeibnitz somewhere remarks that this argument is conclusive, if we first\nprove that most perfect being is possible; but Leibnitz should have\nremembered that the argument _ab esse ad posse_ is always valid, and\nthat God is both his own possibility and reality. Cousin accepts the\nargument, and says St. Anselm robbed Descartes of the glory of having\nproduced it. But it is evident to every philosophical student that the\nvalidity of the argument, if valid it is, depends on the fact that ideas\nare objective and real, that is, depends on the identity of the ideal and\nthe real.\n\nRoscelinus, or Rosceline, did not concede this, and pronounced the argument\nof St. Anselm worthless. Confounding, it would seem, ideas with universals,\nhe denied their reality, and maintained that they are mere words without\nanything either in the mind or out of it to respond to them, and thus\nfounded Nominalism, substantially what is now called materialism. He\nrejects the universals and the categories of the peripatetics, and\nrecognizes only individual existences and words, which words, when not the\nnames of individual things, are void of meaning. Hence he denied the whole\nideal or intelligible world, and admitted only sensibles. Hobbes and Locke\nwere nominalists, and so is the author of Mill's Logic. Mr. Herbert Spencer\nis a nominalist, but is better described as an atomist of the school of\nLeucippus and Democritus, Epicurus and Lucretius. We know very little of\nRosceline, except that he lived in the eleventh century, was born in\nBrittany, the native land of Abelard and Descartes, and incurred, for some\nof his speculations concerning the Trinity, the censures of the church.\nNone of his writings have come down to us, and we know his doctrine only\nfrom the representations of others.\n\nGuillaume de Champeaux, in the following century, who professed philosophy\nfor a time at St. Victor, and was subsequently Archbishop of Paris, is the\nfounder, in the middle ages, of what is called Realism, and which counts\namong its disciples Duns Scotus and William of Occam.\n{147}\nHe is said to have maintained the exact opposite of Rosceline's doctrine,\nand to have held that ideas, or universals, as they then said, are not\nempty words, but entities, existing _a parte rei_. He held, if we may\nbelieve Abelard, that not only genera and species, but such abstractions as\nwhiteness, soundness, squareness, etc., are real entities. But from a\npassage cited from his writings by Abelard, from which Abelard infers he\nhad changed his doctrine, Cousin, in his Philosophie Scholastique, argues\nthat this must have been an exaggeration and that Guillaume only held that\nsuch so-called universals as are really genera and species have an\nentitative existence. This is most probably the fact; and instead, then, of\nbeing driven to change his doctrine from what it was at first, as Abelard\nboasts, it is most likely that he never held any other doctrine. However\nthis may be, his doctrine, as represented by Abelard, is that which the old\nrealists are generally supposed to have maintained.\n\nAbelard follows Guillaume de Champeaux, with whom he was for the earlier\npart of his career a contemporary. Confounding, as it would seem, ideas\nwith universals, and universals with abstractions, he denied alike\nRosceline's doctrine that they are mere words, and Guillaume de Champeaux's\ndoctrine that they are entities or existences _a parte rei_, and\nmaintained that they are conceptions, really existing _in mente_, but\nnot _in re_. Hence his philosophy is called Conceptualism. He would\nseem to have held that universals are formed by the mind operating on the\nconcrete objects presented by experience, not, as since maintained by Kant,\nthat they are necessary forms of the understanding. Thus, _humanitas_,\nhumanity, is formed by the mind from the concrete man, or _homo_.\nThere is no humanity _in re_; there are only individual men. In the\nword humanity the mind expresses the qualities which it observes to be\ncommon to all men, without paying attention to any particular man. The idea\nhumanity, then, is simply the abstraction or generalization of these\nqualities. Abelard, it would appear from this, makes what we call the race\na property or quality of individuals, which, of course, excludes the idea\nof generation. There is, as far as we can see, no essential difference\nbetween the conceptualism of Abelard and the nominalism of Rosceline; for,\nby denying the existence _in re_ of genera and species, and making\nthem only conceptions, it recognizes as really existing only individuals or\nparticulars.\n\nSt. Thomas Aquinas, than whom no higher authority in philosophy can be\nnamed, and from whose conclusions few who understand them will be disposed\nto dissent, differs from each of these schools, and maintains that\nuniversals are conceptions existing _in mente cum fundamento in re_,\nor conceptions with a basis in reality, which is true of all abstractions;\nfor the mind can form no conceptions except from objects presented by\nexperience. I could form no conception of whiteness if I had no experience\nof white things, or of roundness if I had seen nothing round. I imagine a\ngolden mountain, but only on condition that gold and mountain are to me\nobjects of experience. This is certain, and accords with the peripatetic\nmaxim, _Nihil est in intellectu, quod prius non fuerit in sensu_,\nwhich Leibnitz would amend by adding, _nisi ipse intellectus_, an\namendment which, perhaps, contains in germ the whole Kantian philosophy.\n\nBut St. Thomas, as we shall see further on, does not confound ideal with\nuniversals, nor does he hold genera and species to be simply the\nabstraction or generalization of the qualities of individuals or\nparticulars. Genera and species are real, or there could be no generation.\nBut the genus or species does not exist apart from its individualization,\nor as a separate entity. There are no individuals without the race, and no\nrace without individuals. Thus the whole race was individualized in Adam,\nso that in his sin all men sinned.\n{148}\nBut as genera and species, the only real universals, do not exist apart\nfrom their particulars, and are distinctly possessed or apprehended only as\ndisengaged from their particulars, which is done only by a mental\noperation, St. Thomas might say they exist _in mente cum fundamento in\nre_, without asserting them to be real only as properties or qualities\nof particulars.\n\nPlato is commonly held to be the father of the ideal philosophy or ideal\nrealism. We know very little of the philosophy that prevailed before him,\nand cannot say how much of the Platonic philosophy is original with him, or\nhow much of it he took from his predecessors, but he is its originator as\nfar as our knowledge extends. It is from him that we have the word\n_idea_, and his whole philosophy is said to be in his doctrine of\nideas; but what his doctrine of ideas really was is a question. He seems\nwhen treating the question, What is it necessary to know in order to have\nreal science? to understand by idea _causa essentialis_, or the thing\nitself, or what in anything is real, stable, and permanent, in distinction\nfrom the sensible, the phenomenal, the variable, and the transitory. The\nreal existence of things is their ideas, and ideas are in the Logos or\ndivine mind. These ideas God impresses on an eternally existing matter, as\nthe seal upon wax, and so impressed they constitute particulars. Aristotle\naccuses Plato of placing the ideas _extra Deum_, and making them\nobjects of the divine contemplation, but the accusation is not easily\nsustained; and we think all that Plato does is to represent the ideas as\n_extra Deum_ only as the idea or design of a picture or a temple in\nthe mind of the artist is distinguishable from the artist himself. But in\nGod all ideas must be eternal, and therefore really his essence, as is\nmaintained by St. Thomas. If this is really Plato's doctrine, it is dualism\ninasmuch as it asserts the eternity of matter, and pantheism inasmuch as\nthe ideas, the reality of things, are identical with the divine mind, and\ntherefore with God himself. On this doctrine, what is that soul the\nimmortality of which Plato so strenuously maintains? Is it the divine idea,\nor the copy of the idea on matter?\n\nWhen treating the question, How we know? Plato seems to understand by ideas\nnot the ideas in the divine mind, but their copies impressed on matter, as\nthe seal on wax. According to him, all knowing is by similitude, and as the\nidea leaves its exact image or form on matter, so by studying that image or\ncopy we arrive at an exact knowledge of the idea or archetype in the divine\nmind. This is plain enough; but who are _we_ who study and know? Are\nwe the archetypal idea, or are we its image or copy impressed on matter?\nHere is the difficulty we find in understanding Plato's doctrine of ideas.\nAccording to him all reality is in the idea, and what is not idea is\nphenomenal, unsubstantial, variable, and evanescent. The impress or copy on\nmatter is not the idea itself, and is no more the thing itself than the\nreflection I see in a mirror is myself. Plato speaks of the soul as\nimprisoned in matter, and ascribes all evil to the intractableness of\nmatter. Hence he originates or justifies that false asceticism which treats\nmatter as impure or unclean, and makes the proper discipline of the soul\nconsist in despising and maltreating the body, and in seeking deliverance\nfrom it, as if our bodies were not destined to rise again, and, reunited to\nthe soul, to live forever. The real source of Manichaeism is in the\nPlatonic philosophy. We confess that we are not able to make out from Plato\na complete, coherent, and self-consistent doctrine of ideas. St. Thomas\ncorrects Plato, and makes ideas the archetypes, exemplars, or models in the\ndivine mind, and identical with the essence of God, after which God creates\nor may create existences. He holds the idea, as idea, to be _causa\nexemplaris_, not _causa essentialis_, and thus escapes both\npantheism and dualism, and all tendency to either.\n\n{149}\n\nAristotle, a much more systematic genius, and, in my judgment, a much\nprofounder philosopher than Plato, rejects Plato's doctrine of ideas, and\nsubstitutes for them substantial forms, which in his philosophy mean real\nexistences distinct from God; and which are not merely phenomenal, like\nPlato's copies on wax. True, he, as Plato, recognizes an eternal matter,\nand makes all existences consist of matter and form. But the matter is\npurely passive; and, as nothing, according to his philosophy, exists, save\nin so far as active, it is really nothing, exists only _in potentia ad\nformam_, and can only mean the ability of God to place existences after\nthe models eternal in his own mind. His philosophy is, at any rate, more\neasily reconciled with Christian theology than is Plato's.\n\nYet Aristotle and the schoolmen after him adopt Plato's doctrine that we\nknow by similitude, or by ideas in the sense of images, or representations,\ninterposed between the mind and the object, or thing existing _a parte\nrei_. They suppose these images, or intelligible species, form a sort of\nintermediary world, called the _mundus logicus_, distinguished from\nthe _mundus physicus_, or real world, which they are not, but which\nthey image or represent to the understanding. Hence the categories or\npraedicaments are neither forms of the subject nor forms of the object, but\nthe forms or laws of logic or this intermediary world. Hence has arisen the\nquestion whether our knowledge has any objective validity, that is, whether\nthere is any objective reality that responds to the idea. Perhaps it is in\nthis doctrine, misunderstood, that we are to seek the origin of scepticism,\nwhich always originates in the speculations of philosophers, never in the\nplain sense of the people, who never want, when they know, any proof that\nthey know.\n\nThis Platonic and peripatetic doctrine, that ideas are not the reality,\nbut, as Locke says, that \"with which the understanding is immediately\nconversant,\" has been vigorously assailed by the Scottish school, which\ndenies intermediary ideas, and maintains that we perceive directly and\nimmediately things themselves. Still the old doctrine obtains to a very\nconsiderable extent, and respectable schools teach that ideas, if not\nprecisely images, are nevertheless representative, and that the idea is the\nfirst object of mental apprehension. Balmes never treats ideas as the\nobject existing _in re_, but as its representation to the mind. Hence\nthe importance attached to the question of certainty, or the objective\nvalidity of our knowledge, around which Balmes says turn all the questions\nof philosophy; that is, the great labor of philosophers is to prove that in\nknowing we know something, or that to know is to know. This is really the\n_pons asinorum_ of modern philosophy as it was of ancient philosophy:\nHow know I that knowing is knowing, or that in knowing I know? The question\nas asked is unanswerable and absurd, for I have only to know with which to\nprove that I know, and he who knows knows that he knows. I know that I know\nsays no more than I know.\n\nThe quarrel has arisen from confounding ideas, universals, genera and\nspecies, and abstractions or generalizations, and treating them all as if\npertaining to the same category. These three things are different, and\ncannot be scientifically treated as if they were the same; yet nominalists,\nrealists, and conceptualists recognize no differences among them, nor do\nthe Platonists. These hold all the essential qualities, properties, or\nattributes of things to be ideas, objective and real. Hippias visits\nAthens, and proposes during his stay in the city to give the eager\nAthenians a discourse, or, as they say nowadays, a lecture, on beautiful\nthings. Socrates is delighted to hear it, and assures Hippias that he will\nbe one of his audience; but as he is slow of understanding, and has a\nfriend who will be sure to question him very closely, he begs Hippias to\nanswer beforehand a few of the questions this friend is certain to ask.\nHippias consents.\n{150}\nYou propose to discourse on beautiful things, but tell me, if you please,\nwhat are beautiful things? Hippias mentions several things, and finally\nanswers, a handsome girl. But that is not what my friend wants to know.\nTell me, by what are beautiful things beautiful? Hippias does not quite\nunderstand. Socrates explains. All just things, are they not just by\nparticipation of justice? Agreed. And all wise things by participation of\nwisdom? It cannot be denied. And all beautiful things by participation of\nbeauty? So it seems. Now tell me, dear Hippias, what is beauty, that which\nis so not by participation but in itself, and by participation of which all\nbeautiful things are beautiful? Hippias, of course, is puzzled, and neither\nhe nor Socrates answers the question.\n\nBut we get here a clue to Plato's doctrine, the doctrine of the methexis,\nto use his own term. He would seem to teach that whatever particular thing\nexists, it does so by the methexis, or participation of the idea. The idea\nis that which makes the thing what it is, _causa essentialis_. Thus, a\nman is man by participation of the man-idea, or the ideal man, humanity; a\nhorse is a horse by participation of the horse-idea, or ideal horse; a cow\nis a cow by participation of the cow-idea, ideal cow, or _bovisty_;\nand so of a sheep, a weazel, an eagle, a heron, a robin, a swallow, a wren,\nan oak, a pine, a juniper. To know any particular thing is to know its idea\nor ideal, and to know its idea or ideal is to have true science, for it is\nscience of that in the thing which is real, stable, invariable, and\npermanent. This doctrine is very true when by ideas we understand genera\nand species, but not, as we have already seen, and as both Rosceline and\nAbelard prove, when we take as ideas the abstract qualities of things. Man\nis man by participation of humanity; but is a thing white by participation\nof whiteness, round by participation of roundness, hard by participation of\nhardness, beautiful by participation of beauty, or just by participation of\njustice, wise by participation of wisdom? What is whiteness, roundness,\nhardness, beauty, justice, or wisdom in the abstract, or abstracted from\ntheir respective concretes? Mere conceptions, as said Abelard, or, rather,\nempty words, as said Rosceline. When Plato calls these ideas, and calls\nthem real, he confounds ideas with genera and species, and asserts what is\nmanifestly untenable.\n\nGenera and species are not abstractions; they are real, though subsisting\nnever apart from individuals. Their reality is evinced by the process\ncalled generation, by which every kind generates its like. The race\ncontinues itself, and does not die with the individual. Men die, humanity\nsurvives. It is all very well to say with Plato individuals are mimetic,\nand exist as individuals by participation of the idea, if we assume ideas\nare genera and species, and created after the models or archetypes in the\ndivine mind; but it will not do to say so when we identify ideas with the\ndivine mind, that is, with God himself: We then make genera and species\nideas in God, and since ideas in God are God, we identify them with the\ndivine essence--a doctrine which the Holy See has recently condemned, and\nwhich would deny all reality distinguishable from God, and make all\nexistences merely phenomenal, and reduce all the categories, as Cousin\ndoes, to being and phenomenon, which is pure pantheism. The _ideae\nexemplares_, or archetypes of genera and species, after which God\ncreates them, are in the divine mind, but the genera and species, the real\nuniversals, are creatures, and as much so as individuals or particulars\nthemselves. They are creatures by the direct creation of God, without the\nintervention of the plastic soul asserted by Plato, accepted by Cudworth,\nand, in his posthumous essay on the Methexis and Mimesis, even by Gioberti.\n{151}\nGod creates all living creatures in genera and species, as the Scripture\nplainly hints when it says: \"And God said, Let the earth bring forth the\ngreen herb, and such as may seed, and the fruit-tree yielding fruit after\nits _kind_, which may have seed in itself upon the earth.\" Not only in\nthe vegetable but also in the animal world, each living creature brings\nforth its kind--a fact without which generation would be unintelligible,\nand which our scientific men who dream of the formation of species by\nnatural selection, and are laboring hard to prove that man has been\ndeveloped from the tadpole or monkey, would do well to remember.\n\nGenera and species are real, and so far, if we call them ideas, ideas or\nuniversals are real, as Plato and the old realists asserted. But when we\nunderstand by ideas or universals the simple abstractions or\ngeneralizations of the essential qualities or attributes of things, as\nwhiteness, redness, roundness, hardness, beauty, justice, goodness, they\nare real only in their concretes or subject. Objects may be really white,\nred, hard, heavy; things may be really beautiful; actions may be really\njust, wise, and good; but what we call beauty, justice, wisdom, goodness,\ncan exist only as attributes or qualities of being, and are real only in\ntheir concretes. They can be reflected by creatures, but have no reality as\nabstractions. Abstractions, as St. Thomas says, have a foundation in\nreality, because they are formed by the mind by way of abstraction from\nobjects presented by experience, and experience can present only that which\nis real; but as abstractions they are nullities, as Rosceline rightly held.\n\nIt is necessary, then, to distinguish between genera and species and\nabstractions, and it would save much confusion to drop the name of ideas as\napplied to them, and even as applied to the intermediary world supposed to\nbe inserted between the object and subject, as that world is commonly\nrepresented. This intermediary world, we think, has been successfully\nassailed by the Scottish school as ordinarily understood; but we do not\nthink that the scholastics meant by it what is commonly supposed. These\nintermediary ideas, or intelligible species, seem to me in St. Thomas to\nperform in intellectual apprehension the office performed by light in\nexternal vision, and to be very defensible. They are not the understanding\nitself, but they are, if we may be allowed the expression, the light of the\nunderstanding. St. Thomas holds that we know by similitude. But God, he\nsays, is the similitude of all things, _Deus est similitudo omnium\nrerum_. Now say, with him and all great theologians, that God, who is\nlight itself, is the light of the understanding, the light of reason, the\ntrue light that lighteth every man coming into this world, and the whole\ndifficulty is solved, and the scholastics and the philosophy so long taught\nin our Catholic schools and seminaries are freed at once from the censures\nso freely bestowed on them by the Scottish school and others. We suspect\nthat we shall find seldom any reason to dissent from the scholastic\nphilosophy as represented by St. Thomas, when once we really understand it,\nand adjust it to our own habits of thought and expression.\n\nSupposing this interpretation to be admissible, the Scottish school, after\nall, must modify its doctrine that we know things directly and immediately;\nfor as in external things light is necessary as the medium of vision, why\nshould not an intelligible light be necessary as the medium of the\nintellectual apprehension of intelligibles? Now, as this light has in it\nthe similitude of the things apprehensible by it, and is for that same\nreason light to our understanding, it may, as Plato held, very properly be\nexpressed by the word _idea_, which means likeness, image, or\nrepresentation. The error of Plato would not then be in holding that we\nknow only _per ideam_ or _per similitudinem_, but in confounding\ncreator and creature, and recognizing nothing except the idea either to\nknow or to be known. On this interpretation, the light may be identical\nwith the object, or it may not be. Being is its own light, and is\nintelligible _per se_; objects distinguishable from being are not, and\nare intelligible only in the light of being, or a light distinguishable\nfrom themselves.\n{152}\nAs being in its full sense is God, we may say with Malebranche that we see\nall things in God, but must add, _and by the light of God_, or _in\nDeo et per Deum_.\n\nAssuming ideas as the light by which we see to be the real doctrine of the\nscholastics, we can readily understand the relation of ideas to the\nperipatetic categories or praedicaments, or forms under which all objects\nare and must be apprehended, and thus connect the old quarrel of the\nphilosophers with their present quarrel. The categories, according to the\nPlatonists, are ideas; according to the peripatetics, they are the forms of\nthe _mundus logicus_, which, as we have seen, they distinguish from\nthe _mundus physicus_. The Scottish school having demolished this\n_mundus logicus_, by exploding the doctrine of intermediary ideas\nwhich compose it, if we take that world as formal, and fail to identify it\nwith the divine light, the question comes up, Are the categories or\nself-evident truths which precede all experience, and without which no fact\nof experience is possible, really objective, or only subjective? The\nquestion is, if we duly consider it, Is the light by which we see or know\non the side of the subject or on that of the object? Or, in other words,\nare things intelligible because we know them, or do we know them because\nthey are intelligible? Thus stated, the question seems to be no question at\nall; but it is made a very serious question, and on the answer to it\ndepends the validity or invalidity of St. Anselm's argument.\n\nWe have already expressed the opinion that the scholastics as represented\nby St. Thomas really mean by their phantasms and intelligible species, or\nintermediary ideas by which we attain to the knowledge of sensibles and\nintelligibles, simply the mediating light furnished by God himself, who is\nhimself light and the Father of lights. In this case the light is\nobjective, and by illumining the object renders it intelligible, and at the\nsame time the subject intelligent. But Reid, who denied intermediary ideas,\nseemed to suppose that the light emanates from the subject, and that it is\nour powers that render the object intelligible. Hence he calls the\ncategories first principles of science, constituent principles of belief,\nor common sense, and sometimes constituent principles of human nature. He\nseems to have supposed that all the light and activity is on the side of\nthe subject, forgetting that the light shineth in darkness, and the\ndarkness comprehendeth it not, or that the light shines, and the darkness\ndoes not compress it, or hinder it from shining, without our perceiving it\nor the objects it illumines.\n\nKant, a German, but, on one side, of Scottish descent, adopts the\nprinciples of Reid, but sets them forth with greater precision and more\nscientific depth. Denying with Reid the mediating ideas, he makes the\ncategories, which, according to Aristotle, are forms of the _mundus\nlogicus_, or intermediary world, forms of the subject or the subjective\nlaws of thought. He does not say with Rosceline that they are mere words,\nwith Abelard that they are mere conceptions, nor with St. Thomas that they\nare, taken as universals, conceptions, _cum fundamento in re_, but\nforms of the reason, understanding, and sensibility, without any objective\nvalidity. They are not derivable from experience, because without them no\nexperience is possible. Without what he calls synthetic judgments _\u00e0\npriori_, such as, Every phenomenon that begins to exist must have a\ncause, which includes the judgment of cause, of universal cause, and of\nnecessary cause, we can form no synthetic judgment _\u00e0 posteriori_.\nHence he concludes that the categories, what some philosophers call first\nprinciples, necessary truths, necessary ideas, without which we do not and\ncannot think, are inherent forms of the subject, and are constitutive of\nreason and understanding. He thus placed the intelligibleness of things in\nthe elemental constitution of the subject, whence it follows that the\nsubject may be its own object, or think without thinking anything distinct\nfrom himself.\n{153}\nWe think God, man, and nature, not because they are, and think them as we\ndo not because they are really such as we think them, but because such is\nour mental constitution, and we are compelled by it to think them as we do.\nThis the reader must see is hardly disguised scepticism, and Kant never\npretended to the contrary. The only escape from scepticism, he himself\ncontends, is to fall back from the pure or speculative reason on the\npractical reason, or the moral necessities of our nature, and yield to the\nmoral imperative, which commands us to believe in God, nature, and duty.\nKant has been followed by Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, who differ more or\nless from one another, but all follow the fundamental principle he\nasserted, and end in the doctrine of absolute identity of subject and\nobject. \"_Cogito, ergo sum_,\" said Descartes: \"I think, therefore I\nam.\" \"To think,\" used to say our old friend Bronson Alcott, \"is to\n_thing_; to thing is to give or produce reality. My thought is\ncreative: I think, therefore I am; I think God, therefore he is; nature,\nand therefore nature exists. I by thinking make them, that is, _thing_\nthem, render them real.\" No bad statement, as far as it goes, of the\ndevelopment Kant's doctrine received from his disciple Fichte. The only\ndefect is that his later disciples, instead of making thought creative,\nhave made it identical with the object. St. Anselm says: \"I think most\nperfect being, therefore most perfect being is;\" and so does Descartes,\nonly Descartes substitutes God for most perfect being; but St. Anselm never\nsaid it in the sense that most perfect being is because I by my thought\nmake it. Only a modern transcendentalist gone to seed could say that. The\ntrouble with this whole scheme is that it puts me in the place of God, and\nmakes me myself God, which I am quite sure I am not. It would be much more\nphilosophical to say: I exist, therefore I think; I think being because it\nis, not that it is because I think it. Things do not exist because I think\nthem, but I think them because they exist; they are not intelligible\nbecause I think them, but I think them because they are intelligible. Yet\nthe germ of our friend Alcott's philosophy was in Kant's doctrine, which\nplaces the _forma_ of the thought in the subject instead of the\nobject.\n\nWhether the categories, as given by Aristotle, are inexact, as Kant\nalleges, or whether, as given by Kant himself, they are reducible in number\nto two, as M. Cousin pretends, or to one, as Rosmini maintains, enters not\ninto the present enquiry, which relates not to their number, but their\nobjective reality. Kant in regard to philosophy has done simply what Reid\ndid, only he has done it better or more scientifically. He has fully\ndemonstrated that in every fact of experience there enters a non-empirical\nelement, and, if he holds with Leibnitz that that element is the human\nunderstanding itself, he has still demonstrated that it is not an\nabstraction or generalization of the concrete qualities of the objects\npresented by experience.\n\nTake the ideas or categories of the necessary, the perfect, the universal,\nthe infinite, the perfect, the immutable, the eternal. These ideas, it is\nwillingly conceded, never exist in the human mind, or are never thought,\nwithout their opposites, the contingent, the finite, the imperfect, the\nparticular, the variable, the temporal; but they do not, even in our\nthought, depend on them, and are not derived or derivable from them by\nabstraction or generalization. Take the synthetic judgment instanced by\nKant, Everything that begins to exist must have a cause. The idea of cause\nitself, Hume has shown, is not derivable from any fact of experience, and\nReid and Kant say the same. The notion we have of power which founds the\nrelation of cause and effect, or that what we call the cause actually\nproduces or places the effect, these philosophers tell us, is not an object\nof experience, and is not obtainable from any empirical facts.\n{154}\nExperience gives only the relation of what we call cause and effect in\ntime, that is, the relation of antecedence and consequence. Main de Biran\nand Victor Cousin, it is true, deny this, and maintain that the idea of\ncause is derived from the acts of our own will, which we are conscious of\nin ourselves, and which not merely precede their effects, but actually\nproduce them. I will to raise my arm, and even if my arm be paralytic or\nheld down by a [force] stronger than I, so that I cannot raise it, I still\nby willing produce an effect, the volition to raise it, which is none the\nless real because, owing to external circumstances not under my control, it\ndoes not pass beyond my own interior.\n\nBut even granting this, how from this particular act of causation conclude\nuniversal cause, or even from universal cause necessary cause? I by willing\nproduce the volition to raise my arm, therefore everything that begins to\nexist must have a cause. The argument from the particular to the universal,\n_non volet_, say the logicians, and still less the argument from the\ncontingent to the necessary.\n\nTake the idea of the perfect. That we have the idea or category in the mind\nis indisputable, and it evidently is not derivable by abstraction or\ngeneralization from the facts of experience. We have experience only of\nimperfect things, and no generalizing of imperfection can give perfection.\nIndeed, without the category of the perfect, the imperfect cannot even be\nthought. We think a thing imperfect, that is, judge it to be imperfect--and\nevery thought is a judgment, and contains an affirmation--because it falls\nshort of the ideal standard with which the mind compares it. The universal\nis not derivable from the particular, for the particular is not conceivable\nwithout the universal. We may say the same of the immutable, the eternal,\nthe infinite, the one, or unity.\n\nBy abstraction or generalization we simply consider in the concrete a\nparticular property, quality, or attribute by itself, and take it _in\nuniverso_, without regard to anything else in the concrete thing. It\nmust then be a real property, quality, or attribute of the concrete thing,\nor the abstraction will have no foundation in reality. But the universal is\nno property, quality, or attribute of particulars, the immutable of\nmutables, the eternal of things temporary, the necessary of contingents,\nthe infinite of finites, or unity of multiples, otherwise particulars would\nbe universals, mutables immutables, temporals eternals, contingents\nnecessary, finites infinite, and multiples one--a manifest contradiction in\nterms. The generalization or abstraction of particulars is particularity,\nof mutables is mutability, of temporals temporality, of contingents\ncontingency, of finites finiteness, of multiples plurality or multiplicity.\nThe overlooking of this obvious fact, and regarding the universal,\nimmutable, eternal, etc., as abstractions or generalizations of\nparticulars, mutables, temporals, and so on, has given birth to the\npantheistic philosophy, than which nothing can be more sophistical.\n\nThe ideas or categories of the universal, the immutable, and the eternal,\nthe necessary, the infinite, the one or unity, are so far from being\nabstractions from particular concretes that in point of fact we cannot even\nthink things as particular, changeable, temporal, contingent, finite, or\nmultiple without them. Hence, they are called necessary ideas, because\nwithout them no synthetic judgment _\u00e0 posteriori_ or fact of\nexperience is possible. They are not abstractions formed by the human mind\nby contemplating concrete things, because the human mind cannot operate or\neven exist without them, and without them human intelligence, even if\nsupposable, could not differ from the intelligence of the brute, which,\nthough many eminent men in modern science are endeavoring to prove it,\ncannot be accepted, because in proving we should disprove it.\n\n{155}\n\nThe question now for philosophy to answer, as we have already intimated,\nis, Are these ideas or categories, which precede and enter into every fact\nof experience, forms of the subject or human understanding, as Kant\nalleges, or are they objective and real, and, though necessary to the\nexistence and operation of the human mind, are yet really distinct from it,\nand independent of it, as much so as if no human mind had been created?\nThis is the problem.\n\nSt. Thomas evidently holds them to be objective, for he holds them to be\nnecessary and self-evident principles, principles _per se nota_, as\nmay be seen in his answer to the question, _Utrum Deum esse sit per se\nnotum?_ and we need strong reasons to induce us to dissent from any\nphilosophical conclusion of the angelic doctor. Moreover, Kant by no means\nproves his own conclusion, that they are forms of the subject. All he\nproves is that there is and can be no fact of human knowledge without them,\nwhich may be true without their being subjective. He proves, if you will,\nthat they are constituent principles of the human understanding, in the\nsense that the human understanding cannot exist and operate without their\ninitiative and concurrence; but this no more proves that they are forms of\nthe subject than the fact that the creature can neither exist nor act\nwithout the creative and concurrent act of the creator proves that the\ncreator is an inherent law or form of the creature. To our mind, Kant\nconfirms a conclusion contrary to his own. His masterly _Kritik der\nreinen Vernunft_ establishes simply this fact, that man's own subjective\nreason alone does not suffice for science, and that man, in science as in\nexistence, is dependent on that which is not himself; or, in a word, that\nman depends on the intelligibleness of the object, or that which renders it\nintelligible, to be himself intelligent, or knowing. Man is, no doubt,\ncreated with the power or faculty of intelligence, but that power or\nfaculty is not the power or faculty to know without an intelligible object,\nor to know what is not knowable independently of it. Hence, from Kant's\nfacts, we conclude that the ideas or categories, without which no object is\nintelligible and no fact of intelligence possible, are not subjective, but\nobjective, real, and independent of the subject.\n\nThe matter is simple enough if we look at it freed from the obscurity with\nwhich philosophers have surrounded it. Thought is a complex fact, the joint\nproduct of subject and object. God is his own object, because he is self\nexistent and self-sufficing: is in himself, as say the theologians,\n_actus purissimus_, most pure act, which permits us up to a certain\npoint to understand the eternal generation of the Son and the procession of\nthe Holy Ghost. God, being self-existent and self-sufficing, needs and can\nreceive nothing from without his own most perfect being. But man is a\ndependent being, a creature, and does not and cannot suffice in himself for\neither his own existence or his own intelligence. He cannot think by\nhimself alone or without the concurrence of the object, which is not\nhimself. If the concurrence of the object be essential to the production of\nmy thought, then that concurrence must be active, for a passive concurrence\nis the same as no concurrence at all. Then the object must be active,\ntherefore real, for what is not real cannot act or be active. Then the\nobject in my thought is not and cannot be myself, but stands over against\nme. Now, I know that I think these ideas, and that they are the object in\nmy thought without which I cannot think at all. Therefore, they are\nobjective and real, and neither myself nor my creations, as are\nabstractions.\n\nThis conclusion is questioned only by those persons who have not duly\nconsidered the fact that there can be no thought without both subject and\nobject, and that man can never be his own object. To assume that he can\nact, think, or know with himself alone, without the concurrence of that\nwhich is not himself and is independent of him, is to deny his dependence\nand to assume him to be God--a conclusion which some think follows from the\nfamous \"_Cogito, ergo sum_\" of Descartes, and which is accepted and\ndefended by the whole German pantheistic school of the present day.\n{156}\nIndeed, as atheism was in the last century, so pantheism is in the present\ncentury the real enemy philosophy has to combat. In concluding the reality\nof the object from the fact that I think it, I am far from pretending that\nthought cannot err; but the error is not in regard to what I really think,\nbut in regard to that which I do not think, but infer from my thought. I\nthink only what is intelligible, and what is intelligible is real, and\ntherefore true, for falsehood, being unreal, is unintelligible, and\ntherefore cannot be thought. But in converting my thought into a\nproposition, I may include in the proposition not only what I thought, but\nwhat I did not think. Hence the part of error, which is always the part not\nof knowledge, but of ignorance. It is so we understand St. Augustine and\nSt. Thomas.[Footnote 37]\n\n    [Footnote 37: Vide St. Augustine, in lib lxxxiii. Qq., quaest. xxii.,\n    and St. Thomas, Summa p.1 quaest. xvii, a. 3 ln. c. The words of St.\n    Augustine are, \"Omnis qui fallitur, id quo fallitur, non intelligit.\"\n    Hence the Intellect is always true.]\n\nThese considerations authorize, or we are much mistaken, the conclusion\nthat the ideas or categories, which the schoolmen hold to be forms of the\nintermediary or logical world, and Kant to be forms of the subject, are\nobjective and real, and either the intelligible object itself or the\nobjective light by which it is rendered intelligible or knowable. Plato,\nAristotle, and the scholastics, if we have not misapprehended them, regard\nthem, in explaining the fact of knowledge, rather as the light which\nillumines the object than the object itself. Yet, when the object is\nintelligible in itself, or by its own light, St. Thomas clearly identifies\nit with the object, and distinguishes it from the object only when the\nobject is not intelligible _per se_. Thus, he maintains with St.\nAugustine that God knows things _per ideam_; but to the objection that\nGod knows them by his essence, he answers that God in his own essence is\nthe similitude, that is, the idea, of all things: _Unde idea in Deo nihil\nest aliud quam essentia Dei_. Therefore, idea in God is nothing else\nthan the essence of God. [Footnote 38]\n\n    [Footnote 38: Summa, p.1, quaest, xv. a. 1 ad 3. The question is _de\n    Ideis_, and we think the reader, by consulting what St. Thomas says\n    in the body of the first article, will agree that, though we have used\n    a different phraseology, we have simply given his sense.]\n\nThe doctrine of St. Thomas is that all knowledge is by ideas, in the sense\nof image, likeness, or similitude. In God the idea, image, likeness, or\nsimilitude, the _species_, is not distinguishable from the divine\nessence, for he is in his essence _similitudo omnium rerum_. Now,\nthough we are created after the _idea exemplaris_, or model eternal in\nhis essence, and therefore in our degree copy or imitate him, we have not\nin us the types or models of all things, are not in ourselves _similitudo\nomnium rerum_, and therefore are not intelligent in ourselves alone. The\nideas by which things are intelligible and we intelligent must be distinct\nfrom us, and exist independent of us. As no creature any more than we has\nin itself the likeness of all things, or is in itself its own _idea\nexemplaris_, no creature can be in itself alone intelligible. Hence what\nthe schoolmen call idea or intelligible species must be equally distinct\nfrom and independent of the object when the object is _aliquid\ncreatum_, or creature. Hence, while both the created subject and the\ncreated object depend on the idea, the one to be intelligible, the other to\nbe intelligent, the idea, intelligible species, the light--as we prefer to\nsay--is independent of them both. The idea _in re_ is not something\nintermediary between subject and object, as is sometimes supposed, but the\nlight that intervenes between them, as the necessary condition of knowledge\nin creatures. This seems to us to be the real doctrine of the scholastics,\nas represented by St. Thomas, and is, in our judgment, indisputable.\n\n{157}\n\nWe call the idea, regarded as intervening in the fact of knowledge, the\nlight, and thus avoid the question whether all knowledge is by similitude\nor not. It may be that the idea is light because it contains the image or\nlikeness of the object, but that seems to us a question more curious than\npractically important. We cannot see that the explication of the mystery of\nknowing is carried any further by calling the idea image or similitude than\nby simply calling it the intelligible light. The Platonists and\nperipatetics seem to us to come no nearer the secret of knowledge by so\ncalling it than do our philosophers to the secret of external vision, when\nthey tell us that we do not see the visible object itself, but its image\npainted by the external light on the retina of the eye. How do I see the\nimage or picture, and connect it with the external object? When I have\ncalled the object or the idea light, I seem to myself to have said all that\ncan be said on the point, and to retain substantially the scholastic\ndoctrine of ideas, or intelligible species, which asserts, I add, by the\nway, what is perhaps very true, but which after all brings us no nearer to\nthe secret of knowledge, or the explanation of how in the last analysis we\ndo or can know at all.\n\nHow we do or can know seems to us an inexplicable mystery, as is our\nexistence itself. That we do know is certain. Every man knows, and in\nknowing knows that be knows; but how he knows no man knows. To deny is as\nmuch an act of reason as is to affirm, and no one can deny without knowing\nthat he denies. Men may doubt many things, but universal doubt is a simple\nimpossibility, for whoever doubts knows that be doubts, and never doubts\nthat he doubts or that doubt is doubting. In all things and in all science\nwe arrive at last, if we think long and deep enough, at a mystery which it\nis in no human power to deny or to explain, and which is explicable only in\nGod by his divine science. Hence it is that philosophy never fully suffices\nfor itself, and always needs to be supplemented by revelation, as nature to\nattain its end must not only be redeemed from the fall, but supplemented by\ngrace. Man never suffices for himself, since his very being is not in\nhimself; and how, then, shall philosophy, which is his creation, suffice\nfor itself? Let philosophy go as far as it can, but let the philosopher\nnever for a moment imagine that human reason will ever be able to explain\nitself. The secret as of all things is in God and with him. Would man be\nGod, the creature the Creator?\n\nIf we have seized the sense of the scholastic philosophy as represented by\nSt. Thomas, and are right in understanding by the intelligible species of\nthe schoolmen the light by which the object is intelligible, therefore the\nobject itself when the object is intelligible _per se_, and the\nintelligible light when it is not, the ideal is objective and real, and\nboth the old quarrel and the new are voided. Abstractions are null; genera\nand species are real, but creatures; ideas, as the intelligible light by\nwhich we know, are not forms of the subject, but objective and real, and in\nfact the light of the divine being, which, intelligible by itself, is the\nintelligibility of all created existences. St. Anselm's argument is, then,\nrigidly sound and conclusive: I think most perfect being _in re_; and\ntherefore such being is, or I could not think it, since what is not cannot\nbe thought. If the most perfect being, a greater than which and the\ncontrary of which cannot be thought, be only in my thought, then I am\nmyself greater than the most perfect being, and my thought becomes the\ncriterion of perfection, and I am greater than God, and can judge him.\n\nThis follows from the fact that the ideal is real. The ideas of the\nuniversal, the infinite, the perfect, the necessary, the immutable, the\neternal cannot be either the intelligible object or the intelligible light,\nunless they are being. As abstractions, or as abstracted from being, they\nare simple nullities.\n{158}\nTo think them is to think real, universal, infinite, perfect, necessary,\nimmutable, and eternal being, the _ens perfectissimum_ of St. Anselm,\nthe _ens necessarium et reale_ of the theologians, a greater than\nwhich or the contrary of which cannot be thought. That this _ens_,\nintuitively affirmed to every intellect, is God, is amply shown in the\npapers on \"The Problems of the Age,\" and also that _ens_ or being\ncreates existences, and hence there is no occasion for us to show it over\nagain.\n\nBut it will not do to say, as many do, that we have intuition of God. The\nidea is intuitive; and we know by intuition that which is God, and that he\nis would be indemonstrable if we did not; but we do not know by intuition\nthat what is affirmed or presented in intuition is God. When Descartes\nsays, \"I think God, therefore God is,\" he misapprehends St. Anselm, and\nassumes what is not tenable. St. Anselm does not say he thinks God, and\ntherefore God is; he says, \"I think most perfect being, a greater than\nwhich cannot be thought,\" and therefore most perfect being is. The\nintuition is not God, but most perfect being. So the ideal formula, _ens\ncreat existentias_ so ably defended in the papers on \"The Problems of\nthe Age,\" would be indefensible, if _Deus _were substituted for\n_ens_, and it read, God creates existences. That is true, and\n_ens_, no doubt, is _Deus_; but we know not that by intuition,\nand it would be wrong to understand St. Augustine, who seems to teach that\nwe know that God is by intuition, in any other sense than that we have\nintuition of that which can be demonstrated to be God. We know by intuition\nthat which is God, but not that it is God.\n\nSt. Thomas seems to us to set this matter right in his answer to the\nquestion, _Utrum Deum esse sit per notum?_--He holds that _ens_\nis _per se notum_, or self-evident, and that first principles in\nknowing, as well as in being, evidence themselves, but denies that _Deum\nesse sit per se notum_, because the meaning of the word _Deus_ or\nGod is not self-evident and known by all. His own words are: \"_Dico ergo\nhaec propositio, DEUS EST, quantum in se est, per se nota est, quia\npraedicatum est idem cum subjecto Deus enim est suum esse, ut infra\npatebit. Sed qua nos non scimus de Deo QUID EST, non est per se nota est,\nsed indiget demonstrari._\" [Footnote 39]\n\n    [Footnote 39: Summa, pars. 1, quaest. 1 a. ln c.]\n\nSt. Thomas adds, indeed, \"Sed indiget demonstrari, per ea quae sunt magis\nnota quoad nos, et minus secundam naturam, scilicet per effectus;\" but this\nis easily explained. The saint argues that it is not self-evident that God\nis, because it is not self-evident what he is; for, according to the\nscholastic philosophy, to be able to affirm that a thing is, it is\nnecessary to know its quidity [Footnote 40], since without knowing what the\nthing is we cannot know that it is. What God is can be demonstrated only by\nhis works, and that it can be so demonstrated St. Paul assures us, Rom.\n1:20: \"Invisibilia ipsius, a creatura mundi, per ea quae facta sunt,\nintellecta, conspiciuntur: sempiterna quoqne virtus et divinitas;\" or as we\nventure to English it: \"The invisible things of God, even his eternal power\nand divinity, are clearly seen from the foundation of the world, being\nunderstood (or known) by the things that are made.\" St. Paul appeals to the\nthings that are made not to prove that God is, but to show what he is, or\nrather, if we may so express ourself, to prove that he is God, and leaves\nus, as does St. Thomas, to prove, with St. Augustine, St. Anselm, F\u00e9nelon,\nand others, that he is, by the argument derived from intuitive ideas, or\nfirst principles, commonly called the _argumentum a priori_, though\nthat, strictly speaking, it is not, for there is nothing more ultimate or\nuniversal in science than is God himself, or, rather, that which is God.\n\n    [Transcribers footnote 40: quidity--Real nature of a thing; the\n    essence.]\n\n{159}\n\nThe ideal formula is true, for it is contained in the first verse of\nGenesis, \"In the beginning God created heaven and earth,\" and in the first\narticle of the creed, \"I believe in one God, maker of heaven and earth, and\nall things visible and invisible;\" and what it formulates is, as we have\nshown, and as is shown more at length in \"The Problems of the Age,\"\nintuitive, and the human mind could not exists and operate if it were not\nso; but the formula itself, or, rather, the formulation as an intellectual\njudgment, is not so. The judgment was beyond the reach of all Gentile\nphilosophy, which nowhere asserts or recognizes the fact of creation; it is\nbeyond the reach of the mass even of the Christian people, who hold that\nGod creates the world as an article of faith rather than as a scientific\ntruth; it is denied by nearly all the systems of philosophy constructed by\nnon-Catholics even in our own day, and it may well be doubted if science,\nunaided by revelation, could ever have attained to it.\n\nThis relieves the formula of the principal objections urged against it. The\nideas formulated are the first principles in science with which all\nphilosophy must commence, but the formulation, instead of being at the\nbeginning, does not always appear even at its conclusion. The explanations\nwe have offered show that there is no discrepancy between its assertion and\nthe philosophy of St. Thomas. Indeed, the formula in substance is the\ncommon doctrine of all great Catholic theologians in all ages of the\nchurch, and may be seen to be so if we will only take the pains to\nunderstand them and ourselves. The objection, that the doctrine that we\nhave intuition of most perfect being assumes that we have the intuitive\nvision of God even in this life, cannot stand, because that vision is\nvision of God as he is in himself, and this asserts only intuition of him\nas idea, which we even know not by intuition is God. The result of our\ndiscussion is to show that the sounder and better philosophy of our day is\nin reality nothing but the philosophy of St. Anselm and St. Thomas, and\nwhich in substance has been always, and still is, taught with more or less\nclearness and depth in all our Catholic schools.\n\n------\n\n      Original\n\n      The Hidden Crucifixion.\n\n      \"And they crucified him there.\"\n\n\n  Say not 'twas on dread Calvary's mountain top,\n      And in the broad and glaring light\n        Of noonday sun;\n    With hooting rabble crowded 'round\n        To show\n      The Holy One despite.\n\n  No, no! But in this guilty breast, alone--\n      God of my love, how could I dare!--\n        The deed was done.\n      Ye angels, look upon this heart;\n        Ye know\n      I crucified him there!\n\n------\n\n{160}\n\n    Impressions Of Spain.\n\n    By Lady Herbert.\n\n\n    St. Sebastian and Burgos.\n\nWhat is it that we seek for, we Englishmen and Englishwomen, who year by\nyear, about the month of November, are seen crowding the Folkestone and\nDover steamboats, with that unmistakable \"going abroad\" look of\ntravelling--bags and wide-awakes and bundles of wraps and alpaca gowns? I\nthink it may be comprised in one word--_sunshine_. This dear old land\nof ours, with all its luxuries and all its comforts and all its\nassociations of home and people, still lacks one thing--and that is\nclimate. For climate means health to one half of us; and health means power\nof enjoyment; for, without it, the most perfect of homes (and nowhere is\nthat word understood so well as in England) is spoiled and saddened. So, in\npursuit of this great boon, a widow lady and her children, with a doctor\nand two other friends, started off in the winter of 186-, in spite of\nominous warnings of revolutions, and grim stories of brigands, for that\ncomparatively unvisited country called Spain. As far as St. Sebastian the\njourney was absolutely without interest or adventure of any kind. The\nexpress train dashed them past houses and villages, and picturesque old\ntowns with fine church towers, from Paris to Bordeaux, and from Bordeaux to\nBayonne, and so on past the awful frontier, the scene of so many\npassages-at-arms between officials and ladies' maids, till they found\nthemselves crossing the picturesque bridge which leads to the little town\nof St. Sebastian, with its beach of fine sand, washed by the long billowy\nwaves of the Atlantic on the one hand, and its riant, well-cultivated\nlittle Basque farms on the other. As to the town itself, time and the\nprefect may eventually make it a second Biarritz, as in every direction\nlodging-houses are springing up, till it will become what one of Dickens's\nheroes would call \"the most sea-bathingest place\" that ever was! But at\npresent it is a mass of rough stone and lime and scaffolding; and the one\nstraight street leading from the hotel to the church of St. Maria, with the\ncastle above, are almost all that remains of the old town which stood so\nmany sieges, and was looked upon as the key of Northern Spain. The hotel\nappeared but tolerably comfortable to our travellers, fresh from the\nluxuries of Paris. When they returned, four or five months later, they\nthought it a perfect paradise of comfort and cleanliness. After wandering\nthrough the narrow streets, and walking into one or two uninteresting\nchurches, it was resolved to climb up to the citadel which commands the\ntown, and to which the ascent is by the fair zigzag road, like that which\nleads to Dover Castle. A small garrison remains in the keep, which is also\na military prison. The officers receiving our party very courteously,\ninviting them to walk on the battlements, and climb up to the flag-staff,\nand offering them the use of their large telescope for the view, which is\ncertainly magnificent, especially toward the sea. There is a tiny chapel in\nthe fortress, in which the Blessed Sacrament is reserved. It was pleasant\nto see the sentinel presenting arms to it each time his round brought him\npast the ever open door. On the hill side, a few monumental slabs, let in\nhere and there into the rock, and one or two square tombs, mark the graves\nof the Englishmen killed during the siege, and also in the Don Carlos\nrevolution.\n{161}\nOf the siege itself, and of the historical interest attached to St.\nSebastian, we will say nothing: are they not written in the book of the\nchronicles of Napier and Napoleon?\n\nThe following morning, after a fine and crowded service at the church of\nSt. Maria, where they first saw the beautiful Spanish custom of the women\nbeing all veiled, and in black, two of the party started at seven in the\nmorning, in a light carriage, for Loyola. The road throughout is beautiful,\nreminding one of the Tyrol, with picturesque villages, old Roman bridges,\nquaint manor-houses, with coats of arms emblazoned over their porticoes;\nrapid, clear trout-streams and fine glimpses of snowy mountains on the\nleft, and of the bright blue sea on the right. The flowers, too, were\nlovely. There was a dwarf blue bugloss of an intensity of color which is\nonly equalled by the large forget-me-not on the mountainsides of Lebanon.\nThe peasants are all small proprietors. They were cultivating their fields\nin the most primitive way, father, mother, and children working the ground\nwith a two-pronged fork, called by them a \"laya;\" but the result was\ncertainly satisfactory. They speak a language as utterly hopeless for a\nforeigner to understand as Welsh or Gaelic. The saying among the\nAndalusians is that the devil, who is no fool, spent seven years in Bilboa\nstudying the Basque dialect, and learned three words only; and of their\npronunciation they add that the Basque write \"Solomon,\" and pronounce it\n\"Nebuchadnezzar!\" Be this as it may, they are a contented, happy,\nprosperous, sober race, rarely leaving their own country, to which they are\npassionately attached, and deserving, by their independence and\nself-reliance, their name of \"Bayascogara\"--\"Somos bastantes.\"\n\nPassing through the baths Certosa, the mineral springs of which are much\nfrequented by the Spaniards in summer, our travellers came, after a four\nhours' drive, to Azpeitia, a walled town, with a fine church containing the\n\"pila,\" or font, in which St. Ignatius was baptized. Here the good-natured\ncur\u00e9, Padre G--, met them, and insisted on escorting them to the great\ncollege of Loyola, which is about a mile from the town. It has a fine\nItalian fa\u00e7ade, and is built in a fertile valley round the house of St.\nIgnatius, the college for missionary priests being on one side, and a\nflorid, domed, circular marble church on the other. The whole is thoroughly\nRoman in its aspect, but not so beautiful as the Gothic buildings of the\nsouth. They first went into the church, which is very rich in jaspers,\nmarbles, and mosaics, the marbles being brought from the neighboring\nmountains. The cloisters at the back are still unfurnished; but the\nentrance to the monastery is of fine and good proportions, and the\ncorridors and staircase are very handsome. Between the church and the\nconvent is a kind of covered cloister, leading to the \"Santuario,\" the\nactual house in which the saint was born and lived. The outside is in\nraised brickwork, of curious old geometrical patterns; and across the door\nis the identical wooden bar which in old times served as protection to the\nch\u00e2teau. Entering the low door, you see on your right a staircase; and on\nyour left a long low room on the ground floor, in which is a picture of the\nBlessed Virgin. Here the saint was born: his mother, having a particular\ndevotion to the Virgin, insisted on being brought down here to be confined.\nGoing up the stairs, to a kind of corridor used as a confessional, you come\nfirst to the chapel of St. Francis Borgia, where he said his first mass.\nNext to it is one dedicated to Marianne di Jesu, the \"Lily of Quito,\" with\na beautiful picture of the South American saint over the high altar. To the\nleft, again, is another chapel, and here St. Fran\u00e7ois Xavier, the Apostle\nof the Indies, said his mass before starting on his glorious evangelical\nmission.\n{162}\nAscending a few steps higher, their guide led them into a long low room,\nrichly decorated and gilt, and full of pictures of the different events of\nthe life of the saint. A gilt screen divided the ante-chapel from the\naltar, raised on the very spot where he lay so long with his wounded leg,\nand where he was inspired by the Blessed Virgin to renounce the world, and\ndevote himself, body and soul, to the work of God. There is a\nrepresentation of him in white marble under the altar as he lay; and\nopposite, a portrait, in his soldier's dress, said to be taken from life,\nand another of him afterward, when he had become a priest. It is a\nbeautiful face, with strong purpose and high resolve in every line of the\nfeatures.\n\nIn the sacristy is the \"baldachino,\" or tester of his bed, in red silk. It\nwas in this room that he first fell sick and took to reading the Lives of\nthe Saints to amuse himself, there being no other book within reach. Such\nare the \"common ways,\" which we blindly call \"accidents,\" in which God\nleads those whom he chooses, like Saul, for his special service. The\nconvent contains thirty fathers and twenty-five lay brothers. There are\nabout 120 students, a fine library, refectory, etc. They have a large\nday-school of poor children, whom they instruct in Basque and Spanish; and\ndistribute daily a certain number of dinners, soup, and bread, to the sick\npoor of the neighboring villages, about twenty of whom were waiting at the\nbuttery door for their daily supply.\n\nThe English strangers, taking leave of the kind and courteous fathers, had\nluncheon at a little \"posada\" close by, where the hostess insisted on their\ndrinking some of the cider of the country, which the doctor, himself a\nDevonshire man, was obliged to confess excelled that of his own country.\nThe good cur\u00e9 entertained them meanwhile with stories of his people, who\nappear to be very like the Highlanders, both in their merits and their\nfaults. Some of their customs seemed to be derived from pagan times, such\nas that of offering bread and wine on the tombs of those they love on the\nanniversary of their death; a custom in vogue in the early days of\nChristianity, and mentioned by St. Augustine in his Confessions as being\nfirst put a stop to by St. Ambrose, at Milan, on account of the abuses\nwhich had crept into the practice. The drive back was, if possible, even\nmore beautiful than that of the morning, and they reached St. Sebastian at\neight o'clock, delighted with their expedition.\n\nThe next day they started for Burgos, by rail, only stopping for a few\nminutes on their way to the station to see the \"Albergo dei Poveri,\" a\nhospital and home for incurables, nursed by the Spanish sisters of charity.\nThey are affiliated to the sisters of St. Vincent de Paul, and follow their\nrule, but do not wear the \"white cornette\" of the French sisters.\n\nThe railroad in this part of Spain has been carried through most\nmagnificent scenery, which appeared to our travellers like a mixture of\nPoussin and Salvator Rosa. Fine purple mountains, still sprinkled with\nsnow, with rugged and jagged peaks standing out against the clear blue sky,\nand with waterfalls and beautiful streams rushing down their sides; an\nunderwood of chestnut and beach trees; deep valleys, with little brown\nvillages and bright white convents perched on rising knolls, and\npicturesque bridges spanning the little streams as they dashed through the\ngorges; and then long tracks of bright rose-colored heather, out of which\nrose big boulder-stones or the wayside cross; the whole forming, as it\nwere, a succession of beautiful pictures such as would delight the heart of\na painter, both as to composition and coloring. No one can say much for the\npace at which the Spanish railways travel; yet are they all too quick in\nscenery such as this, when one longs to stop and sketch\nat every turn.\n{163}\nSuddenly, however, the train came to a stand-still: an enormous fragment of\nrock had fallen across the line in the night, burying a luggage-train, but\nfortunately without injury to its drivers; and our party had no alternative\nbut to get out, with their manifold bags and packages, and walk across the\n_d\u00e9bris_ to another train, which, fortunately, was waiting for them on\nthe opposite side of the chasm. A little experience of Spanish travelling\ntaught them to expect such incidents half a dozen times in the course of\nthe day's journey; but at first it seemed startling and strange. They\nreached Burgos at six, and found themselves in a small but very decent\n\"fonda,\" where the daughter of the landlord spoke a little French, to their\ngreat relief. They had had visions of Italian serving nearly as well as\nSpanish for making themselves understood by the people; but this idea was\nrudely dispelled the very first day of their arrival in Spain. Great as the\nsimilarity may be in reading, the accent of the Spaniard makes him utterly\nincomprehensible to the bewildered Italian scholar; and the very likeness\nof some words increases the difficulty when he finds that, according to the\npronunciation, a totally different meaning is attached to them. For\ninstance, one of the English ladies, thinking to please the mistress of the\nhouse, made a little speech to her about the beauty and cleanliness of her\nkitchen, using the right word (_cocina_), but pronouncing it with the\nItalian accent. She saw directly she had committed a blunder, though\nSpanish civility suppressed the laugh at her expense. She found afterward\nthat the word she had used, with the \"ci\" _soft_, meant a female pig.\nAnd this was only a specimen of mistakes hourly committed by all who\nadventured themselves in this unknown tongue.\n\nA letter of introduction procured for our travellers an instant admission\nto the cardinal archbishop, who received them most kindly, and volunteered\nto be their escort over the cathedral. He had been educated at Ushaw, and\nspoke English fluently and well. He had a very pretty little chapel in his\npalace, with a picture in it of Sta. Maria della Pace at Rome, from whence\nhe derives his cardinal's title.\n\nThe cathedral at Burgos, with the exception of Toledo, is the most\nbeautiful Gothic building in Spain. It was begun by Bishop Maurice, an\nEnglishman, and a great friend of St. Ferdinand's, in the year 1220. The\nspires, with their lacework carving; the doorways, so rich in sculpture;\nthe rose-windows, with their exquisite tracery; the beautiful\nlantern-shaped clerestory; the curious double staircase of Diego de Siloe;\nthe wonderful \"retablos\" behind the altars, of the finest wood-carving; the\nmagnificent marble and alabaster monuments in the side chapels, vying with\none another in beauty and richness of detail; the wonderful wood-carving of\nthe stalls in the choir; the bas reliefs carved in every portion of the\nstone; in fact, every detail of this glorious building is equally perfect;\nand even in Southern Spain, that paradise for lovers of cathedrals, can\nscarcely be surpassed. The finest of the monuments are those of the Velasco\nfamily, the hereditary high-constable of Castile. They are of Carrara\nmarble, resting upon blocks of jasper: at the feet of the lady lies a\nlittle dog, as the emblem of \"Fidelity.\" Over the doorway of this chapel,\nleading to a tiny sacristy, are carved the arms of Jerusalem. In the large\nsacristy is a Magdalen, by Leonardo da Vinci; and some exquisite church\nplate, in gold and enamel, especially a chalice, a processional cross, a\npax, etc. In the first chapel on the right, as you enter by the west door,\nis a very curious figure of Christ, brought from the Holy Land, with real\nhair and skin; but painful in the extreme, and almost grotesque from the\nmanner in which it has been dressed. This remark, however, applies to\nalmost all the images of Christ and of the Blessed Virgin throughout Spain,\nwhich are rendered both sad and ludicrous to English eyes from the\npetticoats and finery with which modern devotion has disfigured them.\n{164}\nThis crucifix, however, is greatly venerated by the people, who call it\n\"The Christ of Burgos,\" and on Sundays or holidays there is no possibility\nof getting near it, on account of the crowd. In the Chapel of the\nVisitation are three more beautiful monuments, and a very fine picture of\nthe Virgin and Child, by Sebastian del Piombo. But it was impossible to\ntake in every portion of this cathedral at once; and so our travellers went\non to the cloisters, passing through a beautiful pointed doorway, richly\ncarved, which leads to the chapter-house, now a receptacle for lumber, but\ncontaining the chest of the Cid, regarding which the old chronicle says:\n\"He filled it with sand, and then, telling the Jews it contained gold,\nraised money on security.\" In justice to the hero, however, we are bound to\nadd, that when the necessities of the war were over, he repaid both\nprincipal and interest. Leaving, at last, the cloisters and cathedral, and\ntaking leave of the kind archbishop, our party drove to the Town Hall,\nwhere, in a walnut-wood urn, are kept the bones of the Cid, which were\nremoved twenty years ago from their original resting-place at Cardena. The\nsight of them strengthened their resolve to make a pilgrimage to his real\ntomb, which is in a Benedictine convent about eight miles from the town.\nStarting, therefore, in two primitive little carriages, guiltless of\nsprings, they crossed the river and wound up a steep hill till they came in\nsight of _Miraflores_, the great Carthusian convent, which, seen from\na distance, strongly resembles Eton College Chapel. It was built by John\nII. for a royal burial-place, and was finished by Isabella of Castile.\nArriving at the monastery, from whence the monks have been expelled, and\nwhich is now tenanted by only one or two lay brothers of the order, they\npassed through a long cloister, shaded by fine cypresses, into the church,\nin the chancel of which is that which may really be called one of the seven\nwonders of the world. This is the alabaster sepulcher of John II. and his\nwife, the father and mother of Queen Isabella, with their son, the Infante\nAlonso, who died young. In richness of detail, delicacy of carving, and\nbeauty of execution, the work of these monuments is perfectly\nunrivalled--the very material seems to be changed into Mechlin lace. The\nartist was Maestro Gil, the father of the famous Diego de Siloe, who carved\nthe staircase in the cathedral. He finished it in 1493; and one does not\nwonder at Philip II.'s exclamation when he saw it: \"_We_ have done\nnothing at the Escurial.\" In the sacristy is a wonderful statue of St.\nBruno, carved in wood, and so beautiful and life-like in expression that it\nwas difficult to look at anything else.\n\nLeaving Miraflores, our travellers broke tenderly to their coachmen their\nwish to go on to Cardena. One of them utterly refused, saying the road was\nimpassable; the other, _moyennant_ an extra gratuity, undertook to try\nit, but stipulated that the gentlemen should walk, and the ladies do the\nsame, if necessary. Winding round the convent garden walls, and then across\na bleak wild moor, they started, and soon found themselves involved in a\nsuccession of ruts and sloughs of despond which more than justified the\nhesitation of their driver. On the coach-box was an imp of a boy, whose\ndelights consisted in quickening the fears of the most timid among the\nladies by invariably making the horses gallop at the most difficult and\nprecipitous parts of the road, and then turning round and grinning at the\nfright he had given them. It is needless to say that the carriage was not\nhis property. At last, the horses came to a stand-still; they could go no\nfurther, and the rest of the way had to be done on foot. But our travellers\nwere not to be pitied; for the day was lovely, and the path across the moor\nwas studded with flowers. At last, on climbing over a steep hill which had\nintercepted their view, they came on a lovely panorama, with a background\nof blue mountains tipped with snow; a wooded glen, in which the brown\nconvent nestled, and a wild moor foreground, across which long strings of\nmules with gay trappings, driven by peasants in Spanish costumes, exactly\nas represented in Ansdell's paintings, were wending their way toward the\ncity.\n{165}\nTired as some of our party were, this glorious view seemed to give them\nfresh strength, and they rapidly descended the hill by the hollow path\nleading to the convent. Over the great entrance is a statue of the Cid,\nmounted on his favorite horse, \"Babicca,\" who bore him to his last\nresting-place, and was afterward buried beside the master he loved so well.\nBut the grand old building seemed utterly deserted, and a big mastiff,\nfastened by an ominously slight chain to the doorway, appeared determined\nto defy their attempts to enter. At last, one of them, more courageous than\nthe rest, tempting the Cerberus with the remains of her luncheon, got past\nhim, and wandered through the cloister, up a fine staircase to a spacious\ncorridor, in hopes of finding a guide to show them the way to the chapel,\nwhere lay the object of their expedition, that is, the monument of the Cid.\nBut she was only answered by the echo of her own footsteps. The cells were\nempty; the once beautiful library gutted and destroyed; the refectory had\nnothing in it but bare walls--the whole place was like a city of the dead.\nAt last, she discovered a staircase lending down to a cloister on the side\nopposite the great entrance, and there a low-arched door, which she found\najar, admitted her into the deserted church. The tomb of the Cid has been\nremoved from the high altar to a side Chapel; and there is interred\nlikewise, his faithful and devoted wife Ximena, and their two daughters. On\nhis shield is emblazoned the \"tizona,\" or sparkling brand, which the\nlegends affirm he always carried in his hand, and with which he struck\nterror into the hearts of the infidels. This church and convent, built for\nthe Benedictines by the Princess Sancho, in memory of her son Theodoric,\nwho was killed out hunting, was sacked by the Moors in the ninth century,\nwhen 200 of the monks were murdered. A tablet in the south transept still\nremains, recording the massacre; but the monument of Theodoric has been\nmutilated and destroyed. The Christian spoilers have done their work more\neffectually than the Moslem! Sorrowfully our travellers left this beautiful\nspot, thinking bitterly on the so-called age of progress which had left the\nabode of so much learning and piety to the owls and the bats; and partly\nwalking, partly driving, returned without accident to the city. One more\nmemento of the Cid at Burgos deserves mention. It is the lock on which he\ncompelled the king, Alonso VI., to swear that he had had no part in his\nbrother Sancho's assassination at Zamora. All who wished to confirm their\nword with a solemn oath used to touch it, till the practice was abolished\nby Isabella, and the lock itself hung up in the old church of St. Gadea, on\nthe way to the castle hill, where it still rests. This is the origin of the\npeasant custom of closing the hand and raising the thumb, which they kiss\nin token of asseveration; and in like manner we have the old Highland\nsaying: \"There's my thumb. I'll not betray you.\"\n\nAnother charming expedition was made on the following day to Las Huelgas,\nthe famous Cistercian nunnery, built in some gardens outside the town by\nAlonso VIII. and his wife Leonora, daughter of our King Henry II.\n\nWhen one of the ladies had asked the cardinal for a note of introduction to\nthe abbess, be had replied laughing: \"I am afraid it would not be of much\nuse to you. She certainly is not under my jurisdiction, and I am not sure\nwhether she does not think I am under hers!\" No lady abbess certainly ever\nhad more extraordinary privileges. She is a Princess Palatine--styled \"By\nthe grace of God\"--and has feudal power over all the lands and villages\nround. She appoints her own priests and confessors, and has a hospital\nabout a mile from the convent, nursed by the sisters, and entirely under\nher control.\n{166}\nAfter some little delay at the porter's lodge, owing to their having come\nat the inconvenient hour of dinner, our party were ushered into the parlor,\nand there, behind a grille, saw a beautiful old lady, dressed in wimple and\ncoif, exactly like a picture in the time of Chaucer. This was the\nredoubtable lady abbess. There are twenty-seven choir nuns and twenty-five\nlay sisters in the convent, and they follow the rule of St. Bernard. The\nabbess first showed them the Moorish standard, beautifully embroidered,\ntaken at the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, in 1180. A curious old fresco\nrepresenting this battle remains over the arch of the church. She then took\nthem to the choir, which is very rich in carving, and contains the tombs of\nthe founders, Alonso and Leonora, and also of a number of infantas, whose\nroyal bodies are placed in richly carved Gothic sepulchres, resting on\nlions, on each side of the choir. In the church is a curious hammered iron\ngilt pulpit, in which St. Vincent de Ferrer preached. Here St. Ferdinand\nand Alonso XI. knighted themselves, and here our own king, Edward I.,\nreceived the honor of knighthood at the hands of Alonso el Sabio.\n\nThe church is a curious jumble of different dates of architecture; but\nthere is a beautiful tower and doorway, some very interesting old\nmonuments, and a fine double rose-window. The cloisters are very beautiful,\nwith round-beaded arches, grouped pillars, and Norman capitals. The lady\nabbess then ordered one of the priests of the convent to take her English\nvisitors to see their hospital, called \"Del Rey,\" the walk to which from\nthe convent is through pleasant fields like English meadows. It is\nadmirably managed and nursed by the nuns. Each patient has a bed in a\nrecess, which makes, as it were, a little private room for each, and this\nis lined with \"azulejos,\" or colored tiles, up to a certain height, giving\nthat clean bright look which distinguishes the Spanish hospitals from all\nothers. At the end of each ward was a little altar, where mass is daily\nperformed for the sick. There are fifty men and fifty women, and the\nsurgical department was carefully supplied with all the best and newest\ninstruments, which the surgeon was eager to show off to the doctor, the\nonly one of the party worthy of the privilege. The wards opened into a\n\"patio,\" or court, with seats and bright flowers, where the patients who\ncould leave their beds were sitting out and sunning themselves. Altogether,\nit is a noble institution; and one must hope that the ruthless hand of\ngovernment will not destroy it in common with the other charitable\nfoundations of Spain.\n\n\n  Madrid.\n\nBut the cold winds blew sharply, and our travellers resolved to hurry\nsouth, and reserve the further treasures of Burgos for inspection on their\nreturn. The night train conveyed them safely to Madrid, where they found a\nmost comfortable hotel in the \"Ville de Paris,\" lately opened by an\nenterprising Frenchman, in the \"Puelta del Sol;\" and received the kindest\nof welcomes from the English minister, the Count T. D., and other old\nfriends. It was Sunday morning, and the first object was to find a church\nnear at hand. These are not wanting in Madrid, but all are modern, and few\nin good taste: the nicest and best served is undoubtedly that of \"St. Louis\ndes Fran\u00e7ais,\" though the approach to it through the crowded market is\nrather disagreeable early in the morning. The witty writer of \"Les Lettres\nd'Espagne\" says truly: \"Madrid _ne me dit rien:_ c'est moderne,\nalign\u00e9, propre et civilis\u00e9.\" As for the climate, it is detestable: bitterly\ncold in winter, the east wind searching out every rheumatic joint in one's\nframe, and pitilessly driving round the corners of every street; burning\nhot in summer, with a glare and dust which nearly equal that of Cairo in a\nsimoom.\n\n{167}\n\nThe Gallery, however, compensates for all. Our travellers had spent months\nat Florence, at Rome, at Dresden, and fancied that nothing could come up to\nthe Pitti, the Uffizi, or the Vatican--that no picture could equal the \"San\nSisto;\" but they found they had yet much to learn. No one who has not been\nin Spain can so much as imagine what Murillo is. In England he is looked\nupon as the clever painter of picturesque brown beggar-boys: there is not\none of these subjects to be found in Spain, from St. Sebastian to\nGibraltar! At Madrid, at Cadiz, but especially at Seville, one learns to\nknow him as he is--that is, the great mystical religious painter of the\nseventeenth century, embodying in his wonderful conceptions all that is\nmost sublime and ecstatic in devotion, and in the representation of divine\nlove. The English minister, speaking of this one day to a lady of the\nparty, explained it very simply, by saying that the English generally only\ncarried off those of his works in which the Catholic feeling was not so\nstrongly displayed. It would be hopeless to attempt to describe all his\npictures in the Madrid Gallery. The Saviour and St. John, as boys, drinking\nout of a shell, is perhaps the most delicate and exquisite in coloring and\nexpression; but the \"Conception\" surpasses all. No one should compare it\nwith the Louvre pictures of the same subject. There is a refinement, a\ntenderness, and a beauty in the Madrid \"Conception\" entirely wanting in the\none stolen by the French. Then there is Velasquez, with his inimitable\nportraits; full of droll originality, as the \"AEsop;\" or of deep historical\ninterest, as his \"Philip IV.;\" or of sublime piety, as in his\n\"Crucifixion,\" with the hair falling over one side of the Saviour's face,\nwhich the pierced and fastened hands cannot push aside: each and all are\npriceless treasures, and there must be sixty or seventy in that one long\nroom. Ford says that \"Velasquez is the Homer of the Spanish school, of\nwhich Murillo is the Virgil.\" Then there are Riberas, and Zurbarans, Divino\nMorales, Juan Joanes, Alonso Ca\u00f1o, and half-a-dozen other artists, whose\nvery names are scarcely known out of Spain, and all of whose works are\nimpregnated with that mystic, devotional self-sacrificing spirit which is\nthe essence of Catholicism. The Italian school is equally magnificently\nrepresented. There are exquisite Raphaels, one especially, \"La Perla,\" once\nbelonging to our Charles I., and sold by the Puritans to the Spanish king;\nthe \"Spasimo,\" the \"Vergin del Pesce,\" etc.; beautiful Titians, not only\nportraits, but one, a \"Magdalen,\" which is unknown to us by engravings or\nphotographs in England, where, in a green robe, she is flying from the\nassaults of the devil, represented by a monstrous dragon, and in which the\ndrawing is as wonderful as the coloring; beautiful G. Bellinis, and Luinis,\nand Andrea del Sartos (especially one of his wife), and Paul Veronese, and\nothers of the Venetian and Milanese schools. In a lower room there are\nDutch and Flemish chefs-d'oeuvre without end: Rubens, and Vandyke, and\nTeniers, and Breughel, and Holbein, and the rest. It is a gallery\nbewildering from the number of its pictures, but with the rare merit of\nalmost all being good; and they are so arranged that the visitor can see\nthem with perfect comfort at any hour of the day. In the ante-room to the\nlong gallery are some pictures of the present century, but none are worth\nlooking at save Goya's pictures of the wholesale massacre of the Spanish\nprisoners by the French, which are not likely to soften the public feeling\nof bitterness and hostility toward that nation.\n\nThere is nothing very good in sculpture, only two of the antiques being\nworth looking at; but there is a fine statue of Charles V., and a\nwonderfully beautiful St. John of God, carrying a sick man out of the\nburning hospital on his back, which is modern, but in admirable taste.\n{168}\nNeglected, in some side cupboards, and several of them broken and covered\nwith dust and dirt, are some exquisite tazzas of Benvenuto Cellini,\nD'Arphes, and Beceriles, in lapis, jade, agate, and enamel, finer than any\nto be seen even in the Gr\u00fcne Gew\u00f6lbe of Dresden. There is a gold mermaid,\nstudded with rubies, and with an emerald tail, and a cup with an enamelled\njewelled border and stand, which are perfectly unrivalled in beauty of\nworkmanship. Then, in addition to this matchless gallery, Madrid has its\n\"Academia,\" containing three of Murillo's most magnificent conceptions. One\nis \"St. Elizabeth of Hungary,\" washing the wounds of the sick, her fair\nyoung face and delicate white hands forming a beautiful contrast with the\nshrivelled brown old woman in the foreground. The expression of the saint's\ncountenance is that of one absorbed in her work and yet looking beyond it.\n[Footnote 41] The other is the \"Dream,\" in which the Blessed Virgin appears\nto the founder of the church of St. Maria della Neve (afterward called St.\nMaria Maggiore) and his wife, and suggests to them the building of a church\non a spot at Rome, which would be indicated to them by a fall of snow,\nthough it was then in the month of August. In the third picture the founder\nand his wife are kneeling at the feet of the Pope, telling him of their\nvision, and imploring his benediction on their work. These two famous\npictures were taken by Soult from Seville, and are of a lunette shape,\nbeing made to fit the original niche for which they were painted: both are\nunequalled for beauty of color and design, and have recently been\nmagnificently engraved, by order of the government.\n\n    [Footnote 41: This picture was stolen from the Carldad, at Seville, by\n    the French, and afterward sent back to Madrid, where it still remains.]\n\nBut apart from its galleries, Madrid is a disappointment; there is no\nantiquity or interest attached to any of its churches or public buildings.\nThe daily afternoon diversion is the drive on the Prado; amusing from the\ncrowd, perhaps, but where, with the exception of the nurses, all national\ncostume has disappeared. There are scarcely any mantillas; but Faubourg\nSt.-Germain bonnets, in badly assorted colors, and horrible and exaggerated\ncrinolines, replacing the soft, black, flowing dresses of the south. It is,\nin fact, a bad _r\u00e9chauff\u00e9_ of the Bois de Boulogne. The queen, in a\ncarriage drawn by six or eight mules, surrounded by her escort, and\nannounced by trumpeters, and the infantas, following in similar carriages,\nform the only \"event\" of the afternoon. Poor lady! how heartily sick she\nmust be of this promenade! She is far more pleasing-looking than her\npictures give her credit for, and has a frank kind manner which is an\nindication of her good and simple nature. Her children are most carefully\nbrought up, and very well educated by the charming English authoress,\nMadame Calderon de la Barca, well known by her interesting work on Mexico.\nOn Saturdays, the queen and the royal family always drive to Atocha, a\nchurch at the extreme end of the Prado, in vile taste, but containing the\nfamous image of the Virgin, the patroness of Spain, to whom all the\nroyalties are specially devoted. It is a black image, but almost invisible\nfrom the gorgeous jewels and dresses with which it is adorned.\n\nOne of the shows of Madrid is the royal stables, which are well worth a\nvisit. There are upward of two hundred and fifty horses, and two hundred\nfine mules; the backs of the latter are invariably shaved down to a certain\npoint, which gives them an uncomfortable appearance to English eyes, but is\nthe custom throughout Spain. One lady writer asserts that \"it is more\nmodest!\" There is a charming little stud belonging to the prince imperial,\nwhich includes two tiny mules not bigger than dogs, but in perfect\nproportions, about the size required to drag a perambulator. Some of the\nhorses are English and thoroughbred, but a good many are of the\nheavy-crested Velasquez type. The carriages are of every date, and very\ncurious. Among them is one in which Philip I. (le Bel) was said to have\nbeen poisoned, and in which his wife, Jeanne la Folle, still insisted on\ndragging him out, believing he was only asleep.\n\n{169}\n\nMore interesting to some of our party than horses and stables were the\ncharitable institutions in Madrid, which are admirable and very numerous.\nIt was on the 12th of November, 1856, that the M\u00e8re D\u00e9vos, afterward M\u00e8re\nG\u00e9n\u00e9rale of the order of St. Vincent de Paul, started with four or five of\nher sisters of charity to establish their first house in Madrid. They had\nmany hardships and difficulties to encounter, but loving perseverance\nconquered them all. The sisters now number between forty and fifty,\ndistributed in three houses in different parts of the city, with more than\none thousand children in their schools and orphanages, the whole being\nunder the superintendence of the Soeur Gottofrey, the able and charming\nFrench \"provincial\" of Spain. The queen takes a lively interest in their\nsuccess, and most of the ladies of her court are more or less affiliated to\nthem. There are branch houses of these French sisters at Malaga, Granada,\nBarcelona, and other towns; and they are now beginning to undertake\ndistrict visiting, as well as the care of the sick and the education of\nchildren--a proceeding which they were obliged to adopt with caution, owing\nto the strong prejudice felt in Spain toward any religious order's being\nseen outside their \"clausura,\" and also toward their dress, the white\ncornette, which, to eyes unaccustomed to anything but black veils, appeared\noutrageous and unsuitable. The Spanish sisters of charity, though\naffiliated to them, following the rule of St. Vincent, and acknowledging N.\nT. H. P\u00e8re \u00c9tienne as their superior, still refuse to wear the cornette,\nand substitute a simple white cap and black veil. These Spanish sisters\nhave the charge of the magnificent Foundling Hospital, which receives\nupward or one thousand children; of the hospital called Las Recogidas, for\npenitence; of the General Hospital, where the sick are admirably cared for\nand to which is attached a wing for patients of an upper class, who pay a\nsmall sum weekly, and have all the advantages of the clever surgery and\ncareful nursing of the hospital (an arrangement sadly needed in our English\nhospitals); of the Hospicio de St. Maria del C\u00e1rmen, founded by private\ncharity, for the old and incurables; of the infant school, or \"salle\nd'asile,\" where the children are fed as well as taught; and of the Albergo\ndei Poveri, equivalent to what we should call a workhouse in England, but\nwhich we cannot desecrate by such a name when speaking of an establishment\nconducted on the highest and noblest rules of Christian charity, and where\nthe orphans find not only loving care and tender watchfulness, but\nadmirable industrial training, fitting them to fill worthily any\nemployments to which their natural inclination may lead them. The Sacr\u00e9\nCoeur have a large establishment for the education of the upper classes at\nChaumartin de la Rosa, a suburb of Madrid, about four miles from the town.\nIt was founded by the Marquesa de Villa Nueva, a most saint-like person,\nwhose house adjoins, and in fact forms part of the convent--her bedroom\nleading into a tribune overlooking the chapel and the blessed sacrament.\nThe view from the large garden, with the mountains on the one hand, and the\nstone pine woods on the other, is very pretty, and unlike anything else in\nthe neighborhood of Madrid. The superior, a charming person, showed the\nladies all over the house, which is large, commodious, and airy, and in\nwhich they have already upward of eighty pupils. They have a very pretty\nchapel, and in the parlor a very beautiful picture of St. Elizabeth, by a\nmodern artist.\n\nOne more \"lion\" was visited before leaving Madrid, and that was the armory,\nwhich is indeed well worth a long and careful examination. The objects it\ncontains are all of deep historical interest.\n{170}\nThere is a collar-piece belonging to Philip II., with scenes from the\nbattle of St. Quentin exquisitely carved; a helmet taken from the\nunfortunate Boabdil, the last Moorish king of Granada; beautiful Moorish\narms and Turkish banners taken at the battle of Lepanto, in old Damascus\ninlaid-work; the swords of Boabdil, and of Ferdinand and Isabella; the\narmor of the Cid, of Christopher Columbus, of Charles V., of St. Ferdinand,\nand of Philip II.; the carriage of Charles V., looking like a large\nbassinet; exquisite shields, rapiers, swords, and helmets; some very\ncurious gold ornaments, votive crowns, and crosses of the seventh century;\nand heaps of other treasures too numerous to be here detailed. But our\ntravellers were fairly exhausted by their previous sight-seeing, and gladly\nreserved their examination of the rest to a future day. At all times, a\nreturn to a place is more interesting than a first visit; for in the latter\none is oppressed by the feeling of the quantity to be seen and the short\ntime there is to see it in, and so the intense anxiety and fatigue destroy\nhalf one's enjoyment of the objects themselves. That evening they were to\nleave the biting east winds of Madrid for the more genial climate of sunny\nMalaga; and so, having made sundry very necessary purchases, including\nmantillas and chocolate, and having eaten what turned out to be their last\ngood dinner for a very long time, they started off by an eight o'clock\ntrain for Cordova, which was to be their halting place midway. On reaching\nAlcazar, about one o'clock in the morning, they had to change trains, as\nthe one in which they were branched off to Valencia; and for two hours they\nwere kept waiting for the Cordova train. Oh! the misery of those wayside\nstations in Spain! One long low room filled with smokers and passengers of\nevery class, struggling for chocolate, served in dirty cups by uncivil\nwaiters, with insufficient seats and scant courtesy: no wonder that the\nSpaniards consider our waiting-rooms real palaces. You have no alternative\nin the winter season but to endure this foetid, stifling atmosphere, and be\nblinded with smoke, or else to freeze and shiver outside, where there are\nno benches at all, and your only hope is to get a corner of a wall against\nwhich you can lean and be sheltered from the bitter wind. The arrival of\nthe up train brought, therefore, unmixed joy to our party, who managed to\nsecure a compartment to themselves without any smokers (a rare privilege in\nSpain), and thus got some sleep for a few hours. At six o'clock the train\nstopped, the railroad went no further; so the passengers turned out\nsomewhat ruefully, in the cold, and gazed with dismay at the lumbering\ndirty diligences, looking as if they had come out of the Ark, which were\ndrawn up, all in a row, at the station door, with ten, twelve, or fourteen\nmules harnessed to each, and by which they and their luggage were to be\nconveyed for the next eight hours. The station master was a Frenchman, and\nwith great civility, during the lading of the diligences, gave up to the\nladies his own tiny bedroom, and some fresh water to wash themselves a\nlittle, and make themselves comfortable after their long night journey, for\nthere was no pretence of a waiting-room at this station.\n\nReader, did you ever go in a Spanish diligence? It was the first experience\nof most of our party of this means of locomotion, and at first seemed\nsimply impossible. The excessive lowness of the carriages, the way in which\nthe unhappy passengers are jammed in, either into the _coup\u00e9_ in\nfront, or into the square box behind, unable to move or sit upright in\neither; while the mules plunge and start off in every direction but the\nright one, their drivers every instant jumping down and running by the side\nof the poor beasts, which they flog unmercifully, vociferating in every\nkey; and that, not at first starting, but all the way, up hill and down\ndale, with an energy which is as inexhaustible as it is despairing, till\neither a pole cracks or a trace breaks, or some accident happens to a\nwheel, and the whole lumbering concern stops with a jerk and a lurch which\nthreaten to roll everything and everybody into the gorge below.\n{171}\nEach diligence is accompanied by a \"mayoral,\" or conductor, who has charge\nof the whole equipage, and is a very important personage. This functionary\nis generally gorgeously dressed, with embroidered jacket, scarlet sash\nround the waist, gaiters with silver buttons and hanging leather strips,\nand round his head a gay-colored handkerchief and a round black felt hat\nwith broad brim and feather, or else of the kind denominated \"pork pie\" in\nEngland; he is here, there, and everywhere during the journey, arranging\nthe places of the passengers, the stations for halts, and the like. Besides\nthis dignitary, there is the \"moto\" or driver, whose business is to be\nperpetually jumping down and flogging the far-off mules into a trot, which\nhe did with such cruelly that our travellers often hoped he would himself\nget into trouble in jumping up again, which, unfortunately, he was always\ntoo expert to do. Every mule has its name, and answers to it. They are\nharnessed two abreast, a small boy riding on the leaders; and it is on his\npresence of mind and skill that the guidance and safety of the whole team\ndepend. On this occasion, the \"mayoral\" and \"moto\" leant with their backs\nagainst what was left of the windows of the _coup\u00e9_, which they\ninstantly smashed, the cold wind rushed in, and the passengers were\nalternately splashed from head to foot with the mud cast up in their faces\nby the mules' heels, or choked and blinded with dust. For neither\nmisfortune is there either redress or sympathy. The lower panels of the\nfloor and doors have holes cut in them to let out the water and mud; but\nthe same agreeable arrangement, in winter, lets in a wind which threatens\nto freeze off your feet as you sit. A small boy, who, it is to be supposed,\nwas learning his trade, held on by his eyelids to a ledge below, and was\nperpetually assisting in screaming and flogging. A struggle at some kind of\nvain resistance, and then a sullen despair and a final making up one's mind\nthat, after all, it can't last forever, are the phases through which the\nunhappy travellers pass during these agreeable diligence journeys. It was\nsome little time before our party could get sufficiently reconciled to\ntheir misery to enjoy the scenery. But when they could look about them,\nthey found themselves passing through a beautiful gorge, and up a zigzag\nroad, like the lower spurs of an Alpine pass, over the Sierra Morena. Then\nbegan the descent, during which some of the ladies held their breath,\nexpecting to be dashed over the parapet at each sharp turn in the road; the\npace of the mules was never relaxed, and the unwieldy top-heavy mass\noscillated over the precipice below in a decidedly unpleasant manner. Then\nthey came into a fertile region of olives and aloes, and so on by divers\nvillages and through roads which the late rains had made almost impassable,\nand in passing over which every bone in their bodies seemed dislocated in\ntheir springless vehicle, till, at two o'clock in the afternoon, they\nreached the station, where, to their intense relief, they again came upon a\nrailroad. Hastily swallowing some doubtful chocolate, they established\nthemselves once more comfortably in the railway carriage; but after being\nin the enjoyment of this luxury for half an hour, the train came, all of a\nsudden, to a stand-still; and the doors being opened, they were politely\ntold that they must _walk_, as a landslip had destroyed the line for\nsome distance. Coming at last to a picturesque town with a fine bridge over\nthe Guadalquiver, they were allowed once more to take their seats in the\ncarriages, and finally arrived at Cordova at eight o'clock at night, after\ntwenty-four hours of travelling, alternating from intense cold to intense\nheat, very tired indeed, horribly dusty and dirty, and without having had\nany church all day.\n\n  To be continued\n\n--------\n\n{172}\n\n    From All the Year Round.\n\n    Looking Down The Road.\n\n\n  In the early spring-time\n    My long watch began;\n  Through the daisied meadows\n    Merry children ran;\n  Happy lovers wandered\n    Through the forest deep,\n  Seeking mossy corners\n    Where the violets sleep.\n  I in one small chamber\n    Patiently abode--\n  At my garret window\n    Looking down the road.\n\n  Watching, watching, watching,\n    For what came not back!\n  Summer marked in flowers\n    All her sunny track,\n  Hid the dim blue distance\n    With her robe of green,\n  Bathed the nearer meadows\n    In a golden sheen.\n  Full the fierce sure arrows\n    Glanced and gleamed and glowed\n  On my garret window\n    Looking down the road.\n\n  Watching, watching, watching,\n    Oh! the pain of hope!\n  Autumn's shadows lengthened\n    On the breezy slope;\n  Groups of tired reapers\n    Led the loaded wains\n  From the golden meadows,\n    Through the dusky lanes;\n  Home-returning footsteps\n    O'er the pathway strode--\n  Not the one I looked for.\n    Coming down the road.\n\n{173}\n\n  Winter stripped the branches\n    Of the roadside tree:\n  But the frosty hours\n    Brought no change for me--\n  Save that I could better,\n    Through the branches brown.\n  See the tired travellers\n    Coming from the town.\n  Pitiless December\n    Rained and hailed and snowed.\n  On my garret window\n    Looking down the road.\n\n  At the last I saw it\n    (Not the form I sought),\n  Something brighter, purer,\n    Blessed my sleeping thought.\n  'Twas a white-robed angel--\n    At his steadfast eyes\n  Paled the wild-fire brightness\n    Of old memories.\n  Nearer drew the vision,\n    While with bated breath\n  Some one seemed to whisper,\n    The Deliverer, \"Death.\"\n  Then my dreaming spirit,\n    Eased of half its load,\n  Saw the white wings lessen\n    Down the dusty road.\n\n  God has soothed my sorrow,\n    He has purged my sin;\n  Earthly hopes have perished--\n    Heavenly rest I win.\n  Dull and dead endurance\n    Is no portion here;\n  I am strong to labor,\n    And my rest is near.\n  Lifting my dull glances\n    From the fields below,\n  So the light of heaven\n    Settles on my brow.\n  O my God. I thank thee,\n    Who that angel showed,\n  From my garret window\n    Looking down the road.\n\n--------\n\n{174}\n\n  Original.\n\n  Father Ignatius of St. Paul,[Footnote 42]\n\n  Hon. and Rev. George Spencer.\n\n    [Footnote 42: Life of F. Ignatius of St. Paul, Passionist. By the Rev.\n    F. Pius a Sancto, Passionist. 1 vol. 12mo. Dublin, James Duffy.]\n\nFresh from the perusal of this book, we would gladly convey to others the\nagreeable impression it has left on our imagination. It is an interesting\nand impartial biography, full of pleasant incidents, simply narrated; with\nthe view of throwing light upon the character of F. Ignatius, and not upon\nthe personal views of his biographer. But we would rather dwell upon its\nvalue as the life of a saintly man, whose circumstances were so nearly akin\nto those of common Christians that no one can assert the impossibility of\nimitating his example. We have observed, in reading the lives of the\nsaints, that one must himself be a saint to appreciate them aright.\nGenerally severed from us (to our shame be it spoken) by time, race, and\nnational habits, we are startled by strange details, and while wondering\nover individual idiosyncrasies we lose sight of the heroic purity of\nintention that hallowed almost every action of their mature lives.\n\nIn F. Ignatius we have a warm-hearted, frank, humorous Englishman, whose\nmemory is fresh in the hearts of thousands now living. Though belonging to\none of the noblest families in England, his training was simple, and his\nposition as rector in a country parish was not so dazzling as to set him\nabove the sympathies of those who read his life. His natural virtues were\nweighed down by a love of approbation that has ruined many a soul before\nnow. He was accomplished, but not learned. Keen, sympathetic, and\nperceptive, but neither a philosopher nor a logician. In short, he was not\nset apart from the rest of humanity by any natural endowment; and yet one\nlays down his biography with a sense of having made acquaintance with one\nof the remarkable men of this century. Why? We cannot but suppose that it\nwas because he placed every faculty under the guidance of God, who worked\nwonders with capacities by no means rare; and from an unready utterance\nbrought forth fruits of conversion that probably surprised no one so much\nas the preacher himself.\n\nHon. George Spencer was the youngest child of John George, Earl Spencer,\nand Lavinin, daughter of Sir Charles Bingham, afterward Earl of Lucan.\n\nEarl Spencer was successively member of parliament, one of the lords of the\ntreasury, and first lord of the admiralty, succeeding Lord Chatham in the\nlast-named office in the year 1794. It was while Earl Spencer was lord of\nthe admiralty, in London, December 21, 1799, that the subject of our\nnarrative first saw the light, or what goes by the name of light, during a\nDecember in London.\n\nHis first recollections, oddly enough, are of his six-year-old birthday,\nwhen his sister's governess, a Swiss lady, took him aside as for serious\nconversation, and told him of the existence of God, and some other truths\nof religion. Possibly he had heard these things before, but the room at\nAlthorp where the scene took place, and the tender solicitude of the lady's\nmanner, were ever after imprinted on his memory as if connected with a\nmomentous occasion.\n\n{175}\n\nAt nine years old, with his favorite brother, Frederick, be was carried in\na grand equipage to Eton, and placed under the charge of a private tutor,\nthe Rev. Richard Godley, who lived at the \"Wharf,\" about half a mile from\nthe college buildings. Mr. Godley's rule was a severe but blessed one, and\nyoung Spencer owed four years of marvellous innocence to its restrictions.\n\"Egyptian bondage\" he thought it, poor little fellow, that several times a\nday, summer and winter, be must run across the playgrounds to report\nhimself to the tutor. He lived between two fires: the wrath of elder boys\nwho called upon him to fag for them as he rushed through the\ncricket-ground, and the terror of Mr. Godley's awful countenance if he and\nFrederick arrived a few minutes late. \"As might be expected,\" he says, in\nhis autobiography, \"the more we were required to observe rules and customs\ndifferent from others, the more did a certain class of big bullies in the\nschool seem to count it their especial business to watch over us, as though\nthey might be our evil geniuses. A certain set of faces, consequently, I\nlooked upon with a kind of mysterious dread, and I was under a constant\nsense of being as though in an enemy's country, obliged to guard against\ndangers on all sides. Shrinking and skulking became my occupation beyond\nthe ordinary lot of little schoolboys, and my natural disposition to be\ncowardly and spiritless was perhaps increased. I say perhaps, for other\ncircumstances might have made me worse; for what I was in the eyes of the\nmasters of public opinion in the school I really was--a chicken-hearted\ncreature, what in Eton language is called a _sawney_. It may be that\nhad I been from the first in free intercourse among the boys, instead of\nbeing a good innocent one I might have been, what I suppose must be\nreckoned one of the worst varieties of public school characters, a mean,\ndishonorable one.\"\n\nThe experiment of close contact with other boys was too soon to be tried.\nMr. Godley's influence appeared to be dangerously evangelical. \"The\nPilgrim's Progress\" and \"Alleine's Alarm\" were recommended to George by his\ntutor's sisters, and did not find favor at Althorp in the holidays. We next\nhear of him at the Rev. ----'s, performing most of the duties of a footman\nto one or two big boys, and enduring initiation in the iniquities of public\nschool-life. Everyone knows how valuable a prize to youthful tyrants is a\nchild in whom innocence and moral cowardice are combined; and such a prize\nwas George Spencer, blushing at immodest words, and ignorant of the nice\ndistinction between thieving and orchard robbing that exists in the minds\nof school-boys only. Evening after evening the little boys' rooms were\ninvaded, their occupations broken up, and persecution carried on against\none or other of their set. For a little while Spencer used to find a little\ntime of peace when, after such a turmoil, be got into bed, said his\nprayers, and cried himself to sleep. But the atmosphere was anti-religious,\nand in the course of ten days be had given up all attempt to pray. A moment\nof bitter self reproach awaited him. One day he was present when one of the\nrudest of his tormentors was dressing himself. \"To my surprise,\" he says,\n\"he turned to me, and with his usual civility said some such words as 'Now\nhold your jaw,' and then, down on his knees near the bed, and his face\nbetween his hands, said his prayers. I then saw for a moment to what I had\nfallen, when even this fellow had more religion than unhappy I had\nretained, but I had no grain of strength now left to rise. ...\"\n\n  \"When I had ceased attempting to maintain my pious feelings, the best\n  consolation I had was in the company of a few boys of a spirit congenial\n  to what mine was now become. All the time that I remained at Eton I never\n  learnt to take pleasure in the manly, active games for which it is so\n  famous. It is not that I was without some natural talent for such things.\n{176}\n  I have since had my time of most ardent attachment to cricket, to tennis,\n  shooting, hunting, and all active exercises: but my spirit was bent down\n  at Eton; and among the boys who led the way in all manly pursuits, I was\n  always shy and miserable, which was partly a cause and partly an effect\n  of my being looked down upon by them. My pleasure there was in being with\n  a few boys like myself, without spirit for these things, retired apart\n  from the sight of others, amusing ourselves with making arbors and\n  catching little fishes in the streams; and many were the hours I wasted\n  in such childish things when I was grown far too old for them.\n\n  \"Oh! the happiness of a Catholic child, whose inmost soul is known to one\n  whom God has charged with his salvation. Supposing I had been a Catholic\n  child in such a situation--if such a supposition be possible--the pious\n  feelings with which God inspired me would have been under the guidance of\n  a tender spiritual father, who would have supplied exactly what I needed,\n  when about to fall under the sense of unassisted weakness which I have\n  described. He would have taught me to be innocent and firm in the midst\n  of my trials, which would then have tended to exalt instead of oppressing\n  my character. I would have kept my character not only clear in the sight\n  of God, but honorable among my fellows, who soon would have given up\n  their persecution when they found me steadfast; and I might have brought\n  with me in the path of peace and justice many whom I followed in the dark\n  ways of sin. But it is in vain to calculate on what I might have been had\n  I been then a Catholic. God be praised, my losses I may yet recover, and\n  perhaps even reap advantages from them.\"\n\nSo much for the sad and puny childhood of one who in after-life freed\nhimself absolutely from the bondage of public opinion. He who can truly\nsay, \"Tu solus Domine!\" has reached the sublimest height of dignity and\nfreedom.\n\nIf George Spencer's early years gave small promise of moral heroism, still\nless would his youth lead one to look for great virtues in him. His\nautobiography tells us that he yielded to the degrading temptations of\nstudent life at Cambridge, not from inclination so much as because other\nmen set him the example. Two years of misery he endured, too, from the fear\nthat a courteous and merited apology made by him to a gentleman whom he had\nunwittingly offended might have laid him open to the charge of cowardice.\n\nAs a scholar he ranked high, and held, at the same time, a good place among\nathletes; thus showing advance in mind and body, while his soul was still\ncramped by the fear of ridicule.\n\nThen comes the continental tour, made after a grand and uninteresting\nfashion; courier, servants, maids, and family physician. George's journal\nis full of the sneers with which a well-bred English tourist is wont to\nexorcise the demon of popery. He is much amused at the street-preaching of\na passionist father in Terracina; little dreaming that one day he himself\nwould perform the duties of a _svegliarino_, and with only partial\nsuccess too.\n\nOne admires constantly the good sense and high tone of Lord and Lady\nSpencer. Invaluable was the example they gave their children; wonderful to\nan American reader, the sway they exercised over their grown-up sons.\n\nSoon after returning to England, Mr. Spencer took orders and entered upon\nthe life of a country clergyman. By fulfilling in person the arduous duties\nwhich are too often left to a curate, he gave evidence of true nobility of\ncharacter; but so deficient in judgment and in deference to superiors was\nhis general conduct, that the world wondered more at his lack of common\nsense than at his courage. Viewed from the present time, the germs of\nsanctity are plainly visible in these vague struggles after perfection. He\npractised great mortifications, concealing them as far as was possible. He\ninveighed against tepidity wherever shown with an independence as valiant\nas it was unpleasant to the objects of his condemnation. No very\ncomfortable member of a diocese was the Hon. Mr. Spencer in those days.\nBishop Bloomfield, his former tutor, bore his vagaries with fatherly\npatience, and, looking through the mist of Methodism that hung about his\nviews, acutely detected the true difficulty, and recommended as a cure The\nPoor Man's Preservative against Popery, by Blanco White.\n{177}\nOn one occasion when Dr. Bloomfield read prayers in his own church, St.\nBotolph's, Bishopsgate, Mr. Spencer, who was invited to preach, took the\noccasion to explain these evangelical views of religion, intimating that\nthe congregation were not in the habit of hearing the gospel fully and\nfaithfully expounded. The bishop was wounded, but he only said: \"George,\nhow could you preach such a sermon as that? In future I must look over your\nsermon before you go into the pulpit.\"\n\nHere is a scrap from his journal about the same time, 1824, or thereabout:\n\"The Bishop of Bristol preached in the morning for the schools a sermon\nworthy of Plato rather than St. Paul.\" And another day: \"Went with all\nspeed to Craven chapel, where I heard Irving, the Scotch minister, preach\nnearly two hours. I was greatly delighted with his eloquence and stout\nChristian doctrine, though his manner is most blamably extravagant.\" And\nagain: \"I went with Mr. A---- and Miss B---- to hear Mrs. Fry perform, and\nwas delighted to hear her expounding to the prisoners in Newgate.\"\n\nAmong evangelical believers, Mr. Spencer found an energy and a missionary\nspirit which harmonized with his own zealous nature. In theological matters\nhe was dissatisfied whithersoever he turned. In 1822, soon after being made\ndeacon, his early tendencies to high church principles had received a blow\nfrom which they never recovered. He shall tell the circumstances in his own\nsimple words.\n\n  \"I was at the time living at Althorp, my Father's principal residence in\n  the country, serving as a curate to the parish to which it was attached,\n  though the park itself is extraparochial. Among the visitors who resorted\n  there was one of the most distinguished scholars of the day, to whom, as\n  to many more of the Anglican Church, I owe a debt of gratitude for the\n  interest which he took in me, and for the help I actually received from\n  him in the course of inquiry, which has happily terminated in the haven\n  of the true church. I should like to make a grateful and honorable\n  mention of his name, but as this has been found fault with I forbear,\n  [Footnote 43] I was one day explaining to him with earnestness the line\n  of argument which I was pursuing with dissenters, and my hopes from it; I\n  suppose I expected encouragement, such as I had received from many\n  others. But he simply and candidly said: 'These would be very convenient\n  doctrines if we could make use of them, but they are available only for\n  Roman Catholics; they will not serve us.' I saw in a moment the truth of\n  his remark, and his character and position gave it additional weight. I\n  did not answer him; but as a soldier who has received what he feels to be\n  a mortal wound will suddenly stand still, and then quietly retire out of\n  the m\u00e9l\u00e9e, and seek a quiet spot to die in, so I went away with my high\n  churchism mortally wounded in the very prime of its vigor and youth, to\n  die forever to the character of an Anglican high churchman. Why did not\n  this open my eyes, you will say, to the truth of Catholicity? I answer,\n  simply because my early prejudices were too strong. The unanswerable\n  remark of my friend was like a _reductio ad absurdum_ of all high\n  church ideas. If they were true, the Catholic would be so; which is\n  absurd, as I remember Euclid would say, 'Therefore,' etc. The grand\n  support of the high church system, church authority, having been thus\n  overthrown, it was an easy though gradual work to get out of my mind all\n  its minor details and accomplishments, one after another; such as regard\n  for holy places, for holy days, for consecrated persons, for\n  ecclesiastical writers; finally, almost all definite dogmatic notions. It\n  would seem that all was slipping away, when, coming to the conviction of\n  the truth of Catholicity, some years after, it was with extraordinary\n  delight I found myself picking up again the shattered dispersed pieces of\n  the beautiful fabric, and placing them now in better order on the right\n  foundation, solid and firm, no longer exposed to such a catastrophe as\n  had upset my card-castle of Anglican churchhmanship.\"\n\n    [Footnote 43: This distinguished scholar was Dr. Elmaly.]\n\nThe divided state of his own parish occupied Mr. Spencer's thoughts, and he\ndevoted himself to winning dissenters into the fold by other means than\nhigh church arguments. He tried to stretch open the gates of the\nestablishment so as to admit all classes of religionists to her communion.\nAnother system seemed more likely to prove efficacious, namely, the\nbeautiful example he set of devotion in his parish; making great sacrifices\nfor the poor, and qualifying himself to perform the offices of a physician\nto the body as well as to the soul.\n\n{178}\n\nBut new difficulties were in store for him in matters of faith. The\nAthanasian creed begins to disturb him, not because of its doctrines, but\nbecause of the condemnatory clauses at the beginning and end. He is now\nrector of Brington, with excellent prospects of advancement. Is he not\nbound to resign his position, since he cannot agree in full with the\nEstablishment? \"No,\" says the Bishop of Peterborough; \"there is a\ndifference between an open attack upon the liturgy and thirty-nine\narticles, and the entertaining of private doubts to be confided to a friend\nwith the hope of having them removed. It would have been a sufficient cause\nfor choosing another profession than that of the ministry; but, being\nalready in holy orders, it is not a sufficient reason for resignation.\"\n\"No,\" said Dr. Blomfield; \"it is one thing to doubt the truth of a\ndoctrine, and another to believe it false. Besides, the Protestant Church\ndoes not pretend to pronounce a sentence of condemnation like the Church of\nRome. These clauses are merely intended to assert the truth of certain\ndogmas very emphatically.\"\n\nThat this line of argument was not convincing it is easy to see. The result\nwas that Mr. Spencer informed his superiors that he should give up reading\nthe Athanasian creed in his church. Then feeling certain that he was no\nlonger in danger of promotion, he threw himself with renewed ardor into the\nwork of reconciling all sects to each other.\n\nHis family as a last resource bethought them of marrying him to a lady who\nhad charmed him in his college days. No; his conviction was that he ought\nnot to marry. One pities the disappointment of Lord and Lady Spencer. This\nson, whom they had placed in an admirable position in life, who had every\nattraction of manner and person that could insure worldly success, seemed\ndetermined to thwart their efforts for his happiness, and to disappoint\nparental ambition. But they little imagined how far his reckless\nunworldliness would finally carry him.\n\nOn the 23d of November, 1827, when he returned from his parochial\nvisitation, he found a letter purporting to come from a gentlemen in Lille,\nwho was \"grievously troubled about the arguments for popery.\" Ever desirous\nto strengthen the wavering, Rev. Mr. Spencer entered into a long\ncorrespondence, which resulted in a promise on his own part to follow his\ncorrespondent into the Catholic Church if he would acknowledge his true\nname and pause awhile before joining the Catholics. He tells us:\n\n  \"I heard no more of him till after my conversion and arrival at Rome,\n  when I discovered that my correspondent was a lady, who had herself been\n  converted a short time before she wrote to me. I never heard her name\n  before (Miss Dolling), nor am I aware that she had ever seen me; but God\n  moved her to desire and pray for my salvation, which she also undertook\n  to bring about in the way I have related. I cannot say that I entirely\n  approve of the stratagem to which she had recourse, but her motive was\n  good, and God gave success to her attempt, for it was this that first\n  directed my attention particularly to inquire about the Catholic\n  religion, though she lived not to know the accomplishment of her wishes\n  and prayers. She died at Paris, a year before my conversion, when about\n  to take the veil as a nun of the Sacred Heart; and I trust I have in her\n  an intercessor in heaven, as she prayed for me so fervently on earth.\"\n\nNot being restrained, as was Mr. Spencer, by a sense of personal gratitude,\nwe may be allowed to express entire disapproval of the stratagem of the\n\"Maid of Lille.\" Like most other plots, it was quite unnecessary. Rev. Mr.\nSpencer would have listened with profound attention to any person who\nclaimed to possess the truth, and it was offering him an indignity to trick\nhim into attention, as foolish mothers decoy their children to the\ndentist's.\n\nNone the less, however, were Miss Dolling's arguments strong and\nconvincing: \"That Scripture without tradition is quite insufficient for\nsalvation.\n{179}\nWe cannot know anything about the Scriptures themselves, their composition,\ninspiration, interpretation, without tradition. Besides, the New Testament\nwas not the text-book of the apostles. It is a collection of some things\nthey were inspired to write for the edification of the first Christians and\nothers who had not seen our Lord; and the epistles are a number of letters\nfrom inspired men bound up together in one volume. The body of doctrine,\nwith its bearings, symmetry, extent, and obligation, was delivered orally\nby the apostles, and the epistles must be consonant to that system as well\nas explanatory of portions of it. Only by the unbroken succession of\npastors from the apostles to the present time can we have any safeguard as\nto what we shall believe, and how we are to believe. The apostles and their\nsuccessors were 'to teach all nations,' and Christ promised them, and them\nalone, the unerring guide of the Holy Spirit.\" She then assigns to\ntradition the office of bearing testimony to what the doctrines of the\nchurch have been and are at present. The definitions of councils are simple\ndeclarations that such and such is the belief then, and from the beginning\nof the Catholic Church. They state what is, not invent what is to be. Now,\nhistory or written tradition, as contradistinguished from Scripture,\ntestifies to every simple tenet of the Catholic Church--her creeds,\nliturgy, sacraments, jurisdiction. It testifies unerringly, too, even from\nthe objections of heretics, to the fact that this church has been always\nbelieved divine in her origin, divine in her teaching, infallible and\nunerring in her solemn pronouncements. This is fact, and who can gainsay\nit?\n\nToward the end of the year 1829, Rev. Mr. Spencer made the acquaintance of\nMr. Ambrose Lisle Phillips, who was then seventeen years old. A few weeks\nlater he visited this new friend at Garendon Park, Loughbro', a visit the\nresult of which is best given in his own words:\n\n  \"On Sunday, Jan. 24, 1830, I preached in my church, and in the evening\n  took leave of my family for the week, intending to return on the Saturday\n  following to my ordinary duties at home. But our Lord ordered better for\n  me. During the week I spent on this visit, I passed many hours daily in\n  conversation with Phillips, and was satisfied beyond all my expectations\n  with the answers he gave to the different questions I proposed about the\n  principal tenets and practices of the Catholics. During the week we were\n  in company with several other Protestants, and among them some\n  distinguished clergymen of the Church of England, who occasionally joined\n  in our discussions. I was struck with observing how the advantage always\n  appeared on his side in the arguments which took place between them,\n  notwithstanding their superior age and experience; and I saw how weak was\n  the cause in behalf of which I had hitherto been engaged; I felt ashamed\n  of arguing any longer against what I began to see clearly could not be\n  fairly disproved. I now openly declared myself completely shaken, and,\n  though I determined to take no decided step until I was entirely\n  convinced, I determined to give myself no rest till I was satisfied, and\n  had little doubt now of what the result would be. But yet I thought not\n  how soon God would make the truth clear to me. I was to return home, as I\n  have said, on Saturday. Phillips agreed to accompany me on the day\n  previous to Leicester, where we might have further conversation with\n  Father Caestryck, the Catholic missionary established in that place. I\n  imagined that I might take some weeks longer for consideration, but Mr.\n  Caestryck's conversation that afternoon overcame all my opposition. He\n  explained to me, and made me see, that the way to come at the knowledge\n  of the true religion is not to contend, as men are disposed to do, about\n  each individual point, but to submit implicitly to the authority of\n  Christ, and of those to whom he has committed the charge of his flock. He\n  set before me the undeniable but wonderful fact of the agreement of the\n  Catholic Church all over the world, in one faith, under one head; he\n  showed me the assertions of Protestants that the Catholic Church had\n  altered her doctrines were not supported by evidence; he pointed out the\n  wonderful, unbroken chain of the Roman pontiffs; he observed to me how in\n  all ages the church, under their guidance, had exercised an authority,\n  indisputed by her children, of cutting off from her communion all who\n  opposed her faith and disobeyed her discipline. I saw that her assumption\n  of this power was consistent with Christ's commission to his apostles to\n  teach all men to the end of the world; and his declaration that those who\n  would not hear the pastors of his church rejected him. What right, then,\n  thought I, had Luther and his companions to set themselves against the\n  united voice of the church?\n{180}\n  I saw that he rebelled against the authority of God when he set himself\n  up as an independent guide. He was bound to obey the Catholic Church--how\n  then should I not be equally bound to return to it? And need I fear that\n  I should be led into error by trusting to those guides to whom Christ\n  himself thus directed me? No! I thought this impossible. Full of these\n  impressions, I left Mr. Caestryck's house to go to my inn, whence I was\n  to to return home next morning. Phillips accompanied me, and took this\n  last occasion to impress on me the awful importance of the decision which\n  I was called upon to make. At length I answered:\n\n  \"'I am overcome. There is no doubt of the truth. One more Sunday I will\n  preach to my congregation, and then put myself into Mr. Foley's hands,\n  and conclude this business.'\n\n  \"It may be thought with what joyful ardor he embraced this declaration,\n  and warned me to declare my sentiments faithfully in these my last\n  discourses. The next minute led me to this reflection: Have I any right\n  to stand in that pulpit, being once convinced that the church is\n  heretical to which it belongs? Am I safe in exposing myself to the danger\n  which may attend one day's travelling while I turn my back on the church\n  of God, which now calls upon me to unite myself to her forever? I said to\n  Phillips, 'If this step is right for me to take next week, it is my duty\n  to take it now. My resolution is made; to-morrow I will be received into\n  the church.' We lost no time in despatching a messenger to my father, to\n  inform him of this unexpected event. As I was forming my last resolution,\n  the thought of him came across me; will it not be said that I endanger\n  his very life by so sudden and severe a shock? The words of our Lord rose\n  before me and answered all my doubts: 'He that hateth not father and\n  mother, and brothers and sisters, and houses and lands, and his own life\n  too, cannot be my disciple.' To the Lord, then, I trusted for the support\n  and comfort of my dear father under the trial which, in obedience to his\n  call, I was about to inflict upon him. I had no further anxiety to\n  disturb me. God alone knows the peace and joy with which I laid me down\n  that night to rest. The next day, at nine o'clock, the church received me\n  for her child.\"\n\nFar from finding himself harshly received by his family after his\nconversion, Mr. Spencer's domestic relations remained quite undisturbed. It\nwas in the early days of conversions in England; Tractarianism was in its\nvery infancy, and Earl Spencer had always shown kindness to Catholics, as\nto a vanquished enemy.\n\nWhen his son returned from Rome as a priest in 1832 and took possession of\nhis parish at West Bromwich, one of the poorest in the diocese, Lord\nSpencer made ample provision for his support. In 1834 this excellent\nnobleman died, and with the legacy left by him to Father Spencer, several\nchurches and missions were established. It was a theory of Father Spencer's\nthat the evangelical counsels could be practiced as well in the world as in\na religious life. In order to carry out this experiment he placed all his\npossessions at the command of Right Rev. Dr. Walsh, his bishop, who\nappointed an _\u00e9conome_ to supply his necessities and those of his\nchurch.\n\nThat his conversion was not allowed to pass without sharp criticism from\nProtestants can be easily imagined. He was pensive partly by nature,\npartly, perhaps, from the feeling that his actions were misunderstood by\nhis old companions and friends. All the more attractive was the quaint\nhumor that lighted up his conversation. \"One day when speaking with a\nbrother priest with sad earnestness about the spiritual destitution of the\npoor people around him, who neither knew God nor would listen to those who\nwere willing to teach them, a poor woman knocked at the sacristy door, and\nwas ordered to come in; she fell on her knees very reverently to get Father\nSpencer's blessing as soon as she approached him. His companion observed\nthat this poor woman reminded him of the mother of the sons of Zebedee, who\ncame to our Savior _adorans_. 'Yes,' replied Father Spencer, with a\nvery arch smile, 'and not only _adorans_, but _petens aliquid ab\neo_.'\"\n\nThough so harshly handled sometimes by Protestants, Mr. Spencer exercised a\nforbearance toward them that all converts would do well to imitate.\nRemembering his own honest delusions, he attributed sincerity to the\nadherents of every sect.\n{181}\n\"Some were supposing once in his presence that it was impossible for\nfollowers of Joanna Southcote, and the like, not to be fully aware that\nthey were being deluded. Father Ignatius said it was not so, and related a\npeculiar case that he witnessed himself. He happened to be passing through\nBirmingham, and had occasion to enter a shop there to order something. The\nshopkeeper asked him if he had heard of the great light that had arisen in\nthese modern times. He said no. 'Well, then,' repeated the shopman, 'here,\nsir, is something to enlighten you,' handing him a neatly got up pamphlet.\nHe had not time to glance at the title when his friend behind the counter\nran on at a great rate in a speech something to the following effect: That\nthe four gospels were all figures and myths, that the epistles were only\nfaint foreshadowings of the real sun of justice that was now at length\narisen. The Messias was come in the person of a Mr. Ward, and he would see\nthe truth demonstrated beyond the possibility of a doubt by looking at the\ngospel he held in his hand. While the shopman was expressing hopes of\nconverting him, he took the opportunity of looking at the pamphlet, and\nfound that all this new theory of religion was built upon a particular way\nof printing the text: _'Glory be to God on high, and on earth peace\nto--Ward's men._' On turning away in disgust from his fruitless\nremonstrances with this specimen of _Ward's men_, he found some of\n_Ward's women_, also, in the same place, and overheard them\nexclaiming: 'Oh, little England knows what a treasure they have in ----\njail!' The pretended Messias happened to be in prison for felony at the\ntime.\" He declared that these poor creatures were entirely sincere and\nearnest in the faith they had in this malefactor.\n\nThis belief in the genuineness of all kinds of religious convictions,\njoined to his passionate love of country, led Father Spencer to engage in\nthe great work of his life--the forming of an Association of Prayers for\nthe Conversion of England. Mr. Phillips joined with him heartily in the\nproject, and it was a new element of joy in their beautiful friendship.\nFrom the year 1838 to the day of his death, Father Spencer labored\nunceasingly for this end. Many persons grew sick of the very sound of the\nwords, and did not hesitate to tell him so either; but through praise,\nblame, success, or ridicule he labored unceasingly,--and works now, we may\nbe sure, in heaven this very day for the same end. Who can doubt that such\npetitions will be granted?\n\nAfter nine years of hardship, persecution, and loving labor as a parish\npriest, Father Spencer was called to Oscott College to take charge of the\nspiritual affairs of the students.\n\nBy education he was well suited to hold so distinguished a position. He was\nadmirably versed in the French, Italian, and German languages; a good\nclassical and mathematical scholar of course (having been a first-class\nCambridge man), and well read both in Protestant and Catholic theology. His\nintercourse with the young men was very charming. He would make up a game\nat cricket, go heartily into all their youthful sports, and even give\nlessons to beginners. In spiritual matters he had a very fascinating way of\nthrowing a certain poetry into what is usually considered the prosaic part\nof priestly duties. Between these two moods there was a third, in which,\nwith a kindly assumption of equality, as it were, he would take them into\nhis interests as genially as he entered into theirs.\n\nIn 1844 Father Spencer went abroad for his health, and accomplished much\nfor the Association of Prayers. In the following year he returned to\nEngland, and entered at once into retreat under the direction of Father\nThomas Clarke, S.J., in Hodder place. From this retreat he came forth with\na fixed determination to join the order of the Passionists, lately\nestablished in England by his friend Padre Domenico. How happy the results\nof this decision were the following pages will show.\n\n{182}\n\nThe Congregation of the Passion was founded by Blessed Paul of the Cross\nabout the middle of the last century, and approved by Benedict XIV.,\nClement XIV., and Pius VI. Its object is to work for the sanctification of\nthe souls of the faithful; to which end it uses, not only preaching and the\nsacraments, but the diffusion of devotion to the passion of Christ. This\nwork is accomplished by means of missions, retreats, and parish work in\npassionist houses. If necessary, the fathers take charge of a parish;\notherwise they work in their own churches as missioners. They teach only\ntheir own younger members, and they go on foreign missions when sent by the\nHoly Father or the Propaganda.\n\n  \"To keep the members of an order always ready for their out-door work,\"\n  says F. Pius, \"there are certain rules for their interior life which may\n  be likened to the drill or parade of soldiers in their quarters. This\n  discipline varies according to the spirit of each order.\n\n  \"The idea of a passionist's work will lead us to expect what his\n  discipline must be. The spirit of a passionist is a spirit of atonement.\n  He says with St. Paul: 'I rejoice in my sufferings, and fill up those\n  things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ in my flesh for his\n  body, which is the church.' Coloss. i.24. For this cause the interior\n  life of a passionist is rather austere. He has to rise shortly after\n  midnight from a bed of straw to chaunt matins and lauds, and spend some\n  time in meditation. He has two hours more meditation during the day, and\n  altogether about five hours of choir work in the twenty-four. He fasts\n  and abstains from flesh meat three times in the week, all the year round,\n  besides Lent and Advent. He is clad in a coarse black garment; wears\n  sandals instead of shoes; and practises other acts of penance of minor\n  importance.\n\n  \"This seems rather a hard life; but an ordinary constitution does not\n  find the least difficulty in complying with the letter of the rule. It is\n  withal a happy, cheerful life; for it seems the nature of penance to make\n  the heart of the penitent light and gladsome, 'rejoicing in suffering.'\"\n\nThe fathers are bound by these rules only when living in the houses of\ntheir order. Outside they accommodate themselves to circumstances and take\nlife as they find it; not very easy, as we shall see by the experiences of\nF. Ignatius. The superior has, moreover, the right to relax the rule for\nthose who are ill or overworked.\n\nAt forty-seven Hon. and Rev. George Spencer entered upon this austere life.\nThere was little to attract human nature to the order. Four foreigners,\nliving in a wretched house, friendless and nearly penniless, were the\nprincipal occupants of Aston Hall, and even this unenviable position they\nhad reached only after four years of labor and trial.\n\nThe noble novice submitted to more than ordinary tests of vocation. Rank,\nage, and education made him especially the object of distrust to F.\nConstantine, master of novices, who knew that true kindness must turn the\nrough side of discipline to a candidate for admission.\n\n  \"A day or two after his arrival he was ordered to wash down an old dirty\n  flight of stairs. He tucked up his sleeves and fell to using his brush,\n  tub, and soapsuds with as much zest and good-will as if he had been a\n  maid-of-all-work. Of course he was no great adept at this sort of\n  employment, and probably his want of skill drew down some sharp rebukes\n  from his overseer. Some tender-hearted religious never could forget the\n  sight of this venerable ecclesiastic, trying to scour the crevices and\n  crannies to the satisfaction of his new master. He got through it well\n  and took the corrections so beautifully that in a few days he was voted\n  to the habit.\"\n\nA little suffering there was for F. Ignatius (as we must now call him) from\nhomesickness and the difficulty of adapting himself to the small items of\nnovice discipline. Chilled feet, a hard bed, and meagre diet were not quite\neasy to bear. But his hardest trial was the consideration of his\ncompanions, who tried to spare him humiliations, and take upon themselves\nworks that seemed degrading for one of his standing. Austerities were soon\nforgotten, but dispensations were true afflictions to one whose wish with\nregard to life was ceaseless labor, and with regard to death \"to die unseen\nand unknown in a ditch.\"\n\n{183}\n\nThe story of his fifteen years of religious life is beautifully told by his\nbiographer. Only under the restrain& of a religious role did his gifts and\nvirtues receive their right development. It was like a second youth, a\nsecond training for life; undue impetuosity was restrained, zeal,\ngenerosity, charity, tenderness, all found an object and a wise direction.\nSurely never was sanctity made more attractive than in the person of the\nnoble and gentle F. Ignatius. Great was the rejoicing among postulants and\nnovices when his arrival was announced at any one of the passionist houses.\nAnecdote, mirth, kind and sympathizing intercourse were in store for the\nrecreation wherever he appeared, clad in his coarse attire, with a brace of\nrough drogget bags slung over his broad shoulders. The journey had been\nmade, they might be sure, in the third-class cars, \"because there was no\nfourth class.\" The spirit of holy poverty had grown to be a sort of passion\nwith him, only to be surpassed by his zeal for the salvation of souls. He\ntreated himself, and wished others to treat him, like a beggar; thankful\nfor any favor, but cheerfully submissive to refusal. When he had a long\njourney before him, if anyone offered him a \"lift\" in a cart or wagon, he\ngladly accepted it; if not, he was quite contented. He seldom refused a\nmeal when travelling, and would ask for something to eat at any house upon\nthe road, if necessary. At home he generally washed and mended his own\nclothes, and when he was superior would allow no one to perform menial\noffices for him. In dress he dreaded overnicety, and would as gladly wear a\ncast-off tartan as anything else, if it did not tend to throw discredit\nupon his order. For several years he wore an old mantle belonging to a\nreligious who had died, and only left it off at the desire of the\nprovincial. This was by no means his natural bent. Those who knew him as a\nyoung man say that he would hunt through the hosiers' shops in a dozen\nstreets in London to find articles that could satisfy his fastidious taste.\nBut, to return to the pleasure which his presence in a community always\ngave:\n\n  \"His visits at home were like meteor flashes, bright and beautiful, and\n  always made us regret that we could not enjoy his edifying company for a\n  longer time. Those who are much away on the external duties of the order\n  find the rule a little severe when they return; to Father Ignatius it\n  seemed a small heaven of refreshing satisfaction. His coming home was\n  usually announced to the community a day or two before, and all were\n  promising themselves rare treats from his presence among them. It was\n  cheering to see the porter run in beaming with joy as he announced the\n  glad tidings, 'Father Ignatius is come!' The exuberance of his own\n  delight, as he greeted first one and then another of his companions,\n  added to our own joy. In fact the day Father Ignatius came home almost\n  became a holiday by custom. Those days were; and we feel inclined to tire\n  our readers by expatiating on them, as if writing brought them back.\n\n  \"Whenever he arrived at one of our houses, and had a day or two to stay,\n  it was usual for the younger religious, such as novices and students, to\n  go to him, one by one, for conference. He liked this very much, and would\n  write to higher superiors for permission to turn off at Broadway, for\n  instance, on his way to London, in order to make acquaintance with the\n  young religious. His counsels had often a lasting effect; many who were\n  inclined to leave the life they had chosen remained steadfast after a\n  conference with him. He did not give commonplace solutions to\n  difficulties, but he had some peculiar phrase, some quaint axiom, some\n  droll piece of spirituality to apply to every little trouble that came\n  before him. He was specially happy in his fund of anecdote, and could\n  tell one, it was believed, on any subject that came before him. This\n  extraordinary gift of conversational power made the conferences\n  delightful. The novices, when they assembled for recreation, and gave\n  their opinions on F. Ignatius, whom many had spoken to for the first time\n  in their life, nearly all would conclude, 'If ever there was a saint,\n  he's one.'\n\n  \"It was amusing to observe how they prepared themselves for forming their\n  opinion. They all heard of his being a great saint, and some fancied he\n  would eat nothing at all for one day, and might attempt a little\n  vegetables on the next. One novice, in particular, had made up his mind\n  to this, and to his great surprise he saw Father Ignatius eat an extra\n  good breakfast; and when about to settle into a rash judgment, he saw the\n  old man preparing to walk seven miles to a railway station on the\n  strength of his meal. Another novice thought such a saint would never\n  laugh or make anyone else laugh; to his agreeable disappointment, he\n  found that Father Ignatius brought more cheerfulness into the recreation\n  than had been there for some time.\n{184}\n  We gathered around him, by a kind of instinct, and so entertaining was he\n  that one felt it a mortification to be called away from the recreation\n  room while Father Ignatius was in it. He used to recount with peculiar\n  grace and fascinating wit scenes he went through in his life. There is\n  scarcely an anecdote in this book we have not heard him relate. He was\n  most ingenuous. Ask him what question you pleased, he would answer it if\n  he knew it. In relating an anecdote he often spoke in five or six\n  different tones of voices; he imitated the manner and action of those he\n  knew to such perfection that laughter had to pass into admiration. He\n  seldom laughed outright, and even if he did he would very soon stop. If\n  he came across a number of Punch, he ran over some of the sketches at\n  once and then he would be observed to stop, laugh, and lay it down at\n  once as if to deny himself further enjoyment. It is needless to say there\n  was nothing rollicking or off-handed in his wit--never; it was subdued,\n  sweet, delicate, and lively. ... In fact, a recreation presided over by\n  Father Ignatius was the most innocent and gladsome one could imagine.\n\n  \"In one thing Father Ignatius did not go against anticipation, he was\n  most exact in the observance of our rules. He would always be the first\n  in for midnight office. Many a time the younger portion of the community\n  used to make arrangements over night to be in before him, but it was no\n  use. Once, indeed, a student arrived in choir before him, and Father\n  Ignatius appeared so crestfallen at being beaten that the student would\n  never be in before him again, and would delay on the way if he thought\n  Father Ignatius had not yet passed. He seemed particularly happy when he\n  could light the lamps or gas for matins. He was child-like in his\n  obedience. He would not transgress the most trifling regulation. It was\n  usual with him to say, 'I cannot understand those persons who say, Oh! I\n  am all right if I get to purgatory. We should be more generous with\n  Almighty God. I don't intend to go to purgatory, and if I do I must know\n  what for.' 'But, Father Ignatius,' a father would say, 'we fall into so\n  many imperfections that it seems presumptuous to attempt to escape scot\n  free.' 'Well,' he would reply, 'nothing can send us to purgatory but a\n  wilful, venial sin, and may the Lord preserve us from such a thing as\n  that; a religious ought to die before being guilty of the least wilful\n  fault.'\"\n\nIn the year 1850, Father Ignatius made the resolution of never being idle a\nmoment, and carried it out to the end of his life. Bergamo's Pensieri ed\nAffetti he translated in railway stations while waiting for trains, before\nand after dinner, and in intervals between confessions. Of letter-writing\nhe made a kind of duty, and on one occasion he wrote seventy-eight in the\ncourse of two free days. Not mere notes, either, were his letters, but\nepistles full of thought and sympathy for his correspondent.\n\n  \"His days were indeed full days, and he scarcely ever went to bed until\n  he had shaken himself out of nodding asleep over his table three or four\n  times. No one ever heard him say that he was tired and required rest;\n  rest he never had, except on his hard bed or in his quiet grave. If any\n  man ever ate his bread in the sweat of his brow, it was Father Ignatius\n  of St. Paul, the ever-toiling passionist.\"\n\nIllness, unless it kept him in his bed, never interfered with the\nperformance of his duties. When superior, he used his power to secure the\nhardest work for himself. During the time of his rectorship in Sutton, he\nwould preach and sing mass after hearing confessions all the morning;\nattend sick calls, preach in the evening at some distant parish, come home\nperhaps at eleven o'clock, say his office, and be the first to come to\nmatins at two o'clock. The Father Provincial found him so ingenious in\neluding privileges that he placed him under obedience in matters of health\nto one of the priests of his community, whom he strictly obeyed ever after.\n\nOnce a cramp or some accident had made him fall into a ditch where he got\ndrenched and covered with mud. On returning from the sick call which he was\nattending, he found a friend at the house, who sympathized with his\nespecial interests. Down he sat for a good talk upon the conversion of\nEngland, and at the end of two hours was frightened off by one of the\nreligious to change his clothes.\n\nWhen giving a retreat somewhere in midwinter, the shameful carelessness of\nhis entertainers allowed him to sleep in a room where there was neither bed\nnor fire, and where the snow drifted in under the door. In the morning it\noccurred to some one that perhaps Father Ignatius had occupied this\napartment.\n{185}\n\"A person ran down to see, and there was the old saint amusing himself by\ngathering up the snow that came into his room, and making little balls of\nit for kitten to run after. The kitten and himself seem to have become\nfriends by having slept together in his rug the night before, and both were\ndisappointed by the intrusion of the wandering visitor.\"\n\nBut though the good passionist was utterly forgetful of his \"own rights,\"\nas the saying goes, he well knew how to administer a rebuke if justice\ndemanded it:\n\n  \"Once he was fiercely abused when begging, and as the reviler came to a\n  full stop in his froward speech, Father Ignatius quietly retorted: 'Well,\n  as you have been so generous to me personally, perhaps you would be so\n  kind as to give me something now for my community.' This had a remarkable\n  effect. It procured him a handsome offering then, as well as many others\n  ever since.\"\n\nOn another occasion his knock was answered by a very superb footman. Father\nIgnatius gave his errand and religious name, with a request to see the lady\nor gentleman of the house. The servant returned in a moment with the\ninformation that the gentleman was out and the lady engaged and also unable\nto help him. \"Perhaps she is not aware that I am the Honorable Mr.\nSpencer,\" said the mendicant. Mercury bowed courteously and retired. In a\nminute or two came a rustling of silks and the sound of quick steps\ntripping down stairs. The lady entered with blush and courtesy and apology.\nShe had not known that it was he, and there were so many impostors. \"But\nwhat will you take, my dear sir?\" she exclaimed, ringing the bell, before\nhe could accept or decline the proposal. Father Ignatius said that he did\nnot stand in need of anything to eat, and that he never took wine; but that\nhe was in need of money for a good purpose, and would be glad to accept\nanything that she could give him of that kind. The lady instantly handed\nhim a five-pound note, with many regrets that she could not make it more.\nHe took the note, and, folding it carefully away in his pocket, made his\nacknowledgments after this fashion: \"Now, I am very sorry to have to tell\nyou that the alms you have given me will do you very little good. If I had\nnot been born of a noble family, you would have turned me away with\ncoldness and contempt. I take the money because it will be as useful to me\nas if it were given from a good motive; but I would advise you for the\nfuture, if you have any regard for your soul, to let the love of God, and\nnot human respect, prompt your almsgiving.\" Then taking his hat, he bade\nhis amazed benefactress good morning, and left her to meditate upon purity\nof intention.\n\nNotwithstanding his fortitude and independence of spirit, we may gather\nfrom the following extract from his letters that begging cost him some\neffort:\n\n  \"My present life is pleasant when money comes kindly; but when I get\n  refused or walk a long way and find everyone out, it is a bit mortifying.\n  That is best gain for me I suppose, though not what I am travelling for.\n  ... I should not have had the time this morning to write to you had it\n  not been for a disappointment in meeting a young man, who was to have\n  been my begging guide for part of the day; and so I had to come home and\n  stay until it is time to go and try my fortune in the enormous\n  market-house, where there are innumerable stalls with poultry, eggs,\n  fruit, meat, etc., kept in great part by Irishmen and women, on whom I\n  have to-day presently to go and dance attendance, as this is the great\n  market-day. I feel when going out on a job like this, as a poor child\n  going in a bathing machine to be dipped in the sea, _frissonnant_;\n  but the Irish are so good-natured and generous that they generally make\n  the work among them full of pleasure when once I am in it.\"\n\nThese expeditions extended not only through Great Britain, but even to the\nContinent sometimes. As he was passing through Cologne one day, he met his\nbrother Frederick, then Earl Spencer. At first his lordship looked\nwonderingly at him, and then, recognizing his features, exclaimed: \"Hilloa,\nGeorge, what are you doing here?\" \"Begging,\" was the prompt reply, and then\nthe two fell into a friendly chat about old times.\n\n{186}\n\nStrangely enough, the only member of the Spencer family who ever treated\nFather Ignatius with the least harshness was this favorite brother, who, on\nsucceeding to the title, laid such conditions upon his visiting the family\nestate that priestly dignity forbade his going home. \"Twelve years have I\nbeen an exile from Althorp,\" he said in 1857. But in that same year the\nearl relented and invited his brother to make him a visit. The letter\njoyfully accepting this tardy invitation was read by Lord Spencer upon his\ndeath-bed. This bereavement was a grievous blow to Father Ignatius.\n\nIn 1862 he visited Althorp. The present earl carried out his father's good\nresolutions to the utmost, and even restored a part of the annuity which\nhad been diverted from Father Ignatius to other objects. Before leaving the\ncommunity for this visit the religious saw him looking for a lock for one\nof his bags, and asked why he was so very particular all at once. \"Why,\ndon't you know,\" said he, \"that the servant at the big house will open it,\nin order to put my shaving tackle, brush, and so forth, in their proper\nplaces? and I should not like to have a general stare at my beads, sandals,\nand habit.\" But fashions had changed at Althorp. When the company who had\nbeen invited, especially in his honor, went to dress for dinner, Father\nIgnatius remarked to the countess that his full dress would perhaps, not be\nquite in place at the table. \"On the contrary,\" she answered,\ngood-humoredly, \"all his old friends would be delighted to see a specimen\nof the fashions he had adopted since his old days of whist and repartee in\nthe same hall.\" The volunteers were entertained by the earl during his\nuncle's visit. The passionist appeared in full costume, and sat next Lord\nSpencer, whom nothing would satisfy but a speech from the old man's lips. A\nvery patriotic speech it was too, and greeted by a cheer that gave pleasure\nto both uncle and nephew.\n\nAnd so one of the crosses of his life was gently removed, leaving many\nothers, however, to be endured. For a heart so tender, a conscience so\nsensitive, a temperament so vivid and excitable as his, the world had many\ntrials. His simplicity was mistaken for egotism; his zeal looked to many\npersons like unbridled impetuosity; his broad sympathies again seemed like\nindifferentism, and even calumny dared to attack his spotless character.\n\nAll this he bore very patiently, but the suffering was often acute. A deep\nabstraction of manner would come over him at such times, making him quite\nunconscious of his own actions and of the impression they made upon those\naround him. One day when he was going through the streets of Rome with a\nbrother religious, they passed a fountain. \"He went over and put his hand\nso far into one of the jets that he squirted the water over a number of\npoor persons who were basking in in the sun a few steps beneath him. They\nmade a stir, and uttered a few oaths as the water kept dashing down on\nthem. The companion awoke Father Ignatius out of his reverie, and so\nunconscious did he seem of the disturbance he had unwittingly created, that\nhe passed on without alluding to it.\"\n\nBut whoever might blame Father Ignatius for his projects and his peculiar\npertinacity in carrying them into execution, one consoler never failed him.\nThe Holy Father was ever ready to speak with him of the conversion of\nEngland, merely requesting him to endeavor to interest persons to pray also\nfor all those separated from the faith in all countries. His Holiness has\ngranted an indulgence of three hundred days to any one who shall say a\ndevout prayer for the conversion of England. The preaching of Father\nIgnatius was peculiar to himself; he could not be said to possess the gifts\nof human eloquence in the highest degree, but there was something like\ninspiration in his most commonplace discourse.\n{187}\nHe put the point of his sermon clearly before his audience, and he proved\nit most admirably. His acquaintance with the Scriptures was something\nmarvellous; not only could he quote texts in support of doctrines, but be\napplied the facts of the sacred volume in such a happy why, with such a\nflood of new ideas, that one would imagine he lived in the midst of them,\nor had been told by the sacred writers what they were intended for. Besides\nthis, he brought a fund of illustrations to carry conviction through the\nmind. His illustrations were taken from every phase of life and every kind\nof employment; persons listening to him always found the peculiar gist of\nhis discourse carried into their very homestead; nay, the objections they\nthemselves were prepared to advance against it were answered before they\ncould have been thought out. To add to this, there was an earnestness in\nhis manner that made you see his whole soul, as it were, bent upon your\nspiritual good. His holiness of life, which report published before\nhim--and one look was enough to convince you of its being true--compelled\nyou to set a value on what he said far above the dicta of ordinary priests.\n\nHis style was formed on the gospel. He loved the parables and the similes\nof our Lord, and rightly judged that the style of his divine Master was the\nmost worthy of imitation. So far as the matter of his discourses was\nconcerned, he was inimitable; his manner was peculiar to himself, deeply\nearnest and touching. He abstained from the rousing, thundering style, and\nhis attempts that way to suit the taste and thus work upon the convictions\nof certain congregations, showed him that his forte did not lie there. The\nconsequence was, that when the words of what he jocosely termed a \"crack\"\npreacher would die with the sound of his own voice or the exclamations of\nthe multitude, Father Ignatius's words lived with their lives, and helped\nthem to bear trials that came thirty years after they had heard him. Toward\nthe end of his life he became rather tiresome to those who knew not his\nspirit; but it was the tiresomeness of St. John the Evangelist. We are told\nthat \"the disciple whom Jesus loved\" used to be carried in his old age\nbefore the people, and that his only sermon was \"My little children, love\none another.\" He preached no more and no less, but kept perpetually\nrepeating these few words. Father Ignatius, in like manner, was continually\nrepeating \"the conversion of England.\" No matter what the subject of his\nsermon was he brought this in. He told us often that it became a second\nnature with him; that he could not quit thinking or speaking of it even if\nhe tried, and believed he could speak for ten days consecutively on the\nconversion of England without having to repeat an idea.\n\n\"He got on very well in the missions: he took all the different parts as\nthey were assigned him; but he was more successful in the lectures than in\nthe great sermons of the evening. His confessional was always besieged with\npenitents, and he never spared himself.\"\n\nHis last mission was given in the beautiful little church of St. Patrick,\nCoatbridge (eight miles from Glasgow). Crowds came to hear the saintly old\nfather plead for the conversion of England and the sanctification of\nIreland. The first two days he heard confessions from six A.M. to eleven\nP.M., excepting the time needed for devotions and meals. On the third day\nhe remained in the confessional until after midnight. When he came into the\nhouse, his host said: \"I am afraid, Father Ignatius, you are overexerting\nyourself, and that you must feel tired and fatigued:' \"No, no,\" he answered\nwith a smile, \"I am not fatigued. There is no use in saying I am tired,\nfor, you know, I must be at the same work to-night in Leith.\" He was in the\nconfessional again at six o'clock in the morning, said mass at seven;\nbreakfasted at half-past eight, and left Coatbridge about nine o'clock.\n{188}\nFather O'Keefe remarked to him that he looked much better and younger in\nsecular dress than in his habit. This made him laugh heartily. \"When Father\nThomas Doyle,\" he replied, \"saw me in secular dress, he said, 'Father\nIgnatius, you look like a broken-down old gentleman.'\" And the frankness of\nthe observation seemed to amuse him immensely.\n\nThe rest is easily told. He reached Carstairs Junction at half-past ten,\nand, leaving his luggage with the station-master, walked toward Carstairs\nHouse, the residence of his friend and godson, Mr. Monteith. Half a mile\nfrom the entrance to the estate, the long avenue is crossed at right angles\nby a second, which leads to the grand entrance of the house. Father\nIgnatius had just passed the \"rectangle,\" when he turned off into a\nby-path. Then seeing he had lost his way, he asked a child which was the\nright road. He never spoke to mortal again. On a little corner in the\navenue, just within sight of the house, and about a hundred paces from the\ndoor, he fell suddenly and yielded up his spirit into the hands of his\nCreator. May we all die doing God's work, and as well prepared as Father\nIgnatius of St. Paul! \"It was God's will that angels instead of men should\nsurround his lonely bed of death.\" It was simply by an after-thought that\nhe had gone to Carstairs House to pass the time between the arrival and\ndeparture of two trains, and thus died at the threshold of an old friend's\ndoor, instead of in the station.\n\nVery tenderly did Mr. Monteith receive the weary burden that the grand old\nmissionary laid down at his gates. The remains lay in religious state at\nCarstairs House for the greater part of three days. Fathers came from\nvarious retreats to look once more upon his beloved face, never so noble as\nin its last repose; and looked with silent wonder on all that now remained\nof one whom the world was not worthy of possessing longer. Everyone, on\nhearing of his death, appeared to have lost a special friend; no one could\nlament, for they felt that he was happy; few could pray for him, because\nthey were more inclined to ask his intercession. The greatest respect and\nattention were shown by the railway officials all along the route, and\nspecial ordinances were made in deference to the respected burden that was\ncarried.\n\nLord Spencer's letter with regard to his uncle's death is so pleasing that\nwe transcribe it entire. He was in Denmark, and could not reach England for\nthe obsequies:\n\n     Denmark, Oct. 16th, 1864\n  Rev. Sir: I was much shocked to hear of the death of my excellent Uncle\n  George. I received the sad intelligence last Sunday, and subsequently\n  received the letter which you had the goodness to write to me. My absence\n  from England prevented my doing what I should have wished to have done,\n  to have attended to the grave the remains of my uncle, if it had been so\n  permitted by your order.\n\n  I assure you that, much as I may have differed from my uncle on points of\n  doctrine, no one could have admired more than I did the beautiful\n  simplicity, earnest religion, and faith of my uncle. For his God he\n  renounced all the pleasures of the world; his death, sad as it is to us,\n  was, as his life, apart from the world, but with God.\n\n  His family will respect his memory as much as I am sure you and the\n  brethren of his order do.\n\n  I should be much obliged to you if you let me know the particulars of the\n  last days of his life, and also where he is buried, as I should like to\n  place them among family records at Althorp.\n\n  I venture to trouble you with these questions, as I suppose you will be\n  able to furnish them better than anyone else.\n\n    Yours faithfully,\n      Spencer.\n\nThus in the end did Father Ignatius, in the simple pursuance of his duties,\npierce through the prejudices of caste and tradition, harder to penetrate\nin England than elsewhere.\n\nMr. Monteith has erected a cross on the corner of the avenue where his\nsaintly friend fell. It bears this inscription:\n\n  \"On this spot the Hon. and Rev. GEORGE SPENCER,\n    in religion, Father Ignatius of St. Paul,\n      Passionist, while in the midst of his labors\n        for the salvation or souls, and the\n          restoration of his countrymen to the\n            unity of the faith, was suddenly\n              called by his heavenly Master\n                to his eternal home.\n                  October 1st, 1864.\n                      R. I. P.\"\n\n--------\n\n{189}\n\n  From Chambers's Journal.\n\n  A Naturalist's Home.\n\n\nThere is no place like England for a rich man to live in exactly as he\npleases. It is the appropriate exercising-ground for the hobbies of all\nmankind. You may join an Agapemone, or you may live alone in dirt and\nsqualor, and call yourself a hermit. The whim of the late Charles Waterton,\nnaturalist, was a very innocent one, namely, to make his home a city of\nrefuge for all persecuted birds--a sanctuary inviolate from net and snare\nand gun; and he effected his humane purpose. An intimate associate and\nfervent admirer of his, one Dr. Richard Hobson, has given to the world\n[Footnote 44] an account of this ornithological asylum; and it is certainly\nvery curious. The name of the place was Walton Hall, near Wakefield; and it\nseems to have been peculiarly well adapted for the purpose to which it was\nput. It was situated on an island, approachable only by an iron\nfoot-bridge, and having no other dwellings in its immediate neighborhood.\nThe lake in which it stood gave the means of harboring waterfowl of all\nkinds, while the \"packing\" of carrion crows in the park exhibits a proof of\nthe protection afforded by even the mainland portion of the estate; it was\nsufficiently extensive to allow of portions being devoted to absolute\nseclusion, for those birds which are naturally disposed to avoid the haunts\nof man. \"Two thirds of the lake, with its adjacent wood and pasture land,\nwere kept free from all intrusion whatever for six successive months every\nyear; even visitors at the house, of whatever rank, being 'warned off'\nthose portions set apart for natural history purposes. Even the marsh\noccupied by the herons was forbidden ground throughout the whole\nbreeding-season, unless in case of accident to a young heron by falling\nfrom its nest; in which case aid was afforded with all the promptitude\nexhibited by the fire escape conductors for the safety of human life.\"\n\n    [Footnote 44: Charles Waterton: his Home, Habits, and Handiwork. By\n    Richard Hobson, M.D.]\n\nThe surroundings of the mansion itself were quaint and exceptional,\nexhibiting the eccentric character of their proprietor. Item, a magnificent\nsundial--constructed, however, by a common mason in the\nneighborhood--composed of twenty equilateral triangles, so disposed as to\nform a similar number of individual dials, ten of which, whenever the sun\nshone, and whatever its altitude, were faithful timekeepers. On these dials\nwere engraved the names of cities in all parts of the globe, placed in\naccordance with their different degrees of longitude, so that the solar\ntime of each could be simultaneously ascertained. Near this sundial was a\nsubterraneous passage leading to two boat-houses, entirely concealed under\nthe island, furnished with arched roofs lined with zinc-plate, and\narrangements for slinging the boats out of water when they required\npainting or repair. Four sycamores, with roosting branches for peahens, and\na fifth, whose decayed trunk was always occupied by jackdaws, screened the\nhouse from the north winds. Close to the cast-iron-bridge entrance was a\nruin, on the top of whose gable, at the foot of a stone-cross, twenty-four\nfeet above the lake, a wild duck built her nest, and hatched her young for\nyears. A great yew-fence enclosed this ruin on one side, so that within its\nbarrier birds might find a secure place for building their nests and\nincubation.\n{190}\nFor the special encouragement and protection of the starling and the\njackdaw, there was erected within this fence a thirteen feet high\nstone-and-mortar-built tower, pierced with about sixty resting-berths. To\neach berth there was an aperture of about five inches square. A few, near\nthe top, were set apart for the jackdaw and the white owl. The remaining\nnumber were each supplied at the entrance with a square loose stone, having\none of its inferior angles cut away, so that the starling could enter, but\nthe jackdaw and owl were excluded. The landlord of these convenient\ntenements only reserved to himself the privilege of inspection, which he\ncould always effect by removing the loose stone.\n\nThe lake had an artificial underground sluice, which issuing out at a\nlittle distance into sight, furnished the means of cultivating a knowledge\nof the mysterious habits of the water-rat; this stream then passed through\none of the loveliest grottoes in England. Near this place were two\npheasantries, the central portion of each consisting of a clump of\nyew-trees, while the whole mass was surrounded by an impenetrable holly\nfence; the stable-yard was not far off; and hence the squire had infinite\nopportunities of establishing the important fact, as he considered it, that\nthe game-cock always claps his wings and crows, whereas the cock-pheasant\nalways crows and claps his wings. Mr. Waterton's interest in natural\nhistory was, however, by no means confined to the animal creation. He\nconcerned himself greatly with the culture of trees (though by no means of\nland), and hailed any _lusus naturae_ that occurred in his grounds as\nother men welcomed the birth of a son and heir. Walton Hall had at one time\nits own corn-mill, and when that inconvenient necessity no longer existed,\nthe mill-stone was laid by in an orchard and forgotten. The diameter of\nthis circular stone measured five feet and a half, while its depth averaged\nseven inches throughout; its central hole had a diameter of eleven inches.\nBy mere accident, some bird or squirrel had dropped the fruit of the\nfilbert tree through this hole on to the earth, and in 1812 the seedling\nwas seen rising up through that unwonted channel. As its trunk gradually\ngrew through this aperture and increased, its power to raise the ponderous\nmass of stone was speculated upon by many. Would the filbert tree die in\nthe attempt? Would it burst the millstone? Or would it lift it? In the end,\nthe little filbert tree lifted the millstone, and in 1868 wore it like a\ncrinoline about its trunk, and Mr. Waterton used to sit upon it under the\nbranching shade. This extraordinary combination it was the great\nnaturalist's humor to liken to John Bull and the national debt.\n\nIn no tree-fancier's grounds was there ever one tenth of the hollow trunks\nwhich were to be found at Walton Hall; the fact being that the owner\nencouraged and fostered decay for the purposes of his birds' paradise.\nThese trees were protected by artificial roofs in order to keep their\nhollows dry, and fitted thus for the reception of any feathered couple\ninclined to marry and settle. Holes were also pierced in the stems, to\nafford ingress and egress; and one really would scarcely be surprised if\nthey had been furnished with bells for \"servants\" and \"visitors.\" In an ash\ntree trunk thus artificially prepared, and set apart for owls (the squire's\nfavorite bird), an ox-eyed titmouse took the liberty of nesting, hatching,\nand maturing her young. Mr. Waterton attached a door, hung on hinges, to\nexactly fit the opening in the trunk, having a hole in its inferior portion\nfor the passage of the titmouse. The squire would daily visit the his\nlittle tenant, and opening the door delicately draw his hand over the back\nof the sitting bird, as though to assure it of his protection. But\nunfortunately, after the bird had flown, one year, a squirrel took\npossession of this eligible tenement, and although every vestige of the\nlining of its nest was carefully removed, no titmouse or any other bird\never occupied it again.\n\n{191}\n\nIn May, 1862, the squire pointed out to the author no less than three\nbirds' nests in one cavity--a jackdaw's with five eggs; a barn-owl's with\nthree young ones, close to which lay several dead mice and a half grown\nrat, as in a larder; and, eighteen inches above the owl's nest, a\nredstart's, containing six eggs! Our author deduces from this circumstance,\nthat in an unreclaimed state birds, although of different species, are not\ndisposed to quarrel; and the fact that near this \"happy family\" a pair of\nwater-hens hatched their eggs in a perfectly exposed nest, under the very\neyes of two carrion crows who occupied the first floor of the same tree--an\nalder--without the least molestation, seems to confirm this view.\n\nIn this Garden of Eden, however, all sorts of anomalous things seem to have\nbeen done by birds. In a cleft branch of a fir tree, twenty-four feet from\nthe ground, a peahen built her nest, through which piece of ambition, since\nfalling is much easier to learn than flying, she lost all her young ones.\nIn the branch of an oak, twelve feet from the ground, a wild-duck nested\nand brought down all her brood in safety to their natural element. A pair\nof coots built their nest on the extreme end of a willow-branch closely\noverhanging the water; but the weight of the materials, and especially of\nthe birds themselves, depressed it so that their habitation rested on the\nvery surface of the water, and its contents rose and fell with every\nripple; and, finally, another pair of coots, who had built their house upon\nwhat they considered _terra firma_, found themselves altogether adrift\none stormy morning, and continued so, veering with the fickle breeze for\nmany days, until at last the eggs were hatched, and their young family\nbecame independent, and could shift for themselves. All these minutiae were\ncarefully watched by the squire. An excellent telescope enabled him to\nperceive from his drawing-room window the manoeuvres of both land and water\nfowls. \"You could carefully scrutinize their form, their color, their\nplumage, the color of their legs, the precise form and hue of their\nmandibles, and not unfrequently even the color of the iris of the eye: also\ntheir mode of walking, of swimming, and of resting. You could distinctly\nascertain the various kinds of food on which they lived and fed their\nyoung. .... You could see the herons, the water-hens, the coots, the\nEgyptian and the Canada geese, the carrion crows, the ringdoves\n(occasionally on their nests), the wild-duck, teal, and widgeon.\" No less\nthan eighty-nine descriptions of land-bird and thirty of water-fowl\nsojourned in the grounds or about the lake of Walton Hall. In winter, when\nthe lake was frozen, it was literally a fact that the ice could sometimes\nnot be discerned, it was so crowded by the thousands of water-fowl that\nhuddled together upon it without sound or motion.\n\nMr. Waterton, it may be easily imagined, was himself no sportsman; but it\nwas his custom to supply his own table on a fast-day (he was a Roman\nCatholic) with fish shot by himself with a bow and arrow. Otherwise, he\nmade war on no living creature, except the rat: the \"Hanoverian\" rat, as he\ndesignated him with bitterness: and even him he preferred to exile rather\nthan destroy. But having caught a fine specimen of the \"Hanoverian\" in a\n\"harmless trap,\" he carefully smeared him over with tar, and let him\ndepart. This astonished and highly scented animal immediately scoured all\nthe rat-passages, and thus impregnated them with the odor of all others\nmost offensive to his brethren, who fled by hundreds in the night across\nthe narrow portion of the lake, and were no more seen. The squire was\nindeed a most tolerant and tender-hearted man. He built a shelter upon a\ncertain part of the lake expressly for poor folks, who were permitted to\nfish whether for purposes of sale or for their own dinners; and\nnotwithstanding that it was his custom to dress like a miser and a\nscarecrow, and to live like an ascetic--sleeping upon bare boards with a\nhollowed piece of wood for a pillow, and fasting much longer than was good\nfor him--he was very charitable and open-handed to others.\n\n{192}\n\nIt must be confessed, however, we gather from this volume that the great\nnaturalist was, out of his profession, by no means a wise man, and\ncertainly not a witty one. He loved jokes of a schoolboy sort, and indulged\nin sarcasms more practical than theoretical. The two knockers of his\nfront-door were cast, from bell-metal, in the similitude of human faces,\nthe one representing mirth, and the other misery. The former was immovably\nfixed to the door, and seemed to grin with delight at your fruitless\nefforts to raise it; the latter appeared to suffer agonies from the blows\nyou inflicted on it. In the vestibule was a singularly conceived model of a\nnightmare, with a human face, grinning and showing the tusks of a wild\nboar, the hands of a man, Satanic horns, elephant's ears, bat's wings, one\ncloven foot, one eagle's talon, and with the tail of a serpent; beneath it\nwas the following motto:\n\n    \"Assidens praecordiis\n  Pavore soinnos auferam.\" [Footnote 45]\n\n    [Footnote 45: Sitting on the region of the heart,\n    I take away sleep by fear.]\n\nIt was his humor, more than once, when between seventy and eighty years of\nage, to welcome the author, when he came to dinner, by hiding on all-fours\nunder the hall-table, and pretending to be a doll. He made use of his\nwonderful taxidermic talents to represent many individuals who took a\nleading part in the Reformation by loathsome objects from the animal and\nvegetable creation, and completed the artistic group with a sprinkling of\n\"composite\" demons. He was seriously vexed at a stranger under his own\nroof, who had profanely designated his favorite (stuffed) Bahia toad as \"an\nugly brute.\" These and similar instances of bad taste we think Dr. Hobson\nmight have left unrecorded with advantage. Still, there was much to like as\nwell as to admire about the great naturalist. He could show good taste as\nwell as bad. No museum of natural history elsewhere could compare with the\nbeauty and finish of the specimens, prepared by the squire's own hand with\nwonderful skill and patience, which adorned the inside of Walton Hall. \"Not\neven _living_ nature,\" says our author, \"could surpass the\nrepresentations there displayed.\" In attitude, you had life itself; in\nplumage, the lustrous beauty that death could not dim; \"in anatomy, every\nlocal prominence, every depression, every curve, nay, the slightest\nelevation or depression of each feather.\" The great staircase glowed with\ntropic splendor. At the top of it was the veritable cayman mentioned in the\nWanderings, on which the squire mounted in Essequibo, and a huge snake with\nwhich he contended in single combat. Doubts have been thrown on both these\nfeats, but Dr. Hobson relates instances of presence of mind and courage\nshown by the squire in his own presence quite as marvellous as these.\nWishing to make experiment as to whether his Woorali poison, obtained in\n1812 from the Macoushi Indians, was more efficacious than the bite of the\nrattlesnake, he got an American showman to bring him twenty-four of these\ndangerous reptiles, and took them out of their cases, one by one, with his\nown hand, while the Yankee fled from the room in terror, accompanied by\nvery many members of the faculty, who had assembled to witness the\noperation. In his old age, he alone could be found to enter the cage of the\nBorneo orangoutang at the Zoological Gardens, in order minutely to inspect\nthe palm of its hand during life, and also the teeth. It was with\ndifficulty he obtained permission to run this hazard, the keepers insisting\nupon it that the beast would \"make very short work of him.\" However,\nnothing daunted, the squire entered the palisaded enclosure.\n{193}\n\"The meeting of these two celebrities was clearly a case of love at first\nsight, as the strangers embraced most affectionately, kissing one another\nmany times, to the great amusement of the spectators. The squire's\ninvestigations were freely permitted, and his fingers allowed to enter his\njaws; his apeship then claimed a similar privilege, which was as\ncourteously granted; after which the orang-outang began an elaborate\n_search_ of the squire's head.\"\n\nThe strength and activity of Waterton were equal to his physical courage,\nnotwithstanding that he was wont to indulge in venesection to a dangerous\nextent, always performing that operation himself, even to the subsequent\nbandaging. At eighty-one, the suppleness of his limbs was marvellous; and\nat seventy-seven years of age our author was witness to his scratching the\nback part of his head with the toe of his right foot! Death, however,\nclaimed his rights at last in the squire's eighty-third year.\n\nCharles Waterton lies buried in a secluded part of his own beautiful\ndomain, at the foot of a little cross, with this inscription, written by\nhimself:\n\n         Orate\n  Pro anima Caroll Waterton,\n        Viatoris:\n     Cujus jam fessa\n    Juxta hanc crucem\n   Hic sepelluntur ossa.\n\nEven those iron limbs of his, it seems, grew weary at last.\n\n\n------\n\n    Original.\n\n\n    My Tears in Sleep.\n\n\n \"And He said: Weep not; the maid is not dead, but sleepeth.\"\n\n\n    \"Whence come these tears upon thy face?\n  What sorrow craved these scalding drops of woe\n        In peaceful sleep?\n    Didst dream of pain or dire disgrace?\n  Sob not so bitterly. I fain would know\n        What made thee weep!\"\n\n    \"Not for the woes which life may bring--\n  The life, in sooth, that doth just now begin--\n        These tears were shed.\n    But memory hath a bitter sting,\n  And dreaming bade me mourn the time of sin\n        When I was dead.\"\n\n--------\n\n{194}\n\n\n    Translated from the French.\n\n    Robert; or, The Influence of a Good Mother.\n\n    Chapter X.\n\n\n  \"O Rome, Mistress of the world,\n  red with the blood or martyrs,\n  white with the innocence of virgins,\n  we salute and bless thee in all ages, and forever.\"\n\n\nThe first real stopping-place Robert made under the cloudless sky of Italy\nwas at Milan, and its magnificent cathedral was the first place visited.\nThis church, after St. Peter's at Rome, is the finest in Italy, and is\nbuilt of pure white marble. There are few Gothic edifices so rich in\nornament, or of so light and airy an appearance. His next visit was to one\nof the old Dominican convents, named Sainte Marie des Graces, where he saw\n\"The Last Supper\" of Leonardo da Vinci, one of the great Italian painters\nand the _prot\u00e9g\u00e9_ of Fran\u00e7ois I.\n\nThe ancient capital of Lombardy does not present a very agreeable\nappearance, notwithstanding its numerous palaces, which is owing to the\narrangement of the streets, which are so long and narrow that nothing shows\nits real magnificence, not even the cathedral. The memory of Eugene\nBeauharnais is always dear here, where as the delegate of Napoleon he\nexercised sovereign power, and Robert saw with pleasure that the glory and\nbenefits of the one and the wise conduct of the other were not effaced from\nthe hearts of the Milanese. From Milan he went to Parma, where he saw a\nnumber of choice paintings by Correggio, Lanfranc, and Mazzola, and at the\ncathedral the magnificent fresco of the Assumption; at the church of Saint\nSepulchre, the Madonna and Child. He also visited the Farnese gallery, and\nthe tomb of this family in the church of the Madonna Steceata. From Parma\nhe went to Genoa, surnamed the superb. This rich city is the rival of\nVenice, and is proud of her antiquities, and the power she has always held\non the seas. She has almost entire the schools of Michael Angelo and\nBernini, and has a prodigious number of paintings and sculptures. Thus was\nRobert obliged at each step to stop and pay his tribute of admiration to\nwhat be saw. And Genoa has produced so many distinguished artists that for\na long time science and art have flourished there and acquired a high\ndegree of renown. Robert passed three months of study there, which was\nlonger than he intended, as he was burning with a desire to get to Rome,\nfor it was there that he intended seriously to open his studies, but he\ncould not resist the charm which held him in first one, then another place.\nFrom Genoa he sailed for Leghorn, and from there to Florence, which all\ntravellers unite in considering one of the most beautiful of Italian\ncities. It is situated at the foot of the Apennines, and the number of its\ngardens and their beauty, its public squares, ornamented with fountains and\nstatues, the shores of the Arno, with their charming quays, and the\ngrandeur of the palaces, designed and embellished by Sanzio and Buonarroti,\nits smiling suburbs, and the brilliant titles of its citizens, combine to\nmake it a most attractive place. Its largest gallery was commenced by\nCardinal Leopold de Medicis, and is built in two parallel galleries, and at\ntheir end a third is placed, which stands on the right bank of the Arno.\nHere are classed in perfect order the master works of modern art.\n{195}\nIf the name of Medicis has odious remembrances in France since the massacre\nof Saint Bartholomew, it is not so in Florence or any part of Italy; on the\ncontrary, it recalls there all that is most dazzling and generous in\nliterature, art, and science. Talent always finds an asylum and a welcome\nin Florence, and Robert was favorably received by the persons to whom he\nhad been recommended by his master, who, more for his genuine affection for\nhim than for the honor of having such a pupil, had given him letters to men\nof high positions. What could be a more powerful stimulant for him than the\nflattering encouragement he received from persons of known taste and hearty\nappreciation? Believing that nothing that we wish to accomplish is\nimpossible, Robert, with increased passion for his art, studied the old\nmasters with determined energy, though never daring to hope he could\napproach their perfection. Mediocrity is always vain and boastful, while\ntrue merit is modest and mistrustful, and this was why Robert was ignorant\nof his wonderful talent. He left Florence with many regrets both as a man\nand an artist, but Rome was the crowning glory of his ambition, and he must\ngo on. In passing through the gates of the sacred city be felt an emotion\nthat it would be impossible to express; for the soul of the artist and the\nChristian were equally moved, and in his enthusiasm he cried with Tasso:\n\"It is not to thy proud columns, thy arches of triumph, or thy baths, that\nI come to render homage; it is to the blood of martyrs shed for Christ on\nthis consecrated ground!\" At last he was really in Rome, whose walls\nenclose so many scattered leaves of the history of all nations, and the\nvery name of which fills us with reverence. On the mutilated fragments here\nand there, and on the wrecks of past greatness, the artist deplored the too\nshort duration of all earthly things, but the Christian reads there a\nsalutary lesson which told of the early and of worldly joys. In this grand\nold city he settled himself and commenced to work, giving himself up with\nardor to composition as the highest and truest art. In the beginning his\nideas were not truly expressed, but still his pictures were full of talent.\nHe preferred working at home and did not often go to the academy, but was\naided in his studies by the advice of artists and connoisseurs. After a few\nyears he composed works of wonderful power, and his genius seemed to take\nevery turn; sometimes his conceptions were noble and sublime, then, again,\ndelicate and tender, every passion being rendered with fidelity. As he\nbecame conscious of his rapid progress, the more his desire to find his\nfather tormented him. It was not a sentiment of pride, still less of\nvengence, that made him wish it; it was the need he felt of a heart that\nresponded to his own. It was the voice of nature crying unto him, \"Thou\nhast a father; he lives, and thou dost not know him; search for him, and\nthrow at his feet thy love and talent; speak to him of thy mother! See the\ntask which is thine, now that thou art worthy of the name thou bearest.\"\nThe young painter was admitted into many distinguished houses, and learned\nof his father, but could obtain no information which would put him on his\ntrack; yet he buoyed himself up with the uncertain hope that he might meet\nhim in this city of repose and resignation. It is a place of sweet sojourn\nfor those whose fortunes are cast down, and a dear asylum for troubled\nsouls, the end of the artist's pilgrimage as well as that of the invalid,\nthe tourist, and the savant. There all misfortunes are respected and all\nsufferings are consoled; and it is possible that the Count de Verceuil had\nbeen overtaken by some of the sorrows from which no one in this world is\nexempt; and surely he could not flatter himself that he would pass through\nlife without the chastisement that falls on the heads of the guilty! God's\npatience is long-suffering, but sometimes his anger falls with a sudden\nblow on the hardened sinner, and makes him cry for pardon.\n{196}\nThe impressions made upon Robert in this city of majestic ruins and antique\nmonuments, and where the arts speak so noble a language, could not be other\nthan exalted and religious. Before so many wrecks the soul is predisposed\nto pity all things here below; the projects we nourish appear so puerile,\nwe conceive another glory and adore God and his imperishable glory. Faith\ngives to man a moment of calm in every trial, and opens to him the doors of\na blissful eternity. These stones cry aloud to all, \"Passing away!\" but it\nis in a consoling and solemn accent, and brings down all our pity upon the\nworldlings who have forgotten Jesus our divine Master, who said, \"Heaven\nand earth may pass away, but my words will never pass away.\" With the\nexactitude with which he always fulfilled his promises, he knew that the\ntime for his return to France was drawing near, and that there were two\npersons there who counted with sorrow the days which were passed far from\nhim. He was not ignorant of the fact that time hung heavily upon these poor\nold people, and that it was difficult for them to support the long hours.\nThe remembrance of these friends followed him everywhere; they were near\nhim in his excursions through Rome, at the Colosseum, at the Capitol; day\nand night he found them in his thoughts and his heart, and knew that they\nwere impatient for his return, and would amply repay him for the regrets he\nwould leave behind; and as he wished to visit Venice and remain there some\ntime, he bade farewell to the ancient city of the Senate of the Caesars,\nnow the residence of the Pope and the seat of the church militant. From\nthere he goes to Venice, the queen of the Adriatic. From a distance,\nresting tranquilly on the surface of the sea, it resembles a number of\nvessels with countless masts, but on a nearer approach the charm is broken,\nand it stands boldly above the waves, revealing its wonderful beauty to the\nastonished eye of the traveller. Formed of more than sixty small islands,\nVenice is interspersed with canals without number, the largest of which is\nin the form of an S, and divides the city into two nearly equal parts.\nEverything in it has an original character, and silence reigns supreme over\nthe city; no vehicles, and no pavements for them to rattle on, and the\npopulation, not being an industrious or commercial people, have nothing to\nmake a noise at. But the great charm to Robert was in the magnificent\npalaces, nearly all of which were built by the great artists of Italy; and\nthe churches, rich in pictures, frescoes, statues, and bas-reliefs,\ntogether with marble columns of rare workmanship. Before commencing his\nstudies he visited the principal buildings, the church of St. Mark, on the\nfront of which are four bronze horses, attributed to the celebrated\nsculptor Lysippus; then to the ancient palace of the doge, and to see the\nsubterranean vaults, which are separated from the palace by the Bridge of\nSighs, and then to the Arsenal, which occupies an island almost a league in\ncircumference. This edifice is a citadel surrounded by high ramparts, and\nguarding its entrance are two colossal antique lions brought from Athens\nand Corinth. After seeing the city Robert renewed his favorite occupations,\nand, as in Florence and Rome, was inspired by the models in the Venetian\ngalleries. Milan, Parma, Genoa, Florence, Rome, and Venice he had seen in\nturn, and they had each opened to him their treasures and their teachings.\nThere was not a master the secret of whose genius he had not sought to\ndiscover; there was not one of his works he had not studied in its minutest\ndetails. Thus the object of his journey was attained, and his talent was\nripened under the generous sun of Italy. He could now go home and\nconsecrate the knowledge he had obtained to the glory of his art. \"Only\nfourteen days,\" he said to himself, \"before I set out for France.\" But\n_the_ event of the year was coming on, the general confusion of which\ninspires the goddess Folly, and makes her ring her bells more noisily.\n{197}\nIt puts every one in a complete vertigo, in which they think of nothing but\ngiddy pleasure and dancing and feasting. There is not a village which does\nnot take part in the rejoicings of the carnival, and it was something so\nnew to Robert, that he could not return to Paris without seeing and taking\npart in it, an excusable curiosity in one of his age, and we will follow in\nthe train of this festive season, which animates everything.\n\n\n  Chapter XI.\n\n  \"What are misfortunes and despair?\"\n\n\nToward the end of the carnival license has no limit, and each one is\neagerly drinking the cup of pleasure and rushing thoughtlessly into all\nkinds of amusements. Yet there is in this _m\u00e9lange_ of ranks, manners,\nand customs something so fantastic and extraordinary that Robert,\nunaccustomed to scenes of this kind, is perfectly confounded. He is dragged\non by the popular current, which, in its course, made a thousand circuits,\nand carried him along, in spite of his wish to the contrary. He was,\nperhaps, the only person who was serious in the midst of all this\nnonsense--the only one who did not exchange a phrase or word with\nothers--the only one who did not reply to the provoking questions put him\nby the laughing crowd abandoned to the freest gayety.\n\nAs night came on, exhausted with fatigue, be returns to his hotel, and,\nhearing cries not far from him, started in the direction from whence they\ncame. The darkness was profound, and he could scarcely distinguish what\npassed him at any distance. But a few moments accustomed him to it, and,\nfollowing the cries, he found a woman struggling to release herself from a\nman who was trying to drag her toward a gondola he had near. He advanced to\ndefend her, when a fourth person appeared and struck the man with a\nponiard. He staggered and fell, uttering a horrible groan, and as Robert\nwent to his assistance, the man, and the woman he had avenged, disappeared,\nleaving him alone to help their victim. Seeing no one near, he carried the\nwounded man to the door of his hotel, and what was his surprise to find it\nwas Gustave de Vernanges, the son of his loved benefactress. Although he\nhad nothing but painful remembrances of this young man, he was not the less\nsorrowfully affected in seeing the end to which his wickedness had brought\nhim, nor less prodigal in his care of Gustave. The more he saw that his\nsoul was exposed to peril, the more he desired to save his body, that both\nmight at last be saved. But the days of the wicked are numbered, and God\nstrikes them down. Woe unto them then if they are unprepared for their\ndoom. Gustave sank rapidly, and the physician's art could not avail. Robert\nunceasingly prayed to God to give a few more days to this poor sinner, that\nhe might be reconciled to his Judge before appearing in his presence. He\nwept with anguish when he found the shades of death were fast drawing round\nhim. A deep-drawn sigh was heard in the room, and the unfortunate young man\nopened his eyes and looked round him. A second sigh, then a horrible groan,\nand thinking he was not recognized, he articulated in a feeble voice, \"Who\nare you? Where am I?\"\n\n\"Be tranquil,\" replied Robert sweetly, \"you are at the house of a friend.\nYou have been wounded, and, not knowing where you lived, I brought you\nhere. You must be perfectly calm and quiet, for your wound is dangerous. If\nyou have any messages to send your friends, I will faithfully execute\nthem.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" replied Gustave painfully, \"I feel that I am badly wounded, and\nwill, perhaps, die, and so young too. I have no parents, but had a number\nof friends, who shared my pleasures and excited me to do foolish things,\nbut where are they now? Oh! it is frightful to die when one is rich and has\nso much pleasure to look forward to.\n{198}\nMust I give up all these things, my titles, my wealth, and all, to go--\nwhere? I, the rich Gustave de Vernanges, must I die at twenty-seven, struck\nby the hand of a common man?\"\n\n\"You must not speak so,\" replied Robert. \"In God's hand is the life you so\nmuch regret to give up, and, if he wills it, you will be saved; his power\nand goodness are great, but you must submit yourself to his divine will,\nand repent in all sincerity of heart. You are not without sin, for we are\nall sinners; but ask God's pardon for them, and you will then be tranquil,\nand peace of mind is necessary to health of body.\"\n\n\"For what must I repent,\" said the troubled voice of the unhappy Gustave.\n\"What have I done? What are my faults? They are only what thousands of\nothers have done. I have amused myself, and laughed at the sorrows of my\nvictim. I gave them gold and rejoiced in their tears; passing my years in\nfeasts and follies, and never trying to dry the tears I caused. Oh!\" he\ncried in delirium, \"I see it now through the mists of death. My mother! oh!\nhow I treated her! The veil falls from my eyes! Remorse! remorse! I have\nsinned, and my mother that I did not love calls me now to repent. O God, my\nGod, pardon me!\" And in his fever and on his bed of sickness and pain he\ncalled upon his mother, whom he had killed by his wickedness, and upon God,\nwhom be had renounced all his life, to save him.\n\nThe physician came in at this moment, and, looking at him, shook his head\nsadly, saying to Robert that death was near, and a priest had better be\nsent for to prepare him for the last change. He soon arrived, but Gustave\nwas in a violent delirium, and could not understand his saintly\nexhortations.\n\n\"Pray the Lord,\" said the man of God to Robert, \"pray that he will give\nthis unfortunate young man enough consciousness that he may confess and\nreceive absolution; and may his example, my son, teach you to fly from the\nvain pleasures of this world and its impure passions.\"\n\nRobert then told him of the obligations he was under to the mother of\nGustave, and how well he had known her for two years, and how he had since\nbeen separated from her son.\n\n\"And see,\" replied the man of God, \"what would have been his end if God had\nnot made you an instrument of reconciliation between him and his Maker. He\nled you near your enemy just at the moment when death struck the hardened\nsinner, to make him repent. The designs of the Almighty are impenetrable,\nbut in their execution there is grace and pardon. Oh! let us pray, my son,\nand God will give both faith and hope, and will regenerate this poor heart,\ntortured by remorse.\"\n\nThe venerable priest and the young painter passed several hours in prayer,\nand the old man supplicated heaven with fervor for the conversion of one of\nhis brothers to Christ.\n\nToward morning Gustave became conscious, and the persuasive and eloquent\nwords of the priest moved the dying heart. He comprehended his sins, the\ngreatness of his faults, and wept bitterly for his errors, and repented for\nthe fatal passions that tempted him to commit so many crimes. He confessed,\nwith heart-broken repentance, the many griefs he had caused his mother, and\nthe name of Robert was spoken with hers, and his regrets at the sorrows he\nhad given him. But when he commenced to avow all his follies of debauchery\nand infamous seductions, vanquished by shame, and the frightful remembrance\nof the hateful past, he cried out: \"O God, do not pardon me, I am too\nguilty!\"\n\n\"What do you say, my son?\" said the priest? \"You are guilty, it is true,\nbut have confidence in God, and you will be pardoned. He has struck you\ndown, to draw you more truly to himself.\"\n\n{199}\n\nGustave listened attentively, and was much moved at the goodness of a God\njustly irritated against him, and he felt the deepest sorrow at having been\nfor so long an offender against his word; but his soul, full of the most\nbitter vices and most detestable wickedness, is now baptized in the waters\nof repentance. The body dies, but the soul lives; the Lord has ratified in\nheaven the absolution that his minister pronounced on earth. Gustave's\nstrength was fast failing, and he felt that he was dying. The recognition\nbetween Robert and himself was touching, and the priest wept with joy and\nregret, blessing the one who was to leave life, and also the one who\nremained, to practise on earth every Christian virtue.\n\n\"Do not let me die alone, kind father,\" said Gustave to the priest. \"I have\nlived so badly that I have need of your pious assistance to finish life\nmore worthily.\"\n\nThe end was almost come. The physician could not retract his fatal\nsentence, nor give any hope, for the wound was mortal. The blade of the\nponiard had penetrated near the heart, and it was a miracle that he had\nsurvived so long. He heard his sentence pronounced with resignation, and\naccepted death as a just expiation for his sins, praying God to make it\nsuch. He suffered some days longer, testifying by his patience and his\npious prayers the sincerity of his repentance, expiring with sentiments of\nburning contrition and sorrow for his sins on his lips. Robert was grieved\nto lose him so soon after his conversion and his return to virtue; and his\nsad and premature end was a grave warning of the result of worldly passions\nand giving way to vice, though Robert hardly needed such an example, his\nchaste and pure soul had always turned with horror and aversion from the\nlicentiousness which beats the imagination and sullies its purity. Yet he\nwas always on his guard, for be knew the feebleness of human nature and the\ndangers to which it is exposed, and the more he avoided the corrupting\nvices of the world, the better could he resist them, for no one is so brave\nin danger but that he may perish; and Gustave's death convinced him that\nChristianity is the only basis on which we can build immortal happiness, to\nwhich we all look forward after terrestrial joys lose their power of\nsatisfying the desire for happiness which agitates man from the cradle to\nthe grave, and which makes him attach such glorious hopes to religion, the\nonly vessel that is never wrecked and that takes us safely to the eternal\nkingdom of perfect peace.\n\nAfter having rendered the last sad duties to the unfortunate Gustave,\nRobert left Venice, but with very different feelings from those be promised\nhimself. He traversed rapidly the Venetian Lombardy kingdom, then Piedmont,\nand, stopping some days at Turin, went on to Susa at the foot of Mont\nCenis. There were two other travellers crossing this mountain at the same\ntime, a man of about sixty years of age, and a young woman, either his wife\nor daughter. Their carriage followed them at some distance, but from either\nfear or curiosity they preferred going on foot or on a mule. Robert had\nbowed respectfully and exchanged a few polite salutations with them, but\nafter that all effort to renew the conversation had been in vain, and he\nhad renounced the hope of making any further acquaintance with the\nstranger, whose face of manly and severe beauty, though expressive of much\nmental suffering, had not escaped the eye of the artist, habitually\naccustomed to read all the emotions on the face. His sad countenance moved\nRobert so much that he turned round several times, not simply from\ncompassion, but from a sentiment of irresistible and strange interest.\n\nA mysterious and sympathetic influence was felt by the two others, who had\ncertainly never seen him before; for the gentleman followed him with a\npleasure for which he could not account, and watched his light and easy\nstep, urging his mule on to keep near him, when the animal gives a sudden\nspring and throws him into a deep ravine.\n\n{200}\n\n  Chapter XII.\n\n  \"Extend to them the hand of pardon:\n  They have sinned, but heaven forgives!\"\n      Lamartine.\n\n\nOur young hero, wishing to have a view from the highest point of the\nmountain, was pushing on to reach the spot from where he thought it would\nbe most extensive. When he had almost attained it, his foot slipped and for\na moment he lost his balance, and it was this appearance of danger that\nkept the other traveller watching him, and led to his fall. But Robert was\nlight and active, and raised himself by holding on to the rugged sides of\nthe mountain and getting on a kind of plateau, when the cries, first of the\nman, then the lady, and then the guide attracted his attention and made him\nturn quickly. Then at great risk he leaned almost his whole body over the\nside of the precipice, and saw that imminent and terrible death menaced the\nman for whom his heart had conceived so much affection. The lady and the\nguide were both afraid to descend, for there was nothing to hold on to but\nsome loose stones projecting out of the earth. The gentleman's position is\nboth critical and perilous, but Robert descends cautiously to his side and\nassists him to climb up; and indeed it is almost a miracle that he is\nsaved; and with a face radiant with joy Robert receives the thanks of the\nlady and the traveller, who, remarking a medallion Robert always wore, and\nof which he had obtained glimpses in the vivacity of his movements, said to\nhim, in a trembling voice: \"Where did you get that medallion, speak\nquickly!\" And as if the reply he would receive was a sentence of life and\ndeath, he waited in horrible anxiety, as if his soul was suspended on the\nlips of Robert. Though surprised at this question, he was too polite not to\nanswer without hesitation when he saw the agitation of the stranger. \"This\nportrait,\" said he, \"comes from my mother; it represents--\" \"Oh!\npardon--the name of your mother?\" eagerly interrupted the stranger.\n\"Stephanie Dormeuil.\" \"But what was her other name?\" Robert hesitated a\nmoment, then replied, \"She was called Madame de Verceuil.\" At this answer a\ndazzling fire burned in the eyes of the stranger, and he made such a quick,\nimpetuous movement that the cord which held the medallion was broken, and\nit fell to the ground. Robert stooped to pick it up, and heard these words,\nwhich overwhelmed him with astonishment: \"O my God, the remorse I have\nsuffered for twenty-five years!\" and fainted, but the care of the lady and\nRobert soon brought back consciousness, and when he opened his eyes be\ncaught Robert in his arms, and cried, \"Oh! thou art my son, my own Robert!\nand I am thy father. Wilt thou pardon me, my son, my dear child, wilt thou\npardon me?\" \"What! you are my father!\" cried the artist, delirious with\njoy. \"If you are, I must press you to my heart, which has so long called\nfor you and needed you. I curse you?--for what? My saintly mother did not\nteach me this, but the contrary. O my God!\" he said on bended knee, \"you\nhave fulfilled my prayers, you have given me my father.\" It is in vain that\nwe can find words to express this touching scene. Robert was folded in his\nfather's arms, repeating in a tender voice, \"My father, my father!\" He\ncovered him with caresses and kisses, and calls his name with a joy so\nexpressive, and a love so profound, that the count wept bitterly, and\ncried, raising his eyes to heaven, \"O Stephanie, what noble vengeance thou\nhast given me!\" Then gazing on his son, he was filled with pride at seeing\nthe child whom he had lost when an infant, and found when a young man of\nsplendid genius and glorious intellect. He said to him, with some\nembarrassment but with a lively interest, \"My son, where is thy mother?\nWhat does she now?\"\n\n{201}\n\n\"Alas!\" said Robert, pointing to heaven, \"she is there! She sees us, and\nher noble soul rejoices in our happiness.\"\n\nThe count understood it, his head was cast down, overwhelmed by the\nbitterness of his remembrances and his remorse. Robert had seized his hand\nand was pressing it affectionately, when he took the young woman and\npresented her to Robert, saying: \"This is thy cousin, Julia de Moranges,\nwho has been to me the best and most indulgent of nieces. I know you will\nlove each other.\" They shook hands with frank cordiality, but here both\nfilled with emotion at this strange meeting, and as this was not a\nfavorable place for more extended explanations, and the guides were already\nimpatient of so long a delay, they concluded to go on, and God knows the\nmost tender sentiments filled Robert's mind. Filial love had ever been his\nfirst and strongest sentiment, and it burned in his heart with a passionate\nenergy that charmed the count, and made him stop each moment to embrace his\nson, who had been the constant object of his regrets, for whom he had wept\nso much, and whose loss was the cause of the sorrow which had brought on\npremature old age.\n\nArriving at the top of this mountain, which is more than 2000 feet above\nthe level of the sea, our travellers are on a plateau four leagues in\ncircumference and covered with green pasture that charms the eyes, and in\nthe middle of it was a large lake about thirty feet deep, filled with\nseveral varieties of fish.\n\nThe count was a man of extensive and varied information, and it was a\npleasure for Robert to hear him talk, so charming and attractive was his\nconversation; and questioned by his son, the count related many things\nconcerning Mont Cenis. \"There is a certain celebrity,\" said he, \"attached\nto the mountain we are crossing. Some authors pretend that Hannibal crossed\nhere to enter Italy, and it is certain that Augustus opened a route, that\nwas enlarged by Charlemagne. Thou hast before thee,\" added he, \"the still\nmore recent traces of the work that Napoleon commenced, and which is truly\nworthy of the great man who brought it thus far to perfection.\" It was not\nuntil they were descending the mountain that the count commenced to relate\nhis life to his son, which we already know from his mother, but we cannot\npass over in silence his poignant regrets at the loss of such saintly and\nsweet intercourse. When he looked at his son, left an orphan at twelve\nyears of age, with no resources but his perseverance and good conduct, and\nreflected that he had come out of obscurity and made friends and a name, he\nblessed the wife whom he had so cruelly injured and who had given him a\nson, the glory of his white hairs and the love of his old age. But his\nremorse for his treatment of his wife was nothing to the fear that his son\nwould refuse him his esteem and tenderness and would not consent to live\nwith him. But these dread thoughts could not remain long in his mind; the\nrespectful manner and caressing words of his son effaced them. The more he\nstudied the character of Robert the more he felt the need of his love and\nof pleasing him, and the stronger was his desire to win the heart on which\nhe set so high a price. To obtain this he gave him his entire confidence,\nand let him read his heart as he would an open book, and Robert saw the\nremorse his guilty conduct toward his mother had caused him. It was a\npainful avowal to make his son, but he had the courage; and the next day,\nafter Robert had related to him the principal events of his life, he drew\nhim to him, saying:\n\n\"I owe to thee, my child, a history of the years I have passed far from\nthee and thy mother, but it is not that I wish to make a parade of my\nregrets and my sufferings, but simply to tell thee in what way God called\nme to himself and to virtue.\"\n\n{202}\n\n\"My father,\" said Robert, \"if the recital gives you pain, if it recalls too\nvividly your sorrows, do not tell me, I pray you, for I would rather you\nshould chase away all sadness and smile yourself to life. I know I shall\nlove you, and I want you to forget what you have suffered. It is not for me\nto judge you, and believe me, that, no matter what you say, my respect and\nlove for you will always be the same.\"\n\nThe count took the hand of his son, but could not reply for some moments,\nthen commenced thus: \"If thy mother has not spoken to thee of my cruelty\nand injustice toward her, and, still more, if she has rather exculpated\nthan accused me to thee, I owe it to her memory to avow that I alone was\nthe guilty one, and that she was to me, to the last moment, a model of\ngoodness, patience, and gentleness. She was right to leave me, for I was\nthen so blinded by my passions that the threat which decided her to go I\nwould without doubt have executed, if she had not taken the desperate part\nwhich has turned so happily to thy advantage. I say it to my shame, I was\nbarbarous, wicked, and ungrateful to thy mother, and what is more frightful\nis that I was so with premeditation. Incapable of controlling my temper,\nand my pride wounded by the reproaches of my family, and by the railleries\nof the young fools I called my friends, I carried my treatment to blows and\ninsults to her who gave thee birth. I know I make thee shudder and fill\nthee with horror, but I have cruelly expiated these moments of passion, for\nat heart I loved thy mother, and, when I reflected, I cursed my feebleness\nand self-love. Unfortunately these moments were of short duration, and the\nworld and its attractions acted in a fatal manner on my heart, filled with\nthe deplorable maxims of a corrupt, irreligious, frivolous, and mocking\nsociety. What, then, could stop me in the mad career which would soon bring\nme to the abyss already yawning under my feet? Nothing, for I hardly\nbelieved there was a God, and had none of the faith which thy mother has\nplanted in thy heart. I was as blind and insensate as a drunken man, who\nknows neither where he is nor what he says. No curb could be put to my\npassions, for I was like the brute that obeys his instincts, only more\nmiserable, as I had the voice of conscience to enlighten me while he is\ndeprived of the soul, which is the divine essence. See, then, what I was\nwhen thy mother took thee far from me; and I was in a perfect transport of\nfury when on my return to the house I leaned from the servants that thy\nmother had gone, taking thee with her. At first, rage was the only passion\nthat possessed my soul, and it was perfectly incomprehensible to me that a\nbeing as gentle as thy mother had ever proved herself should have the\ncourage to take such a step; but maternal love was stronger than all things\nelse to her, and when I found thy empty cradle, I wept and tore my hair in\ndespair. It was the first time I had really felt as if I was a father; for\nwhen I kissed thy fresh young face, it was more from pride than from\npaternal tenderness; but when I knew thou wert gone forever, my heart was\nbroken. I awoke at once, under the shock of this most agonizing, torturing\nsorrow, and from that moment my life of expiation commenced. But I do not\ndate my return to God from that day, for it was a long time before my lips\nuttered a prayer. I suffered more than tongue can tell in the delirious\nlife into which I was plunged, and which soon destroyed my health and left\nme with a sickness which was long and dangerous. In my hours of suffering\nand anguish you were always present to my mind, and I knew no one to whom I\ncould confide my sorrow, and feared to die without seeing you. Days\nsucceeded each other, until they became years; my despair increased and my\nloneliness was horrible.\n{203}\nThe sign of a reprobate was marked like the curse of Cain upon my brow, and\nI was consuming myself in useless regrets, without having recourse to the\nlove and compassion of God, when a providential accident brought near me\none of those angels of charity who consecrate their lives to the care of\nthe sick and sorrowing.\n\n\"A good sister of the order of St. Vincent de Paul came one day to excite\nmy interest in favor of the poor, and her angelic face and her tender and\npersuasive voice touched me deeply. I was strangely attracted to her, and\ncould not help contrasting her manner with the means used by women of the\nworld to obtain what they desire. It was with pleasure, I might even say\njoy, that I gave her my purse, and we became engaged in conversation. She\nhad read in my face the ravages of passion and the storms of the heart;\nand, as all sorrows were familiar to her, she easily guessed those of my\nsoul, and forced me by her winning manner to confess to her the cause of my\nsufferings. Then when she knew all, she spoke to me in a language so filled\nwith faith and charity that my frozen soul thawed under the warmth of her\nburning words. The name of God was so eloquent in her pure mouth that\nbefore she left me I pronounced it with faith and confidence. From this\nmoment I prayed, and the saintly woman came several times to finish her\nwork of grace. By her cares my body regained some strength, and my soul\nfelt all the hopes of a Christian, all the salutary truths of our sublime\nreligion. My repentance took the character of resignation, which gave some\ncalmness and tranquillity to my desolate days. I bade adieu to the world,\nputting far from me its perfidious and deceitful charms, which I had before\nso eagerly sought, and all the illusions which had appeared seductive and\nworthy of my homage were dispelled. The veil had fallen from my eyes, and I\nloved now what I had hated. Thy mother appeared to me with her virtues and\nher touching simplicity and her charming candor and purity, and, now that I\nwas in a state to appreciate her, I could behold her no more. At this time\nI lost my sister Helena, of whom thy mother has spoken to thee, and she\nleft a daughter, thy cousin Julia. I took her to my home and heart, but\nstill she did not console me for thy loss; for, good and amiable as she\nwas, she was not my son, and the lost happiness is what we always sigh for,\nand which can never be replaced. My niece married and soon became a widow,\nwhen she returned to me, and, finding all her efforts to diminish my\nsadness without effect, she proposed our traveling. We have been all over\nEurope, and everywhere I looked for you and enquired for you, for a secret\nvoice said to me always, 'Go on! go on! thou wilt find him.' I had already\nexplored Italy from one end to the other, had visited cold England, crossed\nthe German States, been through Spain and Portugal, when the fiery\ninquietude which kept me always moving made me turn my steps a second time\ntoward Italy. It was doubtless a presentiment, since it was on this earth,\na thousand times blessed, that I found thee--that we met! I feel that God\nas pardoned me, and my sorrows are at an end. Thou art the conciliating\nangel, the treasure and consolation and the last happiness of a penitent\nold man who has lost and suffered much. Oh! may thy love be the sign of the\nforgiveness thy mother has sent me, and a bond of peace and felicity. But,\"\nsaid the count, in a suppliant tone, in terminating this long and painful\nconfession, \"thou wilt not leave me, Robert? thou wilt live with me, my\nson? It would be too cruel to deprive me of thy presence, and, after having\nfound my earthly heaven, thou wilt not plunge me into the depths of hell;\nfor if I lose thy tenderness, I lose all.\"\n\n\"My father,\" replied Robert, \"I could not leave you. I am too happy to\npossess your love to deprive myself of so sweet a joy. God has reunited us,\nand we will never again separate!\"\n\n\n{204}\n\n\n  Chapter XIII.\n\n  \"Nothing can be dearer to a man\n  than a father he is proud of.\"\n\n\nSome days after this interview, Robert, the count, and Julia were\ntravelling toward l'Auvergne. If the dead could feel in their cold graves,\ncertainly Robert's mother would have felt a deep and holy joy in seeing her\nson and her husband kneeling on her tomb. But their eyes were not on the\ngrave, but raised toward heaven, and Robert saw the same vision which had\nappeared to him in his youth, and he cried out: \"I see it! O my father, I\nsee it! She blesses us.\"\n\nThe name of Dormeuil was effaced from the modest stone, and that of\nCountess de Verceuil substituted, to the great astonishment of the people\nof the surrounding country. Then the count visited the little house which\nhad fallen in ruins, and here Robert called up a thousand tender memories,\nand thanked God for the manifestation of his love in permitting him to find\nhis father. But it was not for the rank he would have in the world, nor for\nthe titles society would look upon with jealous eyes, nor for this\nwonderful elevation of his talent, which dazzled and made him happy. It was\nthe power which God had put into his hands, to enable him to do good to\nothers, and the knowledge of the future of repose and comfort he could\nensure to the two objects of his early affection, good Madame Gaudin and\nthe old soldier of the guard. It was of them that he thought when he said.\n\"I am rich.\" How he longed to see Paris, and to be folded again to the\nhearts of his friends, from whom he had so long been separated. His father,\nseeing his impatience, smiled at the projects he formed for them, but was\nnone the less anxious to know them and thank them for the cares they had\nbestowed on his son. At last they arrived, and when they reached the house\na cruel thought crossed Robert's mind, that they might be \"no more.\" His\nheart beat, and he scarcely dared to knock, but listened a moment, and--oh!\nwhat happiness--two well-known voices fell upon his ear. One said: \"Six\nmonths have passed since his last letter, and no news of our dear child.\nWhat can have happened him?\" \"You must have patience, good woman,\" said the\nother voice, \"he can't always find opportunities to write. I believe the\nreason he does not write is, that be intends to come some day soon.\" \"Ah! I\nknow he is not sick, and it is the faith of Cyprien says it. The Lord is\ntoo just to make so good a boy ill.\"\n\nCompletely reassured, Robert knocked and entered immediately. Two cries\ncame at the same time from two hearts that joy suffocated. Robert raised\nMadame Gaudin in his arms; her too sudden surprise had overwhelmed her with\nemotion, and Cyprien cried, \"It is you, it is you!\" wiping away a tear. \"I\nam happy, now, Mister Robert. I knew you would come back, but I have had a\ntime consoling this poor woman, who saw everything in blackness and\ndespair.\"\n\nRobert pressed the faithful soldier to his heart, then covered Madame\nGaudin with caresses, enquired for her health, and wished to know if either\nof them had suffered in any way since he left them. When the confusion of\nthis sudden meeting had subsided a little, both Cyprien and dame Gaudin\nperceived that Robert had no luggage. \"Where are your effects, my child?\"\nsaid the good woman. Robert smiled, and said he had left them at home, \"How\nat home? And do you not intend to remain with us, my dear Robert?\" \"Yes, of\ncourse, but we will live in another house, and I will take you to your new\nhome.\" She opened her astonished eyes, and followed Robert, who descended\nthe steps, and, calling a carriage, made his friends get in, and directed\nthe coachman to drive them all to No. 110, rue Grenelle, Saint Germain.\n\n{205}\n\nOn the way Madame Gaudin tried to draw from him his secret, but all\nattempts were useless, for he took delight now in teasing her. Stopping in\nfront of the hotel where his father was, he took the arm of his worthy\nbenefactress and conducted her to the saloon where the Count de Verceuil\nwaited. \"Father,\" said he, as he entered, \"here is the excellent woman who\nhas taken the place of a mother to me, and who for my sake generously\nsacrificed all she had.\" \"Madam,\" said the count with amiable courtesy,\n\"excuse me that I did not come for you myself, as it was my duty to do, but\nI wished to allow Robert the pleasure of surprising you. You are at home\nhere, madam, in the house of my son, and I hope you will always be his\nfriend.\" \"Your son?\" she said, half stupefied. \"Who, then, is your son? Ah!\nI know,\" she cried with lively anguish, a secret sentiment of jealousy\ncoming into her heart; \"it is Robert. God is just, and has given him this\nrecompense. What I have done for your son, monsieur, anyone else would have\ndone in my place, for no one could have helped loving so good and generous\na child. But I do not merit so much kindness at your hands. I am only a\npoor creature, without either education or manners, so how can I live with\nyou?\" \"These things are of little value in my eyes, my dear madam. What I\nhonor in you, and what all honest and virtuous people would consider above\neverything else, is the nobleness of your soul and the virtues of which you\nhave given so bright an example. You will give me great pain if you refuse\nan offer that comes from the heart, and that I make you in my name and the\nname of my son. We will live and enjoy together the favors God has been\npleased to bestow upon us. And you will be ours, my brave Cyprien\" said the\ncount, taking the hand of the old soldier. \"I know you love my son, and\nthis entitles you to my friendship. Will you accept it?\" \"Oh! yes; with all\nmy heart,\" replied Cyprien, looking affectionately at Robert, who was\nwatching silently the interview between his father and his friends.\n\nHis father was kind and good, and often he blessed the day they met.\nNothing can be dearer to a man's heart than a father he is proud of. Robert\nhad experienced this feeling for his mother, whom he venerated almost as\nmuch as God. She was to him the type of every virtue. His misfortunes and\naffliction had entirely changed his father, and to the vain pleasures of\nthe world had succeeded the practices of religion and the duties of the\nChristian. All the virtues he admired in his mother he found in the\npaternal heart, tried in the crucible of adversity. In a word, the father\nwas worthy of the son as the son was worthy of the father, and a sweet\nharmony reigned in this family, bound to each other by the tenderest ties.\nAll rank was effaced, and the noble count, the heir of a great name and an\nimmense fortune, and the old woman and the old soldier lived with no other\ndesire than to make each other happy. Robert did not give up his\nprofession, and his name is now illustrious in the world of art! He married\nhis cousin Julia de Moranges, and crowned with joy and happiness the last\ndays of his father, who now sleeps the sleep of the just. Thus ends our\nstory. We have tried to trace the struggling life of Robert, and its\nglorious recompense. We have tried faithfully to reproduce his touching\nvirtues and the noble and beautiful sentiments that adorned his soul, and\nalso to inspire our young readers with a desire to imitate him. We have\ntried to show the efficacious and all-powerful help of religion in\nnourishing the teachings of a Christian mother, and that a good and\npersevering child can overcome all obstacles. Have we, then, succeeded and\nobtained your approbation? If there are among you, my dear readers, some\npoor little orphans like Robert, call down the blessings of your mother\nupon your heads, and, though she lives in heaven, she will watch over you\nwith tender solicitude, and the God of the motherless will be your sure\nrefuge and your final Saviour.\n{206}\nThink not that you can live without constant prayer to God, the author of\nyour beings and the giver of every good and perfect gift. Put your whole\ntrust and confidence in him and his mercy, and whether obscurity or fame be\nyours, always remember that he knows best, and places you in whatever\nposition best suits you. Should he give you the transcendent gift of\ngenius, you must struggle hard to obtain its rewards, and, whatsoever you\ndo, remember to do it for the honor and glory of God and the good of\nmankind; and then, when you are called to leave this life for that better\nworld where all cares cease, you can welcome death, which will open for you\nthe gate of life, and exchange with joy the changing scenes of earth for\nthe unfading bliss of heaven!\n\n\n------\n\n    Original.\n\n    Confiteor.\n\n    \"Confess therefore your sins\n    one to another.\"--St. James v. 16.\n\n    By Richard Storrs Willis.\n\n\n  When to God alone I make confession,\n    Why, my shameful heart! so light thy task?\n  While so deep the shame and the emotion\n    When to man thou must thy guilt unmask?\n\n  Only here we find the true abasement:\n    More than God we dread the eye of man!\n  Hence the justice that, by heaven's ordaining,\n    Human guilt a human eye should scan!\n\n  Ah! how oft, by some great sin o'ermastered,\n    Hearts in secret pray, but all in vain!\n  Not till human ear has heard the story\n    Peace descends and Guilt can smile again!\n\n  Thus must sin requite both earth and heaven;\n    Since 'gainst man the wrong as well as God!\n  Just amends are due the Heavenly Father--\n    Due my brother of this earthly sod!\n\n  Ye who fain would find a peace that's vanished.\n    Heaven demands no long, desponding search!\n  Seek the kind, attentive ear of Jesus,\n    Seek his listening human ear--the Church!\n\n------\n\n{207}\n\n  From The Contemporary Review.\n\n  Mediaeval Universities. [Footnote 46]\n\n    [Footnote 46: This article is not written by a Catholic, which the\n    reader will easily see from some of its expressions. With these\n    exceptions the article is very interesting.--C. W.]\n\n\nUniversities are not mentioned in mediaeval documents before the beginning\nof the thirteenth century. At that period, however, they stand before the\neyes of the historian already fully developed, and in the very prime of\nvigorous manhood, without offering any clue as to their birth and lineage,\nexcept such as they bear visibly imprinted in their very nature. This\nremark holds good only for the most ancient universities--_Paris,\nOxford_, and _Bologna_--all the other institutions of the kind\nbeing easily traced to their foundation, and recognized as copies of the\nancient types. There are, indeed, documents extant which refer the\nfoundation of the three mentioned universities to a very respectable\nantiquity, and according to which Paris claims Charlemagne as its founder;\nOxford, Alfred the Great; Bologna, the Emperor Theodosius II.; and Naples,\nthe Emperor Augustus. But these documents are each and all the fabrications\nof later times, which, agreeably to mediaeval disregard of critical\ninvestigation, could easily spring up and find credence, because they\nsupplied by fables what could not be gained by historic evidence, the halo\nof remote antiquity. Setting, therefore, apart these spurious credentials,\nwe prefer to trace the lineage of our venerable institutions as near as\npossible to their source by reading and interpreting the record they bear\nof themselves.\n\nTwice during the middle ages the church saved literature from utter ruin:\nfirst when barbarous nations overflooded Europe in the great migration, and\na second time during the confusion which arose upon the death of\nCharlemagne. Science was indeed the _enfant trouv\u00e9_, to take care of\nwhich there was no one in the wide world but the church alone. Under its\nfostering care literature and learning started on a new career in the\nasylums erected in the schools of abbeys, monasteries, and convents--a\ncareer, however, characterized by a peculiar timidity, which shrank from a\ncritical analysis of sacred and profane literature alike--abhorring the\nlatter for its savor of heathenism, revering the former with too much awe\nto subject it to dissecting criticism. In this narrowness of space, this\ntimidity of development, the youthful plant might have been stunted in its\ngrowth, but for the breath of life which the genius of human civilization\nimparted to its feeble offshoot to rear it to the full vigor of manhood.\nThis inspiration again proceeded from the church, which made the very\nmarrow of her substance over to the school, that it might feed on it and\nwax strong, so as to become the bearer of mediaeval civilization, the\nleader of society in science and education. At a period when the church had\ngiven form to its doctrines by investing them in a dogmatic garb, so as to\nremove them from beneath the ruder or careless touch of experimenting\nheresy, faith was satisfied, and in its satisfaction felt secure from any\nperilous raid on its domain. Hence, it became less timid in facing the\ndissecting-knife of the philosopher; nay, on the contrary, it soon detected\nthe new additional strength it might derive from the disquisitions of\nphilosophical science; and thus it came to pass that the dogma of the\nchurch left the bosom of the mother that gave it birth, and placed itself\nunder the guardianship of the school.\n{208}\nThe result of this transmigration is but too evident. First of all, the\ninterest of philosophical inquiry was duly regarded by obtaining by the\nside of faith its share in the cultivation of the human mind, and, on the\nother hand, the dogma or symbol of faith, which hitherto had evaded the\ngrasp of human intellect, and therefore assumed the position of a power\nwhich, though not hostile, was yet not friendly to the aspirations of the\nhuman mind, now turned its most intimate and faithful ally. The motto of\nthis alliance between dogma and philosophy--the well-known \"Credo ut\nintelligam\"--is the key-note of scholasticism. Thus, then, theology became\nthe science of the school, when the dogma was completely confirmed and\nestablished, and the school sufficiently developed to receive it within its\nprecincts; and this alliance, which produced a Christian philosophy in\nscholasticism, was the principal agent also in bringing about a new phase\nof the mediaeval school in the _Studium Generale_ or\n_University_.\n\nFrom the earliest centuries it had been a practice with the Christian\nchurch in newly converted countries to erect schools by the side of\ncathedrals. Where our Lord had his temple, science had a chapel close by.\nThese cathedral schools became in the course of time less exclusively\nclerical, at the same rate as the chapters of cathedrals turned more\nsecular in their tendencies. In consequence of this metamorphosis the\ncathedral school attracted a large number of secular students, while the\nmonastic schools more properly limited themselves to the education of the\nclerical order. But for all that the cathedral school bore a decidedly\nclerical character. The bishop continued to be the head of the schools in\nhis diocese, and through his chancellor _(cancellarius)_ exercised\nover the students the same authority as over all others that stood under\nepiscopal jurisdiction. Very often we meet with several or many schools\nconnected with different churches of one and the same diocese. In this case\neach school had its own \"rector,\" but all of them were subject to the\nsupervision and jurisdiction of the bishop, or his representative the\nchancellor. Though they followed their literary and educational pursuits\neach within its own walls and independently of the others, yet on certain\noccasions they were reminded of their consanguinity of birth and their\nrelationship to the church, when on festive celebrations, such as the feast\nof the patron saint of the diocese, rectors, teachers, and students of the\ndifferent schools rallied round the banner of their diocesan, and appeared\nas one body under their common head, the bishop. Thus we see the cathedral\nschools brought nearer to each other by two agencies of a uniting\ntendency--the jurisdiction of the bishop and their relation to the church.\nThat which had grown spontaneously out of the circumstances of the time\nawaited only the \"fiat\" of the mighty to accomplish its metamorphosis, and\nassume its final shape in the _Studium Generale_. The church required\nan able expositor of her dogmas, a subtle defender of her canonical\npresumptions, and both she found in the school. Popes then granted\nprivileges and immunities to the cathedral and monastic schools of certain\ncities, and these schools, following the impulse and tendencies of the age,\nunited in corporations and became universities. Under the circumstances it\nmust appear a vain attempt to search for documentary evidence as to the\nfirst foundation of the three ancient universities. We can only adduce\nfacts to show when and where such establishments are first mentioned, and\nyet we must not draw the conclusion that universities are contemporary with\nthose documents which first bear direct testimony to their existence. For\nwe all know that in primitive ages, when new institutions are gradually\nbeing developed, centuries may pass before the new-born child of a new\ncivilization is christened, and receives that name which shall bear record\nof its existence to future generations.\n{209}\nAs far back as the eleventh century, we find at _Paris_ schools\nconnected with the churches of _Notre Dame, St. Genevi\u00e8ve, St.\nVictor,_ and _Petit Pont_, but it appears doubtful whether they had\nbeen united in a _Studium Generale_ before the end of the twelfth\ncentury. The first direct mention of a \"_university_\" at Paris is made\nin a document of the year 1209. _Oxford_ may, in point of antiquity,\nclaim equality at least with Paris; and the assumption that Alfred the\nGreat planted there, as elsewhere, educational establishments is certainly\nnot without some plausibility. Concerning the existence of monastic schools\nin that town previously to the twelfth century, not a doubt can be\nentertained; but to refer the foundation of Oxford University to the times\nof Alfred the Great is simply an anachronism. Oxford, quite as much as\nParis, or rather more so, bears in the rudimentary elements of its\nconstitution the unmistakable traces of its origin in the cathedral and\nmonastic schools. _Bologna_ was one of the most ancient law schools in\nItaly. Roman law had never become quite extinct in that country; and in the\ngreat struggles between spiritual and temporal power, ever and again\nrenewed since the eleventh century, it was ransacked with great eagerness\nfor the purpose of propping up the claims of either pope or emperor, as the\ncase might be. The Italian law schools, therefore, enjoyed the patronage of\npowers spiritual and temporal, which raised them to the summit of fame and\nprosperity, and then again dragged them to the very verge of ruin by\ninvolving them in the struggles and consequent miseries of the two parties.\nThe Emperor Frederick Barbarossa well understood how to appreciate the\nvantage-ground which presented itself in the codices of the ancients for\nthe support of imperial presumptions, and consequently he expressed his\nfavor and good-will to the lawyers of Italy by confirming the ancient law\nschool at Bologna--a confirmation which was combined with extraordinary\nprivileges to professors and students sojourning in that town, or engaged\non their journey there or back. Bologna may, therefore, be regarded as a\nprivileged school or university since the year 1158, without, however,\nbeing such in the later acceptation of the term, that is, endowed with the\nfour faculties. Concerning this distinction we shall have to advance a few\nremarks hereafter.\n\nThe term university (universitas), in its ancient signification, denotes\nsimply a community, and may, therefore, be applied to the commune of a\ncity. Hence, the distinction will be evident between the expression\n\"_Universitas Bolognae_\" and \"_Universitas Studii\nBonnensis_\"--the commune of Bologna, and the community of the university\nof Bologna. The elder title of a university is _Studium_, a term\napplied to every higher school, and supplied with the epithet\n_Generale_ either from the fact of divers faculties being taught, or\nstudents of all nations being admitted within its pale. The most\ndistinctive trait of the Generale Studium is manifested in the social\nposition it had gained as a corporate institution invested with certain\nrights and privileges, like all other guilds or corporations of the middle\nages. The university was the privileged guild, the sole competent body from\nwhich every authority and license to teach science and literature emanated.\nThe man upon whom it conferred its degrees was, by the very fact of gaining\nsuch distinction, stamped as the scholar, competent to profess and teach\nthe liberal arts. The graduate, however, gained his social position not by\nthe act of promotion, but by the privileges which the governing heads of\nchurch and state had connected with that act. Hence, it was considered an\nindispensable condition that a newly erected university should be confirmed\nin its statutes and privileges by the pope, the representative of the whole\ncommunity of Christians. The universities having gained a social position,\ntheir members were henceforth not merely scholars declared as such by a\ncompetent body of men, but they also derived social advantages which lay\nbeyond the reach of those who stood outside the pale of the university.\n\n{210}\n\nA short sketch of the universities erected in different European countries\nafter the pattern of the three parent establishments may suffice to give\nour readers an idea of the zeal and emulation displayed by popes and\nemperors, princes and citizens, in the promotion of learning and\ncivilization.\n\nIn the year 1204 an unfortunate event befell Bologna. Several professors,\nwith a great number of scholars, removed from that place to _Vicenza_,\nwhere they opened their schools. This dismemberment of the university of\nBologna must have had its cause in some--we do not learn exactly what--\ninternal commotion. The secession was apparently of very little effect, for\nthe university of Vicenza, to which it had given rise in 1204, ceased to\nexist in the year 1209, most probably in consequence of the professors and\nscholars returning to the alma of Bologna as soon as this could be\nopportunely done. A more detailed account has been handed down to us\nconcerning the secession of 1215, when Rofredo da Benevento, professor of\ncivil law, emigrated from Bologna to _Arezzo_, and erected his chair\nin the cathedral of that city. A crowd of scholars followed the course of\nthe great master. From letters written by Pope Honorius between 1216 and\n1220, it would appear that the citizens of Bologna, in order to prevent the\ndismemberment of their university, tried to impose upon the scholars an\noath, by which they were to pledge themselves never, in any way, to further\nthe removal of the Studium from Bologna, or to leave that school for the\npurpose of settling elsewhere. The students, however, refused to take this\noath of allegiance, a refusal in which they were justified by the pope, who\nadvised them rather to leave the city than undertake any engagement\nprejudicial to their liberties. The result was the rise of the university\nof Arezzo, where, besides the ancient schools of law, we find in the year\n1255 the faculties of arts and medicine. From a similar dissension between\nthe citizens and scholars seems to have been caused the emigration to\n_Padua_, where the secessionist professors and scholars established a\nuniversity which soon became the successful rival of Bologna.\n\nIn the year 1222 the Emperor Frederick II., from spite to the Bolognese,\nand a desire of promoting the interests of his newly erected university of\n_Naples_, commanded all the students and professors at Bologna who\nbelonged as subjects to his Sicilian dominions to repair to Naples. The\nnon-Sicilian members of the Alma Bonnensis he endeavored to allure by\nmaking them the most liberal promises. At any other time this ungenerous\nstratagem might have resulted in the entire ruin of the university of\nBologna; this city, however, being a member of the powerful Lombard League,\ncould afford to laugh at Frederick's decrees of annihilation. As long as\nits founder and benefactor was alive, the university of Naples enjoyed a\nhigh degree of fame and excellence among the studia of Italy, for Frederick\nspared neither expense nor labor in the propagation of science and\nliterature.\n\nPope Innocent IV. erected the university of _Rome_ about the year\n1250, and conferred upon it all the privileges enjoyed by other\nestablishments of the kind. But the praise of having raised that university\nto its most flourishing condition, and endowed it with all the faculties,\nis due to Pope Boniface VIII.\n\nLombardy owed its literary fame to the noble Galeazzo Visconti, who formed\nthe design of erecting a university close to Milan which should provide for\nthe increased wants in science and education among the population of that\ncapital and the surrounding cities.\n{211}\nThe site chosen for the purpose was _Pavia_, which had for a long time\nbeen the resort of literati of every description who had been educated in\nthe neighboring university of Bologna. The new university soon acquired\ngreat fame, enjoying the special patronage of the Emperor Charles IV. of\nGermany.\n\nThe French universities were organized after the model of Paris, but most\nof them had to be contented with one or several of the faculties, exclusive\nof theology, which was, and continued to be, a privileged science reserved\nto Paris and a few of the more ancient universities. Thus we see that\n_Orleans_, where a flourishing school of law had existed since 1284,\nwas provided in 1312 with the charters and privilege of of the Studium\nGenerale. _Montpelier_ University, according to some historians, was\nfounded in 1196 by Pope Urban V.; but with certainty we can trace its\nfamous school of medicine only as far back as the year 1221. To this was\nadded the faculty of law in 1230, and Nicolas IV. finally established, in\n1286, the faculties of civil and canon law, medicine and arts.\n_Grenoble_, _Anjou_, and a few others, though entitled to claim\nthe privileges of the Studium Generale, hardly ever exceeded the limits of\nordinary schools, whether in arts, law, or medicine.\n\nThe system of centralization, which at that time had already gained the\nupper hand in the church and state of France, impressed its type on social\nand scientific life as well. Paris became the all-absorbing vortex which\nengulfed every symptom of provincial independence; and the Alma Parisiensis\ndeveloped in her bosom, as spontaneous productions of her own body, the\ncolleges which were founded on so grand a scale as to outweigh in\nimportance all the minor universities, each college forming, so to say, a\n\"universitas in universitate.\" This observation holds good for England and\nthe English universities.\n\nTurning our attention to Germany, we find, in accordance with the social\nconditions of the country, the development of academic life taking a\nsomewhat intermediate course between the Italian universities on the one\nside, and Paris and Oxford on the other. Though emperors and territorial\nprinces vie with each other in the promotion of educational establishments,\nGermany nevertheless bears a close resemblance to Italy in so far as in\nboth countries the opulent citizens are among the first to exert themselves\nin the propagation of science and the diffusion of knowledge. The\nuniversity of _Prague_, founded by the Emperor Charles IV. in 1318,\nwas soon followed by that of _Vienna_, founded in 1365 by Albertus\nContraetus, duke of Austria, and _Heidelberg_, erected by Rupert of\nthe Palatinate, and confirmed by the pope in 1386. The university of\nCologne owed its origin to the exertions made by the municipal council, who\nsucceeded in gaining a charter from Pope Urban VI. in 1388. _Erfurt_\nalso is mainly indebted to the zeal of the citizens and the town council\nfor its erection, which took place in 1392. _Leipzig_ was founded, in\nits rudiments at least, in 1409 by the Elector Frederick I. of Saxony, but\nit started into the full vigor of academic life under the impulse imparted\nto it by the immigration of two thousand students, Catholic Germans, who,\nto escape Hussite persecution, had departed in a body from the university\nof Prague.\n\nSpain, which we should expect to see forward in promoting institutions of\nlearning, did not much avail herself of those fruits of science which had\nripened to unequalled splendor under the Arabs in the eleventh century.\nRecalling, however, to mind the fearful struggles between the Christian and\nArab population, struggles which for centuries shook that country to its\nvery foundations, we can readily make allowance for the slow advance of\nlearning in this state of bellicose turmoil. Yet, in spite of these\nunfavorable conditions, the schools received no inconsiderable attention\nfrom the Christian rulers of the country.\n{212}\nThe ancient school of _Osca_, or _Huesca_, was revived;\n_Saragossa_, which is said to have been founded in 990 by Roderico \u00e0\nS. AElia, began to thrive again; _Valentia_ was founded by Alphonse of\nLeon, and _Salamanca_ in 1239 by Ferdinand of Castile and Leon, both\nof which schools arrived at their greatest splendor and the position of\nuniversities at the beginning of the sixteenth century, as did also those\nof _Valladolid, Barcelona, Saragossa_ and _Alcala_.\n\nIn order to give a general survey of the progress of academic\nestablishments in the different European countries, we subjoin a list of\nall mediaeval universities, with the dates of foundation, which in doubtful\ncases are accompanied by a note of interrogation. The dates of the most\nancient universities require no further remark after our previous\nobservations:\n\n  England and Scotland.\n\n  Oxford           11-\n  Cambridge        11-\n  St. Andrews      1412\n  Glasgow          1451\n  Aberdeen         1494\n  Edinburgh        1520\n\n  Italy.\n\n  Bologna          11-\n  Piacenza         1248\n  Padua            1222\n  Piza             1339\n  Vercelli         1228\n  Arezzo           1356\n  Vicenza          1204\n  Rome             1250 (?)\n  Naples           1224\n  Fermo            1391\n  Perugia          1307\n  Pavia            1361\n  Siena            1420\n  Parma            1412\n  Turin            1405\n  Florence         1348\n  Verona           1339\n  Salerno          1250 (?)\n\n  France.\n\n  Paris            11-\n  Montpelier       1286\n  Avignon          1809 (?)\n  Cahors           1332\n  Anjou            1348\n  Lyons            1300\n  Grenoble         1339\n  Perpignan        1340\n  Poitiers         1431\n  Caen             1433\n  Bordeaux         1442\n  Nantes           1448\n\n  Germany.\n\n  Prague           1348\n  Vienna           1365\n  Heidelberg       1386\n  Cologne          1388\n  Erfurt           1392\n  Leipzig          1409\n  Rostock          1419\n  Greifswalde      1456\n  Freiburg         1457 (?)\n  Trier, (Treves)  1472\n  Ingoldstadt      1472\n  Basle            1460\n  Mayence          1482\n  T\u00fcbingen         1482\n  W\u00fcrzburg         1400\n\n  Spain and Portugal\n\n  Huesca                 (?)\n  Coimbra          1279\n  Lisbon           1283\n  Valentia         1210\n  Salamanca        1239\n  Valladolid       1346\n  Barcelona        1500\n  Saragossa        1474\n  Toledo           1499\n  Alcala            508\n\n  Other Countries.\n\n  Louvain          1425\n  Buda             1465\n  Upsala           1477\n  Copenhagen       1478\n  Cracow           1364\n\n\nEntering upon the subject of the constitution or organization of the\nuniversities, we need hardly remind our readers that, in accordance with\nthe nature of their origin and with the spirit of uniformity which pervaded\nthe middle ages, the constitution of the different universities was\neverywhere essentially the same. The university of the most ancient date\nwas not an exclusive school or establishment existing only for the higher\nbranches of erudition, but it was a system or various schools, which\nchiefly aimed at the education of a competent body of teachers, a\ncorporation of scientific men. This purpose could be, and indeed was,\nattained without splendidly endowed colleges or spacious lecture-rooms. The\nuniversity, in its first rudimentary appearance, is an ideal rather than a\nreality. There are no traces of buildings exclusively appropriated to\nacademic purposes, but the first house or cottage or barn, if need were,\nwas made subservient to scientific pursuits, whenever a licensed teacher or\nmagister pleased to erect his throne there. Nor did the Studium Generale\nconfine itself to giving finishing touches of education, but it comprised\nthe whole sphere of development from boyhood to manhood, so that the boy\nstill \"living under the rod\" could boast of being a member of the\nuniversity with the same right as the bearded scholar of thirty or forty\nyears of age. The same academic privileges which were enjoyed by the\nmagister or doctor extended to the lowest of the \"famuli\" that trod in the\ntrain of the academical _cort\u00e9ge_.\n{213}\nA _Corpus Academicum_, with its various degrees of membership, its\ndistinction of nations and faculties, its peculiar organization and\nconstitution--such are the characteristic traits of all the mediaeval\nuniversities which we are about to examine. To the Corpus Academicum\nbelonged the _students_ (scholares), _bachelors_ (baccalaurei),\n_licentiates, masters_ (magistri), and doctors, with the governing\nheads, the proctors (procuratores), the _deans_ (decani), and the\n_rector_ and _chancellor_ (cancellarius). To these were added\nofficials and servants of various denominations, and finally the\ntrades-people of the university, designated as _academic citizens_.\nEvery student was obliged to present himself within a certain time before\nthe rector of the university in order to have his name put down in the\nalbum of the university (matricula), to be matriculated. He pledged his\nword by oath to submit to the laws and statutes of the university, and to\nthe rector in all that is right and lawful (licitis et honestis), and to\npromote the welfare of his university by every means in his power. At the\nsame time he had to deposit a fee in the box (archa) of the academic\ncommunity, the amount of which was fixed according to the rank of the\ncandidate, as it was not unusual for bishops, canons, abbots, noblemen,\ndoctors, and other graduates to apply for membership in some university.\nAfter being matriculated and recognized as a member of the body, the\nstudent had to assume the academic dress, which characterized him as such\nto the world at large. The dress was identical with that of the clergy, and\nfrom this and other incidents every member of the school was termed\n_clericus_, and all the members collectively _clerus\nuniversitatis_ whence _clericus_ (clerc) came to designate a\n_scholar_, and _laicus_ a layman and a _dunce_ as well. The\nwearing of secular dress was strictly prohibited, and we can appreciate the\nbenefit of this arrangement on considering the exorbitant fashions which\nprevailed in those days, to the prejudice of propriety and the ruin of\npecuniary means. To carry arms, chiefly a kind of long sword, was a matter\nallowed sometimes, more often connived at, but frequently prohibited at\ntimes of disturbances among the scholars themselves, or during feuds with\nthe citizens. Against visiting gambling-houses or other places of bad\nrepute, passing the nights in taverns, engaging in dances or revels, or\nother diversions unseemly in a \"clerc,\" we find repeated and earnest\ninjunctions in the statutes of the universities. Where scholars were living\ntogether in the same house under proper surveillance, they formed a\ncommunity known as _bursa_. Bursa originally denoted the contribution\nwhich each scholar had to pay toward the maintenance of the community,\nwhence the term was applied to the community itself. The bursae had, like\ninns and public-houses, their proper devices and appellations, commonly\nderived from the name and character of the house-owner or _hospes_\n(host). Corresponding with the Continental bursae were the English hospitia\nand aulae, or halls, which, however, may be traced to higher antiquity than\nthe former. It is not difficult to recognize in these institutes the germs\nof the later colleges. At the head of the hospitium or bursa stood the\n_conventor_, who was commonly appointed by the rector, in some places\nelected by the members of the bursa, and who had to direct the course of\nstudy, guard the morals of the students, etc. If the hospes or host was a\nmaster or bachelor, the functions of conventor naturally devolved upon him.\nThe _provisor_ took charge of the victuals, watched over the purchase\nand preparation of the same, and settled the pecuniary affairs with the\nhospes. Discipline in the bursae and halls was rigorous and severe, and it\ncould not be otherwise at a time when the individual man was not restrained\nby a thousand formalities and conventionalities, but allowed to develop\nfreely his inherent faculties and powers, often to such a degree as to\nprove prejudicial to the peace of society, unless they were curbed by the\nsevere punishment which followed transgression.\n{214}\nWe meet in the earliest times of the universities with but very few\nsystematic regulations as far as internal discipline is concerned. This was\na matter of practice, and left rather to be settled according to the\nrequirements of each case as it arose. Practice, again, taught the pupil a\nlesson of abstemiousness and self-denial which might go far to outdo in its\neffect our best text-books on moral philosophy. The convictorial houses, as\nwell as the university at large, were poor, being without any funds but\nthose which flowed from the contributions of the scholars and members of\nthe university. A life of toil and endurance was that of the scholar. If he\nhad a fire in the winter season to warm his limbs, and just sufficient food\nto satisfy his gastronomic cravings, be found himself entitled to praise\nhis stars. The lecture-rooms did not boast of anything like luxury in the\noutfitting. Some rough structure of the carpenter's making which\nrepresented the pulpit was the only requisite piece of furniture; chairs\nwere not wanted, as the pupils found sitting accommodation on the floor,\nwhich was strewn with straw or some other substance of nature's own\nproviding, and on which ardent disciples cowered down to listen to the\nwords of wisdom flowing from the lips of some celebrated master. When, at a\nlater period, the university of Paris went so far in fastidious innovations\nas to procure wooden stools for the pupils to sit upon, the papal legates\nwho had come on a visitation severely censured the authorities for their\nindiscretion in opening the university to the current of luxury, which\nwould not fail, they affirmed, to have an enervating effect on the mind and\nbody of the pupil; and for a time the scholars had to descend again from\nthe stool to the floor. Early rising was so general a habit in those days\nas to make it almost superfluous to mention that the pupils had gone\nthrough their morning worship and several lessons by the time the more\nrefined student of modern days is accustomed to rise.\n\nThe lowest of academical degrees was that of _Bachelor_\n(Baccalaureus). [Footnote 47] Certain historical evidence of the creation\nof bachelors at Paris appears in the bull of Pope Gregory IX., of the year\n1281, though the degree must be of a remoter date, for the pope alludes to\nit not as a novel institution, but in terms which induce us to admit its\nprevious existence. When a scholar had attended the course of lectures\nprescribed by his faculty, and gone through a certain number of\ndisputations, he might present himself as a candidate for the bachelorship.\nHaving passed his examination before the doctors (magistri) of his faculty\nto their satisfaction, and taken the usual oath of fidelity and obedience\nto the university, he gained the actual promotion by the chancellor.\nHereupon be proceeded with his friends and others whom he chose to invite,\nin a more or less brilliant _cort\u00e9ge_, to the banquet which he\nprovided in honor of the occasion. In the procession the staff or sceptre\n(baculus, sceptrum, virga) of the university was carried in front of the\nnew-made bachelor, as the emblem of his recently gained academical dignity.\nThe bachelors were still only a higher class of students, and as such they\nare frequently called _Archischolares_. They, of course, preceded the\nstudents in rank, were allowed to wear a gown of choicer material, and the\ncap called _Quadtatum_, while the _Birrettum_ [Footnote 48] was\nreserved for the doctors.\n\n    [Footnote 47: As to the derivation of this term hardly a doubt can be\n    entertained. The ancient custom of carrying the academic staff or\n    scepter (baculus) before the candidates on his promotion to the first\n    degree, undoubtedly gave origin to the terms _Bacularius_ and\n    _Baculariatus_, which only in later times were corrupted into\n    _Baccularius_ and _Baccalaureus_. Thus with Kink against\n    Balaeus, Voight, and others, who give the most fantastic derivations,\n    such as _bataille_ (batalarius), _bas-chevalier_, etc.]\n\n    [Footnote 48: _Quadratum_, the square cap; _birrettum_, a\n    term still preserved in the French _barrette_, a cardinal's hat;\n    in German the term _barrett_ is used for the cap worn by priests\n    when in official dress.]\n\n{215}\n\nThe bachelors were closely connected with their respective faculties, and\ncould not renounce this connection, or even choose another place of\nresidence, without special permission. They formed the transition from the\nstudents to the masters, as they participated in the functions of both.\nThey had to direct the private study and repetitions of the scholars, and\nwork out the doctor's system, which the latter merely sketched in its\nprincipal theses and rudimentary outline. The bachelors, in fact,\nrepresented the hardest worked people of the body academic. In later\ncenturies they were actually ill treated by the doctors of Paris, who\nconfined themselves to deliver one single lecture in the whole year,\nleaving all the rest of the work to their inferior fellow-graduates.\nBesides their share in teaching the students, they performed other\nimportant duties. They were the industrious copyists of classical works,\nand while they thus toiled for the instruction of others in narrower or\nwider circles, they at the same time qualified themselves for the\nattainment of higher degrees. Opportunities for the advancement of their\nown erudition were given in the _disputations_. It was incumbent upon\nevery doctor or master (magister) from time to time to hold and direct a\npublic disputation, at which the doctors, bachelors, and students were\npresent. The doctors, clad in the furred doctor-gown (cappa, taphardum),\nand with the _birrettum_, took their places on elevated chairs, which\nwere arranged in a circle round the walls of the hall. The cross seats were\noccupied by the bachelors, behind whom mustered the plebeian students, in\nearlier times cowering on the floor, later on provided with the luxury of\nseats.\n\nThe presiding doctor, who directed the disputation, having entered the\npulpit, chose from the text-book a certain passage and formed it into an\nargument (quaestio), the development or exposition of which was called\n_determinatio_. Now the task of the bachelors commenced, who, with\nrespect to their functions, were called _respondentes_ and divided\ninto _defendentes_ and _opponentes_. They had their own pulpit,\nfrom which one or other individual of their class delivered his\n_argumentatio, pro_ or _con_, and then awaited the response of\nhis antagonist. When, however, the contest required a rapid succession of\nquestions and answers, both occupied the same pulpit, facing each other in\na contest which very often did not lack the stimulus of personal animosity.\nWhen they became extravagant in their argumentation, strayed from the\noriginal question, or in the heat of the combat fell into excesses of\nlanguage, it was the office of the presiding doctor to recall them to the\npoint at issue, or, if need were, to impose silence. Sometimes, and perhaps\nnot unfrequently, matters became so complicated as to leave a solution of\nthe question more than doubtful, in which case the doctor, on his own\nauthority, pronounced a decision, to which the contending parties had to\nsubmit. Similarly to the practice prevalent in tournaments, the\ndisputations were wound up with a courtesy (recommendatio), a harangue in\nfavor of the opponent. Students were not allowed to take part in the\ndisputations directed by a doctor; but they had their own combats of the\nkind, presided over by a bachelor.\n\nWhile promotion to the bachelorship took place four times a year, the\ncompetition for the _license_ could occur only once or twice, commonly\nat the opening of the new scholastic year. The scientific requirements\ndiffered in different universities and faculties, and the course of\npromotion was not everywhere the same in all its details, but the following\noutlines will, we hope, give a fair picture of the generality of cases. The\nday of competition for the license (licentia docendi) being agreed upon\nbetween the chancellor and the respective faculties, it was publicly\nannounced by placards at the entrance of churches and other conspicuous\nplaces, and several times pronounced from the pulpits of the clergy.\n{216}\nOn the appointed day the candidates presented themselves before their\nrespective faculties, and on the morrow they were introduced to the\nchancellor, to petition him that he would graciously accept them as\ncandidates, and appoint the day of examination. Hereupon they pledged\nthemselves by oath to be obedient to the chancellor, to promote the welfare\nof the university, to further peace and concord among the nations and\nfaculties, to deliver lectures at least during the first year of their\nlicense, to be faithful to the doctrines of the church, and to defend them\nagainst every hostile aggression. Then the functions of the faculties began\nand ended with the examination of the candidate, who, upon having passed\nsatisfactorily, was recommended to the chancellor for the actual reception\nof the license. Thus it becomes evident that the license was not the gift\nof the faculty, but emanated from the chancellor as the representative of\nthe bishop, the church; nay, more, in several Italian universities it was,\nin spite of their democratic character, customary for the bishop himself to\npreside at the examination for the license and the promotion of the\nsuccessful competitors. When the chancellor withheld his confirmation (as\non several occasions of differences having arisen between him and the\nuniversity it did happen), the most brilliantly sustained examination\nfailed to make a licentiate out of a bachelor. The examination for the\nthree higher faculties was held in the presence of all the doctors, any one\nof whom had a right to examine the candidate on the previously appointed\n\"theses.\" In the theological faculty the questions were everywhere fixed by\nthe episcopal representative, the chancellor, who even might interfere in\nthe examination itself. The same right could be claimed by him in the\nfaculty of law.\n\nTo pronounce judgment on the scientific qualifications of the candidate was\nthe task of the whole faculty. On the appointed day the successful\ncompetitors appeared in the church in the presence of the chancellor, and,\nkneeling down before him (_ob reverentium Dei et sedis apostolicae_),\nthey received the license, the chancellor using the formula: \"By the\nauthority of God Almighty, the apostles Peter and Paul, and the Apostolic\nSee, in whose name I act, I grant you the license of teaching, lecturing,\ndisputing, here and everywhere throughout the world, in the name,\" etc.\n(Ego, auctoritate Dei omnipotentis, et apostolorum Petri et Pauli, et\napostolicae sedis, qua fungor in hac parte, do tibi licentiam, legendi,\nregendi, disputandi, hic et ubique terrarum, in nomine Patris et Filii et\nSpiritus Sancti. Amen.)\n\nAfter the act was over there followed the payment of fees and the\ninevitable banquet. The arts faculty conferred with the license the degree\nof the magisterium at the same time. The license enabled the candidate to\nteach in public at all the universities of Western Europe. In the earlier\ncenturies this prerogative of universal recognition of the license was not\nenjoyed by all the universities. That of Paris was honored with it as early\nas the year 1279 by Pope Nicolas III.; Oxford did not receive it until the\nyear 1319; while the university of Vienna enjoyed it ever since its\nfoundation by the bull of Pope Urban V. of the year 1365. When the church\nhad performed her functions by bestowing the license upon the candidate, he\nwas not therewith a member of the faculty. For this purpose he had to seek\napproval and reception from the respective faculty itself (petere licentiam\nincipiendi in artibus, in medicina, etc.), which, in the regular course of\nevents, was never withheld. There was in this proceeding a manifestation of\ncorporate right and independence which the faculties loved to display on\nthis occasion. Though hardly more than a formality, it tended to give\nexpression to their consciousness of being free corporations upon which no\ncandidate could be intruded, though it were by the highest functionary of\nthe university.\n{217}\nThe bachelors, as we intimated before, may be considered a higher degree of\nstudents, and the licentiates, we may add, formed a lower degree of\nmasters. They, therefore, sat in the same compartments with the masters,\nbut in the rear; they might, like the doctors, wear the _cappa_\n(gown), but not the _birrettum_; nor were they allowed to deliver\nlectures on their own responsibility, but had to do so under the direction\nof a doctor. Licentiates, however, if reading by appointment of a doctor,\nor in his stead, were considered independent lecturers. To make the\nlicentiate a doctor, nothing was required but the act of _promotion_\n--a mere formality again, but of no slight importance, for it was the final\ntransaction which stamped the candidate as a man of learning, the\nlegitimate and competent teacher.\n\nThe act of promotion was celebrated with the greatest possible splendor.\nThe tolling of the church bells gave the signal for the procession to\nprepare. All the doctors, licentiates, bachelors, and students, having\npreviously assembled in front of the candidate's house, they, upon the\nsecond signal being given by the bells, move in a pompous _cort\u00e9ge_\ntoward the church, where the sound of trumpets and timbrels received them\nupon their entrance. For the court, the judges, the magistrates, and the\nmembers of the different faculties, separate accommodation was provided,\nthe populace filling the remaining space. The doctors of the respective\nfaculties having taken their seats, the chancellor opened the proceedings\nby a brief allocution, in which he permitted the candidate to ascend the\npulpit (_auctoritate cancellarii_). The candidate delivered a speech\n(pulchram et decentem arengam) in honor of the faculty, and finally\npetitioned for the insignia of doctor. Upon this the promoter (one of the\ndoctors of the faculty) ascended the pulpit and held an oration\nrecommendatory of the candidate, and then, following his invitation, all\nthe doctors formed a circle and received the _doctorandus_ in their\ncentre, where the promoter transmitted into his hands an open and a closed\nvolume as the symbols of his scientific avocations, gave him the kiss of\npeace as the mark of friendship and fraternity, and placed on his head the\n_birrettum_ in manifestation of his new dignity. Immediately after\nthese ceremonies the new doctor ascended the pulpit (now _sua\nauctoritate_) and delivered a lecture on any theme fitting the occasion,\nthus availing himself at once of the acquired privilege. From this it would\nappear that the act of promotion belonged to the chancellor and faculty\njointly, and not to the university as such, for its actual head, the\nrector, took no part whatever in the proceedings. The doctor alone had the\nright of wearing a gown ornamented with silk and fur, and the birrettum as\nindicative of his rank. In his social position he was considered of equal\nrank with noblemen, and therefore wore the golden ring and other attributes\nof the nobility, and in public manifestoes he always appears included in\nthe aristocratic class of society. The titles of _doctor_ and\n_magister_ designated one and the same degree, and yet there was a\nshade of difference in their meaning, magister (master) being applied to\nscientific superiority or mastership, while doctor signified the person\nwho, in consequence of this degree, exercised the functions of teacher or\nprofessor; hence, magister was the title of courtesy, doctor that of the\nprofessional man, a distinction which will become evident from phrases such\nas this: Magister Johannes, doctor in theologia, etc. Every doctor enjoyed\nthe right, and during the first year of his license undertook the duty, of\nlecturing in that faculty which had promoted him.\n\nThe officials and servants formed no inconsiderable appendage to the\nuniversity. They are mentioned under the names of _notarii, syndici,\nthesaurarii,_ and the lower orders of beadles or famuli of various\ndescriptions. More important, if not in position, yet in number, were the\n_academic citizens_.\n{218}\nTo these belonged tailors, shoemakers, laundresses, booksellers,\nstationers, and a host of different trades, which had to provide for the\nwants of university men exclusively, and formed a body distinct altogether\nfrom the city tradesmen. All these servants of the university, the academic\ncitizens and their servants, together with the servants of each individual\nbelonging to the university, counted as members of this community. If we\ntake into consideration that dignitaries of the church and of the state,\nand noblemen, visited the universities, accompanied by a numerous retinue\nof attendants and servants; that even scholars of the wealthier middle\nclasses were followed by two servants at least (and in this case called\n\"tenentes locum nobilium\"--gentlemen commoners?), we can form an idea of\nthe immense crowd of academic individuals resident in the great\nuniversities. As to the number of academic members in different places, the\nopinions of modern historians are at variance, and in spite of their\ncontroversies the real facts of the case have not been ultimately elicited.\nWood, in his history of the university of Oxford, relates that in the year\n1250 the number of members of that university amounted to 30,000! This\nfabulous number scarcely ever found credence among modern historians until\nHuber, the German historian of the English universities, entered the lists\nas the champion of Wood's thirty thousand. Though, historically, he has no\nnew light to throw upon the subject, he makes his deduction in favor of the\nthirty thousand plausible enough. Taking into consideration the facts we\nhave just advanced concerning the wide range of the term of academic\nmembers, adducing, further, the circumstance of Oxford having at that time\nattained the meridian of its glory by the immigration of Paris scholars in\n1209, and the settlement of the mendicant friars there, he certainly urges\non our minds the belief that the number of academic people must have been\namazingly great. But looking apart from the circumstance that Wood's\nassertion is not confirmed by direct documentary evidence, that the average\nnumbers mentioned before and after the year indicated turn in the scale\nbetween 3,000 and 5,000, we have scarcely any other measure by which to\njudge the above statement but the highest mark of numbers related of the\nother great universities. Allowing the most favorable circumstances to have\nworked in unison toward assembling a large crowd at Oxford University, we\nyet believe no one will be likely to uphold the assertion that Oxford\nUniversity was at that time, or at any time, more densely populated than\nParis or Bologna. In the year 1250, we know for a fact Germany was not in\npossession of one single university, and yet the number of academic\nscholars in that country was not inconsiderable. From want of a Studium\nGenerale in their own country, German scholars had to visit foreign\nuniversities, and the current is clearly distinguishable in two directions,\none to Italy for the study of law, the other to Paris for arts and\ntheology. Even admitting Oxford's fame for its dialectic and theological\nschools having been on an equality with that of Paris, we cannot conceive\nhow, in its insular position, it could rival with the great continental\nuniversities which offered ready access to students from all parts of\nEurope. Now the greatest number ever mentioned at the university of Paris\nis 10,000, when in the year 1394 _all_ the members of the university\nhad to vote in the case of the papal schism, and even this number cannot be\nrelied on, as, according to Gerson's admission, several members gave more\nthan one vote, and others voted who had no right to be on the academic\nsuffrage. Admitting, however, that the gross sum may be an approximately\nfair estimate, we turn our attention to Bologna. This university\nundoubtedly contained all the advantages of celebrity, easy access, freedom\nof constitution, and whatever else may conduce to attract numerous\nvisitors.\n{219}\nYet the highest number is 10,000, mentioned in the year 1262. The\nuniversities of Salamanca and Vienna, certainly not the least among\nacademic establishments, even in the time of their greatest success and\nmost flourishing condition, could not boast of a number exceeding 7,000.\nFrom these data it may become sufficiently evident what we have to believe\nof Oxford's thirty thousand, a number which must stand on its own merits\nuntil it can be supported and confirmed by direct historic evidence. It is\ntrue the line of demarcation between trustworthy and fabulous accounts\nconcerning numbers is very difficult to draw in mediaeval records,\nespecially when they refer to institutions which, exposed to the\nvicissitudes of fortune, experienced a continual influx and reflux of\nscholars, so that the famous Bologna, which numbered 10,000 members in\n1262, had fallen to 500 in the year 1431, not to mention the intermediate\ndegrees in the scale of numbers.\n\nThe whole body academic, numerous and complicated though it was, did not\nrequire any considerable amount of regulating and governing agents. By the\nsimplicity of rule and government the middle ages characteristically differ\nfrom our own wonderful machineries which claim for every touch that is\nwanted the experienced hands of hundreds of officials, and even then they\nare oftentimes served badly enough. Self-government was the ruling idea in\nthe middle ages, and consequently we see the universities directed in their\ncomplicated progress by a number of officials comparatively so small as to\nfill the modern observer with amazement. The university being divided into\ndifferent bodies or corporations (the nations and faculties), it left the\ndirection and management or these different institutions chiefly to\nthemselves. At the head of the nations stood the _proctors_\n(procuratores), and the faculties were governed by their deans (decani).\nThe range of their official rights and duties will be illustrated later on.\nThe president of the different nations and of the four faculties was the\nrector. He was elected for the space of a year, or six months only, by the\nproctors or presidents of the nations, and in earlier times regularly out\nof the arts faculty; at a later period, and in the younger universities,\nout of one of the nations and one of the faculties alternately. The rector\nwas not to be a married man--at Vienna no monk either; Prague required him\nto be a member of the clerical profession, imitating in this, as in almost\neverything else, the university of Paris, where even the professors were\nbound to celibacy (nullus uxoratus admittebatur ad regentiam). The rector\nwas the head, the president (caput, principale) of the whole university.\nOxford and Prague alone, where the supreme power was invested in the\nchancellor, form in this respect an exception, but only so far as names are\nconcerned, for the Oxford chancellor was _eo ipso_ rector of the\nuniversity. The rector's high dignity found expression in the title of\n_Magnificus_, which, in the middle ages, was allowed to none but\nprinces imperial and royal, and a suitable dress distinguished the highest\nofficial of the university whatever he appeared in public. It is surprising\nto learn what an important figure a university rector played on public\noccasions. At Paris, and later on at Vienna, the rector, when officiating\nin his avocation, preceded in rank even the bishops. The rector of the\nuniversity of Louvain (Loewen) Was allowed a life guard of his own; and\neven Charles V., attending on one occasion the convention of the\nuniversity, took his place after the rector. At Leyden, the stadtholder,\nwhen appearing in the name of the states-general, allowed the precedence to\nthe rector of the university; and whenever the rector of Padua visited the\nrepublic of Venice he was received by the senate with the highest marks of\nhonor.\n{220}\nWhen at Vienna the court was prevented from attending at the procession on\nCorpus Christi, the rector of the university took the place of the\nsovereign immediately behind the _sanctissimum_. From the exalted\nstation which a university rector occupied in society the fact is easily\nexplained that dignitaries of the church, nobleman of the highest rank, and\neven princes of blood royal, did not slight the rectorial purple of the\nuniversity. The rector wore, like the deans, a black gown, but on festive\noccasions he was dressed in a long robe of scarlet velvet. He acted as the\npresident of the highest academic tribunal, and held his judicial sessions,\nassisted by the proctors, and if he so pleased he might invite the deans as\nwell. In criminal cases occurring within the bounds of the university, he\ncould inflict any, from the slightest to the severest penalties of the law.\nHence, a _sword_ and a _sceptre_, were carried before him when he\ntraversed the streets or appeared on public occasions. He convened the\nmeetings of the university corporations, and conventions held under any\nother authority (even that of the chancellor) had no legal power in\ncarrying resolutions. What we have just stated concerning the rector holds\ngood for the chancellor of Oxford. When Paris and other universities\ncontrived to free themselves from the influence of their diocesan, Oxford\nnever loosened the close ties which bound it to the church, and received\nwithout opposition its governing head from the bishop. But it must be borne\nin mind that the chancellor of the university had nothing whatever to do\nwith the church of Lincoln, which had its own chancellor. Once appointed by\nthe bishop, Oxford's chancellor entered upon all the functions, and the\nsame independent position as the rector elsewhere. On the other hand,\nhowever, he represented the chancellor of the other continental\nuniversities, who formed the connecting links between the university and\nthe church. During the middle ages the functions of the continental\nchancellor were restricted to the few cases of promotion at which be acted\nas the representative of the bishop, to give the sanction and blessing of\nthe church to proceedings which were deemed as naturally belonging to her\nproper sphere of supervision and authority. Having so far finished our\nsketch of the different members of the Corpus Academicum, we may finally\nlet them pass in review as they appeared at processions and other public\noccasions, according to rank and precedence. At the head of the train we\nsee, of course, the rector followed by the dean, doctors and licentiates of\ntheology, with whom went in equal rank the sons of dukes and counts, and\nthe higher nobility generally. These were succeeded by the dean, doctors\nand licentiates of the law faculty, and the students belonging to the\nbaronial order, and with the medical faculty proceeded the students of the\nlower nobility. The fourth division was formed by the dean and professors\n(magistri regentes) of the arts faculty and those bachelors of other\nfaculties who were masters of arts, while the bachelors of arts followed,\nand the students closed the procession, they also being divided and\nfollowing each other according to the succession of the faculties just\ndescribed, where, _ceteris paribus_, seniority gave the precedence. As\nin all institutions of medieval society the division of ranks was strictly\nobserved, and in case of need enforced in the most rigorous manner, a\ntransgression in this respect being visited on any member with severe,\nsometimes the severest penalty, that is, expulsion from the university.\n\nAll the different degrees of individuals we have now examined were united\nin corporations, representing a union either according to local divisions\nin _nations_, or arranged with respect to scientific pursuits in\n_faculties_. Concerning the nations of the universities, former\nwriters intricated [sic] themselves in great difficulties by recurring to\nhypotheses in which historical records did not bear them out. According to\nBulseus and Huber the nations of the university represented the different\ntribes or nationalities which inhabited a country, and found a rallying\npoint at the centre of science and education.\n{221}\nNow, this assertion is in open contradiction to the character and nature of\nacademic nations, as may become evident from the following data which we\nhave to advance. The nations of the English universities were, and always\ncontinued to be, those of the _Boreales_ or _northerners_, and\nthe _Australes_ or _southerners_. Among the Boreales were\nincluded the Scotch, and with the Australes figured the Irish and Welsh. If\nit had lain in the plan of those institutions to preserve and foster the\ndifference of national extraction and to develop it to the highest degree\nor contrast, how could this end be obtained by a corporation of men which\ncontained in itself the contradictory elements of Celtic and Saxon\nderivation, elements then more sharply defined and opposed to each other\nthan now? Directing our attention to Paris, we find at an earlier epoch\nthere also only two distinct nations, the French and the English, the\nformer comprising Southern, and the latter Northern Europe. When these two\nnations were multiplied into four no regard whatever was paid to the\ndifferent nationalities, for the divisions were the _English, French,\nPicardian_, and _Norman_. Why, we may ask, was the nation of the\nNormans to hold a separate position from that of the English, with whom\nthey were one body from a political point of view, or from the French, whom\nthey resembled closely enough in language and manners? When at the\nUniversity of Vienna the _Austrian_ nation comprised the Italians, and\nthe _Rhenish_ nation, besides Southern Germans, the Burgundians,\nFrench, and Spaniards, where is the principle of nationality preserved?\nTurning finally to the Italian universities, we meet with hardly any other\ndistinction but that of _Cisalpine_ and _Transalpine_. How wide\nthe difference between the nationalities of these academic nations must\nhave been we may leave it with our readers to conclude, when we state the\nfact that in the Transalpine nation we find Germans, Scandinavians,\nFrenchmen, Normans, Englishmen, and Spaniards. What then, will be the\nquestion naturally proposed, was the meaning, tendency, and  character of\nacademic nations? The middle ages, in defining and separating the members\nof the university into nations, did not intend to sharpen the national\ncontrasts and differences, but, on the contrary, to soften them down,\nperhaps to destroy them altogether. Not natural _natural extraction_,\nbut the geographical situation it was which proffered the criterion for\nsuch division. If it were otherwise, they would have applied to these\ndivisions not the term of _Nationes_ (that is, ubi natus), but that of\n_Gentes_. Its chief support our view will derive from the fact that in\nthe middle ages the distinction of rank and avocations far outweighed that\nof nationalities in our acceptation of the term. Just as chivalrous\nknighthood represented, without respect to the different countries, an\ninstitution coalesced into one body or corporation, so likewise the school\nhad its centres of unity, independent of nationalities. The chief criterion\nof nationalities, _language_, formed in the scholastic establishments\na centre of unity, Latin being the medium of conversation and literature,\nfrom the Baltic to the Adriatic, and from Cracow to Lisbon. The division\ninto nations consequently aimed at _uniting_ the different tribes\naccording to the different quarters of the globe whence they had come.\nEvery university was looked upon as a geographical centre, and the\ndifferent nationalities were grouped into nations, and designated by the\nnames of those peoples which resided nearest to the central point, the\nuniversity. It is true, the division recognized by the university did not\nobject to secondary combinations among students of the same nationality if\nthey wished to enter into a league with their countrymen, so that the\nGermans, for instance, who belonged to the English nation at Paris, and to\nthe Transalpine nation of the Italian universities, might at any place form\na separate corporation known as a _province_.\n{222}\nThese provinces, however, were not recognized by, or in any official\nrelation to the _proctors_ (procuratores). The name itself implies the\nnature of their office, that of being the representatives, the advocates,\nthe attorneys of their respective nations. Not only graduates, but even\nstudents were eligible to the office, because doctrine or learning was not\nat all concerned where academic relationship offered the sole guide in the\nelection. When the whole university was convened, each nation voted\nseparately, and the majority out of the four votes (of the four nations)\ndecided. Questions which concern the pecuniary contributions of all the\nmembers, or the external relations of the university and the like, were\ndiscussed and settled in the convention of the nations. The proctors, with\nthe rector as their head, formed the court of academic jurisdiction, and\nthey also elected the rector, who in early times was nothing but the\nsupreme magistrate, the mayor, as it were, of the academic community.\n\nThe nations of which we have treated in the preceding paragraph formed the\nfirst and natural division of the Corpus Academicum into independent\ncorporations, and may therefore outreach in antiquity the faculties. As\nsoon, however, as the different branches of learning had fully grown into\ndistinct sciences, it was merely in accordance with the corporate spirit of\nthe times that the scholars of each respective science separated into\nindependent bodies and assumed the form and constitution of corporations.\nThe origin of these scientific corporations or faculties is, like that of\nthe nations, and of the first universities themselves, shrouded in\nobscurity. The sciences represented in the different faculties may surely\nbe traced back to the early centuries of mediaeval education, having their\nprototype in the Trivium and Quadrivium of the monastic schools; but\nwithout entering any further upon probabilities and conjectures about their\norigin, we proceed at once to a characterization of the faculties at the\ntime of their full development, which is historically authenticated. In all\nuniversities the faculties represented the same quadripartite cyclus of\nsciences, that is, the _Facultus Artium, Jurisprudentiae, Medicinae_,\nand _Theologiae_. It was not requisite for a Studium Generale or\nuniversity to comprise all the four faculties; on the contrary, we find at\nthe early epoch of academic life hardly any university which professed the\nfour branches of knowledge. Paris and Oxford, for instance, were originally\nconfined to arts and theology, to which the schools of medicine and law\nwere added at a later period, probably copied from the model schools of law\nand medicine in Italy. Turning to the peninsula of the Apennines we find\nthere in the earlier times not a single university combining the\ntheological with the other three faculties. Bologna did not gain the\nprivilege of a theological faculty before the year 1362, when Pope Innocent\nVI. decreed that in the law university the faculty of theology should be\nestablished, and theological degrees conferred by the same. Till then it\nhad been customary for Italians to betake themselves to Paris, for the sake\nof obtaining promotion in theology. Of other Italian universities, Padua\nreceived a theological faculty by Pope Urban V., upon the intercession of\nFrancesco da Carrara, then, Signor of Padua. Pisa, when obtaining the\nconfirmation of Pope Benedict XII., was allowed the \"studium sacrae\npaginae;\" but the right of promotion was a case altogether separately\ntreated, and therefore expressly mentioned where it was bestowed, which,\nwith regard to Pisa, did not take place. Ferrara also had a theological\nschool exclusive of the right of promotion; but in the year 1391 it\nsucceeded in gaining the privilege of promotion in theology, which, by the\nend of the fourteenth century, was more universally conceded.\n{223}\nBut even then we find famous schools, such as Piacenza, Pavia, Lucca,\nNaples, Perugia, and even that of Rome itself, not participating in the\nsaid prerogative. The university of Montpellier (like most of the French\nschools, Paris excepted) had no theological faculty; and Vienna, confirmed\nby Pope Urban in 1365, was not favored with a theological faculty\npreviously to the year 1384. These exceptions were owing to various causes,\npartly of a local, partly of a higher and more important nature. The\ninterests of neighboring universities, for instance, might threaten a\ncollision (as in the case of Prague and Vienna), or the pursuits of\ntheological studies could be amply provided for by monastic and cathedral\nschools. But the principal cause of this system appears to lie in quite a\ndifferent circumstance. The method of Scholastic sophisms had, in spite of\nthe opposing movements of the popes, gained day by day more ground in the\ntheological department, a fact which made a strict supervision, and\ntherefore a more limited scene for theological operations a real\ndesideratum. The greatest caution was deemed necessary, owing to the fact\nthat even at Paris, since the scholastic method had gained superiority,\nstartling doctrines were advanced, divergent from the traditional teaching\nof the church, and sufficient to cause apprehension.\n\nAdmission to degrees depended first of all on the diligent attendance at\nlectures, which the candidate had to prove by testimonials, and secondly on\na certain number of years which he had to devote to the special studies of\nhis faculty. For the bachelorship of arts a study of two, for the\nmagisterium a study of three years was required. In the faculty of law the\nbachelor had, previously to his promotion, to go through a course of three\nyears, and after seven years of study the license would be granted; while\nthe medical faculty imposed for the bachelorship two or three, for the\nlicense five or six years, differing in proportion to the candidate's\nprevious studies in the faculty of arts. After six years of theological\nstudy the candidate could attain the bachelorship in theology, whereupon\nhis faculty pointed out one or other chapter of Holy Scripture on which he\nhad to lecture under the superintendence of a doctor. Having passed three\nyears in these pursuits he might gain permission to read on \"dogmatics\" or\ndoctrinal theology (libri sententiarii). Bachelors were, therefore, divided\ninto _baccalaurei biblici_ and _baccalaurei sententiarii_, and\nboth designated as _cursores_. A bachelor who had begun the third book\nof the sentences became _baccalaurens formatus_, and after three\nyears' further practice, that is, after _eleven_ years of theological\nstudy, he presented himself for the license. The head of each faculty, the\n_dean_ (decanus), was elected by the graduates out of his respective\nfaculty, in some cases for six, in others for twelve months. The community\nof the university was represented in three different conventions: the\nconsistory (consistorium), the congregation (congregatio universitatis),\nand the general assembly (plena concio). The first was originally the\njudicial tribunal, and though its functions became more varied at a later\ntime, it continued to be the representative assembly of the academic\nnations. The congregation was a meeting of a more scientific, and, as it\nwere, aristocratic character, including only the doctors and licentiates of\nthe different faculties. It formed the court of appeal from the sentence of\nthe respective faculties. The general assembly, comprising all the members\nof the university, was convened on but few occasions, and then only for the\ncelebration of academic festivals, or for the publication of new statutes,\nor especially in cases when contributions were to be levied from all the\nmembers of the university. On the last-mentioned occasion only had the\nstudents or undergraduates the right of voting; in every other instance\nthey were restricted to silence, or the more passive though uproarious mode\nof participation, by applauding or hissing the proposals and discussions of\ntheir elders and betters.\n{224}\nHere, again, we have to point out a characteristic difference between the\nCismontane and Transmontane universities. While the whole constitution of\nthe universities on this side of the Alps, with their laws, statutes, etc.,\nwas dependent on the aristocratic body of the graduates, the universities\nof Italy, and chiefly that of Bologna, display a thoroughly democratic\ncharacter. At Bologna the students were the gentlemen who, out of their\nnumber, elected the rectors. The Italian rector was, in fact, identical\nwith our proctor, though his functions extended over a wider range. The\naristocratic congregation of faculties is almost totally unknown in Italian\nuniversities, where the nations preserved their predominant position all\nthrough the middle ages. The professors were hardly more than the officials\nof the students, and in their service, though in the pay of the citizens.\nIn the documents we never read of any legal transaction being performed by\nthe faculties, but always by the rectors and the nations, or the rectors\nand the students, and even the papal bulls with respect to the Italian\nuniversities freely use the expression of a _universitas magistrorum et\nscholarium_. In short, the Italian universities were democracies, while\nthe western, and chiefly the English universities present traits of a\ndecidedly aristocratic character.\n\nTo complete the sketch of the organization of mediaeval universities we\nmust add a few remarks concerning their position in society, and the\nrelation in which they stood to civil and ecclesiastical authorities. The\nmembers of the body academic were subject to three distinct tribunals:\ninternal discipline and jurisdiction belonged to the functions of the\nrector and proctors; violations of the common law which were committed\noutside the pale of the university, and required the apprehension of the\ndelinquent, lay within the pale of the bishop's jurisdiction; and all cases\nfalling under the head of _atrocia_ were, for final decision, reserved\nto the law courts of the crown. The bounds of ecclesiastical jurisdiction\nbeing rather vague and undefined, collisions between the ecclesiastical and\nsecular authorities would naturally arise. In order to provide for all\nemergencies the pope appointed _conservatores_, individuals who had no\ndirect connection with the university, and could therefore the more\neffectually step forward as mediators when they considered its immunities\nand liberties endangered. The university of Oxford, for example, was placed\nunder the guardianship of the episcopal sees of London and Salisbury, and\nthe \"ward,\" it would appear, contrived to get into so many scrapes that the\ncharge of _conservators_ was rendered anything but a sinecure. At one\ntime we find them in a controversy with the crown, at another in a deadly\nfeud with the city magistrates, and again occasionally exchanging not very\nfriendly wishes with the bishop of Lincoln, the diocesan of Oxford. When\nthey found their opponents refractory, they appealed to the pope, who at\nonce despatched a legate to the scene of action, where, in nine cases out\nof ten, the controversy was decided in favor of the university, the darling\nchild of the church. By the constitution of Pope Gregory IX., granted to\nParis University in the year 1231, and soon extended to Oxford, the\nfunctions of the academic by the side of civil and ecclesiastic authorities\nwere more clearly and satisfactorily defined. Most conspicuous in that\nconstitution is a statute, according to which the chancellor of Paris as\nwell as the municipal authorities had to take an oath to honor and maintain\nthe privileges of the university. The relations between the academic\nauthorities and the city magistrates, or, to use an academic phrase,\nbetween gown and town, remained at all times in an unsatisfactory state. In\nItaly the universities to a great extent owed their existence to the\nliberality of opulent citizens, who valued the institutions far too highly\nto disgust them by any infringement of their privileges.\n{225}\nShould, however, the city of Bologna show difficulties in their path, the\nscholars, well aware of a friendly reception elsewhere, packed up their\nvaluables, or pawned them in case of need, and emigrated to Padua. If the\ncommune of Padua grew in any way obnoxious to the university, the rectors\nand students at once decided on an excursion to Vercelli. The good citizens\nof Vercelli received them with open arms, and in the fulness of their joy\nassigned five hundred of the best houses in the town for the accommodation\nof their guests, paid the professors decent salaries, and to make the\ngentlemen students comfortable to the utmost the city engaged two copyists\nto provide them with books at a trifling price fixed by the rector. If the\nBolognese emigrants did not feel comfortable at Imola, there was its\nneighboring rival Siena, which allured the capricious sons of the Muses\nwith prospects far too substantial to be slighted by the philosophical\nstudents. These gentlemen having pawned their books, their \"omnia sua,\" the\ncity of Siena paid six thousand florins to recover them, defrayed the\nexpenses of the academic migration, settled on each of the professors three\nhundred gold florins, and--to crown these acts of generosity--allowed the\nstudents gratuitous lodgings for eighteen months. However much an Italian\nstudent might have relished an occasional brawl in the streets, there was\nhardly an opportunity given him to gratify his pugilistic tendencies, while\nin this country the street fights between students and citizens often\nassumed the most fearful proportions. The more English citizens fostered a\nfeeling of independence, derived from increased wealth and social progress,\nthe less were they inclined to expose themselves to the taunts, and their\nwives and daughters to the impudence, of some lascivious youth or other.\nThe students, on the other hand, able with each successive campaign to\npoint out a new privilege gained, a new advantage won over their\nantagonists, would naturally find an occasional fight tend to the promotion\nof the interests of the body academic, besides gratifying their private\ntaste for a match, which in those days, and in this country especially, may\nwell-nigh have attained the pitch of excellent performance. We do not think\nit necessary or desirable to enter into the details of these riots between\n_town_ and _gown_ which are very minutely narrated in Huber's\nhistory of the English Universities. From the position which they had\ngained in England, it will easily be understood that the universities could\nnot keep aloof from the great political contests of the times, so that as\nfar back as King John's reign the political parties had their\nrepresentatives at the academic schools, where the two nations of Australes\nand Boreales fought many a miniature battle, certainly not always with a\nclear discernment as to the political principles which they pretended to\nuphold.\n\nIt is very curious to observe the manner of self-defence which those\ngigantic establishments adopted when they were pressed by the supreme\npowers of church or state. In the first instance, they had recourse to\nsuspension of lectures and all other public functions, a step sufficiently\ncoercive on most occasions to force even the crown into compliance with\ntheir wishes. Should, however, this remedy fail, they applied to still more\nimpressive means, which consisted in dissolution of the university or its\nsecession to another town. Even the most despotic monarch could not abide\nwithout apprehension the consequences of such a step, if resorted to by a\npowerful community such as Paris and Oxford, for it had received legal\nsanction in the constitution granted by Gregory IX., and its results were\nfar too important to be easily forecast or estimated.\n{226}\nWe have already alluded to the frequent migrations of Italian universities,\nand need, therefore, only point out the impulse imparted to Oxford by the\nimmigration in 1209 of a host of secessionist students and professors from\nParis, the unmistakable influence on the development of Cambridge exercised\nby secessionist scholars of Oxford, and the rise of the university of\nLeipzig upon the immigration of several thousand German students who, with\ntheir professors, seceded from Prague, where Slavonic nationality and\nHussite doctrines had gained the ascendency over Germans and Catholics.\n\nThe universities gradually emancipated themselves, rose higher and higher\nin the estimation of society, and thus became the sole leaders and guides\nof public opinion. Popes and emperors forwarded their decrees to the most\nfamous universities in order to have them inserted in the codes of canon\nand civil law, discussed in the lectures of the professors, and thus\ncommended to a favorable reception among the public. As the highest\nauthorities of church and state, so did individual scholars appreciate the\ninfluence of Alma Mater. It was not uncommon for literary men to read their\ncompositions before the assembled university, in order to receive its\nsanction and approval before publication. So did Giraldus, for example,\nrecite his Topography of Ireland in the convention of the university of\nOxford, and Bolandino his chronicle in the presence of the professors and\nscholars of Padua.\n\nWe cannot more fitly conclude our remarks on the social position of the\nmediaeval universities than by shortly narrating the occasion on which they\ndisplayed, for the last time in the middle ages, the immense power of their\nsocial position. The university of Paris, as it behoved the most ancient\nand eminent theological school, took the lead in the movements which were\nmade in the case of the papal schism. Ever memorable will be the occasion\nwhen, on Epiphany, 1391, Gerson, the celebrated chancellor of the\nuniversity of Paris, delivered his address on the subject before the king,\nthe court, and a numerous and brilliant assembly. Owing to his exertions\nand the co-operation of the professors and members of the university,\ncertain proposals were agreed upon which tended to restore peace and unity\nin the church. The king, for a time, was inclined to listen to these\nproposals, but being influenced again by the party of Clement VII., he\nordered the chancellor to prevent the university from taking any further\nstep in the matter. All petitions directed to the king for a revocation of\nthe sentence proving futile, the university proceeded to apply means of\ncoercion. All lectures, sermons, and public functions whatsoever were\nsuspended until it should have gained a redress of its grievances.\n\nIn the year 1409 the Synod of Pisa was opened to take the long-desired\nsteps against the schism. The universities were strongly represented by\ntheir delegates, not the least in importance among the venerable\nconstituencies of the Occidental Church, the number of doctors falling\nlittle short of a thousand. Reformation of the church in its head and\nmembers, and a revision of its discipline and hierarchic organization, were\nloudly proclaimed by the representatives of the universities, foremost\namong all by Gerson, the chancellor of Paris, the most brilliant star in\nthe splendid array of venerable doctors and prelates of the church.\n\nMediaeval universities were truly _universal_ in their character,\nbeing united by one language, literature, and faith. With the sixteenth\ncentury nationalities were growing into overwhelming dimensions; national\nliterature rose in defiant rivalry and joined revived antiquity in marked\nhostility against the scions of scholasticism; and, to give the final\nstroke, the unity of faith was crumbling; piecemeal under the reforming\nspirit of the age. The ties which had bound mediaeval universities to each\nother and to their common centre were sundered. Some became defunct; others\nled a precarious existence; all had a hard and troublesome time of it--a\nfact touchingly recorded in the annals of Vienna: \"Ann. 1528: Propter\nruinam universitatis nullus incorporatus est.\"\n\n{227}\n\nThis sad epitaph might have been written over the portals of more than one\nuniversity and public school by the middle of the sixteenth century.\n\n\n  Literature.\n\n  Bulaerus, \"Historia Universitatis Paris.\" Paris, 1665\n\n  Wood, \"Historia et Antiquitates Universitatis Oxon.\" Ox., 1668.\n\n  Herrnanni Corringii Opera (tom. v., \"Antiquitatis, Academicae\"). 1730.\n\n  Guia, \"Historia de las Universidades, Colegios, Academias y demas Cuerpos\n  Literarios de Espa\u00f1a,\" etc. Madrid, 1786.\n\n  Huber, \"Die Englischen Universit\u00e4ten.\" Cassel, 1839.\n\n  Dyer, \"History of the University Colleges of Cambridge.\"\n\n  Dyer, \"The Privileges of the University of Cambridge.\"\n\n  Fabranius, \"Historia Academiae Pisanae.\" 1791.\n\n  Vincenzio Bini, \"Memorie Istoriche della Perugina Universit\u00e0.\" Perug.,\n  1816.\n\n  Francesco Colie, \"Storia dello Studio di Padova\" Pad., 1825.\n\n  Pietro Napoli-Signorelii, \"Vicende della Coltura nolle Due Sicilie.\"\n  Napoli, 1784.\n\n  Jacobus Faccioiatus, \"Fasti Gymnasil Patavini,\" Patav., 1757.\n\n  Serafino Mazetti, \"Memorie Storiche sopra l'Universit\u00e0 di Bologna.\"\n  Bolog., 1840.\n\n  G. Origila, \"Storia dello Studio di Napoli.\" Nap., 1753.\n\n  F. M. Renazzi, \"Storia dell' Universit\u00e0 de Roma.\" Roma, 1804.\n\n  J. Bouillard, \"Histoire de l'Abbaye Royale de St. Germain des Prez.\"\n  Paris, 1724.\n\n  J. E. Bimbenet, \"Histoire de l'Universit\u00e9 de Lois d'Orl\u00e9ans.\" Paris,\n  1850.\n\n  F. N\u00e8ve, \"Le College des Trois Langues \u00e0 l'Universit\u00e9 de Louvain.\"\n  Bruxelles, 1856.\n\n  Meiners, \"Verfassung und Verwaltung Deutscher Universit\u00e4ten.\" G\u00f6ttingen,\n  1831.\n\n  R. Kink, \"Geschichte der Kalserlichen Universit\u00e4t zu Wein.\"  Wein, 1854.\n\n  Walaszki, \"Conspectus Relpublicae Literariae in Hungaria.\" Budae, 1808.\n\n  C. J. Hefele, \"Der Cardinal Ximenes.\" T\u00fcbingen, 1851.\n\n  J. P. Charpentier, \"Histoire de la Rennissance des Lettres en Europe.\"\n  Paris, 1843.\n\n  S. Voight, \"Die Wiederbelebung des Classischen Alterthums.\" Berlin, 1859\n\n  J. B. Schwab, \"Johannes Gerson,\" etc. W\u00fcrsburg, 1858.\n\n  G. Tiraboschi, \"Storia della Letteratura Italians.\" Venezia, 1828.\n\n\n------\n\n  Original.\n\n\n  The Lady of La Garaye. [Footnote 49]\n\n    [Footnote 49: The Lady of La Garaye. By the Hon. Mrs. Norton. 12mo, pp.\n    115. New-York: Anson D. F. Randolph.]\n\n\nTwo hundred years ago there dwelt in the lordly castle of Dinan, in\nBrittany, the chivalric Claud Marot, Count de la Garaye, and his gracious\nlady. Its fortress-like walls and majestic battlements reared themselves\nagainst the sky and frowned upon the woods and vales around as if with\nconscious dignity and power. Fair Dinan's town nestled in its protecting\nshadow as a gentle maid might seek security beside the burly form of some\nrough-appearing but tender-hearted giant. The porter kept its gates with a\njealous yet a kindly eye, as should befit the keeper of his master's home,\nwhich was at once the sanctuary of his knightly honor and the hall of his\nknightly bounty. The gray-haired old seneschal, with shoulders slightly\nstooped by age and reverence, met the courtly guests, and bowed them\nwelcome with a paternal smile and bustling orders to the underlings to\nprepare all needful things for their better cheer. The courtyard echoed to\nthe baying of the hounds all eager for the chase, and men at arms in\ntroublous times assembled here, mustered by the doughty\n\n       \"Captains, then of warlike fame,\n  Clanking and glittering as they came.\"\n\n{228}\n\nA retinue of well-fed servants and buxom maids prepared the goodly feast,\nand ordered well the halls and chambers with their quaint and comfortable\nfurniture. Its noble master and mistress held sway within their castle with\nfitting grandeur of demeanor, albeit with that graciousness which marks the\ngentlefolk. Honored by all the country round, rich in worldly goods, yet\nricher in virtue, happy in each other's love, the young count and his lady\nhad but one thing to mourn, and that was that God had left them childless.\nA cruel accident banished for ever all hope of any heir: and so they lived\nand died, yet leaving a name behind them \"better than sons and daughters;\"\nand on this our English poetess has weaved a poem of surpassing beauty. We\npropose to present some idea of it to our readers, merely saying by way of\npreface that if anyone will read it as it is, he may dispense himself the\nfurther perusal of this article, which cannot convey in partial extracts\nthat charm which pervades these flowing pages when undisturbed by the rude\ncomments of a stranger.\n\nThe poem opens with the preparations for the chase, in which the lady is to\ntake a part, and at once the noble pair are described to us:\n\n  \"Cheerful the host, whatever sport befalls,\n   Cheerful and courteous, full of manly grace,\n   His heart's frank welcome written in his face;\n   So eager, that his pleasure never cloys,\n   But glad to share whatever he enjoys;\n   Rich, liberal, gaily dressed, of noble mien;\n   Clear eyes--full, curving mouth--and brow serene;\n   Master of speech in many a foreign tongue,\n   And famed for feats of arms, although too young;\n   Dexterous in fencing, skills in horsemanship--\n   His voice and hand preferred to spur or whip;\n   Quick at a jest and smiling repartee,\n   With a sweet laugh that sounded frank and free,\n   But holding satire an accursed thing,\n   A poisoned javelin or a serpent's sting;\n   Pitiful to the poor; of courage high;\n   A soul that could all turns of fate defy;\n   Gentle to woman; reverent to old age.\"--\n\nWe hasten at once to add the second portrait, painted with a delicacy of\noutline and warmth of coloring which display the touch of the master hand:\n\n  \"Like a sweet picture doth the ladies stand,\n   Still blushing as she bows; one tiny hand,\n   Hid by a pearl-embroidered gauntlet, holds\n   Her whip, and her long robe's exuberant folds.\n   The other hand is bare, and from her eyes\n   Shades now and then the sun, or softly lies,\n   With a caressing touch, upon the neck\n   Of the dear glossy steed she loves to deck\n   With saddle-housings worked in golden thread,\n   And golden bands upon his noble head.\n   White is the little hand whose taper fingers\n   Smooth his fine coat--and still the lady lingers,\n   Leaning against his side; nor lifts her head,\n   But gently turns as gathering footsteps tread;\n   Reminding you of doves with shifting throats,\n   Brooding in sunshine by their sheltering cotes.\n   Under her plum\u00e8d hat her wealth of curls\n   Falls down in golden links among pearls,\n   And the rich purple of her velvet vest\n   Slims the young waist and rounds the graceful breast.\"\n\nThe invited guests having all arrived, the merry party set off with cheers\nand laughter, little dreaming of the sad ending of so joyful a day. The\ngame secured, Count Claud and his lady, returning together, meet with a\nroaring stream over which they must leap their horses:\n\n  \"Across the water full of peak\u00e8d stones--\n   Across the water where it chafes and moans--\n   Across the water at its widest part--\n   Which wilt thou leap, O lady of brave heart?\"\n\nNow comes one of the finest passages in the whole volume. Who can read it\nwithout finding at the last line that he has been holding his breath?\n\n  \"He rides--reins in--looks down the torrent's course,\n   Pats the sleek neck of his sure-footed horse--\n   Stops--measures spaces with his eagle eye,\n   Tries a new track, and yet returns to try.\n   Sudden, while pausing at the very brink,\n   The damp, leaf-covered ground appears to sink,\n   And keen instinct of the wise dumb brute\n   Escapes the yielding earth, the slippery root;\n   With a wild effort as if taking wing,\n   The monstrous gap he clears with one safe spring;\n   Reaches--(and barely reaches)--past the roar\n   Of the wild stream, the further lower shore--\n   Scrambles--recovers--rears--and panting stands\n   Safe 'neath his masters nerveless, trembling hands.\"\n\nBut one word mars the power of these lines; the word _safe_ in the\nline,\n\n   \"The monstrous gap he clears with one safe spring.\"\n\nThe safety of the unexpected leap is told us just one instant too soon.\nThere is an indescribable pleasure derived by the mind in being held in\nsuspense in the contemplation of one passing through imminent perils, and\nthat suspense cannot be broken, though it were but for the short time that\none takes to pass from one side of the page to the other, without loss of\npower in the description, and of interest to the reader.\n\n{229}\n\nBut the lady! will she attempt to follow? Did she not mark his hair-breadth\nescape? The confusion of thought in the mind of the count caused by his own\nperil, the sudden, unlooked-for leap, the fear lest his wife should try to\nfollow ere he can turn to warn her of the danger, the dumb horror which\nseizes him as he sees her horse in the air leaping to his certain death;\nare told in a few rapid lines, and then follows the thrilling tableau:\n\n  \"Forward they leaped! They leaped--a colored flash\n  Of life and beauty. Hark! A sudden crash--\n  Blent with that dreadful sound, a man's sharp cry--\n  Prone--'neath the crumbling bank--the horse and lady lie!\"\n\nLike a madman he rushes to her relief, clambering \"as some wild ape\" from\nbranch to branch, trampling the lithe saplings under foot with giant tread.\nHis love, his fear, his trembling excitement are told in one line:\n\n  \"The strength is in his heart of twenty lives.\"\n\nWhat a depth of meaning there is in that one sentence, and how happy the\nchoice of words. When, in reading, we came upon the word _heart_ where\nwe expected to find \"arm\" or \"frame,\" or some similar term which would\nexpress the increase of muscular and nervous power consequent upon strong\nmental emotion, we confess to having been startled by its originality, and\nwe admire the line as it stands as a master stroke of true poetic genius.\n\nClaud is so shocked at finding his beautiful and passionately loved wife\napparently dead that he is struck deaf and dumb with grief. The noise of\nthe passing hunt, the baying of the hounds, the cheery calls of the\nhuntsmen, and shouts of the merry guests he neither hears nor heeds. It is\nsome time ere he realizes the terrible accident. At last the thoughts shape\nthemselves in his disordered brain, and, with one wild glance at her\nprostrate form, be catches her in his arms, and\n\n    \"Parts the masses of her golden hair,\n  He lifts her, helpless, with a shuddering care,\n  He looks into her face with awe-struck eyes:\n  She dies--the darling of his soul--she dies!\"\n\nThen follows one of those passages marked by that deep pathos for which\nthis poem is so remarkable:\n\n  \"You might have heard, through that thought's fearful shock,\n   The beating of his heart, like some huge clock;\n   And then the strong pulse falter and stand still\n   When lifted from that fear with sudden thrill\n   He bent to catch faint murmurs of his name,\n   Which from those blanched lips low and trembling came:\n   'O Claud!' She said: no more--\n                            But never yet,\n   Through all the loving days since first they met,\n   Leaped his heart's blood with such a yearning vow\n   That she was all in all to him, as now.\"\n\nSome passing herdsmen came to their relief, and the bruised and corpse-like\nform of the lady is borne back to the castle on a rude litter of branches.\nIt is impossible for us to refrain giving the strongly drawn contrast in\nthe following description:\n\n  \"The starry lights shine forth from tower and fall,\n   Stream through the gateway, glimmer on the wall,\n   And the loud pleasant stir of busy men\n   In courtyard and in stables sounds again.\n   And through the windows, as that death-bier passes,\n   They see the shining of the ruby glasses\n   Set at brief intervals for many a guest\n   Prepared to share the laugh, the song, the jest;\n   Prepared to drink, with many a courtly phrase,\n   Their host and hostess--' Health to the Garayes!'\n   Health to the slender, lithe, yet stalwart frame\n   Of Claud Marot--count of that noble name;\n   Health to the lovely countess: health--to her!\n   _Scarce seems she now with faintest breath to stir._\"\n\nAnd thus the first part of this exquisite poem ends. The second part is the\n\"Convalescence\" of the wounded lady. Her life returns, but she learns that\nshe is an incurable invalid, that while life lasts she must remain maimed\nand sick, and, most cruel thought of all,\n\n  \"Never could she, at close or some long day\n   Of pain that strove with hope, exulting lay\n   A tiny new-born infant on her breast.\"\n\nShe draws her fate from the unwilling lips of the physician, in whose\nfriendly eyes the tears are glimmering as he pronounces\n\n  \"The doom that sounds to her like funeral bells.\"\n\nAnd now she hurriedly glances in her mind at all the dreaded consequences,\namong which arises the jealous fear lest she should lose the love of her\nbeloved Claud. His wife, indeed, but no longer his companion; only to have\nthe hours his pity spared. Heart-broken and crushed, she murmurs against\nthe holy will of God and prays for death.\n\n{230}\n\nThe poetess here introduces a thought which shows her deep acquaintance\nwith the human heart. We shrink from sympathy for our wounded pride, and\nstrive to smile when our hearts are aching:\n\n  \"Wan Shine such smiles; as the evening sunlight falls\n   On a deserted house whose empty walls\n   No longer echo to the children's play,\n   Or voice of ruined inmates fled away;\n   Where wintry winds alone, with idle state,\n   Move the slow swinging of its rusty gate.\"\n\nHer high-souled husband grieves to see her drooping under the jealous loss\nof her strength and beauty, and, in his undoubting love, unable to suspect\nthat she fears to lose that love,\n\n      \"Wonders evermore that beauty's loss\n  To such a soul should seem so sore a cross,\n  Until one evening in that quiet hush\n  That lulls the failing day, when all the gush\n  Of various sounds seem buried with the sun,\n  He told his thought.\n                   As winter streamlets run,\n  Freed by some sudden thaw, and swift make way\n  Into the natural channels where they play,\n  So leaped her young heart to his tender tone,\n  So answering to his warmth, resumed her own;\n  And all her doubt and all her grief confest.\"\n\nThe unburdening of the sore, doubting heart and the tender, comforting,\nloving assurance of Claud is one of the choicest scenes in the poem. Never\ndid youthful lover pour forth more impassioned utterances than fell from\nthe lips of that true man and noble husband. He tells her that her beauty\nwas but one of the \"bright ripples dancing to the sun\" glancing upon the\nsilver stream of his happy life, and continues the metaphor:\n\n  \"River of all my hopes thou wert and art;\n   The current of thy being bears my heart.\"\n\nAnd last of all, when she, still incredulous of his unswerving faith, sighs\nher girlish doubts and moans for death, he with full heart and fervent\nwords repeats his tale of love and makes profession of love's boldest\noffering, the sacrifice of his life, if it were the will of God, could she\nreturn again \"to walk in beauty as she did before;\" and then he whispers to\nher the thought that has arisen in his soul to answer the \"wherefore\" of\nthe dreadful accident:\n\n  \"It may be God, saw our careless life,\n   Not sinful, yet not blameless, my sweet wife\n   (Since all we thought of in our youth's bright May\n   Was but the coming joy from day to day),\n   Hath blotted out all joy to bid us learn\n   Now this is not our home; and make us turn\n   From the enchanted earth, where much was given,\n   To higher aims and a forgotten heaven.\"\n\nIt is no little comfort in this age of sensual worldliness and practical\nunbelief in the providence of God to find the voice of Christian philosophy\nsounding yet clear above the grovelling utterances of a too often degraded\nmuse.\n\nThe third part of our poem continues and exemplifies this thought. This\nworld is God's world; we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of\nhis hand. Bereavement, pain, unforeseen and unexplained sorrow belong to\nlife, and play their part in schooling the soul to higher aims. The heart\nmust learn to wait on God. \"Peace will come in that day which is known unto\nthe Lord,\" says the author of the Imitation of Christ. We, too, can bring\nour own experience to the proof, and know that a stronger hand and a wiser\nheart has led and loved us. We quote but one extract from this third part;\nit is the summary of the whole:\n\n  \"All that our wisdom knows, or ever can,\n   Is this: that God hath pity upon man;\n   And when his Spirit shines in Holy Writ,\n   The great word COMFORTER comes after it.\"\n\nTo these sorrowing ones, bending beneath the cruel blow, and mourning over\nblighted hopes, God sent a friend; His friend, the minister of His counsel\nand His comfort, a holy monk. Let us transcribe his portrait:\n\n  \"Tender his words and eloquently wise;\n   Mild pure fervor of his watchful eyes;\n   Meet with serenity of constant prayer\n   The luminous forehead, high and broad and bare;\n   The thin mouth, though not passionless, yet still;\n   With the sweet calm that speaks an angel's will,\n   Resolving service to his God's behest,\n   And ever musing how to serve him best.\n   Not old, nor young; with manhood's gentlest grace;\n   Pale to transparency the pensive face,\n   Pale not with sickness, but with studious thought,\n   The body tasked, the fine mind overwrought;\n   With something faint and fragile in the whole,\n   As though 'twere but a lamp will hold the soul.\"\n\nWords of holy counsel, lessons of humble sanctifying obedience, mingled\nwith mild reproof, yet full of the deepest and friendliest sympathy, fall\nfrom the lips of the good priest and charm the unquiet spirit to rest.\n{231}\nSuch words had doubtless fallen upon her ears before, but she had only been\na hearer; now she was perforce a learner. How natural her complaint:\n\n  \"What had I done to earn such fate from Heaven?\"\n\nAnd how deftly does the priest, wise in the counsels of God and in the\nsorrows of the human heart, catch up the text and bring its argument home\nto the questioner! \"What have the poor done?\" he asks in return, \"what has\nthe babe done that is just born to die? .... what has the idiot done? ....\nwhat have the hard-worked factory girls done?\" (the verse says not\n_factory_ girls, but implies it, a pretty little anachronism which we\nblame not, for the lesson of the Lady of La Garaye was meant for our own\ntimes.).... \"what have the slandered innocent done?\" And then he tells her,\nin strong contrast to her own luxury and ease, of the number who sicken and\ndie, forsaken, uncheered by kind words, unaided by kind hands, wanting the\ncommonest comforts of health which become craving necessities for the sick,\nand bids her know that\n\n \"What we must suffer proves not what was done.\"\n\nThe lady listened, and in her heart arose the wish to help the sick, the\naged, and the poor. God had chosen her to be one of his angels of mercy to\nthe suffering, and a minister of benediction to those that mourn. And,\nchoosing her, he called her to the trial, and led her, all unwilling yet,\nthrough the fire of affliction. How her wish was accomplished and what\nfruit it bore is quickly told:\n\n  \"Where once the shifting throng\n   Of merry playmates met, with dance and song,\n   Long rows of simple beds the place proclaim\n   A hospital, in all things but the name.\n   In that same castle where the lavish feast\n   Lay spread that fatal night, for many a guest\n   The sickly poor are fed! Beneath that porch\n   Where Claud shed tears that seemed the lids to scorch,\n   Seeing her broken beauty carried by,\n   Like a crushed flower that now has but to die,\n   The self-same Claud now stands and helps to guide\n   Some ragged wretch to rest and warm inside.\n   But most to those, the hopeless ones, on whom,\n   Early or late, her own sad-spoken doom\n   Hath been pronounced--the incurables--she spends\n   Her lavish pity, and their couch attends.\n   Her home is made their home; her wealth their dole;\n   Her busy courtyard hears no more the roll\n   Of gilded vehicles, or pawing steeds,\n   But feeble steps of those whose bitter needs\n   Are their sole passport. Through that gateway press\n   All varying forms of sickness and distress,\n   And many a poor worn face that hath not smiled\n   For years; and many a crippled child,\n   Blesses the tall white portal where they stand,\n   And the dear lady of the liberal hand.\"\n\nNothing, we think, could be added to increase the beauty of this picture.\nIn noting the impressions made by the perusal of this charming poem one\ncannot help calling attention to its healthful, elevated tone, and the\npurity of thought which pervades the whole. It is a gem of poetic art which\nall lovers of the true and beautiful must admire. It were needless to say\nthat even by our copious extracts we have not presented all that is worthy\nof comment. There are very few verses, indeed, in the poem which do not\npossess equal merit with those of our quotations. The deep pathos which\nreigns throughout as its flowing rhythm glides smoothly along, is like the\nmurmuring of a brook through quiet woods on a sunny day, compelling the\nchance wanderer to stop and pass a dreamy hour away by its leafy banks.\nThere is a singular air of peacefulness and repose pervading it that we\nthink to be its peculiar charm, and we envy not the reader who can rise\nfrom its perusal without feeling that he has enjoyed a delightful feast for\nboth mind and heart.\n\n--------\n\n{232}\n\n  Original\n\n  Procession in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.\n\n\nA pilgrimage to the places consecrated by the events in the life of our\nLord is, of necessity, full of the deepest interest. However familiar we\nmay be at home with the narrative of all that Christ has done for us, that\nmighty work of love is invested with new force and power when we kneel at\nthe places where it was wrought--when we meditate on the incidents of our\nredemption on the spot where it was effected. The offices of the Passion,\nin Jerusalem, have, therefore, a more striking character than in other\nlands. The ritual observances of the Catholic Church, everywhere so\ntouching, have in the Holy City the additional impressiveness of recalling\nto memory events in the places where they occurred.\n\nEvery day in the year there is a procession in the church of the Holy\nSepulchre, which is one of almost startling solemnity. Those who have been\nprivileged to take part in it can never forget the emotions it excited, and\nwhich are renewed daily as the function proceeds. Although no language can\nadequately express these feelings, yet a description of the procession\nitself, with a reference to the circumstances in which it is made, may be\nof advantage, and aid, however imperfectly, in the understanding of this\nmost impressive devotion. The detail of a liturgical service involving many\nrepetitions and sentences in Latin is necessarily somewhat dull; yet it is\nhoped that the unusual character of the office about to be described will\nhave sufficient attraction for the readers of THE CATHOLIC WORLD to induce\nthem to peruse these pages. Should the writer furnish other sketches of his\npilgrimage to the Holy Land, they will probably be found of more general\ninterest than this paper.\n\nLate in the afternoon, compline being finished, the procession is formed in\nthe chapel of the Franciscans. Each person is furnished with a lighted\ntaper, which serves the double purpose of honoring the function and for\nreading the book of the hymns and prayers. The first time anyone is present\na large wax candle is given him, and this he is permitted to take away as a\nremembrance of the office; on subsequent occasions the smaller one is used,\nwhich burns until the close of the service. The church being dark, it is\ndifficult to read without this light, which also adds much to the\nimpressiveness of the scene as the line of pilgrims stretches along. The\nnumber of persons in the procession varies, being, of course, larger when\nmany strangers are in Jerusalem, as is the case at Easter. Some of the\nCatholics of the city, and occasionally the sisters of St. Joseph, are\npresent, the priests and brothers of the convent being always there; thus\nthe whole office has dignity and is reverently gone through.\n\nWhile on the way from one station to the next, a hymn is sung; when the\nplace is reached, incense is used; the people all kneel; a versicle and\nresponsory are said, followed by a prayer, concluding with _Our\nFather_ and _Hail Mary_. Of course, the whole office is in Latin,\nand thus to ecclesiastics from every part of the world it has a familiar\nappearance.\n\nBeginning in the Latin chapel, in front of the altar of the blessed\nsacrament, the function opens with the antiphon, _O sacrum convivium_,\nand the versicle, \"Thou hast given them bread from heaven, having in itself\nall sweetness.\" The prayer of the blessed sacrament, _Deus qui nobis_,\nis said. In the same chapel, a few feet to the right of the high altar, is\nthe station and altar of the column of the flagellation of Christ.\n{233}\nA recess in the wall contains a portion of the column behind a grating of\niron. In going to this, the hymn _Trophos a crucis mystica_ is sung;\nthe antiphon and prayer, \"Pilate took Jesus and scourged him, and delivered\nhim to them that he might be crucified. I was scourged all the day, and my\ncastigation was in the morning, Look down, we beseech thee, O Lord, upon\nthy church which thou hast redeemed with thy precious blood, that it, being\nalways enriched, may obtain eternal rewards: who livest and reigneet\nforever and ever. Amen.\"\n\nWith the hymn _Jam crucem propter hominem_ the procession goes to the\nprison of Christ, a dark place where, according to tradition, our Lord was\ndetained some time. Antiphon and prayer: \"I brought thee forth from the\ncaptivity of Egypt, Pharaoh being drowned in the Red sea, and thou hast\ndelivered me to this dark prison. Thou, O Lord, hast broken my bonds; to\nthee will I sacrifice the host of praise. Loosen, we beseech thee, O Lord,\nthe chains of our sins, that, having been freed from the prison of this\nbody, we may behold the light of glory, through Christ our Lord. Amen.\"\n\nThe hymn _Ecce nunc Joseph mysticus_ is sung as the procession moves\nto the place of the division of the garments of Christ. Antiphon, etc.:\n\"The soldiers, therefore, when they had crucified Jesus, took his vestments\nand made HERE four parts, to each soldier a part, and the tunic. They\ndivided HERE my vestments for themselves, and on my clothing they cast\nlots. O God, who, through thine only-begotten Son, didst confer the\nremedies of salvation on a fallen world, grant to us that, being freed from\nvices and adorned with virtues, we may be presented in white clothing\nbefore the tribunal of thy majesty. Amen.\"\n\nThe procession, chanting the hymn _Crux fidelis inter omnes_, now\ndescends a flight of stone steps, passes through the chapel of St. Helena,\nand down a second flight to the place where was found the holy cross, the\nreward of the pious search of the mother of Constantine. Antiphon, etc.: \"O\nblessed cross, which alone wast worthy to bear the Lord and King of heaven!\nAlleluia. This sign of the cross shall be in heaven when the Lord shall\ncome to judgment. O God, who didst HERE raise up a miracle of thy passion\nin the finding of the glorious cross of salvation, grant that by the price\nof this wood we may obtain the favor of eternal life. Amen.\"\n\nReturning now to the chapel of St. Helena, with the hymn, _Fortem virili\npectore laudemus omnes Helenam_, the people kneel in the centre of this\nedifice, while the priest who leads the devotion goes to the chief altar,\nwhich is near the place where the saintly empress waited while the search\nfor the holy cross was made below. This chapel belongs to the Armenians.\nThe antiphon, etc., are as follows: \"Helena, the mother of Constantine,\ncame to Jerusalem that she might find the cross of the Lord. Alleluia! Pray\nfor us, O blessed Helena, that we may be made worthy of the promises of\nChrist. Mercifully hear the prayers of thy family, O Lord, that as it\neverywhere rejoices in the fervid study of blessed Helena, who here\njoyfully found the wood of the holy cross so much desired, so, by her\nmerits and prayers, it may be able always to rejoice in heavenly glory.\nAmen.\"\n\nThe next station is that of the column of the crowning and mocking, in\ngoing to which the hymn _Caoetus piorum exeat_ is sung. Antiphon,\netc.: \"I gave thee a royal sceptre, and thou hast put on my head a crown of\nthorns. Plaiting a crown of thorns, they put it on his head. O God, who, in\nthe humility of thy Son, hast lifted up the fallen world, mercifully grant\nthat, casting away the crown of pride, we may obtain the unfading crown of\nglory, through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.\"\n\nThe procession now ascends the flight of step leading to Calvary, going\nfirst to the place of the crucifixion, properly so called, where our Lord\nwas nailed to the cross.\n{234}\nThe hymn _Vexilla Regis prodeunt_ is sung on the way from the place of\nmocking. The antiphon, etc.: \"They took Jesus, and led him forth, bearing\nhis cross: he went to the place called Calvary, in the Hebrew Golgotha,\nwhere they crucified him. HERE they pierced my hands and my feet, and they\nnumbered all my bones. O Lord Jesus Christ, son of the living God, who, for\nthe salvation of the world, at the sixth hour, didst ascend the gibbet of\nthe cross on THIS Calvary, and for the redemption of our sins didst shed\nthy precious blood, we humbly beseech thee that after our death thou mayest\ngrant to us joyfully to enter the gate of paradise: who livest and reignest\nfor ever and ever. Amen.\"\n\nA few steps to the left of this place is the spot where the cross was set\nup, and where the great High Priest offered the sacrifice which taketh away\nthe sin of the world. Going to this, the hymn _Lustris sex qui jam\nperactis_ is sung, the second verse of which recounts, word by word,\nsome of the incidents of the gospel narrative:\n\n  \"Hic acetum, fel, arundo,\n   Sputa, clavi, lancea,\n   Mite corpus perforatur,\n   Sanguis, unda profluit:\n   Terra, pontus, astra, mundus\n   Quo lavantur flumine!\"\n\nThe antiphon, etc.: \"Now it was about the sixth hour, and darkness was over\nall the land even to the ninth hour; and the sun was darkened, and the veil\nor the temple was rent in the midst; and Jesus, crying with a loud voice,\nsaid, 'Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit;' and, saying these\nwords, he HERE expired. We adore thee, O Christ, and we bless thee because\nby thy holy cross thou didst HERE redeem the world.\" The prayer (said in a\nlow voice): \"Look down, we beseech thee, O Jesus, upon this thy family for\nwhich our Lord Jesus Christ did not hesitate to be delivered into the hands\nof the executioners and made to undergo the torment of the cross: who with\nthee liveth and reigneth, world without end. Amen.\"\n\nChanting the hymn _Pange lingua gloriosi_, the priests and people now\ndescend to the stone of unction, where the Redeemer was wrapped in fine\nlinen after he had been taken down from the cross. This is midway between\nCalvary and the scpulchre, and on a level with the floor of the great\nchurch and the holy tomb. The nine verses of the hymn admirably express the\nthoughts and feelings which crowd the mind and heart. Redemption is\naccomplished, and through Christ's death we live. Antiphon, etc.: \"Joseph\nand Nicodemus took the body of Jesus, and HERE bound it in linen with\nspices, as is the custom of the Jews to bury. Thy name is as oil poured\nout; therefore have the young loved thee. O Lord Jesus Christ, who,\ncondescending to the devotion of thy faithful in thy most holy body, didst\npermit it HERE to be anointed by them, that they might reverence thee the\ntrue God, King, and Priest, grant that by the unction of thy grace our\nhearts may be preserved from all infection of sin: who livest and reignest\nfor ever and ever. Amen.\"\n\nThe joyful hymn _Aurora lucis rutilat_ is sung as the procession moves\non to the most glorious scpulchre where was laid the Hope of the world, and\nwhence he rose on Easter morn, triumphant over death and the grave.\nAntiphon, etc.: \"The angel here said to the women, 'Fear not; ye seek Jesus\nof Nazareth crucified; he hath risen, he is not here: behold the place\nwhere they laid him. Alleluia.' The Lord hath risen from this sepulchre,\nalleluia, who for us hung upon the wood, alleluia. O God, who by the\ntriumphant resurrection of thy Son, didst here bestow the remedy of\nsalvation on the world, and, having conquered death, hast unlocked for us\nthe way of eternal life, by thine assistance further our earnest desires\nwhich thou hast put into our hearts; through the same Christ our Lord.\nAmen.\"\n\n{235}\n\nThen, going to the place where Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene in the\nhabit of the gardener, the hymn _Christus triumphum gloriae_ is sung.\nAntiphon, etc.: \"Jesus, rising early on the morning of the first day of the\nweek, appeared HERE to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had cast seven\ndemons, 'Mary, touch me not, for I have not yet ascended to my Father.' We\nbeseech thee, O Lord God, that we may be helped by the prayers of blessed\nMary Magdalene, at whose entreaty thou didst not only raise up her brother\nwho had been four days dead, but didst show thyself after thy resurrection\nhere as the living Lord: who livest and reignest for ever and ever. Amen.\"\n\nLastly, going to the place where, according to tradition, Jesus appeared to\nhis holy mother (this station being in the chapel of the Latins, in front\nof the altar of the blessed sacrament), the procession returns to the spot\nwhence it started, singing the hymn,\n\n  \"Jesum Christum crucifixum\n   Ob peccatorum crimina,\n   Hunc vidisti et flevisti,\n   O gloriosa Domina,\" etc.\n\nThe above is an outline of the procession which is made every day in the\nchurch of the Holy Sepulchre. But to have a full understanding of its\nimpressiveness, one must be in Jerusalem, and take part in it. In other\ncountries, when reading of the passion and death of our Lord, we are left\nto imagine the appearance of places which are thousands of miles away; and\nthis consciousness of distance will ever hinder that vivid realization of\nthe incidents which may be had on the spot where they occurred. When the\nword HIC (here) is said by the officiating priest, all bow down and kiss\nthe floor; and it is enough to melt a heart of stone to be so close to\nthese most sacred spots when the mention of what our Lord has here done and\nsuffered for our sins is made. There is no attempt to work upon the\nimagination or excite the feelings. The singing and praying are in a\nnatural but reverent tone. It is felt that the devout Christian needs only\nto be _here_ when the prayers are said, to have his heart subdued and\nfilled with penitence and adoring gratitude and love.\n\n\n------\n\n  Original.\n\n  At Threescore.\n\n\n  There was but one in all the world,\n                Fond heart,\n  To whom thou gayest all, nor kept\n                A part;\n        And that was John.\n  None e'er so gentle, nor so brave as he,\n  None other's arm so strong or sweet to me\n        To lean upon.\n\n  'Twas down upon the ocean shore\n                One day,\n  The heart I once had some one took\n                Away;\n        And that was John.\n  Strange moment! for it seem\u00e8d then to me\n  As if the rocks and sands and clouds and sea\n        And all were gone.\n\n{236}\n\n  You understand, I do not mean\n                Quite all:\n  Some one was there, so handsome, straight,\n                And tall;\n        And that was John:\n  But he was all to me, and nothing there\n  Nor aught in this wide world with him could bear\n        Comparison.\n\n  Long years have passed, and now my step\n                Is slow.\n  Though weak his arm, yet strong his heart,\n                I know,\n        To lean upon.\n  Beside me seated in his high-backed chair,\n  I see a tall old man with silvered hair;\n        And that is John.\n\n  My day of life has always been\n                Most bright,\n  But now the shadows longer grow,\n                And night\n        Is coming on.\n  I fear it not, for when my course is run,\n  I look beyond the grave to meet with One\n        More dear than John.\n\n\n------\n\n    Translated from the Spanish.\n\n    The Revenge Of Conscience.\n\n\n  Though one brief spring restores to earth the flowers\n  Swept from her lap by autumn's stormy hours,\n  Back to man's breast a lifetime will not win\n  The heart's ease lost through one frail moment's sin.\n\n\nWhite as a nest of gulls, in the cleft of a rock on the wild sea-shore,\ngleams Cadiz from the concavity of her walls. So audaciously is she seated\nin the very midst of the billows that the land reaches out an arm to retain\nher. This slender arm of stone and sand, wearing La Cortadura, a fortress\nconstructed during the glorious war of independence, as a bracelet,\nseparates the violent waves of the ocean from the tranquil waters of the\nharbor, and conducts to the city of San Fernando, which, situated in the\ncurve of the bay, opens its dock-yards of La Carraca as hospitals to the\nvessels that return home, maltreated and bruised, from their perilous\nexpeditions.\n\nPoor wanderers, to whom the tempests are ever repeating what the blasts of\nthe world unceasingly say to mortals, \"On, on!\" When they reach their\ncountry, they lay hold of her with their anchors, as children clasp the\nnecks of their mothers with their little hands.\n\n{237}\n\nBeyond the city of San Fernando, the beautiful and worthy neighbor of\nCadiz, with its splendid Calle Larga, and its houses solid and shining as\nif built of massive silver, and beyond the bridge Zuazo, so ancient that\nits construction is attributed to the Phoenicians, the road divides into\ntwo branches the one on the left continuing to follow the curve of the bay,\nand that on the right taking the direction of Chiclana. It enters this\npleasant town through a grove of white poplars, which, settled like hoary\npatriarchs in the midst of green fields, seem by their whisperings to be\nencouraging the weaker plants to strengthen themselves and stand like them\nagainst the heavy south-west winds. The town is large, and divided into two\nparts by the river Liro.\n\nFrom two neighboring heights it was overlooked in former times by a Moorish\ntower on the one, and a Christian chapel on the other; symbols of its past\nand present. Within a few years the tower has disappeared and the chapel\nhas become a ruin.\n\n  There was a temple and an altar, where\n  The lonely heart might weep and lay its care:\n  I wept. Once more I passed that way,\n  And it was fallen to decay:\n  Whereat I wept again!\n\nThe chapel was under the invocation of St. Anna. It was round and encircled\nby a colonnade, which commanded the view, in all directions, of a\nmagnificent landscape.\n\nAt the foot of the isolated and abandoned tower lay a cemetery. Mouldering\nhumanity creeping sympathetically into the shadow of the decaying ruin.\nThis tower--this seal of stone upon the archives of the place; this\ninheritance of generations, which the district had guarded like the remains\nof a dead chief, embalmed by the aroma of the flowers of the field; this\naustere ruin, which had no longer any relations except with the departed,\nwho were turning to skeletons at its feet; with the birds of night which\nhid themselves in its obscure recesses from the noise and light of day, and\nwith the winds that came to moan sadly through its branches--this\ninoffensive tower could not escape modern vandalism.\n\nNeither respect for the memories it evoked, nor reverence for the burial\nplace it so appropriately guarded, nor the romantic in its aspect, nor the\nhistoric in its origin, could avail it. They demolished it under the sage\nprotest that it was \"ruinous.\" A ruin \"ruinous!\" A tower that bore the\ncenturies as you wear days, \"ruinous, ruinous!\" That petrified mass which\nwould have outlasted all your constructions of wood and clay!\n\nThe chapel, also, closed and forsaken, has become the prey of destruction,\nand its noble colonnade has fallen. Groves, convents, feudal castles, and\npalaces, the very ruins are disappearing, and they are not even building\nfactories or planting orchards where they stood; to clothe the noble matron\nSpain, at least with muslin and flowers, instead of the tissues and jewels\nof which they despoil her. What, then, will remain to us? Pastures wherein\nto breed the ferocious beast, whose contests afford the refined and gentle\ndiversion that enjoys, above all others, the favor of the people. My God!\ncan it be that the natural ferocity and cruelty of man, like the atmosphere\nthat discharges its electricity in thunder, lightning, and tempest, must\nhave vent and expression?\n\nIn the times when Cadiz was the Rothschild among cities, times in which,\naccording to strangers of note and credibility, her merchants lived with\nthe pomp and splendor of ambassadors of kings, the greater part of them had\nin Chiclana country houses, built and furnished with marvellous richness\nand taste. Tarnished vestiges still remain of that elegant luxury to which\nthe coming of Napoleon's Frenchmen gave the death-blow.\n\nIn the present epoch, in which we often see fulfilled the saying, \"Ramparts\nfall and dust heaps exalt themselves,\" when old men recount the splendors\nof those days, _new_--we will not say _young_--men receive their\nstories as tales of the thousand and one nights, with incredulity and\ncriticism alternating upon their lips.\n\n{238}\n\nIn their opinion, gallantry, generosity, and munificence afford material\nfor an appendix to Don Quixote as fantastic virtues which can only exist in\nover-excited brains.\n\nAt the close of the last century, when the events which we are about to\nrelate began to take place, Chiclana was at the zenith of her splendor.\nCadiz shone with gold, and, like the sun, shed glory upon all her environs.\nNowhere now do they throw away doubloons as they then did here, with the\nsimple indifference of children tossing soap-bubbles into the air, and the\nlordliness of princes who neither count nor value what they spend in\ncompliment to others. In this epoch occurred the incident which is told of\nthe celebrated Duchess of Alba and the youth, who, seeing twenty thousand\ndollars upon her table, observed, in her hearing, that this sum, which to\nher was such a trifle, would make a man's fortune. \"Would you like to have\nit?\" asked the duchess. The youth admitted that he would. The lady sent him\nthe money and--closed her doors upon him. In these days the contrary would\nhave succeeded. The money would not have been given, nor would the doors\nhave been closed upon one who, by any means whatever, had acquired it.\n\nIn one of the wide, cheerful streets of the above-named town stood a house\nof more distinguished appearance than the others, though it consisted of\nbut one story, which was somewhat elevated from the ground and reached by a\nflight of marble steps. The door was of mahogany, studded with great nails\nof shining metal. The front of the house was surmounted by the arms of the\nfamily, carved in marble. Nobility and riches seek each other; in former\ntimes they were sisters, in these they are not even cousins. The house\nporch, the court, and all the apartments, even to the inferior offices,\nwere paved with magnificent blocks of blue and white marble. Columns of\njasper supported the four galleries which surrounded the court, and in the\narea, in the midst of towering plants and alabaster statues, a fountain\nflowed unceasingly, singing the same pure and infantile melody to the bud\nhalf opened in hope, and to the flower falling in leafless despair. Between\ncolumn and column, embowered in green and flowery tapestries of jassamine\nand musk rose, hung the gilded cages of bright-hued birds. A canvas awning,\ncut in points at the edges, and bound with red, shaded the court and\npreserved its refreshing coolness. The walls of the parlor were of white\nstucco upon a blue ground; the chairs and sofa were made of ebony, with\nheavy silver ornaments and coverings of azure _gros de Tours_. The\nfurniture was of slight and simple form and in the Greek style, which the\nRevolution had brought into favor, making it the order of the day, as it\nhad also introduced the Phrygian cap, the names of Antenor, Anacharsis,\nThemistocles, Aristides, and other things less inoffensive than these. Upon\nthe table, which was supported by four straight-fluted legs, stood a clock,\nconstructed of white marble and bronze. At that time the taste for the\npastoral and idyllic in art had passed, dispossessed by the grave and\nclassic allegories which were presently to be superseded by the cannon,\nbanners, and warlike laurel wreaths with which Napoleon would dispel in\nwide air the ardor and zeal of the Revolution. In its turn the epoch of the\nRestoration, which put an end to the supremacy of the sword as the sword\nhad terminated the rule of the democracy, brought back monarchical ideas\nand religious sentiments with the chivalry, loyalty, and ancient faith\nwhich were to introduce the Romantic in literature and the Gothic in arts\nand customs. Following closely upon these came the taste for the fashions\nof the times called \"of Louis the Fourteenth\" and \"Louis the Fifteenth.\"\nFor men are, like children, enthusiasts of the new, and ever trampling with\ncontempt upon the idol of the moment before. Shakespeare has said.\n\"Frailty, thy name is woman!\" Well might he have added, \"Fickleness, thy\nname is man!\"\n\n{239}\n\nThe clock formed a group, composed of an effigy of time, under the figure\nof an old man; two nude young girls with arms interlaced, leaning upon the\nold man, and representing innocence and truth; and two other figures,\nwrapped in dark veils, symbolizing sin and mystery flying from time, who,\nwith raised finger, appeared to threaten them. The effigy of time was well\nand expressively executed; and when the clear and sonorous voice of the\nhour, counting its dead sisters, was added to its expressive gesture, it\nseemed like the warning voice of an austere patriarch, and could not fail\nto affect him who, meditating upon the sense of the allegory, heard the\nmeasured echo of its strokes. On each side of the clock was a bronze\ncandlestick, in the form of a negro standing upon a marble pedestal and\nadorned with brazen chains. The negro carried upon his head and in his\nhands baskets of flowers. In the centres of the flowers the candles were\nset. The ceiling was painted to represent light, floating clouds of gray\nand white, through which was seen a nymph of the air, apparently holding in\nher hands the tasselled cords of azure silk which sustained an alabaster\nlamp, destined to filter a light as mild and soft as that of the moon, a\nlight extremely flattering to female beauty, and therefore adopted for\nselect reunions. In the middle of the room, upon a mosaic stand, rested a\ngreat glass globe. In it swam fishes of those lovely colors which the water\ndisplays in emulation of the air that has its gorgeous birds, and the earth\nthat parades its charming flowers. Here they lived, silent and gentle,\nunvexed by the circuit which bounded their action, like pretty idiots,\nseeing everything with their great eyes, and comprehending nothing. The\nglobe was surmounted by a smaller one filled with flowers, of which there\nwas also a profusion arranged in jars in the recesses of the windows. The\nwindows were hung with lace-edged muslin curtains, like those now used,\nexcept that the muslin was Indian instead of English, and the lace thread,\nmade by hand, instead of cotton woven. As it was summer time, only a dim\nlight was allowed to penetrate the drawn blinds. The atmosphere of the\napartment was perfumed with flowers and pastilles of Lima.\n\nUpon the sofa reclined a woman of extraordinary beauty. One alabaster hand,\nhidden in a mass of auburn curls, supported her head upon the pillow of the\nsofa. A loose cambric dress, adorned with Flanders lace, robed her youthful\nand perfect form. Through the lace of her robe just peeped the point of a\nlittle foot encased in a silken stocking and white satin slipper. At that\ntime no other shoe was used by ladies of distinction upon any occasion, and\nluxury reached even to the wearing of lace slippers lined with colored\nsatin.\n\nThe apostles of the last foreign fashion, admirers of the buskin, regard\nwith sovereign contempt this rich and elegant custom, which, in their eyes,\nis guilty of two mortal sins--that of being old-fashioned, and that of\nbeing Spanish. The lady's left hand was adorned with a splendid brilliant,\nand held a cambric handkerchief of Mexican embroidery, with which, from\ntime to time, she dried a tear that slid slowly down her pearly cheek.\n\nThe reader thinks that he divines the cause of this solitary tear shed by a\nwoman, young, beautiful, and surrounded by the evidences of a luxurious and\nenviable position. He has decided that it must be the token of wounded\naffection, and has guessed wrong. Respect for truth, even at the sacrifice\nof admiration for the heroine of our story, obliges us to confess that this\ntear was not of love, but of spite. Yes, that brilliant drop, falling from\neyes as blue as the sky of evening, gliding between those long, dark\nlashes, and across those delicately glowing cheeks, was the evidence of\nspite.\n\n{240}\n\nBut before we proceed it is necessary to explain the cause of the ill-humor\nof our heroine.\n\n\n  Chapter II.\n\n\nThe young lady we have been describing was called Ismena, and was the only\nchild of Don Iago O'Donnell, whose family, in common with many others, had\nemigrated from Ireland in the time of William of Orange. After the\ncapitulation of Limerick, the troops, who belonged to the most noble\nfamilies of Ireland, entered the service of France and Spain. Philip the\nFirst, as was to have been expected, welcomed them, and they formed, in\n1709, the regiments of Ibernia and Ultonia, and, later, a third called the\nIrlanda. These troops were commanded by James Stuart, duke of Berwick,\nnatural son of James the Second by Arabella Churchill, sister of the famous\nDuke of Marlborough. The Duke of Berwick gained the battle of Almansa and\ntook Barcelona by assault, and the king rewarded his great services with\nthe dukedoms of Liria and Jerica, and made him a grandee of Spain. This\ngallant general had two sons, the elder was naturalized in Spain and\ninherited the titles of Berwick, Liria, and Jerica, to which he afterward\nunited, by his marriage, that of the noble house of Alba, which had\ndescended to a female. The second son established himself in France, where\nhis descendants still exist and bear the title of dukes of Fitz-James.\n\nThe above-mentioned regiments are represented in our days by the\ndescendants of the loyal men who composed them, for, as we have been\ninformed, there are now ninety Irish surnames in the Spanish army, names\nwhich, for their traditional loyalty and bravery, and their hereditary\nnobility, honor those who bear them.\n\nDon Iago O'Donnell married a Spanish lady, and his daughter, Ismena, united\nin her person the beauty of both types. Her slight and graceful Andalusian\nform was clothed in the white rose-tinted skin of the daughters of misty\nErin, to which the impassible coldness of its possessor gave a transparent\npearliness and purity that nothing ever disturbed. Her large violet eyes\nbeamed from beneath their dark lashes with the haughty and expressive\nglance of the south. Her carriage, though somewhat lofty, was free and\nnatural. Naturalness is, indeed, but another name for that \"Spanish grace\"\nwhich has been so justly famed and eulogized. The irresistible attraction\nwhich is born of it, and which, in former times, women shed around them as\nthe flame sheds light and the flowers perfume, they owed to the men, who\nused to abhor whatever was put on, affected, or studied; anathematizing it\nin a masculine way under the expressive epithet \"monadas.\" [Footnote 50] In\nnaturalness there is truth, and without truth there is no perfection; in\nnaturalness there is grace, and without grace there is no real elegance.\nTaste at present appears to lie in the opposite extreme, as if the\nFlorentines should dress their _Venus di Medicis_ as a show figure.\n\n    [Footnote 50: Monkey airs, splashness.]\n\nThe spirit of Ismena was far less richly endowed than her person. She\npossessed the cold, calm temperament of her father united to the haughty\nand domineering disposition she had inherited from her mother, and these\nqualities were exaggerated in her by the overbearing pride of the rich,\nbeautiful, and spoiled child. Her mind was ever occupied in framing for\nherself a future as illustrious and brilliant as those which\nfortune-tellers prognosticate, and so she rejected all the lovers who\noffered her their affections, not one of them appearing likely to realize\nher dreams of greatness. But changes of fortune, like the transformations\nin magic comedies, come unlooked for and suddenly. Ismena's father lost his\nwhole fortune within a few months; thanks to the treachery of the English,\nwho seized so many of our ships and so much treasure before making a formal\ndeclaration of war with Spain.\n{241}\nThe fatal war which brought upon us the fatal family compact! Don Iago, who\nhad just lost his wife, retired, ruined, to his country house in Chiclana.\nBut this retreat did not long remain to him, for the house was advertised\nfor sale by his creditors. The first person who presented himself as a\npurchaser was the General Count of Alcira. General Alcira had just returned\nfrom a long residence in America. Though he counted but fifty-five years,\nhe appeared much older in consequence of the destructive action of that\nclimate, which, with its hot miasms, impairs the European even as it\ncorrodes iron. Notwithstanding his age, the general had become the heir of\na young nephew, from whose title the rule of succession excluded females.\nOn his return he went to Seville, his native city, where he was received by\nhis sister-in-law (who looked upon him as one come to deprive her and her\ndaughters of the riches and title they had possessed) with such bitterness\nand hostility that, although he was one of the most generous of men, he was\njustly indignant, and determined to leave Seville and establish himself in\nCadiz, and he decided well.\n\nAt that period, Seville, the staid, religious matron, with rosary in hand,\nstill more the buckram stays and the high powdered promontory--that,\nwithout the hair, must have been a weight in itself--and the hoops with\nwhich a lady could pass with ease only through a very wide door. At her\naustere entertainments she played Baciga or Ombre with her canons, her\njudges, her aldermen; and her cavaliers. She had no theatre, being withheld\ntherefrom by a religious vow. She had for illumination only the pious\nlights that burned before her numerous pictures of saints. She had no\npavements, no _Paseo de Cristiana_.\n\nOf course there were no steamboats, those swift news-bearers which have\nsince united in such close friendship these sister cities, the twin jewels\nof Andalusia, Cadiz, even more beautiful than she is now, wore her drapery\nin the low-necked Greek fashion which we still see in portraits of the\nbeauties of those days. Cadiz, the seductive siren of naked bosom and\nsilver scales, bathed in a sea of water, a sea of pleasure, and a sea of\nriches. She knew well how to unite the art and culture of foreign elegance\nwith the dignity, ease, and spontaneity of Spanish grace, and, though the\nfair Andalusian had adopted certain things and forms that were foreign, she\nwas none the less essentially Spanish in her delicate taste and\ncircumspection, and her attachment to her own nationality.\n\nFor, strange to tell, in those days the pompous and high-sounding\nassumption of the \"Spanish\" which now fills the unholy sheets of the public\npress, and resounds through all discourses like hollow and incessant\nthunders, was unknown. It did not blare in lyric compositions, nor was it\nmade the instrument of a party for the promotion of such or such ideas, nor\nwas the bull Se\u00f1orito [Footnote 51] chosen with enthusiasm as its symbol.\n\n    [Footnote 51: The famous bull that, in 1850, in Seville, fought and\n    killed a large tiger.]\n\nBut that which was Spanish was had with simplicity, as the brave man has\nhis intrepidity without proclaiming it, and as the fields have their\nflowers without parading them, Spanish patriotism was not upon the lips,\nbut in the blood, in the being; it was the genius of the people; and it\nbecame them so well, was so refined and generous, so gentle and chivalric,\nso in harmony with the gracious southern type, that it came to be the\nadmiration and delight of strangers. But we have apostatized from it, do\nnot understand it, hold it in slight esteem, and, unlike the ass that\ncovered himself with the rich golden skin of the lion, we, more stupid than\nhe, instead of smoothing and cultivating that which nature has bestowed\nupon us, wrap ourselves in one that is inferior to it.\n{242}\nThen the most candid gayety blended with an exquisite refinement pervaded\nsocial intercourse. There were neither clubs nor casinos, only reunions, in\nwhich gallantry was governed by the code contained in these ancient verses\nof Suarez:\n\n  \"You are feared and worshiped;\n   You to be obeyed:\n   We saw humble worshipers,\n   Of your frowns afraid.\n   You the lovely conquerors;\n   We your bondsman true:\n   Ladies dear in vanquishers,\n   We are slaves to you.\n   You the praised and honored;\n   Fairest under sun:\n   We the lowly servitors,\n   By your smiles undone.\"\n\nThe expression \"to acquire a manner\" was not then in use, but the practice\nof good manners was a matter of course and of instinct. The officers of the\nmarine, brave and gentlemanly as they are now, but richer and more gallant,\nconstituted the chief ornament of the society of Cadiz. They had formed\nthemselves into a gay fraternity, at the head of which were the officers of\nthe man-of-war San Francisco de Paula, and which, in playful allusion to\nthe motto of the saint of this name--Caritas bonitas--styled itself \"La\ndevota Hermandad de las Caritas Bonitas\" [Footnote 52] (The devoted\nBrotherhood of Beauty). In the theatre the national pieces of our own poets\nwere played, and the farces of Don Ramon de la Cruz were enthusiastically\napplauded: at the brilliant fairs of Chiclana the inhabitants of Cadiz and\nPuerto congregated like flocks of gorgeous birds; and Cadiz retained, long\nyears after, charms sufficient to inspire the song of Byron, that\ndiscriminating appreciator of the beautiful.\n\n    [Footnote 52: Caritas bonitas, Pretty faces.]\n\nThe General Count of Alcira desiring to buy a country house, that of Don\nIago O'Donnell was proposed to him, and be went to look at it. The\nunfortunate proprietor threw it open to his inspection as soon as he\npresented himself. The count was charmed with all that he saw in the\nelegant mansion we have already described, and, above all, with the\ndaughter of its master, whom they encountered writing in a retired cabinet\nthat received light and fragrance from the garden. She was dressed in deep\nmourning, and weeping bitterly while she answered letters from two of her\nfriends who had just married--one an English lord, and the other a nobleman\nof Madrid. How bitterly those letters caused Ismena to feel the contrast\nbetween the lot of her friends and that which compelled her, single and\npoor, to abandon even this house, the only thing that remained to her of\nthe brilliant past.\n\nHer tears moved and interested the good general to such an extent that,\nhaving bought the house, he begged the occupant to remain in it and admit\nhim, the buyer, as a member of his family and the husband of his daughter.\nIt is hardly necessary to add that Don Iago received this proposition as a\nmessage of felicity, and that his daughter hailed it as a means of escaping\nlower depths of the abyss into which fortune had hurled her. To paint the\nrage of the aunt's sister-in-law when she heard of the projected alliance\nwould be a difficult task. She spread calumnies upon Ismena, ridiculed the\nmarriage, and spit out her venom in bitter sarcasms, prophesying that the\nunion of the ambitious beggar with the worn-out valetudinarian would remain\nwithout issue; in short, that Providence would mock their calculations, and\ncause the title, for lack of a male inheritor, to return to her own family.\nThe excessive pride of Ismena, more than ever susceptible since her\nmisfortune, was stung beyond endurance by those gibes and revilings. And\nshe was still more chagrined when, after having been married two years\nwithout giving birth to a child, she seemed to see the prophecies of her\nenemy realized. It appeared that God would deny the blessing of children to\nthe wife who desired them not from the holy instinct of maternal love, but\nto satisfy a base pride and a contemptible covetousness; not for the\nblessed glory of seeing herself surrounded by her offspring, but from the\nhaughty and miserable desire of humiliating a rival--of triumphing over an\nenemy.\n{243}\nIt is at this time and under the influence of these feelings that we have\nintroduced Ismena, Countess of Alcira, bathed in tears. And for this we say\nthat these drops, so cold and bitter, were not tokens of wounded love, but\nof rage and spite.\n\n\n  Chapter III.\n\n\nThe general had learned that the house in Chiclana was for sale from his\nsecretary, who was the son of Don Iago's housekeeper. A few words will\nexplain this.\n\nThe general, when young, had for many years an orderly whom he loved well.\nThe Spanish orderly is the model domestic, the ideal servant. He is wanting\nin nothing, has always more than enough, and does whatever is asked of him\nunquestioningly and with pleasure. If he were bidden, he would, like St.\nTheresa, plant rotten onions through the same spirit of blind obedience. He\nhas the heart of a child, the patience of a saint, and the attachment of\nthat type of devoted affection, the dog. Like him he loves and cares for\nall that belongs to his master, and, most of all, for his children, if he\nhas any. And to such a degree does he carry this devotion, that one of our\ncelebrated generals has said that \"an orderly makes the very best of dry\nnurses.\" He has no will of his own, does not know what laziness is, is\nhumble and brave, grateful and obliging. And in the household, where his\ncoming may have occasioned the natural irritation and repulsion caused by\nwhatever invades the domestic circle, his departure is always sincerely\nfelt.\n\nBefore he left Spain the general, then a captain, had lived for a long time\nwith his orderly in the greatest friendship, without the latter having lost\nthe least grain of his respect for his chief. When the general went to\nAmerica, his orderly, to the great grief of both, left him, and returned to\nhis native town of Chiclana to marry the bride who, with a constancy not\nunusual in Spain, had waited for him fifteen years. A few years later the\norderly died leaving one child, a son, to the care of his disconsolate\nwidow. The poor woman, accompanied by a little niece she had adopted, took\nservice with Don Iago O'Donnell. As for the boy, who was godson to the\ngeneral, the latter sent for him, had him educated under his own care, and\nafterward made him his secretary. In this capacity he brought him back to\nSpain. L\u00e1zaro--so he was named--was one of those beings who are sealed by\nnature with the stamp of nobility, and who, aided by circumstances, become\nunconscious heroes by simply following their natural instincts.\n\nHaving learned from his mother that the house in which she lived was for\nsale, he had informed the general, who bought it, and with it his young and\nbeautiful wife.\n\nA beautiful woman she was; as fair and delicate as an alabaster nymph; as\ncold, also, and as void of feeling; a being who had never loved anything\nbut herself; insipid and without sweetness; a jessamine flower that had\nnever felt the rays of the sun.\n\nLater in the afternoon, an attendant called Nora entered the room in which\nwe found Ismena, to open the windows. Nora had been Ismena's nurse, and had\nnever left her. She was a proud and cunning woman, and had done much to\ndevelop the perverse dispositions of the girl.\n\n\"Always weeping,\" she said with a gesture of impatience at the sight of\nIsmena's tears. \"You will lose your good looks, and when your husband dies,\nall you have beside will be gone, youth, consideration, and wealth. You\nwill then have no recourse but to turn pious and spend your days dressing\nup the holy images.\"\n\n\"I know too well that I shall lose everything, that is why I weep,\" replied\nIsmena.\n\n{244}\n\n\"And who says that your lot may not be different?\" answered Nora. \"It is\nnot your sister-in-law that has the disposition of your future; you\nyourself can do more to make your fortune than she to unmake it. Hope is\nthe last thing lost, but then one must not cross one's arms while they can\nbe of use.\"\n\n\"Idle talk,\" returned Ismena. \"You know that my hopes are as vain as my\nmarriage is sterile.\"\n\n\"It will amount to the same thing,\" said Nora, \"whether you give birth to a\nson or adopt one.\"\n\nThe lady fixed her great blue eyes upon the woman as she exclaimed, \"The\ncount would never consent!\"\n\n\"He need not know it,\" replied Nora.\n\n\"A fraud, a crime, a robbery! Are you beside yourself?\"\n\n\"All that sounds very lofty, yet in reality you will only be doing some\npoor wretch an act of charity. Your nieces are well married; your\nsister-in-law has a rich jointure, and does not need the count's money. If\nthey desire to have it, it is through ambition, and that you may not enjoy\nit.\"\n\n\"Never! never!\" said Ismena. \"Better to lose rank and position than become\nthe slave of a secret which may bring us to dishonor. Never!\" she repeated,\nshaking her head as if she wished to shake the fatal thought from her mind.\n\n\"I only shall know the secret, and I alone will be responsible. So it will\nbe more secure in my breast than in your own.\"\n\n\"You will have to employ another person.\"\n\n\"Yes, but without confiding in him. I have already found the person. Your\nhusband is about to embark for Havana. When he returns, be will find a son\nhere.\"\n\n\"Nora, Nora! there is no wickedness of which you are not capable!\"\n\n\"I am capable of anything that may result in benefit to you.\"\n\n\"But to deceive a man like the count would be the most unpardonable of\ncrimes!\"\n\n\"Ismena, I have often heard you sing:\n\n  'Deceit, a faithful friend art thou;\n    'Tis truth that is our bane.\n   Pain without sickness she doth give;\n     Thou, sickness without pain.'\n\nBut to-day you appear to be more high flown than the poets themselves.\"\n\n\"But the text alludes to love quarrels.\"\n\n\"It is very applicable to everything else in life. As if you had never\nknown the case I have suggested to be put into practice; and is it not a\nthousand times worse when combined with infidelity?\"\n\nAt this moment the count entered. \"Ismena, my child,\" he said, approaching\nhis wife, \"I have come to take you out, your friends are already waiting\nfor you in the Ca\u00f1ada. How is it that these lovely spring afternoons do not\ninspire you with a desire to go out and enjoy the free, balmy air?\"\n\n\"I dislike to walk, and people worry me,\" answered Ismena, who had lost\ncolor at sight of her husband.\n\n\"You look pale, my child,\" replied the count with tenderness, \"and for some\ntime past you have seemed low-spirited. Are you not well?\"\n\n\"There is nothing the matter with me,\" answered Ismena.\n\n\"At most,\" said Nora, \"your sickness is not one that requires the attention\nof a doctor.\" And she glanced at the count with a meaning smile.\n\nIrritation and shame sent the hot blood mounting to Ismena's face.\n\n\"Nora,\" she exclaimed, \"are you crazy? Be silent!\"\n\n\"I will be silent, sir count, for, as the saying is, 'the more silent the\ncoming the more welcome the comer.'\"\n\nIn the general's benevolent face glowed the light of a pure paternal hope.\n\n\"Is this certain?\" he said, looking tenderly at his wife.\n\n{245}\n\n\"Sir,\" said Nora, \"have you not noticed for some time past her want of\nappetite and her general languor without apparent cause? _She_ does\nnot believe it, and will not be convinced, but I who have more experience\nam sure.\"\n\n\"Nora, it is false!\" exclaimed Ismena, appalled.\n\n\"Time will show,\" replied Nora, with perfect composure.\n\n\"Time!\" repeated Ismena indignantly.\n\nAt this moment they were interrupted by six deep measured strokes of the\nclock.\n\n\"That fixes the time for the event,\" said Nora, with an affected laugh;\n\"six months from now, it says.\"\n\n\n  Chapter IV.\n\nSix months after these scenes the general, in an affectionate letter to his\nwife, announced his return from Havana, whither he had been upon important\nbusiness. Ismena went to Cadiz to meet him, accompanied by a nurse who\ncarried in her arms the supposed heir.\n\nThis child had been brought from the Iocluso, [Footnote 53] and the secret\nof the deception was known only to Ismena, to Nora, and to L\u00e1zaro; the\nlatter being the person selected by Nora to obtain the infant from the\nasylum. How she had been able to persuade the good young man to bend\nhimself to her wicked plot can be understood only when it is known that he\nbelieved it to have been sanctioned and arranged by his master. L\u00e1zaro\ndoubted until Nora, who had foreseen his opposition, and was prepared to\nmeet it, showed him the following passages in the last letter the general\nhad written to his wife:\n\n    [Footnote 53: Establishment for the reception of abandoned infants.]\n\n  \"The sails which are to bear me from you, and, with you, from all the\n  sweetness of my life, are already spread. Adieu, therefore: I hope on my\n  return to find you with a child in your arms, which will render our\n  happiness complete.\n\n  \"As I have told you before, you may, in the affair of which we know, and\n  in all other's, trust L\u00e1zaro, in whom I place the most implicit\n  confidence.\"\n\nThe letter ended with some tender expressions and the signature of the\ngeneral.\n\nNora, quick to perceive the use she could make of the above passages in\nproving to L\u00e1zaro that the \"affair of which we know,\" which was in reality\na matter relating to money, was the same she had in hand, had kept the\nletter.\n\nL\u00e1zaro, therefore, with the deepest sorrow, but the most entire devotion to\nhis benefactor, brought the innocent little one; which thus passed from the\nbosom of an abandoned woman into the hands of a traitoress.\n\nA little before the time at which we take up the thread of our story the\nbabe had been reclaimed, and the administrator of the asylum had demanded\nit of L\u00e1zaro. Nora could find no means of escape from the difficulty this\ndemand occasioned them but to send L\u00e1zaro out of the country. Ismena also\nvehemently urged his departure, and the devoted victim consented to go,\nknowing that his absence, without apparent cause and without explanation,\nwould break the heart of his mother and of his young cousin, to whom he was\nsoon to have been married.\n\nHe embarked secretly in a small coasting vessel bound for Gibraltar, which,\nbeing overtaken by a tempest off the perilous coast of Conil, was capsized,\nand all on board were lost.\n\nThis catastrophe, of which she believed herself to be the cause, overcame\nIsmena, and her suffering was augmented by a threatening presentiment that\nwould allow her to fix her thoughts neither upon the past nor future\nwithout shuddering. The one reproached and the other appalled her.\n\n{246}\n\nAlas for the wretch that between these two phantoms drags out a miserable\nexistence! Happy is he who, by keeping his conscience pure, preserves, amid\nmisfortunes and sorrows, his peace of soul, the supreme good which God has\npromised man in this exiled state.\n\n\n  Chapter V.\n\nFor many years the beautiful house at Chiclana remained unoccupied, the\ncountess obstinately refusing to go there to enjoy the spring. Alas! for\nher there was neither spring nor pleasure, for, through divine justice, the\nresults of her crime, a crime committed in cold blood and without a single\nexcuse, weighed heavily upon her, as if the Most High had wished, by the\nforce of circumstances, to impress upon her hard and daring spirit that\nwhich the sentiments of humanity had failed to communicate.\n\nAnd these circumstances were indeed terrible, for she had borne the count,\nsuccessively, two sons, whose birth filled the heart of their mother with\nconsternation. To increase her chagrin, she saw the oldest of the three\nboys was growing up beautiful, brave, and sincere, occupying the first\nplace in her husband's heart. For not only did Ramon--so the boy was\ncalled--sympathize with the general, but the equitable old man, seeing the\nhostility with which the countess regarded him, redoubled his\nmanifestations of interest and affection toward the victim of her ill\ntemper, and thus, by the force of a terrible retribution, God had brought\nremorse to that hard heart, and remorse had driven her from the house in\nwhich everything reminded her of her crime.\n\nRemorse! Thou that bindest the temples with a crown of thorns, and the\nheart with a girdle of iron prongs; thou that makest the sleep so light and\nthe vigil so heavy; thou that interposest thyself to cloud the clear glance\nthat comes from the soul to the eyes, and to embitter the pure smile that\nrises from the heart to the lips; thou so silent in face of the seductive\nfault, so loud in thy denunciations when it is past, and there is no\nrecalling it. Cruel and inexorable remorse! by whom art thou sent? Is it by\nthe spirit of evil, that he may rejoice in his work and drive guilty man to\ndespair; or by God, to warn him, in order that he may yet expiate his\nfaults? For through thee two ways are opened to the soul--the way of death\nand the way of repentance. Weak wills and lukewarm spirits fluctuate\nbetween the two, shrinking alike from the furnace which would purify them,\nand the bottomless sea of anguish in whose bitter abysses the impenitent\nsoul must writhe eternally.\n\nThese agonies to which Ismena was a prey, this remorse, this undying worm,\nhad gnawed at her heart and life like an incurable cancer, and her tortures\naugmented in proportion as she felt her end approaching. In a continual\nstruggle with conscience, which cannot be compounded with by human reasons\nor worldly purposes, because it is in itself a reason from God; every day\nmore undecided whether to enter upon the course it indicated or to follow\nthe path into which her pride had led her, Ismena, tearful alike of the\nfiery furnace and of the dreadful abyss, was approaching death as a\ncriminal approaches the scaffold, wishing at the same time to lengthen the\ndistance and to shorten it. When her end seemed near, the doctors insisted,\nas a last recourse, that she should try the air of the country, and the\nhouse at Chiclana was prepared for the reception of its proprietors. The\nmost exquisite neatness was restored throughout. The awning once more\ncovered the court, the birds twittered in their gilded cages, and the\nplants throve and bloomed, though Maria no longer sang as she watered them.\n\nAnnounced by the sound of its bells, the carriage slowly approached and\nstopped at the door. But she who descended from it, and, supported by the\ngeneral and a physician, dragged herself wearily through the marble portal\nlike a corpse entering its sumptuous mausoleum, is only the wasted shadow\nof the once brilliant Ismena.\n{247}\nAt twenty-eight she had lost all the brightness of youth, her splendid eyes\nwere dimmed and cast down, her golden locks had become gray, and her white\nand faded skin was like a shroud that covers a skeleton. A few years had\nsufficed to produce this change; for, instead of the gentle and reluctant\nhand of time, it had been wrought by the destructive talon of suffering.\nThe countess was borne to a sofa, upon which she lay for a long while so\nprostrated that she appeared unconscious of all that surrounded her. But\nwhen left alone with Nora, she became feverish and agitated, and called for\nMaria. Nora, foreseeing the violent shock the sight of this poor old woman,\nthe unfortunate victim of her fatality, must produce, would have put her\noff; but the countess repeated the demand with so much exasperation that it\nwas necessary to obey. When Maria came in, Ismena extended her arms, and,\nembracing her convulsively, laid her burning head upon the bosom of the\nfaithful friend who had witnessed her birth. But Maria was serene, for in\nthat bosom beat a pure heart. Her eyes had lost their former expression or\ncheerful happiness, but still shone with the light of inward peace.\n\n\"Maria,\" exclaimed Ismena at last, \"how have you been able to bear your\nmisfortune?\"\n\n\"With the resignation which God gives when he is asked for it, my lady,\"\nreplied the good woman.\n\n\"O blessed sorrows with which it is not incompatible!\" was the agonized cry\nof Ismena's heart.\n\n\"I told you one day, my lady, that my son filled me with pride; and God has\npermitted that this son, my boast and my glory, should be defamed by all\nthe appearances of a crime.\"\n\n\"Appearances!\" said Nora. \"Who says that?\"\n\n\"Every one,\" answered Maria with gentle firmness, and, after a moments'\npause, she continued with the same serenity: \"A profound mystery hides from\nmy eyes, as from those of all others, the circumstances of his flight; but,\nif anyone has foully caused it, may God forgive him, as I do! He and I know\nthat my son was not--could not be--a criminal; this is enough for me; I\nwill be silent and submit.\"\n\n\"And your motherly conviction does not deceive you!\" exclaimed Ismena,\nfalling back upon the pillows of the sofa.\n\nThey carried her to her couch, attributing her exhaustion to the excitement\nand fatigue of the journey.\n\nHer agitation having been gradually calmed by a narcotic, she was once more\nleft in the care of the nurse.\n\nThe general, with delicate fore-thought, had caused the flow of the\nfountain to be stopped, in order that the uncertain repose of his wile\nmight not be disturbed by the murmur of its water. But the clock in the\nparlor struck twelve--twelve warning notes from the lips of time. As if the\nold man had counted with inflexible memory the twelve years she had\nsurvived her crime; the twelve years passed in luxury and surrounded by an\nareola of respect and public consideration, since, in sacrificing\nconscience to pride, she had also sacrificed the life and fair fame of a\nnoble and innocent man.\n\nIsmena awoke with a start and sat upright in her bed, her perplexed glances\nwandering in all directions, and a wild fever burning in her veins. A\ndevouring inquietude possessed her; the weight upon her breast suffocated\nher. She sprang from the couch and rushed to the window; for, like Margret\nin the \"Faust\" of Goethe, she was suffocating for air. Moonlight and\nsilence reposed without in a tranquil embrace. So profound was the calm\nthat it weighed upon the burdened soul of Ismena like the still but\noppressive atmosphere which precedes the tempest.\n\n{248}\n\nShe leaned her burning forehead against the window bars. The court lay\nblack beneath--black but gilded; an emblem of her life. Then from a\ndistance there came to her ears two voices, blended, like faith and hope,\nin prayer. They were the voices of Maria and Piedad reciting the rosary.\nThere was something deeply solemn in the sweet monotony with which the\nwords, without passion, without variation, without terrestrial modulations,\nrose to heaven, as the smoke rises from the incense of the altar, gently,\nwithout color, without impetuosity, as if drawn upward by celestial\nattraction. Something very impressive in those words, thousands of times\nrepeated because thousands of times felt, in those petitions which are a\nverbal tradition from Jesus Christ and his apostles; words so perfect and\ncomplete in themselves, that all the progress and all the enlightenment of\nthe human mind have vainly endeavored to improve them.\n\nAt what wretched variance was Ismena's soul with the grave and tranquil\nspirit of those words! She longed to unite in them, but could not!\n\n\"O my God!\" she cried, withdrawing from the window, \"I cannot pray.\"\n\nBut presently, drawn by the sacred and irresistible attraction, she\nreturned. She heard Maria pronounce these words: \"For the repose of the\nsoul of my son L\u00e1zaro.\" And then the prayer of the two pious women\ncontinued without other departure from the accustomed words.\n\n\"Ah! holy God!\" exclaimed Ismena, wringing her hands, \"my voice is not\nworthy to unite with these pure tones which rise to thee unsoiled by guilt\nand unchecked by remorse!\" She prostrated herself with her face to the\nfloor, and remained until the last \"amen\" had mounted to heaven; then, as\nshe rose, shrinking from herself as from a spectre, her eyes fell upon\nNora, who had fallen asleep in a chair. She approached, and, clutching her\nwith that right hand, once so beautiful, but now like the claw of a bird of\nprey, \"You asleep!\" she cried. \"Iniquity asleep while innocence watches and\nprays! Wake up, for your repose is more horrible than your crime! You see\nher whom you rocked in her peaceful cradle entering--led by your infamous\nsuggestions--into her coffin, and you sleep while she is agonizing! What do\nyou see in the past? An unpunished crime; and you sleep! What do you see in\nthe present? A usurpation, a robbery, a crime committed and continued from\nday to day in cold blood; and you sleep! What do you behold in the future?\nThe divine and universal justice of God; so sweet to the upright, so\nterrible to the criminal; and you sleep! But this justice will yet cause to\nfall upon your head some of the weight, which oppresses mine! Bear, then,\nin addition to God's condemnation, the curse of her you corrupted! For I am\nthe most guilty of women, and, Nora, Nora, but for you I should never have\nbeen what I am!\"\n\nAlarmed by Nora's cries, all the household hurried to the room to find the\ncountess in a frightful and convulsed state bordering upon madness. Nora,\ntoo, was confused and incoherent, but this was attributed to her grief for\nthe approaching death of her mistress.\n\n\n  Chapter VI.\n\nDuring the following day the sick woman remained in a state of terrible\nagitation, and at night the doctors were obliged again to administer a\npowerful narcotic, which caused her to fall into a deep sleep.\n\nThe count was occupied in arranging some papers that were scattered upon an\nantique ebony escritoire, ornamented in its various compartments with\nexquisite carved work and paintings. In it Ismena kept her papers. It had\nbeen opened that afternoon by her order to take out the writing materials\nshe had demanded.\n\n{249}\n\nIsmena had learned English from her father, to whom that tongue was\nperfectly familiar, and, as the husband replaced the papers, he fixed his\neyes sadly upon a translation she had begun, grieved to think that she\nwould never finish it. It was from \"Hamlet,\" and his glance rested upon the\nlast lines she had written--the monologue of King Claudius in the third\nact. The writing was indistinct, as if traced by a trembling hand. The\ntranslation, in which one familiar with the original would have noted some\nvoluntary omissions, ran as follows:\n\n  \"My crime is already rank; it calls to heaven. Upon it weighs the first\n  curse that entered the world--that of the fratricide! My desire and my\n  will impel me to pray, and yet I cannot, for the weight of my crime is\n  greater than the force of my intention, and, like a man in whom two\n  powers contend, I vacillate between ceding to the pressure of my guilt or\n  giving myself up to my good intentions. But for what is mercy, if not to\n  descend upon the brow of the sinner? And has not prayer the double virtue\n  of preventing a fall and of lifting the fallen by obtaining his pardon?\n  Then will I lift my eyes to heaven. But what form of prayer is\n  appropriate to my crime? Can I ask and hope for forgiveness? Is there\n  water enough in the gentle clouds to wash the blood from the hand of the\n  fratricide? Is there remission for him who continues in the enjoyment of\n  the benefits of his sin--his queen, his crown, his vain-glory? Ah! no,\n  there cannot be! The gilded hand of iniquity may sink justice in the\n  corrupted currents of the world, and the very price of guilt may buy the\n  law of man. But there, on high, it is not so: there artifice obtains\n  nothing and falsehood is of no avail: there, in the kingdom of truth, the\n  deed will stand naked, and the sinner will have to be his own accuser.\n  What, then, remains to us? To try the virtue or repentance? Ah! yes, it\n  can do all. But, alas! if the sinner would repent and cannot? O wretched\n  state! O bosom black as death! O soul, that in trying to free thyself\n  entangled thyself the more in the meshes of thy sin!--angels, hasten to\n  its aid!--melt, heart of steel!--inflexible knees, be bent! Alas! the\n  words have flown, but wings are wanting to the heart; and the words that\n  reach heaven without the heart find no entrance there!\"\n\nThis imperfect translation, though it gave but a faint idea of the\nbeautiful and elevated poetry of the writer, filled the general with\nadmiration, for his was a mind accessible to all things beautiful and good.\nBut when he glanced at his wife, who lay so pale upon her white bed, like a\nwithered lily upon the snow, he reflected in all simplicity: \"Why seek\nthese pictures of crime and passion? Why should the dove imitate the boding\ncry of the owl? Why should the gentle lamb try to repeat the roar of the\nwounded and bloody lion?\"\n\nHaving put the papers in their place, he seated himself at the foot of his\nwife's bed, and lifted his heart to God in a fervent petition for the life\nof her he loved.\n\nThe alcove in which Ismena lay opened into the parlor, and at this moment,\nwith the pertinacity of a recollection always repulsed yet for ever\nreturning, the clock struck eleven. Its metallic strokes, vibrating and\npausing in the silence, suggested the idea of justice knocking at a closed\ndoor--justice, against whom there is no door that can remain for ever\nclosed!\n\nThese clear sounds startled Ismena, and she awoke with a smothered moan.\n\nThe general, alarmed by her wild looks and confused words, approached, and,\nencircling her with his arms, said:\n\n\"Compose yourself, Ismena, for you are better; the healthy sleep you have\nhad for several hours is restoring your strength.\"\n\n\"Have I been asleep?\" she murmured. \"Asleep on the brink of my sepulchre as\nif it offered me rest! Asleep when so little time remains to arrange my\naccounts in this world! Sit down, sir, for so I will address you, and not\nas my husband. I am not worthy to be your wife. I do not wish to talk to\nyou as to a companion, but as a judge whose clemency I implore.\"\n\n{250}\n\nThe general, taking no notice of these strange words, which he attributed\nto delirium, endeavored to tranquillize his wife, telling her to put off\nthe explanations she wished to make until she should be stronger; but\nIsmena persisted in being heard, and continued:\n\n\"I am about to die, and I leave all the good things of this world without\nsorrow; all except one, that I still desire and would fain carry with me to\nthe grave. You, who have been to me father, husband, and benefactor, do not\ndeny what none but you can give! For that which I implore, sir, is your\nforgiveness.\"\n\nThe general, as he listened, became more and more confirmed in the belief\nthat his wife was raving, and again begged her not to agitate herself as\nshe was doing. But Ismena only implored him the more earnestly to listen\nwithout interrupting her.\n\n\"If a woman,\" she said, \"who has expiated a crime by all that remorse can\ninflict of torture and ruin; by the loss of health, of peace, and of life;\nif this wretch, in her dying agony and despair, can inspire the least\ncompassion, oh! you who have been the most generous of men, you who have\nstrewn my life with flowers, have one branch of olive for the hour of my\ndeath! Hear, without repulsing me, without deserting me in my last moments,\nwithout making my last agony more intolerable by your curse, a confession\nwhich will prove to you that my heart is not entirely perverted, since I\nhave the courage to make it.\"\n\nA cold sweat stood upon the forehead of the dying woman; her stiffening\nfingers worked convulsively; the words issued from her lips more\ninterruptedly and fainter, like the last drops of blood from a mortal\nwound. Nevertheless, making one last heroic effort, she went on.\n\n\"I know that I am about to stab you to the heart, but by this means only\ncan I die at peace with God. Here,\" she continued, drawing a sealed paper\nfrom under her pillow, \"is a declaration made by me, for the purpose of\npreventing a dishonest usurpation, and signed by two reverend witnesses,\nwhich will prove to you that--Ramon--is not our son!\" On hearing these\nwords, the general sprang from his chair, but, overwhelmed with grief and\nastonishment, sank back again, exclaiming:\n\n\"Ramon! Ramon not my son! Whose, then, is he?\"\n\n\"Only God knows, for his wretched parents abandoned him; he is a\nfoundling.\"\n\n\"But with what motive?\" The general paused a moment and then continued with\nindignation: \"I see the motive!--ambition!--pride! Oh! what iniquity!\"\n\n\"Have pity on my misery!\" implored Ismena, wringing her hands.\n\n\"You are a base woman!\" cried the general, with all the indignation of\nprobity against dishonesty, and all the aversion of virtue to the thought\nof a crime.\n\nIsmena had never before heard the paternal voice of her husband assume the\nfirm and terrible tone with which he now cast her treachery in her face,\nand she sank under it as if struck by lightning. His profound sorrow and\nstern condemnation seemed to open an abyss between him and her, and render\nit impossible for the lips which had pronounced that severe sentence ever\nto utter the pardon she craved more than life. Pardon! most beautiful and\nperfect fruit of love, of which the value is so great that God's Son gave\nhis blood to buy it, and which, therefore, his Father grants for a single\ntear, so great is his mercy! Pardon, divine gift, that pride neither asks\nnor yields, but that humility both implores and concedes. Pardon, that,\nlike an efficacious intercession, lifts the sinner to heaven.\n\nHad she perchance waited too long to ask it? For one moment the torrent of\nangry blood had swept generosity and sacred mercy from the heart of him she\nhad injured; and must she die in that moment?\n{251}\nShe sprang from the bed, and, falling upon her knees, laid her clenched\nhands against his breast, shrieking in a voice intercepted by the\ndeath-rattle:\n\n\"Pardon!\"\n\nHer last thought, her last feeling, her last breath dissolved in that last\nword. It reached the heart of her husband. Bending forward, he caught her\nin his arms, and lifted--a corpse.\n\nAnd from the clock, as if time had waited for this moment to toll a\nvoluntary and pious passing bell, there issued twelve slow and measured\nstrokes.\n\n\n  Chapter VII.\n\nA secret fault, drawing with it its terrible consequences, interlaced one\nwith another, like a nest of venomous serpents, had already cost the one\nwho committed it her happiness and life, and the one who conceived it her\nreason; for Nora, shocked into insanity by the fearful curse and death of\nher mistress, was the inmate of a madhouse. But its hideous trail continued\nstill, entangling and envenoming the hitherto tranquil life of the General\nCount of Alcira. The good old man never ceased to reproach himself for the\ncruel epithet indignation had forced from his lips; the only expression he\nhad ever uttered that could wound the poor worn heart that implored but one\npious word to permit it to cease its beating in peace. Instead of that\nword, he had cast the cruel taunt under which it had burst in despair. He\nwept burning tears for not having conceded the pardon which could have been\nbut one instant wanting to his generous soul. And that instant had been her\nlast. His forgiveness might have soothed her anguish, prolonged her life,\nand sweetened her death; and he had refused it. This remembrance became in\nits turn a remorse, and poisoned his existence.\n\nThe reaction he experienced, with his natural goodness of heart, had the\neffect to render almost excusable in his eyes a fault counterbalanced by so\nmany shining qualities, and blotted out by such unparalleled remorse and by\nmortal sufferings; for death, when it takes its prey, has the sweet\nprerogative of carrying with it under the earth the evil it has done,\nleaving the good behind for an epitaph.\n\nThe general atoned for that one moment in which he had forgotten to be a\nChristian by multiplied works of charity, offered in sacrifice to obtain\nfrom heaven the pardon earth had denied the penitent, and by incessant\nofferings for the repose of her soul. Offerings which the Eternal would\nreceive; for the Creator has not left man a foundling. He has acknowledged\nhim as a son, has given him precepts, and promised him, from the cross, a\nglorious inheritance.\n\nEvery morning a mass was offered for the rest of her whose image dwelt in\nthe heart of the old man who knelt at the foot of the altar, uniting his\nfervent petitions with those of the priest that was sacrificing.\n\nThe general's life was still more embittered by the painful secret which\noppressed and involved him and his sons with him, as the serpent in the\ngroup of the Laocoon makes both father and sons his prey. He could not\nbreak the arcanum without sacrificing the one to whom his kind heart clung\nwith tender affection, without defaming the sacred ashes of the mother of\nhis children. He, therefore, respecting the youth and innocence of his\nboys, kept the fatal secret, which, in truth, he had not the courage to\nreveal. The time, he argued within himself, when the veil must be withdrawn\nfrom such a sad and cruel reality will come soon enough. Sometimes he\nresolved to let it be buried with him. But what right had he, a man of such\nstrict principles, to deprive his heirs of their inheritance in favor of a\nstranger? Could he make an alien the head of his noble house?\n{252}\nAllow a foundling to usurp the rights of its lawful representatives?\nWorldly fathers would rather listen to the opinion of the world than to the\nvoice of conscience, placing social considerations above its decisions,\npersuading it that they are compelled thereto by circumstances. But let no\none compound with conscience, lest she cease to be conscience; lest she\nbecome a conniver instead of a sentinel, a weather-cock instead of a\nfoundation; lest she lose the respect and confidence she is bound to\ninspire. For she should give her decisions as the sun sends forth his rays,\nwith nothing to hinder them or turn them from their direction.\n\nThe years sped onward. The count grew infirm and saw his end approaching.\nWishing to pass the last days of his life in the society of his children,\nand feeling that he ought to reveal the secret he had kept so long, he sent\nfor them to join him in Chiclana, where he wished to die, in order to be\nburied beside his wife, thereby giving her, even after he was dead, a last\npublic testimony of affection and respect.\n\nThe word enlightenment had not then been brought into use, nor had the\ncolleges been modernized. Yet this did not prevent the three brothers from\nbeing such finished and accomplished gentlemen that the sight of them\nfilled their father's heart with pleasure and pride.\n\nRamon, the eldest, came from the school of artillery, where he had been the\ncompanion of Daoiz and Velarde. The second came from the academy of marine\nguards, the academy which produced the heroes of Trafalgar, those Titans\nwho contended with a powerful adversary, with the treachery of an ally, and\nwith the unchained fury of the elements, and who were crushed, not\nvanquished, by the three united. The youngest arrived from the university\nof Seville, in which, at that time, or a little before, the Listas,\nReinosas, Blaneos, Carvajales, Arjonos, Roldanes, and the worthy, wise, and\nexemplary Maestre, were students. For though Spain has lacked railroads,\nhotels, and refined and sensual means of entertainment, she has never, in\nany epoch, lacked wise men and heroes.\n\nThe general looked at the three in turn with an indefinable expression of\ntenderness; but when his glance fell upon Ramon, he lowered his eyes to\nhide the tears that filled them.\n\nHis vivid pleasure at the sight of his children, mingled with the anguish\nof knowing that over the head of the unconscious Ramon the sword of\nDamocles was suspended, agitated the old man so much that he passed the\nnight in feverish wakefulness, and his state on the following morning was\nsuch that his doctors advised him to make his last preparations. The grief\nof his children, by whom he was adored, was heart-rending. But the general\nwas so well prepared to leave the world and appear before the bar of God,\nthat his last dispositions, though solemn, were short and serene.\n\nToward night, feeling himself grow weaker every moment, he made\narrangements to be left alone with his sons, who drew near his bed,\nrepressing their tears in order not to afflict him.\n\nHe looked long at them, and then said: \"My children, I am about to tell you\na cruel secret, which will make one of you wretched. It has lain for many\nyears buried deep in my soul; but I am dying, and can be its repository no\nlonger. O my God! my heart gives the lie to my lips; and, nevertheless, one\nof you is not my son, and the mother at whose grave you go to pray never\nbore you.\"\n\nThe grieved astonishment which manifested itself in the countenances of the\nthree youths, left them pale, speechless, and overwhelmed.\n\n\"You know well,\" continued the father, after a pause, \"that my interest and\ntenderness, in and toward you all have been the same, and that it cannot be\nknown, even to yourselves, which of you has no right to bear my name. And\nyou, my children, which one of you is it that does not feel for me the\naffection of a son?\"\n\nThe simultaneous and eloquent reply of the three was to throw themselves,\nsuffocated by their sobs, into the arms of the good old man.\n\n{253}\n\n\"Alas! then,\" he proceeded, \"if your own hearts do not tell you, it is my\ncruel duty to declare it.\"\n\nThe youths regarded each other for a moment, and then, with one impulse\nembracing each other, exclaimed with one voice:\n\n\"Father, we will not know it!\"\n\nThe father raised his hands and eyes to heaven. \"My God,\" he cried, \"I\nthank thee! I die contented. My sons, my sons! may the satisfaction of\nhaving hidden for ever an unhappy secret, may the remembrance of having\ncovered with a mantle of holy fraternal love the misfortune of one of\nyourselves, make your lives as happy and tranquil as you have made my\ndeath.\"\n\nAnd laying his hands upon the heads of the three brothers, who had knelt at\nhis bedside, he said: \"Let my last words be your recompense. My sons, I\nleave you my blessing!\"\n\n\n------\n\n  Mercersburg Philosophy.\n\n  By A. Protestant.\n\n\n  [As allusion having been made in the article on Dr. Bacon, which appeared\n  in our April number, \"to the German Reformed Presbyterians and Dr.\n  Nevin,\" has called forth the following communication. We publish it as\n  interesting to our readers who will bear in mind in its perusal that it\n  is from a Protestant source, and while making, therefore, an allowance\n  for some of its statements, will at the same time be not a little\n  surprised that one who sees so much Catholic truth should fail to\n  identify what he sees with the Catholic Church.--Ed. C. W.]\n\n\nFrom the mountain village of Mercersburg in Pennsylvania emanated a\nphilosophy--theology we, who are its prophets and adherents, call it--which\nhas done much, and is destined to do more, to unprotestantize\nProtestantism. Nor do we, who are Protestants, regret this. The longer we\nponder our work the more are we convinced of its utility, and confirmed in\nour resolution to pursue it. Well aware, as we are, that the Reformation\nhas proved a failure, except it be as a preparation for a higher form of\nChristianity to follow nearer the old landmarks, and free from the\ndemocratic tendencies that have crept into the Protestant Church from the\ninstitutions of the state, or which, perhaps, more properly have moulded\nthe institutions of the state themselves as the natural outgrowth of the\nsystem taught by Luther and Calvin, we cannot but rejoice that this is so.\nOur people have a natural desire to worship, instead of being compelled to\ngive an intellectual assent to arguments on points of doctrine, and the\nteachers of the Mercersburg philosophy are determined to gratify them.\n\nWe see clearly, what many others have failed to see, that New England\nUnitarianism, and after it infidelity, to which it leads, are not only the\nlogical but the actual consequences of Protestantism. But we believe in\nhistorical development; and as this is development in the wrong direction,\nwe see nothing before us but to profit by the lesson and retrace our steps.\nWe know that a cult which rejects the Christ and elevates the Jesus will\nsoon degrade the Jesus too, and that, following an attempt to attain to\nmerely human excellence, will be a society distorted by the vices of\nvanity, avarice, and selfishness, and then a gradual obliteration of all\nthe virtues. Men are beginning to see, dimly enough, that this age is a\ntransition period in the world's history, when all our conceptions of\ntruth, that is, Protestant conceptions of truth, are unsettled and passing\nthrough crucible, as it were, to come out in new and untried forms.\n{254}\nBut they do not understand the law of transition periods, and, while they\nacknowledge that the last great transition was the Reformation, they fail\nto perceive that the theories embraced at that time have failed. A certain\nfeeling of disappointment at the work sectarianism has wrought sometimes\noppresses them, but, instead of attempting to bridge over the chasm, they\nendeavor to tear away the broken arches which remain.\n\nEverybody can see that Protestantism had a grand start during the first\nthirty years of its existence. That Rome would soon give its last\nconvulsive gasp seemed patent to the eyes of all reformers; but now, after\nthree hundred years of Protestant endeavor, a leading Protestant clergyman\nof New York is constrained to say that \"Protestant Christendom betrays\nsigns of weakness in every part,\" and to declare, and rejoice in the\ndeclaration, that \"Modern life is not 'Christian' in any intelligible\nsense. The industrial interest is openly averse to it both at home and\nabroad. Political life is, if possible, still more unchristian.\" But\ncontinues the same authority: \"If industry, politics, literature, art, have\nabandoned Christ, they have as fully and unreservedly embraced Jesus.\" Now\nthis is either sheer nonsense or it is downright infidelity. About the\npremises there can be no doubt. It is but a small part of the so-called\nChristian church that looks to Christ as the central fact of the\nsystem--the super-natural agency working through the church for the\nsalvation of men. But the broad churchmen, when they have as fully and\nunreservedly embraced what they understand by Jesus as they now believe\nthey have, will discover that the \"touching devotion to the cause of\nhumanity,\" about which they talk so eloquently, will develop itself into\npure selfishness, and the rapacity of Wall street and the heartlessness of\nMadison square will extend their ramifications through every order of\nsociety.\n\nSeeing that ostentatious wealth is about to be at a premium, and\nunobtrusive piety at a discount, we, who believe in the Mercersburg\nphilosophy, are endeavoring to interpose our hands to stay the sweeping\ntide.\n\nI hope I have now laid the grounds with the readers of THE CATHOLIC WORLD\nfor an enunciation of what we believe and teach.\n\nThe cardinal principle of the system we inculcate is the incarnation,\nviewed not as a mere speculative fact, but as a real transaction of God in\nthe world. Thus, our belief is peculiarly christological in its character,\nall things being looked at through the person of the crucified and risen\nSaviour. The church which he founded is an object of faith--a new creation\nin the natural world working through the body of Christ and mediating\nsuper-naturally between him and his people. Its ministers hold a divine\ncommission from him by apostolical succession. Its sacraments are not mere\nsigns, but seals of the grace they represent. Baptism is for the remission\nof sins. The Eucharist includes the mystical presence of Christ by the\npower of the Holy Ghost; that is, the real presence in a mystery. With\nthese dogmas we started, contending that we had all the attributes that\nwere ascribed to the church in the beginning--unity, sanctity, catholicity,\nand apostolicity.\n\nIt is now many years since the work was started--as many, indeed, as were\nrequired for the Reformation in Europe to reach the acme of its success.\nSince then a growing culture and enlarged views of doctrine and of worship\nhave seemed to require an enlargement of the range within which the\nmovement was originally intended to be confined, and beyond which we did\nnot conceive of its expansion. The time has been spent in educating the\nbackward up to the starting-point, and in preparing a better form of\nworship for them when they are sufficiently advanced to receive it.\n{255}\nThe movement commenced at Marshall College. \"Old Marshall,\" which started\nas a high school for boys and was soon after endowed, though sparingly, as\na college, has since been merged with another with more money, but without\nthe prestige, and, alas! without the true spirit of the philosophy of the\nmountain college. In the same village with this institution is the\ntheological seminary of a church, respectable for numbers and influence,\nthough without fashionable appointments or pretensions to popular favor,\nwhich still retains the true ring of the old metal. Some time after its\nfoundation, it came to be presided over by a man of rare genius as a\ntheological writer and thinker, who was also president of the college.\nProfound in his conceptions of truth and logical in his reasoning, be\npossessed an unbounded influence over those who came under his\ninstructions, and but few young men have sat at the feet of this Gamaliel\nwithout going away fully indoctrinated with his peculiar opinions, and\nzealous standard-bearers in carrying forward the work which he had begun.\n\nMany prejudices had to be encountered and overcome in carrying forward this\nwork. Bigotry and prejudice are barriers against which reason and religion\nstrike in vain. Many who placed their hands to the plough turned back in\nthe furrow. Opposition made the seed strike deeper root, and in the very\nslowness of the work is an earnest of its ultimate triumph. It may take us\nus nearer to Rome than we contemplate just now; it may bring Rome nearer to\nus than she at present desires. Come what will of it, it is plain sailing\nto us, although we cannot see land on either horizon. Nor do we see such\ncause for terror in the \"horrors and superstitions of popery\" which many\nmen believe constantly lurks there. It seems to us that what men call\nRomanism may not be such a bad thing after all. We know it has done much\ngood. A church that was a power in the days of the old Roman empire, and\ncould not be overwhelmed by the tide of barbarism that overturned the power\nof the Caesars, but could finally roll back that tide of darkness,\npreserving Christianity through ages which have not left a vestige of the\nuniversal wreck behind, has certainly claims upon our profoundest gratitude\nand most reverential awe. To us, it would seem strange, indeed, that the\nvehicle for the preservation of Christianity through ages when civilization\nwas blotted out, and which did preserve not only its essence but its form,\nshould be the mystical Babylon and the man of sin.\n\nWere this, indeed, so, we know in what desperate straits we would be\nplaced. The form of the primitive church is generally flippantly declared\nby Protestants to have been nearer the system of New England than old\nEngland; and the Roman hierarchy is regarded as a long distance from\neither, which it certainly is. It is easy to assume that in the earlier\nages of the church there was no papacy, no priesthood, no liturgy, no\nbelief in a supernatural virtue in baptism, nor of the real presence in the\nsacrament, and that everything was quite in accordance with modern ideas of\nprivate judgment, popular freedom, and common sense; but it is not so easy\nto prove it, nor indeed is it desirable even for Protestants that it should\nbe proved. The Reformation has always been understood to have been the\nhistorical product of the church itself; but if these assumptions were well\nfounded, the church out of whose bosom the Reformation sprang would be no\nchurch at all, and the Reformation no reformation, but only a revolution.\nThus, indeed, Christianity would be the theory of a philosopher, but not\nthe life of a Christian.\n\nThe work we have been doing is different from Puseyism even in its spirit.\nThe simplicity of Keble and the earnestness and power of Newman, in the\ndays of their early zeal when these two wrought together, is nearer to what\nwe intend if different from what we have accomplished or may yet\naccomplish. We thank the Roman Catholic Church for its Christian year, its\nsymbols of faith, its traditions of battle and of conquest, its early\nmartyrology, and its unceasing and undying purpose.\n{256}\nNor do we conceal that there are some things in the Roman Catholic Church\nto which we object. These are rather historical defects than present\nimperfections, and we see as much in our own history to regret and to\ncondemn.\n\nI well remember the unpretending little church in which it was my privilege\nto worship in a country town of Pennsylvania. The Episcopalians had no\nfoothold there, and the Presbyterians consequently, combining together at\nonce the imperiousness and the exclusiveness for which they have ever been\ndistinguished, pretended to monopolize the fashion and the piety, the\nsociety and the religion, of the village. They, of course, contemned us,\nand opened wide their doors for our disorganizers, who were crying out\nagainst innovation when we were seeking to make our church a place of\nworship, instead of a bazaar for the display of fine clothing and false\ncurls. The Methodists, living only the false life of a sickly\nsentimentality, and the Lutherans degraded even from the doctrines and\npractices Luther taught in his fiery zeal, were absorbed in their childish\nschemes of marrying and giving in marriage, engaged in special efforts at\nreform by revivals and meetings of religious inquiry, and busied in raising\nsubscriptions for objects like Mrs. Jellaby's mission at Borrioboola-Gha or\nSunday-school libraries which would not be sectarian, had little time to\nthink of us after they received their quietus in the \"anxious bench\"\ncontroversy of 1843. There were, indeed, many solemn conclaves over our\naffairs by gossips who neither understood nor wished to understand the work\nwe were doing, and half in fear that we should be lost for too much\nreverence for mother church, and half in joy at the prospect of a few\nproselytes, everybody affected to commiserate us. But these, though often\nworking mischief among our \"weaker vessels,\" were not seriously opposed by\nus. Our purpose was steadily kept in view, notwithstanding.\n\nIt was by preaching principally that we hoped to accomplish our task, and,\nafter the stubborn fallow of an unworked field had been broken, to recur\ngradually to the forms of the church. But the furrows, we felt, would be an\nempty mockery without the teachings that give them force. To inculcate\ntruth was then our first duty. This was often done by the more earnest and\nintelligent of our clergy, by following up the seasons of the Christian\ncalendar and deriving lessons from each. Incidentally was urged, with more\nor less boldness according to the courage and temper of the man whose duty\nit was to enforce them, doctrines which for many years sounded strangely to\nProtestant ears. Among these, besides those already noticed in this paper,\nI may instance, as an example least expected by Catholics to be urged\nanywhere outside of mother church itself, the dogma of the Immaculate\nConception. Starting with the proposition that that which is holy cannot be\nborn of that which is unclean and sinful, I have time and again heard this\ntheme urged upon his people with force and fervor by an earnest and fervent\npastor. Not with equal boldness, perhaps, but with no less sincerity and\nfervor have I heard him urge the ministrations of the Virgin. Often in\ndeclaring these doctrines he would enforce a proposition by putting it in\nthe form of a question, and one of these, I believe, I shall continue to\nhear ringing in my ears while the words of men remain intelligible to me:\nWhy should we not reverence the mother of our Lord?\n\nThese things may be news to Catholics, and may be news even to many in\nwhose ears they have been thundered for a quarter of a century. The latter\nhear without understanding, but the words will be re-echoed in their\nhearing until they are not terms without meaning.\n{257}\nThe Mercersburg philosophy is the antagonism in thought and in its social\naspects of New England transcendentalism and Plymouth Rock\nconventionalisms, and receives no favor, and merits none, from a people\namong whom Dr. Holmes's Elsie Venner is an exponent of the life and\npractice of the present, as Cotton Mather's Wonders of the Invisible World\nwas of past generations. And Pennsylvania, where this philosophy has its\nstronghold, being unlike New England, of which Dr. Mather said, \"Being a\ncountry whose interests are remarkably inwrapped in ecclesiastical\ncircumstances, ministers ought to concern themselves in politics,\" the body\nof the people who compose the German Reformed Church, and who look back to\nthe Heidelberg Catechism as their earliest enunciation of faith, and the\nMercersberg theology as their latest development of truth, have never felt\nthe need of political preaching. A simple motto includes all their\naspirations, their hopes, and their fears, their preaching, their practice,\nand their eternal reward--CHRIST CRUCIFIED.\n\n\n------\n\n    Original.\n\n    A Family Motto.\n\n\n  A well proportioned ancient shield,\n  And on the azure-tinted field\n        The red crusader's cross:\n  Words scarce could tell at what a loss\n        The well-read scholar stood--\n  In what an earnest, startled mood,\n  Beneath the ancient, comely shield,\n  And red cross on the azure field,\n        This motto's thread\n        He whispering read,\n        \"_Fortiter gerit crucem_.\"\n\n  A true crusader, staunch and bold,\n  Was he, my good ancestor old,\n        Who thus could boast his cross\n  He bore unmindful of the loss:\n        \"Strong, strong his cross to bear,\"\n  Comes down in characters most fair;\n  Comes down a glory unto me\n  Through many a bloody century;\n        The good seed kept\n        Though old faith slept,\n        \"_Fortiter gerit crucem_.\"\n\n{258}\n\n  Though old faith slept! a deep blush came\n  Across his cheek, a blush of shame:\n        That bold crusader's cross,\n  Borne in the very teeth of loss,\n        No longer worn with pride;\n  His conscience told him, laid aside\n  Like some base superstitions's sign:\n  That cross which from high heaven will shine.\n            When men shall hear,\n            With joy or fear,\n            \"_Fortiter gerit crucem_.\"\n\n  Years passed; his quickened eye had scanned\n  The archives rich of many a land.\n            Yet still a purpose, named\n  Not to himself, each spoil had claimed;\n            And day by day to hail\n  On truth's horizon some new sail,\n  Strange sweetness sent through all his veins,\n  Till to his contrite breast he strains\n            That cross severe,\n            While angels hear,\n            \"_Fortiter gerit crucem_.\"\n\n\n------\n\n  From The Month.\n\n  \"He Went About Doing Good.\"\n\n\nThe memory of the French _\u00e9migr\u00e9s_ in England must be almost extinct.\nA few survivors may remain among us, who can just remember the marquis with\nfaded decorations who taught them French or drawing, or the venerable abb\u00e9\nwho patted them on the head and whispered his blessing. But the horrors\nthat led to the sudden appearance on our shores of several thousand French\nexiles, the burst of compassion and friendliness with which they were\nwelcomed, the sustained respect which they continued to excite, the noble\nefforts successfully made, under the crushing pressure of a fearfully\nexpensive war, to provide for their wants, and the recompense that came in\nthe shape of prejudices cleared away and preparation for the reception of\ntruth--these things are now matters of history, and we have few traditions\nof them to supply the place of recollection. They do not even enter much\ninto our current literature. In our own younger days the courteous and\ndignified, although threadbare, French nobleman, and even the snuff-box and\nshoe-buckles and silver hairs of the kind-hearted French priests, not\nunfrequently figured in the moderate supply--very different from the\npresent inundation--of tales and works of fiction which sufficed for the\nwants of that remote epoch. We know of no work of note of the present day\nin which use is made of the character of an _\u00e9migr\u00e9_, except the Tale\nof Two Cities; and that is hardly an exception, since the exiles there\nintroduced are little more than pegs to the story. We would gladly know\nmore of the intercourse of our grandfathers with these confessors for the\nfaith, of the homage which their courage and cheerfulness extorted, and\nespecially of the working of that influence for good, which, indirectly,\nmust have had vast effects, and have tended greatly both to accelerate the\nremoval of the penal laws, and to bring about that reaction toward the\nchurch of which we are now reaping the harvest; and which, even directly,\nwas probably the cause of very numerous conversions.\n{259}\nA memorandum found among the papers of Abb\u00e9 Carron, with the title, \"A\nlittle memorandum most precious to my heart and to my faith,\" contained a\nlist of fifty-five Protestants received by him into the church before the\nyear 1803; and many more, whose names did not appear in that list, were\nknown to have been converted by his ministry. The simple fact that, within\ntwelve years after the public burning of Catholic chapels and the houses of\nCatholics in London, our parliament was voting money by acclamation to\nsupport several thousands of foreign priests who were in exile purely for\ntheir loyalty to the Catholic Church, is at first sight almost startling.\nThe British lion must surely have worn rather a puzzled expression of\ncountenance when he found himself bringing bread to popish priests of the\nmost thoroughly popish kind, and respectfully licking their hands. While\ngreat admiration is really due to the generosity of the noble animal on\nthis occasion, it is perhaps only fair, as well as obvious, to remark, that\nhe probably somewhat confounded the cause of the clergy, who suffered only\nfor their faith, with that of the exiles in general, and was somewhat\ninfluenced by his hatred first of the _sans-culottes_, and afterward\nof Bonaparte. The clergy, however, although for the most part very strongly\nattached to the French throne, were quite ready to work on under any\ngovernment, and in whatever privations, and were driven into exile or\nthreatened with death solely for the same sort of offence as that of St.\nThomas of Canterbury, of Fisher and More; that is, for their repudiation of\nthe wry principle which is the essential basis of the so-called Church of\nEngland.\n\nAn exceedingly interesting life,[Footnote 54] notwithstanding its somewhat\nsuperfluous diffuseness, has lately been published at Paris of the\nvenerable Abb\u00e9 Carron, to whom the Catholics of London are indebted for the\nchapel and schools of the Somers-town Mission, and indirectly, through his\nsuccessor Abb\u00e9 Nerinckx, for the establishment among us of the \"Faithful\nCompanions of Jesus.\"\n\n    [Footnote 54: Vie de l'Abb\u00e9 Carron, par un B\u00e9n\u00e9dictin de la\n    Congr\u00e9gation de France. Paris, 1866.]\n\nWe can hardly help envying the good religious who has sent forth this huge\nvolume of nearly 700 pages, the thorough roominess in which he carries on\nhis labor of love; omitting no detail that in any way furthers his purpose,\ndescribing not only the holy priest himself, but most of his relations and\nintimate friends, and freely inserting letters and documents at full\nlength. Some of these, such as letters of commendation from royal\npersonages, and other notabilities, and the official answers, which show\nthat the \"Circumlocution Office\" was a French quite as much as an English\ninstitution, we could perhaps forego. But the letters of the abb\u00e9 himself,\nnumerous as they are, do not contain a line too many for our taste; for\nevery line exhales the fragrance of a love the strength of which, as a\nnatural affection, could seldom have been surpassed, and which, at the same\ntime, although not so thoroughly predominated over by the supernatural as\nin the highest order of saints, is yet always under its influence, and\nready to pass into it. Few men have ever lived less in or for themselves.\nHe lived for his mother, brother, and sisters, for his nephews and nieces\nand adopted children, for his king and country, for his fellow-exiles, and,\nabove all, for the poor, to whose special service he bound himself by\nrepeated vows, which were gloriously fulfilled. We cannot see in his most\nconfidential letters or in his most private memoranda a trace of indulgence\nin a single natural pleasure, except that of being loved. Although a very\nvoluminous writer, he seems to have been absolutely free from literary\nvanity. He allowed the Abb\u00e9 G\u00e9rard, the author of Valmont--to whom he\nsubmitted most of his productions--to go on criticising and correcting\nwithout mercy, and was ready to suppress anything at a word from him.\n{260}\nAs he had no vulnerable point, so to speak, but in his affections, it was\nhere, as is usual with those whom God would train for great things, that\nthe sharpest wounds were inflicted. The early death of a younger sister\nborn soon after himself, who had been his confidante and associate in piety\nand in all his schemes of devotion and devotedness as a child; the death of\nhis mother, whom he would have idolized if he could have idolized anything,\nbut from whose death-bed he went back calmly to sit all the evening in the\nconfessional; the deaths of several others of those nearest and dearest to\nhim, and the defection of a few; the overthrow of his gigantic and\nsuccessful undertakings in behalf of the poor of his native town; two\ndeportations and nearly half a life spent in banishment from his beloved\nFrance; banishment from Normandy and from home even after his return to\nFrance; frequent contact with distress greater than even _his_\nwonderful ability to relieve; and, perhaps worst of all, his own share,\nhowever innocently, in the ruin of an intimate friend whom he had\nencouraged to invest all his property in his favorite undertaking of\nworkshops at Rennes, and who died broken-hearted, leaving a widow and seven\nchildren destitute: these were the things that made his _way of the\ncross_, and moulded his loving and bleeding heart to a greater likeness\nof the Crucified.\n\nIt was on the 16th of September, 1792, that Abb\u00e9 Carron, then in the\nthirty-third year of his age, and the tenth of his priesthood, landed in\nJersey with 250 other priests, after a tempestuous passage of forty-eight\nhours from St. Malo, in which they had narrowly escaped the fate to which\nthose who forced them to put to sea in a storm had apparently destined\nthem. These were nearly the last of the exiles. The September massacres\ngave the crown of martyrdom to most of the clergy faithful to their vows,\nwho had not either been alarmed into flight or forcibly banished. The Abb\u00e9\nCarron, and those who accompanied him, were not, properly speaking,\n_\u00e9migr\u00e9s_ but _d\u00e9port\u00e9s_. Of the _\u00e9migr\u00e9s_ or fugitives,\nagain, there were two classes: those who, like most of the nobility, had\nfled when their property was seized and their privileges taken away; and\nthose who, as was the case with most of the clergy, had remained at their\nposts till they were exposed to indignities and outrages, and their lives\nendangered. But nothing would induce the Abb\u00e9 Carron and those who were\ninfluenced by his example to fly. The civil character of the clergy had\nbeen decreed by the National Assembly on the 12th of July, 1790, and\nunfortunately accepted by Louis XVI on the 24th of August. On the 4th of\nJanuary, 1791, the oath which was the test of confessorship had been\ndemanded of the bishops, and almost unanimously refused; and soon afterward\nbegan the persecution of the priests and the religious who followed their\nnoble example. On the 11th of May the municipality of Rennes endeavored to\ninstall the schismatical clergy in the chief parishes of the town, and\nthreatened summary proceedings against all who had refused the oath for any\nattempt to discharge their ministry any more. The Abb\u00e9 Carron, the chief\ncurate of the large parish of St. Germain, in which he had labored from the\ntime of his ordination, was one of those specially interdicted. At the same\ntime, the violent republicans of the town, who, although comparatively\nfew--for the mass of the inhabitants continued Catholic and loyal--were\nprevailing, as elsewhere, over the more moderate, had begun to threaten his\nlife. He preached the last course of Lent sermons that were heard for many\nyears to come in his native town, although parties of armed men were known\nto be in wait for him; but after Easter, by order of the vicar-general, he\nretired to the house of a brother a few leagues out of the town.\n{261}\nOn his way, early in the morning, he was met by forty armed men who had\nbeen searching for him at the very house to which he was going, with the\nintention of murdering him, and whose violence had so agitated his brother,\nwho was in weak health, that he died not long after; but although they\nspoke to the abb\u00e9, they did not touch him. His life had been still more\nwonderfully preserved several years before, when three men--one of whom was\nenraged at the conversion by the abb\u00e9's preaching of a woman whom he had\nseduced--had laid a plot for his assassination, and had entrapped him,\nunder pretence of his services being required for a wounded man, into a\nsolitary house on the bank of the river. When he approached the bed in\nwhich his pretended penitent had laid himself ready to strike the murderous\nblow, he exclaimed, \"You have sent for me too late: the unfortunate man is\nno more;\" and his companions found that the wretch had suddenly expired.\nCarron had not yet finished his work; and, although in a less signally\nsupernatural manner, the divine hand that had then fallen on his would-be\nmurderer interposed again and again to protect him. From his retirement,\nwhere he had composed and published a vigorous and pathetic remonstrance to\nthose religious who were yielding to the storm and breaking their vows, he\nreturned to his perish, and did not intermit his work till he was seized\nand carried to prison, and into forced exile in the August of the next\nyear. He continued to carry on and even to extend, in addition to his\nsacerdotal labors, the weaving, rope and sail-making, and other\nmanufactures that he had established for the benefit of the poor, and was\nactually giving employment and subsistence to 1500 artisans when he was\narrested. At the same time he had expended 100,000 francs on the buildings\nwhere the works were carried on; and when they were taken possession of by\nthe republicans, the stock in hand was valued at more than 94,000 francs,\nand 90,000 more were due to him for sails supplied to the navy from his\nestablishment. His success in this undertaking was probably the reason for\nwhich, although he was unflinching in his zeal, and resolutely refused to\nallow any constitutional priest to officiate in his church, his arrest was\nso long delayed. While inflexibly firm in matters of conscience, he was\nready enough to accommodate himself in everything else to the new state of\nthings, in order to carry on his work. He was willing to be known as\n_citoyen Carron_, and to be _tutoyed_ to any extent. He obeyed\nthe law which ordered all the _imerment\u00e9s_ to present themselves every\nday to the municipal authorities. He implored that, if they thought fit to\nimprison him, he might still be permitted to carry on his works of charity,\nand offered to visit them accompanied by an officer, and to live\ncontentedly in confinement. \"Although breathing infected air,\" he said, \"I\nmay still manage to live a few years, and discharge the sacred obligation\nof reimbursing the friends who lent me money to do good with. Then I will\nmake a present of my establishment to my country, and I shall die satisfied\nwith having undeceived those who think that I had in view to enrich myself\nor my family.\"\n\nBut the fatal blow, though delayed, was not very long in coming. On the\n10th of August a party of the national guard took him to the _h\u00f4tel de\nville_, and thence to the Abbey of St. Melaine, which had been turned\ninto a prison; and on the 8th of September he and his fellow-prisoners were\nescorted to St. Malo to be shipped for Jersey. His bishop, his rector, and\nmany of his clerical friends had fled months before; but he had kept to his\nresolution, more expressively, his biographer says, than grammatically\nworded, \"_Jamais je n'ai voulu consentir \u00e0 m'\u00e9migrer._\" He was in bad\nhealth, and suffering besides from a violent toothache; but neither of\nthis, nor of his being made to share the single mattress of a prisoner in a\nhigh fever, nor of any of the brutal insults which he received in prison\nand on the journey to the coast, does he say a word in the letters which he\nmanaged to send to his sister and nephews.\n{262}\nHe addresses them all by name, longs to fold them to his breast, hopes one\nday to see them again, consoles and advises them, and sends the little ones\nthe few sous that he happened to have in his possession. But his thoughts\nof his own sufferings are only such as these:\n\n  \"Believe me, I do not suffer the hundredth part of what I have deserved.\n  An unfortunate sinner, a base and too frequent transgressor, such as I\n  know myself to be, ought not to think anything of such slight drops of\n  bitterness. My God, when we love you, how sweet, how consoling, how\n  delicious it is to suffer for you; and how magnificently does the love\n  which we bear you recompense us for all the miseries of life! Do not, my\n  dear child, think of your friend's imprisonment, without remembering at\n  the same time that I deserve to be at the bottom of the most loathsome\n  dungeon, and under a thousand chains, to bewail the sins of my youth.\"\n\nHis last message, when on the point of embarking, was to M. Paris, whom be\nhad commissioned to watch over his factories.\n\n  \"I hope that this letter, in which I enclose my heart, will find you in\n  good health. Mine has had some variations, but it is at present quite\n  sound; and I desire, if my God preserves me in it, to consecrate it again\n  one day entirely to the service of my dear fellow-citizens; for I shall\n  always love them, and shall always sigh for the moment when, recovering\n  from their unfounded prejudices, they cease to close their heart to me.\n  Speak of me now and then to the members of that dear colony whose\n  prosperity formed the sweetest enjoyment of my youth. Tell them that I\n  shall always be their father and their friend, and that I shall seek all\n  my life for the means of making them happy. If I can gain any practical\n  knowledge of manufactures in England, I shall make haste to apply it to\n  the improvement of La Pileti\u00e8re,\"\n\nHe was never permitted to revisit his work at Rennes; but his indefatigable\nactivity and burning zeal found a still wider field, and achieved still\ngreater wonders in exile.\n\nIt was no slight task that awaited him. The two hundred and fifty penniless\noutcasts--of whom he was one--came to swell a crowd of more than three\nthousand priests and religious, living in discomfort and distress in the\nmidst of a population far more bitterly opposed to the Catholic religion\nthan the people of England, and in danger, from the want of occupation, and\nfrom the cessation of all outward practices of piety, of falling into\ndisorder. Only the year before, a Catholic lady had tried to get permission\nto have mass celebrated in private, and the good people of Jersey had\nthreatened to throw any priest who ventured to celebrate mass into a\ncaldron of boiling oil; and when after some time she got a brave Irish\npriest to run the risk, her husband, who served his mass, held a naked\nsword to be ready for an attack. The Abb\u00e9 Carron had not been long in the\nisland before nine masses were said every morning in her parlor. After a\nshort visit to London, whither he went to consult with the Bishop of L\u00e9on\nand the rector of his old parish at Rennes--not forgetting at the same time\nhis promise to obtain information that would be useful at La Pileti\u00e8re--he\nsettled himself to his work on the 8th of October. He opened an oratory at\nonce, in which he said mass every day, and preached on Sunday, with some\nsecrecy at first, but very soon, as the dispositions of the people changed,\nwithout the necessity of any precautions. He gave several courses of\nspiritual exercises to the clergy, by which their fervor was rekindled. He\nset on foot a large dispensary, in which a priest, who had been a surgeon\nbefore his ordination, made up and administered remedies, and in which\nanother priest dispensed soup, wine, linen, and other necessaries. Then he\ncollected a great quantity of books, and opened a library and reading-room,\nwhere the clergy could come from their over-crowded barrack-rooms to study\nor pray in silence and in comfort. He provided another collection of books\nto form a circulating library for the emigrant laity, many of whom had been\nhurried into exile without being able to bring anything with them; and\nCatholic books were, of course, unattainable at that time in Jersey.\n{263}\nBy the June after his arrival he had two schools at work for their sons and\ndaughters, and constituted himself master of the upper division of the\nboys' school, but taught the catechism and explained the epistles and\ngospels to all the classes in each institution. These were the only\nCatholic places of instruction in the whole island. He was, besides, the\ncommon refuge for all the wants, spiritual and temporal, of the whole\ncolony; he was hard at work at the composition of some of the numerous\nvolumes which he published to increase his resources of charity; and he\ncontinued, till war broke off the communication between England and France,\nto direct, as far as was possible, the factories of La Pileti\u00e8re. Yet, with\nall these undertakings on hand, he was living himself in a state of almost\ndestitution. One room served him for a second chapel, for confessional,\nclass-room, reception-room, and bedchamber; and having no servant, he had\nto move and replace the tables and benches, and sweep and dust several\ntimes a day. And, with all this multifarious work, he made it a rule to\nread two chapters of Holy Scripture on his knees every day, to make a visit\nevery afternoon to the blessed sacrament, to make at least half an hour's\nmental prayer, and to read a chapter in the Imitation, another in the\nSpiritual Combat, and at least fifteen pages of a manual of theology,\nhowever pressing his occupations might be. He prescribed to himself in a\nrule of life, drawn up in Jersey, and found after his death, to rise at\nfour, however late he might have retired to rest; to say office after his\nmeditation, and then to celebrate; to fast every day, never taking anything\nbefore dinner, and only milk for his collation, and on Fridays only bread;\nnever to touch wine, and to confine himself to bread and vegetables when be\ndined alone; and in various other ways to deprive himself of comfort, and\nto bring his standard of what was necessary far below that which is usual\neven with the pious and charitable. The only expensive article that he\nretained was a watch, the alarum of which he found needful to wake him; but\nbe promised, as soon as be had thoroughly acquired the habit of waking\nbefore four o'clock, to give this also away to his \"dear friends the poor;\nwho,\" he said, \"shall have everything that I can deny myself.\" His rule of\nlife, which contains also devout aspirations for every different act of the\nday, and for times of wakefulness at night, ends with this fervent\npetition:\n\n  \"O incomprehensible and eternal treasure of my soul, the one adorable\n  object of all the feelings, affections, and emotions of my heart, Jesus,\n  my Jesus, my love and my all, oh! that I may love you, that I may live\n  only to love you, and to cause you to be loved upon earth! Grant me, O\n  Lord! days well filled, a pure life, and a happy death, that may conduct\n  me to your bosom!\"\n\nThat such a man should exercise great influence for good, and work wonders,\nwe cease to be surprised. When his undertakings assumed soon afterward a\nstill more extended range of responsibility in London, Bishop Douglas\nexpressed to the Bishop of L\u00e9on his amazement and alarm, and was answered:\n\"Reassure yourself, my lord; I have known Abb\u00e9 Carron a long time, and I am\naccustomed to see him work miracles.\" Yet we should hardly, perhaps, be\nprepared for what he actually effected. When the republican forces under\nGeneral Hoche were massed on the coast, apparently for an invasion of our\nterritories, the English government resolved to fortify Jersey, and deemed\nit expedient to transfer the exiles to London. A curious proposal had just\nbeen made by the military commander, that the clergy should take up arms;\nwhich was, however, courteously refused, and the refusal courteously\naccepted. In August, 1796, the abb\u00e9 came to London, charged with the task\nof finding accommodation and providing for the wants of the French colony\nfrom Jersey.\n{264}\nBesides the herculean task of finding lodgings for most of them, he at once\nhired two houses in Tottenham-court road and reopened his two schools, and\nsoon after opened two rooms for public chapels, and established again his\nlibraries. In less than three years he had also under his care a hospital\nfor forty aged and infirm ecclesiastics, and another for twenty-five female\npatients, an ecclesiastical seminary containing twenty-five students in\ntraining for the priesthood, and a Maison de Providence, on the plan of the\nhouses of the Sisters of Charity, provided with all necessary supplies for\nvisiting and relieving the poor. In 1799, to his two day-schools were added\n_pensionnats_--the one for eighty boys, and the other for sixty\ngirls--all the expenses of which, in excess of the twelve or eighteen\nguineas per head granted by the British government, fell on the abb\u00e9. His\nway of returning thanks was to promise some additional work of charity.\nThus, in an effusion of gratitude for the opening of the hospice for old\npriests, he bound himself to give a dinner to six poor old men every 28th\nof October; when the seminary was opened, he promised to give a dinner\nevery 1st of December to twelve poor children, to wait on them himself, and\nto send them home with new clothes and bread in their hands; and when the\nfemale hospital was opened, to give a marriage portion every 25th of\nOctober to three virtuous young women.\n\nWhen in peculiarly great difficulties, his plan, like that of many saints,\nwas to give in alms any little money that remained, in order, as he said,\n\"to draw down dew from heaven;\" and this never failed. Rich Protestants\ncalled and left bank-notes, without giving him time to discover who they\nwere, or sent anonymous donations. Two gentlemen in drab-colored attire\nastonished the pupils, trained to the most exquisite politeness, by coming\nin one day without removing their hats; and one of them, who turned out to\nbe that torment of our infancy, Lindsey Murray, after seeing the whole\nestablishment, deposited \u00a310 in the abb\u00e9's hands. The leading Catholics\nwere, of course, profuse in their offerings, and all ready to place\nthemselves at his disposal. The hoarded jewels of the richer exiles melted\ninto alms for the poor. Actors read plays for his benefit, and the great\nCatalani gave a concert for him. He had been encouraged at the outset by\neven more striking dispositions of Divine Providence. A rich Englishman,\nliving at St. Aubin in Jersey, had entreated him to accept his house and\nestate and become his heir; but, as the offer involved the condition of\nbeing naturalized and abandoning France, his love for his country, that had\nused him so cruelly, prevented his listening to it. Soon after his\nsettlement in London he found himself without resources, and heavily in\ndebt. Mr. Desprez, his former rector, met him coming out of his oratory in\na state of great depression, and proposed a walk in the park. It was early,\nand no one was to be seen. A man passed them at a rapid pace, and, when a\nlittle in advance of them, drew some packages out of his pocket, one of\nwhich fell to the ground. The abb\u00e9 picked it up, and found a bundle of\nnotes. He ran after the man, shouting to him, but in vain, to stop, and at\nlast overtook him. The other refused to stop, and declared that the notes\ndid not belong to him, and that he was in a great hurry. \"Where do they\ncome from, then?\" was the natural question. \"From there, sir,\" said the\nstranger, pointing upward. They amounted, Mr. Desprez recorded, to the\nvalue of some scores of thousands of francs. The abb\u00e9 used to say that,\nwhile in England, more than a million guineas had passed through his hands.\nYet he was inexorable in his rule of never receiving anything of value for\nhimself. He refused whatever was clogged with the condition of keeping it\nhimself.\n\nIn 1797, an amnesty for the exiles was voted, and for a week he was hoping\nto return to France, and had even closed his schools; but the government,\nwho were better acquainted with the state of things, refused him a\npassport, and the _coup d'\u00e9tat_ of the 4th of September revoked the\namnesty.\n{265}\nIn November, 1799, he settled with all his establishments, except the\nseminary for priests, which was now not so much required, at Somers-town.\nThey occupied ten large houses, the rent of three being paid by the\ngovernment, and that of the others by himself. A French journal describes\nthem as situated outside of London, in good air, and _quite in the\ncountry_.\n\nIn 1801, he might have returned to France. The famous concordat was signed\non the 15th of July, and made public on the following Easter, the 12th of\nApril, 1802. The Bishop of Rennes, who yielded, although with rather too\nmuch of protest, to the invitation from the Holy See addressed to all the\nold bishops to resign their sees, in order to facilitate the working of the\nconcordat, earnestly entreated that Abb\u00e9 Carron might be his successor; and\nthe First Consul desired himself to secure him. But the articles\nfraudulently added by Napoleon, and against which the pope, when he became\naware of them, vehemently protested, made the abb\u00e9 feel it to be impossible\nto work satisfactorily in France while they were in force.\n\nThe schism of the _Petite Eglise_, or Blanchardism as it was called in\nEngland, was a terrible blow to him. More than half the bishops still in\nexile and many of the clergy--and among them his dearest friends--held out\nagainst the Holy See. But his fidelity never wavered, not even while the\nvicar-apostolic of the London district was acting timidly, and weakening\nthe effect of Dr. Milner's more energetic measures. The _organic\narticles_ were a sore puzzle and distress to him; but he would never\ncountenance a word of disrespect to the Holy See. In a synod of bishops he\nwas chosen by Dr. Milner for his theologian, but rejected on the ground of\nhis being a foreigner. This firmness of his drew upon him ultimately a\nfierce persecution, and great attempts were made, but with only partial\nsuccess, to alienate from him Louis XVIII. and the other members of the\nexiled dynasty, who had themselves remonstrated with the Holy See on the\nconcordat. But no ecclesiastical dignity was ever offered him after the\nrestoration. A storm of abusive pamphlets, anonymous letters, and\nslanderous reports of the worst kind fell for some time keenly upon him.\nYet in his correspondence with his dear relations in Normandy, which was\nnow resumed and carried on till war broke out again, there is no allusion\nto any of his trials, except that of his continual separation from them. He\nlongs to see them; he interests himself in all the details of their\nfamilies, and gives them advice and encouragement; but he has no space for\nhis own afflictions. The only thing that disputes with them for his love\n--for his love of God is supreme over all--is his love of the poor. \"I love\nyou,\" he cries; \"yes, certainly, I love you with all my heart, and all the\ndear ones by whom you are surrounded; but I love my poor still more; they\nare my numerous and best-beloved family.\"\n\nIn 1807, the popularity of the French clergy was so great, and had so\nincreased the favorable feeling toward Catholics generally, that he thought\nit time to build a regular church. Hitherto he had officiated in the\nlargest room of one of the schools. The impossibility of raising\n4000_l_. for the purpose was soon surmounted by one to whom nothing\nwas impossible that the glory of God seemed to require. So the church in\nthe Polygon soon rose, and was crowded at once on its being opened; and he\nadded to his other labors the task of giving sermons in English, which it\ncost him immense pains to elaborate and learn by heart. As his little flock\nof exiles, who were now making their way back to France diminished, his\nministry both among the French settled in London and among the English\nincreased. He made it a rule to visit all his sick--of whom he had a large\nnumber--at least once a week, and those seriously ill every day.\n{266}\nHe visited one daily, and often twice a day, for six months together. His\npoor schools were enlarged and admitted English as well as French\nCatholics. His records of conversions became more and more numerous; and\neach cost him weeks, and generally months, of careful preliminary\ninstruction. He was constantly engaged in writing, and published twelve or\nthirteen different works in London. He was carrying on also a\ncorrespondence with many Protestants and sceptics; to whose difficulties he\nwas never weary of replying. Part of his correspondence with one alone\nextended to twenty-seven letters, mostly of eight or ten pages each. How he\ncould multiply himself sufficiently for all that he was doing is one of\nthose mysteries which we find in the lives of saints alone. When the\ndemands of the _\u00e9migr\u00e9s_ on his purse were less heavy, he began to\ndistribute soup and coals to the poor Catholics of London; an express\nprohibition from government preventing him from extending this charity to\nProtestants, _for fear of conversion_. As the war went on, immense\ndonations both of money and of all kinds of necessaries were made by him to\nthe increasing crowds of French prisoners.\n\nIn April, 1814, Louis XVIII., who had been nearly seven years in England,\nand under whose patronage the abb\u00e9's _pensionnats_ for the children of\nthe _\u00e9migr\u00e9s_ had acquired a sort of title to be deemed royal\ninstitutions, returned to the throne, vacant by the banishment of Napoleon\nto Elba; and the abb\u00e9 only waited for the royal commands respecting the\nyoung French nobility under his care to terminate his twenty-two years of\nexile. On the 14th of July he said mass for the last time at Somers-town,\nand set off at five in the morning, to escape any attempts of his flock to\nprevent his departure. He left England, after all the hundreds of thousands\nof pounds that had passed through his hands, as poor as he had come to it,\nand was beholden to his friends the Jerninghams for part of the expense of\nthe journey. A solidly built chapel and two poor schools, containing a\nhundred children, with all necessary appliances, were his legacy to the\nCatholics of England. What were his feelings toward those whom he was\nleaving, and those whom he was expecting to see again, how the sight of\nFrance affected him, and what were his intentions for the future, we must\nleave him to express, by extracting some portion of one of several letters\nwhich be wrote on landing:\n\n      Calais, Sunday, July 17, 1814.\n  \"Ursula, my dearly loved sister, daughter, and friend--I arrived here\n  last night, after a difficult passage. Here I am, then, on the precious\n  soil that gave me birth. .... Ah! my dear ones, if I could clasp you all\n  in my arms, my heart would be less bruised, less in anguish than it is!\n  Alas! I have lost Somers-town, for me a land of benediction; and in my\n  own country, I look for France in vain. In twenty-four hours, what have I\n  not seen already! This holy day of rest made a working day; not a shop\n  that is not open; not a street-vender that is not crying his wares. What\n  a sight! How it pierces any heart that retains the faith! ... All the\n  difference between the twenty-two last years and those that it may please\n  the Lord to add to me will only be in the outward utterance of my\n  feelings. I was silent, and I loved; I shall speak, but I cannot love\n  more. Oh! what a pure and innocent enjoyment it will be to bless your\n  children and your grandchildren, and to chat together about the days of\n  our youth! I so need some distraction, some nourishment to my poor heart.\n  But do you know the way to procure it the most delicious nourishment? It\n  is to assure me that you wish to live and breathe only for God and for\n  his love; for this is the true life of man--to have a sinner's awe and a\n  child's love for the most tender and compassionate of fathers. If it were\n  granted me to gain him some hearts before dying, this would be a balm\n  that would heal all my wounds. Ah, my child, if you knew what angelic\n  souls I have left on the soil of my second country! Excellent Christians,\n  you are not heard of on earth; but what a festival is in preparation for\n  you in heaven! The love of God for ever! Let us talk of this love; let us\n  act in everything for the sake of it; let us act only through it. To live\n  without loving is to languish; to live without loving is to die. Ah! let\n  us live to love, and let us desire death in order to love still more. Let\n  us live to get love for what is alone supremely lovable, our dear Master,\n  our best of fathers.\n{267}\n  By his side, and in his bosom, all pains lose their bitterness; and how\n  much of it do they not lose! He forgets nothing that can embellish our\n  crown; and to suffer for so good a Master has its own special charm;\n  suffering love is the best love. Adieu, my beloved child; your father\n  will always love you, as the old curate of St. Germain loved you, and--to\n  end with that sweet title--as _the Missioner of Somers-town_ loved\n  you.\"\n\nIn November he was installed with the orphans, whom he had left in England\nuntil he was ready for them, and the ladies who instructed them, in what\nwas to be his home henceforth, with the exception of his second brief\nexile, until death, a house in the _Impasse des Feuillantines_ in the\nFaubourg St. Jacques. Thirty of his pupils were paid for by the king, and\nothers received at his own risk. On the 1st of the following March Napoleon\nlanded from Elba, and at Lyons, on his way to Paris, ordered all returned\nexiles who had come back without his leave to quit France within a\nfortnight, under pain of death. On the 4th, all unconscious of what had\nhappened, the merry old lady who was at the head of the establishment, and\nstyled herself _Religieuse indigne du Monast\u00e8re des Feuillantines_,\nwas writing a letter, sparkling with fun, to invite the abb\u00e9's nephew to\ncome in June and keep with them the _triplex-majus_ feast of St. Guy.\nBefore the end of the month she and the abb\u00e9 and most of the orphans were\nagain in banishment in London, and a crowd of fugitives were looking to him\nagain for help. An appeal to his \"generous friends, the citizens of Great\nBritain,\" brought in \u00a3500.\n\nAt Kensington, whither he retired to avoid any appearance of interference\nat Somers-town, he gave shelter to a young man, who was afterward too well\nknown as the Abb\u00e9 de la Mennais. A great friendship sprang up between them;\nand when the battle of Waterloo allowed of his return, F\u00e9li, as he was\nfamiliarly called, clung to the Abb\u00e9 de Carron, whom uncertainties about\nhis orphans detained in London, and accompanied him back to the\nFeuillantines in December. \"What a man!\" he wrote to a common friend of the\nabb\u00e9, whom he always called his good father, \"or rather what a saint! I\nhope, by the help of his advice, to settle at last to something. It is high\ntime. Thirty-three years lost, and worse than lost!\" Happy would it have\nbeen for him if be had been guided by his venerable friend's counsels. The\ninstincts of faith in the abb\u00e9 made him suspect even the first volume of\nthe Essai sur l'Indiff\u00e9rence. When the second came out, he wrote a most\naffectionate and touching letter, appealing from his head to his heart, and\nimploring him not to go on writing. But it was too late.\n\nWe regret that we cannot linger longer over the last days of the abb\u00e9. The\ndifficulties about his establishment at Rennes, which were not settled till\njust before his death, prevented the return to his native place for which\nhe had hoped, and he remained at Paris. We intended to confine ourselves\nmainly to his labors in England; and we have not space to dwell, as we\ncould wish, on that wonderful institution of the Feuillantines, where the\npupils never met a mistress without an embrace; where the great treat,\nafter some months of study, was a week of what our foolish would-be\ngovernesses often call \"menial drudgery,\" and the greatest treat of all was\nto wait at table on parties of poor people and play with their children;\nwhere Mr. (afterward Cardinal) Weld, whose daughter was married to Lord\nClifford in the chapel of the institution, and all the most pious priests\nin Paris, came for edification and recreation; and whence relief flowed to\nall the destitute in the city. The good old abb\u00e9 died worn out with toil\nand austerities, the chief of which, such as the wearing of spiked belts\nand haircloths, were not known till after his death, on the 15th of March,\n1821.\n{268}\nHis memory was fresh at Somers-town; and at the requiem sung for him there\nthe chapel was crowded with rich and poor, all in mourning attire; and the\nvoice of the bishop preaching was interrupted by sobs and cries of grief.\nThe simple motto on his grave is _Pertransiit benifaciendo;_ and to\nfew could the words be more truly applied. \"Needy, yet enriching many,\"\nmight be added as equally appropriate. The Catholics of England, as well as\nof France, have good reason to thank God for the life and labors of Abb\u00e9\nCarron.\n\n------\n\n  Translated From the French.\n\n  The Birds' Friend.\n\n\nFor some years past, in the garden of the Tuileries, is seen, daily, a man\nof middle height, with a respectable and roundness of figure, thick\nmustaches, and beard slightly gray and bushy, who, as soon as he appears in\none of the walks bordering the terrace of the water, is surrounded by a\nnumerous brood of pigeons. He throws them a morsel of bread or cake which\nhe brings with him, and the birds are so familiar with him that, far from\nflying away, they surround him, and dispute for his favors and liberality.\nSome of them, even, his favorites, flying around his head, perch on his\nshoulders, his arm or hand, and dip their bills in his mouth for their\naccustomed nourishment. He is the subject of admiration for young mothers,\nbabies great and small, truant apprentices, and child nurses, generally. As\nsoon as the bird man arrives, they precipitate themselves in his train. He\nadvances majestically, and with quite an imposing air, followed by his\nimpromptu court, which holds back slightly, from respect, no doubt, and\nfear of frightening the birds. Idle people who come every day to lounge in\nthe garden of the Tuileries take their daily walk or read the papers, join\nthe crowd of courtiers, and even Guignol himself, in presence of this\nredoubtable concourse, sees his representations deserted, and the Petite\nProven\u00e7e forsaken by the rheumatisms who come to seek a ray of sun on his\nbenches. The friend of the birds walks with a sense of his own importance,\nand enjoys greatly the astonishment and homage of the crowd. With his cane\nunder his arm, his hat on his head, and as immovable as the dervish on his\nminaret, or the little joist of the fable, he gravely accomplishes his\ndaily office. The young mothers are astonished, the children open their\nlarge eyes, and I saw one of the smallest ones, Master Guguste, so terribly\nfrightened, because the birds were not afraid of him, that he hid himself\nbehind his big brother Aymer, and took in the whole scene by stealth, in\nbo-peep style. Master Guguste will certainly ask his father, whom he has\nled by the hand toward the place where the friend of the birds dines his\npets, how is it the pigeons fly around this man's head, and when he, Master\nGuguste, runs toward them, they always fly away? The good little fellow\nforgets to add that he throws stones at them--his age has no mercy--and\nthat the pigeons have the bad taste to prefer cake.\n\n{269}\n\nThe birds' friend has become one of the sights of the Tuileries, and one of\nthe pleasures of the Parisians. They come from the marshes to see him; and\nthe provincial who arranges his programme for his visit to Paris never\nforgets to write in his note-book: \"To go and see the wild beasts breakfast\nin the Garden of Plants; to go and see the hippopotamus bathe; to go and\nsee the pigeons eat in the garden of the Tuileries.\" Innocent people ask by\nwhat talisman this man of the Tuileries has succeeded in taming the\npigeons.\n\nI think his method is a simple one, and that he has nothing in common with\nthe charmers of India, nor even with Madame Vandermersch, who has\nastonished the saloons of Paris by the singular empire she exercises over\nthe feathered tribe.\n\nThen, the pigeons of the Tuileries, like all animals not tormented and\naccustomed to a crowd, are not easily frightened. If you have ever been to\nVenice, you have certainly seen the pigeons of the square of St. Mark.\nThese pigeons, whose history is very curious, date their origin from the\nancient republic of Venice. At that time, it was the custom on Palm Sunday\nto let fly from the top of the principal door of the church of St. Mark a\nlarge number of birds, with little rolls of paper so attached to their\nclaws as to force them to fall into the hands of the crowd who filled the\ncourt, and disputed among themselves for this living prey. Some of these\nbirds, having succeeded in ridding themselves of their fetters, and\ntraining the thread like the pigeon of La Fontaine, sought an asylum on the\nroof of the church of St. Mark, and on that of the ducal palace, not far\nfrom the celebrated leads that Silvio Pellico has described in \"My\nPrisons,\" and Lord Byron has cursed in his immortal verses. They multiplied\nrapidly, and became the favorites of the population to such a degree that,\nto respect popular opinion, the senate of Venice issued a decree, stating\nthat the pigeons of the square of St. Mark had become the guests of the\nrepublic, and as such should be respected and nourished at the cost of the\nstate. While the republic of Venice existed, a man employed by the corn\nadministration of the city came every morning to distribute the rations of\nthe pigeons on the place of St. Mark and the Piazza. Since the\nestablishment of Austrian rule, the Venetians support their favorite birds\nby voluntary contributions. Accustomed to live in peace with man, the\npigeons of the place of St. Mark have become exceedingly familiar. They\nnever fly away at the approach of the promenaders, and I have seen them\nperched on the edge of the buckets of the water-carriers, to quench their\nthirst, and not even take flight when these women took their buckets by the\nhandle. In truth, the whole secret of taming animals consists in not\nfrightening them by movements too sudden or by noise, never injuring them,\nand always treating them well.\n\nIf you have never seen the pigeons of the place of St. Mark at Venice, you\nhave certainly seen the fishes of the large pond at Fontainebleau come in\nbands to dispute the bread thrown to them; the swans of the basins of the\nTuileries swim toward the children who throw them crumbs of their cakes;\nthe small elephants of the Garden of Plants put forth their trunks gently\nto seize a piece of rye bread; and more than one young girl has amused\nherself during the winter in spreading the crumbs from her table on her\nbalcony, to see flocks of sparrows tumble down and help themselves at the\nwell-set table, doing honor to the banquet, without considering in the\nleast the pretty blonde head and the laughing mouth assisting their repast.\n\nYou see, it is always the same process. What frightens animals is noise,\nsudden movements, and especially bad treatment.\n\nWhen man makes friends of them, it is rarely they do not respond to his\nadvances. You know the history of Androcles and his lion, of Pellisson and\nhis spider, and a hundred others of the same kind. I do not speak of\ndomestic animals, the dog especially, our faithful companion.\n{270}\nThe Bible itself, the book of books, in relating the return of the young\nTobias conducted by the angel to his father, has in honor of this faithful\nanimal these charming lines: \"Then the dog, who had followed them all the\nway, ran before them, and, like a courier who might have preceded them, he\ntestified his joy by the wagging of his tail.\" The grand poet of paganism,\nHomer, in his turn, has described in the most touching and heartfelt\nverses, Ulysses, on his return to Ithaca, unknown to Penelope, Telemachus,\nand his retainers, but recognized by the dog, who died of joy at his feet.\nBut passing by the dog who is our friend, savage animals show themselves no\nless sensible to man's goodness, and as we read the legends of monks of the\nMerovingian time, who lived hid in the depths of forests, it seems that\nvirtue can give man the same empire over animals which he had in his first\ndays of innocence. M. de Montalembert, in his Moines d'Occident, has\nrecounted many legends of this nature. A huge boar, pursued by hunters,\nfled for asylum to the cell of St. Basil, which he had constructed in the\nthickest part of the mountain forest of Rheims. Again, St. Laumer,\nwandering in the forest of Perche, and chanting psalms, met a hind flying\nbefore several wolves. To him, she was the symbol and image of the\nChristian soul pursued by demons; he wept for pity, and cried to the\nwolves: \"Enraged executioners, return to your dens, and leave this poor\nlittle beast; the Lord arrest this prey from your bloodthirsty mouths.\" The\nwolves stopped at his voice, and retraced their steps. \"Behold,\" said the\nsaint to his companion, \"how the devil, of all wolves the most ferocious,\nseeks ever some one to strangle and devour in the church of Christ.\"\nMeanwhile the hind followed him, and he passed nearly two hours in\ncaressing her before returning to his home.\n\nRecitals of this nature are numerous. It was the lion of the Abb\u00e9 G\u00e9rasime,\nwhose monastery was on the borders of the Jordan, who, having loved the\nmonk during his life, came to die on his tomb. The wolf of another solitary\nwaited at his door for the remains of his humble repast, and never retired\nwithout licking his hand. Irish legends tell us of stags of the forests\ncoming to present their heads to the yoke to draw the plough. Everywhere we\nfind man's power over animals established by sanctity. \"Can we be\nastonished,\" said B\u00e8de on this subject, \"if he who faithfully and loyally\nobeys his Creator sees in his turn inferior creatures subject to his\ncommand?\"\n\nAmong the legendary recitals we find none more touching than those written\nof St. Fran\u00e7ois d'Assise, whose heart overflowed with tenderness to\nanimals. We read in a legend that this great saint, who had a beautiful and\nharmonious voice, hearing one evening the song of a nightingale, was\ntempted to respond, so that he passed the night in chanting, alternately\nwith the bird, the praises of God. The legend adds that Fran\u00e7ois was\nexhausted the first, and praised the bird that had so completely vanquished\nhim.\n\nWho has not read in the Franciscan Poets the miracle of the saint who\nconverted the ferocious wolf of Gubbio, and how he tamed the wild\nturtle-doves, a present from a pious young man, while saying to them: \"O my\nsimple and innocent doves! how will you ever be tamed? But I must save you\nfrom death, and make you nests, that you may obey the command of our\nCreator.\" And the turtle-doves, by degrees less wild, commenced to deposit\ntheir eggs, like hens, covering them before the brothers, and nourished by\ntheir hands. In conclusion, let us recall the exordium of a delightful\nsermon related in the Franciscan Poets, and addressed by the saint to a\nmultitude of birds, attentive to his voice, a sermon related to Brother\nJacques de Massa by Brother Massio, one of St. Francis's favorite\ndisciples: \"My birds, you are extremely obliged to God, our Creator, and\nalways and in every place you ought to praise him, because he has given you\nliberty to fly everywhere, has clothed you with double and triple\nvestments, and has preserved your species in the ark of Noah.\n{271}\nBesides, you neither sow nor reap, and God cares for you; gives you streams\nand fountains to quench your thirst, mountains and valleys for your refuge,\nand large trees in which to make your nests.\" But we have rambled from the\ncommencement of our story. We began in the garden of the Tuileries, and end\nin another garden, a mystical one, where we gather flowers from St.\nFrancis.\n\n\n------\n\n  From Chambers's Journal\n\n  Time-Measurers.\n\n\nThere is, perhaps, no subject more interesting to human nature than that of\ntime. Like eternity, it concerns us all; and, unlike it, exacts as well as\ndemands our attention. True, as Sir Walter Scott writes, \"it is but a\nshadowy name, a succession of breathings measured forth by night with the\nclank of a bell, by day with a shadow crossing along a dial stone;\" but we\ncannot shut our eyes for very long to the fact of its passage. If in our\nyouth we strive to kill it, so all the more in our age do we strive to\nlengthen its too brief hours out. Even the means by which to note its\ncourse have naturally engaged the minds of men in all ages; they have been\nvery diverse and ingenious, and a due record of them cannot fail to contain\nmany curious particulars. Such a work has been recently published in Mr.\nWood's Curiosities of Clocks and Watches. Even the diligence of our author,\nhowever, does not seem to have discovered at what period the present method\nof beginning the day at midnight came into use; but it is supposed to have\nbeen an ecclesiastical invention. Among the early Romans, the day was\ndivided into twelve hours, from sunrise to sunset, the length of which,\ntherefore, varied with the seasons. The Egyptians, Mexicans, and Persians\nreckoned the day to begin from sunrise, and divided it into four intervals,\ndetermined by the rising and setting of the sun, and its two passages over\nthe meridian. Our own uniform hours of sixty minutes each could scarcely\nhave come into use until something like the wheel-clock was invented: the\nancient sun-dial represented hours of a length varying with the seasons,\nand the clepsydra (or water-clock) was adjusted to furnish hours of fifty\nto seventy minutes each, to suit the changing lengths of day and night.\nClocks, even so late as the reign of James I., were often called horologes;\nand, up to the fourteenth century, the word clock was applied only to the\nbell which rang out the hours, or certain periods determined by the\nsun-dial or sand-glass. To this day, the bell of Wells cathedral is still\ncalled the horologe.\n\nThe clepsydra is said to have been invented by the censor Scipio Nasica,\n595 B.C. The principle of these early time-measurers was a very simple one.\n\"In those of the common kind, the water issued drop by drop through a small\nhole in the vessel that contained it, and fell into a receiver, in which\nsome light floating body marked the height of the water as it rose, and by\nthese means the time that had elapsed. In a bas-relief of the date of the\nlower empire, figuring the Hippodrome in Constantinople, a clepsydra, in\nthe shape of an oviform vase, appears. It is very simply mounted, being\ntraversed by an axis, and turned with a crooked handle.\n{272}\nBy this contrivance, the instantaneous inversion of the vase was secured,\nand the contents, escaping in a certain definite time, showed the number of\nminutes which were taken up by each _missus_, or course. Vitruvius\ntells us of the construction of a clepsydra which, besides the hours, told\nthe moon's age, the zodiacal sign for the month, and several other things;\nin fact, it was a regular astronomical clock. His details now read somewhat\nobscure and complicated; but the principle was that a float, as it moved\nupward by means of a vertical column fixed in it, drove different sets of\ncog-wheels, which impelled in their turn other sets, by means of which\nfigures were made to move, obelisks to twirl round, pebbles to be\ndischarged, trumpets to sound, and many other tricks to be put into action.\nThe admission-pipe for the water was made either of gold or a perforated\ngem, in order that it might not wear away, or be liable to get foul.\" The\nfloats sometimes communicated with wheels which worked hands on dials, or\nsupported human figures which pointed with hands to certain numbers as the\nwater rose; and in some ingenious water-clocks the fluid flowed as tears\nfrom eyes of automata; but all these _clepsydrae_ had two great\ndefects: the one being that the flow varied with the density of the\natmosphere; the other, that the water flowed quicker at last than at first.\nThey were, however, put to one excellent use, which has, unhappily, fallen\ninto decay: they were set up in the law-courts to time counsel; \"to prevent\nbabbling, that such as spoke ought to be brief in their speeches.\" For this\ncustom, the world was indebted to the Romans (especially Pompey), and from\nit Martial is supplied with a pleasant sarcasm: perceiving a dull declaimer\nmoistening his lips with a glass of water, he suggests that it would be a\nrelief to the audience as well as to himself if he would take his liquor\nfrom the clepsydra.\n\nWith some mechanical additions, the ancient clepsydras were made to do\nwonderful things besides stopping lawyers' tongues. Haroun-al-Raschid sent\n(in 807), by two monks of Jerusalem, to the Emperor Charlemagne a brass\nwater-clock, the dial of which was composed of twelve small doors\nrepresenting the divisions of the hours; each door opened at the hour it\nwas intended to represent, and out of it came the same number of little\nballs, which fell one by one, at equal distances of time, on a brass drum.\nIt might be told by the eye what hour it was by the number of doors that\nwere open, and by the ear by the number of balls that fell. When it was\ntwelve o'clock, twelve horsemen in miniature issued forth at the same time,\nand, marching round the dial, shut all the doors.\n\nHour-glasses, called clepsammia, in which sand took the place of water,\nwere modifications of the clepsydrae. Candle-clocks were used as\ntime-measurers by some, and especially by our own Alfred the Great. \"To\nrightly divide his time, be adopted the following simple expedient: he\nprocured as much wax as weighed seventy-two pennyweights, which he\ncommanded to be made into six candles, each twelve inches in length, with\nthe divisions of inches distinctly marked upon it. These being lighted one\nafter another regularly, burned four hours each, at the rate of an inch for\nevery twenty minutes. Thus the six candles lasted twenty-four hours. The\ntending of these candle-clocks he confided to one of his domestic\nchaplains, who constantly from time to time gave him notice of their\nwasting. But when the winds blew, the air, rushing in through the doors,\nwindows, and crevices of his rude habitation, caused his candles to gutter,\nand, by fanning the flame, to burn faster. The ingenious king, in order to\nremedy this serious inconvenience, caused some fine white horn to be\nscraped so thin as to be transparent, which he let into close frames of\nwood; and in these primitive lanthorns his wax-clocks burned steadily in\nall weathers.\"\n\n{273}\n\nThe invention of wheel-clocks is attributed by some to Archimedes so early\nas 200 B.C.; by others to Wallingford so late as the beginning of the\nfourteenth century; but in the Book of Landaff, describing the life of St.\nTeilavus, who made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem at the end of the fifth\ncentury, it is stated that he returned to Britain with three precious\ngifts, and among them \"a bell greater in fame than in size, and in value\nthan in beauty. It convicts the perjured, and cures the infirm; and what\nseems still more wonderful is, that _it did sound every hour without\nbeing touched_, until it was prevented by the sin of men, who rashly\nhandled it with polluted hands, and it ceased from so delightful an\noffice.\" They looked their gift-clock in the mouth, and probably disturbed\nthe works.\n\nSt. Paul's had a clock of some sort at a very early period; in the year\n1286, allowances to \"Bartholomo Orologiario\" (the clock-keeper) being\nentered, in its accounts, of so much bread and beer. Iron and steel were\nused for the wheels and frames until the end of the sixteenth century, and\nblacksmiths were the chief clock-makers. Chaucer, who died in 1400, remarks\nof a punctual cock of his acquaintance:\n\n  \"Full sikerer was his crowing and his loge\n  Then his a clock or any abbey orologe;\"\n\nor:\n\n  \"As certain was is crowing in his roost\n   As any clock or abbey orologe;\"\n\nwhich might probably have been truthfully said of many a less punctual\nbird; for, to judge by the old parish account-books, these blacksmiths'\nclocks were not good goers, and were for ever being rectified. That of St.\nAlban's abbey, however, was an exception. It was constructed at a great\ncost by Richard de Wallingford, son of a blacksmith in the town in\nquestion, but afterward made abbot for his learning (1330), and his clock\nwas \"going\" in Henry VIII.'s reign. It noted the course of the sun and\nmoon, the rising and setting of the planets and fixed stars, and the ebb\nand flow of the tide. When the good abbot felt his end drawing nigh, his\nthoughts being fixed on time as well as eternity, he left a book of\ndirections for keeping this piece of mechanism in order.\n\nFor ingenuity and complication, however, all ancient clocks must hide their\ndials in the presence of that of Strasburg cathedral. \"Before this clock\nstands a globe on the ground, showing the motions of the heavens, stars,\nand planets. The heavens are carried about by the first mover in\ntwenty-four hours. Saturn, by it proper motion, is carried about in thirty\nyears; Jupiter, in twelve; Mars, in two; the Sun, Mercury, and Venus, in\none year; and the moon in one month. In the clock itself are two tables on\nthe right and left hand, showing the eclipses of the sun and moon for the\nyear 1573 to 1624. The third table in the middle is divided into two parts.\nIn the first part, the statues of Apollo and Diana show the course of the\nyear and the day thereof, being carried about one year. The second part\nshows the year of our Lord, and the equinoctial days, the hours of each\nday, and the minutes of each hour, Easter-day, and all the other feasts,\nand the dominical letter; and the third part hath the geographical\ndescription of all Germany, and particularly of Strasburg, and the names of\nthe inventor and the workmen. In the middle frame of the clock is an\nastrolabe, showing the sign in which each planet is every day; and there\nare statues of the seven planets upon a circular plate of iron; so that\nevery day the planet that rules the day comes forth, the rest being hid\nwithin the frames, till they come out, of course, at their day, as the sun\nupon Sunday, and so for all the week. There is a terrestrial globe, which\nshows the quarter, the half hour, and the minutes. There is a figure of a\nhuman skull, and statues of two boys, whereof one turns the hour-glass when\nthe clock has struck, and the other puts forth the rod in his hand at each\nstroke of the clock. Moreover, there are statues of spring, summer, autumn,\nand winter, and many observation of the moon.\n{274}\nIn the upper part of the clock are four old men's statues, which strike the\nquarters of the hour. The statue of death comes out at each quarter to\nstrike, but is driven back by the statue of Christ, with a spear in his\nhand, for three quarters; but in the fourth quarter death strikes the hour\nwith the bone in his hand, and then the chimes sound. On the top of the\nclock is the image of a cock, which twice in a day crows aloud and claps\nhis wings. Besides, this clock is decked with many rare pictures, and,\nbeing on the inside of the church, carries another frame to the outside of\nthe walls, whereon the hours of the sun, the courses of the moon, the\nlength of the day, and such other things are set out with much art.\" But\nperhaps the most striking part of the history of this famous Strasburg\nclock was that it was made, or, at all events, perfected, by a blind man.\nThe artisan who contrived it lost his sight, and was superseded; but since\nnobody else would carry out his ideas, and he refused to communicate them,\nhe was reinstated in his work, and actually carried out the affair, in all\nits intricate delicacy, to the end. There are several other examples of\nblind clockmakers, and even watchmakers. \"The Illustrated London News of\nAugust 23, 1851, tells us that there was then living at Holbeach,\nLincolnshire, a watchmaker named Rippin, who was completely blind. He was a\nfirst-rate hand at his business, and it was truly surprising to observe\nwith what ease he could take to pieces and place together again watches of\nthe most delicate mechanism. Some years previously, Rippin was robbed, and\nthe property taken from him consisted of watch-wheels, hair springs, and\nother tiny things belonging to the trade. The thief was traced, and\nconvicted at Spalding sessions, the blind man having sworn to his property\nby feeling.\"\n\nThose who are accustomed only to eight-day clocks will be astonished to\nlearn that some time-pieces have been made to go for a hundred years! The\nMarquis of Bute had one at Luton Park; and \"in Sir John Moore's account of\nhis 'large sphere-going clock-work' (Mathem. Compend.) we read that it made\na revolution of once in seventeen thousand one hundred years, by means of\nsix wheels and five pinions, for the sun's apogeum.\" Instead of \"it made,\"\none should surely here read \"it was made to make,\" since the oldest\ninhabitant could scarcely certify to the fact having been performed. In\n1859, after years of labor, James White, of Wickham Market, completed a\nself-winding clock, which determined the time with unfailing accuracy,\ncontinuing a constant motion by itself, never requiring to be wound up, and\nbeing capable of perpetuating its movements so long as its component parts\nshould exist.\n\nItaly boasts of some curious native clockwork. Early in the last century,\nat the Palazzo di Colonna at Rome, was a portable clock, which was wound up\nonly once a year, and showed the hour of the day, the month, and the year;\nand the popes possessed for two centuries a horological marvel, which,\npassing through the hands of King William I. of the Netherlands, was\nexhibited to our Royal Society so late as 1848. This was produced solely by\nmanual labor, without any other help than the bench of the turner and the\nfile; yet it shows the date of the month and all the Catholic feasts and\nholidays throughout the year. Seven heathen gods make their appearance,\neach on his proper week-day, exactly in front, and is relieved, after\ntwenty-four hours' duty, by the next. \"In the centre of the second division\n(the clock being a tower of three stories) is an image of the Virgin,\nholding her son Jesus in her arms; two angels are seen placing crowns and\ngarlands on her head; and during the performance of the bells, several\nangels appear making their obeisance before the image of Mary and the\nSaviour. Within the centre of the third division is a metal bell hanging on\na gilt plate of copper, on which is represented the judgment-day.\n{275}\nRound this metal plate move four silver figures, set in motion by\nmechanism, representing the four states of social life. These images point\nout the quarters of the hour by striking the bell; the first quarter is\nrepresented by a youth, the second by a grave citizen, the third by a Roman\nsoldier, and the fourth by a priest. In the fourth division is likewise a\nmetal bell, on the sides of which are chambers; on the left side is the\nrepresentation of death, proclaiming the hours of day and night by striking\nthe bell; above it is seen a Latin inscription, from Romans, chapter vii.\nverse 23. At the right side is the image of the Saviour, stepping forward,\nwith the globe in his hand, and above it the cross. This figure proceeds\nevery two minutes in a slow manner, and then, for a moment, hides itself\nfrom view; above it is a Latin verse from the prophet Hosea, chapter xiii.\nThese two figures are of massive silver. Behind the bell is inscribed the\nname of the artist, and the date 1589.\" Many ancient clocks upon the\ncontinent exhibit processions of saints and various other religious\nautomata; but the most singular of all, perhaps, is one in the cathedral of\nSt. John at Lyon. On the top of it stands a cock, that every three hours\nclaps his wings and crows thrice. In a gallery underneath, a door opens on\none side, and out comes the Virgin Mary; and from a door on the other side\nthe angel Gabriel, who meets and salutes her. At the same time a door opens\nin the alcove part, out of which the form of a dove, representing the Holy\nGhost, descends upon the Virgin's head. After this, these figures retire,\nand from a door in the middle comes forth the figure of a reverend father,\nlifting up his hand and giving his benediction to the spectators. The days\nof the week are represented by seven figures, each of which takes its place\nin a niche on the morning of the day that it represents, and continues\nthere until midnight. The greatest curiosity is an oval plate marked with\nthe minutes of an hour, which are exactly pointed out by a hand reaching\nthe circumference, that insensibly dilates and contracts itself during the\nrevolution. This curious machine, although not so perfect now in all its\nmovements as when it was originally constructed, has suffered but little\ninjury during a long course of years, owing to the care and skill of those\nwho were appointed to look after it. It appears from an inscription on the\nclock itself that it was repaired and improved by one Morrison in 1661; but\nit was contrived long before that time by Nicholas Lipp, a native of Basle,\nwho finished it in 1598, when he was about thirty years of age. The oval\nminute motion was invented by M. Servier, and is of later date. There is a\ntradition that the ingenious artist, Lipp, had his eyes put out by order of\nthe magistrates of Lyon, that he might not be able to make another clock\nlike this; but so far from this being true, the justices of Lyon engaged\nhim to take care of his own machine, at a handsome salary.\n\nIngenious, however, as are the quasi-religious automata above mentioned,\nhow inferior are they in human interest when compared with the time-piece\npossessed by Mrs. Forester at Great Brickhill, Bucks, \"the identical clock\nwhich was at Whitehall at the time of the execution of Charles I., and by\nwhich the fatal moment was regulated.\" At that period (the seventeenth\ncentury), there was a great taste for striking-clocks. \"Several of them,\nmade by Thomas Tompion, who invented many useful things in clock-work, not\nonly struck the quarters on eight bells, but also the hour after each\nquarter. At twelve o'clock, forty-four blows were struck, and one hundred\nand thirteen between twelve and one o'clock. Failures in the striking\nmechanism of these clocks were attended with much annoyance to the owners\nof them, for they would go on striking without cessation until the weight\nor spring had gone down, and they were frequently contrived to go for a\nmonth.\n\n{276}\n\nIn 1696, a very remarkable clock was made for \"Le Grand Monarque,\" whom\nscience as well as literature, it seems, delighted to flatter. Louis was\ntherein represented upon his throne, surrounded by the electors of the\nGerman states and the princes of Italy, who advanced toward him doing\nhomage, and retired chiming the quarters of the hours with their canes. The\nkings of Europe did the same, except that they struck the hours instead of\nthe quarters. The maker, Burdeau, advertised his intention of exhibiting\nthis work of art in public, and knowing the stubborn resistance offered to\nhis sovereign by William III., be determined to make the English monarch's\neffigy particularly pliant, so that when its turn came he should show an\nespecial humility. \"William, thus compelled, bowed very low indeed; but, at\nthe same moment, some part of the machinery snapped asunder, and threw 'Le\nGrand Monarque' prostrate from his chair at the feet of the British king.\nThe news of the accident spread in every direction as an omen; the king was\ninformed of it, and poor Burdeau was confined in the Bastille.\"\n\nClock-omens, it seems, have not been confined to the work of this\nunfortunate Frenchman, \"A correspondent of Notes and Queries\" for March 28,\n1861, relates the following account of a curious omen or coincidence: 'On\nWednesday night, or rather Thursday morning, at three o'clock, the\ninhabitants of the metropolis were roused by repeated strokes of the new\ngreat bell at Westminster, and most persons supposed it was for a death in\nthe royal family. There might have been about twenty slow strokes when it\nceased. It proved, however, to be due to some derangement of the clock, for\nat four and five o'clock, ten or twelve strokes were struck instead of the\nproper number. On mentioning this in the morning to a friend who is deep in\nLondon antiquities, he observed that there is an opinion in the city that\nanything the matter with St. Paul's great bell is an omen of ill to the\nroyal family; and he added: \"I hope the opinion will not extend to the\nWestminster bell.\" This was at eleven on Friday morning. I see by the Times\nthis morning, that it was not till 1 A.M. the lamented Duchess of Kent was\nconsidered in the least danger, and, as you are aware, she expired in less\nthan twenty-four hours. ... I am told the same notion obtains at Windsor.'\"\n\nA century after Burdeau's masterpiece, a much more useful work, and one\nperhaps equally characteristic of the nationality of its maker, was\nexecuted for George III. by Alexander Cumming, of Edinburgh, which\nregistered the height of the barometer. \"This was effected by a circular\ncard, of about two feet in diameter, being made to turn once in a year, the\ncard was divided by radii lines into three hundred and sixty-five\ndivisions, the months and days being marked round the edge, while the usual\nrange of the barometer was indicated in inches and tenths by circular lines\ndescribed from the centre. A pencil, with a fine point pressed on the card\nby a spring, and held by an upright rod floating on the mercury, accurately\nmarked the state of the barometer; the card, being carried forward by the\nclock, brought each day to the pencil. It was not even necessary to change\nthe card at the year's end, as a pencil with a different-colored lead would\nmake a distinction between two years. This barometer-clock cost nearly two\nthousand pounds, and the maker was allowed a salary of two hundred pounds\nper annum to keep it in repair.\"\n\n{277}\n\nTaking leave of these ingenious complications, we may say indeed that in\nnothing has \"man sought out many inventions,\" or exhibited his diligence\nand patience, more than in the science of clockmaking. Earth, air, fire,\nand water have been pressed into his service for his purpose; the sand or\nearth clock being worked like the water-clock; the air-clock consisting in\nthe pumping of a bellows, like those of an organ, the gradual escape of the\nair regulating the descent of a weight, which carried round the wheels; and\nthe fire-clock being formed upon the principle of the smoke-jack, the\n\"wheels being moved by means of a lamp, which also gave light to the dial;\nthis clock was made to announce the several hours by placing at each a\ncorresponding number of crackers, which were exploded at proper times.\"\nThis very alarming time-piece was outdone by a cannon-clock placed in 1832\nin the gardens of the Palais-Royal. \"A burning-glass was fixed over the\nvent of a cannon, so that the sun's rays at the moment of its passing the\nmeridian were contracted by the glass on the priming, and the piece was\nfired; the burning-glass being regulated for this purpose every month.\" At\nGreenwich Observatory there is a most ingenious wind-clock, which, however,\nis not a time-measurer, but registers for itself, with pencil and paper,\nthe wayward action of the wind. \"Each minute and each hour has its written\nrecord, without human help or inspection. Once a day only, an assistant\ncomes to put a new blank sheet in the place of that which has been covered\nby the moving pencils, and the latter is taken away to be bound up in a\nvolume. This book might with truth be lettered, The History of the Wind;\nwritten by Itself: an AEolian Autobiography.\"\n\nThe well-known and simple piece of mechanism called a cuckoo-clock has been\nthe cause of some spiritual mischief. An assortment of them was taken by\ncertain missionaries to the Friendly Islands, the inhabitants of which\nresolutely refused to attribute them to science; they believed that each\ncontained a spirit, which would detect a thief if anything were stolen from\ntheir English visitors. When a native was sick, a cuckoo-clock was always\nsent for, as being \"great medicine.\" Unfortunately, however, one of the\nclocks got out of order, and since the missionaries did not understand how\nto set it right, they fell into contempt, and lost their usefulness.\n\nThe two most curious examples of clock-work--apart from intricacy--to which\nMr. Wood has introduced us are the clock-lock and the clock-bed. The\nformer, made by a locksmith of Frankfort in 1859, consisted of a strong box\nwithout any keyhole at all, and which even its owner could not open. Inside\nwas a clock-work, the hand of which, when the box was open, the owner\nplaced at the hour and minute when he again wanted to have access to the\ninterior of the box. The works began to move as soon as the lid was shut,\nand time alone was the key. The clock-bed was the invention of a Bohemian\nin 1858, and was so constructed that a pressure upon it caused a soft and\ngentle air of Auber's to be played, which continued long enough to lull to\nsleep the most wakeful. At the head was a clock, the hand of which being\nplaced at the hour that the sleeper wished to rise, when the time arrived\nthe bed played a march of Spontoni's (spontaneously) with drums and\ncymbals, enough to rouse the Seven Sleepers.\n\nThe great time-piece of Westminster, which receives Greenwich time by\nelectricity, exhibits no sensible error in less than a month. Mr. Airy's\nlast report upon its rate was that the first blow of the hour may be relied\non within less than one second a week; which is a seven times greater\naccuracy than was required in the original conditions under which the clock\nwas built.\n\n{278}\n\nA proportionate part of Mr. Wood's interesting volume is devoted to the\nsmaller subject of watches. The invention of the coiled spring as a motive\npower instead of the weight used in clocks seems to have taken place in\n1477, at Nuremberg, where watches were first made, and called, from their\noval shape, Nuremberg eggs. In 1530. we find Charles V., in his retirement\nat the monastery of St. Yuste, amusing himself with \"portable clocks;\"\nreflecting: \"How foolish I was to have squandered so much blood and\ntreasure to make men think alike, when I can't even make a few watches keep\nuniform time;\" and good naturedly observing, when a monk overthrew them\nall: \"I have been laboring for some time to make these watches go together,\nand now you have effected it in one instant.\" This emperor possessed one\nwatch that was made \"in the jewel or collet of his ring,\" so that\ndiminutiveness of construction must have been rapidly attained. George\nIII., however, had a repeating watch presented to him (by Arnold of\nDevereux Court, in the Strand) whose size did not exceed that of a silver\ntwopenny-piece. \"It contained one hundred and twenty different parts, but\naltogether weighed not more than five pennyweights, seven grains and\nthree-fourths. ... For this delicate and exquisite specimen of his art,\nArnold had to make nearly all the tools used in its manufacture. This tiny\nwatch contained the first ruby cylinder ever made, The king presented\nArnold with five hundred guineas; and when the Emperor of Russia offered a\nthousand guineas for a similar one, the watchmaker refused to make it lest\nhe should depreciate the value of his gift.\"\n\nSir John Dick Lauder possesses a skull-watch that belonged to Mary Queen of\nScots; this is of silver gilt, and ornamented with representations of death\nbetween the palace and the cottage; the garden of Eden, and the\ncrucifixion; the holy family at Bethlehem, etc. The works are as brains in\nthe skull, the hollow of which is filled by a silver bell; the dial-plate\nbeing on a flat upon the roof of the mouth. With reference to this ghastly\nsubject, Mr. Wood relates that, in a French engraving of 1830, death enters\na watchmaker's shop, and shows his hour-glass to the master, saying:\n\"_Vais-je bien?_\" to which the latter answers: \"_Vous avancez\nhorriblement._\" Many persons addicted to the science of watchmaking\nseem, indeed, to have been on unusually familiar terms with the king of\nterrors; and some have left epitaphs behind them of a very characteristic\nnature. In the churchyard of Lydford, in Devonshire, is to be read the\nfollowing:\n\n  \"Here lies in a _horizontal_ position,\n     the outside _case_ of\n   George Rautleigh, watchmaker,\n   whose abilities in that line were an honor to his profession.\n   Integrity was the _mainspring_, and prudence the\n     _regulator_ of all the _actions_ of his life;\n   Humane, generous, and liberal, his _hand_ never\n     _stopped_ till he had relieved distress;\n   So nicely _regulated_ was his _movements_,\n     that he never _went wrong_,\n     except when _set-agoing_\n   by people who did not know his _key_;\n   Even then he was easily _set right_ again.\n     He had the art of disposing of his _time_ so well,\n     That his _hours_ glided away in one\n   continual _round_ of pleasure and delight,\n   Till an unlucky _moment_ put a _period_ to his existence.\n     He departed this life November 14, 1802,\n       Aged 57, _wound up_.\n   In hopes of being taken in hand by his Maker;\n   And of being thoroughly _cleaned, repaired_, and\n     _set-agoing_ for the world to come.\"\n\nOf course, watches could not be made to imitate the feats of the Strasburg\nclock; but in the Academy of Sciences at St. Petersburg there is a watch\nwhich was made by a Russian peasant, named Kulubin, in the reign of\nCatharine II., which is sufficiently wonderful. It is about the size of an\negg, and contains a representation of the tomb of Christ, with the Roman\nsentinels. On pressing a spring, the stone is rolled from the tomb, the\nsentinels fall down, the angels appear, the holy women enter the sepulchre,\nand the same chant which is sung in the Greek Church on Easter eve is\naccurately performed.\n\nThe most costly and elaborate watch ever produced by British workmen, up to\n1844, was made in that year by Hart & Son of Cornhill, for the Sultan Abdul\nMedschid; the brilliancy of its colors and exquisiteness of its pencilling\nseem to have surpassed anything of the kind of foreign manufacture. It\nstruck the hours and quarters by itself, and repeated them with the minutes\nupon pressing a small gold slide; and the sound, produced by wires instead\nof a bell, resembled that of a powerful and harmonious cathedral clock. Its\nprice was one thousand two hundred guineas.\n\n{279}\n\nThe most accurately exact watch is probably Mr. Benson's Chronograph, used\nfor timing the Derby. \"It consists of an ordinary quick train lever\nmovement, on a scale sufficiently large to carry the hands for an\neight-inch dial, and with the addition of a long seconds-hand, which\ntraverses the dial, instead of being, as usual, just above the figure VI.\nThe peculiarity of the chronograph consists in this seconds-hand and the\nmechanism connected with it. The hand itself is double, or formed of two\ndistinct hands, one lying over the other. The lower one, at its extreme\nend, is furnished with a small cup or reservoir, with a minute orifice at\nthe bottom. The corresponding extremity of the upper hand is bent over so\nas to rest exactly over this puncture, and the reservoir having been filled\nwith ink of a thickness between ordinary writing fluid and printer's ink,\nthe chronograph is ready for action. The operator, who holds tightly\ngrasped in his hand a stout string connected with the mechanism peculiar to\nthis instrument, keeps a steady lookout for the fall of the starter's flag.\nSimultaneously, therefore, with the start of the race, the string he holds\nis pulled by him, and at the same moment the upper hand dips down through\nthe reservoir in the lower, and leaves a little dot or speck of ink upon\nthe dial. This is repeated as the horses pass the winning-post, so that a\nlasting and indisputable record is afforded by the dots on the dial of the\ntime--exact to the tenth of a second--which is occupied in running the\nrace. As an example of the results of this instrument's operations, we may\nadd that it timed the start and arrival of the Derby race in 1866 as\nfollows: Start, 3 hours 34 min, 0 sec,; arrival, 3 hours 36 min. 49 sec.;\nduration of race, 2 min. 49 sec.\"\n\nTo give an idea of the extraordinary division of labor in this delicate\nscience, it was stated in evidence before a committee of the House of\nCommons, that there are one hundred and two distinct branches of the art of\nwatchmaking, and that the watch finisher, whose duty it is to put together\nthe scattered parts, is the only one of the hundred and two persons who can\nwork in any other department than his own. The hair-spring gives a very\ncurious proof of the value that can be given to a small piece of steel by\nmanual labor. Four thousand hair-springs scarcely weigh more than a single\nounce, but often cost more than a thousand pounds. \"The pendulum-spring of\na watch, which governs the vibrations of the balance, costs, at the retail\nprice, two-pence, and weighs three-twentieths of a grain; while the retail\nprice of a pound of the best iron, the raw material out of which fifty\nthousand such springs are made, is the same sum of two-pence.\" Mr.\nBennett--whose advocacy of female labor in the watch-trade has rendered him\nobnoxious to some persons--states that he found at Neufch\u00e2tel, where the\nSwiss watches are chiefly made, twenty thousand women employed upon the\nmore delicate parts of the watch-movement.\n\nThe last part of this very interesting volume is devoted to that perfection\nof timekeepers, the chronometer, by which is found the longitude of a ship\nat sea. Twenty thousand pounds was offered by the British government for\nthe invention of this instrument, which was awarded to John Harrison in\n1765. His chronometer, in the first instance, was discredited on a voyage\nto Jamaica, since it differed with the chart by a degree and a half, but it\nwas eventually discovered that it was the chart that was wrong. Of how\naccurately chronometers are made, there are numberless instances; here is\none with which we must conclude. \"After several months spent at sea,\"\nwrites Dr. Arnott, \"in a long passage from South America to Asia, my\npocket-chronometer, and others on board, announced one morning that a\ncertain point of land was then bearing north from the ship, at a distance\nof fifty miles.\n{280}\nIn an hour afterward, when a mist had cleared away, the looker-out on the\nmast gave the joyous call of 'Land ahead!' verifying the reports of the\nchronometers almost to one mile, after a voyage of thousands of miles. It\nis allowable at such a moment, with the dangers and uncertainties of\nancient navigation before the mind, to exult in contemplating what man has\nnow achieved. Had the rate of the wonderful little instrument in an that\ntime quickened or slackened ever so slightly, its announcement would have\nbeen useless, or even worse; but in the night and in the day, in storm and\nin calm, in heat and in cold, its steady beat went on, keeping exact\naccount of the rolling of the earth and stars; and in the midst of the\ntrackless waves, which retain no mark, it was always ready to tell its\nmagic tale, indicating the very spot on the globe over which it had\narrived.\"\n\nAmong the relics of the Franklin expedition brought home from the arctic\nregions by M'Clintock was a pocket-chronometer in excellent preservation;\nit had stopped at four o'clock. The owner probably had done with time ere\nthat.\n\n------\n\n  Translated from Revue G\u00e9n\u00e9tale, Brussels.\n\n  Catholic Doctrine and Natural Science.\n\nM. D'Omalius D'Halloy, in a discourse recently delivered at a general\nannual meeting of the class of sciences of the Royal Academy of Belgium\n(December 16th, 1866), treated the question which has frequently and\nseriously occupied learned minds. Director of an order which has for the\npast fifty years been signalized by assiduous labors and patient\nresearches, he has once again attested, with that superior authority which\nnone can deny, that \"the pretence is shameful, that our religious teachings\nare in opposition to the progress of natural science.\" We receive, with\nrespect and attention, this frank declaration as the testimony of a noble\nmind surrounded with the double glory of science and faith. After the\nexordium, the speaker thus pursued his demonstration:\n\nIf we commence with that which related to the creation, we shall see, on\nthe one side, those men who, not wishing to forsake the ideas which were\nformed in their early years, have profited by their influence in religious\nmatters to condemn others who do not desire to follow their conclusions in\nregard to the phenomena of the natural development of the world; meanwhile,\non the other side, those men who, inflated by their pride, or prompted by\ntheir desire to divest themselves of the restraint that religion imposes\nupon their passions, have profited all they could in whatever they found\nobscure or contradictory in the explanations of their adversaries to deny\ndivine inspiration to the sacred books, and consequently to the fundamental\nprinciples of our religious belief.\n\nI am, on the contrary, led to believe that we can see nothing in the\ncosmogony of the book of Genesis but the consecration of several grand\nprinciples; namely, the existence of an all-powerful God anterior to\nmatter, and its creation by him. I acknowledge that our minds conceive with\ndifficulty these two principles, but it is more difficult to conceive the\nexistence of the universe and its admirable arrangement without the\npre-existence of [an] omnipotent being; one against whom neither science\nnor reason could raise an objection, or refuse to admit the existence of\nits two component principles.\n{281}\nWhen we say that God inspired our sacred books, we mean to convey that he\nhas caused certain men to understand the great truths which they contain;\nwe do not wish to assert that he has endowed these men with a complete\nscientific knowledge. Besides, to comprehend all that study has revealed to\nmodern _savans_, they should speak or understand the rude language of\nthe age in question; even at this period, though civilization and the art\nof printing have greatly increased the instruction of the masses, we find\nastronomers speaking of the _rising_ and the _setting_ of the\nsun.\n\nWe should not take the sacred writings for other than what they really are;\nnamely, as the medium through which we are to understand the great\nprinciples which form the basis of our religious belief; and not as\ntreatises upon natural science.\n\nThe long periods, the existence of which has been revealed by the study of\nthe terrestrial globe, have also been placed in opposition to the recent\nperiod which we find named in the Bible as the epoch of the creation. But\nit is to be remarked, in the first place, that the term translated\n_day_ has been erroneously rendered; the seven successive periods\nindicated in the Bible as the limits of events were not confined to\ntwenty-four hours; and, in the second place, that the calculations derived\nfrom the age and genealogy of the patriarchs should not be regarded as\nimperative; first, because we do not possess the positive value of the\nexpression translated as _year_, and, further, because it appears that\na portion of the terms of the genealogical series has been lost in the\nlapse of time.\n\nThe question of the deluge has also given rise to numerous contradictions;\nbut it seems to me that we can say, on the one side, that these\ncontradictions support themselves upon the susceptible hypotheses of\ndiscussion, and, on the other, upon the interpretations of modified nature\nwhich they will eventually acknowledge. It is thus that, while there exist\nin geology schools which deny the great cataclysms, there are others which\nadmit them; and we cannot deny that the theory which attributes the origin\nof our high mountains to swellings of the crust of the earth relatively\nrecent, destroys the objections raised against the return of the waters\nupon the materials forming the summits of our most elevated plateaux.\nNotwithstanding the objections which anthropologists make against the\nopinion that all mankind are descended from Noah, which agrees with pure\nhypothesis, can we not say that the contrary opinion is founded upon but\none interpretation of Genesis, which cannot be very exact? Indeed, it\nappears to me that the book, after the account of the creation, which\nshould be applied to the entire universe, does, while it always teaches the\npower of God and the origin of things, assume: an especial character;\nnamely, it becomes a history of a people whom God had chosen to serve him\nin a particular manner. Thus the history of the Bible does not relate to\nany other people than the Hebrews, although these people had relations with\nthe most powerful races on the earth; the races that are willing to admit\nthat the deluge of which they speak submerged all the countries known to\nthe Hebrews, but not all the terrestrial globe. They object in this manner\nto see that the book of Genesis gives to the deluge the title of universal;\nbut is not this one of those expressions often employed to designate\nsomething understood? Do we not often say, All the world was united, all\nEurope is afraid, all the world listens? Expressions of this kind are very\ncommon in the florid style of the orientals; and, without leaving the\nsacred books, do we not read of the Pentecost, that there were in the\nassembly who listened to the apostles \"Jews of all the nations under\nheaven;\" and in the enumeration of the countries from which they came,\n\"Rome was the most distant?\"\n\n{282}\n\nIf I here recall the hypotheses of the anthropology of all men who did not\nactually descend from Noah, I am far from saying that they were not\ndescended from one couple. I have had, on the contrary, occasion to declare\nthat, according to my views, science, in its present state, is powerless to\nresolve the question whether the human race is descended from one or from\nseveral sources. However, I am convinced that the differences which\nactually present themselves in the diverse human races have not manifested\nthemselves since the deluge of Noah. I have said, long since, that\npaleontology has led me to admit that hereditary transformations are much\nmore important than the differences which exist in the human race. At all\ntimes admitting that man has hardly suffered the transformations analogous\nto those described in the paleontological order, I am far from concluding\nthat he descends from a beast. Existing observations do not disprove the\ndistinct creation attributed by the Bible to man. The opinion of some\nauthors, that all living beings derive their origin from a monad, is a\ngratuitous hypothesis, which cannot be supported by facts. Quite to the\ncontrary, we learn, by paleontology, that all the great organic types\nexisted in the silurian period; and, if the vertebral type had not yet been\nobserved in the anterior deposits, this negative circumstance is considered\nof small importance. For it is only a short time since that the existence\nof organic remains in these deposits has been revealed; that these remains\nare very rare, and that even they differ but slightly from those of the\nsilurian soil. Now, if the present state of observation leads us to admit\nthat the Creator originally and distinctly formed the great types of\norganization, nothing authorizes us to deny that he created in a distinct\nmanner the only being endowed with the faculty of knowing and adoring him.\n\nOn the other side, we do not see why the special origin of man is denied,\neven if he should have changed his form with time, as I suppose other\nliving creatures may have done. Genesis tells us truly that God created man\nin his own image; but we cannot understand this phrase to signify that he\nhimself actuated a material form. God has taken the human form under\ncertain circumstances to communicate with man, but no one maintains that\nthis is the normal form of an essentially spiritual being. The Bible, in\nspeaking of the image of the Deity, scarcely alludes to the material and\ndecomposable part of man, but always to the spiritual part; which, to be\nthe _image of God_, should be endowed with immortality. But this\nspiritual part, which we call the soul, may have been placed in a being who\nhad a different form to that worn by man at the present time; one more\nappropriate to the sphere in which he lived. Because God now permits the\nexistence of men, who, by their brutishness, assimilate to the beasts, we\nsee no reason for supposing that the first men had forms unsuited to the\ndevelopment of the faculties which characterize the civilized world of\nto-day.\n\nThey have also denied particular immortality to human souls in assimilating\nthem to vital force, but this is one of those hypotheses unfounded upon any\nobservation.\n\nI am convinced that the life, that is to say, the vital force, or the union\nof forces which gives to matter the attributes characteristic of organized\nbodies, can be assimilated, to a certain degree, to the forces which\ndetermine physical phenomena; because the condition of its effects are more\nrestrained, and only develop by continuation with the body with which it\nwas originally endowed, and is not a sufficient reason for concluding that\nit belongs to an entirely different order of things. We see, in effect,\nthat the order of forces presents phenomena which becomes successively less\ngeneral; it is thus that attraction constantly acts upon all bodies, while\nthere exist circumstances where affinity acts upon certain bodies; and the\nmanifestation of electricity is due to conditions again less general.\n{283}\nOn the other side, we cannot conceive the movement of the stars without the\nfirst cause of impulsion, any more than we can conceive the birth of a\nliving being without the intervention of a pre-existing cause; we cannot\ngive to these connections any consequence contrary to the dogma of the\nimmortality of the soul. Nor can science decide whether physical phenomena\nare owing to diverse forces, or to a single force that manifests itself in\nvarious ways; neither resolve the question whether life is composed of an\nindividual force or the union of many. It is certain that _vegetable\nlife_, a term which we consider applicable to all living things, is\nsomething different from _animal life_, a term applied to all sensible\nbeings. It is contended no longer that man has attributes not possessed by\nbeasts. Now we see nothing in physiology which opposes itself to these\naptitudes being determined by a particular force named the soul, and that\nthis force be endowed with immortality; that is to say, the power of\npreserving eternally its individuality after separation from the matter\nwhich it once animated.\n\nAlthough I am unfamiliar with physiological studies, I will add that these\nconsiderations compel me to say that I have no right to apply the name of\nsoul to that force which animates beasts; not that I wish to rob certain\nanimals of the faculties which they enjoy, but whatever may be the\nintelligence or social capacity with which these animals are endowed, they\ncannot pretend to perform the _r\u00f4le_ that man maintains upon earth.\nAnd neither physiology nor the sacred writings lead us to believe that the\nforce which animates beasts should be endowed with immortality. I can only\navow that the birth, the existence, and the death of an animal are but the\nmanifestation of a vital force determined by particular circumstances, as\nlightning and thunder are but the manifestations of electricity.\n\nAgain, according to my views, a religious sense has hardly been given to\nthe admission or the rejection of a human kingdom, a question frequently\nagitated in these modern times. In fact, the division of natural bodies\ninto three kingdoms, with their inferior subdivisions, has only been made\nto facilitate the knowledge of these beings, and to designate by name the\ndifferent groups of which we would speak. We cannot deny that by the\nmineral, the animal, and the vegetable kingdoms we understand three\ndivisions, which include all bodies on the terrestrial globe; and that each\none has common attributes which are not found in the two others; it follows\nthat, when we admit a human kingdom, we have no term to designate the class\nof beings possessing the attributes which distinguish man and the beasts\nfrom the two other kingdoms. This consideration causes me to reject the\nhuman kingdom, without always classing man in the animal; the enlargement\nof the vertebrae and the mammiferous class appear to me to oppose\nthemselves in another order of ideas; we must, therefore, believe that man\nis endowed with a soul enjoying attributes different from the force which\nanimates beasts.\n\nIn conclusion, I do not hesitate to say that there exists in my mind no\nreal opposition between our religious belief and the demonstrations\nafforded by the present state of the natural sciences.\n\n------\n\n{284}\n\n    Miscellany.\n\n_Meteoric Stones_.--M. Daubr\u00e9e records his observations on a great\nshower of meteoric stones which fell on the 30th of May, in the territory\nof Saint Mesmin, in the Department of the Aube. Mr. Daubr\u00e9e gives the\nfollowing account of the phenomenon: The weather being fine and dry, and\nonly a few clouds in the sky, at about 4,45 in the morning a luminous mass\nwas seen to cross the sky with great rapidity, and shedding a great light\nbetween Mesgrigny and Payns. A few seconds after this appearance, three\nloud explosions, like the report of cannon, were heard at intervals of one\nor two seconds. Several minor explosions, like those of muskets, followed\nthe first, and succeeded one another like the discharge of skirmishers.\nAfter the detonations a tongue of fire darted toward the earth, and at the\nsame time a hissing noise was heard like that of a squib, but much louder.\nThis again was followed by a dull, heavy sound, which a person compared to\nthat of a shell striking the earth near him. After a long search he\nperceived, at the distance of about two hundred feet from the place where\nhe was when he heard the noise, a spot where the earth had been newly\ndisturbed; he examined the place, and saw a black stone at the bottom of a\nhole nine inches deep, which it seemed to have formed. This stone weighs\nnearly ten pounds. On the following day a gendarme named Framonnot picked\nup another meteoric stone of the same nature, weighing nearly seven pounds,\nat about two thousand feet distant from where it first fell. A third stone\nwas found on the first of June by a man named Prosat, five to six thousand\nfeet from the two spots above referred to. This last meteorite weighed\nnearly four pounds and a half.-_Science Review._\n\n\n\n_Father Secchi_.--A new spectroscope has been constructed by Father\nSecchi, S.J., and seems to be a very excellent instrument. It absorbs a\nvery small quantity of light, and is therefore admirably adapted for\nstellar observations. The inventor has analyzed with it the spectrum of the\nlight emitted by the star Antar\u00e9s. It is of a red color; the luminous bands\nhave been resolved into bright lines, and the dark ones are checkered with\nlight and dark lines, so there is no black foundation.--_The Reader._\n\n\n_The Heat-conductibility of Mercury_.--M. Gripon, who has been making\nexperiments after Peclet's method, thinks he has demonstrated that if the\nconducting power of silver be regarded as 100, that of mercury is equal to\n3.54. He places mercury, therefore, the lowest in the scale of metals, as\nfar as the conductibility of heat is concerned. It is strange that electric\nconductivity is quite different, being represented by the figures\n1.80.--_Science Review_.\n\n\n_Penetration of Platinum and Iron by Hydrogen_.--From time to time we\nhave reported the discoveries of Troost and Deville in this field of\nresearch. These conclusions have recently been collected by the master of\nthe mint, Mr. Thomas Graham, in an admirable paper published in the\nProceedings of the Royal Society. He thinks that this wonderful penetration\nis connected with a power resident in the above-mentioned and certain other\nmetals to liquefy and absorb hydrogen, which latter is possibly in the\ncondition of a metallic vapor. Platinum in the form of wire or plate at a\nlow, red heat may take up and hold 3.8 volumes of hydrogen, measured cold;\nbut it is by palladium that the property in question appears to be\npossessed in the highest degree. Palladium foil from the hammered metal,\ncondensed so much as 643 times its volume of hydrogen, at a temperature\nunder 100\u00b0 C. The same metal had not the slightest absorbent power for\neither oxygen or nitrogen. The capacity of fused palladium (as also of\nfused platinum) is considerably reduced, but foil or fused palladium, a\nspecimen of which Mr. Graham obtained from Mr. G. Matthey, absorbed 68\nvolumes of the gas. Mr. Graham thinks that a certain degree of porosity may\nbe admitted to exist in all these metals.--_Science Review_.\n\n{285}\n\n_Improvements in the Barometer_.--Some important improvements have\nrecently been effected in the Aneroid barometer by Messrs. Cook &; Sons,\nthe opticians. Although the Aneroid, under ordinary circumstances, has been\nshown by Mr. Glaisher and others to be very much more effective and\nsatisfactory in its results than could have been hoped, still, under\nconditions which bring rapid changes of pressure into play, the instrument\nwhen it returns to the nominal pressure does not always indicate correctly.\nThis results from the motion being communicated to the index axle by a\nchain, and this chain, from other considerations, is the weakest part of\nthe instrument, and is the first acted upon by climactic influences, rust,\netc. Mr. Cook has abolished this chain altogether, substituting for it an\nalmost invisible driving-band of gold or platinum, and the result of this\ngreat improvement is that the Aneroid may now be looked upon as an almost\nperfect instrument for scientific research. Several such Aneroids, placed\nunder the receiver an air-pump, not only match absolutely together, but all\nreturn unfailingly to one and the same indication--_The Reader_\n\n------\n\n     Original.\n\n     New Publications.\n\n1. Frederick The Great And His Court.\n   An Historical Romance. By L. M\u00fchlbach.\n   Translated from the German\n   by Mrs. Chapman Coleman and her\n   daughters. New York: Appleton & Co.\n   1867. 12mo, pp. 434.\n\n2. Berlin And Sans-Souci; or, Frederick\n   The Great and His Friends.\n   An Historical Romance. Author,\n   translators, and publishers the same.\n   New York. 1867. 12mo, pp. 391.\n\n3. Joseph II. and His Court.\n   An Historical Romance. By the same.\n   Translated from the German by\n   Adelaide de V. Chaudbron; complete\n   in one volume. New York: Appleton & Co.\n   1867. 8vo, double columns, pp. 343.\n\nWe know nothing of the writer of these works, save the works themselves,\nand even them we know only in the translations before us. The last-named\nvolume reads more like an original work in English than the others. Mrs.\nChapman Coleman and her daughters appear not to have learned the proper use\nof _shall_ and _will_, and make now and then the same sort of\nblunder the Frenchman did when he fell into the river and exclaimed: \"I\n_will_ be drowned, and nobody _shall_ help me out.\" The use of\n_shall_ and _will_ is a little arbitrary in English. _Shall_\nin the first person simply foretells, in the second and third persons it\ncommands; _will_ in the first person promises or expresses a\ndetermination or resolution, in the second and third persons it simply\nforetells. The same rule applies to _should_ and _would_. The\nScotch, Irish, and most foreigners are very apt to reverse the rule, as do\nsome New-Yorkers and most western writers and speakers.\n\nThese works themselves are too historical for romances, and too romantic\nfor histories. Unless one is exceedingly familiar with the real history of\nthe times, one never knows whether he is reading history or only romance.\nThe historical predominates in them, and most people will read them as\nhistories rather than romances, and thus imbibe many erroneous views of\nreal persons and events. The Empress Maria Theresa is praised enough and\nmore than enough, so far as words go, both as a woman and as a sovereign,\nbut she is, after all, represented very untruthfully as weak, sentimental,\npermitting her ministers to persuade her to adopt measures to which she is\nconscientiously opposed, and really ruinous to the empire. She is\narbitrary, despotic, and the slave of her confessor. The author even\nrepeats the silly story that Kaunitz persuaded her, in order to further his\npolicy, to write an autograph letter to Madame Pompadour, the mistress of\nLouis XV., and to praise her for her virtue and modesty, a story invented,\nit is said, by Frederick the Great. The _b\u00e9te noir_ of the writer is\nthe clergy, and alike whether Catholic or Protestant.\n{286}\nThe author sympathizes from first to last with Joseph II.; thinks the\nJosephine reforms or pretended reforms very just, very wise in themselves,\nbut that the people were too ignorant and superstitious to appreciate them.\nFrom first to last humanity takes precedence of God and the state of the\nchurch. The great divinity the author worships is the mutual love of man\nand woman, and the greatest evil that afflicts humanity, or at least\nprinces and princesses, is that they cannot follow the inclinations of\ntheir own heart, but must sacrifice their affections to the demands of\nstate policy.\n\nJoseph II. is a great favorite with the author, but Frederick the Great is\nher hero. He is always great, noble, wise, just, with a most loving heart,\nwhich he sacrifices to the necessities of state. No censure is breathed\nagainst his infamous conduct in invading and taking possession of Silesia,\nwithout even a color of right, and without even the formality of declaring\nwar against Austria, and while Austria, unsuspicious of any invasion, is\nwholly unprepared to resist it, and embarrassed by a disputed succession.\nHe was successful, and in our times success is proof of right. Frederick\nwas utterly without principle, without faith of any sort, a\n_philosophe_, corresponded with Voltaire, invited him to his court,\nand even paid him a salary, and detested the clergy, and therefore was a\nfitting idol of our modern liberals and humanitarians, and worshippers of\nFORCE like Carlyle.\n\nJoseph the Second, we are inclined to believe, was sincere, and really\nwished to benefit the nation committed to his charge, and he gave proof of\nit in revoking most of the changes he attempted, and dying as a Christian.\nHe was vain and ambitious, and was led astray by the philosophy of his\ntimes, and his unprincipled minister, Prince Kaunitz, a legacy from his\nmother. He, like all the philosophers of the eighteenth century, understood\nnothing of the laws of continuity, and supposed anything he decided to be\nfor the good of his people, however contrary to all their most deeply\ncherished convictions and their most inveterate habits, could be forced\nupon them by power, and should be received with grateful hearts. Two things\nhe appears to never have known, that despotism cannot found liberty, and\nthat power must, if it would make people happy, suffer them to be happy in\ntheir own. There was, in the eighteenth century, with the European rulers\nand the upper classes much sincere and active benevolence--a real and\nearnest desire to lighten the burdens of government and ameliorate the\ncondition of the people; and no one can read these volumes, with sufficient\nknowledge to distinguish what in them is history from what is mere romance,\nwithout being persuaded that real reforms would have gone much further, and\nEuropean society would have been far in advance of what it now is, if the\nrevolution of 1789 had never been attempted. All that was true in the\nso-called principles of 1789 was favorably accepted by nearly all European\nstatesmen and sovereigns who were laboring peaceably and earnestly to\ndevelop and apply it. The statesmen and sovereigns, unhappily, had utterly\nfalse and mischievous views of the relation of the church to the state, and\nimagined that the only way to reform society was to begin by subjecting the\nspiritual to the temporal; but they went in this direction not so far as\nwent the old French revolution. Indeed, the great lesson of history is that\nthe attempt to effect real social reforms by raising the people against\nlegitimate authority, whether civil or ecclesiastical, always turns out a\nfailure. Some good may be gained on one side, but is sure to be more than\noverbalanced by the evils effected on another side.\n\nAs purely literary works, these historical romances possess a high degree\nof merit, and prove that the writer has rare powers of description and\nanalysis. They read like the genuine histories, and from them alone it is\nimpossible to say where the real history ends and the romance begins, so\ncompletely is the verisimilitude maintained throughout. If, as we are told,\nthey are the production of a female pen, as they bear indubitable evidence\nof being, they are truly remarkable productions. The characters introduced\nare all, or nearly all, historical, and if not all or always faithfully\nreproduced, they are presented without any violence to the generally\nreceived history of the two courts described. There is a little too much\nGerman sentimentality in them, if faithfully translated, to suit our taste,\nand more than we believe is usually to be found in imperial or royal\ncourts; and the _liaisons_ of princes are treated with too much\nlenity, if not downright approbation, to have a good moral effect; but they\nindicate a rare mastery of the subjects they treat, and intellectual powers\nof a very high order.\n{287}\nThey are by no means faultless, and their spirit and tone are pagan rather\nthan Christian; but they who are familiar with the history of the two\ncourts described, and are accustomed to master the works they read instead\nof being mastered by them, may read them even with profit.\n\n\n  Lectures On Christian Unity,\n  delivered in St. Ann's Church, Eighth Street, during the season of\n  Advent, 1866, with an appendix on the condition of the Anglican\n  Communion, and of the Eastern Churches. By the Rev. Thomas S. Preston,\n  Pastor of St. Ann's Church and Chancellor of the diocese. 12mo, pp. 264.\n  New-York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co.\n\nFather Preston's style is natural, earnest, and direct. He is too anxious\nto impress truth on the minds of his readers to load his pages with\nrhetorical ornaments; too resolute in his opinions to hesitate at the most\ndownright and unmistakable expression of them. His ideas are clear, and\ntherefore his style has the two chief requisites of all good writing,\nclearness and simplicity. It has also the beauty which invariably radiates\nfrom a devout heart. Love of God, love of the Blessed Virgin and the\nsaints, love of the holy church and all her teachings and her ways,\nilluminate every chapter with the light of an unaffected piety. And like\nthe majority of really devout controversialists, he writes without rancor\nor bitterness. \"No true Catholic,\" he says, \"can be intemperate in speech,\nmuch less in heart. .... When we speak of the claims of our religion or\nannounce our doctrines and urge them upon men, it is not to advance our own\nopinions so much as to benefit mankind, and promote their best happiness,\ntemporal and spiritual. We feel that the church answers the very questions\nwhich are agitating their souls; that it responds to the wants of their\nspiritual being, now unsatisfied; that it is the only and the divine\nbarrier to infidelity so fast increasing among us. ... It is in this spirit\nthat these lectures are begun, with the earnest desire for truth, and a\ncomprehensive charity for all who differ from us.\"\n\nThe first of the four lectures comprised in this volume proves from reason,\nScripture, and the writings of the primitive fathers the necessity of unity\namong all who profess the Christian faith. The second shows how impossible\nit is of attainment under the theory of Protestantism, which holds that\neverything concerning faith and salvation must be left to the private\njudgment of each individual, and that no external authority has power to\nbind the conscience or compel the obedience of believing men. There can be\nno unity of belief unless there be an admitted standard of truth; and under\nthe Protestant theory such a standard cannot be found. There is no church\nwhich can be such an authority, for, according to the doctrines of all the\nreformed bodies, a church has no authority except that given to it by the\nmembers. As then the members are not infallible, the church cannot be. The\nBible cannot be the authority; for history shows that the Scriptures,\nsubjected to private interpretation, have never been able to effect any\nagreement whatever; and, moreover, it is practically impossible to prove\neither the authenticity or inspiration of the sacred books without falling\nback upon the authority of the church. The objections to setting up the\nconsent of the majority or the opinions of antiquity as a standard of\ndoctrine are likewise exposed with clearness, though very briefly. The\nthird lecture is devoted to an examination of the claims of Protestantism\nto represent the Church of Christ, and a survey of the present condition\nand history of the principal reformed bodies. In lecture the fourth the\nclaims of the Catholic Church upon the obedience of mankind are summarized\nwith beautiful lucidity and eloquence.\n\nAn appendix of 100 pages contains an interesting and valuable note on the\nposition of the Anglican churches, and some welcome information respecting\nthe church union movement, from which it is hardly necessary to say that\nFather Preston expects no good. Neither is he so sanguine of happy results\nfrom the ritualistic movement as a writer in a recent number of this\nmagazine; but of these, as of all other matters, he speaks with his\naccustomed charity. A second part of the appendix gives an account of the\npresent position of the Eastern churches.\n\nWe regard this as the best work Father Preston has written, and we\nearnestly join in the hope he expresses in his modest preface, that it \"may\nreach some minds who are seeking the truth, and lead them to the haven of\nrest.\"\n\n{288}\n\nLectures on doctrines of the Catholic Church are a powerful means of\nconversion to the faith. Never were the public better disposed to inquire,\nand more ready to listen to the claims of the church, than at present, and,\nwherever lectures of this character have been given, their fruits have been\nfound more abundant than was anticipated.\n\n\n  The Life Of St. Dominic And A Sketch Of The Dominican Order.\n  With an introduction by the most Rev. J. S. Alemany, D.D., Archbishop of\n  San Francisco. P. O'Shea, 27 Barclay street.\n\nThis is not a reprint of F. Lacordaire's Life, but an original biography,\naccompanied by a history of the Dominican order brought down to the present\nday. It is from the pen of an anonymous English author, and resembles the\nbest works of the modern school of English Catholic writers in the care and\nelegance with which it has been prepared. No one could have introduced it\nmore suitably to the American public than the illustrious Archbishop of San\nFrancisco, who is himself one of the brightest ornaments of the Dominican\norder in modern times. It is the history of a great man and of a great\norder, given in a moderate compass and an attractive style, and, of course,\nwell worth the perusal of every intelligent reader, whether Catholic or\nProtestant.\n\n\n  The Journal Of Maurice De Gu\u00e9rin.\n  With an Essay by Matthew Arnold, and a Memoir by Saint-Beuve. Edited by\n  G. S. Trebutien. Translated by Edward Thornton Fisher. 12mo. pp. 153. New\n  York, Leypoldt & Hoyt. 1867.\n\nOur readers, already so familiar with the character and writings of Eug\u00e9nie\nde Gu\u00e9rin from the frequent notices they have received, especially of her\nJournal and Letters, will be glad to know that this journal of her so much\nloved brother Maurice has been brought before the public.\n\nIn perusing the charming journal and mournful letters of Eug\u00e9nie our\ncuriosity must needs be awakened to know more of her gifted brother, of\nwhom these pages of love speak so constantly. We have only to say that in\nthis volume that curiosity may be satisfied. Our readers will see depicted\nthe efforts of a soul vainly striving to find God outside of God in the\nworship of nature, and at last returning, wearied and disappointed, like\nthe prodigal son to his father's home and embrace. Maurice de Gu\u00e9rin, who\nhad fallen away into heartless and godless pantheism, died kissing the\ncrucifix.\n\n\n\n\"The Catholic Publication Society\" announces an American edition of a book\njust published in London: \"The Clergy and the Pulpit, in their relations to\nthe People,\"\nM. l'Abb\u00e9 Mallois, chaplain to Napoleon III.\n\n------\n\n  Books Received.\n\nFrom Hon. W. H. Seward, Secretary of State. Washington, D. C, Diplomatic\nCorrespondence, relating to Foreign Affairs for 1865. Parts I., II., and\nIII.; also Part IV., being an appendix to the other three parts, containing\nletters and documents with reference to the assassination of President\nLincoln, and the attempted assassination of Secretary Seward, with extracts\nfrom the press of Europe, and letters from public communities, of\ncondolence and sympathy, inspired by inspired by these events. 8vo.\n\n\nFrom Kelly & Piet. Baltimore, Md, Devotion to the Holy Guardian Angels, in\nthe form of Considerations, Prayers, etc. Translated from the Italian of\nRev. P. de Mattel. S. J. 32mo. pp. 229. Price 50 cts.\n\n\n\nFrom P. O'Shea, New York. The Life of St. Dominic and a Sketch of the\nDominican Order, with an introduction by Most Rev. J. S. Alemany, D.D. 1\nvol. 12mo. pp. 370. Price $1.50.--The Gentle Skeptics; or, Essays and\nConversations of a Country Justice on the Authenticity in Truthfulness of\nthe Old Testament Records. By Rev. C. Walworth. New edition, revised. 1\nvol. 12mo. Price $1.50.\n\n\nFrom Ruttenberg & Co., Newberg, New York. An Address in behalf of Universal\nEducation with Religious Toleration. By the Hon. J. Monell. Pamphlet.\n\n\n\nFrom Lawrence Kehoe, New York. Three Phases of Christian Love. By Lady\nHerbert, of Lea. 1 vol. 12mo. pp. 315. Price $1.50\n\n\nFrom Dayton Ohio, we have received two pamphlets namely: the Divinity of\nChrist, a sermon preached in the Holy Trinity Church, Dayton, Ohio, at the\nconclusion of the Feast of the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ; St.\nAntony: Alban Butler and Local Gossip of the Dayton Journal. By X.\n\n\nFrom D. & J. Sadlier & Co., New. York, Lectures on Christian unity,\ndelivered in St. Ann's Church, New York, during the season of Advent, 1866,\nwith an Appendix on the condition of the Anglican Communion, etc. By Thomas\nS. Preston, Pastor of St. Ann's Church. 1 vol. 12mo. pp. 264. Price\n$1.50--The Christian armed against the Seductions of the World, etc.\nTranslated from the Italian by Father Ignatius Spencer. 1 vol. 18mo. pp.\n320, 50 cts.--Devotion to St. Joseph By Rev. Father Joseph Anthony\nPatrignani, S. J. Translated from the French. 1 vol. 12mo. pp. 360. Price\nthe 63 cts.--Fourth Annual Report of the Society for the Protection of the\nDestitute.\n\n\nFrom the author. Reconstruction of the Union., in a letter to Hon. E. D.\nMorgan. U. S. Senator from New York, from Judge Edmonds. New York American\nNews Co. 8vo. Pamphlet, pp. 89.\n\n\nFrom John Murphy & Co., Baltimore. Manual of the Lives of the Popes, from\nSt. Peter to Pius IX. By John Charles Earle, B.A. 1 vol. 12mo. pp. 332.\nPrice $1.25.\n\n------\n\n{289}\n\n  The Catholic World.\n\n  Vol. NO. 27, June 1867\n\n\n  Translated from Le Correspondant\n\n  Lectures and Public Conferences Among the Ancients.\n\n  I.\n\n_Nil sub sole novum;_ there is nothing absolutely new under the sun.\nApart from the sciences and their application, our age differs less than we\nsuppose from the ages that preceded it. Fancying ourselves pure Frenchmen\nof the nineteenth century, we discern upon a nearer view numerous traits of\nresemblance to the contemporaries of Pliny and Plutarch.\n\n\"Who will deliver us from Greek and Roman shackles?\" cried the author of\nGastronomie, in a fit of witty ill-humor. It is to be feared that for many\na long year we are condemned to imitate the Latins and Athenians whom we\nlove to slander even while copying them. What matter how unconsciously we\nborrow from them? Many things besides the game that made the amusement of\nour infancy may be considered renovations of Greek originals. Fashions,\ncustoms, pleasures even, are ours, not by right of invention, but of\ninheritance; and what we take for new is sometimes merely the old\nrefurbished.\n\nIf there be a novelty, for the mass of the people who do not pride\nthemselves on erudition, it is to be found in the lectures or conferences,\nto which the public is bidden every winter. Tested first successfully in\nParis, through the enterprise of a few private individuals, they afterward,\nfavored by the influence of higher powers, reached the provinces--invaded\nthem, I should have said, if the word had not an offensive signification,\nfar from my thoughts. It is surprising to watch the rapid development of\nthis custom, exhibited as it is in the fact that since the second year a\nthousand _chaires_ have sprung up in various parts of France. Modest\ntownships, no less than great cities, have their course of lectures, and\none peruses with interest the list of lecturers, [Footnote 55] some of whom\nare accustomed by profession to communicating their ideas to an audience,\nwhile others essay for the first time the public expression of their\nopinions.\n\n    [Footnote 55: The _chaires_ have been lately interdicted to Prince\n    Albert de Brogile and to MM. Saint Marc Girardin, Cochin, Laboulaye,\n    and Jules Simon. We cannot help, while recording this ostracism,\n    deploring its effect upon French literature.--_Note of French\n    Editor_.]\n\n{290}\n\nIn the ranks of volunteer instructors (without mentioning professors, who\nare naturally called to assume such a position) lawyers elbow physicians,\nthe Catholic priest finds himself next to the Protestant minister, and\nofficers march abreast with men of letters. Nay more: women too are seen\ntaking part in these manly exercises, anxious to prove good the equality of\ntheir sex with ours.\n\n'Tis undeniably an odd spectacle to unaccustomed eyes, and there is no lack\nof discussion and outcry upon the matter. But one need only read a few\npages from the pen of ancient authors to discover that what startles us\nto-day as a thing without precedent, had passed into a well-known custom in\nthe earliest ages of Christianity. It is into the subject of lectures and\nconferences among the ancients that I propose to inquire, as a topic\noffering interest if not profit to those who like to compare antiquity with\nour own times.\n\n  II.\n\nNowadays, thanks to the printing-press, which multiplies thought and\nscatters it to the four winds of heaven, an author can enter into\ncommunication with the public without going beyond the threshold of his\nstudy. But among the ancients, when every copy of a work was painfully\nexecuted by hand, who can estimate the pains, fatigue, and expense that\nwent to build up an incomplete publicity? What wonder then that an\nhistorian like Herodotus introduced his book to public notice by reading it\naloud to the crowds assembled for the Olympic games, or that the people\npaused to listen to him for days together? The author entered without delay\nupon the enjoyment of his glory--the public into possession of a\nmasterpiece. Later, we learn that Prodicus, the sophist of Ceos, went from\ncity to city, reciting his allegory of Hercules between Virtue and\nPleasure, and engraving it upon the memory of all Greece.\n\nOther similar instances might be cited, but merely as exceptions to the\ncustoms anterior to the Christian era; nor was it in Greece but at Rome\nthat public lecturing first became a popular usage.\n\nIn the reign of Augustus, when eloquence had become _pacifice_ (or\nnarrow-minded, as the bitter spirits who pined for ancient laxity would\nhave said), Asinius Pollio, having been transformed from a republican into\na courtier without sacrificing his love of letters, bethought himself to\nreplace the oratorical combats, for ever banished from senate and forum, by\nestablishing a school of declamation, and assemblies whither authors should\nresort to read their works in public.[Footnote 56] It was erecting a stage\nfor the exhibition of wits who longed for notoriety, and the plan could not\nfail to succeed. Augustus, in harmony, on this occasion, with popular\ndesire, lent a hearty consent to the innovation. Not only did he sit among\nthe audience without giving evidence of weariness or _ennui_, but he\ntook an active part in the literary exercises, reading in person, or\nletting; Tiberius read for him, various compositions of his own.[Footnote\n57]\n\n     [Footnote 56: Seneca the Rhetorician, Controv. V. Procem.]\n\n     [Footnote 57: Sustonius, Augustus, 85, 89.]\n\nWithout doubting that Augustus really enjoyed these intellectual\nentertainments, I believe the encouragement of a harmless literature to\nhave been in accordance with his policy. Every pursuit that could turn\naside the Romans from too importunate an interest in state affairs was\nfavorably received. What time remained for meddling in public matters to\nany man occupied with polishing poetical phrases or rounding rhetorical\nperiods? The chair replaced the tribune advantageously. While bread and\ncircus games satisfied the lower classes, distractions and diversions of a\nnobler stamp were provided for more enlightened minds. In both cases the\nconduct of Augustus was actuated by the same motive.\n{291}\nSo well did public lectures second his designs that be might perhaps have\nintroduced the fashion if it had not already existed. Under the\ncircumstances his countenance only was required to elevate what seemed like\na modish caprice to the dignity and durability of an imperial institution.\nEven the most suspicious and distrustful of this prince's successors\nforbore to disturb an amusement so conducive to their own advantage. The\nleast favorably inclined were contented with depriving the assemblies of\ntheir presence, and others esteemed it an honor to be counted among the\nmost attentive listeners. Nero especially, imperial artist and metromaniac,\nseems to have honestly regarded these exercises as one of the glories of\nhis reign.\n\nEvery one who fancied himself a man of talent (and illusions upon such\npoints are common to the literary world in all ages) was glad to win renown\nby exhibiting the fruits of midnight toil. With few exceptions, all authors\nclaimed the public ear: Lucan to recite his Pharsalia; Silius Italicus, his\nPunic War; Statius, his Thebald, Achille\u00efd, and Silvae; Pliny, his\nPanegyric of Trajan.[Footnote 58] I mention those authors only whose\nwritings have remained to us; but many others sought to charm a Roman\naudience. The list would be long, of lecturers whose names, without their\nworks, have come down to posterity; orators of whom Pliny has introduced a\nlarge number to us in enumerating his personal friends. Princes followed\nthe contagious example of Augustus. Claudius and Nero enjoyed the display\nor their acquirements;[Footnote 59] Domitian recited poems which he\ncertainly never wrote; but what matter for that? he liked to give himself\nthe airs of a poet, and of a successful poet, we may be sure. Nero, at\nleast, did not solicit applause in borrowed plumes. In short, no verses\nwere too bad to seek a hearing. A mania for reading and writing raged\nabroad. Horace satirizes this madness, but after Horace's own sweet,\ngraceful fashion. Juvenal exclaims with wrathful bitterness: \"Am I for ever\nto be a listener? Shall I never retaliate, (I who have been) so often\nteased with the These\u00efd of husky Codrus? One man recites his comedies with\nimpunity, and another his elegies. Shall huge Telephus consume my day\nunpunished; or Orestes, full to the extremest margin of the book, written\neven on the reversed pages, and not finished then?\" [Footnote 60]\n\n    [Footnote 58: Suetonius; Lucan; Pliny the Younger, Let. III. 7, 18;\n    Juvenal, vii. 79]\n\n    [Footnote 59: Suetonius; Claudius, 41; Nero, 10.]\n\n    [Footnote 60: Juvenal, i, 1.]\n\nThe time for retaliation came at last. A desire seized him during the reign\nof Adrian to bring forward the satires so long kept under lock and key, and\nto emulate those whom he had ridiculed. He bored no one, it is true, but\nnone the less fatal were the results to himself: Several passages,\ncordially received by the public, and invidiously interpreted among\ncourtiers, seemed to contain hostile allusions to an imperial favorite; and\nthe emperor, under pretext of appointing the poetic octogenarian to a\nmilitary command, sent the satirist to the extreme recesses of Egypt to\nfinish his days in honorable exile. [Footnote 61]\n\n    [Footnote 61: Suetonius, Juvenal]\n\nThe subjects of Roman lectures were exceedingly various; sometimes serious\nand long-winded poems like those we have mentioned; sometimes comedies; but\noftener short poems, light and trifling, or sweet and tender, according to\nthe poet's vein. On exceptional occasions, some eloquent voice, disdaining\nvulgar platitudes, aroused, with its noble accents, genuine Roman\nsentiments; as on that day, in the Augustan era, when Cornelius Severus\ndeplored the death of Cicero and cursed his assassin in the glorious lines\nthat have been preserved to us. [Footnote 62]\n\n   [Footnote 62: Pliny the Younger, Letters, iv, 27; v. 17; vi. 15, 21;\n   viii.21.]\n\n{292}\n\nWe notice as a singular fact that a lecturer endowed with a fine voice,\nwould sometimes content himself with reading passages from some ancient\npoet, Ennius, for example; and with success too, if he read with taste.\n[Footnote 63] But this was too low an aim to satisfy ambition. Men desired\nfame and applause for themselves, and cared little to offer any works but\ntheir own to the public.\n\n    [Footnote 63: Seneca, the Rhetor, Suasor, 7.]\n\nNo style was banished from these assemblies. One day an audience listened\nto dialogues, or to philosophical and moral dissertations; on the next,\nsome lawyer, already well known to fame through important law-suits,\nclaimed a hearing. The lawyer who had gained his client's cause before the\ntribunal, came to argue in behalf of his own intellect before the public,\n[Footnote 64] caring more, perhaps, to win in the second suit than in the\nfirst. History, too, seems to have held an important place in lectures, nor\ndid the speaker limit himself to events long since gone by. Rome within a\nfew years had lost several distinguished men, whose death Titinius Capito\ncommemorated. [Footnote 65] Strictly speaking, it might be considered a\nfuneral oration, intended to console friends and relatives without wounding\nany individual. But the intrepid lecturer ventured upon volcanic soil, and\nportrayed the history of recent years with so great liberty of speech that,\nat the close of the first assembly, he was surrounded and urged to silence:\nwhy wound the feelings of auditors who blushed to hear of acts they had not\nblushed to commit? [Footnote 66]\n\n    [Footnote 64: Pliny the Younger, Lett. ii. 19; vii. 17.]\n\n    [Footnote 65: Ibid., viii, 12.]\n\n    [Footnote 66: Ibid., Lett. ix. 27.]\n\nProbably he had reference to those informers who were expiating under\nTrajan the favor and prosperity they had enjoyed under Domitian. That they\ndeserved scorn, there can be no doubt; but is it always easy to pass just\nand impartial judgment upon contemporaries? Does not history run a chance\nof resembling one of those retrospective reviews, before which, after a\nchange of rulers, the men of to-day lay complaints against the men of\nyesterday?\n\nOccasionally the choice of subjects was even more remarkable. The orator\nRegulus, whom Pliny (usually so full of good will toward the subjects of\nhis criticism) unceasingly pursued with scornful hatred, loses his only\nson. Not content with bestowing upon him magnificent obsequies, in which,\nto strike all eyes with the spectacle of pompous woe, be sacrifices, upon\nthe funeral pile, the nightingales, parrots, dogs, and horses that the\nchild had loved; he would perpetuate his son's memory and spread abroad the\nproofs of his own grief. Portraits and images wrought in wax, or copper, or\nmarble, ivory, silver, or gold--the most varied works of painter or\nsculptor, suffice him not. It occurs to him that he himself is an artist--a\nword-artist, and now or never his powers should be utilized. His son's life\nand death would be an admirable text for a lecture. Quick to the work!\nGreat griefs are mute, says Seneca, but Regulus thinks otherwise; and in a\nfew days he gives forth to a numerous assembly an address which cannot fail\nto do credit to his literary talents and his paternal sentiments. The\ncomedy (for what else can we call it?) met with success. So fine a piece\nwas not composed to delight a single audience, and Regulus, being rich\nenough to pay the expenses of glory, addressed a sort of circular to the\nmagistrates of every important town throughout Italy and the provinces,\nbegging them to select their best declaimer and confide to him the reading\nof this precious work of art. The wish of Regulus was gratified. [Footnote\n67]\n\n    [Footnote 67: Pliny the Younger, iv. 2, 7.]\n\nPliny's letter, giving these curious details, shows also that the fashion\nof recitations had spread beyond Rome. Testimony to the same effect abounds\nin ancient authors. Few cities were without public lectures. In imitation\nof Italy, the practice was adopted in Africa, Gaul and Spain. Of Greece I\ndo not speak, for Greece is _par excellence_ the land of literary\nrecreations, and we will go thither all in good time.\n\n{293}\n\n  III.\n\nIt would appear from various texts that Rome at least had certain seasons\nfor lectures: the months of April and August, and sometimes of July, being\nespecially selected, no doubt because affairs before the tribunals were\nthen less frequent. Authors took advantage of these periods of leisure to\nsupplant the magistrates. But that each aspirant might have his turn,\nmeeting succeeded meeting. \"Poets abound this year,\" writes Pliny; \"we have\nhad recitations almost every day this month.\" Innocent satisfaction of a\nmind enjoying the triumph of good taste and literature in these\nexhibitions, or _osentationes_, as they were termed by severe judges!\nSeneca advises his pupil Lucilius not to stoop to objects so paltry. One\nwould suppose that the frequency of public lectures would have led to the\nerection of a public edifice--of an amphitheatre especially devoted to\nthese exercises. We find, however, that such a thing was never thought of,\nand that each lecturer was expected to provide his platform as best he\ncould. Poor poets, a never-failing race, spoke in public squares or at the\nbaths. [Footnote 68] Petronius in his Satyricon depicts the old poet\nEumolpus declaiming anywhere and everywhere, in the streets or under\nperistyles, spouting his verses to every comer, at the risk of being driven\naway by the wearied crowd or of driving them away, a circumstance not more\nflattering to a poet. Eumolpus is but a fictitious personage, but he is no\ndoubt drawn from life. Petronius describes what he has often witnessed; and\neven if we could doubt this, Horace and Juvenal would bear witness to the\nfidelity of the portrait.\n\n    [Footnote 68: Horace, Sat. I. iv. 75.]\n\nEven when the crowd was attentive, these meetings in the open air had their\ninconveniences. Apuleius was to speak in Carthage, and great was his\nreputation. The people crowded and pushed and hustled to get a front place.\nSo far so good, for what can be pleasanter than to see one's fellow\ncreatures suffocated in one's honor? Apuleius began in his finest tones,\nthe lecture marched apace, the most striking point was reached, enthusiasm\nstood on tip-toe--when, alas for the vanity of human hopes! a pelting\nshower fell upon all this success, dampening eloquence, putting the excited\naudience to flight, and sending the orator home wet to the skin, with his\ntriumph changed to disaster. [Footnote 69]\n\n    [Footnote 69: Apuleius, Florides.]\n\nAccidents of this nature rarely occurred, at least to men of reputation\nlike Apuleius, for addresses were usually delivered under cover in a hall.\nA suitable apartment was easily found by any one who could afford to hire\none. Sometimes, too, a friend would kindly lend his house, as for instance\nTitinius Capito, who liked to render services of this kind. \"His mansion,\"\nsays Pliny, \"belongs to all those who have addresses to deliver.\" A simple\ndining-room sufficed for the occasions when only a few persons were\nexpected; but these were exceptional. [Footnote 70] The place of meeting\nbeing selected, seats and benches were placed for the audience. A stage was\nerected for the lecturer, raised above the public, so that none of his\ngestures might be lost, and that he might judge correctly of the effect\nproduced. The audience consisted of men only, it being contrary to received\ncustoms that a woman should appear in a lecture room. But an ingenious plan\nwas devised by which literary Roman ladies could enjoy the entertainment.\nOne part of the hall was sometimes curtained off with draperies, and behind\nthis shelter, a woman could listen at her ease, without wounding\nconventional ideas. [Footnote 71]\n\n    [Footnote 70: Tacitus, Dial. de Or. 9.]\n\n    [Footnote 71: Pliny the Younger Letters viii. 12, 21]\n\nThe lecture was announced several days in advance, and ceremonious\ninvitations were issued to friends and personages of distinction. This\nprecaution proved useful in securing an audience, and fulfilled at the same\ntime a duty of politeness, the neglect of which implied indifference to the\ncourteous usages of the time. While slaves were carrying invitations\nthrough the city, the host remained at home, and, in order to make his\nvoice clearer and more flexible, enveloped his throat in woolen cloths, and\nimbibed soothing beverages.\n\n{294}\n\nThe great day comes at last. The benches are filled. The lecturer only is\nwanting. He appears, and at sight of him a murmur of satisfaction passes\nround the hall. He takes the chair, often surrounded by his best friends,\nwho sit beside him to encourage him with their presence and to enjoy his\nsuccess. [Footnote 72] In order to appear in full lustre, he has arrayed\nhimself in a new white toga, dressed his hair and beard carefully, and\nplaced upon his finger a ring adorned with a precious stone. He unrolls a\nmanuscript; utters a few modest phrases in apology for his temerity, asking\nof course the indulgence of the audience, but soliciting their justice\nalso, since he seeks before all things an exact criticism, revealing the\ndefects in his work, that he may correct them. This preamble being well\nreceived, he enters upon the discourse. In reading he tries to give effect\nto the words by a varied intonation of voice, by turns of his head and\nmovement of his eyes. Soon faint cries of \"Excellent perfect!\" arise in\nvarious parts of the hall to charm his ear; but he feigns not to hear them.\nHe pauses, remarking, \"I am afraid all this bores you. Perhaps I ought to\nsuppress a few passages, lest you should be wearied.\" But the audience are\ntoo polite to admit that a short lecture would not displease them. \"Oh! no,\nno, skip nothing; we do not wish to lose a word.\" He proceeds, only to go\nthrough the same farce a little later. \"I have already abused your\npatience; it is time to stop and release you from the remainder.\" \"Read on,\nread on! it is charming to hear you.\" He reads to the end; the admiration\ngrows, rises, bubbles over! where will it end? Thunders of applause follow,\nand the lecturer is inwardly overjoyed, but his modesty never deserts him.\n\"Enough friends, enough!\" he murmurs, \"This is too much,\" Of course the\ntransports are redoubled, and our lecturer returns home, believing himself\na Virgil, a Sallust, or a Cicero.\n\n    [Footnote 72: Pliny the Younger, Letters, vi. 6.]\n\nWe have described here a successful lecture; but not always, it must be\nconfessed, did the hero of the occasion carry away with him impressions so\nagreeable. Sometimes an author had to renounce the pleasure of reading his\nown composition, because of a weak or unpleasing voice, leaving the task of\ndelivery to a reader, near whom he sat, accompanying the recitation with\nglance and gesture. [Footnote 73]\n\n    [Footnote 73: Pliny the Younger, Letters, viii. 1; ix. 34.]\n\nThen, too, there were a thousand petty mishaps, impossible to foresee or\navoid, one of which sufficed to spoil the occasion. Passierus Paulus, a\nRoman knight, was addicted to the composition of elegiac verses; a family\npeculiarity, it would seem, as he counted Propertius among his ancestors.\nOne day, among the numerous assemblage of invited guests, sat Javolenus\nPriscus, a friend of the poet, though a little crazy. Paulus opened the\nrecitation of his elegies with one commencing: \"Priscus, you order me--\"\n\"I! faith! I ordered nothing,\" cried the crack-brained Javolenus, amid\nexplosions of laughter from the audience. Behold Passierus Paulus greatly\ndisconcerted! The absurdity of Javolenus had thrown a cloud over the\nentertainment, which proves, observes Pliny, that not only should a\nlecturer be himself of sane mind, but he should take care that his\nlisteners be so too.\n\nPaulus grieved over the ill success of his lecture; not so Claudius when an\naccident chanced to trouble the course of his recitation. He was at the\nfirst pages of the address, when a remarkably stout auditor cracked and\nbrought to the ground a bench with his weight. The assembly roared with\nlaughter. The good-natured emperor was not in the least annoyed; and, when\nsilence was at last reestablished, he broke it again and again with peals\nof merriment, carrying the audience along with him, at the thought of the\nfat man's downfall.\n\n{295}\n\nBut a graver difficulty presented itself occasionally in the unwillingness\nof the public to partake of the feast of reason prepared for their\nenjoyment. The frequency and length of these lectures, which would last\nsometimes through two or three meetings, had tired many people, who came no\nmore, except under protest, saying with Juvenal (iii. 9), \"No desert but\nwould be more endurable than Rome in lecturing times.\" Pliny bemoans this\nfalling off and sees therein a grievous sign for literature--decline and\ndecay. \"The guests,\" he says, \"stand about public places amusing themselves\nwith frivolous talk. From time to time they send to ask if the lecturer has\narrived, or if the preface is over, or the lecture far advanced. Then they\ngo in, but slowly and with regret. Nor do they remain to the close. One\nslips out adroitly; another stalks unceremoniously away with his head in\nthe air. It is said that, in our fathers' time, Claudius, while walking\nthrough his palace one day, heard a great noise, and, on asking the cause,\nwas told that Nonianus was reading one of his works. The prince went\nimmediately to join the assembly; but to-day prayers and entreaties will\nnot induce the most unoccupied man to come, or, if he does come, it is only\nto complain of having lost a day because he has not lost it.\" [Footnote 74]\n\n    [Footnote 74: Pliny the Younger, Letters, i. 13; iii. 18.]\n\nTo go away before the close was a mark of ill breeding, as Pliny\ndemonstrates; an infringement of that code of proprieties to which auditors\nwere expected to adapt themselves. Attention was, of course, required, but\nmany other things were prescribed. The excellent Plutarch, who seems to\nhave shared Pliny's weakness for this kind of exercise, was at the pains to\ncompose a treatise for his disciples upon the art of listening. \"In a\nlistener,\" he says, \"a supercilious air, a severe face, wandering eyes, a\nstooping attitude, legs carelessly crossed, nay, more, a wink or nod, a\nword in a neighbor's ear, an affected smile, a sad and dreamy look,\nindecent yawns, and all other things of that nature, are reprehensible\ndefects to be scrupulously avoided.\" [Footnote 75]\n\n    [Footnote 75: How to Listen, 13.]\n\nElsewhere he cites with approbation the conduct of Rusticus Arulenus: \"One\nday when I was making a public address in Rome, Arulenus sat among the\naudience. In the middle of the conference, a soldier brought him a letter\nfrom the emperor. A profound silence prevailed in an instant, and I myself\npaused to give him time to read the despatches. This he declined to do, and\nonly opened his letter when the address was ended and the audience had\ndispersed; conduct which won for him the admiration of every one.\" _Of\nevery one_, and especially, I imagine, of Plutarch, who must have been\nflattered, indeed, to see that so grand a personage would not let his\nattention wander even to state affairs.\n\nPlutarch at least exacts of his audience only what may be called good\nbreeding. In this he agrees with Epictetus, who, while advising his\ndisciple not to attend the public readings of poets and orators (believing,\nin his austere philosophy, that time might be better employed), recommends\nhim, if he must go, to preserve decency and gravity, not indulging in\nboisterous and disorderly demonstrations, or wounding his host by giving\nevidence of weariness. But Pliny is not satisfied with this. In maintaining\na religious attention at the lecture, the listener had fulfilled only half\nhis duties, the other half being applause. To leave without exhibiting\nlively satisfaction was simply significant of boorish ill breeding. We find\nPliny in despair when one of his friends has not obtained the meed of\npraise he had a right to expect from the audience. \"For my own part,\" he\nsays, \"I could not refuse my esteem and admiration to those who interest\nthemselves in literary labors.\" Before the lecture, he predicts in all\nsincerity the most startling success; and at its close, pronounces upon it\nin equally good faith a pompous eulogium. [Footnote 76]\n\n   [Footnote 76: Epictetus, Manual, 51.]\n\nSometimes the facile admiration borders on simplicity. Sentius Angurinus\nreads a poem, and the benevolent critic exclaims, \"In my judgment, there\nhas been nothing better done for years;\" giving a specimen of the lines,\nthat the reader may pass his own judgment. It is a little piece in which\nhe, Pliny, is compared to Calvus and Catullus and ranked, of course, above\nboth, without taking into consideration that he has the wisdom of a Cato\ninto the bargain. \"What delicacy!\" cries the tickled critic, \"what nicety\nof expression what vivacity!\" Of course, who would not see charms in a\nmadrigal containing these pleasant sentiments about one's self? It would be\nfastidious indeed to fail in admiration of such a production.\n\nSentius loudly proclaims the poetic talent of Pliny; and Pliny reciprocates\nwith the announcement that Sentius is one of those rare geniuses who do\nhonor to their age. It was an exchange of good offices--a mutual adulation\nin which the lecturer of to-day received back all that he had generously\nlavished about him yesterday. Vanity more than the love of letters found\nits meed in this interchange of courtesies.\n\nWe have already seen that on one side the disdain of serious thinkers, and\non the other public satiety, had ended by injuring the success of these\nexhibitions. Solitude reigned about the lecturer, but should he on that\naccount desert his post? It was an extreme case not to be easily met, but\nnecessity is ingenious. New plans were invented for filling the hall. If an\naudience would not come, an audience must be hunted up--recruited at any\ncost. Clients and freedmen were borrowed from personal friends to fill the\nbenches. One orator gathered together a troop of famished wretches and gave\nthem a plentiful dinner. The guests, having eaten and rejoiced, were fired\nwith gastric gratitude, and vigorously clapped the poems of their\nAmphitryon. This trade was carried on every day, and those who said their\nadmiration for a good dinner were called by the expressive name of\n_laudicoeni_. Others bought applause cash down; but at a low price, if\nthey were not particular as to quality; contented, for instance, with\nservants, who could be had for three _denarii_ apiece. At this rate,\npersons of low estate could drive a lucrative business by hiring out their\nservices. A more simple method, however, than that of paying listeners by\nthe day, was making use of debtors if one had any; for what debtor, with\nany sense of duty, could help attending the lectures of his creditors?\n\nAn audience collected thus did not trouble themselves much about listening,\nbut no matter for that if they would but applaud; and applaud they did, and\nall the more vigorously in proportion to their inattention, as Pliny tells\nus, and we may well believe. All that the orchestra needed was a leader to\ngive the signal to his docile troop, at the fine points, and to regulate\nthe degrees of enthusiasm. Applause was no mere trade; it had risen to the\ndignity of a science. A skilful manager could provide every suitable\nemotion, from a discreet and low-voiced approbation up to passionately\ntumultuous enthusiasm. First came murmurs of pleasure, starts of gratified\nsurprise and involuntary exclamations, followed by a silence no less\nflattering. Gradually the excitement got beyond control, and manifested\nitself by stamping of feet; by cries, nay, howls; to use the words of\nPliny, _ululatus large supersunt_. Togas were shaken; benches trembled\nbeneath the blows of trampling feet. Persons who sat near the lecturer, and\ncould take such a liberty, ran to embrace him in token of gratitude at the\ndelight he had afforded them. If perchance the speaker was an emperor,\nrespect did not allow them to kiss his sacred lips, but only to pour forth\nexpressions of gratitude.\n{297}\nThe joy would become so universal, as we see in the case of Nero, that the\nsenate decreed solemn thanksgiving to be offered to the gods; and the\nverses of the prince, graven in golden letters on the walls of the capitol,\nto be dedicated to Jupiter, as the noblest offering earth could consecrate\nto heaven. [Footnote 77]\n\n    [Footnote 77: Pliny the Younger, Letters, ii. 10, 14; Martial, i. 77;\n    Suetonius, Nero, 10.]\n\n  IV.\n\nWe see by Pliny's lamentations that lectures in his day were not in vogue\nas they had been formerly. But it must be remembered that, even when\nlectures were at the height of popularity, they attracted only the\ncultivated class, so-called; that is to say, the minority. The Roman people\ndid not pride themselves upon a marked taste for refined intellectual\npleasures, finding more fascination in spectacles and circus games.\nStatius, according to contemporary accounts, appears to have been the poet\nmost eagerly sought; but numerous as was the audience that thronged to hear\nhim, there is little doubt, that, if some famous gladiator had appeared in\nthe arena, Statius would have stood a fair chance of addressing empty\nbenches. While the seats of the small lecture-room filled slowly with\nhardly earned auditors, the amphitheatre steps were never vast enough to\naccommodate the struggling multitude.\n\nOnly in Greece do we find a nation truly sensitive to purely intellectual\nenjoyments. There the simple artisan understood and appreciated\nphilosophers, poets, and orators. The art of eloquence never left him\nindifferent, and he would leave his trade to run to a discourse as to a\nfeast. With this disposition, what seemed to the Romans a pastime for the\nfew, was the chief interest of many members of Greek society. Public\nspeaking was but an accident in the lives of Pliny and his friends, while\nto the clever men of Athens or Alexandria it became a profession. Anyone\nwho believed himself gifted with eloquence became a sophist or rhetor, and\nwith a little tact and assurance could count upon that kind of success\nwhich is measured by a numerous audience. Some distinction between these\ntwo classes of men, the sophist and the rhetor, should be made here. The\nformer claimed to have succeeded the philosophers, with the right to teach\nthe people, and to develop the commonplaces of politics, morals, and even\nof religion. They made themselves preachers to the populace, and sometimes\nto princes, as, for instance, when we find Dion Chrysostom holding forth\nconcerning the duties of royalty in Trajan's palace. Rhetors, on the other\nhand, were professors of eloquence. Their avowed aim was to please, but,\nwhile less proud in pretensions than the sophists, they were in reality\nequally presumptuous, assuming to teach art not only by explaining its\nroles, but also by offering in their own compositions finished models of\nrhetoric, in the genuine belief that they had garnered up the heritage of\nDemosthenes and Eschines. As all pretensions belong together, the sophist\noften combined his duties with those of the rhetor; witness the Dion above\nmentioned.\n\nThis race of public speakers lingered about the towns of Greece, and also\nof Asia Minor, Egypt, and Lybia. Then, finding these limits too narrow,\nthey burst beyond them and invaded the Latin countries.\n\nAbout the time of the Antonines, that is to say, when exhausted Roman\ngenius seemed doomed to barrenness, there came a _renaissance_ of\nGreek letters. Many Romans preferred Greek to Latin for writing, and not\nmerely as a caprice or literary foppishness, loving to deck itself in\npublic with the riches of a foreign language. Marcus Aurelius converse with\nhimself in Greek in the memoirs where be makes his examination of\nconscience. Why should we wonder that an audience should most readily\ncollect in Rome to listen to some elegant rhetorician from the East?\n\nThe reputation to be gained from public speaking was too enviable to admit\nof delay in its acquisition. All persons did not even wait for manhood\nbefore claiming the attention of the public.\n{298}\nFar from pleading youth as an excuse, they gloried in it. Hermogenes of\nTarsus made his _d\u00e9but_ at fifteen, as Marcus Aurelius tells us in his\ntravels. \"In me,\" says Hermogenes haughtily, \"you see an orator who has had\nno master, an orator to whom years are still wanting.\" A sterile precocity\nit proved to be, making him, according to his enemies, an old man among\nyouths, and a youth among old men.\n\nEmulation fired women also. Many, and among their number young girls,\nundertook to speak in public, and spoke effectively too, and with success.\nHistory has left us the names of several of these muses, as the Greeks\nsometimes called them. The muses did not reveal themselves too visibly to\ntheir worshippers. A large curtain veiled them from the audience, lest\ntheir beauty should make too dazzling an impression. No longer as at Rome\ndid draperies shelter the woman from the public; it was the public screened\nfrom feminine attractions.\n\nIn Italy we have seen that poets were among the most eager aspirants for\nrecognition; but among the Greeks prose held public attention almost\nexclusively, for a reason which we hope to make clear. The crowd rushed to\nhear sophists and rhetors. Of historians there is no call to speak. The\nname was claimed by some, but on weak pretensions. They babbled of military\nart without understanding its first rules, and of geography while\ntransplanting towns and rivers from one country to another. They took\ndragons stamped upon the Parthian standards for veritable dragons, of\nmonstrous dimensions, fastened to pikes and destined to be launched upon\nthe enemy, and to strangle and devour him. To give more credibility to\nthese accounts, they assure us that, perched upon a tree, they themselves\nhad seen the monsters and witnessed the frightful carnage. Elsewhere we\nlearn that a general slew twenty-seven Armenians by uttering one cry, or (a\nstatement no less remarkable) that, in a grand battle fought in Media, the\nRomans had only two dead and nine wounded, while the enemy lost (observe\nthe exactness of the calculation) 70,236 men. [Footnote 78] And many more\nsuch tales indulged in by Greek historians,\n\n     \"Quidquid Graecia mendax\n  Audet in historia,\" (_Juvenal_,)\n\nand detailed to credulous hearers. It is true that these authors of rare\nimagination laid great stress upon fine language, if not upon veracity,\nstriving to gain distinction as polished writers. Lucian, however, who had\nheard them, believed as little in their eloquence as in their truthfulness,\nand laughed unmercifully at rhetors disguised as historians.\n\n     [Footnote 78: Lucian, \"Of the Way to write History.\"]\n\nOn another point the Greeks differed from the Romans. With the exception of\nthese written recitations, they did not read their orations. While in Rome\nwe find public lectures, in Greece we have conferences or oral exercises.\nThe theme was no doubt contemplated in private, and ideas were brought\nforward which habit had made familiar to the orator, but he spoke without\nmanuscript gaining in vivacity of delivery and gesture by this liberty of\naction. Pliny complains of the inconvenience of reading an address: \"Since\nneither hand nor eye is free, on which a declaimer should especially rely,\nwhat wonder that the attention wanders?\" The Greek threw off all fetters,\nand spoke at once to eye and ear; unlike the lecturer who read his address,\nseated, in a voice whose inflections were monotonous in comparison to the\nmodulations we are now about to describe. Our actor, for the platform was\nin fact a stage to him, was wont to call violent gesticulation to the aid\nof speech. He paced up and down in agitation, smiting his thighs,\nperspiring and panting. Again, if the subject demanded calmness and\ntranquillity, his actions grew melodious as a song to charm the audience,\nthrowing into the sweet, harmonious language of Greece new suavity and\nunknown grace.\n{299}\nWhen Adrian of Tyre spoke, it was like the warbling of a nightingale, and\neven those who were ignorant of Greek came to listen. Herodias Atticus had\nmore variety of tone than flutes and lyres; and, supreme above all, Varus\npossessed a voice so flexible that one could have danced to it, as to the\nsound of musical instruments. [Footnote 79]\n\n    [Footnote 79: Lucian, Master of Rhetoric, 19, 20; Plutarch, How to\n    Listen, 7; Philostratus, Life of the Soph. II. v. 8; x, 8, xxviii.]\n\nOne can fancy with what facility the fervid Greek imagination lent itself\nto this enthusiasm. The state of religious belief contributed to bring\nspirits under the dominion of eloquence. The ancient faith was singularly\nweakened among pagan nations; and the priests who offered sacrifice to the\ndeities of Olympus never dreamed of giving instruction to the people whom\nthey gathered together in the temples. Men feel the need of moral teaching,\nhowever faulty may be their practice. They thirst for it, and seek it,\nthough perhaps not at its true source. If pure waters are denied them, they\ndraw from troubled streams. Preaching, which had been neglected by the\nministers of paganism, was taken up by sophists. One had but to show\nhimself abroad, manifesting a desire to speak, and straightway a circle\ngathered about him. To a renowned orator who wished to be silent, the\nprivilege of silence was denied; speech was not his to refuse. As, for\nexample, when Dion Chrysostom came as a spectator to the Olympic games,\nhardly was he recognized before they forced him to address them; when,\ntaking for his theme the god they celebrated, he discoursed upon the\nattributes of Jupiter.\n\nAnother peculiarity of the time was that an emperor even did not disdain to\ninculcate virtue in public, guided, we may boldly assert, by no impulse of\nvanity, but by a more generous motive than that of exhibiting his\neloquence. Marcus Aurelius, for it is of him we are speaking, was going to\nwar with the Marcomanni. It was feared, and with too good cause, that he\nmight die on this expedition, and he was implored earnestly, and without\nflattery, to address the people, and leave to them, by way of farewell, the\nmoral precept that had guided his own career. He consented, and for three\ndays in succession his people learned, from the imperial philosopher, duty\nas he himself understood and practised it. A curious and touching spectacle\nit must have been to see a sovereign regarding the instruction of his\nsubjects as one of the functions of royalty. In unveiling his great soul,\nMarcus Aurelius revealed to his people the secret of an administration\njudged previously only by its beneficial effects; and left to his\nsuccessors a model that was to find, alas! few imitators.[Footnote 80]\n\n    [Footnote 80: Vulcatius Gallicanus, Life of Aridius Cassius, 3.]\n\n  V.\n\nIn all ages, even the most degraded, a few souls have found a source of\nhappy inspiration in moral truth. Whether among such self-appointed guides\nin spiritual matters there were many really worthy of their mission, we may\nbe permitted to doubt. The instance, Lucian (I do not speak of Christians,\nwhose veracity might be doubted), shows the conduct of these teachers of\nvirtue to have been little in accordance with their language. Morality was\nin danger of being stricken with sterility under such tillage, but the\nfield remained fertile though ill cultivated.\n\nWhat can eloquence accomplish if the matter itself of eloquence be wanting?\nAll cannot be orators for the choosing, nor even all who are endowed by\nheaven with those precious gifts that make an orator. There must be great\ninterests to defend and great questions to debate. Place Demosthenes or\nMirabeau in a chair of rhetoric, and what would they do with their genius?\n{300}\nA time came when there was no call but for school harangues; when\nprofessors trained their pupils in reading and speaking upon hackneyed\nthemes familiar to every classroom. That such exercises may be useful for\nchildren of fifteen years of age, I will not deny; but here we have masters\nof eloquence descanting upon these venerable subjects, and impersonating\nAlexander or Themistocles, Miltiades, Menelaus, or Priam. They were\nscholars whose schooling was never ended. Gray heads betokened no\nemancipation from childish leading-strings, and death found them far\nremoved from the maturity of manly oratory.\n\nWould you know the subjects that attracted a delighted audience? A\nLacedaemonian urging the Greeks to destroy trophies raised during the\nPeloponnesian war; or a Scythian conjuring his countrymen to abandon the\nlife of cities for a wandering existence. One while we have Athenians\nwounded in Sicily praying for death at the hands of their companions;\nagain, Demosthenes justifying himself against Demades for receiving Persian\ngold; with a hundred such trite themes, preserved to us by the complaisant\nbiographers of the rhetors. It is unlucky that they have not transmitted\nfor our edification any of these marvellous harangues entire, but we know\nenough of them to be sure that the style then in vogue was that sonorous\nAsiatic eloquence, pompous and commonplace in tone, compared by Dionysius\nof Halicarnassus to a courtesan entering an honest household to drive\nthence the mother of the family. Demosthenes is not to be recognized in the\nflowery declamation put into his mouth in common with other great\npersonages. There were usages of style and rhetorical receipts, adapted to\nall circumstances, serviceable for none.\n\nThe glory of ancient Greece was another text on which rhetors loved to\nexercise their skill. They consoled themselves for achieving no exploits by\ncelebrating those of their ancestors; boasting of victories only when the\nday of victory was long gone by. One orator was pleasantly nicknamed\nMarathon from his inability to pronounce any discourse without referring to\nthe warriors killed at Marathon. Platea, Salamis, and Mycale had become\nrhetorical commonplaces. \"Why,\" asks Plutarch sadly, \"why recall triumphs\nthat serve only to inspire us with useless pride? We should propose only\nimitable examples. Are we not like children walking about in their fathers'\nshoes?\"\n\nThe eulogium of a city, a god, or some grand personage afforded matter for\nample development. Socrates tells us that speech makes trifles important\nand great things trifling. This false definition of eloquence was received\nas a precept, as an axiom. Panegyrists no longer confined their\ncommendation to heroes and great men, but pleaded the cause of the tyrant\nPhalaris or the cowardly Thersites. One vaunted the merits of long hair,\nanother of bald heads. The praises were sung of parasites, parrots, gnats,\nand fleas. \"_In tenui labor_,\" said Virgil, when about to sing of\nbees; but he could add, \"_at tenuis, non gloria;_\" for who can help\nadmiring the labors of these intelligent republicans? The rhetor promised\nhimself no less glory in celebrating the almost invisible wonders of the\nflea. This kind of discourse received a name which may be translated\n\"paradoxical or unsustainable causes.\" Yet, strange to say, clever men did\nnot disapprove of such topics. Aulus Gellius considers them suited to\nawaken talent, to sharpen wit, and inure it to difficulties. [Footnote 81]\n\n    [Footnote 81: Lucian, Phalaris, The Gnat; Dion Chrysostom,\n    _passim_; Plutarch, Art of Listening, 13; Synesius,  Praise of\n    Baldness; Aulus Geilius, xvii. 12.]\n\nTo bring something out of nothing is a success of which one may justly be\nproud. But rhetors, like conquerors, possessed an insatiable ambition. They\nwished to astonish the world with new feats of prowess, and possibility has\nno limits for adventurous and valiant spirits.\n{301}\nTo speak without preparation, sagely, long-windedly, without error or\nhesitation, being the noblest triumph attainable by man, improvisation\nbecame the exercise _par excellence_. [Footnote 82] There stood the\norator, erect and tranquil, sure of himself and of his powers, waiting\nuntil the audience should throw him the text selected for his dissertation.\nThe word given, he plunged into the discourse; words flowed in a\nself-supplying stream, pure and abundant; and periods unrolled themselves\nwith admirable facility. No obstacle was insuperable; the stream flowed on\nand on, straying perchance into side channels here and there; but the\nlistener followed its wanderings contentedly, for the paths were flowery\nand came quickly to a termination. Phrases ready for all times, and served\nup on all occasions, with a facility that knew neither pause nor\nobstruction--such was the supreme merit or the age. But if we may believe\ncertain cavillers, it often sufficed to bring to the work audacity, to push\non boldly, careless of ideas, prompt in the creation of new and odd\nexpressions, regardless of solecisms, and anxious to avoid but one\nthing--silence. [Footnote 83] To acquire this noble art, one needed little\nstudy. Ignorance was no longer an obstacle, for it gave greater intrepidity\nand audacity. \"Would you have your son a good orator,\" says an epigram of\nthe Anthology, \"do not let him learn his letters.\" [Footnote 84]\n\n    [Footnote 82: Pliny peaks admiringly of one Isaeus, and improvisatore.\n    But it was an exception in Rome. Lett. ii. 8.]\n\n    [Footnote 83: Lucian, Master of Rhetoric, 18.]\n\n  [Footnote 84: Anthology, vi. 152.]\n\nWe feel far removed from the time when Demosthenes thought it no blot on\nhis glory that his orations smelt of the oil! Greece has ever loved words.\nTake away her eloquence, and she remains gossiping and loquacious. If I may\nbe allowed the comparison, she is like the princess in the fairy story,\ndropping pearls from her lips. The true pearls being exhausted, only waxen\npearls remained.\n\nAnd now, having proved an absence of apparent labor to be a condition of\nsuccess in these exhibitions, we can understand why poets did not resort\nthither for the recitation of their works. Improvisations in verse had not\nthen been invented, but the enthusiasm they would have excited one may\neasily fancy.\n\nSpoiled by public favor, these fluent geniuses could not fail to hold their\nown merits in high estimation. We will not take literally Lucian's\nassertion that they set themselves above Demosthenes: \"Who was your orator\nof Paeania compared to me? Must I conquer all the ancients one by one?\"\n[Footnote 85] But they frequently speak in magnificent terms of their own\ntalents, elated at the tricks of the tongue so thoroughly mastered. Praise\nthem as one would, their self-praise was louder still. The sophists hid\ntheir vanity more skillfully perhaps, affecting sober vestments and an air\nof austerity, but it was merely a stage trick suited to the character to be\nsustained. Sometimes, in order to produce a better effect on their hearers,\nthey appeared clad in the skins of wild beasts, with hair and beard\ndishevelled, or wearing simply an old tunic and carrying a wallet and\nstaff. [Footnote 86] The rhetor was more dainty in his toilette; his\ngarments were of a white stuff woven with flowers, brought from the looms\nof Tarentum, and so fine in texture as to show the outlines of the form\nthrough its gauzy tissue. He wore Attic sandals like those of women,\ncovered here and there, or a Sicyonian buskin decorated with white fringe.\nHe did not disdain those external signs of luxury that betoken rank; and\nwent from town to town followed by numerous servants leading horses and\npacks of hounds. One in particular drove a chariot with silvered reins,\nand, passing lingeringly along the ranks of spectators on his way to the\nchair, allowed them to contemplate his gorgeous robe covered with diamonds.\n[Footnote 87]\n\n    [Footnote 85: Lucian, Master of Rhetoric, 21.]\n\n    [Footnote 86: Lucian, Peregrinus, Eunapius, Prohaeresius.]\n\n    [Footnote 87: Philostratus, Life of the Sophists, I. xxv. 4; II. x. 4.]\n\n{302}\n\nPhilostratus, the biographer and fervent admirer of the sophists, remarks\nconcerning one among them (the only one to whom he accords the praise) that\nhe was always modest, and never spoke boastingly of himself. The vanity of\nmany of them was simply ludicrous. Philagrius, newly arrived in Athens, was\nindignant because a young man had ventured to ask his name, and shuddered\nat the idea of meeting an individual unacquainted with Philagrius. In an\nassembly he let fall an expression that shocked the ear of a purist. \"Who\nauthorizes the use of that word?\" asked the critic. \"Philagrius,\" was the\nhaughty answer. Words sufficed that day to express his sentiments, but it\nwas not always so. One day an auditor presumed to fall asleep, an act of\nirreverence soon detected by the orator. He paused, stupefied to perceive\nthat the audience were not all ears to hear him. Then, eager to avenge the\nwound inflicted on literature in his person, he descended from the stage,\napproached the unhappy sleeper, and roused him with a vigorous cuff. This\nsevere but merited reproof was not without a certain eloquence; and we\nimagine that never again was anyone caught napping during the discourses of\nthe irascible Philagrius. [Footnote 88]\n\n    [Footnote 88: Philostratus, Life of Soph. II. viii. 1; xxvii. 3.]\n\nA Phoenician rhetorician arrived in Attica. \"With me,\" he explained to his\naudience, \"literature comes to you a second time from Phoenicia.\" Polemon,\nthe Carian, speaking for the first time in Athens, opened his address thus:\n\"Athenians, you are said to be good judges. I shall ascertain the truth of\nthe report by your manner of receiving my discourse.\" Forewarned is\nforearmed. The audience were to applaud Polemon under pain of appearing\ndull in Polemon's eyes. His genius, according to his own estimate, placed\nhim above the rank of kingdoms, on a level with kings and even with gods.\nAnd as a great man must die after a fashion of his own, he had himself\nburied alive, in his old age, lest years should impair his success. Hie\nweeping friends delayed to seal the stone over the cavern. \"Close the\ntomb,\" he called out from below--\"Close the tomb. Let it not be said that\nthe sun beheld Polemon silent.\" [Footnote 89]\n\n    [Footnote 89: Philostratus, Life of the Sophists,\n    I. xxv, 9, 27; II. x. 4.]\n\n\n  VI.\n\nDid worshippers so convinced of their own merit recognize and honor the\ngifts of others? We shall see that they could mutually esteem and praise\neach other. Herodius Atticus had been declaiming at the Olympic games: \"You\nare a second Demosthenes,\" he was told. \"I would rather be a second\nPolemon,\" was the reply. An odd desire, and one that showed the bad taste\nof that day; but it expressed homage to a rival. Herodius in his turn saw\nhis superiority recognized in the exclamation of another rhetor: \"We are\nsmall change (_menue monnaie_) beside you.\" [Footnote 90] But these\ninstances of modesty are rare. They were usually indisposed to yield the\npalm of eloquence so generously. Jealous one of another, they regarded all\npraise not personal to themselves as so much stolen from them. Their\nself-esteem was equalled only by their disdain of all rivals. Lucian gives\na recipe of a method often employed to injure a rival. \"Ridicule every\nother orator. Has he talent? Affect to believe that the sentiments are not\nhis own; that he decks himself in borrowed spoils. Is he commonplace? Think\nhim odious. Come late to his exhibitions. It will make you conspicuous.\nChoose a moment of silence to utter a eulogium in singular language,\ncalculated to distract and startle the audience. Your exaggerated praises\nwill disgust them with the object of your praise and make them stop their\nears. Almost invariably smile scornfully, and never appear pleased with\nwhat is said.\" [Footnote 91]\n\n    [Footnote 90: Ibid. I. xxv. 17; II. v.8.]\n\n    [Footnote 91: Lucian, Master of Rhetoric, 22.]\n\nMeantime the orator, seeing his success threatened, was wont to meet the\nskilful attack with a defence no less skilful. He managed his resources\nprudently, gathering about him devoted friends to assist in the manoeuvres.\n{303}\nUnder all circumstances he must count upon these faithful satellites.\nMarcus Aurelius was to attend the exercises of Aristides. \"Will you let me\nbring my disciples?\" asked the prudent rhetor. \"Certainly,\" said the\nemperor, \"if it is customary.\" \"And will you allow them to shout and\napplaud with all their might?\" added Aristides ingenuously. \"Oh!\ncertainly,\" replied Marcus Aurelius, laughing, \"that depends entirely upon\nyourself.\" When the master spoke, the scholars must stamp enthusiastically.\nIf he were about to fail, they must reach out a helping hand, and give him\nby applause the time to recover his self-possession.\n\nHappy he who could count among his admirers some high and puissant\ncelebrity; for who can fail to discern the grandeur of an oration stamped\nwith the approbation of an imposing authority? When Heliodorus declaimed,\nthe emperor, holding him in great affection (who was that emperor, by the\nway? The historian does not tell us, but no matter!), regarded with an air\nof irritation anyone disinclined to applaud the speaker. And the laggards\ntook the hint, we may be sure, and adapted their impressions thenceforth to\nthe emotions of royalty. [Footnote 92]\n\n   [Footnote 92: Philostratus, Life of Soph. II. xxxii. 3]\n\nBut when an orator had reached the highest rank in the city, it is not to\nbe supposed that his reign was free from rivalry. Combatants came from a\ndistance to compete with him. Many lecturers, and by no means the least\nbrilliant, have a taste for travelling, and would extend their reputation\nin any direction where there are ears to listen to them. Knights errant of\nthe rhetorical art wandered from province to province, seeking adversaries\nand flinging challenges as they went. If victories heralded their approach,\nthe crowd ran to greet them, and the most illustrious citizens met them at\nthe city gates.\n\nConceive the uneasiness and agitation of the unlucky sophist or rhetor thus\ndisturbed in the possession of his glory. He had labored long to attain the\nposition of eminence, now threatened by the approaching aspirant. O\nnothingness of glory! A single day might suffice to destroy the edifice of\nmany years. What was to be done? To refuse the challenge was to declare\nhimself vanquished. Rather death than such humiliation!\n\nDeath might follow a similar struggle. Niger, the famous declaimer, had\nswallowed a fishbone which stuck in his throat. There came a stranger to\npronounce a public harangue, and Niger, fearing that his silence might be\nconstrued into a desire to fly from the lists, declaimed in his turn, with\nthe fishbone still in his throat. The effort caused an inflammation so\nviolent as to result in his death.[Footnote 93]\n\n    [Footnote 93: Plutarch, Precepts of Health, 16.]\n\nThe time having arrived for the new speaker to be heard, he opened his\naddress with a eulogium of the audience, as the exordium best calculated to\nensure success. \"In this place one should bend the knee,\" [Footnote 94]\ncried one of these orators, as if struck with a religious awe of the city\nwhere he was to speak. We have two declamations of Lucian's that give a\ngood idea of the precautions peculiar to the trade. \"The chosen of every\ncity are before me, the flower of Macedonia. This assemblage consists not\nof an ignorant rabble, but of orators, historians, and sophists of the\nhighest distinction.\" This satirical Lucian was not sparing of compliments\nto his Macedonian public; what was left for the Athenians? \"I have long\ndesired an audience such as this. What approbation could I look for after\npassing through your city without obtaining a hearing?\" Then follows the\npanegyric of the city, endowed not only with especial magnificence, but\nwith more men of power and talent than fell to the lot of any other city.\nHe exalts their benevolence and affability, and likens himself to the\nScythian Anacharsis, so fascinated with the charms of Athens as to be\nunable to tear himself away.[Footnote 95]\n\n    [Footnote 94: Philostratus, Life of Soph. II. v. 3.]\n\n    [Footnote 95: Herodotus, 8, The Scyth, 10, 11,]\n\n{304}\n\nI spoke just now of knights errant. Do you remember in accounts of the\ntournament the disguised cavalier who enters the lists and is recognized by\nthe weight of his blows? The champions of rhetoric were sometimes the\nheroes of similar adventures.\n\nHippodromus of Larissa landed at Smyrna, and, following the crowd, entered\na hall where one Megistias had drawn together an audience. Hippodromus was\nin travelling gear. Approaching Megistias, he said: \"Change clothes with\nme. Lend me your mantle for a moment.\" The other looked at him to see if he\nmight be a maniac; but the exchange was made. \"And now give me a subject of\ndeclamation,\" continued Hippodromus. They gave him one, which he treated so\nskilfully that Megistias exclaimed with surprise: \"But who are you?\" \"I am\nHippodromus the Thessalian.\" In a few moments the report of the illustrious\nrhetor's arrival had spread through the town, and the whole population\nrushed to see and hear him. [Footnote 96]\n\n    [Footnote 96: Philostratus, Life of the Sophists, I. xxiv.4.]\n\nAgain the challenger would be some great celebrity. Anatolius, prefect of\nthe praetorium, and gifted with remarkable eloquence, announced his speedy\narrival at Athens, challenging all speech-makers to an encounter, and\nproposing one of the most difficult questions capable of discussion by\ntrained intelligences. Great agitation ensued. Anatolius was a formidable\njudge, both by his science and by his exalted position in the state.\nEunapus tells us that Greece trembled more on that occasion than at the\napproach of the Persians. He was Prohaeresius, the great Prohaeresius,\nvictor in every battle, to whom Rome was to erect a statue bearing the\ninscription: _Rome, queen of the world, to Prohaeresius, king of\neloquence._ The Greeks decreed even a grander title to him. He was no\nmere mortal; he was Mercury disguised in human form. One day when he had\nfinished speaking, the people gathered round him and kissed his hands and\nfeet, nay, licked his breast, as if he had been in very deed a god. And\nwould you know by what manifestation of power he had deserved this\nidolatry? After improvising a long discourse, he had forthwith repeated it\nword for word, without missing a single syllable. The prodigy could not be\ndenied, for reporters had been provided for the occasion, who had noted\ndown every expression. [Footnote 97]\n\n    [Footnote 97: Eunapus, Prohaeresius.]\n\nThese transports on the part of the public, these passionate\ndemonstrations, bordering sometimes on delirium, are so foreign to our\nhabits that we should be inclined to suspect exaggeration in the recital of\nEunapus, if many other authorities did not testify also to the ecstasies\nexcited in the populace by eloquence. Habits of mind are, perhaps, harder\nto eradicate than those of the soul, and Christianity succeeded in\nintroducing austere ideas in the spiritual life without immediately curing\nthis excessive love of eloquence. Applause was heard sometimes in churches,\nand St. John Chrysostom had to impose silence more than once upon his\nhearers, who clapped him, forgetful of the sanctity of the place in their\nenthusiasm for the orator.\n\nWe have seen the bright side of the subject, but every medal has two sides.\nWithout speaking of the jealousies and enmities inherent to the profession,\ncan one be sure of being equal to one's self every day and all day? You\nappear before an imposing assembly; all eyes are fixed upon you. Let\nemotion seize you, a little lapse of memory, a slight absence of mind, and\nyou are lost. The thought is enough to intimidate the most intrepid rhetor.\nAnd it was a misfortune not without example. Herodius Atticus, on one\noccasion, stopped short in the presence of the emperor, and thought for an\ninstant of drowning himself in the Ister.\n{305}\nA similar accident happened to Heraclides, who took the accident more\nphilosophically, and sought consolation for his disgrace in abusing\nimprovisation, and composing a work in praise of labor. [Footnote 98]\n\n    [Footnote 98: Philostratus, Life of Soph. II. i. 36; xxvi. 3, 5. Here\n    belongs an anecdote showing the pleasure taken by rhetors in insulting\n    each other. Heraclides sent his Panegyric of Labor (Greek text) to one\n    Ptolemaeus, and adept in improvisation. Ptolemaeus returned it to him,\n    after erasing the first letter, so that the title stood, \"Panegyric of\n    an Ass.\" The biographer does not mention that Heraclides found the\n    epigram to his taste.]\n\nAnd who can count on the good nature of his audience? Listeners have a\ncertain malice of their own at times, as Philagrius once discovered to his\ncost. He had composed a discourse in Asia, and learned it by heart. On\narriving in Athens, he presented himself before the amateurs and burst\nforth into improvisation. By a wonderful coincidence, they had given him\nprecisely the subject which he had so carefully treated. Philagrius, sure\nof his ground, began boldly, and wandered on like one led by the moment's\ninspiration. He grew diffusive and pathetic; but, strange to relate, as the\ndiscourse proceeded, the audience gave evidence of merriment, first by\nsubdued tittering, finally by uproarious bursts of laughter. Philagrius\npaused in wrath and amazement. To calm this excitement, his hearers\nproduced a copy of the address which he had repeated without altering a\nsingle word. Philagrius had been caught in a trap.[Footnote 99]\n\n    [Footnote 99: Philostratus, Life of Soph. II. viii. 3.]\n\nThe abuse of this false eloquence could not fail in the end to produce\ndisgust. Serious men began to ask themselves if these brilliant exercises\nwere true oratorical art or merely a vain tissue of words. A few even of\nthose who had yielded to the fascination began to look pityingly on\ndeclaimers. Lucian lavished satire upon them, but the trade was still\nprosperous in his day. Synesius, coming later, spared them as little. From\nhim we learn their misery as well as their presumption. We see that the\npalmy days of the profession had passed away.\n\n\"I will not wander from door to door, attracting the townspeople with the\npromise of a charming speech. O sad profession! Speaking for the crowd;\nattempting the impossible in trying to please so many different minds! The\nstage orator, no longer belonging to himself, is in truth a slave to the\npublic, subject to the caprice of every individual. If an auditor begins to\nlaugh, the sophist is lost. He dreads a morose visage; too close attention\nseems to him to imply criticism, a restless turning of the head to signify\nweariness. And yet he surely merits indulgent masters who sacrifices sleep\nat night, spends his days in toil, consuming himself, as it were, with\nhunger and fatigue, in order to compose a fine address. He comes before the\ndisdainful crowd to charm their ears, concealing his indisposition with an\naffectation of health. Having bathed the day before, he presents himself to\nthe public at the appointed time, blooming, dimpling, displaying every\ngrace. He turns to the audience, wreathed in smiles, joyous in appearance,\nbut torn with secret pangs. He chews gum to make his voice clear and\nstrong, for even the most serious sophist lays great stress upon a fine\nvoice, and lavishes upon it much ill-concealed care. In the middle of the\noration, he pauses to ask for a beverage, previously prepared. A servant\noffers it, and he drinks, moistening his throat, the better to pronounce\nhis melodious sentences. But the poor wretch cannot with all this gain the\ngood will of his hearers. The audience await the final clause impatiently,\nthat they may laugh in liberty. They would gladly see him with\nout-stretched arm and parted lips, preserving the attitude and silence of a\nstatue: then, when worn out with weariness, they could escape.\" [Footnote\n100]\n\n    [Footnote 100: Synesius, Dion]\n\nBut of all the perils that menaced their very existence, sophists and\nrhetoricians had most cause to dread the growing strength of Christianity.\nThe new religion proposed to its disciples, as the aim of life, an object\nfar more elevated than the pleasures of eloquence. It was no longer a\nquestion of noble words, but of noble actions.\n{306}\nWhat were intellectual satisfactions in comparison to the joys of\nconscience? The Christian sought the eloquence that should teach him his\nduties, and the sophist with uncertain and contradictory answers was no\nlonger an authority. He must appeal to the priest for precepts of\nunfailing, unchanging wisdom. Let some solitary, in repute for sanctity and\nfor familiarity with the things of God, leave his desert for a moment to\nmingle among men, and the crowd rushed to greet him. St. John Chrysostom\nproudly contrasts the entrance of a monk with that of a sophist. A few days\nmore, and the revolution was consummated. Sophists saw no one following\nthem, while the troop of the faithful, that is to say, the entire nation,\npressed upon the steps of the humble monk. A preacher of the gospel, even\nif recommended only by soundness of doctrine and morality, was sure of\nseeing listeners seated at the foot of the pulpit. But preachers who think\nonly of the triumph of the faith attain the true glory of oratory, that of\narousing emotion. Not only may a great thought come from the heart, but the\nexpression with which it is given forth. Why listen to elegant but empty\namplifications in schools, when in a neighboring basilica one could enjoy a\nmagnificent oration, whose brilliancy should remain untarnished through\nfifteen centuries? No rhetor, but a young priest from Antioch, received\nfrom contemporary admirers as well as from posterity the glorious name of\nChrysostom--Golden Mouth. The church is fertile in orators as in martyrs.\nChristianity did not smother eloquence. She assigned to it new destinies;\nregenerating, or rather (for it existed no longer) resuscitating it.\n\n\n  VII.\n\nAnd now we ask ourselves, what good and what evil these exercises have\ndone? The mischief is not far to seek. It is exhibited in every page of the\npresent article. Invented by vanity, these literary and philosophical\nexhibitions had seldom any better object than the satisfaction of vanity;\nhence their vitality and duration, but also their sterility.\n\nBut does this imply that they answered no useful end? By no means. I do not\nbelieve with Ovid, a great amateur of public lectures, as it appears\n(perhaps he used them himself), that they excite poetic genius. [Footnote\n101] His contemporaries Horace and Virgil had no need of the stimulant of\npublic praise in the composition of their masterpieces. Pliny saw another\nadvantage in lectures, as giving a writer the opportunity to consult the\npublic, and to invite criticism with the view of correcting defects.\n[Footnote 102] But an audience thus convoked is no severe and judicious\nAristarchus, overlooking no defect, [Footnote 103] but forever crying\n\"Correct.\" It is there to approve, and any lack of commendation is\ngenerally criticised by the author as a want of good manners. Pliny's\nfriends applauded him, and Pliny, with singular simplicity, confessed\nhimself charmed with their good taste. [Footnote 104] What is he thinking\nof when he speaks of the free judgment of auditors, and yet complains of\nthose who deny him applause? In fact, he says, whether you are the\ninferior, equal, or superior of the lecturer, you have an interest in\npraising him whom you surpass or who equals or surpasses you. Your\nsuperior, because you merit no praise if he deserves none; your equal or\ninferior, because the glory lavished upon him tends to raise your\nreputation. With this convenient theory criticism loses its rights. We need\nnot wonder that Lucan, [Footnote 105] whose brilliant defects are easily\npardoned, allowed himself to be elated by the boisterous applause accorded\nto his Pharsalia; or that, comparing his age and _d\u00e9buts_ with those\nof Virgil, be exclaimed! \"My friends, am I so far behind the great?\"\n[Footnote 106] Seneca wisely decided that nothing had injured literature so\nmuch as popular acclamations. [Footnote 107]\n\n    [Footnote 101: Pont. iv. 2.]\n\n    [Footnote 102: Letters, v, 3; vii. 17.]\n\n    [Footnote 103: Horace, Poetic Art, 445.]\n\n    [Footnote 104: Letters, iii. 18.]\n\n    [Footnote 105: Letters, vi. 17.]\n\n    [Footnote 106: Saetonius, Lucan.]\n\n    [Footnote 107: Letters, 102.]\n\n{307}\n\nFar from thinking, as Pliny does, the system of lectures a finishing\nschool, I believe the author to be confirmed in his defects by applause and\nadulation. But I agree with Pliny as to the efficiency of these assemblies\nin preserving and propagating a taste for intellectual things. Mental\nlabor, even when bestowed on trivial matters, is of use in fostering\nintelligence. Rhetors and sophists were generally inferior orators and\nphilosophers, but they deserve our thanks for their fidelity to study and\nto the preservation of literary traditions. But for them the maturity of\nChristian eloquence might have been long delayed. We must remember that\nBasil, Gregory, Chrysostom, Augustine, and Ambrose had passed through their\nschools before entering the church. The disciples effaced their masters,\nwhile profiting by lessons received from them.\n\nAnd, turning to a different view of the subject, it is no matter of\nindifference to continue beyond the usual period assigned to serious labors\none's devotion to literature, so softening and humanizing in its influence\non the heart. This especially applies to a nation, unprovided by religion\nor morality with any remedy against evil instincts. To write little verses\nand polish periods is no great affair, I confess; but it is better than\nwallowing in low and sometimes cruel sensuality, like the rabble. In point\nof religious and moral convictions, the Greeks had fallen to a level with\nthe Romans. But one thing elevated them: an untiring love of poetry,\neloquence, and philosophy. In default of the reality, they pursued its\nshadow. Ixion, so say their mythologists, embraced only the phantom of\nJuno. True; but, while striving to win this phantom, he had not stooped to\nbase and ignoble loves. The astute and polished Greek avoided that\nbarbarism which engulfed the coarse, unlettered Roman.\n\nWe must not forget that Christian preaching has been served to a limited\nextent, but yet effectively, by habits introduced by sophists. The first\ncomers freely explained their doctrines in public places without exciting\nsurprise. Every system received a hearing. Stoics, epicureans, and cynics\nall sought to win converts to their various theories. Beneath the mantle of\nphilosophy, the Christian could mingle with the crowd, and, while teaching\na morality hitherto unknown, prepare the way for novel doctrines. When St.\nPaul arrived in Athens, that city where all men, strangers or citizens,\nwere occupied only with hearing or uttering something new, [Footnote 108]\nthe multitude at first mistook the apostle for some wandering sophist, and\nlent him an attentive ear so long as he did not openly shock their\npreconceived ideas. Peregrinus, whose life and death Lucian gives us,\nbecame a cynic after having been a Christian, and continued to address the\npeople. Lucian does not clearly mark the change nor the distinction between\nthe two systems of instruction, which seem to him equally strange. A\nsimilar confusion must have often arisen, not in the minds of Christians\nturned philosophers (there were fewer apostasies than conversions), but of\nphilosophers who became Christians.\n\n    [Footnote 108: Acts of the Apostles, xvii. 21.]\n\nOur study is ended. I had merely thought of writing a chapter on literary\nhistory, without seeking in the past an attack or a defence of the present.\nIt is difficult to compare two periods justly. Our lectures and conferences\ndiffer in many respects from those in vogue among the ancients, but who can\ndeny the various points of resemblance? If we wish, as everyone indeed must\nwish, to secure a durable and legitimate success to the system, we must\nremember it is not established merely for the recreation and diversion of\nthe public, like the theatre or the concert-room, but also and above all\nfor their instruction. It is a question of education.\n{308}\nI would have the lecture, whether literary or scientific, given in an\nattractive style, not after the severe, didactic fashion or a _cours de\nfacult\u00e9;_ but it should be distinctly a lecture, so that the hearer may\ncarry away with him some profitable ideas with the memory of an agreeable\nhour. In my humble opinion, it is only on these conditions that the system\nof public conferences will obtain not merely a passing popularity, but\nfreedom of the city. If this be true, are we to encourage authors to read\ntheir unpublished works, poems, dramas, odes, romances, or what not? In\nthese days there are other roads to publicity, and it is not by a single\nhearing that intellectual works are to be judged. Still less must it be\nallowed (for even improbabilities should be anticipated) that an author,\nspeculating in fame, should announce his arrival on such a day and hour:\n\"To speak about what? I have not the least idea, but no matter! I shall\nspeak, and you will have seen and heard me.\" A mere matter of curiosity,\nmaking one think of the tight rope.\n\nAnother danger is, that conferences may become a sort of intellectual\ngymnasium, only good for the development of suppleness and agility of mind.\nHitherto, in running over the lists of subjects under discussion, we have\nmet none of the frivolous and insignificant themes that rhetors revelled in\nhandling. The titles at least announce a serious purpose. We should be glad\nto attribute the merit of this to the wisdom of the choosers, but the\nthought suggests itself that the administrative control may deserve part of\nthe praise. It is well known that no one can deliver lectures without\nespecial permission, and a especial approval of the subject of his address.\nIt is also well known that certain orators find it impossible to obtain\nthis permission. Whether this exercise of authority has inconveniences as\nwell as advantages is a question we will not here investigate. But there is\none among the conditions imposed on public lectures that must suit every\nsensible person, the restrictions with regard to age. It is not difficult\nto find young persons who, mistaking temerity for talent, are eager for an\nopportunity to display their presumptuous ignorance. Can we even be quite\ncertain that among those who have passed their twenty-fifth year there may\nnot be some who would do well to preserve a discreet silence? \"Weigh\ncarefully the burdens your shoulders are to bear,\" said Horace to the\nRomans of his day. The precept is old, but sound even now. Remember, all\nyou who present yourselves for public speaking, that it is not merely an\nhonor, but a responsibility also. Consult your strength. Neither diploma\nnor certificate of capacity is demanded of you. Do not, however, imagine\nthat no quality is needed to fit you for this professorship (for the post\nis nothing less than a professorship) except unbounded self-confidence. The\nleast we can ask is that those who would teach us should be well informed\nthemselves. Good sense, ever successful in the end, would do justice sooner\nor later to all such vain pretensions; but meantime the oft-deluded public\nmight have learned to avoid the recreation prepared for them. We earnestly\ndesire the long life and prosperity of the system, and therefore trust that\nno lecturers likely to injure it should be tolerated. Is our wish to be\nfulfilled? The future must answer.\n\n--------\n\n{309}\n\n    Original.\n\n    Verheyden's Right Hand.\n\n\nIf there were no music, I think there would have been no Verheyden. He was\nan obligato.\n\nThe child of a violin-player and a singer, both professional, he had been\nborn into an atmosphere of sweet sounds. His baby eyelids had drooped in\nslumber to a flute-voice lullaby, or some ethereal strain from his father's\nprecious little Cremona. Every breeze that swept over the rippling Neckar\nor down the wooded mountain-sides, playing mournfully through the wind-harp\nin the window, caught the child at his play, hushing him. As soon as he\ncould reach them, his fingers sought the keys of the piano; and from that\nthrilling moment when first a musical sound woke at his touch, Verheyden\nhad found his occupation. It became his life. Every feeling found\nexpression at the tips of his fingers, and his fiercest passions culminated\nin a discord.\n\nIt is said that a violin long played upon will show in the wood flutings\nworn by the \"continual dropping\" of musical sounds from the strings. So\nVerheyden seemed wrought upon by his art. He looked like a man who might\nhave stepped from some wild German tale; of Walpurgis, or other. He was\ncalled tall, being slight, and appeared to be made of nerves and as little\nas possible besides. His dark hair rose like the hair in Sir Godfrey\nKneller's portraits, and streamed back from his forehead as if blown. His\nthin face was alive with restless gray eyes--the eyes of a listener, not a\nseer--with fiery nostrils to the slightly aquiline nose, and with an\nunsteady mouth. He had frequent flitting motions, apparently inconsequent,\nreally timed to some tune in his mind. He was moody, absent, abrupt; he was\ntoo much in earnest about everything. He had little perception of wit or\nhumor, and he never laughed except with delight. He could be bold, yet he\nwas simple and ingenuous as a child. An enthusiast, with room in his\nnarrow, intense brain for but one idea at a time; a man who would take life\nby the blade rather than the handle; a man in _alto relievo_.\n\nOn the breath of some unaccountable impulse, he would have said--fulfilling\nhis destiny, say we--Verheyden came to the New World, wandered about a\nlittle, dazed and homesick, at length engaged to take the place of Laurie,\nthe organist, who was about going to Europe for further instruction.\n\nHe went into the church one afternoon with Laurie to try the organ. A\nsultry afternoon it was, the eve of the Assumption; but inside the church\nall was coolness and silence and shadow, most home-like to the stranger of\nany place he had seen this side the ocean. While the organist played, be\nleaned from the choir and looked down into the nave. Laurie played with\ngreat sweetness and delicacy, and chose first one of those yearning things\nthat touch, but do not rouse; and Verheyden leaned and listened, dreaming\nhimself at home.\n\nAh! the green, cool Neckar flowing downward to the Rhine; all the rafts and\nall the barges, all the wet and mossy rock; the overlooking mountains dense\nwith forests to their summits; the gray outstanding castle crumbling lothly\nfrom its post; the red roofs of the houses, the churches fair and many; all\nthe quiet and the color of that home in fatherland.\n\n{310}\n\nWhen the organist ceased playing, the dreamer felt as though he had been in\nmotion and were suddenly stopped. He perceived that he was waving his hand,\nand became aware of a little maiden dressed in white who had been going\nabout placing flowers, and who, at the first sound of music, had sunk upon\nthe altar-steps, and sat there listening, her eyes upturned and fixed on\nthe crucifix.\n\n\"Who, then, is she?\" asked Verheyden, as Laurie trifled with the keys,\nholding the clew while he searched what next to play.\n\nLaurie glanced into the mirror before him. \"Oh! she belongs in a frame on\nthe wall, but sometimes steps out and wanders about the church. She sings\nat service. Call her up here if you can.\"\n\nVerheyden hastily took a seat at the organ, and, as the girl rose and\nprepared to leave the church, a smooth strain sprang like a lasso from\nunder his fingers, and caught her. She went upstairs, and, standing by the\norganist, sang Lambillot's _Quam Dilecta_. Her voice was not powerful,\nbut a pure soprano, clear and sweet, making up in earnestness what it\nlacked in volume. She sang with exquisite finish, having taken the kernel\nof science and thrown away the husk. Musical ornamentation was not with\nAlice Rothsay vocal gymnastics, but seemed to grow upon the melody as\nspontaneously as tendrils upon the vine. Verheyden laughed with delight\nwhen, at the climax of the song, she touched the silver C in alt.\n\nWhat had been a little maiden in the distance was a small young woman when\nnear by. She was blonde; her oval face had the lustrous paleness of a\npearl; she looked as she sang, pure, sweet, and earnest. One knowing the\nsigns in faces would say that sharp tools must have wrought there to make\nthe eyelids and the mouth so steady. Strangers called her cold; but those\nwho had once seen her pale gray eyes grow luminous thought her fervid.\n\nThen began again Verheyden's life, growing richer everyday. Musical\n_cognoscenti_ grew enthusiastic about him: he was a genius, they said,\nno one before had so well interpreted the old masterpieces of song. Laurie\nwas charming; but Verheyden was inspiring. The Scottish laddie was sweet\nand bright as one of his own dancing burns; but the German brought\nreminiscences of torrents and avalanches, and lightnings tangled among the\nmountain-tops. Laurie saw music as in a glass darkly, and strove to tell\nthem how she looked; but Verheyden grasped the goddess with compelling\nfingers, and led her out before their eyes to dazzle them. His slight form\nbelow the towering organ-pipes they compared to Samson between the pillars\nof the temple of Gaza.\n\nVerheyden was extremely happy in his art: pleased, too, to feel the wreath\nof fame settling on his brow with tingling touches; and when that August\nday had slipped back three years, he was thirty years old.\n\nJohn Maynard, the machinist, drew into his mind various abortive notions\nconceived by men who had lived, or who were still in the sun--drew them in\nmistrustfully, and found them stray sparks of genius whose kindred dwelt\nwith him. Uniting, they played pranks on the man; they made his brain swell\nand snap as they pushed open the portals of unsuspected chambers; they\nsailed through his dreams in the trains of vast shadows, whose shapes he\npanted to catch as they eluded him in the labyrinths of sleep; they grouped\nand they scattered, forming here and there a salient or receding angle,\nleaving voids to be filled; they got into his eyes till he forgot his\nfriends and to brush his hat; they salted his coffee and sugared his beef;\nthey took him on long rambles, where he would wake to find himself standing\nstock-still, staring at nothing; they burned up questions and answers\nbefore they could reach his lips, and they dislocated his sentences. They\nwooed, and eluded, and tormented, and enraptured him, till, darting on them\nunawares, he caught a shadow and copied it out on paper. Finally, fused\ninto one shape, it sprang from his brain, like Minerva from Jove's, armed\n_cap-\u00e0-pie_. The machinist's invention was clad in iron, and stood\nshining and winking in the unaccustomed sunshine for everybody to admire.\n\n{311}\n\nWhich finishes the story of John Maynard's only love.\n\nAmong the many visitors who flocked to see this wonderful invention came\none day Verheyden, Alice Rothsay, and her cousin Rose.\n\nThey stood and watched smoothly slipping cylinders that coquetted with a\nhand of gold from every gazing window, large wheels that turned\ndeliberately on their dizzy centres, and little families of cogged wheels\nthat made them feel cross-eyed--all the deceitful gentleness and guileful\nglitter of the creature.\n\nAlice Rothsay stretched a venturesome pink finger-tip toward a lazily\nrocking bar, then with a shiver, drew it back. \"But I like to look at\nmachinery,\" she said; \"it is so self-possessed. Besides, it is full of\ncurves, which are amiable as well as graceful. Parallels are unsocial, and\nangles are disagreeable.\"\n\n\"Parallels are faithful if not fond,\" remarked the machinist, \"and straight\nlines have an aim and arrive at places. They are the honest lines, the\nworking lines, the strong lines. The reasoner's thought goes like an arrow,\nthe dreamer's like smoke on a heavy day. I would rather see a cat pounce\nupon a mouse than run round after her own tail.\"\n\n\"But the spiral,\" she ventured.\n\n\"Oh! that's the supernatural,\" said the machinist.\n\n\"For my part,\" said Rose, \"I don't see why the cat, after having caught her\nmouse, should not amuse herself by running round after her own tail. It\nkeeps her out of the cream.\"\n\nMiss Rothsay turned to look at Verheyden, who was examining another part of\nthe machine. As she looked, he stretched his right hand to point a\nquestion, and stretched it too far. The cruel teeth caught it, there was a\nsharp breath that was not quite a cry. John Maynard sprang to stop the\nmachine, and in a moment Verheyden drew back, wild-eyed, but silent,\nholding up a crushed and bleeding hand.\n\n\"There is no pain,\" he said as Maynard knotted the handkerchief about his\narm. But he staggered while speaking, and the next moment fell.\n\nMiss Rothsay had news of him that evening. His hand had been amputated, and\nhe was wild. He wanted to tear the ligatures from his arm and bleed to\ndeath, had to be restrained and drugged into quiet. Her messenger had left\nhim in a morphia-sleep, pale as the dead, and with only the faintest\nbreathing.\n\nWeeks passed, and the reports were scarcely more cheering. The patient had\nto be watched lest be should do himself harm; and as he resented such\nwatching with savage impatience, his attendant's place was no sinecure.\n\nIndeed, Verheyden writhed in his circumstances as upon burning fagots.\nWrapped in his art as in an atmosphere, the wrench that tore his hand away\nleft him breathless. Music, the glory and the sweetness of his life,\nfloated back only just out of reach, tantalizing him with remembered and\nalmost possible bliss. Melodies brushed his lips and left a sting; chords\nstretched broad, golden, electric, and, reaching to grasp them, he fell\ninto darkness. His passionate heart rose and swelled, and found no outlet,\nbut beat and broke against an impossibility, like the sea on its rocks.\nVerheyden's occupation was gone.\n\nTrue, he could study phenomena. He was haunted by the ghost of a hand that\nhe could clench but could not see, that sometimes itched at the\nfinger-tips. It would seem that the nerves, confounded at being cut short\nfrom their usual station, had not yet learned to send new messages, even\nsent the old ones blunderingly, overdoing in their anxiety to do the best\nthey could. He had sometimes to recollect that this troublesome hand was\npreserved in spirits in a glass jar set in Dr. Herne's laboratory, on a\nshelf just behind his pet skeleton.\n\n{312}\n\nVerheyden read treatises on nerves till his own were no longer telegraphic\nlines under control, but the wires of a rack to which he was bound. He\nstudied spiritualism till in dim night-watches the veil before the unseen\nseemed to glide back. He dived into mesmerism till all the powers of his\nmind centred in a will that glittered hard and bright in his eyes, causing\nthe timid to shrink and the pugilistic to make fists.\n\nBut through all these noxious parasites of the tree of knowledge which he\nrecklessly gathered about him moaned ceaselessly his unforgotten\nbereavement. Or, if he forgot for a moment, it was like drawing the knife\nfrom a wound to drive it back again.\n\nHaving exhausted every other distraction, he started one day for a long\nwalk in the country. He could not walk the city streets without meeting at\nevery step some piercing reminder of his loss. It was Scylla and Charybdis.\nHis fancy had caught a spark from everything beautiful in nature, and there\nwas not an outline nor motion, not a sound nor a tint, but found in him\nsome echo. Stately, swaying trees in his path waved the grave movement of\nan Andante; the shrill little bird that slid down on a sunbeam through the\nbranches mimicked a twittering strain of Rossini's; a sigh of air that\nrose, and swelled, and sank again, echoed a phrase of Beethoven; and an\nunseen rivulet played one of Chopin's murmuring soliloquies.\n\nVerheyden trod savagely on yielding moss, and crackling twigs, and dry\nleaves of last year, and on the bluest of blue violets that bloomed bathed\nin the noon sunshine. He plunged into a by-path, and came to a brook that\nfled as though pursued. It stumbled dizzily over shining pebbles, glided\nwith suspended breath around grassy curves; it was all a-tremble with\ninextricably tangled sunshine and shadow; it gushed here and there into\nsweet complaining; it leaped with white feet down the rocks. Verheyden\nthrew himself upon the bank beside it. He had played such dances, measures\nthat made the dancers giddy, and sent the ladies dazed and laughing to\ntheir seats.\n\n\"Does he think we are dervishes? Do take me into the air.\"\n\nVerheyden laughed; and the fingers in Dr. Herne's glass jar behind the\nskeleton played a caprice as saucy as Puck plunging with headlong\nsomersaults and alighting on tiptoe. Then, with a groan, he recollected.\n\nAs he crouched there, half wishing the water were deep enough to drown him,\nbe heard a low-voiced singing near by, and, taking a step presently, he saw\na picture among the pine shadows. Alice Rothsay, with a red rose in her\nbosom, sat in the moss, and the green, thready grasses, looking fair as\nTitania, her small figure showing smaller by the boles and branches of the\ntrees. She was hushing herself silent and smiling, her lucent eyes intent\non a humming-bird that wandered in the flickering shade and shine of the\nwoods. It foraged for a moment among the shrinking blossoms, the bold\nlittle robber! it snapped at a round bright drop dashed up by the fretted\nwaters, and got a sip, half spray, half sunshine, that turned it clean\ntipsy; then it made a dart at the red rose in Alice Rothsay's bosom, and\nhung there, a little blue buzz with a long bill. The rose trembled over the\ngirl's suppressed laughter, and the winged mite flung itself petulantly\nbreast deep in the fragrant petals. Then it reeled away, scared at the\nbound her heart gave; for, looking up, she saw Verheyden. It was the first\ntime they had met since his accident.\n\n\"I dare not pity you,\" she said; \"the hand of God shows too plainly.\" But\nthe moistened eyes, and the unsteadiness of her soft, loitering voice,\ncontradicted the words she spoke.\n\nHe looked at her in a dazed, lost way, wondering who then might be\ndeserving of pity.\n\n\"We miss you at church,\" she went on. \"We have a different organist every\nSunday, and I am not used to their accompaniments. I broke down last\nSunday.\n{313}\nMrs. Wilder played, and at the _sucipe_ that you always played\n_legato_, she threw in half a dozen bars of explosives. The\n'deprecationem' was fired off, every syllable of it, as from a mortar. I\njumped as if I'd been blown up. So few know how to accompany. It will be\nbetter when Laurie comes. But we want to see you at church, Verheyden.\"\n\nHis face lost its momentary gentleness. \"I don't go to church now,\" he\nsaid; \"that is, to what we call church. I've been invoking 'black spirits\nand white, blue spirits and gray'--all but the white. I've been calling\nback the soul of Mesmer. I could tell stories that would frighten you.\"\n\n\"Oh! no, you couldn't,\" she said. \"'If armies in camp should stand together\nagainst me, my heart shall not fear.' I might fear for you, though. I have\nreason to fear for you when you give thought to such delusions.\"\n\nVerheyden began defending himself with the impatience of one who knows his\nposition to be weak, going over that hackneyed talk about progress and\nfreedom of thought. \"Ah!\" she sighed, \"there are heights and heights; and\nBabel is not Pisgah.\"\n\nThe fragment of woods in which they had been walking belonged to the estate\nof Monsieur Leon, at whose house Alice was visiting; and, as she saw the\ntwo approaching, madame herself came out to meet them. An amiable, worldly\nwoman, a patroness of the arts, graceful, cordial, and full of charming\nlittle enthusiasms. Not least among her aesthetic devotions was that to the\ntoilette, by the help of which she managed to appear forty instead or\nsixty.\n\nShe stepped to meet Verheyden with both her hands extended, tears swimming\nin her fine dusky eyes. \"My dear friend!\" she said. \"At last you remember\nus. You are welcome. Where have you been all summer?\"\n\n\"Summer?\" repeated Verheyden. \"I haven't seen any summer.\"\n\nAnd truly the three months had for him been beautiful in vain. He had not\nseen their glad, pelting showers, their dim, soft rains, nor the glory of\ntheir sunshine, and their moonlights had been to him as spilt wine.\n\nHe could not help being soothed by these friends. There was no obtrusive\nsympathy, no condolence hard to answer to, no affected reserve concerning\nhis affliction. He was free to speak of it or not, as he should choose.\nThey went on with some trifling employment while they talked to him; or, if\nsilent, he felt their kindly, homelike presence. Then the large, cool house\nwas refreshing after the dust and heat of the city.\n\nSilence was sweetest in that sultry noon; and, presently perceiving it,\nthey did not speak. But the oaks outside rustled like oaks of Dodona, and\nwhat had seemed silence grew to be fullest sound. There was a stir of\nplants uneasy with growing, multitudinous tiny voices of insects in the\ngrasses, bee and bird and the murmur of waters, the wings of doves that\nhalf flew, half dropped, in purple flocks from the eaves, the fall of an\nover-ripe peach, the shrill cicala, the fond sighing of the brooding air in\nwhose bosom all these sounds nestled.\n\nAlice rose to lower the crimson curtain over an intrusive sunbeam, (madame\nkept her crimson draperies up all summer, knowing that her complexion\nneeded deep, warm lights,) and out of revenge the brightness poured through\nthe tissue, its gold changed to a rosy fire. Pausing in that light to\nlisten, she stood aglow, her pale-brown hair, her clear eyes, her white\ndress.\n\n\"It is a Guido!\" whispered Verheyden, with a flash of light across his\nface.\n\n\"No,\" said madame; \"it is the Charity for which Ruskin longed, floating all\npink and beautiful down to earth, the clouds blushing as she passes.\"\n\nThe sun went lingeringly down the west, a breeze fluttered up from the\nsouth, and they roused themselves to open the windows.\n\n{314}\n\nA piano drew Verheyden by all his aching heart-strings. He seated himself\nbefore it and played the base of Rossini's Cujus Animam. As he played, a\nfair hand stole to the keys at his right and played the Aria.\n\n\"It kills me! Alice, it kills me!\" he moaned out, turning his haggard face\ntoward her.\n\n\"Verheyden,\" she said, \"do something heroic: submit!\"\n\n\"To writhe on the rack is not to resist,\" he said bitterly.\n\n\"But how sublime,\" she urged, \"if, instead of writhing, one could, in the\nmidst of pain, wear a serene face, and rejoice in a serene heart.\"\n\n\"It is easy for you to talk of serenity,\" he said impatiently. \"You have\nall you want. You live in music as I lived in it. And what an enchanted\nlife we lived together! Do you remember the first time I saw you? Three\nyears ago, it was, on the eve of the Assumption. You sat on the steps of\nthe altar and listened while Laurie played. I told him you looked like a\nsoprano, and he said you were one, that you had a voice like a violin. Do\nyou remember how I called you up?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" she said, smiling at the remembrance. \"No one ever accompanied like\nyou. The voice went floating on your music like a shallop on the water.\nYour interludes were nothing more than spray or little wavelets, or like a\nhalf-hushed bubbling laughter underneath the bows.\"\n\n\"And you,\" he said, \"you never learned: you sing of nature, and 'tis art\nthat tries to reach you. Laurie always said your _roulades_ were as if\nyou couldn't help them; that he had to look at the score to be sure you\ndidn't make them up as you went along. Come, now, let us try.\"\n\nIn the act of turning eagerly to the piano, he recollected and stopped.\n\nShe touched his arm with an earnest hand. \"Delight is dear,\" she said; \"but\nnever so dear as when we find it in dark places. Let me speak to you of\nmyself, Verheyden, as I have never spoken to anyone else. You think my life\nhas been a tranquil one, but you mistake. None, or but few, knowing, I have\ngone through tragedies that would delight a romance writer. What I read is\ndull to what I have experienced. If I am calm, it is because I have nothing\nleft to suffer. At twenty-five--you didn't think me so old because I am\nsmall and blonde--at twenty five I have exhausted the pains of life. And,\nVerheyden, believe me, contradictory as it may sound, the highest rapture\nthat earth can give is distilled from its sharpest pains. It is true, even\nhere, that those who weep are blessed. When the strong man, Jesus, rends\nthis ravenous nature of ours, after some days we find sweetness. O\nVerheyden! go to the Lord with your burden, and he will give you rest. Do\nnot fill your soul with discord because your hand can no more awaken\nharmony. That loftier harmony nothing can disturb without your consent. Is\nit not beautiful to think of--the security of the soul? Remember,\nVerheyden, the lightnings may strike us, but our souls shall not be\nsmitten; and they shall not be drowned though the waters cover us; the\nearth may burn, but our souls shall not be consumed; and they shall not be\ncrushed though the heavens fall on us. When I think of these things, I\nlaugh at fear of anything save sin; I am lifted; my body seems dissolving\nlike frost in fire. I cannot comprehend the sadness of your face. I am\nglad! I am glad!\"\n\nHe looked at her as she stood there pale and shining, then stretched his\nhand, and, at a venture, touched the scarf she wore. It didn't scorch him.\n\nMonsieur L\u00e9on came home at sunset, and with him Auguste, the son of the\nhouse. Monsieur was one of his wife's enthusiasms. \"He is a misanthrope,\"\nshe would say delightedly. \"What a listless air! he cares for nothing. How\nmournful and hopeless his eyes! And though his hair is white, he is but\nlittle over fifty. He is full of poetry and sublimity and learning; but it\nis frozen in. His early days were unfortunate--a poor gentleman, you\nknow--and all his life till he was forty was a struggle for bread.\n{315}\nAt forty be inherited his property. Then he thought to live, my poor\nAuguste! We went to Paris, which we had left as children. Ah! well. But he\nhad aspirations, and pressed on toward Italy. There was the Medean\nchaldron, he said. He was ill when we reached there, and saw nothing till\none evening he was convalescent, and I took him by the hand and led him out\non to our balcony. It was a May-moonlight in Venice. The earth can do\nnothing more. He stood and looked till I thought he had lost his breath,\nthen clasped his hands over his heart as though he had a great pang, and\ncried out, 'O my lost youth!' He would look no more. He went in and sat\nwith his face hidden in his hands. It was too late. The next day we started\nand came back. He looked at nothing as we passed, but sat in the gondola or\ncarriage with his face hidden. He said it was like setting a feast before\nthe corpse of a man who had died of starvation. So romantic!\" sighs madame,\nsmoothing the lace ruffles from her little hands.\n\nPresently, when evening deepened, Auguste put his head in at the window and\ncalled them out to see an eclipse of Venus.\n\nThey stood in the dewy dusk and fragrance of the garden, and watched the\nstar hover, moth-like, near and nearer to the moon, seeming to grow larger\nand more brilliant as it approached extinction, shining in audacious\nbeauty. Then it touched, trembled, and disappeared.\n\n\"Served her right!\" cried Auguste, fresh from the classics.\n\n\"But, Alice, where is Verheyden?\" asked madame.\n\n\"He recollected Laurie's concert, and would go. I tried to detain him, but\ncould not.\"\n\nVerheyden hurried into town to the concert-hall, though by no means certain\nhe might not be tempted to fling himself over the balcony. Avoiding\nacquaintances, he took a seat high up and apart, and looked down upon the\naudience. Such crowds had flocked to hear him in that lost life of his. Was\nit indeed lost, or did he dream?\n\nPresently there was music. There came his fugues rolling in like\noverlapping billows. How he had played them when his mood had been to\nplunge in such a surge, he solitary, everything else washed away like\nsea-weed! He would never breast that tide again! Symphonies sailed over his\nhead; but he could no more reach to touch their pinions. There was one he\nhad named St. Michael's, from a sharp brightness that swung through it,\nsword-like. How he had wrestled with those angels!\n\nThen Laurie, being loudly called, stood out, blushing before their praises.\n\nBless the boy! Only that day, bursting into tears, he had clasped Verheyden\naround the neck, saying: \"Dear friend, my success hurts me like failure\nwhen I think of you.\"\n\nTo an encore he played \"Comin' through the Rye,\" improvising variations in\nwhich the lovely melody hovered like Undine in the fountain, half veiled in\nthat spray of music: an arch, enchanting thing.\n\nAs Laurie stood up again, his friend leaned over the balcony and looked\ndown on the young, lifted brow. For one instant their eyes met; then\nVerheyden started up and fled out into the night.\n\nFather Vinton sat alone in his room meditating on a text which was\ngradually expanding, budding, and blossoming into a sermon. He tried not to\nbe vexed when some one knocked at his door at that late hour, and was just\ncontrolling his voice to give a charitable summons when the door opened,\nand Verheyden, or his ghost, came in, and, without a word of greeting, fell\non his knees beside the priest, dropping his face to the arm of the chair.\n\n\"My poor friend,\" said the father, \"have you not yet forgiven God for\nloving you better than you can understand?\"\n\n{316}\n\nVerheyden shivered, but said nothing.\n\n\"Remember whose hands were pierced, not one, but both, and his feet, and\nhis side. He never shrank.\"\n\nVerheyden's shaking hand held out a little vial \"I shall take this unless\nyou prevent me,\" he said. \"Help me if there is any help. I dare not be\nalone.\"\n\nFather Vinton unstopped the vial, and, taking deliberate aim, flung it\nthrough the open window into the street. Then he laid his hand tenderly\nupon the bowed head. \"You shall not be alone,\" he said. \"Stay here\nto-night.\"\n\nBlessed are all peace-makers; but thrice blessed are those who make peace\nbetween the soul and God. Blessed are they in whose care we breathe the\ntales else unspoken, whose hands lead us back from the brink of many a\nprecipice where no one dreamed we stood, whose voices soothe the pains\nhidden to all besides, and inspire with hope hearts that were filled with\ndespair. May such peace-makers be for ever blessed!\n\nVerheyden's religion had been a recollection rather than a remembrance. He\nhad made a point of going to confession and communion once a year; and had\none looked into his mind while he was preparing for these sacraments,\nsomething like the following might have been seen: \"Well, what have I been\ndoing this year? I haven't committed any sins. I've done nothing but play\ntunes. To be sure, I broke Smith's fiddle over his head for playing false\nand spoiling a chorus. Don't suppose that was just right; though I must say\nI think the chorus of more consequence than Smith's head. But I must have\ndone something. I'm not a saint yet. Guess I'll say a prayer.\n\n\"Oh! I remember!--; that was mean. I wouldn't believe I could do such a\nthing if I didn't know I had. I'll be hanged if I do it again. Then\nthere's--, and--, and--. Well, confession does put a fellow out of conceit\nwith himself. And there's--; a dishonest deed, I must own. I don't wonder\nthe Lord gets angry with us; and how he does wait for us to come round! I'm\nglad I didn't drop dead to-day. I'm thankful I didn't drop dead to-day! The\nLord is good. What am I lounging on a seat for? Why don't I go on my knees?\nThen there's ----. I'm sorry for that. I wish somebody would give me a\nthrashing for it. I've been sorry for the same sin dozens of times, and\naccused myself of it, and promised not to commit it again. My resolutions\nare not worth much. Suppose I can't keep myself out of sin without the\nLord's help. I'll ask for it.\"\n\nAt the end, Verheyden, sobered and humbled, would present himself to the\npriest and make a clear and sincere confession.\n\nBut now religion was to be no more an incident, but the business of his\nlife. He was fortunate in his director, for Father Vinton was not only\nprudent, but sympathetic. If, when he read lives of the saints, Verheyden\nlonged for ecstasies which should thrill him as sensibly as music could,\nthe father did not reprove his presumption, but said: \"My son, such favors\ndo not come when they are looked and asked for, they are unexpected. Strive\nto render yourself worthy of God's friendship, and forget the reward till\nhe shall please to bestow it.\" If, kneeling before the altar, his eyes full\nof tears, the intensity of his gaze defeating itself, Verheyden fancied\nthat the cross before him quivered with its burden, and that the aureoled\nhead grew to be the head of a living, suffering man whose eyes turned\npitifully on him--the father did not call his penitent crazy.\n\n\"Perhaps he grieves to find you so unreconciled,\" he said. \"When with a\nloving violence he tore the idol from your grasp in order to give you a\nwork wherein the end would not be forgotten in the means, he expected your\nsubmission. Perhaps he grieves to see that you reject all work.\"\n\n{317}\n\nVerheyden blushed painfully as he extended his mutilated arm. \"What can\n_I_ do?\"\n\n\"Take charge of your singing-class again.\"\n\nFor one instant he faced the priest with a sudden fierceness, the last\nspark of rebellion in him. Then his face faded and drooped.\n\n\"I will, sir.\"\n\n\"Miss Rothsay will play for you when you need her.\"\n\n\"Yes, father.\"\n\nAnd Verheyden went back to the drudgery of his profession, missing its\ndelights, and did his duty faithfully if not cheerfully. There could have\nbeen no severer test.\n\nThere was no more talk of visions and trances. But every morning a shadow\nof a man stole into the chapel, knelt near the door, and went out as\nquietly after the mass was over. Once a fortnight the same shadow came to\nFather Vinton's side and made a sincere but disheartening confession. The\nspring of the musician's spirit was broken.\n\n\"You are ill,\" the priest said to him one day.\n\n\"No,\" answered Verheyden dreamily. \"My heart troubles me a little. It beats\ntoo fast. There's nothing else the matter with me.\"\n\nHe was told that he ought to consult a doctor.\n\n\"I thought I would,\" was the answer; \"but I forgot it. What is in the\nchurch?\"\n\n\"Laurie with the choir practising a new mass. To-morrow is the Assumption,\nyou know.\"\n\n\"Oh! yes, I'll go in and listen awhile; shall I?\"\n\n\"My poor boy!\" said the priest. \"Will it not give you more pain than\npleasure?\"\n\n\"No, father, it doesn't hurt me now.\"\n\nGoing into the choir, Verheyden took a seat apart and unseen. He leaned\nwearily, closed his eyes and listened, hearing the voices more than the\ninstrument, hearing one voice through all. When Alice Rothsay uplifted her\npure voice and sang the _Dona nobis pacem_, tears dropped slowly down\nhis face; but they were not tears of bitterness.\n\nPresently all but Alice left the church. As on that day, four years before,\nwhen he had first seen her, she had flowers for the altars.\n\nIt was a delight for her to get into the church alone, as she now believed\nherself to be. If she were good, she knew not. No matter: God is good. She\nfelt as though she were among dear friends with nobody by to criticise, Her\ndelight bubbled up almost over the verge of reverence. But perfect love\ncasteth away fear; and she loved.\n\n\"Rosa Mystica, here are roses. Pray for me. And lilies for St. Joseph, whom\nI often forget. He is so near you he is lost, like the morning-star in the\nmorning. St. Paul, I bring you fine plumes, and cardinal flowers like\nliving coals. But you look as though you would scorch them up with a push\nfrom the point of your pen, writing epistles toward the four winds. O\nUnseen One! what shall I offer you? The earth is yours, and the fulness\nthereof. I cannot offer myself, for I am not mine to give. But if you love\nme, take me. O Sweetness!\"\n\nSunset flashed through the windows, and every saint caught an aureola. Then\nthe day went out, bright and loth. When the sanctuary lamp began to show\nits flame in the gathering twilight, Alice Rothsay rose with a happy heart,\nand went home.\n\nVerheyden was happy, too; he scarce knew why, perhaps because the happiness\nof another made his own seem possible. He groped his way down to the\nchapel, and found Father Vinton hearing confessions.\n\n\"God is with him,\" thought the priest when Verheyden had left him. \"He is\nlike a child.\"\n\nThe same child-like sweetness shone in the face raised the next morning for\ncommunion.\n\n{318}\n\nGoing out of the chapel after his thanksgiving, Father Vinton saw his\npenitent still kneeling there. \"I wished I had asked him to pray for me,\"\nhe said. \"I must see him when he comes out.\"\n\nHe waited half an hour, watching, but no one appeared. The father would not\nfor anything disturb so sacred a devotion; but he felt like looking again.\nGoing back: to the chapel, he saw the lonely worshipper still in place, but\nin a slightly changed attitude. He was leaning a little wearily on the desk\nbefore him, and his shoulder and head rested against a pillar beside. His\npale face was lifted, as though some one above had spoken, and he had\nlooked up to answer.\n\nFather Vinton hesitated, then went nearer. A morning sunbeam came in\nthrough an eastern window, stole in tender, tremulous gold over the\nmusician's hair and brow, and looked into his eyes. So Magdalene might have\nlooked into the sepulchre. The father bent and looked also.\n\nAh, Verheyden! Some One above _had_ spoken, and he had answered.\n\n\n------\n\n    Original.\n\n    May: A Fancy.\n\n\n  I cannot sing to thee a song, O May!\n  New-born of beauties never sung before.\n  On all the tourneyed fields of poesy\n  Bright souls have broken lance to do thee honor.\n  And yet (so hard it is for youth and life\n  To deem to-day not brighter than the past)\n  I cannot think they loved thee more than I,\n  Those silent poets in their silent graves.\n  I cannot think their sunshine was as golden,\n  Their meads as green, their wilding flowers as rife\n  With the low music of the laden bee,\n  Their clouds as soft upon the summering sky,\n  Their gales as wooing in the wakened forests--\n  Their May as much of May as thou to us.\n  Moreover, this I know: the tiny bark\n  Of the frail nautilus may crest the wave\n  That swelled to clasp the bosomed argosy,\n  Or chafed the warrior-ship's embattled side.\n  And so, beneath thy deep serenity\n  Of sunlit blue, as, thrilled and filled with May,\n  I lie on earth and gaze up into heaven,\n  Sprite Fancy doth embody me a dream;\n  And I dare utter it, for I am bold\n  On kindly Nature's mother-breast to lay\n  My head, and prattle of the love I bear her.\n  As little, earnest children deck them dolls,\n  And name them for the fair ones whom they love,\n  I prank an image out, and call it--May.\n\n{319}\n\n  Thou shin'st, O May! upon my visioned hours,\n  A maiden in the prime of maidenhood,\n  Poised on the summer boundary of blooms,\n  Disparting child and woman; blent of each;\n  The child-smile pure upon the perfect lip,\n  And girlhood in the wavy wealth of curls\n  So lavish on the toying, amorous air,\n  And deep'ning in the blue uplifted eyes,\n  Like stainless heaven reflect from silent lakes,\n  The mystic, dawning holiness of woman.\n\n  She, o'er the cycled earth imperious,\n  Throned on the morning candor of the clouds,\n  Sits haloed with the worship of the sun.\n  Chosen is she of all her sister months\n  To be the bride of the imperial sun.\n  Disdainful suitor, he did pass unwooed\n  The paly elder beauties of the year,\n  Nor in the hoyden March, nor sportive April,\n  Nor majesty of June, his pleasure found:\n  He toyed familiar, yet scarce lovingly,\n  With the swart, sparkling nymphs of summer tide,\n  He schooled the autumn oreads in their tasks,\n  And, smiling, passed, and left them all, to shower\n  The splendid unrestraint of all his love,\n  And choice, and tenderness on May, his own.\n\n  This is the bridal season, and the earth,\n  Fondest of mothers, and the ardent bridegroom\n  Have ta'en all gems of earth, all rays of heaven,\n  Have beggared all the universe for charms\n  To deck the bride withal. She sits in beauty,\n  Crowned with the rarest radiance of morn,\n  Robed in the tissued blooms of all the world,\n  Yet loveliest for her own proud modesty;\n  Her glorious eyes the fairest of her jewels,\n  Her bridal blush her brightest ornament.\n  Thus maidenly, thus queenly in the skies\n  She waits against the coming of the bridegroom.\n  He, o'er the orient wave now eminent,\n  Through the concoursing rosy clouds of morn\n  Strides like a monarch 'mid a courtier throng,\n  Pushing soft adulation out of way;\n  Presses in grandeur up the noon-day height,\n  Half haste, all stateliness and majesty.\n\n  And over all the vastness of the world\n  Goes forth the tale of bliss. The roseate clouds\n  Blush down the tidings to the raptured sea,\n  Till all his crested waves are musical\n  With murmured joyfulness. The courier birds\n  Thrill myriad melodies through all the woods,\n  With this their joyous burden: \"May is bride!\"\n  The hoary oaks, and all the ancient trees,\n  On the high, rippling winds commune together,\n  Saying one to another: \"May is bride!\"\n\n{320}\n\n  And from her throne float forth cloud-messengers,\n  The white-winged spirits of the unborn rain:\n  They stoop and whisper to the dreaming flowers\n  Bidding their choicest petals venture out;\n  Then die to sight amid the morning shine,\n  As sudden angels, their high missions done,\n  Rapt from our days, resume their viewless shapes.\n  But the fair blossoms wake and look about them,\n  And find all May, and all things lapped in sunshine,\n  And softly call their kindred to arise,\n  Till every turf in all the happy fields\n  Is garish with their bloom, and atmospheres\n  Of perfume waft their homage to the seat\n  Of their dear sovereign. And the loving earth,\n  The great, dumb mother of the happy May,\n  With all her waving continents of trees,\n  Makes murmurous gestures full of ecstasy;\n  And up from land, and sea, and air, and sky,\n  Rise choral hallelujahs: \"May is bride!\"\n\n------\n\n    Impressions of Spain.\n\n    by Lady Herbert.\n\n    Cordova and Malaga.\n\nA comfortable little old-fashioned inn, with a \"patio\" full of\norange-trees, leading to a public \"sala,\" rather like a room at Damascus,\nwith alcoves and fountains, gladdened the hearts of our wearied travellers.\nAfter a good night's rest (and one advantage in Spain is, that except\nmosquitoes, your beds are generally free from other inhabitants), they\nstarted down the narrow, badly paved streets to visit the cathedral. The\nexterior is disappointing, as all you see is a buttressed wall, with square\ntowers sixty feet high, opposite which is the gateway and wall of the\narchepiscopal palace. But on passing through a beautiful oriental court, in\nthe centre of which is a picturesque Moorish fountain, the rest of the\nspace being filled with orange-trees and palms, and on the north side an\nexquisite giralda, or tower, from whence there is a beautiful view over the\nwhole town and neighborhood. All the entrances to the mosque (now the\ncathedral) from this court are closed, except the centre one. Entering by\nthat, a whole forest of pillars bursts upon you, with horseshoe arches\ninterlacing one another and forming altogether the most wonderful building\nin the world. The Moors collected these pillars, of which there are upwards\nof a thousand, from the temples of Carthage, of Nismes, and of Rome, and\nadapted them to their mosque. Some are of jasper, some of verde-antique,\nsome of porphyry--no two are alike. The pillars have no plinths, and divide\nthe mosque into nineteen longitudinal and twenty-nine transverse aisles;\nhence the immense variety and beauty of the intersection of the arches.\nThis mosque was built in the eighth century, and ranked in sanctity with\nthe \"Alaksa\" of Jerusalem and the \"Caaba\" of Mecca.\n\n{321}\n\nA pilgrimage to it was, indeed, considered equivalent to that of Mecca, and\nhence the Spanish proverb to express distant wanderings, \"Andar de zeca en\nMeca.\" The roof is of arbor-vitae, and is in perfect preservation. Two of\nthe moresque chapels are exquisite in carving and richness of detail, one\nbeing that of the Caliphs, and the other the \"Holy of Holies,\" where the\nKoran was kept. The beauty and delicacy of the moresque work, with its gold\nenamel and lovely trefoiled patterns, its quaint lions and bright-colored\n\"azulejos\" (tiles), exceeds anything of the sort in Europe. The roof is in\nthe form of a shell, and exquisitely wrought out of one single piece of\nmarble. The mosaic border was sent to Cordova by Romanus II., from\nConstantinople. When the brother of the king of Morocco came there a year\nor two ago, he went round this \"Holy of Holies\" seven times on his knees,\ncrying bitterly all the time. The inscriptions in this mosque are in Cufic,\nand not in Arabic. The whole carries one back to Damascus and the East in a\nway which makes it difficult to realize that one is still in Europe. The\nchoir is a horrible modern \"churriqueresque\" innovation, stuck in the\ncentre of the beautiful forest of Saracenic columns, many of which were\ndestroyed to make room for it. Even Charles V. protested against the bad\ntaste of the chapter when he saw it completed in 1526, and exclaimed: \"You\nhave built a thing which one can see anywhere; and to do so, you have\ndestroyed what was unique in the world.\" The carving of the choir is\ncertainly fine, but the incongruity of the whole jars on one's taste too\nkeenly for any kind of admiration. The only beautiful and solemn modernized\nportion of the building is the chapel of the cardinal, with fine tombs and\na deep recess for the Blessed Sacrament, with a magnificent silver\ntabernacle. From the cathedral, some of the party went to visit the bishop,\nwho received them very kindly, and sent his secretary to show them the\ntreasures of the cathedral. The \"custodia,\" of the fifteenth century, is in\nsilver-gilt, with beautiful emeralds, and exquisitely carved; it is the\nwork of Arphe, the Benvenuto Cellini of Spain. There are also some\nbeautiful processional crosses, reliquaries, chalices, and pax, secreted at\nthe time of Dupont's French invasion, and so saved from the universal\nplunder.\n\nHaving spent the morning in the cathedral, our travellers wandered down to\nthe fine Roman bridge, of sixteen arches, over the Guadalquiver, looking\nupon some picturesque Moorish mills and orange gardens. To the left is a\nstatue of St. Raphael, the guardian angel of Cordova; and close by is the\nAlcazar, now a ruin, formerly the palace of Roderick, the last of the\nGoths, whose father was duke of Cordova. Nothing can be more melancholy\nthan the neglected gardens, the broken fountains and statues, the empty\nfish-ponds, and grass-grown walks, despite the palms and orange-trees and\nluxuriant creeping roses, which seemed to be striving to conceal the\ndesolation around. The first palm ever planted in Cordova was by the\nMoorish king Abdulrrahman, who brought it from his much-loved and\nalways-regretted Damascus.\n\nAfter luncheon, having obtained special permission from the archbishop, our\nparty started off in two carriages for the hermitages in the Sierra Morena,\nstopping first at a picturesque ruined villa, called the \"Arrizafa,\" once\nthe favorite residence of the Moorish king. The gardens are beautiful;\npassion-flowers and jessamine hung in festoons over all the broken walls,\nand the ground was carpeted with violets, narcissus, and other spring\nflowers. The view from the terrace is lovely, the town, when seen from a\ndistance, being very like Verona. Here the road became so steep that the\nparty had to leave their carriages and walk the remainder of the way.\n{322}\nThe mountain-path reminded them of Mount Carmel, with the same underwood of\ncistus, lilac and white, and heaps of flowering and aromatic shrubs.\nBeautiful wild iris grew among the rocks, and half-way up a rushing stream\ntumbled over the boulder-stones into a picturesque basin, covered with\nmaiden-hair fern, which served as a resting-place for the tired travellers.\nAfter a fatiguing climb of two hours, they reached the postern gate of the\nhermitage, into which, after some demur as to their sex, the ladies, by\nspecial permission of the archbishop, were admitted. There are at present\nseventeen hermits, all gentlemen, and many of high birth and large fortune,\nliving each in a little separate cabin, with a patch of garden round it,\nand entirely alone. They never see one another but at mass and in choir, or\nspeak but once a month. In their chapel they have a beautiful oil painting\nof St. Paul the first hermit, whose rule they follow in all its primitive\nseverity. One of the cabins was vacant, and the party entered. It was\ncomposed of two tiny rooms: in the inner one was a bed formed of three\nboards, with a sheepskin and a pillow of straw; the rest of the furniture\nconsisted of a crucifix, a jug of water, a terrible discipline with iron\npoints, and Rodriguez' essay on \"Christian Perfection,\" published in 1606,\nat Valladolid, and evidently much read. This cell was that of Count ----, a\nman of great wealth and high rank, and of a still wider reputation for\nability and talent. He had lost his wife some years ago, to whom he was\npassionately attached; and remaining in the world only till he had settled\nhis children, then took leave of it for ever, and resolved to spend the\nrest of his days in penitence and prayer. Their habit is composed of a\ncourse grey stuff, with a leathern girdle, drawers, and a shirt of serge.\nNo linen is allowed, or stockings, and they wear sandals on their feet.\nThey are not permitted to possess anything, or to keep anything in their\ncells but a glazed earthenware pot, a wooden plate, a pitcher, a lamp, and\ninstruments of penance and devotion. They keep a perpetual fast on beans\nand lentils, only on high days and holidays being allowed fish. They are\nnot allowed to write or receive letters, or to go into one another's cells,\nor to go out of the enclosure, except once a month, when they may walk in\nthe mountains round, which they generally do together, reciting litanies.\nSeven hours of each day must be given to prayer, and they take the\ndiscipline twice a week. [Footnote 109] How strange a life for one\naccustomed to live in the world and in society! Yet there is no lack of\ncandidates for each vacancy; and the prior told our travellers that the\nnumber of vocations of late years had increased. There is a fine old marble\nseat and cross in the garden, erected by the late bishop, from whence there\nis a magnificent view over the whole country. The cold in winter is\nintense, and they are not allowed any fires, except what is absolutely\nnecessary for the cooking of their miserable meal. Taking leave of the\nprior in his little \"parloir,\" and receiving a rosary from him made of the\nwood of the \"carouba\" by the hermits themselves, the visitors retraced\ntheir steps down the hill, feeling as if they had been spending the last\ncouple of hours in another world; and, rejoining their carriages at the\nvilla, made the circuit of the city walls, which are partly Moorish, built\nof tapia, and described by Julius Caesar.\n\n    [Transcriber's note: The image of the following footnote is blurred.\n    \"Pardon my French.\"]\n\n    [Footnote 109: The Rev. P\u00e8re F\u00e9lix, the famous Paris preacher, in one\n    of his Notre Dame conferences, speaking of asceticism of this sort,\n    says: \"Les paiens avaient \u00e9puis\u00e9 la volupt\u00e9: les chr\u00e9tiens ont \u00e9puis\u00e9\n    les souffrances. De ce creuset de la douleur l'homme nouveau a sorti,\n    et c'est un homme plus grand que l'homme ancien. Ah! je le sais, la\n    p\u00e9nitence corporelle, le je\u00fbne, l'abstinence, la discipline, la\n    flagelation, pr\u00e8tent \u00e0 rire \u00e0 des penseurs de ce temps, qui se croieat\n    trop sages pour pratiquer de telles folies. Ils out plus d'\u00e9gurd pour\n    la chair, plus de respect surtoui pour le corps, et ils disent en\n    souriant \u00e0 l'aust\u00e9rit\u00e9 chr\u00e9tienne: 'Asc\u00e9tisme! Moyen \u00e0ge! Fanatisme!\n    D\u00e9mence!' La v\u00e9rit\u00e9 est, que ch\u00e1tier volontairement son corps pour\n    venger la dignit\u00e9 de l'homme outrag\u00e9s par les r\u00e9voltes, est une sainte\n    et sublime chose. La v\u00e9rit\u00e9 est que pour accorder \u00e0 son corps le\n    plaiair, il suffit d'\u00e8tre l\u00e2che, et que pour infliger \u00e0 son corps la\n    douleur volontaire dans un but de restauration morale, il faut \u00e8tre\n    courageux, il faut \u00e8tre veaiment grand. La v\u00e9rit\u00e9 est enfin que cette\n    race de mortifi\u00e9s, mieux que tout autre, maintient \u00e0 sa vraie hauteur\n    le niveau de l'humanit\u00e9, et tient dans sa main intr\u00e9pide, avec le fouet\n    dont elle se frappe ell-m\u00eame, le drapeau du progr\u00e8s. Le chemin du\n    progr\u00e8s, comme ceiul du Calvaire, est un chemin douloureax. Le drapeau\n    de l'aust\u00e9rit\u00e9 chr\u00e9tienne triomphera une fois de plus dans le monde du\n    seusualisme paien de nos joura.\"]\n\n{323}\n\nThen one of the party went to see the Carmelite convent of St. Theresa; not\none of the saint's own foundation, but one built soon after her death. It\ncontains twenty-four nuns, the cheeriest and merriest of women, proving how\nlittle external circumstances contribute to personal cheerfulness.\n\nThe German gentleman who had so kindly served as escort to our travellers\nduring their stay at Cordova dined with them in the evening, and gave them\nseveral very interesting details of the place and people. The next morning\nmass had been promised them at five, but it was six before the priest made\nhis appearance in the fine old Jesuit church, now bereft of its pastors and\nfrequent services; and it was only thanks to the unpunctuality of the\nSpanish railways that the train which was to convey our party to Malaga was\nreached in time.\n\nPassing through a very fine gorge of the Sierra Nevada, with magnificent\nAlpine scenery, the train suddenly stopped: the guard came to the\ncarriages, and civilly suggested to the passengers that the government\ncould not answer for the safety of the tunnels, and, therefore, had\nprovided carriages and mules to take them round; or else, if they preferred\nit, that they might _walk_, as there would be plenty of time. This\nsounded ludicrous enough to English ears, but, after all, they thought it\nmore prudent to comply than to run any risk, and accordingly bundled out\nwith their bags and manifold packages. On the recurrence of a similar\nwarning, however, a little later, they voted that they would remain and\ntake their chance; and nothing disastrous occurred. At the station they\nwere met by the kind and obliging English consul, who had ordered rooms for\nthem at the hotel called the \"Alameda,\" pleasantly situated on the\npromenade, and who had done everything in his power to insure their\ncomfort. The first days of their arrival were spent in settling themselves\nin their new quarters, which required a good deal of preliminary cleaning,\nand in seeing the so-called \"lions\" of the place. These are soon visited.\nIn truth, except for climate, Malaga is as dull and uninteresting a place\nas can be well imagined. There is a cathedral, originally a mosque, but now\nconverted into an ugly Corinthian pile with two towers. Only one fine old\nGothic door remains, with curious \"azulejos.\" The rest, both inside and\nout, is modern, heavy, and in bad taste. The high altar, however, is by\nAlonso Ca\u00f1o; and there is some fine wood-carving of the sixteenth century\nin the choir and on the screen, commemorating different scenes in the life\nof St. Turibius, archbishop of Lima, whose apostolic labors among the\nIndians were crowned with such wonderful success. There are one or two good\npictures and monuments, especially the recumbent figure of a bishop, in\nbronze, of the fifteenth century. In the sacristy is a valuable relic of\nSt. Sebastian, and some fine silver vases for the holy oils; but everything\nelse was plundered by the French. Afterward our travellers went, with an\norder from the governor, to see the castle and Moorish fortress overlooking\nthe town, built in 1279. Passing under a fine Moorish horse-shoe arched\ngateway, they scrambled up to the keep, from whence there is a magnificent\nview over sea and land. It is now used as a military prison, and about\ntwenty-six men were confined there. The officers were extremely civil, and\nshowed them everything. The men's barracks seemed clean and comfortable,\nand their rations good; their arms and knapsacks were, however, of the most\nold-fashioned kind. That day a detachment of troops were starting for\nMorocco, whose embarkation in the steamers below was eagerly watched by the\ngarrison.\n\nBut if Malaga be dull in the way of sights, it is very pleasant from the\nkind and sociable character of its inhabitants. Nowhere will the stranger\nfind more genuine kindness, hospitality, or courtesy.\n{324}\nTheir houses, their villas, their horses, their flowers, their time, all\nare placed, not figuratively, but really, \"\u00e1 vuestra disposicion.\" Some of\nthe villas in the neighborhood are lovely, especially those of Madame de\nH----, the Marquise L----, etc. Here one finds all kinds of tropical\nvegetation: the date palm, the banana, the plantain and India-rubber trees,\nsugar, cotton, and other oriental products, all grow luxuriantly; while the\nbeds are filled with masses of violets, tulips, roses, arums, scarlet\nhybiscus, and geraniums; and beautiful jessamine, _scarlet_\npassion-flowers, and other creepers, trail over every wall.\n\nBut the chief interest to the winter resident at Malaga will be derived\nfrom its charitable institutions. The French sisters of charity of St.\nVincent de Paul have the care of three large establishments here. One--an\nindustrial school for the children and orphans connected with a neighboring\nfactory--is a marvel of beauty, order, and good management. The girls are\ntaught every kind of industrial work; a Belgian has been imported to give\nthem instruction in making Valenciennes lace, and their needlework is the\nmost beautiful to be seen out of Paris. Any profit arising from their work\nis sold, and kept for their \"dot\" when they marry or leave the\nestablishment. Attached to this school is also a little home for widows,\nincurables, and sick, equally tended by the sisters. This admirable\ninstitution is the offspring of individual charity and of a life\nwrecked--according to human parlance--but which has taken heart again for\nthe sake of the widow and the orphan, the sorrowful and the suffering. Her\nname is a household word in Malaga to the sad and the miserable; and in\norder to carry out her magnificent charities (for she has also an\nindustrial school for boys in the country), she has given up her luxurious\nhome, and lives in a small lodging up three pair of stairs. She reminded\none of St. Jerome's description of St. Melania, who, having lost her\nhusband and two children in one day, casting herself at the foot of the\ncross, exclaimed: \"I see, my God! that thou requirest of me my whole heart\nand love, which was too much fixed on my husband and children. With joy I\nresign all to thee.\" The sight of her wonderful cheerfulness and courage,\nafter sorrows so unparalleled, must strengthen every one to follow in her\nsteps, and strive to learn, in self-abnegation, her secret of true\nhappiness. The French sisters have likewise the charge of the great\nhospital of St. Juan de Dios, containing between 400 and 500 patients, now\nabout to be removed to a new and more commodious building; and also of a\nlarge day and infant school near the river, with a \"salle d'asile,\"\ncontaining upward of 500 children, who are daily fed with soup and bread.\nThey also visit the poor and sick in their homes, and everywhere their\nsteps are hailed with thankfulness and joy.\n\nThe \"Little Sisters of the Poor\" have likewise established themselves in\nMalaga, and have a large house, containing seventy old and incurable\npeople, which is very well supplied by the richer inhabitants. The nuns of\nthe \"Assumption\" have lately started a \"pension\" for the daughters of the\nupper classes, which was immensely wanted (education being at a very low\nebb in Spain), and which has been most joyfully hailed by the Malaga ladies\nfor their children. The superior, a charming person, is an English woman;\nand the frequent benediction services in their beautiful little chapel were\na great boon to some of our party. They paid a visit also to the\narchbishop, a kind and venerable old man, with the most benevolent smile\nand aspect, and who is really looked upon as the father of his people. At a\ngrand Te Deum service, given in the church of S. Pietro dei Martiri, one of\nthe most interesting churches in Malaga, as a thanksgiving for the\npreservation of the city from cholera, he officiated pontifically, which\nhis great age generally prevents, and gave the benediction with mitre and\ncrosier to the devout and kneeling multitude.\n\n{325}\n\nThere is a very touching \"Via Crucis\" service performed every Friday in\nMalaga, up to a chapel on the top of a high mountain overlooking the whole\ntown and bay. The peasants chaunt the most plaintive and beautiful hymns,\nthe words of which they \"improviser\" on the way, both up and down. It\nbegins at a very beautiful church and convent called Notre Dame des\nVictoires, now converted into a military hospital, nursed by the Spanish\nsisters of charity. The family of the Alcazars is buried in the crypt of\nthis church, and beautiful palms grow in the convent garden. In the old\nrefectory are some fine azulejos tiles and some good specimens of Raphael\nware.\n\nAs to diversions, Malaga offers but few resources. Those who like boating\nmay go out daily along the beautiful coast; but the rides are few, the\nground hard and dusty, and the \"rivi\u00e8re \u00e0 sec,\" like that at Nice, must be\ntraversed before any mountain expeditions could be reached. There is a\nbull-ring, as in every Spanish town, and occasionally the additional\nexcitement of elephants being used in the fights: but the bulls will rarely\nface them.\n\nAfter about a month, therefore, spent in this quiet little place, it was\ndecided to start for Granada, which promised to afford greater interest and\nvariety.\n\n\n  Granada.\n\nTaking leave rather sorrowfully of their many kind friends, and of the\nsisters of charity who had been their constant companions during their stay\nin Malaga, our travellers started one stormy evening, and found themselves\nonce more cooped up in one of those terrible diligences, and slowly\nascending the mountains at the back of the town. Their intention had been\nto go on horseback, riding by Velez-Malaga and the baths of Alhama; but the\nlate heavy rains had converted the mountain streams into torrents, and some\nof the party who attempted it were compelled to return. After ascending for\nabout three hours, leaving on their left the picturesque cemetery, with its\nfine cypresses, they came to a plateau 3000 feet above the sea, from whence\nthey had a magnificent view, the whole of Malaga and its bay being\nstretched out at their feet, the lights glistening in the town, and the\nmoon, breaking through the clouds, shedding a soft light over the sea-line,\nwhich was covered with tiny fishing-vessels. Beautiful aloes and cacti\nstarting out of the bold rocks on either side formed the foreground, while\na rapid river rushed and tumbled in the gorge below. But with this fine\npanoramic view the enjoyment of our travellers came to an end. When night\ncame on, and they had reached the highest and loneliest part of the bleak\nsierra, it began to pour with rain and blow a regular gale; the heavy mud\nwas dashed into their faces; the icy cold wind whistled through the broken\npanes and under the floor of the carriage, and froze them to the bone.\nThere was some difficulty about a relay of mules at the next stage, and so\nour party were left on an exposed part of the road without drivers or\nbeasts for more than an hour. Altogether, it was impossible to conceive a\nmore disagreeable journey; and it was therefore with intense joy that they\nfound themselves, after sixteen hours of imprisonment, at last released,\nand once more able to stretch their legs in the _Alameda_ of Granada.\nTired, hungry, dirty, and cold, a fresh disappointment here awaited them.\nAll the hotels were full (their letters ordering rooms had miscarried), and\nonly one tiny bedroom could be found in which they could take refuge, and\nscrape the mud off their clothes and hair. One of the party found her way\nto the cathedral; the rest held a council of war, and finally determined to\ntry their fate at the new \"Alhambra\" hotel outside the town, where an\napartment was to be had, the cold and wet of the season having deterred the\nusual visitors to this purely summer residence.\n{326}\nThey had every reason to congratulate themselves on this decision; for\nthough the cold was certainly great, the snow hanging still on all the\nhills around, and the house being unprovided with any kind of fire-places\nor stoves, still the cleanliness and comfort of the whole amply compensated\nfor these drawbacks, to say nothing of the immense advantage of being close\nto the Alhambra, that great object of attraction to every traveller who\nvisits Granada. The way up to it is very picturesque, but very steep. After\nleaving the wretched, narrow, ill-paved streets, which dislocate almost\nevery bone in your body when attempted on wheels, and passing by the Sala\nde la Audiencia and other fine public buildings, you arrive at an arched\ngateway, which at once brings you into a kind of public garden, planted\nwith fine English elms, and abounding in walks and fountains and seats, and\nin which the paths and drives, in spite of their precipitous character, are\ncarefully and beautifully kept by convict labor, under the superintendence\nof a body of park-keepers dressed in full Andalusian costume. The hotel is\nplaced on the very crest of the hill, overlooking the magnificent range of\nsnowy mountains to the right. To the left the first thing which strikes the\neye is the Torre de Justicia. Over the outer horse-shoe arch is carved an\nopen hand, upon the meaning of which the learned are divided; some saying\nit is an emblem of the power of God, others a talisman against the Evil\nEye. Over the inner arch is sculptured a key, which typified the power of\nthe Prophet over the gates of heaven and hell. A double gate protects this\nentrance, which no donkey may pass: in the recess is a very beautiful\nlittle picture, framed and glazed, of the Virgin and Child. Passing through\nthis arch, you come to an open \"plaza,\" out of which rise two towers; one\nhas been bought by an Englishman, who has converted the lower part of it\ninto his private residence. (Where shall we not find our ubiquitous\ncountry-men?) [Footnote 110]\n\n    [Footnote 110: This unexpected rencontre reminded one of our party of a\n    similar surprise, some years ago, in the mountains of the Tyrol. She\n    was riding with her husband, when they came on a very picturesque old\n    \"Schloss,\" in an out-of-the-way gorge of a mountain pass. Stopping to\n    look at it, and pushing open a half-open door in what appeared to be\n    only habitable part of the ruling, they came on a group of chubby-faced\n    English children, sitting around a table in their white pinafores,\n    eating an undeniably English tea; and were told by the nurse, in answer\n    to their inquiries, that the present owner of this Austrian Schloss was\n    a London tradesman, who brought his children over every year to spend\n    the summer--a most sensible arrangement, as the healthy bright looks of\n    his little ones testified.]\n\nThe other is called the Torre de la Vela, because on this watch-tower hangs\nthe bell which gives warning to the irrigators in the vega below. The view\nfrom hence is the most enchanting thing possible, commanding the whole\ncountry. Below lies Granada with its towers and sparkling rivers, the Darro\nand the Xenil. Beyond stretches the beautiful rich \"vega\" (or plain),\nstudded with villas and villages, and encircled by snowy mountains, with\nthe Sierra of Albama on one side, and the Gorge of Loja on the other.\nDescending the tower, and standing again in the \"plaza\" below, you see\nopposite to you a large ruined Doric palace, a monument of the bad taste of\nCharles V., who pulled down a large portion of the Moorish building to\nerect this hideous edifice, which, like most other things in Spain, remains\nunfinished. Passing through a low door to the right, our travellers were\nperfectly dazzled at the beauty which suddenly burst upon them. It is\nimpossible to conceive anything more exquisite than the Alhambra, of which\nno drawings, no Crystal Palace models, not even Washington Irving's\npoetical descriptions, give one the faintest idea. \"J'essaie en vain de\npenser: je ne peux que sentir!\" exclaimed the authoress of \"Les Lettres\nd'Espagne\" on entering; but the predominant feeling is one of regret for\nthe Moors, whose dynasty produced such marvels of beauty and of art.\n{327}\nEntering by the fish-pond \"patio,\" and visiting first the Whispering\nGallery, you pass through the Hall of the Ambassadors, and the Court of\nLions, out of which lead the Hall of the Abencerrages, and that of Justice,\nwith its two curious monuments and wonderful fretted roof, and then come to\nthe gem of the whole, the private apartments of the Moorish kings, with the\nrecessed bedroom of the king and queen, the boudoir and lovely latticed\nwindows overlooking the beautiful little garden of Lindaraja (the violets\nand orange-blossoms of which scented the whole air), and the exquisite\nbaths below. [Footnote 111] It is a thing to dream of, and exceeds every\nprevious expectation. Again and again did our travellers return, and always\ndiscovered some fresh beauties. The governor resides in a modernized corner\nof the building, not far from the mosque, which has suffered from the bad\ntaste of the Christian spoilers. He is not a good specimen of Spanish\ncourtesy, as, in spite of letters of introduction from the highest\nquarters, it was with very great difficulty that our party were admitted to\nsee anything beyond the portions of the building open to the general\npublic. At last, however, he condescended to find the keys of the Tower of\nthe Infantas, once the residence of the Moorish princesses whose tragical\nfate is so touchingly recorded by Washington Irving. It is a beautiful\nlittle cage, overlooking the ravine, with its fine aqueduct below, and rich\nin the delicate moresque carving of both ceilings and walls. Afterward,\ncrossing a garden, they came to the gate by which Boabdil left his palace\nfor the last time, and which was afterward, by his special request, walled\nup. The tower at this corner was mined and destroyed by the French. Our\nparty then descended to a little mosque lately purchased by Colonel ----,\nand beautifully restored. This completed the circuit of the Alhambra, which\nis girdled with walls and towers of that rich red-brown hue which stands\nout so beautifully against the deep blue sky, but the greater portion of\nwhich was ruthlessly destroyed by Sebastiani, at the time of his occupation\nof Granada.\n\n    [Footnote 111: Few have described this enchanting palace as well as the\n    French lady already quoted. She says, speaking of the feelings it calls\n    forth: \"J'aimerais autant \u00e9tre broy\u00e9e dans la gueule de ces jolis\n    monstres qui ont des nez en noeud de oravate, appel\u00e9s _Lions_ par\n    la gr\u00e2ce de Mahomet, que de te parier de l'Alhambra, tant cette\n    description est difficile. Les murailles ne sont que guipures d\u00e9licates\n    et compilqu\u00e9es: les plus hardies stalactites ne peuvent donner une id\u00e9e\n    des coupoles. Le tout est une merveille, un travail d'abeilles ou de\n    f\u00e9es. Les sculptures sont d'une d\u00e9licatesse ravissante, d'un go\u00fbt\n    parfait, d'une richesse qui vous fait songer \u00e0 tout ce que les contes\n    de f\u00e9es vous d\u00e9crivalent jadis \u00e0 l'heureux \u00e0ge o\u00f9 l'imagination a des\n    ailes d'or. H\u00e9las! la mienne n'a pius d'alle, elle est de plomb. Les\n    Arabes n'employaient que quatre couleurs: le bleu, le rouge, le noir et\n    l'or. Cette richesse, ces teintes vives, sont visibles encore partout.\n    Enfin, mon ami, ce n'est point un palais ceci: c'est la ville d'un\n    enchanteur!\"]\n\nThe restoration of this matchless palace has been undertaken by the present\nqueen, who has put it in the hands of a first-rate artist named Contreras;\nand this confidence has been well bestowed, for it is impossible to see\nwork executed in a more perfect manner, so that it is very difficult to\ntell the old portions from the new. If he be spared to complete it, future\ngenerations will see the Alhambra restored very nearly to its pristine\nbeauty. This gentleman makes exquisite models of different parts of the\nbuilding, done to a scale, which are the most perfect miniature fac-similes\npossible of the different portions of this beautiful palace, and a most\nagreeable memento of a visit to it. Our travellers purchased several, and\nonly regretted they had not chosen some of the same size, as they would\nmake charming panels for a cabinet or screen.\n\nIn the afternoon, the party started to see the cathedral, escorted by the\nkind and good-natured dean, who engaged the venerable mother of the \"Little\nSisters of the Poor\" to act as his interpreter, his Andalusian Spanish\nbeing utterly unintelligible to most of the party. The first feeling on\nentering is of unmixed disappointment. It is a pagan Greco-Roman building,\nvery much what our London churches are which were erected in the time of\nthe Georges. But it has one redeeming point--the Capilla de los Reyes,\ncontaining the wonderful monuments of Ferdinand and Isabella, and of Philip\nand Joan.\n{328}\nThe alabaster sepulchres of the former, wrought at Genoa by Peralta, are\nmagnificent, both in design and execution. Isabella's statue is especially\nbeautiful:\n\n                      In questa forma\n  Passa la bella donna, e par che dorma.\n\nThe faces are both portraits, and have a simple dignity which arrests the\nattention of the most unobservant. A low door and a few steep steps below\nthe monuments lead to their last resting-place. The royal coffins are of\nlead, lapped over, rude and plain (only the letter F distinguishes that of\nthe king), but they are genuine, and untouched since the day when their\nbodies, so justly revered by the Spaniards, were deposited in this humble\nvault. Among the treasures of this chapel are likewise shown the identical\nroyal standards used at the conquest of Granada; the kings sword; the\nqueen's own missal; their crosier and crown of silver-gilt; the picture of\nthe Virgin and Child by St. Luke, given to Isabella by Pope Innocent VIII.,\nand before which mass is said every 2d of January, the anniversary of the\ntaking of the city; and the portrait of the knight who, during the siege,\nrode into Granada, and affixed a taper and an \"Ave Maria\" on the very door\nof the principal mosque. In the sacristy is a \"Conception,\" exquisitely\ncarved, by Alonso Ca\u00f1o; an \"Adoration of the Kings,\" by Hemling, of Bruges;\na curious ring of Sixtus II.; a chasuble embroidered by Queen Isabella;\nsome very valuable relics and reliquaries, and a letter of St. Charles\nBorromeo, which the good-natured dean allowed one of the party to copy.\nBesides these treasures, and the Capilla de los Reyes, there is really\nnothing to look at in the cathedral, but one or two good painted glass\nwindows, some clustered columns, and a curious arch in the dome, which was\nmade to bend downward.\n\nThe following morning, after an early service at the Capuchin convent of\nSt. Antonio, one of the party started on an expedition with the sisters of\nthe town, and winding up a beautiful and steep ravine, in the holes and\ncaverns of which gypsies live and congregate, they came to a picturesque\nwood planted on the side of the mountain. Here they left their carriages,\nand scrambled up a zigzag path cut in the hill, with low steps or\n\"gradini,\" till they reached a plateau, on which stands both convent and\nchurch. The view from the terrace in front is the most magnificent which\ncan be conceived. On one side are the snowy mountains of the Sierra Nevada,\nwith a rapid river tumbling into the gorge below, the valleys being lined\non both sides with stone-pine woods, amid which little convents and\nvillages are clustered. On the other is the town of Granada, with its domes\nand towers; and sharply standing out on the rocks above the ruins, against\nthe bright blue sky, are the coffee-colored towers of the beautiful\nAlhambra. There is a Via Crucis up to this spot, the very crosses seeming\nto start up out of the rocks, which are clothed with aloes and prickly\npear; while in the centre of the terrace is a beautiful fountain and cross,\nshaded by magnificent cypresses. The church is built over some catacombs,\nwhere the bodies of St. Cecilia and eleven other martyrs were found, who\nsuffered in the persecution under Nero. The superior of this convent, now\nconverted into a college, is Don Jos\u00e9 Martin, a very holy man, though quite\nyoung, and revered by the whole country as a saint. He is a wonderful\npreacher, and by his austere and penitential life works miracles in\nbringing souls to God. His manner is singularly gentle, simple, and humble.\nHe kindly came to escort the party through the catacombs, and to show them\nthe relics. The sites of the different martyrdoms have been converted into\nsmall chapels or oratories: in one, where the victim perished by fire, his\nashes still remain. Little leaden tablets mark the different spots.\n{329}\nHere also is the great wooden cross of St. John of the Cross, from the foot\nof which he preached a sermon on the \"Love of God\" during his visit to\nGranada, which is said to have converted upward of three thousand people.\n\"I always come here to pray for a few minutes before preaching,\" said\nsimply Don Jos\u00e9 Martin, \"so that a portion of his spirit may rest upon me.\"\nAfter spending some time in this sanctuary, the party reluctantly retraced\ntheir steps, and returned to the town, where they had promised to visit the\ngreat hospital of San Juan de Dios. It is a magnificent establishment,\nentirely under the care of the Spanish sisters of charity of St. Vincent de\nPaul, with a \"patio\" or quadrangle in the centre, and double cloisters\nround, into which the wards open: all round the cloisters are frescoes\ndescribing different scenes in the life of the saint. The church is\ngorgeous in its decorations, and in a chapel above rests the body of San\nJuan, in a magnificent silver shrine, with his clothes, his hat, the basket\nin which he used daily to go and collect food for his sick and dying poor,\nand other like personalities.\n\nThis saint is immensely revered in Granada. He was the first founder of the\norder of Brothers of Charity, now spread all over Europe, beginning his\ngreat work, as all saints have done, in the humblest manner possible, by\nhiring a small house (now converted into a wayside oratory), in which he\ncould place four or five poor people, nursing them himself night and day,\nand only going out to beg, sell, and chop wood, or do anything to obtain\nthe necessary food and medicines for them. The archbishop, touched with his\nburning charity, assisted him to build a larger hospital. This house soon\nafter took fire, when San Juan carried out the sick one by one on his back,\nwithout receiving any hurt. It is thus that he is represented in the Statue\nGallery of Madrid. The people, inflamed by his loving zeal, and in\nadmiration of his great wisdom, humility, and prudence, came forward as one\nman to help him to build the present hospital, which remains to this day as\na monument of what may be done by one poor man of humble birth, if really\nmoved by the love of God. His death was caused by rescuing a man in danger\nof drowning from the sudden rising of the river, and then remaining, wet\nand worn out as he was, while caring for the family. He died on his knees,\nrepeating the \"Miserere,\" amidst the tears of the whole city, to whom, by\nthe special command of the archbishop, he gave his dying benediction. His\nfavorite saying was: \"Labor without intermission to do all the good works\nin your power while time is allowed you;\" and this sentence is engraved in\nSpanish on the door of the hospital.\n\nThe following day happened to be the anniversary of his death, or rather of\nhis birthday in heaven, when a touching and beautiful ceremonial is\nobserved. The archbishop and his clergy come to the hospital to give the\nholy communion to the sick in each ward. A procession is formed of the\necclesiastics and the sisters of charity, each bearing lighted tapers, and\nlittle altars are arranged at the end of each ward, beautifully decorated\nwith real flowers, while everything in and about the hospital is fresh and\nclean for the occasion. A touching incident occurred in the male ward on\nthat day, where one poor man lay in the last stage of disease. The\neagerness of his look when the archbishop drew near his bed will never be\nforgotten by those who were kneeling there; nor the way in which his face\nlighted up with joy when he received his Lord. The attendant sister bent\nforward to give him a cordial afterward: he shook his head, and turned his\nface away; he would have nothing after _that_. Before the last notes\nof the \"Pange Lingua\" or the curling smoke of the incense had died out of\nthe ward, all was over; but the smile on the lips and the peace on the face\nspoke of the rest he had found. Afterward there was a magnificent service\nin the church, and a dinner to all the orphans in the sisters' schools.\n\n{330}\n\nAnother interesting expedition made by our travellers was to the Carthusian\nconvent outside the town. Sebastiani desecrated and pillaged the wonderful\ntreasures it contained; but the tortoise-shell and mother-of-pearl doors\nand presses remain, reminding one of those in the Armenian church at\nJerusalem, at the shrine of St. James. There are also two statues of St.\nBruno, by Alonso Ca\u00f1o; wonderful for their life-like appearance and\nexpression, but still not equal to the incomparable one at Miraflores.\nThere are some beautiful alabaster and agate pillars still left in the\nchapel behind the high altar, which it is to be supposed were too heavy for\nthe spoilers to carry off. In the cloister are some curious frescoes of the\nmartyrdoms of the Carthusians, at the time of the Protestant Reformation,\nby Henry VIII. of England. The guide who accompanied our travellers said\nslyly to the only Catholic of the party: \"We had better not explain the\nsubject of these. Let them imagine they are some of the horrors of of the\nInquisition--_that always takes with English people!_\" Another picture\nwas startling both in subject and coloring; it was that of a dead doctor,\nmuch venerated in life, who, on a funeral panegyric being pronounced over\nhim, started from his coffin, exclaiming that \"his life had been a lie, and\nthat be was among the damned!\" The friar who showed our party over the now\ndeserted convent was like Fray Gabriel in Fernan Caballero's novel of La\nGaviota. When the rest of the Carthusians were turned out by the\ngovernment, he would not go. \"I was brought here as a little child,\" he\nsaid, \"and know no one in the world;\" and so he sat himself down by the\ncross and sobbed. They let him stay and keep the garden and the church, but\nhis life is over. \"The blood does not run in his veins--it walks!\" Like\nFray Gabriel, he will die kneeling before the Christ to whom he daily prays\nfor those who have so cruelly wronged and robbed him. The view from the\nterrace in front of the church is beautiful, overlooking the rich and\ncultivated plain of Soto de Roma, the property of the Duke of Wellington,\nwith the mountain of Parapanda above, the hills of Elvira, and the pass of\nMoelin, which forms the bridle-road to Cordova. The gardens also are\ndelightful: no wonder the poor monks clung to their convent home!\n\nIn the afternoon our travellers walked up to the Generalife, a villa now\nbelonging to the Panavicini family, a branch of the great Genoa house, but\nformerly the palace of the Sultana. Passing through vineyards and\nfig-trees, they arrived at the gate of the fairy garden, with its long\nstraight borders, fringed with myrtle, irrigated by the Darro, which is\ncarried in a little canal between the flower-beds, and with a beautiful\nopen colonnade overlooking the Alhambra, while a less formal garden sent up\na shower of sweet scents from the orange trees and jessamine trellises\nbelow. Through this colonnade they passed into the living-rooms, exquisite\nin their Moorish carvings and decorations. In one of them there are a\nnumber of curious though somewhat apocryphal portraits, including one of\nBoabdil, and of another Moorish king of Granada, with his wife and\ndaughter, who turned Christians, and were baptized at Santa F\u00e9. In the\nouter room are portraits of an the \"bluest blood\" of Granada. But the\ngardens form the greatest charm. The ground was covered with Neapolitan\nviolets and other spring flowers. Roses climbed over every wall, and\nmagnificent cypresses, and aloes in full flower, shaded the beds from the\nburning sun. The largest of these cypresses, called the Sultana, is twelve\nfeet in circumference, and to this tree the fatal legend of the fair Zoraya\nis attached. Behind these cypresses is a flight of Italian-looking steps,\nleading to another raised garden, full of terraces and fountains. On the\nsteep brow of the hill is an alcove, or summer-house, from whence the views\nover Granada and the Alhambra are quite enchanting, every arch being, as it\nwere, the setting or frame of a new and beautiful picture.\n{331}\nAbove this again, is a Moorish fortress, and a knoll called the Moors\nChair, from whence the last Moorish king is said to have sadly contemplated\nthe defeat of his troops by the better-disciplined armies of Ferdinand and\nIsabella grouped in the plains below. Scrambling still higher up, our\ntravellers came to the ruins of a chapel, and to some curious caverns, with\na peep into a wild gorge to the right leading into the very heart of this\nmountainous and little-visited region. Boabdil's sword, and other relics\nand pictures of the fifteenth century belonging to the Pallavicini family,\nare carefully preserved by their agent in their house in the town, and had\nbeen courteously shown to our travellers when they called to obtain\npermission to visit the villa. Returning toward their hotel, they thought\nthey would prolong their walk by visiting the great cemetery, or \"Campo\nSanto,\" which is a little to the north of the Generalife. Long files of\nmourners had been perpetually passing by their windows, the bier being\ncarried on men's shoulders, and uncovered, as in the East, so that the face\nof the dead was visible. Each bier was followed by the confraternity to\nwhich he or she belonged, chanting hymns and litanies as they wound up the\nlong steep hill from the town to the burial-ground. But all appearance of\nreverence, or even of decency, disappears at the spot itself, where the\ncorpse is stripped, taken out of its temporary coffin, and brutally cast\ninto a pit, which is kept open till filled, and then, with quicklime thrown\nin, closed up, and a fresh one opened to be treated in a similar manner. It\nis a disgrace to Catholic Spain that such scenes should be of daily\nrecurrence.\n\nAnother villa worth visiting in the neighborhood of the Alhambra is that of\nMadame Calderon, where the obliging French gardener took our travellers all\nover the gardens and terraces, the hot houses and aviaries, the artificial\nstreams and bridges, till they came to the great attraction of the place--\na magnificent arbor-vitae, or hanging cypress, falsely called a cedar of\nLebanon, which was planted by St. John of the Cross, this site being\noriginally occupied by a convent of St. Theresa's. The house is thoroughly\ncomfortable inside, with charming views over the \"vega,\" and altogether\nmore like an English house than anything else in Spain. If anyone wished to\nspend a delightful summer out of England, they could find no more agreeable\nretreat; perfect as to climate, and with the most enjoyable and beautiful\nexpeditions to be made in every direction. It is worth remembering, as\nMadame Calderon, being now a widow, is anxious to let her residence, having\nanother house in Madrid. There is a church close by, and a dairy attached\nto the garden, which is a rarity in Spain, and a public benefit to the\nvisitors at the Alhambra; and the clever and notable French wife of the\ngardener makes delicious butter, and sells both that and the cream in her\nmistress's absence--luxuries utterly unknown anywhere else in the\nPeninsula.\n\nBad weather and heavy snow (for they had visited Granada too early in the\nyear) prevented our travellers from accomplishing different expeditions\nwhich they had planned for the ascent of the Sierra Nevada, and visiting\nAlhama and Adea, and other interesting spots in the neighborhood. But they\ndrove one day to the Alameda, where all Granada congregates in the evening,\nand from whence the view looking on the mountains is beautiful.\n\nReturning by the Moorish gateway, called the Puerta de Monayma, they came\nto an open space, in the centre of which is a statue of the Virgin. Here\npublic executions used to take place, and here, in 1881, Mariana Pineda, a\nlady of high birth and great beauty, was strangled. A simple cross marks\nthe spot. Her crime was the finding in her house a flag, maliciously placed\nthere by a man whose addresses she had rejected.\n\n{332}\n\nFrom this \"plaza\" our travellers drove to the conflux of the rivers Darro\nand Xenil, which together form the Guadalquiver; and from thence proceeded\nto a mosque, where a tablet records the fact of its having been the place\nwhere the unfortunate king Boabdil gave the keys of the town to the\nChristian conquerors, Ferdinand and Isabella, and then himself rode slowly\nand sadly away from his beautiful palace by a mountain still called the\n\"Last Sigh of the Moor,\" immortalized both in verse and song. The\naccompanying ballad, with its plaintive wailing sound, still echoes in the\nhearts and on the lips of the people:\n\n  Ay de mi Alhama\n  Paseabase el Rey Moro\n  Por la ciudad de Granada\n  Desde la puerta de Elvira\n  Hasta la de Bibarrambla\n  Ay de mi Alhama!\n\nReturning, they visited the church of Las Angustias, where there is a\nwonderful but tawdrily dressed image of the Blessed Virgin, who is the\npatroness of the town. The French sisters of charity have a large orphanage\nand day-school here, established originally by Madame Calderon; but the\nsituation, in the street called Recogidas, is low and damp, and their\nchapel being almost underground, and into which no sun can ever enter,\nseriously affects the health of the sisters. Here, as everywhere, they are\nuniversally beloved and respected, and the present superior is one\neminently qualified, by her loving gentleness and evenness of temper, to\nwin the hearts of all around her. The dress of the people of Granada is\nsingularly picturesque: the women wear crape shawls of the brightest\ncolors, yellow, orange, or red, with flowers stuck jauntily on one side of\nthe head just above the ear; the men have short velvet jackets, waistcoats\nwith beautiful hanging silver buttons (which have descended from father to\nson, and are not to be bought except by chance), hats with large borders,\nturned up at the edge, red sashes round the waist, and gaiters of untanned\nleather, daintily embroidered, open at the knee, with hanging strips of\nleather and silver buttons. Over the whole, in cold weather, is thrown the\n\"capa,\" or large cloak, which often conceals the threadbare garments of a\nbeggar, but which is worn with the air of the proudest Spanish 'hidalgo.'\nThis evening, the last which our travellers were to spend in Granada, they\nhad a visit from the king and captain of the gypsies, a very remarkable\nman, between thirty and forty years of age, and a blacksmith by trade. He\nbrought his guitar, and played in the most marvellous and beautiful way\npossible: first tenderly and softly; then bursting into the wildest\nexultation; then again plaintive and wailing, ending with a strain of\ntriumph and rejoicing and victory which completely entranced his hearers.\nIt was like a beautiful poem or a love-tale, told with a pathos\nindescribable.\n{333}\nIt was a fitting last remembrance of a place so full of poetry and of the\npast, with a tinge in it of that sorrowful dark thread which always seems\nwoven into the tissue of earthly lives. Sorrowfully, the next morning, our\ntravellers paid their last visit to the matchless Alhambra, which had grown\nupon them at every turn. Then came the \"good-by\" to their good and faithful\nguide, _Bensaken_, that name so well known to all Granada tourists;\nand to the kind sisters of charity, whose white \"cornettes\" stood grouped\nround the fatal diligence which was to convey them back to Malaga. And so\nthey bade adieu to this beautiful city, with many a hope of a return on\nsome future day, and with a whole train of new thoughts and new pictures in\ntheir mind's eye, called forth by the wonders they had seen.\n\n------\n\n    Original.\n\n    Victor Cousin And His Philosophy.\n\n\nThe papers some months since announced the death at Paris of M. Victor\nCousin, the well-known eclectic philosopher and Orleanist statesman. The\nre\u00ebstablishment of the Imperial _r\u00e9gime_ in France had deprived him of\nhis political career, never much distinguished; and whatever interest he\nmay have continued to take in philosophy, he produced, as far as we are\naware, no new philosophical work after the revolution of July, 1830, except\nprefaces to new editions of his previous writings, or to other writers\nwhose works he edited, and some \"Rapports\" to the Academy, among which the\nmost notable is that on the unpublished works of Abelard, preceded by a\nvaluable introduction on the scholastic philosophy, which he afterward\npublished in a separate volume under the title of La Philosophie\nScholastique.\n\nM. Cousin was born at Paris in 1792, and was, the New American Cyclopedia\nsays, the son of a clock maker, a great admirer of Jean Jacques Rousseau,\nand he was, of course, brought up without any religious faith or culture,\nas were no small portion of the youth of France born during the Revolution.\nPierre Leroux maliciously accuses Cousin, after he had quarreled with him,\nof having been, when they were fellow-students together, a great admirer of\n_L'Ami du Peuple_, the journal in which Marat gained his infamous\nnotoriety. His early destination was literature, and he was always the\nlitt\u00e9rateur rather than the philosopher; but early falling under the\ninfluence of M. Royer-Collard, a stanch disciple of the Scottish school,\nfounded by Reid and closed by Sir William Hamilton, he directed his\nattention to the study of philosophy, became master of conferences in the\nNormal School, and, while yet very young, professor of the history of\nphilosophy in the Facult\u00e9 des Lettres at Paris. His course for 1818, and a\npart of is course for 1819 and 1820, have been published from notes taken\nby his pupils. Being too liberal to suit the government, he was suspended\nfrom his professorship in 1824, but was restored in 1828, and continued his\nlectures up to the Revolution of 1830. Since then he has made no important\ncontributions to philosophical science.\n\nThe greater part of M. Cousin's philosophical works are left as fragments\nor as unfinished courses.\n{334}\nHis course of 1829-30 ends with the sensist school, and the critical\nexamination of Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding. His translation of\nPlato was completed indeed; but the arguments or introductions, except to a\nfew of the Dialogues, and the Life of Plato promised, have never appeared.\nHe seems to have exhausted his philosophical forces at an early day, and\nafter publishing a new and revised edition of his previous writings, to\nhave devoted himself chiefly to literature, especially to the literary\nhistory of the first half of the seventeenth century, and the biography of\ncertain eminent ladies that played a very distinguished part in the\npolitical intrigues and insurrections of the period. It is doubtful if any\nman living had so thorough and minute a knowledge of the literature, the\nreligious controversies, the philosophy, the polities, and the biography of\nthe period from the accession of Louis XIII. to the end of the wars of the\nFronde, and the triumph of Mazarin over his enemies, as he possessed. His\nDuchesse de Longueville, Madame de Sabl\u00e9, Duchesse de Chevreuse, and Madame\nde Hautefort, and his history of the conclusion of the wars of the Fronde,\nare, as literary works, unrivalled, written with rare simplicity, purity,\ngrace, and delicacy of expression and style, and have an easy natural\neloquence and charm never surpassed by any writer even in the French\nlanguage. He has resuscitated those great dames of the seventeenth century,\nwho live, love, sin, repent, and do penance in his pages as they did in\nreal life. He seems, as a Parisian has said, to have really fallen in love\nwith them, and to have regarded each of them as his mistress, whose honor\nbe must defend at the risk of his life.\n\nThe French, we believe, usually count M. Villemain as the most perfect\nmaster of their beautiful language; but to our taste he was surpassed by\nCousin, if not in the delicacy of phrase, which only a Frenchman born or\nbred can appreciate, in all the higher qualities of style, as much as he\nwas in depth and richness of feeling, and variety and comprehensiveness of\nthought. Cousin was by far the greater man, endowed with the richer genius,\nand, as far as we can judge, equally polished and graceful as a writer. As\na philosophical writer, for beauty, grace, elegance, and eloquence he has\nhad no equal since Plato; and he wrote on philosophical subjects with ease\nand grace, charmed and interested his readers in the dryest and most\nabstruse speculations of metaphysics. His rhetoric was captivating even if\nhis philosophy was faulty.\n\nM. Cousin called his philosophical system eclecticism. He starts with the\nassumption that each philosophical school has its special point of view,\nits special truth, which the others neglect or unduly depress, and that the\ntrue philosopher weds himself to no particular school, but studies them all\nwith impartiality, accepts what each has that is positive, and rejects what\neach has that is exclusive or negative. He resolves all possible schools\ninto four--1st. The Sensist; 2d, the Idealistic--subjectivistic; 3d, the\nSceptical; 4th, the Mystic. Each of these four systems has its part of\ntruth, and its part of error. Take the truth of each, and exclude the\nerror, and you have true philosophy, and the whole of it. Truth is always\nsomething positive, affirmative; what then is the truth of scepticism,\nwhich is a system of pure negation, and not only affirms nothing, but\ndenies that anything can be affirmed? How, moreover, can scepticism, which\nis universal nescience, be called a system of philosophy? Finally, if you\nknow not the truth in its unity and integrity beforehand, how are you, in\nstudying those several systems, to determine which is the part of truth and\nwhich the part of error?\n\nThere is no doubt that all schools, as all sects, have their part of truth,\nas well as their part of error; for the human mind cannot embrace pure\nunmixed error any more than the will can pure unmixed evil; but the\neclectic method is not the method of constructing true philosophy any more\nthan it is the method of constructing true Christian theology.\n{335}\nThe Catholic acknowledges willingly the truth which the several sects hold;\nbut he does not derived it from them, nor arrived at it by studying their\nsystems. He holds it independently of them; and having it already in its\nunity and integrity, he is able, in studying them, to distinguish what they\nhave that is true from the errors they mix up with it. It must be the same\nwith the philosopher. M. Cousin was not unaware of this, and he finally\nasserted eclecticism rather as a method of historical verification, than as\nthe real and original method of constructing philosophy. The name was\ntherefore unhappily chosen, and is now seldom heard.\n\nEclecticism can never be a philosophy. All it can be is a method, and is,\nas Cousin held, a method of verification rather than  of construction.\nCousin's own method was not the eclectic, but avowedly the psychological;\nthat is, by careful observation and profound study of the phenomena of\nconsciousness, to attain to a real ontological science, or science of the\nsoul, of God, and nature. This method was severely criticised by Schelling\nand other German philosophers, and has been objected to by ontologists\ngenerally, as giving not a real ontology, but only a generalization. Dr.\nChanning called the God asserted by Cousin \"a splendid generalization\"--a\nvery just criticism, but perhaps not for the precise reason the eloquent\nUnitarian preacher assigned. Cousin does not maintain, theoretically at\nleast, that we can, by way of induction or deduction from purely\npsychological facts, attain to a real ontological order. His real error was\nin the misapplication of his method, which led him to deny what he calls\nnecessary and absolute ideas, and terms the idea of the true, the idea of\nthe beautiful, and the idea of the good, are being, and therefore God, and\nto represent them as the word of God--the precise error which, Gioberti\nrightly or wrongly maintains, was committed by Rosmini. It must be admitted\nthat Cousin is not on this point very clear, and that he often speaks of\nontology as an induction from psychology, in which case the God he asserts\nwould be, for the reason Channing supposes, only a generalization.\n\nBut we think it is possible to clear him from this charge, so far as his\nintention went, and to defend the psychological method as he professed to\napply it. He professed to attain to ontology from the phenomena of\nconsciousness, or the facts revealed to consciousness; but he labors long\nand hard, as does every psychologist who admits ontology at all, to show,\nby a careful analysis and classification of these phenomena or facts, that\nthere are among them some, at least, which are not derived from the soul\nitself, which do not depend on it, and do actually extend beyond the region\nof psychology, and lead at once into the ontological order. In other words,\nhe claims to find in his psychological observation and analysis real\nontological facts. It is from these, not from purely psychological\nphenomenon, that he professes to rise to ontology. So understood, what is\ncalled the psychological method is strictly defensible. Every philosopher\ndoes and must begin by the analysis of thought, that is, in the language of\nCousin, the fact of consciousness, and there is no other way possible. That\nthe ideal formula enters into every one of my thoughts is not a fact that I\nknow without thought, and it can be determined only by analyzing the\nthought one thinks, that is, the fact of consciousness. The quarrel here\nbetween the psychologists and the ontologists is quite unnecessary.\n\nWhat is certain, and this is all the ontologist need assert, or, in fact,\ncan assert, that ontology is neither an induction nor a deduction from\npsychological data. God is not, and cannot be, the generalization of our\nown souls.\n{336}\nBut it does not follow from this that we do not think that which is God,\nand that it is from thought we do and must take it. We take it from thought\nand by thinking. What is objected to in the psychologists is the assumption\nthat thought is a purely psychological or subjective fact, and that from\nthis psychological or subjective fact we can by way of induction attain to\nontological truth. But as we understand M. Cousin, and we studied his works\nwith some care thirty or thirty-five years ago, and had the honor of his\nprivate correspondence, this he never pretends to do. What he claims is\nthat in the analysis of consciousness we detect a class of facts or ideas\nwhich are not psychological or subjective, but really ontological, and do\nactually carry us out of the region of psychology into that of ontology.\nThat his account of these facts or ideas is to be accepted as correct or\nadequate we do not pretend, but that he professes to recognize them and\ndistinguish them from purely psychological facts is undeniable.\n\nThe defect or error of M. Cousin on this point was in failing, as we have\nalready observed, to identify the absolute or necessary ideas he detects\nand asserts with God, the only _ens necessarium et reale_, and in\nfailing to assert their objectivity to the whole subject, and in presenting\nthem only as objective to the human personality. He never succeeded in\ncutting himself wholly loose from the German nonsense of a\nsubjective-object or objective-subject, and when he had clearly proved an\nidea to be objective to the reflective reason and the human personality, he\ndid dare assert it to be objective in relation to the whole subject. It was\nimpersonal, but might be in a certain sense subjective, as Kant maintained\nwith regard to the categories. There always seemed to remain in his mind\nsome confusion between the subject and object, and hence his translator in\nSpecimens of Foreign Standard Literature, never ventures to translate _le\nmoi et le non-moi_, subject and object, or the soul and the world, but\nintroduces into the language such barbarisms as the _me_ and the\n_not-me_. Indeed, at the time those Specimens were published, there\nwere few, if any, of the scholars of the modern Athens that understood or\ncould be made to understand the real distinction between objective and\nsubjective; and we observed the other day, in looking over the\n_Einleitung_ of a German professor, that he speaks of the\nobjective-object, the objective-subject, the subjective-object, and the\nsubjective-subject.\n\nIt is very easy to understand why Kant should assert objective-subjective,\nfor he held that the categories are necessary, irresistible, and\nindestructible forms of the subject, but independent of the human will or\npersonality, or of proper human activity, nay, the very conditions of that\nactivity, imposed on us not by our will, but by the very constitution all\nof our intellectual nature. But why Cousin should have hesitated to assert\nthe complete disjunction between subject and object in thought is what we\nare unable to explain. He maintains strenuously that the object is distinct\nfrom the personality of the subject, or that it is always, in his own\nlanguage, _le-non-moi_, but not that it is distinct from the whole\nsoul. He  distinguishes the subject between personal activity and\nimpersonal. The personal is subjective, the impersonal is objective, but\nobjective in relation to what? To the personal only. There is, no doubt,\nthe distinction he asserts, and it is recognized by all our theologians in\ntheir distinction between _actus humanus_ and _actus hominis_.\nThe _actus humanus_ is an act of free will, the _actus hominis_\nis an involuntary act; but both are acts of the subject, man. All action of\nman, whether personal or impersonal, voluntary or involuntary, is\nsubjective, but for involuntary acts he is not held morally accountable.\n\n{337}\n\nThis same failure to mark the real distinction between subjective and\nobjective, and making it simply the distinction between personal and\nimpersonal, _le moi_ and _le non-moi_, has greatly deprecated the\nvalue in his philosophy of the distinction M. Cousin notes between\nintuition and reflection. According to him they are but two modes of the\nactivity of one in the same reason--which reason, he asserts is our faculty\nof intelligence. Reason, he says, is our only faculty of knowing, by which\nwe know all that we do know, whatever the sphere or object of our\nknowledge. Reason, then, is subjective, and consequently so are all its\nmodes of activity. Intuition is as subjective as reflection, and hence the\ndistinction between intuition and reflections, really so important when\nrightly understood, says nothing in favor of the objectivity of what M.\nCousin calls absolute or necessary ideas. It is in his philosophy simply a\ndistinction between personal and impersonal, between the spontaneous\nactivity and the reflective of the same subject; yet it is on this very\ndistinction that he bases the validity of his ontology and his whole\nmetaphysical system. By it he explains genius, inspiration, revelation, and\nreligious faith. These are operations of the spontaneous reason, and divine\nbecause the activity of the spontaneous reason is not personal. In this\nway, he legitimates all the religions of all ages and nations. He places\nprophetic and apostolic inspiration and the inspiration of genius in the\nsame category, and resolves them all, in the last analysis, into what we\ncommonly called enthusiasm. But as reason, whether personal or impersonal,\nis subjective, a faculty of the human soul, it is not easy to see why its\nspontaneous activity should be more divine or authoritative then its\nreflective activity. Does M. Cousin hold with the Arabs that the ravings of\nthe maniac are divine inspirations?\n\nCousin seems to us never to have clearly understood the real character of\nthe distinction between intuition and reflection, on which he rightly\ninsists. Intuition is impersonal, divine, infallible, authoritative, he\nmaintains, while reflection, partaking of the imperfections and pettiness\nof our own personality, is individual, fallible, and without authority,\nsave as supported by intuition. All that we ever do or can know is given us\nprimarily in intuition, and what is so given constitutes the common sense,\nthe common faith or belief of the race. There is less, but there can never\nbe more, in reflection than in intuition. The difference between the two is\nthe difference between _seeing_ and _beholding_. I see what is\nbefore me, but to behold it I look. I look that I may determine what it is\nI see. But it is clear from this illustration that the intuition is as much\nthe act of the subject as is the reflection. The only difference between\nthem is that asserted by Leibnitz between simple perception and\napperception. In simple perception I perceive all the objects before me,\nwithout noting or distinguishing them; in apperception I note that it is I\nwho perceive them, and distinguish them both from myself and from one\nanother. The intuition is _\u00e0 posteriori_, and is no synthetic judgment\n_\u00e0 priori_, as Kant terms what must precede experience in order to\nrender experience possible.\n\nNor is it true to say that all our knowledge is given in the primitive\nintuition. What is given in the primitive intuition is simply the ideal,\nself-evident truths, as say some, first principles of all science, which\nare at the same time the first principles of all reality, and could not be\nthe first principles of science if they were not the first principles of\nreality, say others. Even they who assert that the ideal formula, _Ens\ncreat existentias_, is intuitive, never pretend that anything more than\nthe ideal element of thought or experience is intuitive. The ideal formula\nis simply the scientific reduction of the categories of Aristotle and Kant\nto three, and their identification with reality; that is, their reduction\nto being, existence, and the creative act of being, which is the real nexus\nbetween them. These three categories must be given intuitively, or _\u00e0\npriori_, because without them the intelligence is not constituted, and\nno science, no experience, is possible.\n{338}\nBut in them, while the principles of all science are given, no knowledge or\napprehension of particular things is given. The intuition constitutes, we\nwould say creates, the faculty of intelligence, but all science is acquired\neither by the exercise of that faculty or by divine revelation addressed to\nit.\n\nReduced to its proper character as asserted by M. Cousin, intuition is\nempirical, and stands opposed not to reflection, but to discursion, and is\nsimply the immediate and direct perception of the object without the\nintervention of any process, more or less elaborate, of reasoning. This is,\nindeed, not an unusual sense of the word, perhaps its more common sense,\nbut it is a sense that renders the distinction between intuition and\nreflection of no importance to M. Cousin, for it does not carry him out of\nthe sphere of the subject, or afford any basis for his ontological\ninductions. He has still the question as to the objectivity and reality of\nthe ideal to solve, and no recognized means of solving it. His ontological\nconclusions, therefore, as a writer in The Christian Examiner told him as\nlong ago as 1836, rest simply on the credibility of reason or faith in its\ntrustworthiness, which can never be established, because it is assumed that\nto the operation of reason no objective reality is necessary, since the\nobject, if impersonal, may for aught that appears be included in the\nsubject. Notwithstanding his struggles and efforts of all sorts, we think,\ntherefore, that it must be conceded that Cousin remained in the sphere of\npsychology, and that the facts the study and analysis of consciousness gave\nhim, have in his system no ontological value, for he fails to establish\ntheir real objectivity. His passage from psychology is a leap over a gulf\nby main strength, not a regular dialectic passage, which he professes to\nhave found, or which he promises to provide, and which the true analysis of\nthought discloses.\n\nM. Cousin professes to have reduced the categories of Kant and Aristotle to\ntwo, substance and cause, or substance and phenomenon. But, as he in fact\nidentifies cause with substance, declaring substance to be substance only\nin so much as it is cause, and cause to be cause only in so much as it is\nsubstance, he really reduces them to the single category of substance,\nwhich you may call indifferently substance or cause. But though every\nsubstance is intrinsically and essentially a cause, yet, as it may be\nsomething more than cause, it is not necessary to insist on this, and it\nmay be admitted that he recognizes two categories. Under the head of\nsubstance he ranges all that is substantial, or that pertains to real and\nnecessary being, and under the head of cause the phenomenal, or the effects\nof the causative action of substance. He says he understands by substance\nthe universal and absolute substance, the universal, necessary, and real\nbeing of the theologians, and by phenomena not mere modes or appearances of\nsubstance, but finite and relative substances, and calls them phenomena\nonly in opposition to the one absolute substance. They are created or\nproduced by the causative action of substance. If this has any real\nmeaning, he should recognize three categories, as in the ideal formula,\n_Ens creat existentias_, that is, being, existence, or creature, and\nthe creative act of being, the real nexus between substance or being and\ncontingent existences, for it is that which places them and binds them to\nthe creator. In the ideal formula the categories are all reduced to three,\nwhich really include them all and in their real relation. Whatever there is\nto be known must be arranged under one or another of the three terms of the\nformula, for whatever is conceivable must be being, the creative act of\nbeing, or the product of that act, that is to say, existences. The ideal\nformula is complete, for it asserts in their logical relation the first\nprinciples of all the knowable (_omne scibile_) and all the real\n(_omne reale_), and of all the knowable because of all the real, for\nwhat is not real is not knowable. M. Cousin's reduction to substance and\ncause, or being and phenomena, besides being not accurately expressed, is\nunscientific and defective.\n\n{339}\n\nWe do not think M. Cousin ever intended to deny the creative act of being,\nor the reality of existences, or what he calls phenomena, but he includes\nthe act in his conception of substance. God is in his own intrinsic nature,\nhe maintains, causative or creative, and cannot, therefore, not cause or\ncreate. Hence, creation is necessary. Being causative in his essence,\nessentially a cause, and cause being a cause only inasmuch as it causes or\nis actually a cause, God is, if we may so speak, forced to create, and to\nbe continuously creating, by the intrinsic and eternal necessity of his own\nbeing. This smacks a little of Hegelianism, which teaches that God perfects\nor fills out his own being, or realizes the possibilities of his own\nnature, in creating, and arrives at self-consciousness first in man--a\ndoctrine which our Boston transcendentalists embodied in their favorite\naphorism, \"In order to be you must do\"--as if without being it is possible\nto do, as if imperfection could make itself perfection, or anything by\nitself alone could make itself more than it is!\n\nBut the doctrine that substance is essentially cause, and must from\nintrinsic necessity cause in the sense of creating, is not tenable. We are\naware that Leibnitz, a great name in philosophy, defines substance to be an\nactive force, a _vis activa_, but we do not recollect that he anywhere\npretends that its activity necessarily extends beyond itself. God is _vis\nactiva_, if you will, in a supereminent degree; he is essentially\nactive, and would be neither being nor substance if he were not; he is, as\nsay Aristotle and the schoolmen, most pure act; and hence the theologians\ndiscover in him a reason for the eternal generation of the Son, and the\neternal procession of the Holy Ghost, or why God is necessarily indivisible\nTrinity; but nothing in this implies that he must necessarily act _ad\nextra_, or create. He acts eternally from the necessity of his own\ndivine nature, but not necessarily out of the circle of his own infinite\nbeing, for he is complete in himself, the plenitude of being, and always\nand everywhere suffices for himself, and therefore for his own activity.\nCreation, or the production of effects exterior to himself, is not\nnecessary to the perfection of his activity, adds and can add nothing to\nhim, as it does and can take nothing from him. Hence, though we cannot\nconceive of him without conceiving him as infinitely, eternally, and\nessentially active, we can conceive of him as absolute substance or being\nwithout conceiving him to be necessarily acting or creating _ad\nextra_.\n\nM. Cousin evidently confounds the interior act of the divine being with his\nexterior acts, or acts _ad extra_, or creative acts. God being most\npure act, says the eclectic philosopher, he must be infinitely active, and\nif infinitely active he must develop himself in creation; therefore,\ncreation is necessary, and God cannot but create. This denies while it\nasserts that God is in himself most pure act, and assumes that his nature\nhas possibilities that can be realized only in external acts. It makes the\ncreation necessary to the perfection of his being, and assumes either that\nhe is not in himself _ens perfectissimum_, or most perfect being, or\nthat the creation, the world, or universe, is itself God; that is, the\nconception of God as most perfect being includes both substance and cause,\nboth being and phenomenon. Hence, with the contradiction of which M. Cousin\ngives more than one example, and which no pantheistic philosopher does or\ncan escape, in asserting creation to be necessary, he declares it to be\nimpossible; for the phenomena substantially considered are God himself,\nindistinguishable from him, and necessary to complete our conception of him\nas absolute substance, or most perfect being.\n\n{340}\n\nIn the preface to the third edition of his Philosophical Fragments, M.\nCousin says the expression, \"Creation is necessary,\" is objectionable, as\nirreverent, and appearing to imply that God in creating is not free, and he\nwillingly consents to retract it. But we cannot find that he does retract\nit, and, if he retracts the expression, he nowhere retracts the thought. He\ndenies that he favors a system of fatalism, and labors hard to prove that\nthough God cannot but create, yet that in creating he is free. God, he\nsays, must act according to his own essential nature, and cannot act\ncontrary to his own wisdom and goodness; yet in acting he acts freely.\nThere is a distinction between liberty and free will. Free will is liberty\naccompanied by deliberation and struggles between opposite motives and\ntendencies. In God there can be no hesitancy, no deliberation, no struggle\nof choice between good and evil. Yet is he none the less free for that.\nThere are sublime moments when the soul acts spontaneously, with terrible\nenergy, without any deliberation. Is the soul in these sublime moments\ndeprived of liberty? The saint, when, by long struggles and severe\ndiscipline, he has overcome all his internal enemies, and henceforth acts\nright spontaneously, without deliberating--is he less free than he who is\nstill in the agony of the struggle, or are his acts less meritorious? Is\nthe liberty of God taken away by denying that he is free to act contrary to\nhis nature?\n\nWhether the distinction here asserted between liberty and free will is\nadmissible or not, or whether all that is alleged be true or much of it\nonly error, we pass over, as the discussion of the question of liberty\nwould lead further than we can now go; but in all he says he avoids the\nreal question at issue. Certainly, there can be no hesitancy on the part of\nGod, no interior struggle as to choice between good and evil, no\ndeliberation as to what he shall do or not do; nothing that implies the\nleast possible imperfection can be in him. Certain, again, is it that God\nis not free to alter his own nature, to change his own attributes, or to\nact contrary to them, to the eternal essences of things, or to his own\neternal ideas. But that is not the question. The real question is, Is be\nfree to create or not create at his own will and pleasure? Among the\ninfinite number of contingents possible, and all according with his own\nessential attributes, is he free to select such as he chooses, and at his\nown will and pleasure give them existence? This is the only question he had\nto answer, and this question he studiously avoids, and fails, therefore, to\nshow that they are wrong who accuse him of asserting creation as the\nnecessary and not the free act of God. The charge of asserting universal\nfatalism and pantheism he therefore fails to meet. He fails to vindicate\nthe liberty of God, and therefore, though he asserts it, the liberty of\nman. All pantheism is fatalistic, and the doctrine of Spinoza is not more\ndecidedly pantheistic than the system adopted and defended by Cousin.\n\nWe are far from believing that M. Cousin thought himself a pantheist, for\nwe do not think he ever understood his own system. He was more than most\nmen the dupe of words, and, though not destitute of philosophical genius,\nphilosophy was never his natural vocation, any more than it was his\noriginal destination. He was always, as we have said, the litt\u00e9rateur\nrather than the philosopher. Much allowance should also, no doubt, be made\nfor the unsettled state of philosophy in France when he became, under\nRoyer-Collard, master of conferences in the Normal School of Paris, and the\nconfused state of philosophical language that was then in use. Throughout\nhis whole ontology, he is misled by taking the word substance instead of\n_ens_ or being. He says that he understands by substance, when he\nasserts, as he does, that there is only one substance, what the fathers and\ndoctors of the church mean by the one supreme, necessary, absolute, and\neternal being, the _Ego sum Qui sum_, I am that I am, of Exodus, the\nname under which God revealed himself to Moses. This is an improper use of\nthe word.\n{341}\nNo doubt being is substance, or substantial, but the two terms are not\nequivalents. Being has primary reference to that which is, as opposed to\nthat which is not, or nothing; substance is something, and so far coincides\nwith being, but something in opposition to attribute, mode, or accident, or\nsomething capable of supporting attributes, modes, or accidents. Being is\nabsolute in and of itself, and therefore strictly speaking one, and it is\nonly in a loose sense that we speak of beings in the plural number, or call\ncreatures beings. There is and can be but one only being, God, for he only\ncan say, _Ego sum Qui sum_, and whatever existences there may be\ndistinguished from him have their being not in themselves, but in him,\naccording to what St. Paul says, \"in him we live, and move, and have our\nbeing: in _ipso vivimus, et movemur, et sumus._\" There is in this view\nnothing pantheistic, for being is complete in itself and sufficient for\nitself. Consequently, there can be nothing distinguishable from being\nexcept placed by the free creative act of being, that is, creation or\ncreatures. The creature is not being, but it holds from being by the\ncreative act, and may be and is a substance, distinct from the divine\nsubstance. Being is one, substances may be manifold. Hence, in the ideal\nformula, the first term or category is _ens_, not _substans_ or\n_substantia_.\n\nCousin, misled by Descartes and Spinoza, and only imperfectly acquainted\nwith the scholastic philosophy, adopts the term substance instead of being,\nand maintains sturdily, from first to last, that there is and can be but\none substance. Whence it follows that all not in that one substance is\nunsubstantial and phenomenal, without attributes, modes, or activity.\nCreatures may have their being in God and yet be substances and capable of\nacting from their own centre as second causes; but, if there is only one\nsubstance, they cannot themselves be substances in any sense at all, and\ncan be only attributes, modes, or phenomena of the one only substance, or\nGod. God alone is in himself their substance and reality, and their\nactivity is really his activity. By taking for his first category substance\ninstead of _ens_ or being, M. Cousin found himself obliged virtually\nto deny the second. He says he calls the second category phenomena, only in\nopposition to the one universal substance, that he holds them to relative\nor finite substances. This shows his honorable intentions, but it cannot\navail him, for he says over and over again that there is and can be but one\nsubstance. Either substance is one and one only, he says formally, or it is\nnothing. The unity of substance is vital in his system, and unity of\nsubstance is the essential principle, of pantheism. He himself defines\nsubstance as that which exists in itself and not in another.\n\nM. Cousin say pantheism is the divinization of nature, or nature taken in\nits totality as God. But this is sheer atheism or naturalism, not\npantheism. The essence of pantheism is in the denial of substantial\ncreation or the creation of substances. The pantheist can, in a certain\nmanner, even admit creation, the creation of modes or phenomena, and there\nare few pantheists who do not assert as much. The test is as to the\ncreation of substance, or existences that can support attributes, modes, or\naccidents of their own, instead of being simply attributes, modes, or\naccidents of the one substance, and thus capable of acting from their own\ncentre as proper second causes. He who denies the creation of such\nexistences is a pantheist, and he who affirms it is a theist and no\npantheist, however he may err in other matters. Had M. Cousin understood\nthis, he would have seen that he had not escaped the error of Spinoza. With\nonly one substance, it is impossible to assert the creation of substances.\nThe substance of the soul and of the world, if there is only one substance,\nis God, and they are only phenomenal or mere appearances; the only activity\nin the universe is that of God; and what we call our acts are his acts.\n{342}\nWhatever is done, whether good or evil, he does it, not only as _causa\neminens_ or _causa causarum_, but as direct and immediate actor.\nThe moral consequences of such a doctrine are easy to be seen, and need not\nbe dwelt upon.\n\nNo doubt M. Cousin, when repelling the charge of pantheism preferred\nagainst him, on the ground of his maintaining that there is only one\nsubstance, thought he had said enough in saying that he used the word\nphenomena in the sense of finite or relative substances; but if there is\nonly one substance, how can there be any finite and relative substances?\nAnd he, also, should have considered that his use of the word phenomena was\nthe worst word he could have chosen to convey the idea of substance,\nhowever finite, for it stands opposed to substance. He says _le moi_\nand _le non-moi_ are in relation to substance phenomenal. Who from\nthis could conclude them to be themselves substances? He says he could not\nmaintain that they are modes or appearances of substance only, because he\nmaintains that they are forces, causes. But it sometimes happens to a\nphilosopher to be in contradiction with himself, and always to the\npantheist, because pantheism is supremely sophistical and\nself-contradictory. It admits of no clear, consistent, logical statement.\nBesides, no man can always be on his guard, and when his system is false,\nthe force of truth and his good sense and just feeling will often get the\nbetter of his system. He has, indeed, said the soul (_le moi_) and the\nworld (_le non-moi_) are forces, causes; but he has also said, as his\nsystem requires him to say, that their substantial activity is the activity\nof the one only substance, which is God.\n\nIt were easy to justify these criticisms by any number of citations from M.\nCousin's several works, but it is not necessary, for we are attempting\nneither a formal exposition nor a formal refutation of his system; we are\nmerely pointing out some of his errors and mistakes, for the benefit of\nyoung and ingenuous students of philosophy, who need to be shown what it is\nnecessary to shun on the points taken up. Most, if not all, of M. Cousin's\nmistakes and errors arose from his having considered the question of method\nbefore he had settled that of principles. He says a philosopher's whole\nphilosophy is in his method. Tell me what is such or such a philosopher's\nmethod, and I will tell you his philosophy. But this is not true, unless by\nmethod he means both principles and method taken together. Method is the\napplication of principles, and presupposes them, and till they are\ndetermined it is impossible to determine the method to be adopted or\npursued. The human mind has a method given it in its very constitution, and\nwe cannot treat the question of method till we have ascertained the\nprinciples of that constitution. Principles are not found or obtained by\nthe exercise of our faculties, because without them the mind can neither\noperate nor even exist. Principles are and must be given by the creator of\nthe mind itself. To treat the question of method before we have ascertained\nwhat principles are thus given, is to proceed in the dark and to lose our\nway.\n\nUndoubtedly, every philosopher must begin the construction of his\nphilosophy by the analysis of thought, either as presented him in\nconsciousness or as represented in language, or both together. This is a\nmental necessity. Since philosophy deals only with thought or what is\npresented in thought, its first step must be to ascertain what are the\nelements of thought. So far as this analysis is psychological, philosophy\nbegins in psychology; but whether what is called the psychological method\nis or is not to be adopted, we cannot determine till we have ascertained\nthe elements, and ascertained whether they are all psychological or not. If\non inquiry it should turn out that in every thought there is both a\npsychological and an ontological element given simultaneously and in an\nindissoluble synthesis, it is manifest that the exclusively psychological\nmethod would lead only to error.\n{343}\nIt would leave out the onto logical element, and be unable to present in\nits true character even the psychological; for, if the psychological\nelement in the real order and in thought exists only in relation with the\nontological, it can be apprehended and treated in its true character only\nin that relation. Whether such be the fact or not, how are we to determine\ntill we know what are the principles alike of all the knowable and of all\nthe real--that is, have determined the categories?\n\nThe error of the psychological method is not that it asserts the necessity\nof beginning our philosophizing with the analysis of thought, or what M.\nCousin calls, not very properly, the fact of consciousness, but in\nproceeding to study the facts of the human soul, as if man were an isolated\nexistence, and the only thing existing; and after having observed and\nclassified these facts, either stopping with them, as does Sir William\nHamilton, or proceeding by way of induction, as most psychologists do, to\nthe conclusion of ontological principles--an induction which both Sir\nWilliam Hamilton and Schelling have proved, in their criticisms of Cousin's\nmethod, is invalid, because no induction is valid that concludes beyond the\nfacts or particulars from which it is made. The facts being all\npsychological, nothing not psychological can be concluded from them. Cousin\nfeels the force of this criticism, but, without conceding that his method\nis wrong or defective, seeks to avoid it by alleging that among the facts\nof consciousness are some which, though revealed by consciousness or\ncontained in thought, are some which are not psychological, and hence\npsychology leads of itself not by way of induction, but directly, to\nontology. The answer is pertinent, for if it be true that there is an\nontological element in every thought, the analysis of thought discloses it.\nBut, hampered and blinded by his method, Cousin fails, as we have seen, to\ndisengage a really ontological element, and in his blundering explanation\nof it deprives it of all real ontological character. His God is\nanthropomorphous, when not a generalization or a pure abstraction. What\ndeceives the exclusive psychologists, and makes them regard their\ninductions of ontology from psychological facts as valid, is the very\nimportant fact that there are no exclusively psychological facts; and in\ntheir psychology, though not recognized by them as such, and according to\ntheir method ought not to be such, there are real ontological\nelements--elements which are not psychological, and without which there\ncould be no psychological elements. These elements place us directly in\nrelation with the ontological reality, and the mistake is in not seeing or\nrecognizing this fact, and in assuming that the ontological reality,\ninstead of being given, as it is, intuitively, is obtained by induction\nfrom the psychological. Ontology as an induction or a logical conclusion is\nsophistical and false; as given intuitively in the first principles of\nthought, it is well founded and true. The mistake arises from having\nattempted to settle the question of method before having settled the\nquestion of principles. The simple fact is that the soul is not the only\nexistence, nor an isolated existence. It exists and operates only in\nrelation with its creator and upholder, with the external world, and with\nother men or society, so that there are and can be no purely psychological\nfacts. The soul severed from God, or the creative act of God, cannot live,\ncannot exist, but drops into the nothing it was before it was created.\nPrinciples are given, not found or obtained by our own activity, for, as we\nhave said, the mind cannot operate without principles. The principles, as\nmost philosophers tell us, are self-evident, or evidence themselves. If\nreal principles, they are and must be alike the principles of being and of\nknowing, of science and reality. They must include in their real relations\nboth the psychological and the ontological. As the psychological does not\nand cannot exist without the ontological, and, indeed, not without the\ncreative act of the ontological, science is possible only on condition that\nthe ontological and the psychological, as to their ideal principles, are\nintuitively given, and given in their real synthesis, as it has been\nabundantly shown they are given in the ideal formula.\n{344}\nThe ontological and psychological being given intuitively and\nsimultaneously in their real relation, it follows necessarily that neither\nthe exclusively psychological method nor the exclusively ontological method\ncan be accepted, and that the method must be synthetic, because the\nprinciples themselves are given in their real synthesis. Clearly, then, the\nprinciples must determine the method, not the method the principles. It is\nnot true, then, to say that all one's philosophy is in one's method, but\nthat it is all in one's principles. If M. Cousin had begun by ascertaining\nwhat are the principles of thought, necessarily asserted in every thought\nand without which no thought is possible, he could never have fallen into\nhis pantheism, which every thought repudiates, and which cannot even be\nasserted without self-contradiction, because in every thought there is\ngiven as essential to the very existence of thought the express\ncontradictory of pantheism of every form.\n\nM. Cousin professes to be able, from the method a philosopher follows in\nphilosophizing, to foretell his philosophy; but although we would speak\nwith the greatest respect of our former master, from whom we received no\nlittle benefit, we must say that we have never met a man, equally learned\nand equally able, so singularly unhappy in explaining the systems of the\nvarious schools of philosophy of which he professes to give the history. We\ncannot now call to mind a single instance in which he has seized and\npresented the kernel of the philosophical system he has undertaken to\nexplain. He makes the Theaetetus of Plato an argument against the sensists,\nor the doctrine of the origin of all our ideas in sensation--when one has\nbut to read that Dialogue to perceive that what Plato is seeking to prove\nis that the knowledge of the sensible, which is multiple, variable, and\nevanescent, is no real science at all. Plato is not discussing at all the\nquestion of how we know, but what we must know in order to have real\nscience. Cousin's exposition of what he calls the Alexandrian theodicy, or\nof neoplatonism, is, notwithstanding he had edited the works of Proclus, a\nmarvel of misapprehension alike of the Alexandrian doctrine and of\nChristian theology. He describes with a sneer the scholastic philosophy as\nbeing merely \"a commentary on the Holy Scriptures and texts from the\nfathers.\" He edited the works of Descartes, but never understood more of\nthat celebrated philosopher than enough to imbibe some of his worst errors.\nHe has borrowed much, directly or indirectly, from Spinoza, but never\ncomprehended his system of pantheism, as is evident from his judgment that\nSpinoza erred only in being too devout and too filled and penetrated with\nGod!\n\nHe misapprehends entirely Leibnitz's doctrine of substance, as we have\nalready seen. His own system is in its psychological part borrowed chiefly\nfrom Kant, and in its ontological part from Hegel, neither of whom has he\never understood. He has the errors of these two distinguished Germans\nwithout their truths or their logical firmness. And perhaps there was no\nsystem of philosophy, of which he undertook to give an account, that he\nless understood than his own. He seems, after having learned something of\nthe great mediaeval philosophers in preparing his work, Philosophic\nScholastique, to have had some suspicions that he had talked very\nfoolishly, and had been the dupe of his own youthful zeal and enthusiasm;\nfor, though he afterward published a new edition of his works without any\nessential alteration, as we infer from the fact that they were placed at\nRome on the Index, he published, as far as we are aware, no new\nphilosophical work, and turned his attention to other subjects. Even in his\nwork on the Scholastics, as well as in his account of Jansenism in his work\non Madame de Sabl\u00e9, we recollect no re-assertion of his pantheism, nor even\nan unorthodox opinion.\n\n{345}\n\nIt was a great misfortune for M. Cousin as a philosopher that he knew so\nlittle of Catholic theology, and that what little he did know, apparently\ncaught up at second-hand, only served to mislead him. We are far from\nbuilding science on faith or founding philosophy on revelation, in the\nsense of the traditionalists; yet we dare affirm that no man who has not\nstudied profoundly the Gospel of St. John, the Epistles of St. Paul, the\ngreat Greek and Latin fathers, and the mediaeval doctors of the church, is\nin a condition to write anything deserving of serious consideration on\nphilosophy. The great controversies that have been called forth from time\nto time on the doctrine of the Trinity, the Incarnation, the two natures\nand the two wills in the one person of our Lord, the Real Presence of our\nLord's body, soul, and divinity in the Eucharist, liberty and necessity,\nthe relations of nature and grace, and of reason and faith, throw a\nbrilliant light on philosophy far surpassing all the light to be derived\nfrom Gentile sources, or by the most careful analysis of the facts of our\nown consciousness. The effort, on the one hand, to demolish, and on the\nother to sustain, Catholic dogma, has enlightened the darkest and most\nhidden passages of both psychology and ontology, and placed the Catholic\ntheologian, really master of the history of his science, on a vantage\nground which they who know it not are incapable of conceiving. Before him\nyour Descartes, Spinozas, Kants, Fichtes, Schellings, Hegels, Cousins,\ndwindle to philosophical pigmies.\n\nThe excellent M. Augustin Cochin thinks that M. Cousin rendered great\nservice to the cause of religion by the sturdy warfare he carried in\ndefence of spiritualism against the gross sensism and materialism of the\neighteenth century, and nobody can deny very considerable merit to his\nCritical Examination of Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding. Dr. C. S.\nHenry translated it some years ago, in this country, and published it under\nthe rather inappropriate title of Consin's Psychology, and it has no doubt\nhad much influence in unseating Locke from the philosophical throne he\nformerly occupied. But the reaction against Locke and Condillac, as well as\nthe philosophers of Auteuil, had commenced long before Consin became master\nof conferences in L'Ecole Normale; and we much doubt if the subtiler and\nmore refined rationalism be has favored is a less dangerous enemy to\nreligion and society than the sensism of Condillac, or the gross\nmaterialism of Cabanis, Garat, and Destutt de Tracy. Under his influence\ninfidelity in France has modified its form, but only, as it seems to me, to\nrender itself more difficult of detection and refutation. Pantheism is a\nfar more dangerous enemy than materialism, for its refutation demands an\norder of thought and reasoning above the comprehension of the great mass of\nthose who are not incapable of being misled by its sophistries. The\nrefutation of the pantheism of our days requires a mental culture and a\nphilosophical capacity by no means common. Thousands could comprehend the\nrefutation of Locke or Condillac, where there is hardly one who can\nunderstand the refutation of Hegel or Spinoza.\n\nBesides, we do not think Cousin can be said to have in all cases opposed\nthe truth to sensism. His spiritualism is not more true than sensism\nitself. He pretends that we have immediate and direct apprehension of\nspiritual reality--that is, pure intellections. True, he says that we\napprehend the noetic only on occasion of sensible affection, but on such\noccasion we do apprehend it pure and simple. This is as to the apprehension\nitself exaggerated spiritualism, and would almost justify the fair pupil of\nMargaret Fuller in her exclamation, \"O Miss Fuller! I see right into the\nabyss of being.\" Man, not being a pure intelligence, but intelligence\nclothed with sensibility, has and can have no pure intellections.\n{346}\nM. Cousin would have been more correct if instead of saying that the\naffection of the sensibility is necessary as the occasion, he had said, we\nknow the supersensible indeed, but only as sensibly represented.\n\nIn this sense we understand the peripatetics when they say: \"Nihil est in\nintellectu, quod non prius fuerit in sensu.\" The medium of this sensible\nrepresentation of the intelligible or spiritual truth to the understanding\nis language of some sort, which is its sensible sign. M. Cousin would have\ndone well to have studied more carefully on this subject the remarkable\nwork of De Bonald, a work, though it has some errors, of an original genius\nof the first order, and of a really profound thinker. Had he done this, he\nmight have seen that the reflective reason cannot operate without language,\nand understood something of the necessity of the infallible church to\nmaintain the unity and integrity of language, whose corruption by\nphilosophers invariably involves the loss of the unity and integrity of the\nidea. It might also have taught him that a philosophy worth anything cannot\nbe spun by the philosopher out of his own consciousness as the spider spins\nher web out of her own bowels, and that without as much at least of\nprimitive revelation or the primitive instruction given by God himself to\nthe race, as is embodied in language, no man can successfully cultivate\nphilosophy.\n\nAs minister of public instruction under Louis Philippe, M. Cousin labored\nhard and with some success, we know not how much, to extend primary schools\nin France; but he in part neutralized his services in this respect by his\ndefence of the university monopoly, his opposition to the freedom of\neducation, his efforts to force his pantheistic or at best rationalistic\nphilosophy into the colleges of the university, and his intense hatred and\nunrelenting hostility to the Jesuits, who have first and last done so much\nfor education and religion in France as well as elsewhere. Ordinarily a man\nof great candor, and of a most kindly disposition, his whole nature seemed\nto change the moment a Jesuit was in question. He was no friend to the\nCatholic religion, and after the writer of this became a Catholic, he\nforgot his French politeness, and refused to answer a single one of his\nletters. To him we were either dead or had become an enemy. He moreover\nnever liked to have his views questioned. In politics he belonged to the\n_Doctrinaire_ school, and supported the _juste milieu_. In the\nRevolution of 1848, and under the Republic, he opposed earnestly socialism,\nand attempted to stay its progress by writing and publishing a series of\nphilosophical tracts, as if philosophy could cure an evil which it had\nhelped to create. When society is in disorder, old institutions are\nfalling, and civilization is rapidly lapsing into barbarism, it is only\nreligion, speaking from on high with the power of truth and the authority\nof God, that can arrest the downward tendency. \"Religion,\" said Lamennais\nin the first volume of his Essay on Indifference in Matters of Religion,\n\"is found at the cradle of nations; philosophy at their tomb.\" Woe to the\nnation that exchanges faith for philosophy! its ruin is at hand, for it has\nlost the principle of life. After the _coup d'\u00e9tat_ little was heard\nof Cousin either in the world of politics or philosophy, and his last years\nappear to have flowed away in the peaceful pursuits of literature.\n\nRumors from time to time reached us during the last dozen years that M.\nCousin had become a Catholic, and for his sake we regret that they have\nremained unconfirmed. It is reported, on good authority, that he regularly\nattended mass, and was accustomed to say his morning and evening prayers\nbefore an image of Our Lady; but it is agreed by his most intimate Catholic\nfriends that he never made any formal profession of Catholic faith, and\ndied without receiving or asking the sacraments of the church.\n{347}\nThat in his later years his mind turned at times toward the church, that\nhis feelings toward religion were softened, and that he felt the need of\nfaith, is very probable; but we have seen no evidence that he ever avowed\npublicly or privately any essential change in his doctrine. He always held\nthat the Catholic faith is the form under which the people do and must\nreceive the truth; but he held that the truth thus received does not\ntranscend the natural order, and is transformed with the _\u00e9lite_ of\nthe race into philosophy.\n\nWe have found in his works no recognition of the supernatural order, or the\nadmission of any other revelation than the inspiration of the impersonal\nreason. Providence for him was fate, and God was not free to interpose in a\nsupernatural way for the redemption and salvation of men. Creation itself\nwas necessary, and the universe only the evolution of his substance. There\nis no evidence that we have seen that he ever attained to the conviction\nthat creation is the free act of the creator, or felt even for a moment the\ndeep joy of believing that GOD IS FREE. Yet it is not ours to judge the\nman. We follow him to the mouth of the grave, and there leave him to the\nmercy as well as the justice of him whose very justice is love.\n\nWe are not the biographer of Victor Cousin; we have only felt that we could\nnot let one so distinguished in life, who had many of the elements of a\nreally great man, and whom the present writer once thought a great\nphilosopher, pass away in total silence. Genius has always the right to\nexact a certain homage, and Victor Consin had genius, though not, in our\njudgment, the true philosophical genius. We have attempted no regular\nexposition or refutation of his philosophy; our only aim has been to call\nattention to his teachings on those points where he seemed to approach\nnearest the truth, and on which the young and ardent philosophical student\nmost needs to be placed on his guard, to bring out and place in a clear\nlight certain elements of philosophic truth which he failed to grasp. We\nplace not philosophy above faith, but we do not believe it possible to\nconstruct it without faith; we yet hold that it is necessary to every one\nwho would understand the faith or defend it against those who impugn it. If\non any point what we have said on the occasion of the departure of the\nfounder of French eclecticism shall serve to make the truth clearer to a\nsingle ingenuous and earnest inquirer, we shall thank God that he has\npermitted us to live not wholly in vain.\n\n\n------\n\n    Original.\n\n    Praises Of The Blessed Sacrament.\n\n    Imitated from Madame Swetchine.\n\n\n  O vault of heaven, clear and bright!\n  All spangled o'er with stars to-night,\n  Canst say how many worlds of light\n    Adorn thy glorious firmament?\n\n  For here I long my voice to raise\n  To him who hath my heart always.\n  And fain would know how oft to praise\n    The sweet, All Holy Sacrament.\n\n{348}\n\n  O shining sun! for every ray\n  That from thee beamed since Eden's day,\n  And shall, till this world pass away,\n    And all thy light and heat be spent:\n\n  For each bright ray my voice I'd raise\n  To him who hath my heart always,\n  And sing a canticle of praise\n    To this Most Holy Sacrament.\n\n  O trackless sea! could I but save\n  And count each short-lived glist'ning wave;\n  Their sum would tell how oft I crave\n    To praise the Blessed Sacrament.\n\n  O fields! for every grassy blade\n  Of which thy beauteous robe is made,\n  Let offerings sweet of praise be laid\n    Before the Blessed Sacrament.\n\n  O pleasant gardens! could I know\n  How many flowers within you grow:\n  So many flowers of praise I'd strew\n    Before the Blessed Sacrament.\n\n  O wide, wide world! canst tell to me\n  How many grains of dust in thee?\n  So many would my praises be\n    To this Most Holy Sacrament.\n\n  O earth! thy praises have an end;\n  To seraphs I the task commend.\n  Their tireless voices they must lend\n    To praise the Blessed Sacrament.\n\n  Eternity! duration long!\n  To thee alone it doth belong\n  To measure when should cease the song\n    That lauds the Blessed Sacrament!\n\n------\n\n{349}\n\n    From Chambers's Journal.\n\n    Architecture Of Birds.\n\n\nIf we desire to look upon something which the first inhabitants of our\nplanet saw exactly as it is to-day, we have only to stand before a bird's\nnest. Your bird is no innovator: he laid down the plan of his dwelling at\nthe creation of the world, and, while everything around him has been\nchanging, assuming new forms, yielding to the influence of fashion, has\nremained content with his primitive architecture ever since. He calculates\nthe number, and considers the necessities of his family, and with unerring\nsagacity provides for them all. He imitates none of his neighbors, and his\nneighbors, in their turn, display no inclination to imitate him. There is\nin our rural districts a tradition of a farmer's daughter, who, having\nobserved her mother winnow at a certain barn-door, stuck to the same\nlocality through life, without the slightest reference to the quarter from\nwhence the wind blew. So exactly is it with the bird. He cares for nothing\nbut his own ideas of comfort, convenience, suitability--whether the\noriginal type of his mansion necessitated its being built on the summit of\na rook or a tree, under the eaves of a house, or in the thick foliage of a\nbush, in the crevice of a cliff, or amid the rustling grass of a meadow.\n\nTo study the habitations of birds is to traverse the whole extent of man's\nuniversal habitation, through every zone from the equator to the polar\ncircle; from the tops of the highest ranges, amid unscalable crags and\nsnows, to the sedgy margin of the sea, and the mossy banks of streams.\nWhenever the air is fanned by a wing--wherever eggs are deposited--\nwherever little bills are opened almost hourly for food--wherever the hen\nsits, and the male bird roves and toils to support her--wherever, from\nbough or twig, he pours music into the woods, to cheer his helpmate during\nher labor of love, there is poetry; whether, as on the lofty surface of\nDanger Island, or amid the flowery bogs of the Orinoco, the airy artisan\nworks in solitude, or, on village roof and church spire, clings to the\nvicinity of man. Naturalists gravely inform us that birds are bipeds like\nourselves, which in some cases may be thought to account for their fondness\nfor our society, as with the sparrow, the swallow, the red-breast, and the\nmartin; but, on the other hand, several members of this numerous family,\nthough they boast of no more legs than we, make careful use of those they\nhave to keep out of our way. Even among the swallow tribe, there is one\nremarkable branch which abjures the man-loving qualities of his\ncongeners--we mean the sea-swallow of the Twelve Thousand Islands, which in\nbreeding-time mounts high into the air, takes a scrutinizing survey of the\nearth beneath, and, selecting for his quarters the least frequented,\ndescends, skims into some lofty cave, and there builds his procreant\ncradle. In this way he hopes to elude observation. Flattering himself that\nhis whereabouts will remain undiscovered, he darts away with his wife to\ntheir favorite element the ocean, where it breaks upon solitary shores,\nand, flying along its crested surges, gathers from amid the foam and spray\nthe materials of its dwelling, the nature of which still remains unknown.\nWhatever it may be, it forms a delicate bassinet in which to deposit its\neggs and rear its young. Less white than alabaster, the nest of the\nsea-swallow is of a light color, and semi-transparent, odoriferous in\nsmell, glutinous, and rather sweet to the taste.\n{350}\nRows of these little bowls, which look like so many vessels of porcelain,\nrun along the rocky walls of caverns, and are filled with a thickly\nbedropped with spots of celestial blue. To the people of the Flowery Land,\nthese nests are a delicacy, which, when of the best quality, are weighed in\nthe market against gold. What, however, renders some nests better than\nothers is uncertain; it may be that in parts of the ocean the ingredient\nwhich imparts the most delicate flavor to the substance is not to be found;\nor else, on shore, the flowers that supply the perfume are too few, so that\nthe swallow is compelled to have recourse to blossoms of inferior\nsweetness.\n\nFrom the mouth of the swallow's cave, you may sometimes, from a long\ndistance, discern another and very different specimen of ornithological\nbuilding. This is a mound, sometimes sixty or seventy feet in length,\nalmost as much in diameter, and about six feet high. This also is a nest,\nor rather a city of nests, for it is constructed so as to receive a whole\nrepublic of birds, who, as in a well-ordered state, have all their separate\ndwellings, with streets, highways, common chambers, breeding apartments,\nand so on. In some, there you find callow citizens, or fledglings, or eggs,\nor the grave parents of the state, discussing or meditating upon its common\ninterests. Nothing can be more curious than a section of such a bird mound,\nwith its various cells and compartments laid open to the view.\n\nFrom this cyclopean style of architecture, the distance is prodigious to\nthe house of the tailor-bird, which selects for its habitation the inside\nof a leaf, and with its bill and claws sews its house to it. It takes a\nfilament of fine grass, and, steadying the leaf with one of its feet, uses\nits bill for a needle, or rather for a borer; then, having made a little\nhole, it introduces the grassy filament into the edge of the leaf, and\nafterward doing as much for the other edge, weaves between both a sort of\nherring-bone netting, strong enough to support its nest. Within this net it\nimmediately begins building until it has wrought a small soft purse,\nsufficiently capacious to contain the female and her eggs. The habitation\nbeing completed, she enters tail foremost, leaving her little head and bill\nvisible at the top of the purse, situated directly under the leaf's stem,\nand forthwith commences her maternal duties. Now begins the business of the\nmale, which flies backward and forward in search of such delicacies as his\nlady loves; and, having been successful, approaches the leaf, and, with\ntrue martial tenderness, puts them gently into the female's mouth. He then\nseats himself upon a branch overhead, and, watching his helpmate as she\nswings to and fro in her airy couch, twitters or sings incessantly to keep\nup her spirit's.\n\nAmong us, the most accomplished bird-architect is the wren, which, in\ncompliment to his building powers, is by our neighbors called the\n_roitelet_, or little king; and certainly no king has a more\ncomfortable dwelling. The most flexible grass roots, the finest grass, the\nsoftest moss, the most delicate down from its own breast, constitute the\nmaterials of this beautiful structure, which forms a perfect sphere of dark\nemerald green. This edifice has two doors, one at which the little king or\nqueen enters, the other through which it emerges when it desires to stretch\nits wings or plume its feathers. When at home, the point of the bill and\nthe tip of the tail are visible at the opposite entrances, while the\nvaulted roof protects it from raindrops, and assists in concentrating the\nheat by which the regal fledglings are hatched. The builder of St. Paul's,\nwhen projecting his magnificent dome, may have taken a hint from his\nancestors the wrens. But, unwilling to accumulate all her gifts on one of\nher children, nature has left the _roitelet_ quite without the power\nof charming Madame Wren by his voice, a fact to which Shakespeare alludes\nwhere he says:\n\n  \"The nightingale, if she should sing by day,\n   When every goose is cackling, would be thought\n   No better musician then the wren.\"\n\n{351}\n\nBut this unmusical character does not belong to all the varieties of the\nwren, since there is one kind which may be regarded as a songster. With\nrespect to external appearance, there are few northern birds more favored\nthan the golden-crested wren, the feathers of whose crest, as they glance\nand quiver, look like sprays of burnished gold in the sunbeams. The war\nrecently declared against these little people is as absurd as it is cruel.\nSupposed to be the gardener's enemies, they have been hunted down without\npity or remorse; whereas, instead of destroying the fruit, they only eat\nthe insects which do really destroy it, and should therefore be esteemed as\nlittle winged scavengers, who clear away from gardens very much that is\npernicious. If we understood our own interest, we should look upon our\ndiminutive ally, not exceeding two drachms in weight, much as the Turks do\nupon the stork, which they reverence for its filial piety. If contempt can\ndwell within breasts so small, the wren must surely feel it for the stone\ncurlew, which, too ignorant or too lazy to build a nest at all, lays its\neggs on the bare ground, where they are crushed by Hodge's foot or by the\nplough.\n\nThe country people in France love the song of the wren, which is most\nagreeable in the month of May, that being the breeding-season. In many\nFrench provinces, the rustics entertain so great a respect for the\n_roitelet_, that they not only abstain from injuring it, but will not\nso much as touch its nest, built sometimes against the sides of their\nhouses or stables, though generally a thick bush or full-foliaged tree is\npreferred. Like nearly all other birds, the wren takes a fancy to some\nparticular locality, where it will construct its habitation, in spite of\ndangers and difficulties. Its eggs, from ten to twelve in number, are about\nthe size of peas, and when they are hatched it becomes so fierce and\npugnacious that it will attack large birds, and put them to flight by the\npunctures of its sharp bill. It is the smallest of European birds, and\nholds, therefore, with us the place which the humming-bird occupies in Asia\nand America. This diminutive creature, which is as ingenious as it is\naffectionate, forms its tiny nest with cotton or fine, silky filaments,\nwhich it twines and arranges so as to afford the softest conceivable couch\nfor its eggs, which never exceed two in number, and resemble small white\nbeads, dotted with bright yellow. The young, when they first emerge from\nthe shell, are little larger than flies, and perfectly naked, though a fine\ndown soon appears upon the skin, which gradually ripens into feathers so\nbrilliant and dazzling in color as not to be exceeded by the rarest gems,\nor even by the tints of the rainbow. So great, in fact, is the beauty of\nthese birds, that the ladies of the countries in which they abound suspend\nthem instead of diamonds as drops to their earings.\n\nTiny as the humming-bird is, neither the eagle nor the condor exceeds it in\nlove for its young. A French missionary, during his residence in Surinam,\ntook a humming-bird's nest in which the young were just hatched, and placed\nit on the sill of an open window in a cage. The parents, as he conjectured,\nfollowed their young, and brought them food, the male and female by turns,\nwhich they introduced between the bars of the cage. At length, finding that\nno attempt was made to harm them, they grew fond of the place, and perching\nupon the top of the cage, or flying about the room, rewarded the worthy\npriest by their music for the delicate fare he soon learned to provide for\nthem. This was a sort of soft paste made of biscuit, Spanish wine, and\nsugar, and nearly transparent. Over this they passed their long tongues,\nand when they had satisfied their hunger, either fell asleep or burst forth\ninto song. Familiarity, if it did not in their case breed contempt, at\nleast banished all apprehension, for they alighted on the priest's head, or\nperched on his finger, where their long rainbow-like tails floated like\nlittle ribbons in the air. But all earthly pleasures have an end; a rat ate\nup the humming-birds, nest and all, and left the poor missionary to seek\nfor new companions.\n\n{352}\n\nDown among the coral-reefs in the Southern Pacific you meet with other bird\nstructures, which in their way deserve equal attention. Here the sea-eagles\nbuild their nests, always, if possible, in the same islet, and, if there be\nsuch a convenience, on the same tree. On a small wild flat in the ocean,\ntoo confined to allure inhabitants, and apparently too arid for vegetation,\nthere grew nevertheless one tree, on which a pair of fishing-eagles erected\ntheir dwelling. There these lords of the waves, contemplating their vast\nempire, sat aloft in their eyrie, male and female, looking at their eggs,\nand dreaming of the future. Our readers will remember the Raven's Oak,\nwhich the woodman, whose brow like a penthouse hung over his eyes, felled\nand floated down the course of the river. So it was with the tree of the\nfishing-eagles; some savage applied his axe to the stem, and down it came,\nthough, it is to be presumed, not while the young eagles were in the nest,\nfor the mother did not break her heart, neither did the father follow the\ntimber with vindictive pertinacity. On the contrary, having consulted his\nhelpmate, he took up his lodgings in a bush, and there provided as well as\nhe could for the support and comfort of his heirs and successors. There\nmight be tall trees at no great distance, there might also be islands\nlarger and prettier; but he was born on this sandy flat; he therefore loved\nit, and stuck to it, and, had it not provided him with a bush, he would\nhave built his nest on the sand. Such, over some creatures, is the power of\nlocality. The higher the nature, the more extensive become the sympathies,\nso that to some it is enough if they can rest anywhere on this globe. They\nlove the planet in general, but would like, if they could, to make a\ncountry excursion from it to Jupiter, Sirius, or Canopus, just by way of\nexercising their wings.\n\nWe have seen the humming-bird building in a little garden shrub, the\ntailor-bird in the folds of a leaf; but there is one of their family which\nselects a far more extraordinary situation, in order to place its young\nbeyond the reach of vermin. Selecting the tallest tree within the range of\nits experience, it weaves for itself a sort of long pouch with a narrow\nneck, and suspends it to the point of a bare twig some sixty or seventy\nfeet from the ground. There, in its pensile habitation, it lays its eggs,\nwarms them into life, and when the callow brood begin to open their bills,\nfeeds them fifty or sixty times in the day with such dainties as their\nconstitutions require. This bird is the _Aplonis metallica_, about the\nsize of a starling, with plumage of a dark glossy green, interfused with\npurple, which gives forth as it flies bright metallic reflections. The\naplonis is gregarious, like man, since it loves to build its nest in the\nclose neighborhood of other creatures of its own species, so that you may\noften behold fifty nests on the same tree, waving and balancing in the air.\nOn the plain beneath, the aplonis sees from its nest the long necked emu\nflying like the wind before the hunter, immense flights of white pigeons,\nor the shy and active bower-bird constructing its palace, four feet long by\nalmost two feet in height, where it eats berries with its harem, brings up\nits offspring, and, darting hither and thither before the savage, seeks to\nallure him away from its home. All the shrubs, and vines, and low thickets\nin the vicinity are haunted by perroquets no larger than sparrows, whose\nplumage, gorgeous as the brightest flowers, may be said to light up the\nwoods.\n\nThe only European bird that builds a pensile nest is one of the family that\nwe familiarly denominate toun-tits. This liliputian architect is as choice\nin his materials as he is skilful in the arrangement of them--his bases,\nhis arches, his metopes, and architraves consist of cobwebs, the finest\nmosses, the most silky grasses, which are woven, and twisted, and matted\ntogether, so as to defy the drenching of the most pitiless storms, while\nwithin, his wife and little ones recline on beds of down as soft as the\nbreast of a swan.\n{353}\nScarcely less genius is displayed by the magpie, which, having constructed\nits dwelling with extraordinary care, covers it with a sheath of thorns,\nwhich, bristling all round like quills upon the fretful porcupine,\neffectually defend it from the approach of insidious enemies. The portal to\nthis airy palace is at a little distance scarcely visible; but if you\ndiligently observe, you will perceive the magpie dart swiftly between the\nthorns, and disappear beneath his formidable _chevaux de-frise_. To\nthis stronghold he sometimes carries his strange thefts--his gold and\nsilver coins, his spoons, his sugar-tongs, and any other bright article\nthat strikes his fancy. Birds of the dove kind are proverbial for the\nslovenly style in which they provide for their families. Putting together a\nfew sticks, which form a sort of rack to support their eggs, they think\nthey have done enough for posterity, and forthwith lay without scruple upon\nthis frail cradle. It may be fairly conjectured that they say to\nthemselves: \"If man will eat my eggs, my young ones, and me, upon him be\nthe charge of seeing that I have decent accommodation.\" In the same spirit\nact all the barn-door fowls, hardly taking the trouble to find a soft place\nfor their eggs, but laying anywhere, like the stone curlew. This reckless\ndepravity of the maternal instinct has generally been attributed to the\nostrich as well as to the domestic hen--but unjustly. She lays, it is true,\nher eggs in the sand, but not without knowing where she puts them, and not\nwithout visiting the same spot daily to lay a new egg, till, as the French\nsay, she has finished her _ponte_. If the case were otherwise, how\ncould we account for finding all her eggs together? Nature has informed\nher, that in those warm latitudes in which she shakes her feathers, it is\nquite unnecessary for her to squat upon her eggs, which the solar heat\namply suffices to hatch; indeed, so scorching is the sand of the desert,\nthat if she did not lay her family hopes tolerably deep, her eggs would be\nroasted instead of hatched. To the superficial observation of man, the\nsurface of the desert looks all alike--smooth, undulating, or blown up into\nhillocks; but the ostrich's practised eye is able to detect the minutest\nelevations in the arenaceous plain, so that she can go straight to the spot\nwhere her first egg has been left, to deposit a second and a third close to\nit. Indeed, the Arabs, who habitually traverse the waste, sometimes rival\nher in keenness of perception, and take forth her treasures, while in\nmaternal confidence she is scouring hither and thither in search of food.\n\nTo many others among the inferior animals, man deals forth his unthinking\nreproaches. To the cuckoo, for example, he objects to her habit of\nobtruding her egg or eggs into other people's premises, and leaving them\nthere to be hatched by sparrow, wry-neck, or starling, as the case may be.\nBut while bearing thus hard upon the cuckoo, he forgets the terrible curse,\nunder which, like another Cain, she walks about the earth, urged forward by\nsome resistless impulse, and condemned to the eternal repetition of two\nanalogous notes--cuckoo, cuckoo. What do those syllables mean? The Abb\u00e9 de\nNemours, who devoted twenty years to the language of birds, or one of the\noriginal doctors of the Hellenic mythology, might perhaps have explained,\nbut has not; so we must be content to regard as a mystery the secret of the\ncuckoo, which in some respects resembles those _ames damn\u00e9es_ which\nfly for ever over the Black Sea, according to inconsiderate tradition, for\nif they never paused to build nests or lay eggs, it must have been all over\nwith them long before this time. The cuckoo has some odd tricks which have\nseldom been noted; for instance, she seems to find out some small bird's\nnest, say, in a hole in the wall, too small by far for her to enter. In\nthis case, she squats upon the ground, lays her egg, and then, with bill or\nclaws, takes it up, and pokes it into the hole, after which she flies away,\nshrieking her awfully monotonous song.\n{354}\nIn a forest in France, we used day after day to watch this smoky-blue\ntraveller, as, in the dawn of a summer's morning, she flew across the leafy\nglades, or down the glens, resting her weary feet for a moment on some\ngiant bough, and then shooting away through the soft green light, repeating\nher strange and ominous cry. What is the original country of the cuckoo?\nHas she any original country? Or is she not one of those wretched\ncosmopolites who know no attachment to any hallowed spot, no love or\nknowledge of parents, having been brought up by strangers, who regarded her\nfrom her birth as an ugly changeling, thrust by some evil spirit into their\nnest? Surely the cuckoo is to be pitied, since she knows no home, has never\nseen a hearth, or experienced the soft care of fabricating a nest or\nhatching an egg.\n\n\n------\n\n    Original.\n\n    The Father of Waters.\n\n\nSome one has said that rivers are the great moving highways of the world.\nIn the earlier ages, when, from a restless and feverish impulse, whole\nnations became nomadic, their migrations were doubtless influenced by the\nrivers lying in their track. History tells of barbaric people that wandered\naround the Euxine and along the banks of the lower Danube found their way\nto central Europe.\n\nBefore the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope, rivers, and especially the\nRhine, played a considerable part in that extensive commerce which found\nits way from India to the cities of the Hanseatic League. Weary caravans\nbrought the spices, gems, and rich fabrics of the East to the shore of the\nMediterranean, whence they were carried westward mainly by Venetian traders\ntimidly skirting the coast in their frail barks, venturing up rivers or\nmaking long journeys wherever the prospect of traffic invited. The old\ncastles on the Rhine were built by feudal robbers, who were wont to descend\nfrom their strongholds to plunder merchants travelling on this great\nthoroughfare of mediaeval commerce.\n\nIn time they were induced to forego the chances of occasional booty for the\npayment of a stipulated toll. Doubtless the princely Hohenzollern could\ntrace back their genealogy to the feudal _high-toll_ barons of the\nRhine, who furnished the original idea of the modern _Zollverein_ of\nGermany. _La mer, c'est l'empire_, and, after the great maritime\ndiscoveries had opened a new route to India, it, in good part, diverted\nthat distant commerce from the rivers, which the ocean reaches like shining\narms over the continents as if to grasp dominion. As the elements of modern\ncivilization became developed, societies crystallized, and the\nnationalities hitherto disturbed by migrations and conquests settled down\nwhere we now find them, rivers came gradually to serve their legitimate\npurpose of internal and international communication--a purpose resembling\nthat which they fulfil in the physical economy of the earth, they are the\nveins which bring back to the ocean, through innumerable brooks and rills,\nseeming to have their sources in the ground, yet having unseen springs in\nthe air, the moisture that the sun has already drawn up from the seas in\ninvisible buckets, and wafted away in shining clouds to be poured out in\nrain or dew upon the thirsty hills.\n\n{355}\n\nOur own country, however, furnishes the best illustration of the importance\nand use of rivers. Its great physical features, of which the river system\nis perhaps the most striking, seem to make it a fit arena for those\nwonderful triumphs over the elements and the forces of nature which it is\nour privilege to enjoy. Their vastness would have intimidated races of men,\nweak and cowardly from long habits of servility, superstitious, torn with\nfierce passions and hatreds, and able to contend with the fatality of\nmaterial things only on that diminutive scale afforded by the physical\nconformation of Europe.\n\nThe traveller descending the lower Danube finds the ruins of old Roman\ntowns, Trajan's way cut for a distance of thirty miles in the steep solid\nrock of the Carpathians for the passage of his Roman legions, and, below\nthe Iron Gate, the piers of Trajan's bridge, erected by him for the same\npurpose nearly eighteen centuries ago. Hardly less remarkable are the\nmemorials of the bloody wars between the Christians and the Turks, the\nplaces made memorable by the campaigns of Eugene and Suwarrow and the\nEastern war. But, excepting now and then a walled town, there are to be\nseen comparatively few habitations of men, and none of that active,\nsleepless life which lines the banks of our great rivers.\n\nThere are no richer plains in the world than those of the lower Danube. Why\nis it that the pent-up millions of Western Europe do not find their way\nthither, as in the time of Trajan vast multitudes emigrated from slavery\nimpoverished Italy to that Eldorado of the Roman world? The very facility\nafforded by the river for hostile inroads has driven or kept the\ninhabitants from its banks, and to a great extent left them desolate\nwastes. The feverish restlessness which once made barbarous nations nomadic\nnow seizes upon the individual; and a constant stream of immigration,\noppressed by the despotisms of the Old World, bursts forth in the midst of\nus like a new fountain of Arethusa.\n\nAnd in our own country the astonishing facilities of communication afforded\nby the telegraph and long lines of railroads seem to detract somewhat from\nthe importance of rivers. We can only appreciate their value when we think\nof them in connection with the toil requisite for subduing the wilderness\nand laying under contribution the resources of our country. How earnestly\nand bravely our forefathers battled in this warfare, one generation taking\nup the task where it was left by another, so as to subdue the land and\nrender possible such marvels as the Pacific railroad! Whatever may be the\nsocial development of the human race hereafter, and however wonderful the\napplications of art and science to the uses of life, will not our own age\nbe looked back upon as perhaps the grandest in its history? To have lived\nin a period that saw the mysteries of Central Africa explained, the\ncontinents united with telegraphic nerves, the oceans traversed with\nsteamships and monitors, the seas clasped together with railways, and, as\nwe hope, the thin air made a navigable element, will be to have enjoyed the\nmost startling triumphs of emotion of which the soul is capable.\n\nWhat first strikes the attention upon comparing the rivers of the New and\nthe Old World is the diminutive size of the latter, especially of many in\nthe most civilized portions of Europe, or rendered famous in classical\ntimes. The Nile, with its ancient mysteries, its dim historic memorials of\none of the oldest civilizations, its stupendous monuments of human wisdom\nand of human folly over which the centuries have brooded in solemn silence,\nand its wonderful physical peculiarities, is, indeed, a magnificent river.\n{356}\nReaching from the Mediterranean to the central regions of Africa, and\nforming an intimate connection with its great lake and river system, it\nwill doubtless accomplish for that portion of Africa what the Mississippi\nhas done, and is now doing, in the material development of the United\nStates--what the Danube may also accomplish in Eastern Europe, the Amazon\nin South America, and the Hoang Ho in Eastern Asia, when their expiring\nstrata of civilizations shall have been aroused by the restless, aggressive\nspirit of modern times. The Jordan is only a mountain torrent. The Tiber\nand the Po can be swum with a single arm. The Simois and Scamander, the\nsacred rivers of Troy, are, like the Rubicon, the merest brooks, and would\nhardly drive a saw-mill. The Cephisus can be leaped across, and the Ilissus\nscarcely suffices for a few Athenian washerwomen, sorry representatives of\nits nymphs and graces of old.\n\nThe Mississippi river drains not far from a million and a quarter square\nmiles of territory, equal to about one third of the extent of Europe. From\nthe source of the Missouri, on the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains, to\nthe Balize, is, following the windings of the river, a distance of four\nthousand five hundred miles. A circular line drawn through the head waters\nof the Mississippi and its chief tributaries would not be less than six\nthousand miles in length. With all of its confluents the Mississippi forms\na great moving sinuous highway fully twenty-five thousand miles long, and\nploughed by many thousand steamboats. They stretch out as if to embrace the\nbeauty, to grasp the wealth, and gather, as into a lap, the products of the\nvast region between the two mountain chains of the continent; the coal and\noil of the Alleghanies, the gold of the Rocky Mountains, the grain, lumber,\nand lead of the North, and the cotton, sugar, and tropical fruits of the\nSouth. Equally well will they serve for the distribution of the Asiatic\ncommerce and travel which will be poured across the continent on the\ncompletion of the Pacific railroad. St. Louis may then become a great\ndistributing centre, and the same causes which have made London, Paris,\nVienna, and Pekin the commercial capitals of their respective countries,\nmay, in time, give that favored and opulent city the supremacy now enjoyed\nby the great marts of trade on the Atlantic coast. It is hardly safe to\npredict what may be the social and material, much less the intellectual\npossibilities of that near period, when, gliding on \"the pale iron edge,\"\nwe may jostle Chinese mandarins _en route_ for Europe, and European\nmoney kings on their way to the Golcondas of the East.\n\nThe lotus-eating tourist of the Nile floats dreamily along the river\nbetween quaint villages and graceful palm-trees, past the pyramids, past\nthe deserted sites of ancient cities, past the stupendous ruins of Luxor\nand Thebes. The monotony of the desert is broken by gloomy hills of\nsunburnt rock, and by the narrow strip of verdure which fringes both banks\nof the river. Should he push his explorations further, he will come in\ncontact with the barbarous negro tribes of the upper Nile, and may\nencounter troops of giraffes and elephants.\n\nHow different the objects that attract the attention of the voyage up the\nMississippi! The eye is charmed with the prospect of orange groves, of vast\nfields of sugar-cane of the deepest green, and of cotton plantations whose\nverdure and bloom at the proper season are only equalled in beauty by the\nsnow-like whiteness of the opened balls. The forests are hung with long\nfestoons of moss, giving them a sombre, funereal aspect. For between two\nand three hundred miles, both river banks, called coasts in Louisiana, are\nlined almost continuously with plantations, which, before the war, were in\na high state of cultivation and furnished homes of luxury. The region now\nteeming with such active and varied life, inspired by the adjacent city of\nNew Orleans, is made romantic by the adventures of De Soto and La Salle,\nand the wandering hither of the Acadians, known as _Cagians_ by the\nLouisianians, whose sufferings in the wilderness excited even the\ncompassion of hostile savages.\n{357}\nFurther up the river vast forests intervene, with here and there a\nstraggling town or settlement on the banks. The monotony is broken by the\nsight of enormous flat-boats and rafts floating lazily down the current;\nand an occasional column of black smoke rising high above the trees in the\ndistance indicates the presence of a steamboat, but, so crooked is the\nriver, it is often impossible to say whether above or below. In consequence\nof the great bends, approaching boats are sometimes moving in parallel\nlines in the same direction, or are absolutely diverging and running from\neach other. Now and then the huge steamboat stops to land, perhaps, a\nsingle passenger, or, at long intervals, at a wood-yard where some settler\nis laying the foundation of a future fortune, the stump being usually the\nfirst product of American industry. The rude, vigorous, untamed aspect of\nthe region seems, to a certain degree, to be reflected in the\ncharacteristics of the passengers on board. Still further north the\ntraveller begins first to feel the pulses of that wonderful life which is\nthrobbing throughout the great West. Here are vast prairies waving with\nfields of grain, and dotted with mounds built perhaps before the pyramids\nof Egypt. Up the Missouri one will soon reach the great plains on which\nroam herds of buffaloes and tribes of red men. About the head-waters of the\nMississippi and its chief confluents is to be found some of the wildest\nmountain scenery on the continent. Where, upon the banks of a single river,\nare to be seen such varieties of climate, scenery, and animated life?\n\nVery remarkable are the physical, it might almost be said paradoxical,\ncharacteristics of the Mississippi. Its average width below Natchez is not\nso great as from Natchez to Cairo. At Vicksburg, the river rises and falls\nabout forty feet; at New Orleans not more than twelve feet. During the\nlowest stage of water, the largest ships experience but little difficulty\nin crossing the bar at the passes; when the great floods have filled the\nbanks above to overflowing, deep-draught vessels can hardly be got over the\nbar. Below the mouth of Red river streams run out of the Mississippi\ninstead of into it. Much of the distance below Cairo the river runs, not in\nan ordinary channel between the hills, but on the crest of a ridge of its\nown formation. The source of the Mississippi is about two and a half miles\nnearer the centre of the earth than the mouth, thereby causing it to run\nactually uphill.\n\nThe delta of the Mississippi, properly, extends from the mouth of the Red\nriver to the gulf, a distance of about three hundred miles, following the\nwindings of the river. It has an area of about fourteen thousand square\nmiles, and its numerous bayous form an admirable system of natural canals.\nTo the delta really belongs the left bank of the river below Manshac, where\nthe bayou Manshac formed an outlet from the Mississippi to lake\nPontchartrain, until it was closed by General Jackson in the war of 1812,\nto prevent the British getting into the river above New Orleans. The bayou\ncould not be reopened without jeopardizing the safety of the city. A\ncrevasse some distance above New Orleans, a few years ago, inundated the\nback streets. Skiffs took the place of omnibuses, and when the waters\nsubsided some of the residents were surprised to find alligators\n\"herbivorating\" in their gardens. There is also a large partially alluvial\ntract west of the Atchafalaya, which covers the wonderful salt mine of\nPetit Aunce Island, and out through which ooze the petroleum springs of\nCalcasieu, where the Cagians have long been in the habit or greasing the\naxles of their rude carts.\n\nExtending from the mouth of the Red river to a point above Cairo is the\ngreat alluvial plain of the Mississippi, varying from thirty to fifty miles\nin width, and containing a territory of about seventeen thousand square\nmiles.\n{358}\nThe bluffs retreat from the east side of the river in many places, making\nroom for rich bottom lands, and touch the river only at one point on the\nwest side, namely, at Helena, Arkansas. From Cairo to the Balize is by the\nriver almost twelve hundred miles, while in a straight line it is only five\nhundred. The frequent changes in the bed of the Mississippi, caused by\n\"cut-offs,\" where it forces a channel through a narrow neck of land around\nwhich it has hitherto flowed in a wide circuit, have left numerous\nsemicircular lakes and _fausses rivi\u00e8res_, whose tranquil waters\nabound with alligators and wild fowl.\n\nThe soil of the delta is filled with whole trees deposited while it was in\nprocess of formation. A sudden change in the direction of the river\nsometimes unearths the trunks, standing erect and close together, as if\nthey had grown where they are found. While boring an artesian well in New\nOrleans, they came upon a solid cypress log nearly five hundred feet below\nthe surface. The Mississippi is said to be, geologically, one of the oldest\nrivers on the globe. We happened to be with Professor Hyrtl of Vienna a few\nyears ago, when be received, as a contribution to his unequalled museum of\nnatural history, a couple of _ganoid_ fishes, now to be found only in\nthe \"father of waters.\" They were clad in coats of mail, fitting them for\nexistence in bodies of water dashed about by conflicting tempests and\ncurrents and convulsed by the upheavals of the earth. At the base of the\nobelisk of Heliopolis, erected by Sesostris four thousand years ago, one\ncan see that, during that long interval of time, the valley of the Nile has\nbeen raised about nine feet around the monument. A friend of mine, engaged\nin sinking a shaft in the alluvium over the salt mine of Petit Aunce\nIsland, recently exhumed the skeleton of a mastodon, and the rude\nimplements and traces of the habitation of a people that must have passed\naway centuries ago. Skirting the delta on the gulf shore are vast\nshell-banks, consisting entirely of millions upon millions of cubic yards\nof small sea-shells. The popular superstition of the country ascribes their\norigin to the Indians, who came down to the coast for subsistence and\ndeposited the shells where they are now found. But their existence in such\nvast quantities, in a purely alluvial region, is one of the curious\nproblems of geology. In view of these facts, what ages upon ages is the\nmind carried back by the formation of the delta and the great alluvial\nplain of the Mississippi, to that far-off time when the place they now\noccupy was covered with a silent sea in which floundered the ichthyosauri\nof the pre-Adamic period!\n\nThe most remarkable feature of the lower Mississippi, and that which gives\norigin to very many of the peculiarities already mentioned, is the annual\nrise of its waters in consequence of the rain and melting of the snow\nabove. Egypt owes its fruitfulness in great part to the sediment yearly\ndeposited by the Nile wherever it overflows the land. We saw _fellahs_\nscattering seed upon the fresh and scarcely uncovered ooze, almost in the\nshadow of the Great Pyramid, and treading it in with oxen, as mentioned by\nHerodotus. The side canals are filled when the flood is at its height, and\nevery possible means is employed to retard the fertilizing waters for\nirrigation, as rain very rarely falls. Just below the head of the delta an\nimmense _barrage_, or dam, has been built across both the Damietta and\nRosetta branches of the Nile, for the purpose of keeping back the flood.\nWhen the Nilometer indicates that the river has risen to a certain height,\nthere is rejoicing throughout Egypt, a plentiful harvest being safely\npredicted from a full river.\n\nIt is directly the reverse along the Mississippi. The planter depends upon\nthe rains, not upon irrigation; upon the accumulated alluvial richness of\nformer ages, and not upon the annual deposit of the river. He does not\ninvite an overflow, but labors to prevent it by every means in his power.\n{359}\nA low stage of water, like that of 1864, is hailed as a providential\nblessing. The unprecedented floods of the present year have swept away\nmillions of dollars worth of property, and produced extreme misery.\n\nThe lower Mississippi generally begins to rise in November or early in\nDecember, and, with rare exceptions, attains the maximum volume in April or\nMay. The rise is at first gradual, and usually comes from the tributaries\nbelow the Ohio. As the season advances, the rains and the melting of the\nwinter snows enlarge the Tennessee, the Cumberland, the Ohio, and the upper\nMississippi, whose freshets, often amounting to devastating floods, and\nsometimes becoming vast inundations, are successively poured into the lower\nMississippi. Finally, and sometimes as late as June, the Missouri\ncontributes the drainage of the great plains and of the eastern slope of\nthe Rocky Mountains. Descending steamboats, which have overtaken and passed\nthe rise, announce the coming of a great tidal wave bringing possible\ndestruction with it. The _bottures_ of the lower river are first\ncovered, the banks are rapidly filled, and the torrent of foaming and\nturbid waters begins to rush down with accumulated velocity. Immense\nquantities of driftwood are drawn into the swiftest part of the current, in\na continuous line that twists and writhes in the tortuous channel like a\ngreat black serpent, or is, day after day, whirled round in vast eddies, as\nat Port Hudson. Many a Federal soldier who has stood guard on the banks of\nthe Mississippi will remember the great trees, with roots and branches high\nin the air, that floated down in grim processions, and in the gloom and\ndarkness of the night seemed to glide past like spectral fleets. As the\nriver rises, immense bodies of water escape from the natural channel and\nflow away into the swamps of Arkansas, Mississippi, and upper Louisiana.\nThe low alluvial plain of the Mississippi becomes a vast reservoir. Without\nthis, it would be impossible to control the flood below. The banks are\nentirely covered, and the voyager beholds an immense lake spread out before\nhim, whose waters rush through the forest with a subdued and angry roar,\nthe wide open space between the trees alone indicating the course of the\nriver. And now, wherever in this vast region civilization has planted her\nfoot, begins that conflict between man and the elements and the forces of\nnature, which in one form or another is as old as the human race. In Egypt\nit was typified in the never-ending contest of Typhon and Osiris. Osiris\nrepresented the fertile land of Egypt, the product of the Nile; Typhon, the\nencroaching desert, as solitary and incomprehensible as the ocean itself,\nthe desert whose storms and waves or shifting sand, respecting only the\nplaces they cannot reach, have destroyed armies and caravans, depopulated\nimmense regions, and turned the course of mighty rivers. The old\ncivilization of Egypt, the giant Antaeus of mythology, who could not be\nvanquished so long as his foot touched the solid, fertile earth, interposed\nenormous obstacles to the advances and inroads of the desert. Count de\nPersigny wrote a book during his political imprisonment to prove that the\npyramids were built as barriers to protect the alluvial land of the Nile\nfrom the encroaching sand of the desert.\n\nTo progress is, everywhere, to combat. The human race maintains a perpetual\nand tremendous strife with the fatality of material things, whether it be\nin the form of the stubborn elements, the overwhelming forces of nature, or\nthe subtle, inexorable laws that govern the material world. Barbarism is a\ndefeat, from cowardice of spirit; civilization, a triumph over them. And\nnowhere else is the conflict more terrible than where it is attempted to\ncontrol the floods that sweep down the valley of the Mississippi from the\nvery heart of the continent. The forces of the winds and of the ocean are\nnot so irresistible. It is a hand-to-hand combat, in which to be vanquished\nis to be destroyed.\n{360}\nThe thousands of miles of levees built on the banks of the Mississippi and\nits great bayous, at an expense of many million dollars, are the means\nemployed to arrest the watery element. In some places they are between\nfifteen and eighteen feet high, with a base of one hundred and twenty feet.\nAs the threatening river rises against them, they are put in the best\ncondition, and watched with the utmost care, lest the little crawfish, or\naccident, a storm, or some malicious enemy should make an opening which,\never so small at first, would rapidly enlarge into a crevasse. Sometimes\nthe river bank caves in, carrying away the levee, and permitting the water\nto rush in uninterruptedly. In the spring of 1863 the writer of this\narticle rode in a carriage one evening around a point of land a few miles\nabove Baton Rouge, which, to the extent of several acres, disappeared\nduring the night. The following day the fields in the rear resembled a\nlarge lake. Shortly after the capture of Port Hudson, a portion of the bank\nslid into the river with a battery of guns. The famous citadel and many of\nthe rebel earthworks on those historical bluffs have since shared the same\nfate.\n\nShould the levee, from any cause, give way, every possible effort is made\nto close the breach. Planters from miles above and below hurry to the\ncrevasse with all their available help. Piles are driven into the ground\nclose together, and in two parallel rows a few feet apart, both above and\nbelow the opening, and in such a direction as gradually to have the lines\napproach each other at no great distance in the rear of the crevasse.\nBetween these rows of piles are thrown sacks of earth, hay, or anything\nthat will arrest the rushing flood. Presently the narrowing space between\nthe dams can be spanned with pieces of timber, and then the torrent is soon\nchecked and the levee replaced.\n\nThe State of Louisiana paid last year thirty thousand dollars for closing\nthe Bouligny crevasse, a few miles below New Orleans. Crevasses above the\ncity, owing to their greater magnitude, are, however, rarely closed. An\neffort was made in 1865 to rebuild the great Chim and Robinson levee, on\nthe right bank of the river, a short distance below Port Hudson. This\ncrevasse occurred in 1863, and was of such enormous extent that, through\nit, a river more than a mile wide and several feet deep rushed out of the\nMississippi. A steamboat, several flatboats and rafts, and vast quantities\nof driftwood were swept into the irresistible torrent. It required over\nthree hundred thousand cubic yards of earth to replace the levee, and an\noutlay or nearly one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The tremendous\nflood of last April broke through the newly constructed work. The levee\ncommissioners refused an offer to close the crevasse for eighty thousand\ndollars, and in a few days a great part of the new levee was swept away.\nDeep gulches were cut in the plantations where the disaster occurred. The\nditches were filled, sandbanks formed in many places, and the sugar-cane\nfields covered with the _d\u00e9bris_ of the Mississippi. There were two or\nthree crevasses of nearly equal magnitude between Port Hudson and the mouth\nof Red river, and upper Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi suffered\nterribly from the overflow, caused in great part by the breaking away of\nthe newly built levees. The entire valley of Red river, whose bottoms\nfurnish perhaps the best cotton lands in the world, was inundated below\nJefferson, Texas. Many of the best buildings in Shreveport and Alexandria\nwere undermined. The planters betook themselves to the upper rooms of their\nhouses, and the cattle crowded together on the little knolls found here and\nthere on the river bank. A friend who came down during the inundation\nstated that he saw at least twenty thousand animals thus perishing from\nhunger, and being gradually swept away by the rising flood. At one time\nthirteen parishes were said to be in great part under water.\n{361}\nMany millions' worth of property was destroyed, and the unstinted charity\nof the Federal government to the sufferers, through the Freedmen's Bureau,\nwas measured only by cargoes of provisions sent to their relief.\n\nBut the overflows of the Mississippi have this year been still more\ndisastrous. Instead of pouring out successive floods, Red river, the\nArkansas, the Ohio and its great tributaries, and even the upper\nMississippi have risen simultaneously and poured their mighty inundations\ninto the lower river. The Mississippi was at one time fifty miles wide at\nMemphis, and the great alluvial plain or basin became an inland sea several\nhundred miles in length. There have for some time been but few places where\nlandings could be made between Cairo and the mouth of Red river. Days and\neven weeks must elapse after the river begins to recede at Cairo before it\ncan be affected at New Orleans or even at Vicksburg, so enormous is the\nbody of water that must find its way to the gulf. The bottom-lands of\nMississippi, especially those of the Yazoo region, and of upper Louisiana,\nwere nearly all under water before the delta people suffered from the\ninundation. But as the irresistible flood swept down toward the gulf, levee\nafter levee gave way, and at present the tracts overflowed can be estimated\nonly by parishes and counties, the plantations only by thousands, and the\nloss of property only by millions of dollars. There are nearly a dozen\ncrevasses between the mouth of Red river and New Orleans, not one of which\nit has been possible to stop. The crevasse at Grand Levee, Morganza, is a\nmile wide, and through it rushes a river twelve feet deep. To restrain the\nmighty flood would require immense levees through the entire delta, several\nfeet higher than those already constructed.\n\nThe parish of Tensas, the finest cotton district of Louisiana, is almost\nentirely under water. The inundation extends far up the Cortableau and\nalmost to the rich prairies of Opelousas. The sugar plantations of\nTerrebonne and Lafourche are invaded by the flood, and the Opelousas\nrailroad rendered useless. The rich lands of Grosse T\u00eate, Fordoce, and the\nMarangouin, for the first time in the memory of Creoles, are almost\nentirely inundated. Thousands of families have been driven from their\nhomes. Certain districts, overflowed for three successive years, begin to\nassume the appearance of a wilderness. The garfish, the alligator, and\nwildfowl have, in fact, resumed possession of many of the choicest portions\nof the state. Should the waters not soon subside, the product of cotton on\nthe bottom-lands of Louisiana and Mississippi will be very small. April is\nthe month for planting, and from present appearances the floods will not\nbegin to recede before the month of May.\n\nSo great is the interest of the Northern States in the cotton and sugar\nproduced an the bottom-lands of the Mississippi, that evidently the general\ngovernment ought to assume the responsibility of rebuilding the levees on a\nscale that will insure protection. This policy would be at variance with\nthe traditions of the government as regards internal improvements. But\nneither the planters who have hitherto been assessed for nearly the entire\noutlay, nor the impoverished states, are now in a condition to do what is\nrequired.\n\nOf the two plans proposed far leveeing the delta of the Mississippi, one\nconsists in increasing the number of the bayous, or lateral outlets, and\nthereby diminishing the volume of water in the main channel; the other, in\nclosing up all the bayous, and, with levees of sufficient strength,\nretaining the floods in the natural bed of the river. In some remarks made\nupon the subject by Mr. Banks in Congress, he expressed his preference for\nthe former theory, and intimated his intention, should the proper occasion\noccur, of advocating a large appropriation by the general government to put\nit in practical execution. The general government has, in fact, virtually\npledged itself to undertake the work as soon as the Southern States again\ncome into the Union.\n{362}\nMr. Banks is well acquainted with the topography of Louisiana, and can\nestimate the enormous outlay required for leveeing the bayous Lafourche and\nPlaquemine, to say nothing of the Atchafalaya, and opening new outlets,\nupon each of which, however small, the work would have to be done as\nthoroughly and upon as vast a scale as upon the Mississippi itself. This\ntheory is based upon the false assumption that, in case of a bayou or a\ncrevasse, the depth of the river at any point below the outlet is\ndiminished exactly in proportion to the quantity of water taken by it from\nthe main channel. When the great crevasse, over a mile wide, occurred last\nspring above Baton Rouge, I could not see that the volume of water at Baton\nRouge was much diminished thereby, but the current of the river was\nmaterially lessened. When several large crevasses occur, of course, both\nthe volume and the current of the river below must be diminished. And the\nslower the current, the greater the deposit of sediment on the bed of the\nriver, the effect of which is to lift up the whole body of water and\nincrease the tendency to overflow. The great _desideratum_ is to\nprevent the formation of deposit, which can be done only by maintaining a\ncertain rapidity of current. The more effective and scientific plan would,\ntherefore, seen to be to confine the floods to a single channel by means of\nlevees built sufficiently far back to prevent their destruction by the\ncaving in of the river banks, and strong enough for any emergency. The work\nof leveeing would thus be concentrated, vast areas of now useless\nswamp-land would be made available, and the bayous could be used as canals\nfor internal communication. Nor should it be forgotten that, as the regions\nbordering the tributaries of the Mississippi are settled and the forests\ncleared up, the actual quantity of water drained from them is from year to\nyear diminished. The floods of the upper Mississippi have already been\nnotably affected by this general law. But disasters like those of the\npresent year, although exceptional, can be averted only by levees\nconstructed upon a gigantic scale, and, as the wilderness of the great\nalluvial plain whose swamps now receive such vast quantities of water\nbecomes settled like the delta, the levees will have to be proportionally\nenlarged.\n\n------\n\n    From The Dublin Review;\n\n    The Church and the Roman Empire.\n    [Footnote 112]\n\n      [Footnote 112: _L'Eglise et l'Empire romain au l Ve Si\u00e9cle._ Par\n      M. Albert de Brogile, de l'Academie Francaise. Troisi\u00e8me\n      partie--Valentinien et Th\u00e9odose. Paris: Didier.]\n\n\nWhen we opened the two last volumes of this noble work, we fancied that,\nafter devoting a considerable degree of attention and study to the fruitful\nevents of the decline and fall of the Roman empire, we had little to learn\nabout its government, its institutions, manners, customs, and modes of\nthought. We had felt, indeed, a strange interest in watching the slow but\nsure development of Christianity, as it tumbled down, one by one, every\nlandmark of ancient heathenism; here forcing back the ugly iceberg into its\nolden limits, there bringing forth a new and verdant vegetation to conceal\nthe blackening ruins of the past; now enchasing, within its virgin gold,\nsome relic of primitive wisdom, or again planting its wooden cross among\nthe wastes and forests of Germania, as a beacon for a future world.\n{363}\nAnd yet, after all, in these last volumes of Prince de Broglie we have\nfound much to admire and much to remember.\n\nAre there many books of which we could say the same? Or, in other words,\nare there many that would so amply repay the trouble of perusing them?\n\nWhoever undertakes to read any work of serious importance, whatever its\nnature and subject, will do well to ask himself, when he comes to the\nconclusion, How has the author fulfilled his promises? How far has he\ncarried out his plan, how far justified his pretensions to impartiality, if\nwe have to do with a historian? The reader will not therefore be astonished\nthat we should apply the same rule to the work now before us. When Prince\nAlbert de Broglie started upon his now completed undertaking, what was his\nmain view and object he himself shall answer\nin the words he penned in 1852:\n\n  \"The mild and intelligent influence of the church was never more striking\n  than when she came forth for the first time on the stage of the world.\n  ... In the days when Jesus Christ was born in an obscure town of Judaea,\n  the empire was pacified, the Roman laws established on a sound basis, the\n  Roman manners polished and refined unto corruption; the Roman empire had\n  acquired its utmost development beyond the pale of Christianity, under\n  the shadow of a false worship and of false gods. Everything bore the\n  stamp of idolatry. The civil and political laws, founded first of all by\n  those patricians who were alike priests and lawyers, and then by those\n  Caesars whose supreme pontificate was deemed their prime dignity, were in\n  every direction pervaded by polytheism. Arts, letters, private manners,\n  all was heathen. Not a temple but acknowledged the protection of a\n  divinity--not a poem but embalmed its memory--not a banquet but began\n  with a libation--not a home but kindled a fire sacred to the Lares. Being\n  thus totally independent of Christianity, this civilization was\n  foredoomed to become its enemy--fate, indeed, to which it had not been\n  found wanting. Roman society, giving up for once its usual habits of\n  political toleration, had heaped upon Christianity contempt and insults\n  and persecutions without end. For three long centuries, Christianity had\n  grown up through ignominy and bloodshed. Wise men had scoffed at it,\n  politicians chastised it, the mob hooted it fiercely and savagely. The\n  blood of the martyrs had defiled the basis of the finest edifices in\n  Rome, whilst the smoke of the burning stake had blackened their crowning\n  frontispieces.\n\n  \"So, when the progress of truth, supported by the revolutions of\n  politics, had at last made the church triumphant with Constantine, what a\n  favorable opportunity and how many excellent reasons had she for\n  overthrowing all this profane and sacrilegious civilization! If, on the\n  very morrow of her triumph, the church had declared open war to Roman\n  society, if she had fired its monuments, broken to pieces its statues,\n  burnt its libraries, overthrown its laws--all this would have been but a\n  lawful deed of reprisal. ... Both means and motives were equally\n  plentiful for this summary justice. Without any appeal to the ardor of\n  new converts, the forests of Germany held within their wastes a reserve\n  of wild auxiliaries, ever ready to undertake the task on their own\n  account. The empire had already received its death-blow, through its own\n  internal anarchy, and through the barbarian invasions. The church stood\n  in no need of dealing the fatal blow--she had but to let it fall. ...\n  This, however, the prudent and tender mother of the human race did by no\n  means do. She looked upon Roman civilization not as the cursed gift of an\n  evil spirit, but as the motley product of human labor. As is the case\n  with every creation of a fallen being, there must needs be found hidden\n  behind the mists of error certain rays of light which were not to be\n  extinguished, but, on the contrary, brought back within the ever-burning\n  focus of eternal truth. Peacefully settling down in the midst of the\n  imperial society, taking up her abode in Rome itself, whilst Constantine\n  flew from the city, as if afraid of the old genius of the republic, the\n  church, far from destroying anything, adopted all, correcting and\n  reforming all by her own insensible influence, raising the victorious\n  sign of the cross above every monument, and breathing the healthy warmth\n  of Christian inspiration into every law. The fourth century of the\n  Christian era is not only remarkable for the men of genius by whom it was\n  illustrated. What is a constant subject of admiration, and what I should\n  not be astonished to see some future historian investigate hereafter more\n  deeply, is that slow labor of purification and absorption to which the\n  Christian religion subjected heathen civilization. It is this\n  transformation of a whole society, not by any material conquest, but\n  through the influence of a moral doctrine, which I shall attempt to bring\n  forth in the following picture.\" [Footnote 113]\n\n    [Footnote 113: V. i., Avertissement, pp. i-v.]\n\n{364}\n\nMost certainly the whole work is but the grand demonstration of the above\noutline, but nowhere does it come forth in such glowing characters as in\nthe two last volumes. There is hardly a page in which you do not meet with\nthis silent yet ever-rising tide of Christian ascendency, which ends in\nmastery over every relic of Roman civilization. In vain does the temporal\npower struggle to maintain its own ground; it is itself hurried on with the\nstream, and forced to give up the contest in sheer despair. At the distance\nof sixteen centuries, we are often reminded of what took place at the dawn\nof our own age; and, could we but change names, we might almost imagine we\nhave before us certain modern figures familiar to every reader. Let us\ntake, for instance, Valentinian I., who ascended the imperial throne in 364\nA.C., and chose for associate his brother Valens, as the ruler of the East.\nValentinian was a sturdy soldier, an austere Christian, of no original\ngenius, but yet endowed with such qualities as were not unequal to his\ndifficult task.\n\n   \"Of a cold disposition, inclined to enforce the laws and good order--no\n   less severe to himself than to others--he was sober, upright, and\n   chaste. Though a good soldier and a good speaker, he had not the\n   slightest pretension to wit, nor even to glory. He was a plain\n   matter-of-fact ruler, governing the empire just as he would have done a\n   legion, with a simplicity and a roughness of character exclusively\n   military; showing a harshness that bordered upon cruelty, when he deemed\n   it necessary to the interests of the public service, and yet by no means\n   prompt to avenge his own personal injuries; a man, in fact, having but\n   few wants and no taste for pomp or display, though rigorous beyond\n   measure to replenish the coffers of the state, and to balance the\n   receipts with the outlays of the treasury,\" (pp. 8, 9.)\n\nValentinian was in the height of manhood when he was clothed with the\nimperial purple; but if he felt no exultation, he evinced a keen jealousy\nfor the maintenance of his newly acquired power, hardly allowing a mere\nsuggestion as to its use and exercise. That jealousy and mistrust were\nextended even to the high influence of the church itself. The very first\nyear of his reign offers numerous traces of that spirit of universal\ntoleration which has become the idol of our modern reformers, yet which was\nso repugnant to the ideas and feelings of the old Roman world.\n\nSucceeding to Jovian, having witnessed the vagaries of Julian, under whom\nhe had even suffered persecution, the new emperor indeed began by relieving\nhis fellow-believers from their sundry disabilities, but at the same time\nhe put every other form of religious belief on a footing of rigorous\nequality with Christianity. Thus, if he takes from the heathens the temples\nwhich the Apostate had bestowed upon them, these temples became state\nproperty, instead of being restored to the Christians--Valentinian so\nestablishing, observes Prince de Broglie, a sort of neutral power between\nthe two contending doctrines. Thus, again, the public schools are opened to\nall, the clerical immunities and privileges are kept within narrow bounds,\nthe heathen sacrifices are scarcely prohibited; in fact, the most assiduous\nprecautions were taken in order to prevent the very appearance of any\nsubordination of the temporal government to sacerdotal influence. This was,\ndoubtless, a new feature in the sovereign, which took every one by\nsurprise, though many considered it to show a sound policy and practical\nwisdom. And yet, this very attitude of Valentinian toward the church was\nbut a proof of his real weakness, as the general incidents of his reign\nwere destined to show in strong colors. Valentinian's immediate object was\nto establish the full and total independence of the secular government. In\nreality, he rendered still more evident in the eyes of the world its utter\nhelplessness to guard and defend its most important privileges.\nThenceforward, to stand aloof from the church on the plea of state policy\nwas an utter impossibility.\n{365}\nOn the contrary, an alliance with the church was a matter of positive\nnecessity, for no other power in the world could, like her, play the part\nof a most useful and efficient auxiliary. Valentinian was to learn this at\nthe outset of his reign.\n\nHe had hardly arrived at Milan, the capital of the western empire, when he\nhad to encounter the insuperable difficulties of his finely balanced\nsystem. A contest had arisen between the Arian bishop Auxentius and the\ngreat Hilary of Poitiers. The latter used his utmost endeavors to correct\nthe evils attendant upon the persecution lately raised by the Emperor\nConstans; but Hilary was by no means disposed to overlook the delinquencies\nof courtier prelates, who changed their belief according to the whim and\nwill of every new sovereign. Such was Auxentius, who after showing himself\na zealous Arian, now displayed no less zeal in his recantations, which did\nnot, however, at all deceive his own flock. The Milanese were steadfast in\ntheir opposition to the ever-changing prelate, and Hilary no less staunchly\nencouraged them in their resistance.\n\nAccording to Valentinian's system, he should and would have remained\nneutral between the two antagonists. But such an amount of indifference was\nnot in the habits of the Roman administration. There was nothing so\ncontrary to public order, said many an imperial adviser, as these\nconventicles of the flock against their pastor, above all when backed by\nthe influence of a foreigner. Since Auxentius consented to sign the\northodox formula, and thus to do away with every vestige of past\ndissensions, why should others obstinately endeavor to perpetuate them?\nThis was a matter of police regulations, not a question of belief. When\npeople were all of the same opinion, why should not they meet together to\npray in the same church?\n\nWe can almost imagine that we are reading a memoir sent up by a French\nprefect to his minister, for the purpose of playing the umpire between some\npriest and his bishop. At any rate, Valentinian found the advice so\nconformable to his own ideas, that he unwittingly issued an edict\nprohibiting the Christians to attend at any ceremony of their worship,\nexcept in such places as were subjected to the bishop's jurisdiction.\nHilary immediately applied to the emperor himself, and soon showed him his\nerror, which was, however, followed by another step of a still graver\ncharacter. He ordered that the question should be examined by a committee\nof ten bishops and two secular magistrates. Auxentius, on being confronted\nwith Hilary, made every admission that was required; yet the latter had\nscarcely turned his back when the equivocating prelate recanted once more\nhis recantations, and maligned the Bishop of Poitiers to the emperor. His\naspersions were but too successful, for Hilary was denied a second\naudience, and was commanded to leave the town immediately.\n\nThe prelate obeyed as a subject, but as a bishop he had a right to speak,\nand he spoke with a freedom worthy of such a man. His letter, apparently\naddressed to the public, in reality was a bold protest against the\nemperor's interference in religious affairs. We doubt whether Constantine\nwould have submitted to such language, which, however, is a landmark\nshowing the progress of Christian ideas as to the relations of the\nspiritual and the temporal power. But it was the last episcopal act of the\ngreat pontiff, who died shortly after.\n\nIt is not merely in this direction that we see Christianity gradually\nasserting its ascendency in the Roman world. Slowly, but surely, the\npatriciate was yielding to its influence. Accustomed, as we are, to\nconsider the Roman aristocracy as totally effete during the latter period\nprevious to the fall of the empire, we can hardly fancy to ourselves that\nits grandees were anything else but the degenerate posterity of the\nCornelii, the Anicii, and other illustrious _gentes_, of ancient Rome.\nThere were, indeed, so many links connecting them with olden forms and\nidolatrous ordinances, that to couple them with the new belief seems\nsomething bordering on anachronism.\n{366}\nAnd yet the fact really stands thus: Partly through the effect of example,\npartly through ambition, and partly through an imperious conviction, whole\nraces had embraced the doctrines and practices of Christianity, and soon\nfound out, to their own astonishment, that they recovered at once an\nunexpected share of illustration and power.\n\n  \"Christianity, says Prince de Broglie, renewed their influence, by\n  throwing over it a sort of second youth. The day before their baptism,\n  they were wont to squander away their wealth among a motley _plebs_\n  to gain the bauble of a useless title; on the morrow their charities,\n  scarcely more abundant, but distributed by the discerning hand of the\n  priest, insured them, on the part of the less degraded Christians, a\n  prouder yet more lasting gratitude. Their slaves being gradually\n  emancipated, and prepared for freedom by a pious education, soon formed\n  around them a devoted army. They were no more that vile race of\n  freed-men, a true scourge to the empire, ever ready to pass from an\n  abject servility to the basest treachery. They were all the children of\n  Adam, redeemed by Jesus Christ, in whom their masters revered the\n  remembrance of a primitive equality and the stamp of a newly restored\n  dignity. Within a short time, the authority of the Christian patricians\n  extended far beyond Rome. Having once become members of an association\n  the most extensive and, indeed, the only one then organized throughout\n  the empire, they found themselves by the very fact placed at the head of\n  a powerful party. Since Athanasius, in the days of his exile, had found\n  an asylum in the dwellings of the Roman senators, the Christians of every\n  country were in the habit of applying from the depths of Egypt or of\n  distant Asia to the illustrious families in the capital, whenever they\n  had a church to build, a convent to establish, some ruin to prevent, or\n  some disaster to retrieve; and the alms which usually followed the\n  application were abundantly repaid in popularity and thankfulness. One\n  might compare them to some old trunks falling into decay through the\n  effect of time; should their roots, whilst shooting forth, meet with a\n  rich vein of alluvial soil, they send up a youthful sap, which adorns\n  with a wreath of verdure their dying branches and their blackening\n  limbs.\" (pp. 23, 24.)\n\nSuch was the society in which an Ambrose and a Jerome were formed and\nbrought up--the one learning all those arts and traditions that made him\nhereafter such an attractive compound (if we may be allowed the term) of\nsanctity and statesmanship; the other of a more ardent and restless\ndisposition, as if he had brought from his native forests of Dalmatia\nsomething of the fierce wildness of the barbarian. Jerome, though a sincere\nChristian, did not then conform his conduct to his belief; he rather\nyielded alternately to the allurements of pleasure or to the suggestions of\na repentant spirit. He himself tells us that be thirsted for knowledge,\nbeing ever on the wing, passing from the Capitol to the Catacombs; almost\nequally impassioned for the Gospel or for Homer; reading by turns the\nScriptures with the fervor of an anchoret or the disdain of an Athenian\norator. But still he clung with fondness to the best Roman society, where\nhe was an habitual guest and companion. There is hardly any part of the\nempire, or any one of its institutions, in which we do not find this\nall-pervading influence of Christianity. But nowhere, perhaps, is it more\nevident than in the laws. Volumes have been written upon this subject, and\nthe most lamentable pictures have been drawn of the wretched state of the\nRoman population, ground down at once by heavy taxation, by the oppression\nof local governors, and exposed to all the horrors of repeated invasions.\nTheir condition was so melancholy that they fled to the barbarians, among\nwhom they enjoyed more real freedom and greater security than under the\nrule of their lawful sovereign. Valentinian distinguished himself among\nmany other princes by his extreme severity in the enforcement of the fiscal\nlaws; he hardly admitted any plea or excuse when the treasury was to be\nreplenished; far better than anyone he felt the difficulties of his\nposition, when he had to encounter the numberless enemies of his empire.\nBut he had hardly secured by the most severe measures the public resources\nin men and money when a reaction ensued. An immense complaint and wailing,\nsays our author, ascended to the throne from every region, and the prince\nwas obliged to bind the very wounds he had inflicted--nay, to countermand\nthe measures which he had adopted under the imperious claims of the public\nsecurity.\n\n{367}\n\nAmong these laws or decrees tending to soothe the pangs of a suffering\nnation, we must note several that bear evident traces of a Christian\ninspiration. Thus, close to a law binding the tenant to the land on which\nhe is condemned to live and die, we find another defending him against the\nexcessive pretensions of the landowner. Elsewhere, if the authority of the\njudges is duly enforced, minute precautions are taken against their\naccidental or interested errors; they are ordered to enact their sentences\nin public, prohibited from holding property within the limits of their\nresidence, and threatened with severe penalties if they should listen to\nthe insinuations of informers. At the same time, physicians were appointed\nto attend the poor in large towns at the expense of the treasury, and other\nmeasures of a similar character were carried, all betraying a benevolent\ndisposition totally unknown to the heathen world.\n\nWe must refer to the author's pages for many other instances of innovations\nin which we detect the increasing influence of Christianity, and draw the\nreader's notice to one of the most remarkable institutions of those times,\nout of which grew perhaps the ecclesiastical principalities of the feudal\nages. As there was a constant stream of grievances and claims sent up from\nthe provinces to the crown, Valentinian thought proper to appoint an\nofficial defender of their rights, _defensor civitatis_.\n\n  \"Such was the title of a new office, which appears for the first time in\n  365, filling an intermediate station between the _curia_, or\n  municipality, and the treasury. The duties of this new agent were\n  twofold, and well adapted to the high-pressure mechanism which held the\n  _curiae_ responsible for the total amount of taxes due to the fiscus\n  and allowed them at the same time to fall back on the small proprietors\n  of the city. On the defender incumbs the duty, as a representative of the\n  curiales, of discussing with the state the amount of the whole\n  contingent; and then, with the curiales themselves, the aliquot part of\n  each rate-payer. Himself a stranger to the curia, he is obliged at once\n  to protect and keep it within bounds; to speak for it and against it; to\n  defend it, to lighten its burden, and to prevent it from throwing that\n  burden on other people's shoulders. In fact, the defender was something\n  like the popular tribune, whose _veto_ is now directed, not against\n  aristocratical influence, but against the tyranny of the administration.\n  In its decrepitude, the empire was returning, like many an old man, to\n  the habits and ways of its childhood,\" (p. 51, _seq_.)\n\nBut the difficulty was to find a man of sufficient integrity, power, and\ninfluence to hold this delicate position between the crown and the nation.\nIn the general downfall of public virtue, there was hardly a citizen or a\nlandowner capable of fulfilling such arduous duties. His magistracy was\nelective; but it was soon found out that the bishop alone had both virtue\nand power to withstand the fitful caprices of imperial despotism, no less\nthan the raging passions of the barbarians. Did Valentinian dream of such a\nresult when be instituted the _defensores?_ Doubtless not: and this\nvery fact throws a flood of light upon the real state of things at the\nperiod we have before our eyes.\n\nIt is not merely in the West that we thus meet with the irresistible\nascendency of Christianity, making its way both with and against temporal\npower; the same spectacle awaits us in a still more striking manner in the\nEast. Every one is more or less familiar with the great struggle between\nArianism and the illustrious Athanasius. That contest, however, bore more\nof a purely theological than of a political character, and we shall\ntherefore pass on to scenes of a different nature, and perhaps less known\nto the general reader. The famous heresy, so like Protestantism in its main\nfeatures, was fast dwindling into a court intrigue, though fostered by the\nweak arm of a Valens. Under that degenerate prince the orthodox bishops\nwere once more banished from their sees; but the church had already\novercome two recent persecutions, whilst the state had well nigh succumbed\nto four successive revolutions.\n{368}\nEvery man could now see with his own eyes where resided true influence and\npower, so that, even in a worldly view, it was no longer safe to trust\nsolely to the sovereign's whim and pleasure. Valens himself was destined to\nexperience, in his fatal downfall, that he would have to deal alike with a\ntrue bishop and a true statesman in the person of St. Basil, who ruled over\nthe diocese of Caesarea.\n\nThe importance of Caesarea, as the ecclesiastical metropolis of Asia Minor,\nwas very considerable, extending its jurisdiction over the independent\nexarchate of Pontus, and even beyond the limits of the empire, over Armenia\nand certain parts of Persia. Valens was desirous of placing at the head of\nthis large see one of his Arian creatures; but at the very first rumor of\nsuch a scandal the whole population called for Basil, who had not yet been\nraised to the episcopal dignity. Shortly after, however, the old Bishop of\nCaesarea offered a share of his power to the popular candidate, who thus\nwas brought forth to the foremost rank in the impending struggle between\nthe church and the emperor.\n\nValens, after many delays, at last set out upon his progress through Asia\nMinor. He journeyed slowly, in order to make himself acquainted with the\nreal feelings of the surrounding population. To secure a favorable\nreception, he sent before him his prefect Modestus, who took good care that\nno hostile figure should meet the eye of the sovereign. On entering any\ntown, with a numerous retinue of courtiers, the prefect immediately sent\nfor the bishop, and questioned him as to his dispositions in regard to the\nemperor's views. If the answer proved satisfactory, the prelate was loaded\nwith honors and privileges; if, on the contrary, he adhered to the true\nfaith, banishment or even death was awarded against him. The whole of\nBithynia and Galatia was thus traversed by the imperial cort\u00e9ge, which met\neverywhere that silent attitude on the part of the people so often mistaken\nfor a sincere feeling of satisfaction. At last Modestus entered Cappadocia,\non his way to the city inhabited, one might almost say governed, by Basil.\nAnd here we must give way to our author's narrative, for no words of ours\ncould supply the interest of the following scene:\n\n   \"On his arrival in town, the prefect sent for the bishop. Basil obeyed\n   the summons; when he entered the prefect's room, he maintained an\n   attitude of calm superiority, which gave him, says Gregory Nyssa, far\n   more the appearance of a physician visiting a patient than that of a\n   delinquent before his judge. This firmness intimidated the prefect, who\n   had recourse at first to mildness. 'The emperor is coming,' said he;\n   'pray beware, for he is highly irritated; and, for a mere scruple about\n   a dogma, do not jeopardize wantonly the interests of your church: if, on\nthe contrary, you show yourself submissive, you will feel the effects of\n   his good-will' 'Pay attention yourself,' replied Basil, 'to the fact\n   that you have no power over such men as seek for nothing else but the\n   kingdom of God, and pray do not talk to me as you would to children.'\n   'Well, but won't you do anything for the emperor?' asked the prefect.\n   'Is it nothing in your eyes to see the emperor mingling with your flock\n   and becoming one of your auditors? This is what you may gain by yielding\n   a little, and by sacrificing one single word of the symbol.' 'Doubtless,\n   it is a great thing to see an emperor at church, for it is a great thing\n   to save a soul, not only the soul of an emperor, but the soul of any\n   man, whatever it may be. And yet, far from adding to or taking from the\n   symbol one single word, I would not even alter the disposition of the\n   letters that make up the syllables.' 'What, will you forget so far the\n   respect you owe to the emperor?' exclaimed Modestus in a loud voice, and\n   giving way to impatience. 'But in what I do really offend him,' retorted\n   Basil, 'is more than I can understand.' 'Why, you don't adopt his faith,\n   when all around you submit to it.' 'But my own emperor wills it not; I\n   can never worship a creature, having myself been created by God, and\n   called to become one like unto him.' 'Well, but we who command in this\n   place, what do you think of us! Are we nothing in your eyes? and would\n   you not deem yourself happy to be our equal, and to be associated to our\n   dignity?' 'You may lord it over us, and I by no means dispute your\n   exalted rank. To be your equal is, doubtless, a fine thing; but I am\n   already your equal, since you are, like myself, the creature of God, and\n   since I am likewise the equal, which I deem an honor, of those whom you\n   rule.' 'At least, don't you fear my power?'\n{369}\n   'What can you do to me?' 'What?--why, inflict upon you any degree of\n   suffering I may command.' 'Pray speak out clearly and tell me what?'\n   'Confiscation, banishment, tortures--death itself.' 'None of those\n   things can reach me; a man who has nothing leaves nothing for\n   confiscation; a man who is attached to no place, and looks upon himself\n   everywhere as a stranger, is beyond the reach of banishment. What\n   tortures can you inflict upon this weak body, when the very first blow\n   will do for it at once? Indeed, indeed,' added Basil, pointing to his\n   chest, 'you would do me a good service were you to rid me of this\n   miserable pair of bellows. As for death, I should deem it a favor, as\n   leading me to that God for whom I wish to live, and for whose cause I am\n   already half dead.' 'Nobody ever dared,' interrupted Modestus, 'to speak\n   to me in this way.' 'Because you never met a bishop.' Bewildered and\n   angry, yet still afraid of carrying matters to the last extremities,\n   Modestus put an end to the interview by giving the bishop one day for\n   reflection. 'To-morrow you will find me what I am to-day,' concluded\n   Basil, 'and I don't wish that you should yourself change in regard to\n   me.'\n\n   \"On the morrow, and on the following days, Valens was expected every\n   hour. The bishop was besieged with parleys and entreaties of every\n   description. There was not one noble personage who did not undertake to\n   argue with the prelate. The head cook, Demosthenes--an influential man,\n   by the by--returned constantly to the attack. Modestus, on the other\n   hand, feeling vexed at having no better result to bring before the\n   emperor, and anxious to avoid any charge of weakness, made public\n   preparations for an execution. Heralds, lictors, executioners--every\n   judicial agent was summoned, ready at a signal to seize upon the\n   factious priest. Having thus taken every precaution, the prefect,\n   somewhat abashed, yet confident at least in his preventive measures,\n   repaired to the prince. 'Emperor,' said he, 'I have failed in my\n   attempt; this man is unmanageable; threats, entreaties, kindness, are\n   all unavailing with him. This is a matter of stern severity; do but give\n   the order, and it shall be fulfilled.' But this was exactly what Valens\n   was not inclined to do. Though no less incensed than bewildered, still\n   be did not dare to shed such illustrious blood on the path he was about\n   to enter. He reprieved the execution, and penetrated into the city in a\n   sort of wavering state of mind, just like a piece of iron, says Gregory\n   Nyssa, already melting in the fire; but nevertheless still remaining a\n   bit of iron.\n\n   \"He continued in this mood, irresolute as to his line of conduct, and\n   without holding any communication with the bishop's dwelling. A meeting,\n   however, became unavoidable, for the festival of the Epiphany was\n   approaching; and, unless he chose to put himself outside of the church,\n   Valens could not do otherwise than attend at divine service. On the\n   morning of the feast, he therefore came to a determination, and went to\n   the temple with an escort of soldiers, himself doubting whether he would\n   be received peacefully, or would have to force an entry through\n   violence. He entered: the crowd was most numerous, and had just begun\n   the choral psalms; the chant was both harmonious and powerful, the whole\n   service offering that appearance of majesty and order which Basil\n   excelled in maintaining in his church. At the bottom of the nave stood\n   Basil himself, facing the people, but motionless like a pillar of the\n   sanctuary, and with his eyes fixed upon the altar. There he remained\n   standing, just as the acts of the saints represent him, his tall or\n   rather towering stature showing off his spare and slender figure, while\n   his aquiline features were strongly brought forth by his thin, emaciated\n   cheeks; a latent fire flashed from under his prominent forehead and his\n   arched eyebrows, whilst now and then a somewhat disdainful smile parted\n   on each side of his mouth his long white beard. All around him stood his\n   clergy in an attitude of fear and respect. At this imposing sight Valens\n   stopped, as if suddenly seized with a sort of bewilderment. The service\n   continued as though his presence had passed unperceived. At the\n   offertory, he stepped forward to present the gift which he had prepared;\n   but no hand was held out to receive it; nobody came forward to meet him.\n   A cloud passed before his eyes; he staggered on his legs; and, had not\n   one of the attendants supported him, he would have fallen to the ground.\n   Basil had pity on his anguish, and waved with his hand that the offering\n   should be accepted.\n\n   \"The next day, the emperor having recovered his composure, returned to\n   the church, and, feeling bolder, resolved to speak to his terrible\n   antagonist. The service being over, he passed behind the velum where the\n   officiating priest was wont to retire. Basil received him with kindness,\n   in the presence of his faithful friend Gregory, who had hastened to his\n   side. The interview was a long and peaceful one. Basil fully explained\n   to the monarch his reasons for not conforming to his wishes, and even\n   entered into many theological developments. By thus flattering his\n   vanity, and by appearing to set some value on his opinion, he kept him\n   for several hours spellbound by his lucid and powerful eloquence. This,\n   by no means, satisfied many of the by-standers, who had already gone\n   over to Arianism, and some of them endeavored to interfere. Among these\n   was the unfortunate Demosthenes, who made an attempt at a theological\n   argument, but in the midst of his demonstration he unwittingly coined a\n   most ridiculous barbarism. 'Strange,' exclaimed Basil, smiling, 'here we\n   have caught Demosthenes blundering in Greek!' The emperor departed,\n   somewhat pacified, and bestowed upon Basil a piece of land for a\n   hospital which he had founded,\" (pp. 94-103.)\n\n{370}\n\nWhat a picture! what a lesson for every one! How it brings home to every\nmind the fact that a new power had arisen, which was more than a match for\nworldly rulers, though clothed with even imperial purple. In the present\ninstance, the lesson became still more apparent, when Valens left Caesarea\nwithout having dared to sign a decree of banishment against Basil, and\nfully convinced that a supernatural agency interfered to protect him. In\nthe West, observes Prince de Broglie, Valentinian endeavored to maintain a\nneutral position between the church and heathenism; but he found it\nimpossible to keep his ground, and his own measures turned against him. In\nthe East, Valens aimed at governing against the church, but was overcome by\nthe sole ascendency of sanctity combined with genius. The time, in fact,\nwas come when the temporal power proved to be utterly helpless to save a\ncrumbling state of society from its utter downfall, and when the\nfundamental principles on which all society must ever rest were to be\nrecast and remodelled by more skilful hands, though even through a dark,\nchaotic period, to serve again in future days as the substratum of modern\nChristendom. Geologists plunging into the bowels of the earth tell us of\nprimitive periods, and primitive creations, that appear to our wondering\neyes as the forerunners or foreshadows of our own world. We read something\nof the same kind in the facts and incidents of the fourth century: the\npriestly power makes itself already felt in a Basil, or in Augustin, much\nas it was hereafter displayed in a Gregory I., or a Lanfranc, or an Anselm,\nor even a Hildebrand. Doubtless, Basil and Ambrose were no Hildebrands, but\nthey are of the same race and genus--there is a family likeness between\nthem all, because, perhaps, the same spirit burns within them, whatever may\nbe their outward figure or robe. To convey our meaning through another\nsimile. You enter a gallery, containing the portraits of some eminent\nfamily, whose deeds have left their imprint for ages on the country to\nwhich they belong. You take your stand at the founder of the illustrious\nstock, and probably his large, open, noble figure sinks at once into your\nmemory, as if you had before you some huge relic of the fossil world. And\nthen you go on, following, one by one, each successive representative of\nthe time-honored generations. The ancestral likeness becomes almost\nextinct, and you vainly endeavor to retrace in the effeminate lineaments of\na courtier the eagle-eye and haughty traits of his forefathers. But all of\na sudden you are riveted to the spot by the portrait of a youth, who seems\nto embody within himself every distinctive mark of the whole race. You\nwould almost mistake him for a son of the original founder, and yet he\nbears so completely about him the peculiarities of his own time that to\nplace him anywhere else would be committing an utter anachronism. Your mind\nis, as it were, thrown off its balance, and you hardly know how to account\nfor the delusion. Something of the same kind occurs when you compare\ncertain prelates of the middle age, or even of later times, with the last\nbishops of the Roman empire; and nowhere does this highly interesting fact\ncome forth in stronger relief than in the work before us. It would be easy\nto demonstrate the assertion by other incidents belonging to the life of\nSt. Basil; we prefer giving a still better proof in St. Ambrose, the\ncelebrated bishop of Milan.\n\nHe was the last Roman statesman, just as Theodosius might be termed the\nfirst Christian emperor. He had been brought up in the familiarity of\nProbus, one of the most eminent patricians of the great city. As he himself\nbelonged to a noble family, he had learned at an early age all the\ntraditions and arts of the Roman government, whilst the austerity of his\nreligious principles guarded him against the allurements of pleasure.\n{371}\nOf an open, commanding exterior, a good speaker, well versed in literature,\nno less proficient in the laws of his country, it seemed natural that with\nsuch eminent qualifications, backed with excellent connections, he should\nattract the sovereign's notice. This actually took place, and he was\nappointed to the consular government of Milan. But the times were\ndangerous, for the unbending disposition of Valentinian had now become\ntyrannical. Probus was by no means blind to the peril incurred by his\nyouthful _prot\u00e9g\u00e9_; and on taking leave of him the veteran politician\nsimply said, \"Child, I have but one piece of advice to give you. Behave,\nnot like a governor, but like a bishop.\" The advice was characteristic and\npithy: Ambrose remembered it well. In the midst of the universal confusion\nand terror caused by the emperor's cruelty, Milan enjoyed the greatest\norder and tranquillity. No riots, no insurrections, no complaints; the\nthing was in itself a wonder, more particularly, if we recollect the\ndissensions existing between the Arian bishop Auxentius, and the better\npart of his flock. In fact, a young governor setting an example of\nchastity, integrity, and humanity--showing himself affable, just, or\nmerciful according to the occasion--never sacrificing to his own ambition\nor private interests the time and property of others; such a man, says\nPrince de Broglie, was, in the eyes of the population, fit to grace the\nepiscopal seat far better than the praetorium of the civil magistrate.\n\nThe popular election of Ambrose to the episcopacy is too well known for us\nto relate once more a story that has been so often and so ably told. What\nwe wish particularly to bring forward is the secular character which is\nconstantly enforced upon a bishop of those times, whether he wills it or\nnot, from the very simple reason that he could do what no other could\naccomplish.\n\nAmbrose had scarcely been consecrated--he had scarcely bestowed the whole\nof his large fortune upon the poor, he had scarcely given himself up to the\nabsorbing duties of his new position, when be was called upon to guide the\nfirst steps of his own sovereign, young Gratian, who had just succeeded to\nhis father Valentinian, and raised Theodosius to the throne of the East.\nBoth these princes were sincere Christians, but Theodosius had been brought\nup in the camp, had tasted the bitter cup of adversity, and added to the\nqualities of a good soldier those of a cool judgment and a sound heart.\nGratian, on the contrary, was a mere stripling, whose intentions were\nupright, but who had hardly any experience in public affairs. He thus was\nnaturally disposed to lean on Ambrose, whose advice, both as a pastor and a\nstatesman, might be so eminently useful. That advice was not wanting, and\nfor some time the policy of the Western Empire was in reality the policy of\nAmbrose. We use the word advisedly, for no other could better answer to our\nmeaning and to the real state of things. At the same time we beg the reader\nto remember that not for one minute does the bishop separate his strong,\nmanly adherence to the gospel from his views as to the secular government;\nboth are, indeed, so blended, so utterly identified, that it becomes as\nimpossible to distinguish them one from another, as it is to mark where the\ninfluence of our bodily organs terminates, and where that of our soul\nbegins. The evils of the times were too frequent, and too poignant, not to\nrequire the interference of Ambrose--not to make him bold, even as a\nbishop, a sort of civil magistracy, of which his flock would have been the\nvery last to complain. Though he had not the slightest idea of using his\nsober but penetrating eloquence for anything like popular demonstrations,\nyet he was not the man to refuse the part or an intercessor, if a\npopulation, suffering from oppression, claimed his support; or if the\nsovereign asked of him to strengthen his wavering counsels, he would\nreadily hold out a helping hand.\n\n{372}\n\nAnd here we may find, with our author, manifest indications of that great\nChristian doctrine, the \"_de jure_\" alliance of church and state.\nAmbrose had been formed from childhood upward to a certain course of ideas,\nwhich led him naturally to assume a large share in the direction of public\naffairs.\n\n   \"He could not apprehend the notion that the empire should have no\n   official form of worship, or rather that it should have two religions\n   together at one and the same time. He was shocked at the sight of an\n   incoherent confusion of Christianity and heathenism to be met with at\n   every step throughout the West, and nowhere more than at Rome itself.\n   The churches and their rival temples, both opened on the same day, by\n   order of the senate or emperor, for the same official ceremonies;\n   Jupiter and Mars, two glorified demons, associated with the one jealous\n   God, as the protectors of the commonwealth; invoked in the same\n   language, thanked for the same favors; and then the monuments covered\n   with profane inscriptions, the statues of idols towering over the\n   basilicas, or defying on the public squares and at the corner of every\n   street the cross triumphant; all this adulterous mixture of truth and\n   error, which the Christian emperors had never dared to proscribe\n   completely, scandalized the jealous purity of his faith quite as much as\n   his taste for administrative regularity. As a prefect, he would have\n   gladly put an end to such confusion, as being a public nuisance; as a a\n   bishop, he felt indignant against so poisonous a profanation. The empire\n   acknowledging but one master, and there being but one God in heaven, why\n   should not these two unities be linked together by an indissoluble\n   union? Why should the state tolerate within its limits anything beyond\n   those two grand unities? On this central point Gratian and the bishop\n   agreed even before they had seen each other. The alliance of the church\n   and state, which the timorous conscience of a Gratian had looked for,\n   Ambrose was ready not only to recommend, but enforce as a duty,\" (vol.\n   ii. p. 18.)\n\nIt would hardly be possible to point out in more positive terms the\ndoctrine which became the groundwork of Christendom in after times, a\ndoctrine which a St. Gregory VII. and an Innocent III. were to carry to its\nextreme consequences. This was the germ, destined to unfold itself slowly\nunderground, until it should rise and develop its branches in the feudal\ntimes, serving as a stay and prop for an anarchical state of society. But\nlet us not wander beyond our subject. Gratian and Ambrose were soon closely\nknit together in the greatest intimacy, and ere long the influence of the\nmaster mind became apparent. Between 378 and 381 Gratian dwelt almost\nconstantly at Milan, issuing new laws, which all bear the stamp of a\npriestly impulse, which all are inspired by a man who could not forget that\n_he_ likewise had held civil power. In everyone of these enactments,\njustly observes our author, we perceive certain dispositions tempering\nrigor by clemency. Thus it is, for instance, with those privileged\ncorporations of the Roman empire, which were at once a resource and a\nsource of ruin for its very existence by their extortionary tendencies;\nthus, again, with a more equitable distribution of the annona, which is\nmodified according to the dictates of charity. Elsewhere measures are\nadopted against burglary or brigandage, but at the same time qualified by\ncertain humane clauses, as to the mode of repression. In fact, the civil\nruler shows himself less authoritative, less imperious, less harsh and\narbitrary in the display of his power; and yet we meet with a greater\nfirmness, never baulked by alternatives of weakness and helplessness.\n\nIn other directions these laws assume the form of what we might call public\nmanifestations of the imperial conscience. Let us supply a few instructive\ninstances.\n\nMilan, August 3, 379.--General law against heretics, expressly modifying\nthe edict enacted at Sirmium in the preceding year, and extending to such\nsects as shall debase _by their sophistry_ the notion of God, the\nprohibition of propagandism, which had already been laid upon those who\n_annulled baptism by renewing it_, (Donatist.)\n\n{373}\n\nMilan, April 24, 380.--Women of low extraction, and condemned by that very\nfact to appear on the stage are freed from any such obligation as soon as\nthey embrace Christianity; \"because,\" says the law, \"the better mode of\nliving they have adopted liberated them from the bond of their natural\ncondition: _Melior vivendi usus vinculo naturalis conditionis\nevaluit_.\"\n\nMay, 381.--The above law is restricted; \"for such women as abandon the\npurity of a Christian life shall not enjoy the above exemption.\"\n\nJuly 21st.--Liberation of certain criminals, in honor of Easter.\n\nMay 2, 382.--Penal measures are denounced against those apostates who shall\npreach apostasy. Whoever abandons the Christian law to embrace idolatry,\nJudaism, or Manichaeism, is declared incapable of making a will, one of the\ngreatest penalties to which a Roman could be subjected. And all these\nmeasures were crowned by another, which made a deep impression throughout\nthe whole empire: the statue of Victory was definitively removed from the\nhall where the senate assembled at Rome for its deliberations. This was\nperhaps the greatest proof of the influence which Ambrose had over the\nimperial mind, and not one heathen, of high or low degree, mistook the hand\nthat had dealt the blow.\n\nAt any rate, Ambrose was not the man to deny it. Symmachus, one of the most\nillustrious patricians, who belonged to the heathen party, having sent up\nto the throne a petition, whose object was to obtain the restoration of the\nstatue, Ambrose himself entered the lists in a counter petition, or rather\nmanifesto, in which we see at once the bishop and the statesman.\n\n  \"Every man [says he] who acknowledges the Roman rule bears arms for the\n  emperors and princes; you are verily the militia of an all-powerful God,\n  and of the most holy faith. For there is no security for man himself if\n  he does not worship the true God--the God of the Christians, who governs\n  all things; he alone is the true God, and demands that we should adore\n  him from the bottom of our souls. The gods of nations, say the\n  Scriptures, are nothing else but devils.\n\n  \"Now whosoever serves that God ought to bear within him no dissimulation,\n  no reserve, but devote his whole being to him. If he does not entertain\n  such feelings, he ought at least to offer no external consent to\n  idolatrous worship, or to a profane worship; for no one can deceive God,\n  to whom the secret of our hearts lies open. ... I am really astonished\n  that any man should hope to see you restore the altars of the Gentiles,\n  and give money from your coffers for profane sacrifices. .... O emperor!\n  do not allow any man to deceive your youth. ... And I likewise, I am for\n  following the experience of the wise, but God's counsels must rule\n  supreme over all others. If we had to do here with some military concern,\n  you should consult and follow the opinion of the best approved generals.\n  But in religious matters you are bound to listen to God. Is the man who\n  gives you this piece of advice a heathen? Well, don't force him to\n  believe what he won't believe; but then let him allow you, O emperor! the\n  same freedom: let him not attempt to force upon the sovereign an act of\n  violence that he would not himself endure at his hands. The very heathen\n  does not like a man to belie his own creed; every one ought to maintain\n  the free and sincere convictions of his own mind. Should those who hurry\n  you on to such a decision be but nominal Christians, pray, do not allow\n  yourself to be deluded by a name. Whoever advises you in this way\n  sacrifices to the gods, whether he admits it or not. ...\"\n\nAmbrose wound up by requesting to\nobtain communication of the petition, with a view of answering it. \"In a\nworldly suit,\" said he, \"you would listen to both parties. This is a matter\nof religion. I, the bishop, I come forth to defend her. ... If you refuse\nme, no bishop will submit peacefully to such an iniquity; you may still\napply to the church, but you will not meet any more with priests, or at\nleast with any who will not be ready to resist you.\"\n\nThoroughly to appreciate the weight of this strong language, it must be\nremembered that many a lukewarm Christian within the imperial council\ninclined to the restoration of the famous statue. To refuse the request of\nAmbrose would, however, have been imprudent, and besides, Valentinian the\nYounger revered and loved the venerable bishop, who had shown him great\nkindness in trying circumstances. Once in possession of the pagan\nmanifesto, the great prelate of the West dealt with it in a manner which\nscattered to the four winds both its arguments and rhetorical flourishes.\n{374}\nThe whole composition is a masterpiece of sound reason and gentlemanly\nsatire, forming a thorough defence of Christianity against idolatry. When\nit was read before the council, every wavering mind was struck dumb with\nastonishment, whilst the youthful sovereign broke forth in the following\nimpassioned words: \"It's the voice of Daniel; I will not undo what my\nbrother did.\" Of course the cause of the goddess Victory was lost for ever.\n\nBut something was not and could not be lost--we mean the contest between\nthe church and idolatry, that survived even the final crash of the empire.\nYet that crash, though imminent, could not yet be foreseen by either party,\nstill less perhaps by Ambrose himself, who was a true type of the old\nRoman. His constant object seems to have been to revive the pristine policy\nof his forefathers, by instilling new life into them, thanks to the sublime\ndoctrines of the new faith. So things went on just in the same way,\nChristianity impregnating more and more the habits, institutions, and laws\nof ancient society, but for purposes that were still the secret of\nProvidence. In the mean time Gratian was murdered by the usurper Maximus,\nand Ambrose was once more called to negotiate with the murderer, and to\ndefend the last relics of the Valentinian family. A short time yet runs on,\nand Theodosius remains sole ruler of the whole civilized world--a ruler\naccording to the heart of the holy bishop of Milan. With an Ambrose and a\nTheodosius to prop the tottering edifice, what might not be expected? And\nyet it was not to be. These two bright figures are but a transient gleam\nbetween two storms. Alaric was born--nay, more, he had been a silent\nspectator in the glittering crowd of courtiers who attended at the\ncoronation of Theodosius. How many wild dreams of invasion, and burning\ncities, and bloody battles were teeming at that very moment in the brain of\nthat young barbarian!\n\nSingular enough, the first occasion on which Ambrose and Theodosius met, as\nit were, in public, gave rise to a contest. The emperor, irritated at the\nsummary destruction of a Jewish synagogue by one of the Eastern prelates,\nhad ordered it to be rebuilt at the expense of the prelate. The bishop was\nabsent from Milan when the order was given and sent; on his return, he felt\nindignant that a Christian prelate should be bound to rebuild a temple\ndedicated to the execration of Jesus Christ. It was in his eyes a sort of\nprevarication far more guilty than the violation of any civil law. He\nimmediately wrote to the emperor in the strongest language; and here again\nhe sets forth that great Christian doctrine which was afterward so fully\ndeveloped and exemplified in the middle age. The whole incident is so\nstriking that we shall give it in the words of Prince de Broglie:\n\n   \"Ambrose begins by a short insinuative exordium: 'Listen to me, O\n   emperor! as you wish that God may listen to me when I am praying for\n   you. If I am not worthy of being heard by you, how should I be worthy of\n   transmitting your wishes and prayers? If it be not proper for an emperor\n   to fear plain speaking, it is not likewise proper for a priest to\n   disassemble his thoughts.'\n\n   \"He then enters fully and unreservedly into his own doctrine: he\n   maintains the unlawfulness of any help given by Christians for the\n   construction of an edifice destined to error; and the faithful, but,\n   above all, the bishops, have no more the right to do it than the emperor\n   to impose it upon them. If the bishop yields to the imperial order, he\n   becomes guilty, and the emperor responsible before God for the bishop's\n   weakness. 'So you must see,' pursues Ambrose, 'whither you are going.\n   You ought to fear quite as much the bishop's obedience as his\n   resistance. If he is steadfast, fear to make a martyr of him; if he\n   shows weakness, fear that you may bear the weight of his fall. And,\n   indeed, how will your order be fulfilled? Should the Christians refuse\n   to accomplish it, will you force them to it through violence? So you\n   will be obliged to confide to the Count of the East your victorious\n   standards, your labarum; nay, the very standard of Christ himself, with\n   the mission of restoring a temple, wherein Christ will be denied.\n{375}\n   Well, pray order that the labarum shall be carried into the synagogue,\n   and then see whether anyone will obey you. ... History tells us that\n   idolatrous temples were erected in Rome with the spoils of the\n   Cimbrians. In our days, the Jews may engrave on the frontispiece of\n   their synagogue: Temple built with the spoils of the Christians. Public\n   order requires it, will you say? So the appearance of outward order must\n   lord it over the interests of faith! No; authority must yield to piety.'\n\n   \"It would be impossible to assert in language of more rigorous cogency\n   the supremacy of the religious law over every civil law. The church, in\n   her maternal prudence, is far from having ratified on these delicate\n   points the tenets of Ambrose: as she never imposed upon the faithful the\n   obligation of building temples to error, so has she not forbidden them\n   to contribute to their material preservation whenever equity, previous\n   engagements, or the necessity of repairing wrongs requires it of them.\n   It is, therefore, by no means astonishing that Theodosius, arguing like\n   a civil lawgiver, should have deemed these demands excessive, or even\n   that he should have given way to an unusual fit of ill humor. He allowed\n   the letter to remain unanswered. And yet it contained toward the end two\n   lines which offered matter for consideration. 'Such is my request,' said\n   the prelate; 'I have done all in my power to present it with that\n   respect which is due to you: pray, do not force me to speak out in the\n   church.'\n\n   \"Indeed, as soon as he returned to Milan, Ambrose availed himself of the\n   very first opportunity to speak out at church, and before Theodosius. He\n   chose for his text the words of Jeremiah: 'Take up thy walnut staff, and\n   walk forth.' He boldly asserted that the staff mentioned by the prophet\n   was the sacerdotal rod, intended far less to be agreeable than useful to\n   those whom it scourges. He then recalled several examples of the old\n   law, such as Nathan and David, thus showing that in all times the\n   ministers of God had never spared the truth to kings. The comparison was\n   in itself clear enough, and Theodosius must have felt somewhat\n   uncomfortable at the very first words; but still he could hardly expect\n   that the orator should address him personally. And yet such was the\n   case, when Ambrose said by way of conclusion: 'And now, O emperor! after\n   speaking of you, I must speak to you; reflect that the more God has\n   raised you up in glory, the more you ought to show deference to him who\n   has given you all. .... It is the mercy of Christ which has made you\n   what you are. So you must love Christ's body, or the church, you must\n   wash her feet, kiss them, perfume them, so that the whole dwelling of\n   Christ shall be filled with your good odor; in other words, you must\n   honor the meanest of his disciples, and forgive them their faults, since\n   the repentance of one single sinner gives joy in heaven to all the\n   prophets and apostles. The eye cannot say to the hand, I do not want\n   thee, thou art unnecessary. Every member of the body of Jesus Christ is\n   necessary, and to every one of them you owe protection.'\n\n   \"The bishop came down from the altar after uttering these words in a\n   tone of severity, and in the midst of the general amazement, for all\n   were aware that the emperor was accused, but no one knew the motive of\n   the reprimand. Theodosius, of course, could not for one instant remain\n   doubtful. Stopping the prelate as he passed by, 'So you have made me the\n   subject of your speech,' said he in an angry tone. 'I said what I deemed\n   of use to yourself,' replied Ambrose. 'I see very well,' resumed the\n   emperor, more moved than ever, 'that you have been speaking of the\n   synagogue. I admit that my orders were somewhat harsh, but I have\n   already mitigated them; and then those monks yonder are so\n   wrong-headed.' [Footnote 114] Here a courtier thought fit to inveigh\n   against the monks, but he was soon stopped by Ambrose, who, once more\n   addressing the emperor, 'I am going to offer the sacrifice!' exclaimed\n   he; 'allow me to offer it for you fearlessly: free me from the burden\n   which weighs down my soul.' 'Well, well,' replied Theodosius, as he sat\n   down again, 'the orders shall be modified, I promise you.' But such a\n   vague promise, and made as it was in a sullen mood, was not deemed\n   sufficient. 'Cancel the whole affair,' insisted Ambrose; 'for, if you\n   allow one tittle of it to remain, your magistrates will take advantage\n   of it to grind down the poor Christians.' The dialogue proceeded in the\n   midst of the whole assembly, and the situation became at last downright\n   intolerable. The emperor gave way, and promised whatever was exacted.\n   'You swear to it,' said Ambrose; 'I am about to offer the sacrifice on\n   your word. Mind, on your word,' he repeated a second time. 'Yes, on my\n   word,' replied Theodosius, who wanted, at any cost, to put an end to\n   such a scene. The holy sacrifice began; 'and never,' said Ambrose the\n   next day to his sister, 'never did I feel so sensibly the real presence\n   of God in prayer.'\" (Vol. ii. pp. 247-254.)\n\n     [Footnote 114: The Emperor's expression is far stronger: _Menachi\n     multa scelera faciunt._.]\n\nWhat a scene indeed! And how it brings out at once the rapid progress which\nChristian feeling had made of late throughout the empire. Better than the\nfamous penance of Theodosius in the cathedral of Milan, it shows us how\nstrongly the slightest deviation from the general range of Christian\nopinion worked upon the people. For, in fact, we do not detect here the\nslightest mark of disapprobation, far less of indignation, among the\naudience.\n{376}\nAny other feeling but astonishment is not once perceptible, and even that\nis caused by ignorance of the case, not by any want of sympathy for\nAmbrose. His conduct seems to be taken for granted on the part of his\nflock, however extreme and out of place it may appear to modern readers. We\nare justified in considering such cases as signs of the times; fifty years\nbefore they could not have taken place, and we doubt whether Constantine\nwould have allowed himself to be thus browbeaten in an open church; sixty\nyears after--the world had fallen a prey to the barbarians, and it was all\nover with the Roman empire.\n\nAnother observation of no less importance is the fact that conduct like\nthis on the part of Ambrose did not in the slightest degree deprive him of\nany influence with the emperor. Quite the contrary; as long as Theodosius\nremained in Italy, there prevailed the greatest intimacy between these two\nillustrious personages. Ambrose naturally resumed the station of a\nconfidential advisor, to whom every political affair is freely\ncommunicated. No doubt that his opinions might be followed in a less\nservile manner than under Gratian, but the sovereign himself was a man of\nmature years, accustomed to all the arts of government, and thus a better\nappreciator of the bishop's lucid views and truly Christian politics. On\nboth sides there sprang up a sort of mutual understanding, closely\nbordering on a footing of equality, as one might expect between two master\nminds. It is indeed probable that to Ambrose we owe the permanent\nestablishment of an Eastern and Western Empire, a division founded upon\nnecessity, and well calculated to avert its imminent ruin.\n\n            \"Si Pergama dextra\n  Defendi possent, etiam hac defensa fuissent.\"\n\nNor was this all, for other measures reveal the same influence. Contrary to\nwhat took place on such occasions, the revolution which placed Theodosius\nat the head of the whole empire cost no other blood but that spilt on the\nfield of battle against the usurper Maximus. There were no executions, no\nconfiscations, no acts of vengeance; for the first time, Christian mildness\nand charity had the day to themselves. Such policy, good in all times, was\nexcellent at a time when hardly any monarch could reckon upon transmitting\nhis imperial crown to his immediate descendants.\n\nThe reader may now, we trust, form a definite notion of what he may expect\nto find in the _church and the Roman empire during the fourth\ncentury_. It is a general review of what the church maintained,\npreserved, and appropriated to herself among the confused elements of which\nwas made up ancient civilization. Among that huge mass of elements we have\npurposely selected the most striking, as offering the best instances of\nthat constant though silent transformation which society itself was\nundergoing previous to the creation of feudal Christendom. That, in the six\noctavo volumes before us, there are numberless instances of the same kind,\nmust be evident to every intelligent mind. As another inducement to study\nthe book, we may add that the holy father has bestowed upon it the highest\npraise in a brief addressed to the author--the best reward, assuredly,\nwhich his truly Catholic mind could have wished.\n\nAnd now, lastly, for one most important application of those historical\nfacts which the Prince de Broglie has placed before the world. To those who\nare familiar with the annals of the two centuries which preceded the utter\ndownfall of the Roman empire, there is a striking resemblance, in a moral\nview, with what is going on in our own times. Wherever we cast our eyes, we\nfind a motley assemblage of high-flown philosophical doctrines blended with\nthe most degrading superstitions of polytheism; or at Alexandria, the\nNeo-Platonic schools borrowing a few partial tenets of Christianity, which\nit mixes up with a sort of juggler's theurgy.\n{377}\nAfter listening to the apostles of this celebrated school, we had but to\ncross the street to attend at one of those instructions or lectures--how\nshall we call them?--in which the Christian teachers, priests, and bishops\ndeveloped the sublime tenets of the redemption. And again, a little further\non, we might have stepped into the Serapeum, and there witnessed the\nimmoral mysteries of the Egyptian worship. And so was it, more or less,\nover all the Roman world.\n\nDoubtless between our own times and those there are many differences, but\nhow many no less striking points of resemblance? We meet with no immoral\nmysteries in the public worship, but how many cesspools of the same kind in\nthe lower ranks of society--cesspools emitting such loathsome exhalations\nas would have shocked more than one heathen philosopher? There are no\nbarbarians at our doors, ready to rush in through every gap and weak point\nof the body politic; but kings put forth their armies, in order to\nestablish the supremacy of might over right; and their attempts are\nsuccessful, and on the footsteps of their victorious legions an intoxicated\nmultitude of admirers hurry on, shouting, \"Hurrah, hurrah!\"\n\nAnd well may they shout \"_Hurrah!_\" for they, in their wild ovations,\ndo but foreshadow the advent of a still wilder democracy, animated by all\nthe insensate passions of self-worship. Such, indeed, is the form of\nidolatry which modern nations have assumed, in defiance of the living God,\nin defiance of a blessed Redeemer, in defiance of every dogma held sacred\nto mankind. Such are the barbarians, henceforward to be subdued, converted,\nbaptized once more by Christianity, unless the world itself be condemned to\nrock and totter to and fro between anarchy and despotism. Take it as you\nwill--consider it as you please--run over England, or France, or Germany,\nor Italy, or the eastern wastes of Russia,--everywhere you will descry and\nbear the ground-swell of the huge human tides as if awaiting but the breath\nof the blast to foam, and surge, and lash itself into fury. Again, the\nforthcoming invasion is of a far more alarming character than that of the\nGerman savages; for, born and nurtured in the bosom of Christianity itself,\nit has profited by all its lights, benefited by all the forces of modern\nscience. Nay, more, our rising democracy is backed by a host of learned\ninfidels, whose only aim and end is to annihilate revelation, so as to\nraise in its stead the adoration of man as God. Who will dare to deny that\nsuch a situation is fraught with imminent peril or refuse to repeat with an\nancient, \"_Corruptio optimi pessima_\"?\n\nAnd now as to our helps. An eminent French writer lately remarked in the\nRevue des Deux Mondes that, after all, in the present state of society\nthere is nothing more alarming than in what has ever taken place since the\nvery birthday of the new dispensation. Has it not ever been its fate to\nstruggle against evil doctrines, evil practices, and evil doers? But, then,\nin all times it successively modified and tempered anew its weapons,\naccording to the wants and exigencies of every age. This indeed is the very\nsecret, in a human view of the subject; this is the secret of its\nascendency over heathen corruption, feudal violence, monarchical despotism,\nor even revolutionary anarchy. Now, one of the most extraordinary features\nof the present age is that of thirsting after civil and political\nliberties, which seem destined to become the ground-work of every future\nstate or government. Let us observe that this very feeling--however\nvitiated and disturbed it may be--is an offspring of the gospel, and, as\nsuch, worthy of our respect. So why should it be so difficult for\nCatholicism to bring about a conciliation between its sublime doctrines and\nthe new cravings of civilized Europe?\n\n{378}\n\n  \"Is the notion of liberty (asks M. Vitet) alien and unknown to\n  Christianity? Was it never enforced within its bosom? Did the church\n  never practise it? On the contrary, did not liberty surround her cradle?\n  Was it not in the church that arose a whole system of elections, debates,\n  and control, which has become both the glory and rightful goal of our\n  modern institutions? To make peace with liberty, to live cheerfully in\n  its company, to understand and bless its favors, is that the same thing\n  as to absolve its errors? Is that to concede one jot to misrule and\n  anarchy? 'No,' will reply some good people; 'for God's sake, don't mix up\n  religion with party questions. Don't drag her into such quarrels. The\n  more she keeps aloof from the affairs of this world the more steadfast\n  will be her empire.' Granted; and above we have insisted upon this truth;\n  but still, however disengaged from politics, from worldly interests\n  however absorbed in prayer and good works we may suppose religious people\n  and the clergy, still how could they live here below in an utter state of\n  ignorance as to what was going on? Were it but to attack the vices, the\n  baseness, the disorders of our age, must they not know them, witness\n  them, with their own eyes? We put the question to those pious souls who\n  are scared at the very association of the two words--liberty and\n  religion. Are we not delighted that eloquent voices should condemn and\n  brand in the holy pulpit the vagaries of our modern spirit, the\n  revolutionary frenzy, and all those impious doctrines which are a scourge\n  to society? Well, if religion is right in waging war against false\n  liberty, why should not she be entitled to speak of sound liberty? Why\n  not encourage her to speak of it with kindness and sympathy, duly\n  appreciating its generous tendencies, making it both beloved and fully\n  understood? Otherwise, what sort of Christianity is yours, and what do\n  you believe to be its fate? Are you not making of it a narrow, contracted\n  doctrine--a privilege of the few--the tardy and solitary consolation of\n  old age or grief? If of Christianity you ask nothing more, if you are\n  satisfied with allowing it to live on just enough to show that it is not\n  dying, like one of those ruins protected by antiquarians, and never used,\n  though objects of general reverence--why then you must separate it from\n  the rising generations, from an overflowing democracy; you must allow it\n  to become isolated and to grow old--to bury itself complacently in the\n  past, in contempt for the present, just like a scolding, querulous,\n  morose, unpopular old gentleman. But if better apprehending its true\n  destiny, you wish Christianity to obtain a salutary influence not only\n  over yourself and your friends, but over all mankind, let it penetrate\n  into the hearts of all your brethren, young and old, low and high; let it\n  fire them with the spirit of justice and truth; let it transform them,\n  straighten their paths, purify them, regenerate them, by speaking their\n  own language, by taking interest in their ideas, by yielding to their\n  wishes, without either weakness or flattery, just as a kind father draws\n  around him all his children by making himself once more young among them,\n  by consenting to their requests while he corrects their faults, guards\n  them against the dangers of life, and teaches them the narrow, severe\n  paths of wisdom and truth.\" [Footnote 115]\n\n    [Footnote 115: Revue des Deux Mondes, Feb. 1, 1867. The above article,\n    written by M. Vitet, member of the French Academy, will certainly well\n    repay the reader's perusal, and enlighten him as to the situation of\n    Catholicism in France. It is indeed astonishing that such a paper\n    should have been published by that truly infidel periodical; in fact,\n    Paris readers are fully aware that the editor consented with the\n    greatest difficulty to its insertion. But then he had of late lost so\n    many Catholic subscribers.]\n\nA leaning, then, toward the cause of civil and political freedom might\nprobably become a powerful help to Catholics in the present and future\ncrisis by which the world is now threatened. As M. Vitet very properly\nremarks, they would not have to sacrifice one single principle; and such an\nattitude on their part might pave the way for many a conversion. Yet such a\nhelp is evidently but a poor one after all--a mere matter of expediency. It\nis from above and in herself that the church must look for her real helps.\nAnd here we are brought round at once to a strong resemblance between the\nactual state of society and that of the fourth century after Christ. The\nresult of a most extraordinary progress in physical science has bent the\nminds of men toward sensual enjoyment and money making. \"Put money in your\npurse\" seems now the motto of almost every living man, and in England more\nthan in any country. But we may already see what are the effects of this\nruling passion, and how it gnaws at the very vitals of our social body. The\nonly means of counteracting this fatal craving are the same through which\nChristianity conquered the heathen world. Evidently Catholicism alone\ncommands those means, for it is hardly worth while to take into account\nthat bastard, inconsistent system, yeleped Protestantism, which has arrived\nat its lowest period as a spiritual doctrine, and rather promotes than\nchecks the materialistic tendencies of the day.\n{379}\nSo to set, as in olden times, bright example of asceticism, humility,\ncharity, self-renouncement, strong faith, and a no less strong love of the\npoor--such are the chief weapons of the church in her warfare against her\nantagonists. Most fortunately, she appears at present to put forth her best\napproved armory in this respect; for never, whether among the clergy or\nlaity, did there exist a more exalted ideal of Christian perfection, nor a\nstronger will to carry that ideal into execution. Half the work is done,\nand we have but to maintain our ground manfully in front of our common\nenemy to win the day.\n\nAnd yet the day may not be ours. Another world, another form of society may\nreap the harvest that we have sown. When St. Ambrose and Theodosius, like\ntwo brave swimmers, breasted the wave of corruption, quickly followed by\nthe wave of invasion, they fondly imagined, perhaps, that they were\nsecuring once more the props of Roman society, or founding a thoroughly\nChristian empire. Ambrose above all, a true Roman of the old stock, could\napprehend no other institutions, no other government but those which had\nborne the test of a thousand years. Though a saint and a statesman, he\ncould not read the signs of the times; and if he could not, who could? The\nfuture was in the hands of God; Ambrose labored and toiled for nations yet\nunborn, but which were already bursting the womb of their mother Europe.\nYea! and so may it be with the men of our own generation.\n\n\n------\n\n  From the Italian of Manzoni.\n\n  The Death of Napoleon.  [Footnote 116]\n\n    [Footnote 116: The translation of this poem from the Italian of\n    Alexander Manzoni was made by the late Rev. Thomas Mulledy, Provincial\n    Superior of the Jesuits of Maryland. Manzoni is a standard writer in\n    Italy, and the ode \"Il Cinque di Maggio\" is a household poem with the\n    Italians.]\n\n\n  MAY 5, 1821.\n\n  He's gone: as void of motion lay,\n    When the last breath had winged its way,\n    His stiffened corse--of such a soul\n    Bereft so struck from pole to pole,\n    The astonished world astounded hung,\n    When in its ears his death knell rung:\n      Silent in dumb reflective power\n    It mused upon the final hour\n    Of that great man--that man of fate,\n    And knows not, if with equal weight\n    A mortal foot shall ever press\n    Its bloody dust with such success.\n\n{380}\n\n  Him shining on a gorgeous throne\n    My muse beheld--nor struck one tone\n    While fortune's wheel its circles flies.\n    He falls, gets up--then prostrate lies;\n    While thousand voices rend the air,\n    Her voice amongst them none can hear.\n      Exempt from every servile praise,\n    For outrage base she forms no lays;\n    But now, when such a beam had fled,\n    She quickly rears her drooping head,\n    And round his urn, with heaving sigh,\n    She weaves a song that may not die.\n\n\n  From Alpine heights to Egypt's shrine,\n    From Mansanares to the Rhine,\n    His thunderbolts unerring flew\n    Close to his vivid lightning's hue,\n    From Scylla to the Tanais roars,\n    From Asia's bounds to Adria's shores.\n      Was this true glory? undefiled?\n    Posterity, just, unbeguiled,\n    The arduous sentence must proclaim,\n    Whilst we before our Maker's name\n    Must bow--who wished in him to shine\n    An impress vast of _hands divine_.\n\n\n  He felt the stormy, trepid joy\n    Of great _designs_--without alloy;\n    The anxious heart--its feverish pains--\n    That eager burn--to seize the reins\n    _That guide to power's airy height_.\n    He grasped them, _and with hardy might_\n    He gained the proud reward--which seemed\n    To all a folly e'en t' have dreamed.\n      All things he tried: bright glory's sweet\n    _Increased by frightful danger's heat,_\n    _Fair_ vict'ry's _smiles_, and _sadd'ning_ flight,\n    The _sunny_ throne, and exile's night:\n    Twice prostrate in the dust he lay,\n    And twice he blazed in _glory's day_.\n\n  His name was _heard_: submissive turned\n    Two ages--that with fury burned--\n    And, trembling, stood before his seat,\n    In expectation of their fate:\n    He bade them hush with lordly frown,\n    And as their umpire sat him down.\n      He disappeared: his shortened days\n    He closed, far from the busy gaze\n    Of men--a mark for envy's dart,\n    For purest piety of heart,\n    For hate, that can no act approve,\n    And for indomitable love.\n\n{381}\n\n  As o'er the shipwrecked sailor's head\n    The wave rolls up, with terror dread,\n    That wave, from whose bleak top before\n    He searched, in vain, for distant shore;\n    Soon that soul the sick'ning weight\n    Of mem'ry felt, and brooding sat.\n      How oft be undertook to paint\n    Himself to future days--when faint\n    Upon the eternal pages sunk\n    His hand, and in himself he shrunk.\n\n  How oft, upon the silent close\n    Of some dull, tedious days, he rose,\n    And bending down his lightning eyes--\n    His hand thrust in his bosom lies--\n    He stood: and gloomy mem'ry's roll\n    Of days gone by attacked his soul!\n      He thought upon the tented field,\n    The sounding plain with bayonets steeled,\n    The splendor of his marshalled brave,\n    The chargers rolling in a wave,\n    The throbbing breast, the quick command,\n    And prompt obedience of his band.\n\n  Perhaps with torturing cares opprest,\n    His wearied spirit found no rest,\n    And he despaired: but quick was given\n    An aiding hand from piteous heaven,\n    To lift him up--from this dark sphere,\n    And place him in more genial air.\n      And through hope's smiling, flow'ry way\n    To guide him to the fields of day;\n    To those rewards that far transcend\n    The hope that vast desires lend:\n    Where gulfed in darkness sinks each ray\n    Of glory that has passed away.\n\n  O faith immortal! beauteous! kind!\n    Turn'd to triumphs o'er the mind!\n    Write this one too--rejoice! be glad!\n    For never yet a prouder head,\n    Or one on loftier deeds intent,\n    To Calv'ry's infamy has bent!\n      Off from his ashes do thou guard\n    All malice black--each venomed word\n    The God who overthrows--and when\n    To pity moved--rears up again--\n    Who scatters terror to the poles!\n    The God who, when he wills, consoles;\n    That God has placed himself beside\n    The desert couch--on which he died.\n\n{382}\n\n    Translated from Le Mousquetaire.\n\n    Sketch of P\u00e8re Hyacinthe.\n\nThe discourses of P\u00e8re Hyacinthe, in the church of Notre Dame, have been\nnumerously attended, and the sacred eloquence of the orator has furnished\nsubjects for the strangest criticisms that have appeared in what has been\ncalled, in the nineteenth century, the profane world.\n\nIt is not my intention to give you a portrait of P\u00e8re Hyacinthe. It has\nalready been drawn by a master hand. I wish merely to sketch the features,\nthe figure, and the personalities of this great saver of souls.\n\nThe preacher, who now attracts to Notre Dame the thinking minds of Paris,\nis in stature above the middle size; his head is closely shaven, like all\nthose of the order of barefooted Carmelites. It is well known that the\ndisciples of St. Teresa wear but a circlet of hair. It is their earthly\ncrown. His form is too large for the size of his head; his face is monkish;\nhis forehead recalls to mind that of St. Augustine; his eyes have rather\nthe expression of seeking truth than of imparting it; but the mouth opens\nfreely to let fall the word of God upon his hearers; the chin, without\nbeing aristocratic, is not wanting in a certain nobility that redeems his\nappearance, which at first sight is ordinary.\n\nOn the whole, P\u00e8re Hyacinthe carries one's thoughts back to those monks of\nthe thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, who, regardless of\npersonal safety, fearlessly crossed the thresholds of palaces to make the\ndignitaries of earth listen to the teachings of charity, love, and of\nliberty. This preacher has been accused of voluntarily laying aside\nspiritual subjects to descend to the things of earth. This reproach is\nunjust.\n\nIt is necessary to speak of what interests people the most; meet them at\ntheir own doors, live their lives, and suffer with them. Christ spoke in\nparables that the ignorant might understand him better, and the poor\nflocked in crowds to hear these admirable teachings which transformed the\nold world and regenerated humanity. For different times we must take\ndifferent means. In this age the man of God desires to enlighten both\nScribes and Pharisees, and to warn noble ladies of the seductive\ntemptations of Bael. What can be found objectionable in the earthly\ncharacter of these teachings? In spite of philosophical reasonings, we must\nfall back upon the old adage, \"The end justifies the means.\"\n\nI do not wish to institute a comparison between P\u00e8re Hyacinthe and the\nsacred orators who have preceded him, but I have heard two of his sermons\nin Notre Dame. Not being able to judge which was the best, I can only\ndecide which pleased me the more. P\u00e8re Hyacinthe possesses in the highest\ndegree the gift of awakening man to a proper estimate of himself. Elevate\nthe creature, and he approaches the Creator.\n\nI have the honor of knowing a priest who exercises his holy ministry in the\nvicinity of our Lady of Loretto. He is the most amiable and benevolent man\nthat I have ever had the good fortune to meet.\n\nHe speaks to the humblest sinner as St. Charles Borromeo spoke to the\nthoughtless Milanese. He has words of consolation and charity for all\nclasses of unfortunates. His door is open to them at all hours of the day\nor night. Thus has he labored for several years, and God alone knows how\nmany wandering sheep this minister of Christ has brought back to the fold,\nand how many erring hearts he has reconciled to God, to their families, and\nto society.\n{383}\nCertainly there do not exist two kinds of morality, but the application of\nmorality can and ought to vary according to the situation in which they who\nare in need of instruction are placed.\n\nThe church of Notre Dame is to my mind one of the churches in the world\nwhich most elevates the soul and brings it nearer to God. I like the Gothic\nchurch; it seems to me that prayers ascend more easily to heaven through\nsteeples whose spires are lost in the clouds.\n\nThe Greek Byzantine style is both rich and beautiful; but I think it\nwanting in majesty. My soul is more deeply impressed upon entering the\nportal of one of the cathedrals upon the Rhine than upon ascending the\nsteps of the Vatican.\n\nThe other day, upon listening to the touching eloquence of P\u00e8re Hyacinthe,\nI could not drive from my thoughts the sad remembrance of a sermon I heard\nseveral years ago in the same place from another celebrated preacher. I had\nthen for a neighbor in the church of Notre Dame an abb\u00e9 whose memoirs have\nformed the subject of one of my best works. The orator selected for his\ndiscourse the subject of devotion, \"Thou shouldst love thy God with all thy\nheart, and thy neighbor as thyself.\" All is contained in these admirable\nwords; the law and the prophets.\n\nSuch were the first words of the preacher, who from this starting-point\ncaused his hearers to traverse ages, tracing at length the great efforts of\nthose noble hearts who devoted themselves for the good of humanity.\n\nThe subject was beautiful, and the orator was truly convincing, every heart\nbeat in unison.\n\nI looked at my neighbor, he was inspired. Before me was an apostle who\nasked no greater happiness than to suffer martyrdom for the glory of God\nand the good of his fellow-creatures.\n\nSubsequently I learned the precise details of the life of the priest, who\ncalled himself the Abb\u00e9 Bernard.\n\nHis history is so interesting that I cannot deny myself the pleasure of\nwriting it a second time. The father of the abb\u00e9 had accumulated great\nwealth in lending money with interest. He was one of those practical men\nwho shut up their hearts in their money chest.\n\nWidowed in early life, he sent his only son to college, where he remained\nuntil he had attained the age of seventeen; he then removed him to finish\nhis studies by travelling for two years in England and eighteen months in\nGermany.\n\nIn translating the works of Shakespeare and Goethe, the young Bernard had\nacquired a knowledge of the two living languages that are now the keys of\nthe commercial world.\n\nHe then returned to Paris, with his thoughts more filled with poetry and\nphilosophy than with a mind prepared for the sterile labors of an\naccountant.\n\nHis father, upon placing him in his counting-house, generously allowed him\na salary of 2,000 francs. Forced into acquiescence, Bernard began the life\nof an accountant, in which he continued for several years. Unhappily, the\nyoung man fell in love with the daughter of his father's cashier. She was a\nbeautiful blonde, had every desirable quality, but possessed no greater\nfortune than modesty. Bernard's father, who had other views, dismissed the\ncashier from his employment and commanded his son never to speak to him\nagain upon the subject of that foolish union. The young man fell ill, but\nhis father remained inflexible, \"I would rather,\" said he, \"see him laid in\nhis coffin than give him in marriage to an inferior. I have not worked like\na horse and economized for forty years for the bright eyes of Mademoiselle\nMarie Closet; more than that, it is the extreme of folly; the time has\npassed ages ago since anyone died for love.\"\n\n{384}\n\nThe father was right, nature triumphed over the malady, and the young\nBernard's health was soon restored. The first day he went out during\nconvalescence, he hastened to the father of his beloved, who declined\nseeing him, not wishing to give a pretext for calumny. Despairing on all\nsides, the young Bernard resolved to put an end to his existence; a\nfrequent recourse for despairing lovers of twenty and twenty-five years!\n\nHis mother, a holy woman, had before her death inculcated in the\nspring-time of his life religious precepts, of which be retained the\nfaithful remembrance. Strange caprice of the human heart! at the moment he\ndetermined to offend God the most, be felt unwilling to die before entering\na church.\n\nFinding himself within two steps of the church of St. Vincent de Paul, he\nentered the temple. Lights burned before the two altars. At his right, a\nmarriage was being celebrated, and at the end of the chapel a funeral\nservice was being performed. The bridal party was not numerous; but the\ndeceased must have occupied a high position in society, judging from the\nnumbers who followed his remains to their last resting-place. Bernard\nbecame absorbed in prayer. When he raised his eyes, he saw before him a\nyoung priest blessing the assemblage. An idea quick as lightning crossed\nthe mind of the self-destroyer. It is noble, thought he, to console others,\neven when there is no hope of happiness for one's self. A week had not\nelapsed before Jean L\u00e9on Bernard entered a theological seminary. Two years\nafter be received ordination; he never saw his father again, but the banker\nsettled upon him an annuity of three thousand francs. The young Levite was\nsent to a small village to begin the exercise of his holy ministry. After\ncelebrating his first mass, he found upon entering the sacristy a letter\nawaiting him sealed with black. His father had just died and left him an\ninheritance of over four millions.\n\nRemember Christ himself has said, \"The poor and those who lead sinful lives\nare in great need of being encouraged and consoled.\" Bernard returned to\nParis, the great centre of glory and the abode of every misery.\n\nWhen I first saw him at Notre Dame, the Abb\u00e9 Bernard had been administering\nhis admirable charities in that capital for ten years. From the time he put\non the soutane he lived the life of a saint, his days and nights were at\nthe disposal of suffering humanity. He passed his time and consecrated his\nlife to healing the wounds of the soul and curing those of the body. He\nmultiplied himself, as it were, to accomplish his hard task. He was soon\neverywhere, carrying words of peace to the dying, of hope to the occupants\nof prisons, and alms to the afflicted of all classes.\n\nIndefatigable in well-doing, with charity for the faults of others, this\nworthy disciple of Christ exercised severity only toward himself.\n\nThough scarcely forty years of age, he appeared more than fifty; in the\nvigor of life he was bent like an old man. The worn features and the\ncadaverous paleness of his countenance would have given him a doomed look,\nhad not his whole aspect been illumined by the divine halo of charity.\n\nI will relate a few more particulars, in the brief space allotted me, of\nthe life of this priest and the manner of his death. In order to fulfil a\ngreat mission of charity this abb\u00e9 set out for Rome. Arriving at\nMarseilles, he learned that a change consequent upon the state of the tide\nwould compel him to wait three days for a boat leaving for Civita Vecchia.\n\nPatience being a Christian virtue, the worthy priest submitted to the\nnecessity without a murmur. Having nothing better to do, he set out upon a\ntour of investigation through this interesting city, which, thanks to the\nconquest of Algeria and the opening of the isthmus of Suez, should become\nat some future day the first maritime city of the world. Pursuing his walk,\nhe took a cross street dividing the port from the oldest quarter of\nMarseilles. He had hardly advanced thirty steps, when be found himself\namong a crowd assembled before a house of humble appearance. A horrible\nsight burst upon his vision. A woman stood before the door uttering the\nmost piercing shrieks.\n\n{385}\n\nThe priest asked, \"What is the matter?\"\n\n\"What! Monsieur le Cur\u00e9!\" replied the porter at the gate. \"Do you not\nunderstand that here lies another victim to the terrible epidemic which is\nravaging the city, and that this woman is shrieking for help for her\nhusband who is dying?\" Without waiting for the sentence to be finished, the\nAbb\u00e9 Bernard made his way through the crowd and directed his steps toward\nthe unhappy woman. \"Take me to your husband,\" said he, extending his hand\ntoward her.\n\nThe woman regarded him earnestly, but, prevented from replying by choking\nsobs, she showed him the way to the third floor. Upon a rough bed a naked\nman was prostrated. Two of his comrades were rubbing him with woollen\ncloths.\n\nFinding himself in the presence of cholera the abb\u00e9 reflected a second,\nthen wrote some words upon a detached leaf of his note-book. \"Here,\" said\nhe to the elder of the two porters, \"is an order and five francs. Run\nquickly to the apothecary's! I will take your place until you return.\" The\npriest took the cloths and rubbed the poor unfortunate. Under his skilfully\napplied friction the sick man became calm; but upon seeing the costume of\nthe priest he could hardly contain himself with terror. \"My God!\" cried he,\n\"must I die? Yes, they have brought me a confessor.\" The abb\u00e9 assured him\nhe would be better. The messenger returned bringing the medicines. The\npriest remained three hours by his bedside, and when the doctor arrived he\ndeclared him out of danger.\n\nIn the south, the people are sensational and carry their feelings to great\nexcess. We can hardly wonder, then, that in their enthusiasm the woman and\nporters carried the Abb\u00e9 Bernard out to the street in triumph. Unhappily,\nwhile enthusiastic, they are superstitious. The crowd immediately spread\nthe report that the priest had power to cure the cholera. At the end of the\nstreet, a woman, upon seeing the abb\u00e9, threw herself upon her knees,\nexclaiming with sobs: \"Father, my child is dying; I have only him on earth;\nin the name of the Holy Virgin save him.\" The indefatigable apostle of\ncharity followed her to the poor little creature only five or six years of\nage, whom he found rolling in agony. God has not given to man the power of\nstaying the angel of death when he turns from his path to strike the infant\nin its cradle. Prayers and science are often powerless. Notwithstanding,\nthe child was saved.\n\nThe worthy abb\u00e9 did not regain his hotel until a late hour, greatly\novercome with fatigue. The next morning he did not leave his room. Toward\nnoon, fearing he was ill, they visited him, and found him with closed eyes\nand a smile upon his lips. He was dead. The good pastor had given his life\nfor his flock.\n\nSuch was the man I had for a neighbor at one of the sermons of P\u00e8re\nLacordaire. Such was the man whom memory recalled to my thoughts yesterday\nwhile listening to the last discourse of P\u00e8re Hyacinthe.\n\n------\n\n{386}\n\n    Original.\n\n    The Two Lovers of Flavia Domitilla.\n\n    By Clonfert.\n\n\n  Chapter I.\n\n  The Emperor's Feast\n\nIt is now over seventeen hundred years since late on an evening about the\nIdes of December, two men, with flowing palliums drawn closely about them,\nmet near the statue of Janus, in the street of the same name in Rome.\n\n\"Ho! well met, Sisinnius. Coming from the baths, and, like myself, bound\nfor the emperor's feast!\"\n\n\"No, Aurelian, I've had a previous engagement to meet at my own house a man\nwho is a celebrity in the city for his charity and skill in healing\nmedicines. When my wife, Theodora, was so very ill last season, the old\nGrecian slave that nursed her said that, if permitted, she would seek\nClement--that is his name--and told us of some wonderful cures he had\nwrought in her native country by an application of oil. I gladly accepted\nthe offer. Clement, a venerable old man, effected Theodora's recovery.\nSince then he has been a frequent and welcome visitor at my house. If not\ntoo late, drop in when returning from the emperor's, and you will hear\nanecdotes of strange scenes and travels in many lands. Clement spends the\nevening with us.\"\n\n\"This, then, is what prevented your acceptance of Domitian's invitation?\"\n\n\"Yes, and I assure you I look forward with more pleasure to an evening's\nconversation with my friend Clement than I would to the imperial\nfestivities, although I understand no expense has been spared to make them\nsurpass anything before witnessed, even the magnificence of Nero.\"\n\n\"Are you not afraid that your absence from the senatorial party will be\nnoticed? Take care, lest, like the late Consul Clemens Domitilla, who\nscrupulously avoided those entertainments of the Saturnalia, you be\nsuspected of a leaning toward the Jews. If so, your great popularity and\nworth would scarcely save you, as they did not save him, who was, moreover,\ncousin german of the emperor.\"\n\n\"Not I, Sisinnius! Afraid? Why, I am ready at any moment to sacrifice to\nthe gods of my country and of my family. _I_ to acknowledge as the\nonly son of the supreme Jupiter a Jew, of whom we know nothing save that he\nwas nailed on a cross by the procurator Pilate! Poor Clemens Domitilla! So\nunaffected, so earnest, so honorable! May his manes enjoy elysium! It has\nbeen always a mystery to me how a man of his education, of his\nintelligence, of his high position and practical sense, could have been\ninfected with this Christian leprosy. To deny the gods worshipped by his\nforefathers since the days of Romulus and Numa, and to adore in their stead\nthis crucified Jew, of whom we are beginning to hear so much of late--it is\ninexplicable.\"\n\n\"It is part of the infatuation which clouds betimes the greatest\nintellects,\" said Aurelian; and then, lowering his voice, he added: \"Pardon\nme for introducing a subject which you must not mention to your wife\nTheodora, nor to my affianced, Flavia?\"\n\n\"I have no secrets from my wife, Aurelian, nor should you from your\nbetrothed. No two men in Rome have more reason to trust a wife and an\naffianced than have you and I.\"\n\n\"There was a time, Sisinnius, when I thought as you. Would I had no cause\nto think otherwise now! What if _they_ are infected, as you express\nit, with this Christian leprosy, which led to the death of my betrothed's\nuncle, Clemens Domitilla?\"\n\n{387}\n\n\"But you know,\" whispered Sisinnius, \"there was another motive for Clemens'\nexecution--_he_ was the most popular member of the imperial family.\nDomitian was jealous of his popularity and influence, as he is now jealous\nof this Jesus who is called King of the Jews, whose relatives he is seeking\nout in every quarter.\"\n\n\"Would not the same motive have force with regard to Clemens' niece--my\nbetrothed, Flavia, if only a fair excuse could be found for the destruction\nof one so young, so fair, and so innocent? Would not you and I be involved\nin the ruin, if she and Theodora had the misfortune of leaning to\nChristianity?\"\n\n\"By Jupiter, it is impossible,\" broke in Sisinnius. \"My wife is a model, a\nvery Lucretia in devotion to her lord, and attention to her household\nduties. The slaves are cheerful and obedient; the laborers set to work,\nstewarded and paid; the clients met and satisfied without long interviews\nwith me. How one so young and gentle can manage to get through so much\nbusiness and make our home so peaceful and happy is a wonder to me! I bless\nthe gods for the treasure they have given me in her! When tired with the\nlabors of office in the forum or in the senate, I am cheered by her\nwelcoming smile on my return home. It is impossible that one of her\nbusiness habits, so wrapt up in her husband and in her home, could have\ntime or folly enough to trouble her head about this crucified Jew. Perhaps\nFlavia, who is rich, unoccupied, and, like all young people, romantic, may\nbe silly enough to lend an ear to his sorcery. If so, the sooner you make\nher a wife, and give her business to attend to, the better.\"\n\n\"Was not Clemens Domitilla a sensible man, Sisinnius, most attentive to the\nduties of his consular office, and least likely to be led astray by a mere\nidea?\"\n\n\"Undoubtedly he was considered a cool councillor, a practical commander,\nand the ablest statesman of our time.\"\n\n\"And yet he yielded himself up a captive to this new religion; nay, yielded\nup his life sooner than admit that Jesus was not the true God. You are\nstill incredulous? I hope you may be right, and my suspicions unfounded,\nfor both our sakes and the sakes of those we love like our own lives. But\nmeet me at the third watch of the night of the 8th, before the Kalends of\nJanuary, and I will promise you the means of sifting this matter to the\nbottom.\"\n\n\"Agreed. Don't forget to drop in at our place on your return from the\nemperor's banquet. You will meet Clement; and perhaps some one else, whose\nname I will not tell you lest I might have to consider myself indebted for\nyour visit to the attraction of its owner. _Vale!_\"\n\nLeaving Sisinnius to ponder over what he had heard, we will follow\nAurelian, as he wends his way to the palace of Domitian at the foot of the\nEsquiline. Aurelian was a young noble of high rank and vast wealth. The\nwaxen images in his paternal atrium represented many who had sat on the\ncurule chair; and brought his family history, stamped with the badge of\nnobility, back beyond the days of the Fabii and Cincinnatus. His Etrurian\nestates alone brought him in a yearly revenue, which in modern times would\nbe considered fabulous by those not aware of the immense wealth of even\nprivate Roman citizens under the republic and the empire. His dress made\nknown his rank to those who met him as he passed along the streets. The\ntoga of whitest woollen cloth, the _latus clavus_, or broad purple\nstripe on his uncinctured outer tunic, and the golden \"C\" riveted on the\nupper leather of his short boots, were worn only by senators. Many stood to\nadmire his tall figure, stately bearing, and rich dress; and some uttered\nwords of praise. One remark fell upon his ears with ominous sound:\n\n\"Truly a Roman in birth and in appearance, and well worthy to be the mate\nof that beautiful creature, the niece of the late consul Domitilla!\"\n\n{388}\n\n\"I saw the solitary raven flap his wings to-day on a tree in the vestibule\nof her palace.\"\n\nAurelian passed on quickly as if he had not heard these words. But he was\ninfluenced like most Romans by the superstition which from the gestures and\nflight of birds would trace the adverse or prosperous course of futurity.\nOnce only did he pause, as a Greek clad in sable tunic carolled in broken\nLatin a ditty, the burden of which, as it may throw some light upon our\nstory, we shall attempt to inadequately render:\n\n  \"She loved her lord as her lord loved her;\n   But him she will not love any more;\n   To-night to the feast she will not stir,\n   But she'll sup with the Christian called Theodore,\n   She will sup with the Christian called Theodore,\n   And her lover Aurelian she'll love no more;\n   Another, another has got him before--\n   A Christian, a Christian whom she'll adore!\"\n\n\"What now, slave! Again taking liberties with noble names! Do you want to\npublish me to the whole city, Zoilus?\"\n\n\"I admit it. Zoilus is my cognomen, master. It was an ugly mishap,\nconsidering my poetical turn, that made me namesake of the man who maligned\nHomer and got burned for his criticism. What a pity they did not give me\nthe cognomen Homerus or Virgilius. By the lyre of Orpheus! if they did, I\nwould write an epos like the Iliad or the AEneid, of which you, Aurelian,\nwould be the hero, and Flavia Domitilla the heroine. You would see into\nwhat hair-breadth 'scapes you would be brought to be rescued by the sharp\nend of my poetical stylus. The only thing to be regretted now is that you\nwill, likely enough, be brought into scrapes and find no escapes from\nthem.\"\n\n\"Be silent, slave! I have no time for your jokes,\" exclaimed the nobleman\nin an excited tone.\n\n\"All right, then,\" said the imperturbable slave, \"as you have no time to\nreceive, I cannot have time to communicate news that does not concern\n_me_.\"\n\n\"Excuse my hasty temper, good Zoilus! I am going to the emperor's feast,\nand I fear I am after the appointed hour. Take this,\" and he slipped into\nthe other's hand a silver denarius, \"it will help to buy a pallium to cover\nyour unkempt tunic. What about Flavia?\" he said in lower but more earnest\ntones.\n\nThe silver piece had worked its effect upon the slave's manner, who\nreplied: \"She will not go to the imperial feast. She dislikes the emperor,\nthough she is his adopted child; and naturally, on account of her uncle's\nexecution. Moreover, she will not partake of meats blessed in the name of\nJupiter, the father of gods and men, nor of wine poured out in libation to\nBacchus. I suspect she has lost her attachment to you, and is falling in\nlove with one of those Christians whom she is never done admiring. Look to\nit, my noble master! For, from expressions she has let fall, my informant\nsuspects she has already been espoused to this admirer.\"\n\n\"And she engaged to me by the emperor himself?\"\n\n\"Even this, notwithstanding; she has given herself over to this Christian,\nwhom she declares she adores.\"\n\n\"Zoilus! if you are deceiving me, by that oath held sacred in heaven and in\nhell, I swear--\"\n\n\"Swear not, my lord, until you have put me to the proof: Have I not engaged\nto meet you on the night of the 8th of next kalends, to give you an\nopportunity of judging on the testimony of your own eyesight? Until then,\nfarewell And the slave bounded away before Aurelian could say another word,\nand chanted as he went:\n\n  \"She'll sup with the Christian called Theodore,\n   And her lover Aurelian shell love no more;\n   Another, another has got him before--\n   A Christian, a Christian, whom she'll adore,\n     Adore, adore,\" etc.\n\nAurelian, though filled with bitter thoughts, paused to listen, and\nmuttered as he heard the receding strain, which was now being chanted in\ndoggerel Greek: \"Well, we Romans are called masters of the world; but we\nshall yet be mastered by our slaves.\" There was great reason for the\nreflection.\n{389}\nFor the slaves had now grown so numerous in Rome that the Senate feared to\npass a law appointing them a distinctive dress, lest they should thereby\ncome to the knowledge of their own strength. A law had been also proposed,\nthough not passed in the legislative council, with the view of lessening\ntheir numbers by employing them in the public quarries and mines and other\nsevere works, as the Jews had been long before employed as hewers of wood\nand drawers of water in the Egyptian bondage. Moreover, about this period\nwriting and book-knowledge generally were, with very few exceptions,\nconfined to the slaves in Rome. It was the sunset of the literature whose\nnoon was lit up by luminaries such as Virgil, Horace, Cicero, and Sallust;\nand the few stray rays which yet lingered behind were either confined to\nthe slave population of the city or, glancing over the Alps and the\nPyrenees, rested upon favored spots in the ultramontane provinces.\n\nAs Aurelian thought over these and other matters he did not notice the\nplaces by which he passed, and soon found himself at the gate of the\nvestibule before the emperor's palace. He went through the massive bronze\ndoor into the atrium or hall. Here he waited while the slave, whose office\nit was, went to announce his arrival. His thoughts were diverted from the\nsubjects which had engaged them to the magnificence of the scene around.\nThe blue sky and brilliant stars above the _compluvium_, which was an\nopen space through the roof of the atrium, were shut out and eclipsed by\nthe many-colored lights attached to the marble pillars, white, black, and\nvariegated, by which the slanting tiles of the roof were supported.\nUnderneath the _impluvium_, which was an enclosed space corresponding\nand proportioned to the open one above, sent up interwoven ellipses of\ndivers-colored waters through brazen tubes so arranged as to cast a\nrainbow-like halo over the whole place. Between the rows of pillars thus\nlighted up, receding in lofty and majestic file far as the eye could reach,\nand through the _fauces_, or corridors, formed by the chambers beyond\nthem, there appeared the mellow glow of the lamps around the peristyle in\nthe distance; while the sound of rushing waters fell agreeably on the ear.\nNearer to him around the walls of the atrium Aurelian observed that the\nniches, where were deposited the images of the Emperor's friends and\nancestors, were draped in veils of black, as if in mourning for his cousin\nthe late consul Domitilla, but in reality because the family history did\nnot afford many remarkable names beyond those of Vespasian and Titus.\n\nWhile Aurelian was thus engaged in examining the splendor of the imperial\nresidence, the slave who had gone to announce his arrival returned, and\nwith him the \"distributor of seats\" in the royal _triclinium_. Led by\nthe latter, Aurelian entered the _triclinium_, the Roman dining hall,\nwhich was decorated and lighted up in the same manner as the atrium. At the\nend of it, on an elevated platform of cedar wood, Domitian was seated on a\nthrone of ivory inwrought and decorated with gold. The young noble made a\nlow prostration on bended knees until permitted by touch of the golden\nsceptre to arise.\n\n\"Arise, Aurelian!\" said the emperor. \"To evidence our high consideration\nfor you, we have delayed our guests ten strokes of the clepsydra. But be\nnot distressed; we shall hear your explanations at another time. Where\"\n(these words were added in an undertone) \"have you left our fair cousin and\nchild, Flavia? We expected her to accompany her accepted suitor and future\nhusband.\"\n\n\"My sovereign lord and master! the most noble Flavia has been indisposed\nfor some time, and regrets she cannot be present at the festivities this\nevening. Her friend the noble Theodora, wife of the Senator Sisinnius, has\ninduced her, for change of air, to visit at their residence for some days,\nwhere she will have the advantage of meeting an old and experienced\nphysician named Clement, who has travelled much in the East and thereby\nbecome acquainted with herbs and drugs that have acquired for him the\nrepute of a mastery over bodily disease.\"\n\n{390}\n\n\"Clement, Clement!\" repeated the emperor, striving to recollect himself; \"I\nhave heard of him somewhere before; but we shall talk of these things at a\nmore fitting time;\" and be waved his sceptre to the steward of the banquet.\n\nScarcely had the sceptre waved when the eastern side of the immense banquet\nhall was opened by some unseen agency, and an archway of vast proportions,\nwithout rent or flaw, was formed, through which the loose-robed slaves were\nseen driving a brazen elephant, on whose back was placed the huge abacus on\nwhich the banquet was served. This abacus, of solid silver, had admirable\ncontrivances for the preservation of the warmth and flavor of every dish;\nand the whole repast \"from the egg to the apple,\" including three courses,\nwas served upon it. The number and nature of the dishes became at a glance\nknown to the guests, for over each dish the silver or golden likeness of\nthe fish, bird, or beast which supplied it was supported upon a very thin\nwire, so colored as to be invisible in lamplight. Here was the brazen image\nof the flamingo; there the golden plumage of the guinea-hen, the famous\n_Afra avis_, of the Romans, was outspread without any visible support\nin air. At another part the star-eyed tail of the peacock was extended\nfan-like, while a turtle and a sturgeon seemed to swim on either side of\nit. Every bird, fish, and beast held in repute by the Roman gourmands was\nrepresented floating or flying over this monster server. The slaves, who\npushed it on golden rollers into the triclinium, danced as they advanced to\nthe music of the flute, the harp, and other instruments. At the sound of a\ngong, struck by the head steward, \"the distributor of seats\" led the guests\nto the couches on which they were to recline. Having resigned their boots,\nor slippers, to the slaves appointed to receive them, they leaned back,\nsupporting themselves on their left elbows on the soft couches covered with\npurple, embroidered with gold, and bearing the imperial arms. Many of the\nfemales preferred to sit, and for them suitable seats were provided. At\nanother sound of the gong twenty slaves, in purple tunics and white aprons\nsustained on black cinctures, moved into the hall, with motions of head and\nfoot and hands to suit the music, and removed the covers under which were\nplaced the materials for the feast. The same movements took place before\nand after each of the courses. As soon as the covers for the second course\nwere taken off, the _scissores_ or carvers cut the solid dishes and\nserved the various meats according as the servants in waiting on the guests\npresented the plates. To show the extent of refined luxury to which the old\nRomans of the republic and empire carried things, it may be observed that\nthe carvers so managed while cutting the dishes as to keep time with the\nknives to the music. In fact, the art of carving was a profession in Rome.\n\nThe writer of this hurriedly sketched tale may pause for a little here to\nassure the indulgent reader that he has made it a rule in the descriptions,\nin the substantial facts of the narrative, and in the lives of the leading\ncharacters to make imagination wholly the handmaid of truth. He is sure\nthat in the scenes he endeavors to paint he is using the colors supplied\nhim by pagan and Christian writers of the times. He might point specially\nto Polybius, Lampridius, and Plutarch as vouchers for his accuracy in\ndescribing a Roman banquet in the last ages of the republic and the first\nof the empire.\n\nWhen the third course was over, the elephant and abacus were rolled with\nthe same accompaniment of music and dance from the room. Then began the\nsymposium, or drinking-feast. As the repositorium bearing the goblets and\nwines was introduced, the ceiling or the triclinium seemed suddenly as if\nby magic to disappear, and an immense stage with gorgeous scenery was\nlowered into the apartment.\n{391}\nAs it quietly and slowly descended, the voices were heard singing as if\nfrom heaven:\n\n  \"Strike the tympan, beat the drum!\n   Down from heaven we come.\n   Jupiter nodded--it must be so--\n   Down, down to earth below,\n        To greet the God, Domitian!\n\n  \"Domitian is Jove upon earth we know,\n   Jupiter wills it-it must be so--\n   So, we'll beat our shields and our trumpets blow,\n   We'll launch the spear and we'll draw the bow.\n   And  we'll dance 'mid the flying missiles, O!\n        Before the God, Domitian!\n\n  \"We'll play as we play on Olympus' height,\n  Where Jupiter grasps the thunder's might\n  And hurls to earth its lances bright,\n  And sends from his throne the broad daylight--\n  We'll dance as we dance on Olympus' height,\n         Before the God, Domitian!\"\n\nBy the time these lines were ended the stage had taken a stationary\nposition about six feet from the ground, so that every guest from his bench\nor couch could have a full view of the performance. The first thing that\nstruck the eye was a group of figures, male and female, dressed in various\nstyles to represent the immortals. Here was Apollo with his lyre and halo;\nthere was Diana in her huntress garb. Mercury, with his wand and winged\nsandals, was flying over the helmeted head of Minerva; while Vulcan, with\nthe red glow of the furnace on his face, was, with the assistance of the\nCyclops' hammers, forging thunderbolts for Jove. In another part the rustic\nPan, with his goat-ears and oaten pipe, was playing, while the naiads and\nfauns in cloud-like Ionic tunics kept dancing as they fled from the\npursuing satyrs.\n\nSuddenly the scenery is shifted and the stage is filled with\nnarrow-pointed, straight and double-edged swords fixed perpendicularly with\nthe blades upward; while a number of persons in close-fitting garments\ndance alternately on their feet and hands, in the execution of which they\nsomersault over the sharp weapons. Again, they time with martial tread to\nthe quick measure of the Pyrrhic dance, the accompaniment to which was the\nrattle of their flying spears on the bronze shields they bore. The scene is\nagain changed. The lamps are suddenly put out; and a vast chamber with\nvaulted roof, through which a subterranean damp oozes, is dimly seen by the\nlight of a muffled lamp, which only helps to make \"the darkness visible.\"\n[Footnote 117]\n\n    [Footnote 117: Tillemont and other historians relate this substantially\n    in the same way.]\n\nAlong the sides, which are draped in sable cloth, are ranged a number of\ncoffins equal to the number of guests, each of whom reads his own name in\nfiery letters shining out upon one or other of them from the surrounding\ngloom; while demons, with snake-like locks and flame-like garments and\nblack faces, ran in horrible frenzy about, shrieking out the names of the\nprincipal senators present. And a deep, sonorous voice, which seemed to\nrise out of the earth, pronounced the following:\n\n  \"Hail, monarch of monarchs! whose mighty sway\n   The nations and tribes of the earth obey,\n   From the rising sun to the setting day!\n\n  \"From the highest Alp to the island cove,\n   Thy power is felt like the power of Jove\n   When Olympus shakes at his frown above.\n\n  \"The Celtic shout does not pierce the sky,\n   The Parthian arrows pause as they fly,\n   When thy name is heard 'mid the battle's cry.\n\n  \"When heard from the height of Caucasian snow,\n   The beard-like woods on its chin bend low,\n   And the rivers cease down its cheeks to flow.\n\n  \"When breathed abroad o'er the ocean waves,\n   The sea-monsters sink to the rocky caves,\n   Where, continents under, they scoop their graves.\n\n  \"When uttered by spirits among the clouds,\n   They gather like flocks into frightened crowds,\n   And bind up the tempest in sable shrouds.\n\n  \"The word of thy mouth is the simoom's breath,\n   Thy sceptre's wave is the scythe of death\n   Which sweeps all life to the domes beneath.\n\n  \"Then how can aught mortal in earth or air,\n   The might or the power of thy sceptre dare\n   With the crown or a crucified Jew compare?\n   Domitian, Domitian! Beware, beware!\"\n\nAs the last verse was being chanted, the stage, the voice, and awful\nchamber began slowly to ascend, until the last words seemed to fall from\nthe sky!\n\n  \"Domitian! Domitian!! Beware! beware!!\"\n\n{392}\n\nA hushed terror pervaded the spectators. The cruel character of Domitian\nwas well known. History records that he could spend whole days in killing\nflies with a bodkin; which gave occasion to the witty reply of Vibius\nCrispus, who, being asked, \"Who is with the emperor?\" said, \"Not as much as\na fly.\" It is well known that he had at times ordered the execution of his\nmost intimate friends and most favored officers; nay, that he had left his\nbanquet to witness the death-throes of those who had partaken it with him.\nLately he had become more and more suspicious of everyone and everything.\nHe had conceived a great jealousy of the family and descendants of David,\none of whom he had heard was worshipped by his numerous family as Lord of\nlords and King of kings. So much did this fear influence him that he sent\nout orders to his civil and military officers in the East to have every\ndescendant of David, every relative of the Redeemer, arrested and brought\nto Rome. In accordance with this order two grandsons of St. Jude, who were,\naccording to Jewish custom, called \"brothers,\" whereas they were in reality\nonly cousins, of our Lord, were sent from Judea to Rome, and examined by\nthe emperor. Having questioned them about their family and about the empire\nof their relative, who by his adherents was adored as God, he laid aside\nhis fears of their rivalry for the throne and dismissed them ignominiously.\n[Footnote 118]\n\n    [Footnote 118: Eusebius, Hist. Eccles.]\n\nThey had told him they were only poor peasants living on the proceeds of a\nsmall farm near Jerusalem; and in proof they raised their hands and showed\nhim the palms roughened and the nails dirty from toil. But though he had\nlaid aside his fears of these friends of our Lord, he did not cease to\ndread the increasing number of true believers. Therefore, as if to be on an\nequal elevation, he had some time before the date of the incidents of our\ntale issued an edict by which he commanded all his subjects to address him\nas a god, and to offer divine worship to his statue! Many citizens who gave\nevidence of their appreciating the absurdity of this edict had been put to\ndeath under his own eyes.\n\nWe may imagine, then, the secret feelings of the guests after viewing the\nscene that had been presented on the stage. The pantomimic art, which in\nancient Rome and Athens had reached a height of perfection and magnificence\nnow unknown, had applied all its resources on the occasion to suit the\nimperial mood. During the recitation of the verses descriptive of his power\nover animate and inanimate nature--whether in air, in earth, or in the\nsea--he held his head and sceptre erect as if with the conscious dignity of\nthe godhead. But when the allusion to an opponent, to \"the crown of a\ncrucified Jew,\" fell on his ears, his brow lowered, his face darkened and\nhis eyes flamed. His excitement was increased by observing the impulsive\nmovements of many present, especially of a young officer of the court who,\nas the same allusion was being made, laid his hand upon his sword and\nadvanced a step to the stage, until drawn back by a lady of mild aspect and\nof retiring demeanor. The only person else besides the emperor who noticed\nthe motions of the young officer was Aurelian, who had conceived a jealousy\nof him for some kind attentions paid to Flavia Domitilla. These attentions\nwere easily accounted for; the officer, as was customary with young\nnoblemen of wealth, had been out for some years in the suite of the\nproconsul of Judea, a relative of Flavia. This circumstance led to an\nacquaintance between them. But it was observed by every one except Aurelian\nthat the young man studiously endeavored to avoid as much as politeness\nwould allow the company of Flavia as well as of other ladies of the court.\nThis was the more remarkable considering her youth, her beauty, and her\nconnection with the imperial family.\n\n{393}\n\nThe other guests were too engrossed with their fears to observe what had\nnot escaped the jealous eyes of Domitian and Aurelian. After an interval or\nsuspense, to enjoy the effects produced by fear upon the guests, Domitian\nordered them to continue the banquet--that the scene they had witnessed was\nthe work of the pantomimes. This allayed their anxiety; but there was no\nzest remaining for enjoyment. Each one saw his own likeness in his\nneighbor's pallid face long after the stage had vanished. As soon as the\nusual formulas were gone through, they quickly and quietly took leave at an\nearlier hour than usual on such occasions, and left the emperor seated amid\nhis magnificence.\n\nAurelian, having with the other guests left the palace at so early an hour,\nwas glad to have so much time for visiting the house of Sisinnius. He had\nnot seen Flavia Domitilla for nearly a month. She had been unwell; and, as\noften as he called, she sent word that she was not able to leave her room.\nHe had called each day, and each day received the same answer. He was all\nanxiety for her health; for, her ways so artless, and yet so artful, had\nwoven round his heart a network of loving thoughts and wishes for her\nwelfare. She had been betrothed to him by the emperor, her cousin,\nguardian, and adopted father; and had avowed her attachment for him, and\nproved it by the affectionate kindness of her manner. But latterly he\nthought she had begun to treat him with coolness and to avoid his society.\nJealousy suggested that her previously avowed affection had been diverted\ninto another channel, to a different object. Could it be that after all his\nefforts to secure her love, after all her professions, she had withdrawn\nher affections and bestowed them on that young officer? Such were the\nthoughts that held longest possession of Aurelian's mind as he bent his\nsteps toward the house of Sisinnius.\n\nAs soon as he touched the knocker, which was a ring grasped in a lion's\nmouth, the hall door was opened by Nereus, one of Flavia's most favored\nslaves. The little dog, the usual inmate of the Roman atrium, bounded in\nfamiliar gumbols about the purple band which bound the lower edge of his\nsenatorial toga.\n\n\"Down, Hylax!\" And he waved away the dog with the pallium he had just taken\noff to intrust to the servants until his departure. \"I hope your mistress\nhas recovered from her late indisposition?\" said he, addressing Nereus,\nwho, though humble and respectful in manner and language, seemed to have a\ndislike for Aurelian.\n\n\"Not quite recovered, my noble lord. The confinement at home was increasing\nthe depression of spirits, under which she has been suffering since her\nuncle's death.\"\n\nThe door of an apartment off the atrium--not the triclinium, but a small\n_diaeta_, or parlor, where the family spent the winter\nevenings--opened and presented Sisinnius to view.\n\n\"Welcome, Aurelian! How so early from the feast? I heard that Apollonius of\nTyana himself was brought from Corinth to aid in the entertainment; and I\nwonder to find you here before the sixth hour!\"\n\n\"It is true, indeed, that Apollonius was in Rome some time ago. Either he\nor the infernal imps must have been there to-night!\"\n\n\"You were highly amused, then?\"\n\n\"Amused! Domitian's amusements are not likely to suit all tastes.\"\n\nHe laid aside his pallium and wide-leafed carpentum, and was arranging the\nfolds of his toga, while Sisinnius in a whisper told him that Theodora,\nFlavia, and Clement were inside. After the usual salutations and courtesy\nhe was introduced to the last named, whose venerable appearance impressed\nhim deeply. The hand of time had polished the upper part of the stranger's\nhead to a transparent whiteness through which the blue veins were visible,\nand had scattered the snows of some eighty years on the hairs, which, like\na silver crown, encircled his neck and flowed down on his shoulders. His\nface was bronzed by long exposure to suns in many lands.\n{394}\nBut there was about it an indescribable sweetness, and a charity beamed in\nhis piercing eye sure to win the attention and good-will of all. He wore\ngoat-skin sandals without stockings. The other parts of his dress, though\nindicative of citizenship and noble birth, were old and threadbare. The\nonly ornament he wore was a plain gold ring, on which a cross was engraven.\n\nAurelian recognized in Clement the person who, some weeks before, when a\nphysician was sought to attend one of the human [Footnote 119] victims in\nthe capitol sacrificed to propitiate the god of war, presented himself and\nsaid: \"I am not a physician by profession. But during a long life spent in\nforeign lands I have learned some secrets of the healing art. If permitted,\nI can relieve the pains of yonder victim.\" Leave was given; for according\nto the augurs it would be a bad omen if the victim expired before the\nconclusion of the sacrificial rite. Clement spoke in language which\nAurelian did not understand, and raised his hand over the head of the\nsufferer, who, seeing it, brightened into smiles. He then took out a silver\ncase from his side-pocket and rubbed its contents over parts of the wounded\nbody; and immediately, before all present, the wounds inflicted by the fire\nwere healed, and the victim was strong as ever. Recognizing now in the\nguest of Sisinnius the visitor of the capitol, Aurelian rejoiced to make\nhis acquaintance. He rejoiced, too, on account of Flavia, whose health,\ndear to him as his own, would, no doubt, be soon restored by the skill of\nClement.\n\n    [Footnote 119: Smith's Dictionary of Antiquities. _Vide\n    Sacrificium_.]\n\n\"Come, Aurelian,\" said Sisinnius, \"help yourself to some of those Calabrian\npomegranates and to a cyathus of Falernian. You seem to want it sadly, for\nyou look as pale as if you had seen the ghost of Nero. While you help\nyourself, tell us how you fared at the emperor's. Did he by way of disport\norder any of those Jews or Christians to be executed?\" The Jews and\nChristians were during the first centuries considered the same by the\npagans.\n\n\"No! But it might have come to that had the entertainment been prolonged!\"\nAnd be related the incidents we have already laid before the reader. When\nhe spoke of the effect produced on the emperor by the allusion to the\n\"Crucified Jew,\" the eyes of Flavia and Theodora met and turned to the face\nof Clement. The latter seemed for a time lost to the thought of all about\nhim. Tears glistened in his eyes, which were sad and thoughtful, while his\nwhite head was bent and his lips moved silently. Sisinnius was too wrapt in\nthe description of the banquet, and Aurelian too much complimented by the\nsilence in which they listened to him, to observe the old man. Otherwise,\nthey, like the two women, would have easily construed the motion of his\nlips into the words: \"Father, not my will, but thine, be done. But give\nwisdom and strength to thy servant.\"\n\n\"This bodes ill for the Christians,\" said Sisinnius when Aurelian had\nfinished.\n\n\"I would not wonder to find a worse edict than that of Nero posted on\nbrazen tablets in the Campus Martius in a few days. Domitian is under the\nimpression that they in their private meetings are plotting against his\nlife and throne. He has already ordered one of the most intimate and\ntrusted friends of Jesus to be arrested at Ephesus and to be brought in\nchains to Rome,\" said Aurelian.\n\nAt this announcement Clement, who had been a quiet listener, started as if\nwith sudden pain; then as suddenly recovering his composure, he asked: \"Is\nit possible they could think of dragging the good old man across the sea in\nthis wintry weather? The journey would kill him.\"\n\n\"It is not only possible, but it is a fact,\" said Aurelian.\n\n\"You know this good old man, then?\" asked Sisinnius.\n\n{395}\n\n\"Know him! Yes, good right have I to know him. There is not a country from\nthe Pillars of Hercules or the Tin Islands of the North to the sunny steeps\nof Asia and syrtes of Africa, in which I have not been and met with many\nfriends. Most of those I loved and labored with are gone\"--he wiped away a\ntear--\"but of all that remain there is none more worthy, none more\nvenerated, none more dear to my heart and to the heart of one far greater\nthan I, than John of Ephesus. He is the last of a generation now almost\npassed away--a generation of mighty workers--giants in their way--sent on\nearth to lay the foundations of an edifice, the stories of which are to be\nlaid on age after age until they reach the sky. When he is gone, the last\ndirect link between that generation and the present will be taken away.\nAlready the work they commenced has fallen on frail and feeble shoulders.\"\nHere the speaker, who had forgotten his company in the warmth of his\nlanguage, bent his head upon his breast, and again his lips moved silently.\nAll present looked on wonderingly: there was something in the old man's\nappearance to excite their admiration.\n\nSoon after, Clement rose to depart. Theodora and Sisinnius endeavored to\ninduce him to remain. He had spent nights from time to time in their house,\nwhen the former had been sick; but now he was not to be moved.\n\n\"Young men!\" he said as be rose, \"we may or we may not meet again, No one\ncan count on another day; it is better to arrange tonight what the morrow\nmight not dawn upon.\" Theodora and Flavia bent their eyes inquiringly upon\nhim: addressing them, he said: \"To you I address the words often said to me\nby one I journeyed with for many years: 'Be always ready with lamps\ntrimmed. The shadow of this world is passing away. The night is at hand;\nbut remember there is a bright and lasting dawn beyond it.' Allow an old\nman, whose pilgrimage in this world will not be long, to invoke his\nblessing upon you all.\" He raised his outspread hands, and the ring with\nthe engraven cross shone out as he solemnly said, \"May my blessing and the\nblessing of the unknown God descend upon you. May he soon gather you all\ninto that glorious edifice he has sent his workmen to build on earth, and\nthere manifest to you the _admirable light_ and beauty of his\ncountenance!\" While he spoke, Flavia and Theodora bent their heads, as if\nsome unseen influence was descending upon them; while Sisinnius and\nAurelian attributed the manner of Clement to an eccentricities not\npreviously noticed.\n\nAfter Clement's departure, Aurelian approached Flavia to express his\nanxiety about her health. She was agitated. He saw that her face did not\nwear the sunshine welcome and the loving smile with which it heretofore\nbrightened at his approach. She seemed sad, yet not unhappy, but anxious to\navoid his presence and his look. Could the insinuations of Zoilus be true?\nFormerly when she went from home, or when she expected to meet him, she\ntook trouble to heighten her great natural beauty of appearance and manner\nby artificial assistance. Her toilet table and attendants were models for\nthe Roman ladies, who spent enormous sums on Asiatic cosmetics and Ionian\nfemale slaves to aid them in dressing. All seemed now changed with Flavia.\nHer dress was a mourning one of brown cloth, such as the wives of Roman\nshopkeepers might wear, drawn modestly about her from chin to feet, without\na single ornament. Her hair was bound in no Persian head-dress, as was then\nthe fashion with high-born dames; but was folded unpretendingly about her\nhead, so as to conceal as much as possible the fair proportions of her full\nand polished forehead. Her dark eyes, usually so full of hearty affection,\nwere not upturned as of old to his. He saw something was out of joint.\nCould it be the effect of sickness? If so, he would pour out all his\nfortune, melt down the silver and golden images of his ancestors, at\nClement's feet, and beseech him to cure her. Or could it be that she had\ntransferred her affections from himself to the young officer lately\nreturned from Judea? Such were the thoughts flitting through the mind of\nAurelian as he found himself alone with Flavia. Sisinnius had beckoned\nTheodora away.\n\n{396}\n\n\"Flavia!\" he at length said, \"in what have I offended? You appear\ndistressed at my approach. Who can have a better right to that affection\nyou always professed for me than I, who shall call you by a new endearing\ntitle on the next Kalends?\"\n\n\"The next Kalends! You cannot be in earnest, Aurelian!\" she said.\n\n\"Your guardian and adopted father, the emperor, has chosen that day for the\nfulfilment of the promise you have made me. It is a day to be for ever\nmarked with Cretan chalk in my memory,\" he replied.\n\n\"But it cannot be! It is impossible!\"\n\n\"Why not? How?\" he asked.\n\n\"O Aurelian! you are too noble, too generous, you have been always too kind\nto me to force me to fulfil a promise which can never bring me aught but\nmisery!\"\n\n\"Misery? Why, have you not always professed the greatest confidence and\nlove of me? Have I done anything to lose them? You admit I have not. How,\nthen, can the fulfilment of your engagement make you miserable?\"\n\n\"I shall never,\" she answered, \"forget your kindness day after day to me,\nand I shall always love you as my brother. But any other relationship there\ncannot be!\"\n\n\"I see it all plainly,\" he said. \"You too have been infected by this new\nplague: you have withdrawn your affections to bestow them on another?\"\n\n\"And suppose I have,\" said Flavia, grasping at another mode of calming his\nexcitement. \"You are too high in rank, too proud to accept the hand of one\nwho cannot bestow her heart with it?\"\n\n\"By Hercules! I know who this Christian enchanter is, and by the honor of a\nRoman knight--\"\n\n\"Then, if you know him well, you cannot blame me for bestowing my\naffections on him. He is so beautiful, so noble, so glorious beyond the\nsons of men. His teeth are whiter than milk, and the words of his mouth are\nlike the dripping of the honey-comb. He is encompassed with perpetual\nyouth, and crowned with a comeliness which shall never fade. All these\nenduring qualities he promises to confer on me if I will love and serve\nhim!\"\n\n\"Love him then, infatuated girl! But serve him you never shall, if the\nsword and fortune of Aurelian can prevent it!\"\n\n\"Aurelian, my brother! I will pray and ask him that you also may know him;\nfor, if you did, you could not help loving and serving him.\"\n\n\"Do you wish to mock my misery,\" he bitterly asked, \"now that you have\nblighted all on which my hopes of happiness rested? But, Flavia! remember I\nam not to be put off, if the power of Domitian can crush this Christian\nviper! Remember your uncle's fate!\"\n\nAnd turning be left the room.\n\nTO BE CONTINUED.\n\n------\n\n{397}\n\n    From The Dublin University Magazine.\n\n    The Libraries Of The Middle Ages And Their Contents.\n\n\n  Father Hardouin On The Classics.\n\nThe fourteenth century was doubtlessly an era of great literary activity\nwith regard to transcribing and filling libraries with copies of the Latin\nScriptures, of theological works in general, and of the classics. The\nlearned and eccentric Jesuit, Father John Hardouin, fixed on it for the\ncomposition of all the supposed classic treasures of antiquity which we\npossess, except the works of Cicero, Pliny's Natural History, the Satires\nand Epistles of Horace, the Georgics and nine Eclogues of Virgil, the\ncomedies of Plautus, the poems of Homer, and the history of Herodotus. All\nthe rest were the brain-produce of the cloistered scholars of the\nthirteenth and fourteenth centuries, especially the latter, as being\ndistinguished by the rage for collecting manuscripts and forming libraries.\nNot only were these supposed fruits of the classic pagan tree the growth of\nthe Christian intellect of that late time, but the works of St. Augustin\nand his disciples were composed for them nine hundred years after their\nfunerals.[Footnote 120]\n\n    [Footnote 120: John Hardouin, the son of a bookseller of Quimper, was\n    born in 1646. He entered at an early age into the Society of Jesus. He\n    soon distinguished himself by acute perception and a great memory, but\n    still more by cherishing such paradoxes as the above. The AEneid,\n    according to him, was the work of a Benedictine of the thirteenth\n    century, and was an allegorical description of St. Peter's journey to\n    Rome; and Horace's _Lalage_ was a type of the Christian religion.\n    The antique metals were all modern inventions, each letter representing\n    a word. \"You are quite right, father,\" said an antiquary to him one\n    day. \"These letters found on so many metals, Con. Os.,  and supposed to\n    stand for 'Constantinopli Obsignatum,' (stamped [sealed] at\n    Constantinople,) are evidently intended to read, 'Cusi Omnes Nummi\n    Officina Benedictina'--all moneys struck in the Benedictine Mint.\" He\n    was a most firm believer in all the dogmas of revealed religion, but a\n    thorough Pyrrhonist in human traditions. He classed Jansenism,\n    Thomassin, Malebranche, Quesnel, Arnauld, Nicole, Pascal, Descartes, Le\n    Grand, and Regis among the atheists. They were Cartesians, merely\n    another name for unbelievers. His learning was most extensive and his\n    works numerous. He died in Paris in 1729 at the age of 88.]\n\nThere was in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries a literary warfare\nbetween the Classicists and Romancists as real as that which sprung up in\nParis before the three days of July, but much less noisy. We find among the\n145 volumes bequeathed to the library of the church of Langres in 1365, by\nJean de Saffres, about two dozen of romances whose titles deserve to be\nremembered. They were Renart, (Reynard the Fox,) Girart de Roussillon,\nGarin la Loherain, Aimeri de Narbonne, Raoul de Cambrai, Bueves de\nBarbastre,[Footnote 121] Jean dit le Lanson, Parise la Duchesse, Merlin,\nCourberau d'Oliferne, Gibert dit Desr\u00e9e, les Sept Sages, les Machab\u00e9es,\nTroie la Grant, (Troy the Great,) Florimont, la Rose, Beaudoux, (Sweet\nBeauty or Beautifully Sweet.) Clyges, Perceval le Gallois, Basin et\nGombaud, Amadas, (Amadis, qu.,) Galaad, Lancelot, Tristan, (Sir Tristrem.)\n\n    [Footnote 121: A cherished manual of our youth was Wild Roses or\n    Cottage Tales, published by Anne Lemoine in some court whose name has\n    escaped our memory. One of the stories was \"Barbastal, or the Magician\n    of the Forest of Bloody Ash!\" Was _Bueves de Barbastre_ the\n    original of that terrible and interesting narrative?]\n\n\n  The Care Bestowed On The Libraries.\n\nWe may be certain that St. Benedict had not such books as these in his mind\nwhen he composed the following prayer of blessing on the works to be copied\nby his monks, a prayer which has been preserved in the Abbey of\nFleuri-sur-Loire:\n\n  \"O Lord, let the virtue of thy Holy Spirit descend on these books; let it\n  purify them, bless them, sanctify them. Sweetly enlighten the hearts of\n  those who read them, and impart their true sense to them. Grant us also\n  to be faithful to the precepts emanating from thy light, in accomplishing\n  them by good works, according to thy will\"\n\n{398}\n\nThe same respect for good books is found in an the abbeys of the\nBenedictines. The very high value the religious communities set on rare\nworks connected with their order, subjected the monks of the abbey of St.\nDenis to a cruel imposition in 1389. An imposter, such as some who have\npractised mighty deceptions in our times, a supple Greek named Paul Tagari,\npassing himself off for the patriarch of Constantinople, obtained thirty\nthousand crowns of gold from the king of Cyprus, on imparting the royal\nunction to his majesty, and a magnificent reception from the pope at\nAvignon, as he held out strong assurances of the return of the Greek schism\nto the faith. He announced to the simple monks of St. Denis the existence\nof some manuscripts from the hand of the very patron of their order, Saint\nDionysius the Areopagite, who had heard the words of life from the lips of\nSt. Paul himself, when he spoke to the news loving people of Athens on the\nhill of Mars. Two brothers set out on foot to Marseilles, and, deluded by\nthe knave's representations, journeyed on from that to Rome. The Greek had\ngot their money, but they got nothing by their long journey but the labor\nand expenses of performing it, and the chagrin of the disappointment.\n\nThe monks of Cluni were particular in the illustrating and the binding of\ntheir volumes. As a general rule the outsides of the volumes in the abbey\nlibraries were not attractive. The Bernardine houses of Citeaux and\nClairvaux affected the plainest style. We may here give an instance of the\ncare taken of the precious volumes, by quoting the library rules of the\ncanons regular: \"The _armarius_ (literally, guardian of shelves or\npresses) should apply labels to the backs, catalogue the volumes, go over\nthem twice or thrice in the year, see that they were not crowded, and that\nevery volume was in its place.\" In case of a loan he was to record the\nborrower's address, the title of the volume, and the deposit received,\nwhich in all cases should be the registered value of the book. When the\nbook was highly prized, he was not to give it out without the express\nsanction of the prior or abbot. He had charge of the parchment, the ink,\nthe pens, the bodkins, and the penknives, and he kept an eye on the intern\nand extern copyists. The writers of funeral billets and of business letters\nwere also under his control. He provided his indoor copiers with a quiet\napartment where no one had right of ingress but the abbot, the prior, or\nthe sub-prior. He examined the purity of the texts, the binding, the\ncondition of the volumes. He kept the volumes in daily use, such as the\nBibles, the accounts of the passion, the lives of the saints, and the\nhomilies in a place accessible to all, regulated the readings during meal\ntimes, and corrected faults committed in reading or chanting, and arranged\nprocessions. Our Benedictine librarian had no sinecure.\n\n\n  The Rich Libraries Of the Begging Brothers.\n\nThe Dominicans were no less careful of their literary treasures. In a\ngeneral chapter of the order, held at Saragossa in 1309, it was forbidden\nto every prior, sub-prior, or officer commissioned by them, to bestow,\nsell, lend, or pledge any book of which there was but one copy in the\nrespective houses. Whoever was guilty of infraction was to be deprived of\nhis faculties (official to wit) for three years. The theological works\nshould not be sold out of the order. Whoever disobeyed should, till the\nrestitution of the property, fast on bread and water one day in every week.\nA student was privileged, in cases of urgent necessity, to sell a book, the\nBible and the great work of St. Thomas of Aquino excepted.\n\nThe English Richard de Bury before mentioned found the Dominicans the most\nkeen-scented and zealous retrievers of rare treasures in bibliography.\n\n{399}\n\n  \"When,\" said he, \"they traverse seas and deserts, when they search the\n  recesses of convents, they never forget me. What beast of chase can\n  escape these keen hunters? What fish so small can wriggle out of their\n  nets?\"\n\nHe goes on, mentioning how they despatch to him sermons lately preached in\nRome, discourses delivered at a Paris university, and adds:\n\n  \"We are now about visiting their convents and their books. There in a\n  profound poverty we shall discover untold of treasures. We shall find in\n  their baskets and their wallets, along with such crumbs as men fling to\n  the dogs, the unleavened bread of proposition, the bread of angels, the\n  granaries of Joseph filled with wheat, all the riches of Egypt, all the\n  sumptuous presents which the queen of Sheba offered to Solomon. Yes!\n  having come into the vineyard at the eleventh hour, the friars-preachers\n  have secured the richest vintage.\" (Victor le Clerc.)\n\nThese Begging Brothers, being a rich and numerous branch, secured the most\nvaluable works everywhere. The Archbishop of Armagh having sent four\ntheological students to complete their course at Oxford, they were obliged\nto return as they went, the Mendicant friars having bought up all the\nbooks: so that the poor Irishmen could neither borrow nor buy the Bible nor\nany theological work.\n\nDivers presents were made from time to time to these lovers of books. In\nthe end of a MS. of the Dominicans at Clermont, containing the pastoral of\nSt. Gregory, and some tracts of St. Jerome and St. Isadore of Seville, is\nfound the following note:\n\n  \"The Seigneur Peter d'Andre, citizen of Clermont, licentiate in both\n  laws, (LL.D.,) at first bishop of Noyon, then of Clermont, and finally of\n  Cambrai, has given us this book and many others. Wherefore we bind\n  ourselves to Celebrate his anniversary [Footnote 122] in perpetuity. You\n  who read in this book, pray to God for him, for he has done us great\n  kindnesses, and we owe much to him, as well as to his family. Let him who\n  shall wickedly efface these words be Anathema! So be it! Dated on St.\n  George's day, the 23d of the month of April, 1377.\"\n\n    [Footnote 122: That is, celebrate divine offices for the repose of\n    soul.]\n\nThe Franciscans possessed poor libraries compared with those of the\nDominicans. Indeed the accumulation of the profane writers seemed\ninconsistent with the spirit of the order. The following story was put in\ncurrency either to advance the views of the body or throw ridicule on their\nfear or neglect of classic literature. We incline to the first theory, and\nwill give the outline of the little drama with as little irreverence as we\ncan.\n\nThere were two Friars Minors in a convent at Marseilles, one the guardian\nof the library, the other the reader, and both attentive students of the\nrare old pagan classics. On the same night the summons came to both, and a\nmonk of their order, but living in a distant province, had a vision at the\nmoment of their departure which terrified him not a little. He saw them\npassing to judgment, preceded by two mules heavily laden with books, and it\nappeared to him that their patron, St. Francis, was commissioned to examine\ninto their lives, and pass sentence. The awe-struck monk then heard the\nfollowing questions and answers: \"What use made you of these books?\" \"We\nread them.\" \"Did you act as they recommended?\" \"By no means.\" \"Then as it\nwas through a principle of vanity and in contempt of your holy law of\npoverty you amassed so many volumes, and left neglected that which God\nordained, you and your books shall!\" ...... The poor monk awoke terrified\nbeyond expression, and was confirmed in his utter neglect of Homer, Virgil,\nand Horace, and in his predilection for the study of the Bible and the\nearly fathers.\n\n\n  The Sorbonne.\n\nIf the universities had heard the above narrative, it did not make much\nimpression on them. They multiplied books--the university of Paris\nparticularly; but this last was unprovided with a suitable lodgment for\nthem as well as for itself, and was obliged to borrow accommodation for its\nassemblies from the establishment of the Mathurins, and for its sermons on\ngreat occasions, the pulpit of the Dominicans, corner of the Rue Saint\nJacques.\n{400}\nIt left to posterity only one library of importance, that of the\nSorbonne. [Footnote 123]\n\n    [Footnote 123: This much spoken of institution was founded by Robert, a\n    canon of Cambrai, born in the village of Sarbon, in the Ardennes, in\n    1201. He was much endeared to Louis IX, (St. Louis) by his learning and\n    piety, and became his chaplain. He conceived the project of an\n    institution in which clergymen supported by government might\n    gratuitously instruct poor students in theology, and thus give great\n    assistance to the university. St. Louis warmly approving his design,\n    the institution was opened in 1252 with sixteen poor scholars selected\n    from England, Gaul, Normandy, and Picardy, the four nations so called.\n    Four German scholars were afterward affiliated. Each candidate for\n    admission was obliged to maintain these propositions against all\n    opponents one day from five A.M. to seven P.M. The institution\n    continued to maintain its reputation for theological science down to\n    the first revolution. It was reestablished, and still exists.]\n\nAmong the rare old collections of manuscripts, that of the Sorbonne\ndeserves honorable mention. In 1290 it included 1017 volumes. About that\ntime a heroic socius simply calling himself \"John,\" seeing so many volumes\nnever taken off the shelves nor opened, owing to the want of a catalogue,\nset to the work, and made out one to the best of his abilities, assorting\nthe books into a few general classes. He arranged the works in each class\nby the authors' names, and after the title he copied a few words of the\ncommencement--a very useful proceeding. Generally the books in the convents\nwere only lent to the brothers or other inmates of the house, or to some\none of the order; but in the Sorbonne library the volumes were freely lent\nto all applicants on depositing somewhat more than the value of the work in\ngold, silver, or some more valuable book, the rule being _Extraneo sub\njuramento_-to an extern--under oath, (to return the work.)\n\nWe find the lending system in full vigor with most of the libraries either\ngratis or at a very trifling charge. Besides the catalogues, they possessed\nat the Sorbonne a registry for the lending department. In this registry\nwere not only marked the opening words of the first page, but also those of\nthe third, sometimes those of the last leaf but one, in order that, if the\nborrower was rogue enough to return a volume different from the one\nborrowed, he might be easily detected. It is a matter worth attention, the\nlow prices set on books in common use by ordinary folk or by students.\nTullius de Officiis, de Senectute et de Amicitia was valued at decem\nsols--say five pence sterling. Allowing even for the high value of money at\nthe time in relation to that of our day, the price seems out of all\nproportion with the materials of the book and the time bestowed on the\nwriting. Baron Tauchnitz at this moment would make the poorest student pay\nabout half a florin for it, notwithstanding the aid of movable type and\nsteam presses.\n\nSome of the works in this register were distinguished by the word\n_catenatus_, (chained to its place,) others by _deficit_. Among\nbooks in this category were most of the Libri in Gallico. These were called\nromances, whatever the subject. Thus we find Romancium de Rosa, Romancium\nquod incipit Miserere mei, (one of the Seven Penitential Psalms;) Romancium\nde decem praeceptis, sine rigmo, et dicitur Gallice, (romance of the Ten\nCommandments unrhymed and issued in the French language;) Le libre roiaus\n(roiaulx, royal) de Vices et Virtus (sic): Incipit Ce sont li X\ncommandemens.\n\nFrom the year 1321 they began to bestow or sell numbers of the less\nimportant works, for the library had outgrown the calculated proportions,\nand such things as the students' _cahiers_ (copy books) and old\nsermons only took up valuable space.\n\nThe learned Bishop of Durham bequeathed his valuable library to the\nuniversity of Oxford in 1344; and actuated by the same good spirit, left\ndirections that the books should be lent even as the works in the Sorbonne\non receiving sufficient security.\n\n{401}\n\n  Unprincipled Book Borrowers.\n\nMany were the deplorable losses of valuable books incurred by lending but\nyet the practice was productive of too many and too great benefits to be\ndiscontinued. No one in our days, except a true bibliomaniac or the keeper\nof a circulating library, can enter into the sore feelings of abbot or\nrector of a university when the invaluable MS. was either lost or returned\ndamaged. Such a heart-scald was inflicted on Peter called Monoculus,\n(one-eyed,) abbot of Clairvaux, when a book lent to a neighboring abbot was\nreturned as wet as if it had been placed under a water-pipe. Observe the\nrascality of the messenger! He came by night, made a great bustle, turned\noff the attention of the unsuspicious librarian, got another volume\ninstead, and departed at a very early hour to escape a perquisition. This\nwas in 1187. In the next century the Abbot Philip, with feelings soured by\nsuch instances of want of principle, would not lend the tracts of St.\nAugustin, humbly and earnestly demanded. No; there they were--too large to\nbe carried away. \"His dear brother was welcome to send an accredited writer\nto make a copy.\"\n\nProprietors of valuable books became so chary from sad experience, that\nunless the messenger who came to borrow was provided with a good steed, he\nwould not be entrusted with the treasure. This supposes some distance to\nseparate lender from borrower.\n\nSaint Louis and Charles the Wise were liberal in bestowing and lending.\nBorrowers, as has been their custom since the days of Job, were found\nfrequently false in their vows, and after the reign of poor Charles VI.,\n_deficit_ was found in multiplied instances in the royal register\nafter the names of works in request. So strong was the desire among\nlettered people to be the owners of valuable works that a certain learned\nmonk was not considered above the temptation of what some lawyers have\ntermed _conveyancing_. In a life of St. Bernard it is related that one\nday at Clairvaux he thus addressed three novices: \"One of you will make his\nescape this night: let the others watch and not allow him to take away\nanything.\" Two fell asleep, the spirit of evil sitting very heavy on their\neyelids. The third, who staid awake, saw about daybreak two giants enter,\nand place under the nostrils of one of the sleepers a roast fowl encircled\nby a serpent. Roused by the deluding smell, he got up, approached the\nlibrary, forced open the door, and was about making off with some of the\nliterary treasures. Being stopped by his fellow-students, he attempted to\nscale the wall, but being prevented and still remaining impenitent, he lost\nhis reason, and continued in that state till be died.\n\nIn some of the old abbeys the place of the library is still to be found\nsunk in the thickness of the wall, as well as the desks of wood or stone\nbefore it, fixed there for the behoof of the copyists.\n\nFires aided the class of knavish borrowers in destroying the labors of the\nlearned and their copiers. Twenty-two thousand volumes were reported as\nburned at Saint Vicent at Laon. The entire books of Livy were lost, if some\npeople are to be trusted, at the Benedictine abbey of Malmesbury. A savant\nsaid he saw the Treatises on the Republic, by Cicero, in a certain convent\nin 1517, and when he inquired some time after for it, the reply was, that\nthey had been _furto praerepti_, [Footnote 124] (thievishly\nabstracted.)\n\n    [Footnote 124: Cardinal de Mai was enabled to rescue a portion of the\n    work. A copy of his edition was published in London in 1828, with a\n    fac-simile of a page of the palimpsest exhibiting the ancient and\n    modern letters.]\n\nBesides strong locks and vigorous anathemas, chains were used to secure\nsome of the most valued volumes from pilfering fingers. Some suspected\nbooks were even fastened to their shelves with stout nails, as tradition\nrelates to have happened to Roger Bacon's works at the hands of his\nunscientific brethren, Lord Litton's Friar Bungay being probably the most\nactive on the occasion. Under the treatment of the nails the book could not\nbe read. A relic of the old custom has remained till now in some churches\nof Florence, where missals and rituals may be read under wire gratings, and\neven the leaves turned over.\n\n{402}\n\n  Unworthy Curators.\n\nAs a rule libraries in the possession of kings and lords were not as\ncarefully watched as those in convents. A remarkable exception to\nconventual care is recorded by Boccaccio when relating a visit to the\nBenedictines of Mount Cassino. He found the door of the library left open,\nand the books covered by a thick coat of dust, grass growing on the\nwindows, the volumes imperfect, the margins clipped, and everything\ndenoting the greatest negligence. On inquiring the cause of the injury to\nthe volumes, he learned that they erased the writing from the vellum to\nwrite psalters (the Seven Penitential Psalms) for young people on them, and\nclipped off the margins to receive short prayers. About the same time the\nFrench king's library was not better secured. It was near the falconry, and\nthe new librarian Giles Malet, apprehensive that the \"birds and other\nbeasts\" would take the liberty of coming in and injuring the volumes, the\nwire-worker got eighteen golden francs for applying wire screens to the\nwindows.\n\nAt the same convent of Mount Cassino, Mabillon saw the remains of a\nmanuscript of the tenth century, converted to covers. Montfaucon was\ninformed by the archbishop of Rosano that one of his predecessors being\nrather annoyed by a succession of curious scholars to inspect some Greek\ndocuments in his possession, hid them in the earth to get rid of the\nannoyance. [Footnote 125]\n\n    [Footnote 125: The first of these two eminent scholars was born in the\n    diocese of Rheims in 1632, and became a Benedictine monk at St. Maur,\n    same diocese, at the age of 21. Being employed at Saint Denys to show\n    the curiosities of the place, he fortunately broke a glass which had\n    once belonged to Virgil! He received his _cong\u00e9_ in consequence.\n    His next employment was on the lives of the Saints of the Benedictine\n    order, the Spicilegium, and when his brethren of St. Maur were editing\n    the works of the fathers he was entrusted with those of St. Bernard.\n    Being sent by Colbert into Germany to collect for the library archives\n    of France, he made many valuable acquisitions. The celebrated abbot of\n    La Trappe, De Ranc\u00e9, having contended that many in a religious state\n    should not distract their attention with literature, Mabillon was\n    appointed to answer him, a duty which he performed with great effect,\n    but in a very mild manner. Le Tellier presented him to Louis XIV., by\n    whom he was graciously received. The learned Du Cange being consulted\n    by a stranger on some abstruse points, sent him to Dom Mabillon. \"You\n    have applied to an ignorant person,\" said D. M. \"Go to my master in\n    erudition, M. de Cange.\" \"Why!\" said the other, \"it was he who directed\n    me to you.\" This modest and devout and learned man died in Paris in\n    1707 at the age of seventy-five. Among his chief works is that history\n    of the Benedictine order, and a work on diplomacy.]\n\nNotwithstanding the care shown in influential quarters by heads of\nreligious houses, by kings, by universities, and even the threats of\nexcommunication issued against all pilferers or destroyers of good books,\nmany instances of cruel neglect such as those quoted occurred. The curators\nof the Sainte Chapelle of Bourges felt so little interest in their literary\nproperty that the library was converted into a fowl-house, and valuable\nworks were discovered there by sorrowful visitors, lying open on the desks,\nit being hard to say whether they were worse treated by the feathered or\nthe unfeathered two-legged animals. These negligences notwithstanding, the\nwork of conserving and reproducing standard works in the classics, and\nothers in the native tongue, went on vigorously, the brave laborers little\naware of the mighty aid near at hand for lightening and abridging the labor\nof hands and pens, and even unable to conceive the possibility of the\nresults of a few mechanical appliances to the rapid and almost infinite\nmultiplication of literary works, a single copy of which required such\nclose application, and such a length of time for its production.\n\nIf Saint Louis, when painfully increasing his library in the Sainte\nChapelle, volume by volume, and at slow intervals, had been vouchsafed in\none of his nightly visions the knowledge of the art and mystery of\nprinting, and, while his whole being was filled with joy and admiration,\nsuddenly awoke, and found all the steps of the process completely vanished\nfrom his memory, what anguish would have seized on him for a time, and with\nwhat disgust he would continue to witness the snail-like progress of a\nbook, word by word, and line by line, till the writer reached the colophon.\n{403}\nHowever, the possibility of what we now look on as a commonplace privilege\nand convenience never disturbed the equanimity of the earnest laborers of\nthe fourteenth century, and they performed their daily tasks with patient\ncontent, and frequently with enjoyment.\n\n\n  Lay Libraries and Popular Fictions.\n\nThe Bibliotheque Royal dates its origin from a collection in the Sainte\nChapelle of Saint Louis's palace, made by the good king for his own special\nreading, as well as for that of his friends of good taste. Something was\ndone by his successors, but the real history of the royal library begins\nwith Charles V., surnamed the \"Wise.\"\n\nOld house-keeping accounts preserved till the great fire on 27th October,\n1737, and then partially destroyed, have put it into the power of\narchaeologists to point out that particular tower of the Louvre called the\nLibrary Tower. There were two floors wainscotted with _bo\u00ecs\nd'Irlande_--shillela oak, as we may suppose--vaulted with cypress wood,\nand all ornamented with bas-reliefs. The painted windows were furnished\nwith brass wire and iron bars. There were _lutrines_, (choristers'\ndesks,)' _pupitres tournants_, (desks revolving on pivots,) and some\nof these were brought from the palace. Thirty small chandeliers and a\nsilver lamp were lighted when evening came, and thus the students were\nenabled to study at night.\n\nFrom some of the household accounts of Charles V. still in preservation, we\nlearn that this Irish oak, to the amount of four hundred and eighty pieces,\nwas presented in 1364 to the Wise King, to be used in the building of his\ncastle, the donor being the seneschal of Hainault. The chief part of the\nvolumes in the library of the Louvre were in the French tongue.\n\nBesides the pieces of native literature already mentioned, we may here\nquote the following as the established favorites:\n\n  Romances About Charlemagne And His Peers:\n    Berte, Roland et Olivier, Roncevaux, Merlin, Gaidon, le Voyage \u00e0\n    Jerusalem, Ferabras, Garin de Monglane, Dame Aye, Amis et Amile,\n    Jordain de Blaives, Ogier le Danois, (Holger the Dane,) Beuve\n    d'Aigremont, les Quartre Fils d'Aymon, Maugis, Aubri le Bourgoing, Gui\n    de Nanteuil, Beuve de Hanstone, Basin, Carlon, Anseis de Carthage,\n    Guillaume au Court Nez.\n\n  Tales Of The Round Table:\n    La Mort d'Artus, le Saint Graal, Gauvain, l'Atre Perilleux, (Castle\n    Perilous,) Glorion de Bretagne, Giron le Courtois (Sir Gawain, qu.)\n    Meliadus, and those already mentioned.\n\n  Poems And Romances:\n    Cleomedes, Blancandin, Gerart de Nevers, le Comte de Poitiers, Flore et\n    Blanche-fleur, Gautier d'Aupais, Gui de Warwick, Meraugia, la Manckine,\n    Robert le Diable.\n\n  Poems On Classic Subjects:\n    Troie, En\u00e9as, Narcissus, la Prise de Th\u00e8bes, (the Taking of Thebes,) le\n    Si\u00e8ge d'Ath\u00e8nes, Ypomedon, Thesalus, Alexandre, Jules C\u00e9sar, Vespasien.\n\n  Poems On Religious Traditions:\n    les Machab\u00e9es, la Passion, les Trois Maries, Barlaam et Josaphat, Lives\n    of the Saints and Miracles.\n\n  Poems On Modern Subjects:\n    Godefroi de Bouillon, le Voeu du Paon, (the Vow of the Peacock,) Songs,\n    Fabliaux, collections of stories, such as the Dolopathos, allegorical\n    compositions, as la Rose, le Renart, la Poire, l'Escoufle, instructive\n    compositions like l'Image du Monde, le Livre de Charit\u00e9, les\n    Bestiaires, les Lapidaires, books of hunting, etc.\n\nMany of these volumes were richly bound, and liberally paid for. The\nDuchess of Brabant, in 1369, paid to Maitre Jean six sheep for binding a\nFrench book.\n{404}\nIn 1376, Godfrey Bloc (suitable name!) charged his patron, the Duke of\nBrabant, seven sheep and a half for binding Meliadus, and in 1383, twelve\nsheep for binding the Saint Graal, called in the bill by its other title,\nJoseph of Arimathea.\n\nIn the age of which we are treating Greek was little studied or known. The\nscholars were ignorant of the Greek historians, of the dramatic poets, even\nof Homer, of whom the poet Petrarch said, when his eyes first rested on a\ncopy, \"Your Homer is dumb to me, or rather I understand him not.\"\nBoccaccio, when young, attempted to translate him. Some Dominicans studied\nthe language, but it was for the sake of their sermons, not to be able to\nperuse Homer, or even St. Chrysostom or St. Basil. The Greeks were\nschismatics, and everything coming from them was liable to a moral\nquarantine. The works of Aristotle and some others were accessible in Latin\ntranslations.\n\nIt is time to glance at the other subjects which, along with the classics\nand the romances in the native tongue, occupied the minds of the scholars\nof the fourteenth century, and filled the books they produced with such\ncare and patience.\n\n\n  The Educational Cursus of the Fourteenth Century.\n\nAll the humanities of the day were included in the Trivium and the\nQuadrivium, the first comprising grammar, rhetoric, and dialectics, and the\nsecond, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. This was apparently a\nstrait circle for human intelligence to move in at freedom, but the prime\nmasters in the intellectual craft endeavored to enlarge the various\ncompartments to their widest extent. Thus into rhetoric crept poetry,\nepistolary correspondence, didactics, and translation. With dialectics came\nin philosophy entire. \"Aristotle and his numerous interpreters,\" among whom\nwere many saints, authorized free discussions on the highest abstractions\nof thought, on the natural sciences, on physiology and the curative art, on\npolitics, and even on common law. Thus, without going out of the Trivium,\nsee what a vast amount of facts were lugged in, analyzed, and discussed. In\ndialectics no subject was let drop till it was turned in every point of\nview, analyzed, and established in true or fancied relation to every other\nthing.\n\n\n  Grammar.\n\nThey were not at all scant--these earnest seekers--in grammatic manuals.\nThey had their \"Large Donatus,\" their \"Small Donatus,\" and the commentary\non Donatus by Remy of Anxerre; Priscian, entire and in abridgments; Bede's\nmetres, and several modern works. Those not content with the mere\nenunciation of the old rules, would moralize them something in this style:\n\n  \"'What is a prenomen?' [Footnote 126] _Man_ is thy nomen,\n  _sinner_ is thy prenomen. So when you pray to God, make use only of\n  thy prenomen, and say, 'O Heavenly Father, I invoke not thy name as man,\n  but I implore thy pardon as sinner.'\"\n\n    [Footnote 126: In Caius Julius Caesar, _Caius_ is the prenomen,\n    corresponding to our Christian name, _Julius_ is the nomen or\n    family name, _Caesar_ the adnomen, derived from some particular\n    event or circumstance.]\n\nWonderful were the applications of even such simple things as the four\n(five) declensions. The first declension was from the obedience of God to\nthe suggestion of the devil. Eve made this declension. The second is from\nthe obedience of God to the obedience to the woman. This declension was\nmade by Adam. The third declension is from Paradise to this world; the\nfourth from this world to hell.\n\nAnalogies of grammar and piety were often of a slight and whimsical tissue.\nSome of them might be classed with modern conundrums, thus. \"Why is the\npreposition a theme of pleasure to the elect? Because _Illi praeponuntur\ndamnandis._\" \"Why does an interjection resemble the sufferings of the\ndamned? Because it is the expression of the soul by an unmeaning sound.\"\n\n{405}\n\nSuch was the tendency of the time for extracting moral conclusions, that\nOvid's Metamorphoses served as an excellent text-book for the learned\nDominican Thomas Walleis, for the enunciation of a series of moral axioms\nwhich the Epicurean poet of Augustus's court never dreamed of for a moment.\nPhilippe de Vitri, friend to Petrarch, made a Latin prose version of the\nbook, and educed Christian dogmas from the least austere of the tales.\n\nThe attention paid by our fourteenth century scholars to their Latin\ngrammar, and their aptitude to convert it to as many uses as the Knave in\nthe folk story did his pack of cards, ceases to excite much wonder when it\nis recollected that a practical grammar of the native language at the time\nwas a complete desideratum. What a falling was that from the state of\nthings when the Canterbury pilgrims may be supposed to have collected at\nthe Tabard Inn in Southwark, and when the trouv\u00e8res told and sung their\nlays. Every Chaucerian will recall at once the sweet nun, Madame\nEnglentyne:\n\n  \"That of hire smylyng was ful simple and coy;\n   Hire grettest ooth was but by Seint Loy;\n   Entuned (the service) in hire nose ful semyly.\n   And Frensch she spak ful faire and fetyaly.\n   After the scole of Strattford atte Bowe.\n   For Frensch of Paris was to hire unknowe.\"\n\nFrench must consequently have been taught with more or less attention to\ngrammar rules long before the period with which this paper is occupied, and\nit is a case of comfort to archaeologists that a French grammar exists\nwritten by Gautier de Biblesworth in the thirteenth century, for the\ninstruction of English natives in that language, and principally for Lady\nDionysia de Monchensi, of the county of Kent, wife to Count Hugh de Vere.\nThe author in his preface modestly announced it as \"Le Tretys Ke (qui)\nMounsire Gauter de Bibelesworth fist (fit) a ma Dame Dionysie de Mounchenay\npur aprise de Language.\" [Footnote 127] Master Biblesworth, if that was his\nname, mixed his grammatical rules with educational precepts, beginning very\nproperly at the birth of his pupil, and naming the different parts of the\nbody, terms of agriculture, domestic economy, hunting, fishing, and\ngardening, and all conveyed in octosyllabic verse, with the slightest\npossible pretension to poetry.\n\n    [Footnote 127: \"The treatise which Monsieur Walter de Blblesworth has\n    composed for My Lady, Dionysie de Mounchenay, to learn the language,\"\n    etc.]\n\nThat people with some pretensions to education took pride in speaking the\n\"Frensch of Paris\" with propriety long before the fourteenth century, is\nevinced by the boast of the Picard trouv\u00e8re, Guernes, who recited his poem\nat the tomb of Saint Thomas of Canterbury in 1173:\n\n  \"Mes languages est buens car en France ful nez.\" [Footnote 128]\n\n    [Footnote 128: \"My language is good, for in France was I born.\" The\n    reader will remark the Latin instead of the modern French form for the\n    verb _was_.]\n\nQuenes de Bethunes, a contemporary and authoress of several fine songs,\nexcused herself for using provincial words, for \"she was of Artois, not of\nPontoise.\" A century later, the poets mention the request in which\nprofessors of French were among foreigners. They relate how \"good Queen\nBertha of the long feet spoke French like any lady of Paris\"--more favored\nin this than Chaucer's good prioress. There was a humorous poem current\namong the people, in which _Dom. Barbarisme_ played a ludicrous part,\nand which would not have circulated among the laity if they had no notion\nof French grammar.\n\nDomestic troubles and other causes, for whose introduction we have not\nspace, had effected the destruction of grammatical treatises previous to\n1400. About that date the translator of the psalter into the vulgar tongue\nthus bewailed the general ignorance:\n\n  \"Et pour ceu que, nulz ne tient eu son parlier, ne rigle certenne,\n  mesure, ne raison. Est langue romance si corrompue qu' \u00e0 poinne li uns\n  eutent l'aultres, et \u00e0 poinne puet on trouveir \u00e0 jour d'ieu personne qui\n  saiche escrire, anteir,(_Chanter_,) ne prononcieir en une meisme\n  semblant menieir, mais eseript, ante, et prononce, li uns en une guise,\n  et li aultre eu une aultre.\" [Footnote 129]\n\n    [Footnote 129: And because no one observes in his speech either a\n    certain rule, measure, or reason, the romance tongue is so corrupted\n    that scarcely one understands another, and scarcely can a person be\n    found to-day who knows how to write, sing, and pronounce in the same\n    manner; but they write, sing, and pronounce--one in one way, another in\n    a different way.]\n\n{406}\n\nThe strong predilection of churchmen and princes for the Latin tongue was\none of the chief causes of the tardy amelioration of the French language\nand French grammar. In a council held in the palace in 1398, where the\nvulgar tongue was spoken, a learned ecclesiastic, by name Pierre Plaoul,\nexcused his indifferent style of speaking by his want of familiarity with\nthe tongue. Others spoke as bad or worse, but made no apology. It was as\nlate as 1345 that the government thought it advisable to put forth in the\nlanguage of the people laws respecting the tanners, curriers, and makers of\nbaldrics and shoes in Paris, as they were ignorant of Latin.\n\nThe early composers of French grammars under the new order, instead of\nstudying the spirit of the language as it was then spoken by educated\npeople, subjected it to the rules of the Latin tongue as given by Donatus\nand others. Much time was lost and much linguistic error propagated by this\narrangement. As time went on, and that attention which had been entirely\ngiven to a foreign tongue began to be shared with the language of the\ncountry, some philologists took to study its construction, and frame\nsuitable rules for the government and concord of its chief parts; and by\ndegrees the orthography and the syntax of the language became subject to\nlaws which fitted its character.\n\n\n  Rhetoric.\n\nUnder the name rhetoric, as already mentioned, were joined to eloquence\nhistoric recitals, letter writing, didactic teaching, translations, and\npoetry. Few treatises on the art have survived. The Dominicans were fonder\nof practising than teaching it, and some who taught it correctly could not\nrefrain from allegorizing on it in the style already alluded to. Under\nMolenier's management, three kings, Barbarisme, Solecisme [Footnote 130],\nand Allebol\u00e9, make war on three queens, Diction, Oration, and Sentence.\n\n    [Footnote 130: The Greek inhabitants of _Soli_ in Cillcia suffered\n    \"their parts of speech\" to be affected for the worse by intercourse\n    with the neighboring barbarians. So the fastidious Athenians began to\n    designate all infractions of grammar as _solecisms_.]\n\nThey possess in common ten arrows--pleonasm, tautology, ellipse, tapinosis,\n(obscurity, qu.,) etc. Allebol\u00e9 has thirteen daughters, Barbarisme\nfourteen, and Solecisme twenty-two, and the number of grandchildren is not\nsmall. If any reader desires to see how men of some talent can lose\nthemselves in matters trifling and intricate at the same time, let him\nprocure Molenier's treatise, or even that of the chronicler Chastellain,\nwhere he will find Dame Rhetoric accompanied by science, gravity, multiform\nriches, flowery memory, noble nature, precious possession, laudable\ndeduction, old acquisition, etc.\n\nThe professors of rhetoric in the middle ages had sundry classic writers to\nfall back on, such as Quintilian, Aristotle, Cicero, etc. They had also the\naid of Priscian, Donatus, and Isadore of Seville. Among the earliest\nspecimens of eloquence assuming the garb of the vulgar tongue was the\neulogium pronounced on the brave Bertrand du Gueselin by the bishop of\nAuxerre, Ferrie Cassinel, at the request of Charles VI. A poet of the\ncentury thus described its effects:\n\n  \"Les princes fondolent en larmes,\n   Des mots que l'evesque monstroit;\n   Quar il disoit, 'Plorez gens d'armes\n   Bertrant qui trestant vos amoit.\n   On doit regreter les fex d'armes\n   Qu'il fist au temps qu'il vivoit.\n   Dieux ait pitie sur toutes ames;\n   De la sienne quar bonne estoit.'\"\n   [Footnote 131]\n\n    [Footnote 131:\n    \"The princes melted in tears\n     At the words which the bishop spoke;\n     for he said, 'Weep, ye men of arms,\n     Bertrand, who so much loved you.\n     We should regret those feats of arms\n     Which he performed in the time he lived.\n     O God! have pity on all souls;\n     and in _his_, for he was good.'\"]\n\nFour men of that era distinguished themselves by eloquence at the bar, and\nin addressing assemblies in the tumultuous days of the poor demented king.\nJean Faure and Guillaume le Breul besides their speeches, left behind them\nvaluable works on jurisprudence; and their learned contemporary, Yves de\nKaermarten, acquired such a good name that he was promoted to the Calendar\nof Saints.\n{407}\nWe are unable to quote any other gentleman of the bar whose sanctity\nattained the heroic degree. Renault d'Acie and Jean des Mar\u00e8s ventured\namong the political tempests of the day, and perished in their patriotic\nefforts.\n\nFew instances of eloquence, ancient or modern, could surpass that of\nCharles the Bad, King of Navarre, if we can trust the chroniclers. Having\nbeen released from prison, and brought to Paris, 29th November, 1357, he\nascended a platform near the Pre aux-cleres (the Clerk's Meadow) in the\nmorning, and kept a considerable portion of his ten thousand auditors\neither crying at, or deeply sympathizing with, his pretended wrongs, till\nthe dinner hour of the citizens had passed. He afterward scattered his\npoison among multitudes at the Greve and the Halles. His oration made to a\ndeputation at St. Denis bears an annoying resemblance to some delivered not\nvery long since in various American cities, by patriots of our own time:\n\n  \"Gentlemen and friends,\" said he, \"no ill luck can befall you which I\n  will not freely share. But I strongly counsel you, while you govern\n  Paris, to provide yourselves well with gold and silver. Confide in me.\n  Send me here freely all that you can put together. I shall give you a\n  good account of it, and will have at your service numerous men at arms,\n  many comrades who shall defend you from your enemies.\"\n\nThe speeches of the wicked king were mostly prefaced by texts, but it is\nnot rightly known whether this _argumentum ad crumenam_ was so\ngarnished.\n\nWhile some exhibited their eloquence in defending or accusing prisoners,\nand others spoke against king, or chiefs of obnoxious parties, some\nminstrels were still to be found chanting the old romances for ready money.\nIn 1368, the municipal authorities of Valenciennes are found allowing\nColart de Maubeuge, \"xii gros, in value vi sols ix deniers, for playing on\nhis instrument, and singing gests of arms.\" The ancient romances of\nCharlemagne, of King Arthur, and of the wars of Troy, were still in\npossession of the popular mind, but such poets as there were did not fail\nto seize on recent or passing events, and do their best to immortalize\nthem, as well as perpetuate their own fame. The raising of the walls of New\nRoss, on the Barrow, was celebrated by a poet of the day in two hundred and\nnineteen verses, in which the patriotism of the citizens, and the clergy,\nand the ladies, was sung, not forgetting the beauty of the women of all\ndegrees, whose delicate hands did not disdain to bring materials to the\nmasons. \"Yet in no part of the earth, where the minstrel had been, did he\never see such beauty.\"\n\n  \"Kique la fu pur regarder\n   Meint bele dame, y put veer\n   Ke unke en terre ou jal est\u00e9,\n   Tants belies ne vi in foss\u00e9.\"\n\nThe siege of Carlaverock by King Edward I., in 1300, where six hundred men\ndefended the place against three thousand assailants, was sung by an\neye-witness in octo-syllabic rhyme.\n\nThe Vow of the Heron, commencing the war between Edward III. and Philippe\nde Valois, was not neglected by the rhymers. Collins, trouvere of John of\nHainault, Lord of Beaumont, in a poem of five hundred and sixty-six\neight-syllable verses, lamented the fate of the brave old king of Bohemia,\nand his ostrich plume and the other victims of the battle of Creci,\nsignalized by the minstrels of the era as in\n\n  \"L'an mil iij.c.xl.vj.,\n   Que nos seigneurs furent occis\n   En la bataille de Creci;\n   Jh\u00fc Cris leur face mierci!\"\n   [Footnote 132]\n\n    [Footnote 132:\n    \"The year one thousand, three hundred, forty, and six,\n     When our lords were slain\n     In the battle of Creci;\n     Jesus Christ show them mercy!\"]\n\n{408}\n\nThe life and deeds of the Black Prince were commemorated by Chandos, the\nherald of Sir John Chandos, Constable of Aquitaine, in five thousand and\nforty-six verses, of the same measure as those others recorded. We quote a\nfew lines of the courteous communications between the captive king and the\nchivalric prince.\n\n  \"Li rois Johan lui ad dit,\n  'Beaux douis cosins pur Dieu mercit.\n   Laissez; il n'apartient a moi,\n   Car par la foi que jeo vous doi,\n   Plus avez ei jour d'hul d'honour\n   Qu'onques n'\u00e9ust prince a un jour.'\n   Dont dist il prince, 'Sire douls,\n   Dieux l'ad fait et non mie nous.\n   Si l'en devons remercier,\n   Et de bon coer vers lui prier,\n   Qu'll nous ottroier sa gloire,\n   Et pardonner cesto victoire,'\" etc.\n   [Footnote 133]\n\n    [Footnote 133:\n    \"But King John to him said,\n    'Fair, sweet cousin, God-a-mercy,\n     Let be; it belongs to me not,\n     For, by the faith which I owe thee,\n     More honor this day you've won\n     Than ever did prince in any one day (of fight)'\n     Then to him said the prince, Sweet sire,\n     God has achieved it, not we ourselves,\n     So to him we should give thanks,\n     And with good heart thus pray to him,\n     That he would give us his glory,\n     And pardon this victory.'\"]\n\nThe single-minded and patriotic Du Guesclin was not forgotten by the poetic\nchroniclers. Jean Cuvelier, in 1384, put his deeds in verse.\n\nJudicious historians have not disdained to avail themselves of these\nproductions of the rhymers. They have extracted those passages from them\nwhich were despised by the matter-of-fact chroniclers, but which had an air\nof probability, and were calculated to add picturesque and interesting\nfeatures to the narrative.\n\nIt is highly probable that every ancient narrative poem which was not\ninspired by mere emulation of former poets had some foundation in fact. The\nmere invention of subjects, as well as their treatment, is a feature of\ncomparatively modern times. The personages figured by _Reynard, Bruin,\nIsgrim_, and the other animals of the great beast-epic of the middle\nages, once lived and acted some way in the spirit of their four-footed\nsubstitutes.\n\nToward the end of the century, the taste for the old rhymes, romances, and\nnarratives began to veer round to more trivial and simple subjects, and to\ntake more interest in the distinctions between the different classes of the\nshorter pieces of poetry. Prosody had been in process of cultivation for\nsome time, and now the attention of such dilettanti as filled courts and\nthe castles of the nobles was more strongly arrested upon feet, accents,\nlengths, measures, and number of lines in each piece, than in the deed\nrecorded or sentiments expressed.\n\nWhile Froissart was searching for material for his chronicle, in 1392,\nEustache des Champs was instructing poetic students in the difference\nbetween _chansons, balades, virelais,_ and _rondeaux_. He was\nwell entitled to do so, having himself composed 80 virelais, 171 rondeaux,\n1,175 balades. These ballads he divided into _Leonines, Sonnantes,\nequivoques, retrogrades,_ etc., etc.; but in the next century his merits\nwere forgotten in presence of Henri de Croy, who subdivided his ballads\ninto _communes, balladantes, fatris\u00e9es_, and the rondeaux into simple,\ntwin, and double. Then care should be taken not to mix the rhymes beaten,\nbroken, re-linked, doubled tailed, etc., in form of amorous complaint. The\ncombination denominated _ricquerac_, and that called _baguenaude_\nwe would explain but for the misfortune of being ignorant of their\nstructure. The first, perhaps, was a disjointed affair, like some negro\nmelody, the other, a perpetual hovering round the predominant idea,\nwhatever it might be.\n\nThat was the golden age of bouts rim\u00e9s, logogriphes, enigmas,\nchronographes, achrostiches, and fatfasies, (unmeaning combinations of\nwords.) In Henri de Croy's great work, even the single fatrasies were\ndistinguished from the double ones. The reign of these egregious morsels\nstill lingers in some almanacs, people's penny periodicals, and even in the\nParis Illustrated News, where the logogriph, consisting partly of letters\nand partly of pictured objects, keeps the subscribers in misery till next\nSaturday, when the solution appears.\n\n{409}\n\nThe taste of the public with regard to spectacles was not superior to that\nof the readers of the time for such trifles as have been just mentioned. In\n1313, when the young princes, sons of Philip the Fair, received the order\nof knighthood, a grand mystery was exhibited to the people of Paris, where\nthe Infant Saviour was presented smiling on his mother and eating an apple,\nsurrounded by the three kings of Cologne, (the Magi,) the twelve apostles\nsaying their paternosters, the souls of the blessed in paradise singing\nhymns in unison with ninety angels, and the reprobate in hell howling for\nthe entertainment of about a hundred demons.\n\nOf translations, which were also included under the head rhetoric, we have\nalready spoken. As Latin was almost the only language from which the\nversions were made, the spirit of that language must have had considerable\ninfluence on future compositions in the vulgar tongue.\n\n\n  Dialectics.\n\nIn teaching and learning the dialectics, which embraced metaphysics,\njurisprudence, political economy, and even claimed physics for its\njurisdiction, the object seemed rather a victory in a war of words and\nideas than discoveries of new truths or the establishment of old ones.\nHair-splitting and sophistry flourished in all the contests. So useless and\neven criminal seemed this amazing waste of time to quiet-minded and earnest\npeople, that a legend was current in the twelfth century of a dead scholar\nappearing to a comrade in a robe of hell all covered with sophisms. Another\ndisplayed himself wrapped round and oppressed with a heavy parchment all\ncovered with closely written exercises in the _dialectique_. Both\nattributed their present sufferings to the sort of logic they had acquired\nin the Paris schools.\n\nIrish students were as redoubtable in these witty duels in the Sorbonne and\nin Salamanca as Irish colonels and generals of later times in the armies of\nFrance and Spain and Austria. In metaphysics, the realists, with John Duns\nScotus for leader, warred with the nominalists, using such arms as were\nsupplied by substantial forms, quiddities, hecc\u00e9ites, polycarp\u00e9ites, and\nother such chimeras, the result being nothing but obscurity of the\nunderstanding from these clashings in the dark. Sometimes the sharp-witted\ndialecticians intruded rashly on the domains of theology and morality, and\nwere smartly pulled up, as in the case of the great interpreter of\nAristotle, Nicolas d'Autrecourt, in 1348, for this ingenious proposition:\n\n  \"A young man of good birth met with a sage who undertook to communicate\n  the 'universal science' to him without delay, for a hundred crowns; but\n  the young man had no other means to procure the money than by stealing\n  it. Was he justified in this theft? Certainly; for we must do what is\n  agreeable to God; but it was agreeable to God that this young man should\n  get instruction, and he had no other means to get it than theft; ergo,\"\n  etc.\n\nA sharp condemnation by the Theological Faculty of Paris was all the honor\nawarded to Mr. Nicolas's plausible conclusion.\n\nIn physics and natural history, our philosophers of the middle ages were\nmore prone to depend on Aristotle and Pliny, and later dreamy sages, than\nto resort to careful observation. Theory, not induction, was their darling\nmode of enlarging the domain of human knowledge, and no fact fitted\ncomfortably in its place without being moralized. Far away in the realms of\nPrester John were to be found giants, pigmies, men with one eye in front\nand three behind, female warriors, griffins, licorns, and alerions, animals\nwell adapted to point a moral.\n\nThe learned Pierre Bercheure, who translated Livy, informed his readers\nthat the toad was mute in every country but France. _Moral_: The\nFrenchman, a babbler at home, is perforce mute when he goes abroad. The\nlearned Bercheure either intended to hint that the Gaul too much neglected\nthe study of foreign languages, or that, while vainglorious at home, he\nbecame meek and humble when he crossed the frontier.\n\n{410}\n\nStill proceeding in this moral strain, Dr. Bercheure asked, \"Why, in the\nterritory of Orange, was utterance by sound denied to all toads, one only\nexcepted?\" No answer being received, he gave this explanation: The holy\nbishop, Florent, being much disturbed in his meditations by the\ndisagreeable songs of the toads, ordered them to be silent. They obeyed on\nthe moment, and the good bishop was so touched by their prompt attention to\nhis command that he revoked his order. However, the stupid messenger who\nbrought the news, instead of using the plural form of the\nverb--_cantate_--merely said _canta_, and thus only one of the\ncommunity ever after could avail itself of the privilege: nasty Mercury!\nsay we. These additions to Pliny could scarcely be called improvements in\nthe science of natural history.\n\nFor a long time the healing art was nearly monopolized by the religious\nhouses, but it was not so without an occasional scruple of conscience on\nthe part of the chiefs in the various orders. They feared that their art\nmight too much engross the attention of the practitioners. To moderate\ntheir mere scientific ardor, the following legend was sent abroad among\nthem: There was a skilful medical man among the monks of Citeaux, whose\ntime was so much taken up in provincial excursions that he was not found in\nthe convent unless at the great festivals. As he was employed on one of the\nfeasts of the Blessed Virgin, singing in choir with the rest, he was\nfavored with a vision of his heavenly patroness distributing a spoonful of\nelixir to every one of the singers, himself alone excepted. He made a\ngesture of supplication not to be treated to such an unenviable\ndistinction, but this reply reached the recesses of his understanding\nwithout any action of the senses: \"Physician, thou hast no need for my\nelixir, for you do not deny to yourself any consolation.\" A radical change\nwas wrought in the man, and on the next solemnity he was favored as the\nrest. Such was the rapture into which he was thrown, that for the future\nhis healing excursions were as short and as few as possible.\n\nThere was no college of physicians at Paris nor Montpellier in the\nbeginning of the twelfth century, but considerable progress was made in\nfounding medical establishments during the next two hundred years. Some\nenthusiastic pill-taker thus expanded in commendation of the faculty of\nParis in 1323:\n\n  \"In this city, where there is no want or consolation or succor, the\n  physicians appointed to look after our health and the cure of our\n  maladies, and whom the sage orders us to honor as being created by the\n  Most High for our needs, are so numerous that, when they pass through the\n  streets to discharge their duty in their rich dresses and in their\n  doctoral caps, those who have need of them have little trouble to get an\n  interview. Oh! how we should love these good physicians, who, in the\n  practice of their profession, philosophically conform themselves to the\n  rules of science and long experience!\"\n\nWe have seen a copy of the Medical Review, a brochure, in rhyme, issued in\nDublin circa 1775, eulogizing by name the several physicians and surgeons\nwho practised in our city at that period. It was written throughout in the\nspirit of the above extract, and, but for the evident good faith of the\nwriter, would be supremely ludicrous.\n\nAll the old writers on the subject were not so complimentary to the\nfaculty. Some of the members deserved what they got if they were of the\nsect of the impudent Arnaud de Villeneuve, some of whose counsels to his\nstudents took this shape: \"You examine perhaps the ... of a patient without\nbeing anything the wiser for it, but say, 'There is an obstruction in the\nliver.' The patient may perhaps answer, 'But, master, it is in my head I\nfeel the illness.' You answer without hesitation, 'It is from the liver it\ncomes.' Always make use of the word obstruction. They don't know the\nmeaning of it, and it's all for the best that they should not.\"\n\n{411}\n\nBut skilful or the reverse, the doctors of the fourteenth century found all\ntheir resources powerless to arrest the epidemic which about the middle of\nit swept across Europe. Its visitations were more appalling than those of\ncholera in our times. The physicians behaved as feeling and heroic men, and\nwere swept off in thousands, while doing their duty by their patients.\nThere was no writer found to introduce a series of licentious stories as\nsequel to a harrowing account of the scourge.\n\nAmong those who essayed to cure Charles VI. of his mental malady was Arnaud\nGuillem, who came in 1393 from Languedoc to Paris, bringing with him the\nvolume Smagorad, which \"Adam had received by way of consolation a century\nafter the death of Abel.\" There is some doubt about his being put to death\nfor failure; but two Augustine monks suffered in 1398, and four sorcerers\nin 1403, for the same liberty taken with sick majesty. It is probable that\nthe heads stuck on spikes over palace gates for similar failures in our\nHousehold Stories had some foundation in pre-historic times. In one of his\nlucid intervals the poor king directed that once in the year the dead body\nof a criminal should be delivered to the Faculty of Medicine at\nMontpellier, a proof that he set more value on the study of the human\nsubject than the virtue of charms or other superstitious processes. Among\nmedical treatises of the fourteenth century, some disfigured by the dreams\nof the astrologer, the alchymist, and the sorcerer, that of Gui de Chauliai\nstands pre-eminent for scientific attainment.\n\n\n  Arithmetic Geometry, Music, and Astronomy.\n\nAt first scholars were careful to avoid the title of mathematicians.\nSomething magical and occult was attached to it, as in the old Roman times.\nMathematician and felon were synonymous terms. Mere arithmetic was in\nbetter odor; it was useful in concocting the ordinary tables set in the\nbeginning of prayer-books, and including the golden number, the epact, the\ndominical letter, etc.[Footnote 134] Calendars were carefully compiled all\nthrough the era in question. It has often puzzled us to know how\ncalculations to any extent could be effected by the Xs and Vs and Is which\ndenoted numbers previous to the eleventh century. Wretched was the pupil's\nlot (if such an incident ever took place) required to perform an operation\nin long division, in multiplication by tens of thousands, or to extract the\ncube root of a large number. Great are our obligations to the Arabians for\nthe use of their system of notation.\n\n    [Footnote 134: These names mysterious to scholars of city and\n    university, were household words with the masters of Hedge schools and\n    their advanced pupils half a century ago.]\n\nA household joke of the day throws light on the incapacity of the wives of\nsmall citizens to manage deep calculations. A few of the husbands drinking\nagree that he whose wife could not count up to four accurately should pay\nthe reckoning. The calculation of Robin's wife was \"One, two, three, seven,\ntwelve, and fourteen.\" John's wife began at two. Tassin's wife tossed her\nhead, and said she was not a baby, and would not count at all. We cannot\nfind out which of the husbands paid the scot.\n\nThe geometry of the day chiefly confined itself to the measurement of land,\nbut there were treatises on perspective, and portions of the Latin Euclid\nextant.\n\nCharles the Wise was not without charts and maps of the world. Many such\nexisted, but, as may be supposed, tolerably incorrect. The earth was\nsupposed to consist of two hemispheres, glued, as it were, to each other,\nand the globe somehow maintained its place in the void like a suspended\nlamp.\n\nIn 1366, King Charles V., in order to prevail on Pope Urban V. not to\nremove to Rome, urged that Marseilles was in the centre of the civilized\nworld. This would be rendered still more sensible by cutting off Greece\nfrom the general map.\n{412}\n\"The schismatic Greeks cut themselves off from the spiritual world by their\nseparation from the church: let their land be removed from the material\nworld.\" It does not appear that this ingenious proposition was put in\npractice.\n\nOf accounts of foreign parts there was no lack, and it must be said that\nthe early books of travels and accounts of countries, if less strictly\nconfined to facts than ours, were much more entertaining. A copy of Marco\nPolo's travels was presented in 1307 to Charles Count of Valois by John de\nCepoy, son of the Venetian ambassador. John de Meun translated into French\nthe Wonders of Ireland. They had also the Wonders of England, India, the\nWorld, etc.\n\nSeveral works were composed in the fourteenth century on the subject of\nmusic, but chiefly in Latin and with reference to the established canons of\nsacred melody.\n\nAstronomy had a hard strife with the impostor astrology, which had been so\nlong in possession of the general intellect. However, some glimmerings of\nthe true state of heavenly things had been gradually entering the minds of\nthe astrologers themselves. The total eclipse of the moon on the night of\nthe 15th of January, 1305, terrified the Parisians. It was mentioned as an\n_Eclipsis Lunae horribilis_. But an eclipse of the sun, 31st January,\n1310, was predicted by the Faculty of Astronomy. Another in 1337 was\ntreated of by John of Genoa, who, in 1332, had composed his canon of\neclipses. Comets gave considerable disturbance to the public mind during\nthis century. They predicted the death of Louis X., and the destruction of\nFrance, the plague, and all varieties of deceit, lies, hatred, and\ninsubordination, etc. However, science was making a sure though slow\nprogress, and toward the close of the century the learned were in\npossession of many astronomical facts unknown at the beginning. The comets\nmade their fearful visits at these dates--March, 1315, July, 1337. April,\n1338, 1340, 1346, 1360, 1368, 1378.\n\nSeveral voyages and land journeys were performed during this century, and\namong the rest that by our own Sir John Mandeyille, some of whose\ndiscoveries were inferior to those of the truth-loving Lemuel Gulliver\nalone. The Holy Land possessed strong attractions for devout and cultivated\nsouls. Of all these the most enthusiastic was the Tuscan Dominican,\nRiccoldo di Monte da Croce. Having gained the valley of Josaphat, he\nbelieved himself at the end of the world, and thus gave vent to his burning\nthoughts:\n\n  \"We saw about the middle or the valley the tomb of the Blessed Virgin\n  Mary, and, considering it to be the place of the final Judgment, we\n  passed between the Mount of Olives and Mount Cavalry, weeping, and\n  trembling with fear, as if the Supreme Judge was already above our heads.\n  In this sentiment of awe we thought within ourselves, and we said to each\n  other--'It is from above this hill that the most Just of Judges will\n  pronounce his decision. Here is the right hand, there is the left. We\n  then selected, to the best of our judgment, our places on the right, and\n  each sunk in the ground a stone to denote his own. I sunk mine, and I\n  retain that spot for myself, and for all those who, after receiving from\n  me the word of God, shall persevere in faith, in charity, and in the\n  truth of the holy gospel, and we marked the stone in the presence of many\n  of the faithful, who wept with us, and whom I call on as witnesses this\n  day.\"\n\nWe have come to the end of our sketch of the progress of intelligence\nduring a brief portion of its course, namely, that portion immediately\npreceding the epoch of the invention of the printing-press. The impediments\nin the way of scientific progress were great and humorous. Many weak\nspirits were discouraged, and did nothing; others, some few of whom we have\nparticularized, wrought like giants, and thus benefited themselves and\ntheir kind. Among these benefits we do not reckon in chief the conveniences\nand luxuries which distinguish our existence from that of the Samoyeds or\ndog-ribbed Indians. The Mussulman, well to do, and spending the eleven\ntwelfths of his time in mere indolence and indulgence of the senses, would\nbe better off discharging the duties of porter or ferryman.\n{413}\nNo, the chief advantages we derive from the advance of human knowledge is\nthe easier and swifter communication between the scattered members of the\ngreat human family, the advance of education among the working classes, and\nthe healthy occupation of so many active and energetic minds, which,\nwithout suitable work to do, would prey on themselves, and become a curse\nto their possessors.\n\n------\n\n    Original.\n\n    Laudate Pueri Dominum. [Footnote 135]\n\n      [Footnote 135: Died at the Convent of the Visitation, Georgetown,\n      D.C. on the 18th of April, .... a young girl thirteen years of age,\n      who was received into the bosom of the Holy Church October 2d, 1866.]\n\n\n  \"I will wash my hands among the Innocent,\n  and so will I compass thy altar, O Lord!\"\n\n\nOct. 2d. Feast Of The Holy Guardian Angels. Baptism\n\n  In snowy robe and spotless veil\n  Stands the fair child at the altar rail.\n  \"Of Holy Church what askest thou?\"\n  \"The FAITH,\" she murmured. Upon her brow\n  The bright drops fell. An angel smiled\n  In the face of God, all he said: \"Thy Child!\"\n\nDec. 8th. Feast Of The Immaculate Conception. First Communion.\n\n  In snowy robe and spotless veil\n  Kneels the fair child at the altar rail.\n  \"Of Holy Chinch what cravest thou,\n  On suppliant knee and with rev'rent brow?\"\n  \"My Lord, my Hope, in whom I live.\"\n  \"'Tis thy Child!\" said the angel. \"Master, give!\"\n\nApril 14th. Palm Sunday. Burial.\n\n  In snowy robe and spotless veil\n  Lies the fair child at the altar rail.\n  \"Of Holy Church what askest thou,\n  Palm-branch in hand, and with flower-crowned brow?\"\n  \"In robe baptismal yet undefiled,\n  MY LOVE!\" Said the angel: \"He waits thee, Child!\"\n\n------\n\n{414}\n\n    Translated from Paris l'Union.\n\n    Christianity And Social Happiness.\n\nIt is the fate of illustrious men to reproduce the tendencies of the age in\nwhich they live--whether for good or evil. Thus, the study of characters,\nthat the engraver of fame has impressed on the memory of humanity, leads\nfrequently to a knowledge of the age to which they belonged, and from this\nknowledge much that is useful can be elicited.\n\nA man has lived among us, whose noble character, generous aspirations,\nillusions even, or exaggerations, are reflected in his contemporaries.\nLacordaire is France of the nineteenth century, and the thought that\ngerminated in the soul of the celebrated Dominican, and until his time\nawaited its development, borne down by the weight of intellectual ruin\nwhich the school of Voltaire had amassed, this thought harmonizes so well\nwith the genius of the day, and with its research, that it seems impossible\nnot to recognize the ray of light destined to dissipate for ever the\nshadows of doubt and unbelief, which lead astray and weaken the life of our\ngeneration.\n\n\"I have attained to my catholic belief,\" writes Lacordaire, \"through my\nsocial beliefs, and today nothing appears plainer to me than such a\nconsequence. Society is necessary, therefore the Christian religion is\ndivine; for it is the means of leading society to perfection by accepting\nman with all his weaknesses, and social order with its every condition.\"\n\nSuch words cannot be too deeply considered; and the truths that they\nexpress are in such close affinity with the tendencies of our time that it\nis easy and profitable to meditate upon them. We wish for the happiness of\nthe masses, social prosperity, and the advancement of civilization;\ntherefore, we wish for Christianity. Humanity is called upon to peaceably\ndevelop its strength, while releasing itself from the bonds of the monster\ncalled pauperism, with whom physical misery is only the clothing of moral.\nTherefore humanity is called upon to germinate in a reviving sun all\nChristian teachings.\n\nDo you wish for facts? You are children of an age that acts only by\nexperience. Well, then, light the torch of history, and, throwing its rays\nover the annals of the world, read the observations spread before your\neyes, and compare the actual state of an ancient and modern people. In\ninstructing and bringing man to a sense of his greatness and duty, who has\nraised and elevated social relations? Who has broken the chains of pagan\nslavery? Who has sown the seed of all intellectual and moral virtue in\nthose vast regions that barbarian night had enveloped? Who, then, has given\nservants to weakness, to suffering, to the disinherited by fortune, to all\nthose that grief had touched with an unpitying hand? Who has founded large\nschools, asylums of science and art; great centres from which have parted\nin radiating those who, by gigantic works, accomplished under the\nobservation of astonished generations, have merited the appellation of the\nCultivators of Europe? Who has done all these things, if not the church,\nthat is to say, Christianity teaching, directing, and moralizing humanity?\n\nChristianity, then, not only elevates man to a moral grandeur unknown to\npagan nations, but through its influence society exists in a material\nprosperity to which Greece and Rome never attained. Profane history shows\nus a few privileged ones, satiated, we may say, with riches, but beneath\nand around them, we see only a servile mass vegetating in degrading misery.\n{415}\nWhat a difference, say we, with a modern wise economist, M. Perin,\nprofessor in the university or Louvain--what a difference in the riches of\nthe sun between the Roman empire in its happiest time and contemporary\nEurope! What difference in products, in the multiplicity and rapidity of\ncommunication, in the cheapness of transportation, and in the extent of\nrelations which to-day embrace the entire world!\n\nWhat a difference, again, in the financial resources of states, in their\narmies, in their material. What a difference and what superiority on the\nside of modern nations, not only in that which constitutes their individual\nhappiness, but in that which makes the material power of nations and their\ntrue force. What superiority especially in the mass of wealth destined for\nthe consumption of a people. Time, since the thirteenth century, has rolled\non in the full power of Christian civilization, and has evidenced a period\nof prosperity which has had no equal in history. These are the facts. But\nscience does not stop at facts. Its mission is to investigate by labor of\nwhich it only has the secret and the glorious trouble, the why as well as\nthe end of things.\n\nScience is the knowledge of objects of observation studied by their causes:\ncognitio rerum per causas. We ask of it, therefore, the reason of the\nmarvellous power we have just proved in Christianity; and in order not to\nextend our investigations, we will content ourselves by seeking with it how\nmaterial prosperity and the wealth of nations come from a religion which\npreaches the doctrine of renunciation.\n\nThe reason of the prosperity of nations truly Christian is, it seems to us,\nevident. We find them practising generally the virtues of which\nChristianity is the apostle and propagator. Economists will tell, you\nwithout capital, that is to say, without expenditure with the view of\nreproduction, there can be no social riches. But is this expenditure\ncompatible with vice, that never has enough to satisfy its brutal\nappetites?\n\nVirtue, then, is the source of social ease, and in it only the remedy for\npauperism. \"If you do not give a people virtue, the only serious guarantee\nof present expenditure and future capital, you can never entirely defend it\nagainst an invasion of misery. In vain you may accumulate well-being and\nease around the domestic hearth; in vain make and increase capital from\ngrowing wealth, if you do not accumulate a capital conservative of all\nother, that of virtue.\" We are happy to quote these beautiful words, only a\nfew days since fallen from the pulpit of Notre Dame.\n\nJust now we pronounced the word renunciation. Well, it is necessary that\nall understand that Christian self-denial is a dispensing force, the\nresults of which are incalculable. It elevates the poor man beyond\ndiscouragement, and preserves for him the energy with which he diminishes\nthe privations of his family. To him it comes to destroy the individuality\nwhich absorbs the opulence of the rich. To him it leads the beneficent\ncurrent of fortune, which flows from those who have toward those who have\nnot. To him, at last, it brings riches in every way, since under its mild\ninfluence each one profits by its thousand sacrifices, although he\nindividually may make none. Let us be permitted to borrow some lines from\nthe beautiful book of M. P\u00e9rin, De la Richesse dans les Soci\u00e9t\u00e9s\nChr\u00e9tiennes:\n\n\"Follow the course of ages,\" said this wise economist, \"and you will ever\nfind Christianity accomplish through the virtue of self-denial the work of\neach epoch, forcing humanity toward progress, and even saving it from the\nperils of success. Run through the society of to-day, and in every degree\nof civilization that a contemporary world presents us, in the same picture\nand at a single glance, and in the varied phases that pervade our different\nsocieties, you will find Christianity proportion its action to\ncircumstances; you will find it endeavoring to impress all countries and\nraces with the salutary impulse for progress by the power of self-denial,\nwhile it is ever the same in principle, and ever infinitely varied in its\napplications and fertile in its effects.\"\n\n{416}\n\nSelf-denial! Yes, it is this which gives Christian souls that holy love of\nwork which is the productive element of social riches. To make a sacrifice\nof one's repose to God, while bending under the yoke of painful labor, is\nthe joy of the Scripture disciple. He wishes for such joy, he loves it, and\nit was to obtain it that the children of Saint Benedict have sown its seed\nin the uncultivated deserts of the old Europe or under the murderous sun of\nAfrica.\n\nAt the time of its decay and corruption Rome, it is said, was at the same\ntime lazy and servile. But, even in the days of its grandeur, can we\nbelieve that labor showed itself to the eyes of the Roman people\ntransfigured by that aureole which gives it incomparable beauty, so grand\nthat one loves it with a love which might seem folly if it were not supreme\nwisdom? Such a sentiment can only be born with the doctrine of renunciation\nand the thought of the Saviour. \"To re-establish labor and the condition of\nthe workman, it was necessary that Christ, making himself a laborer, should\nwield with his own royal and divine hands, in the workshop of Nazareth, the\naxe and the tools of the carpenter.\"\n\nThese words, which we borrow from a course of political economy, delivered\nwith so much eloquence to the Facult\u00e9 de Droit de Caen, by M. Alexandre\nCarel, finish by exemplifying how labor, and, by consequence, the wealth of\nsociety, owes so much to Christianity.\n\nThe limits of an article do not permit us to develop further the ideas\nnecessary to understand all its power and truth. We can only resume them in\nsaying:\n\nTo occupy one's self with social and political studies is to follow the\nimpulse that our age impresses on intelligence. To find the condition\nnecessary for the well-being of society, of which we form a part, would be\nfrom the point of view of contemporary aspirations one of the finest\nvictories that the public mind could carry with it, one of the greatest\nsatisfactions that the heart can obtain. Well! may our eyes open at last.\nLet us learn to see that, without neglecting secondary means, it is\nnecessary, to attain the end desired, to christianize the people.\n\nChristianity with its virtues, its doctrine of self-renunciation, its labor\ntransfigured by freedom and love, behold the agent, and the only one\ncapable of producing the prosperity with which we would wish to endow\nnations. Let us understand these things, and we shall march with success to\nthe conquest of social happiness. But we shall do better still. Penetrating\nthe harmonious connection that unites effects to causes, we shall ask of it\nthe secret of the superhuman power that escapes from it by submission to\nthe Scripture; and soon we can repeat again the conviction of Lacordaire:\n\"Christianity is the means of leading society to its perfection, by\naccepting man with all his weaknesses, and social order with its even\ncondition. Society is necessary; therefore the Christian religion is\ndivine.\"\n\n------\n\n{417}\n\n    From The Lamp.\n\n    Visible Speech.\n\n\nMr. Alexander Melville Bell has recently brought under the notice of the\nSociety of Arts his very remarkable system of Visible Speech or Universal\nLanguage, which is (says Chamber's Journal) intended to remove an absurdity\nwhich vitiates all ordinary alphabets and languages. This absurdity is the\nutter want of agreement between the appearance of a letter or word and the\nsound which it is intended to convey; between the visible form of the\nsymbol and the sound and meaning of the thing symbolized; between (for\ninstance) the shape of the letter C and the value of that letter in the\nalphabets which contain it. This is an old difficulty--how old, we do not\nknow; but to understand the proposed remedy, it will be necessary to have a\nclear idea of the defect to which the remedy is to be applied.\n\nSpoken language may, for aught we know, have had its origin in an attempt\nto imitate, by the organs of the voice, the different sounds which animate\nand inanimate nature presents. Man could thus recall to the minds of those\naround him those notions of absent objects and past actions with which the\nsounds are connected. The expression of abstract qualities by the same\nmeans would be a later object, and one more difficult of attainment. When\nthe eye instead of the ear had to be appealed to, or the signs rendered\nvisible instead of audible, the system of hieroglyphics would at once\nsuggest itself, by marking on a tablet or paper, a piece of ground or a\nsmooth surface of sand, a rude picture of the object intended. When we get\nbeyond these preliminary stages, however, the difficulty rapidly increases.\nThere is no visible picture by which we could convey the meaning of such\nsentiments as are called in English virtue, justice, fear, and the like,\nexcept by so elaborate a composition as it would require an artist to\nproduce; nor could an audible symbol for each of these sentiments be\nframed. It would take a Max M\u00fcller to trace how the present complication\ngradually arose. That there _is_ a complication, anyone may see in a\nmoment. What is there in the shape of the five letters forming the word\ntable, in these particular combinations of curved and straight lines, to\ndenote either the sound of the word or the movements of the mouth and other\nvocal organs which produce its utterance? Nothing whatever. Any other\ncombination of straight and curved lines might be made familiar by common\nuse, and substituted for our plain English word, with as little attention\nto any analogy between the visible symbol and the sound of the thing\nsymbolized.\n\nNumerous attempts have been made to devise some sort of alphabet in which\nthe shapes of the letters should in some way be dependent on the movements\nof the vocal organs--not actual pictures of them, but analogies, more or\nless complete. Without going to earlier labors, we may adduce those of\nProfessor Willis. Nearly forty years ago, he showed that the ordinary vowel\nsounds--_a, e, i, o, u_--are produced on regular acoustic principles;\nthat \"the different vowel sounds may be produced artificially, by throwing\na current of air upon a reed in a pipe; and that, as the pipe is lengthened\nor shortened, the vowels are successively produced\"--not in the order\nfamiliar to us, but in the order _i, e, a, o, u_, (and with the\ncontinental sounds,\n_i_ like _ee_,\n_e_ like _ay_,\n_a_ like _ah_,\n_u_ like _oo_.)\n{418}\nEighty or ninety years ago, Mr. Kratzenstein contrived an apparatus for\nimitating the various vowel sounds. He adapted a vibrating reed to a set of\npipes of peculiar forms. Soon afterward, Mr. Kempelen succeeded in\nproducing the vowel sounds by adapting a reed to the bottom of a\nfunnel-shaped cavity, and placing his hand in various positions within the\nfunnel. He also contrived a hollow oval box, divided into two portions, so\nattached by a hinge as to resemble jaws; by opening and closing the jaws,\nhe produced various vowel sounds; and by using jaws of different shapes, be\nproduced imperfect imitations of the consonant sounds _l, m_, and\n_p_. By constructing an imitative mouth of a bell-shaped piece of\ncaoutchouc, imitative nostrils of two tin tubes, and imitative lungs in the\nform of a rectangular wind-chest, he produced with more or less\ncompleteness the familiar sounds of _n, d, g, k, s, j, v, t_, and\n_r_. By combining these he produced the words _opera, astronomy,_\netc., and the sentences _Vous etes mon ami--Je vous aime de tout mon\ncoeur_. By introducing various changes in some such apparatus as this,\nProfessor Willis has developed many remarkable facts concerning the mode in\nwhich wind passes through the vocal organs during oral speech.\n\nThe useful work would be, however, not to imitate vocal sounds by means of\nmechanism, but to write them so that they should give more information as\nto their mode of production than our present alphabet affords. Such was the\npurport of the _Phonetic_ system, which had a life of great activity\nfrom ten to twenty years ago, but which has since fallen into comparative\nobscurity. Mr. Ellis and the Messrs. Pitman published very numerous works,\neither printed in the phonetic language itself, or intended to develop its\nprinciples. Bible Histories, the New Testament, the Sermon on the Mount,\nPilgrim's Progress, Paradise Lost, Macbeth, The Tempest--all were printed\nin the new form; and there were numerous works under such titles as\nPhonetic or Phonographic Alphabets. Almanacs, Journals, Miscellanies,\nHymn-books, Note-books, Primers, Lesson-books, and the like. The intention\nwas not so much to introduce new forms of letters, as new selections of\nexisting letters to convey the proper sounds of words. There was an\nunfortunate publication, the Fonetik Nuz, which worked more harm than good\nto the system, seeing that it was made a butt for laughter and\nridicule--more formidable to contend against than logical argument.\n\nMr. Bell contemplates something more than this. He has been known in\nEdinburgh for twenty years in connection with numerous works relating to\nreading, spelling, articulation, ortho\u00ebpy, elocution, the language of the\npassions, the relations between letters and sounds, logograms for\nshorthand, and the like. As a writer and teacher on these subjects, he had\nfelt, with many other persons, how useful it would be if we could have a\nsystem of letters of universal application; letters which, when learned in\nconnection with any one language, could be vocalized with uniformity in\nevery other. There are two obstacles to the attainment of this end: first,\nthat the association between the existing letters and sounds is merely\narbitrary; and second, that international uniformity of association is\nimpracticable, because the sounds of different languages, and their mutual\nrelations, have not hitherto been ascertained with exactitude or\ncompleteness.\n\nMr. Bell, as he tells us, feeling that all attempted collations of existing\nalphabets have failed to yield the elements of a complete alphabet, tried\nin a new direction. Instead of going to languages to discover the elements\nof utterance, he went to the apparatus of speech itself, endeavoring to\nclassify all the movements of tongue, teeth, lips, palate, etc., concerned\nin the pronunciation of vocal sounds. By this means, he hoped to obtain,\nfrom the physiological basis of speech, an organic scale of sounds which\nshould include all varieties, known and unknown.\n{419}\nTo transfer these sounds to paper, in the form of visible characters, a new\nalphabet was necessary. To have adopted letters from the Roman, Greek, or\nother alphabets, constructed on no common principle of symbolization, would\nhave been to introduce complexity and confusion, and to create a conflict\nbetween old and new associations. He therefore discarded old letters and\nalphabets of every kind. He set himself the task of inventing a new scheme\nof symbols, each of which should form a definite part of a complete design;\ninsomuch that, if the plan of the alphabet were communicated by diagrams,\neach letter would teach its own sound, by expressing to the reader's eye\nthe exact position of the sound in the physiological circuit. Could this\nobject be attained, not only would there be a universal alphabet; there\nwould be a scheme of letters representative of sounds, and not, like\nordinary alphabets, associated with sounds only by arbitrary conventions.\n\nMr. Bell believes that he has achieved this result, and his expositions\nbefore the Ethnological Society, the College of Preceptors, and the Society\nof Arts, have had for their object the presentation of various phases of\nthe system. The fitness of the term _visible_ speech may, be urges, be\nshown by the analogy of an artist, who, wishing to depict a laughing face,\ndraws the lines of the face as seen under the influence of mirth; be\ndepicts, in fact, _visible_ laughter. Every passion and sentiment,\nemotion and feeling, has this kind of facial writing; and an idea of it\nmight be expressed on paper by a picture of the muscular arrangements of\nthe face, so that all persons seeing the symbols would have a common\nknowledge of their meaning. In forming any sound, we adjust the parts of\nthe mouth to certain definite attitudes; and the sound is the necessary\nresult of our putting the mouth in such a shape. If, then, we could\nrepresent the various positions of the mouth, we should have in those\nsymbols a representation of the sounds which cannot but result from putting\nthe mouth in the positions symbolized. Now, Mr. Bell claims to have applied\nthis system of symbolization to every possible arrangement of the mouth: he\nclaims that, whatever your language, and whether you speak a refined or a\nrustic dialect, he can show, in the forms of his new letters, the exact\nsounds you make use of. If this be so, a Chinaman may read English, or an\nEnglishman Chinese, without any difficulty or uncertainty, after he has\nlearned to form his mouth in accordance with the directions given him by\nthe letters. Nearly all the existing alphabets contain vestiges of a\nsimilar relation between letters and sounds--a relation which has nearly\ndisappeared during the changes which alphabetic characters have gradually\nundergone. Mr. Bell gave the following anecdote illustrating this relation:\n\"Shortly before I left Edinburgh, in the early part of last year, an\nelderly lady called on me, accompanied by two young ladies, who were going\nout to India as missionaries. The elderly lady had been for upward of\ntwenty years engaged in mission work, and she spoke the language of the\ndistrict like a native. Nevertheless, she could not teach the English girls\nto pronounce some of the peculiar sounds which she had acquired by habit.\nThey had been for some time under her instruction, but they could not catch\nthe knack of certain characteristic elements. Having heard of 'Visible\nSpeech,' the lady called to solicit my assistance. I know nothing of the\nlanguage she pronounced before me. Some of the sounds I had never heard in\nlinguistic combinations, though, of course, I am acquainted with them\ntheoretically. I saw the young ladies for half an hour, but this proved\nlong enough to give them the power of pronouncing the difficult sounds\nwhich, while they did not know precisely what to do, they could not\narticulate. Strangely enough, since I came to reside in London, I heard a\nclergyman and former missionary, speaking of these very girls, remark on\nthe great success with which they pronounced the Canarese language before\nthey left this country; and the speaker knew nothing of their previous\ndifficulty, or how it had been overcome.\"\n\n{420}\n\nThe system analyzes all sounds according to the mode in which they are\nproduced. The number of sounds discriminated in various languages amounts\nto several times the number of letters in the English alphabet; and even in\nEnglish, although there are only twenty-six letters, there are at least\nforty different sounds. The Church Missionary Society employ nearly two\nhundred different letters or symbols in their several printed books; and\nthe list is even then imperfect as regards many of the languages.\n\nMr. Bell finds thirty symbols sufficient to denote all the two hundred\nvarieties of vowel and consonant sounds. What kind of symbols they are, we\ndo not know, (for a reason presently to be explained;) but he states that,\nwhile each elementary sound has its own single type to express it in\nprinting, he requires only thirty actual types to express them as used in\nlanguage. Each symbol has a name, which does not include the sound of the\nletter, but merely describes its form. The learner has thus at first only\nto recognize pictures. But the name of the symbol also expresses the\narrangement of the mouth which produces the sound; so that, when the symbol\nis named, the organic formation of its sound is named at the same time. In\norder that thirty symbols may denote two hundred sounds, Mr. Bell has\nadopted certain modes of classification. All vowels receive a common\ngeneric symbol, all consonants another; vocality and whisper have their\nrespective symbols; so have inspiration, retention, and expulsion of\nbreath; so have the touching and the vibration of the several vocal organs;\nso have the lips, the palate, the pharynx, the glottis, and the different\nparts of the tongue; so has the breathing of sounds through the nostrils,\nor through nearly closed teeth. There are thirty of these generic meanings\naltogether, and they are combined to make up letters, every part of every\nletter having a meaning. The thirty symbols need not be represented\nmechanically by exactly thirty types; they may be embodied in a larger or\nsmaller number, according to taste or convenience; such of the symbols as\ntogether represent simple elements of speech being properly combined in\nsingle types. \"The highest possible advantages of the system,\" we are told,\n\"would be secured by extending the number of types to about sixty. At\npresent, I and my sons--as yet the only experts in the use of visible\nspeech--write the alphabet in a form that would be cast on between forty\nand fifty types, which is but little more than the number in an ordinary\nEnglish fount, including diphthongs and accented letters. This number does\nnot require to be exceeded in order to print, with typographic simplicity,\nthe myriad dialects of all nations.\"\n\nMr. Bell pointed out the prospective usefulness of his system in\ntelegraphic communication. The symbols of speech may, in all their\nvarieties, be transmitted by telegraph, through any country, without the\nnecessity for a knowledge of the language adopted on the part of the\nsignaller. He would only have to discriminate forms of letters; he may be\ntotally ignorant of the value of a single letter, and yet may convey the\ntelegram so as to be intelligible to the person to whom it is virtually\naddressed. It is known that the telegrams from India now reach London in a\nsadly mutilated and unintelligible state, owing to their passing through\nthe hands of Turkish and Persian agents who do not know the English\nalphabet; an evil which, it is contended, would be removed by the adoption\nof the new system.\n\n{421}\n\nThe mode in which Mr. Bell illustrated his method was curious and\ninteresting. His son uttered a great variety of sounds--whispered\nconsonants, vocal consonants, vowels, diphthongs, nasal vowels,\ninterjections, inarticulate sounds, animal sounds, mechanical sounds--all\nof which are susceptible of being represented in printed or written\nsymbols. Then, the son being out of the room, several gentlemen came\nforward and repeated short sentences to Mr. Bell, some in Arabic, some in\nPersian, some in Bengali, some in Negro patois, some in Gaelic, some in\nLowland Scotch, some in Norfolk dialect; Mr. Bell wrote down the sounds as\nhe heard them, without, except in one or two cases, knowing the purport of\nthe words. The son was called in, and, looking attentively at the writing,\nrepeated the sentences with an accuracy of sound and intonation which\nseemed to strike those who were best able to judge as being very\nremarkable.\n\nThere is something a little tantalizing in the present state of the\nsubject. We know that there is _a_ system of symbols, but we do not\nknow the symbols themselves. Mr. Bell states that, besides the members of\nhis own family, only three persons have been made acquainted with the\nsymbols, and the details of their formation--namely, Sir David Brewster,\nProfessor de Morgan, and Mr. Ellis. He has not intended, and does not\nintend, to secure his system to himself by any kind of patent or copyright;\nand yet, if he made it fully public at once, he would lose any legitimate\nhold over it to which he is rightly entitled. He has submitted his plan to\ncertain government departments, but has found that it is \"nobody's\nbusiness\" to take up a subject which is not included in any definite sphere\nof duty. He has next endeavored to interest scientific societies in the\nmatter, so far as to induce them to urge the trial of his plan by the\ngovernment. He says: \"I am willing to surrender my private rights in the\ninvention _pro bono publico_, on the simple condition that the costs\nof so introducing the system may be undertaken at the public charge.\"\nTeachers there must be, because \"the publication of the theory of the\nsystem and the scheme of symbols must necessarily be supplemented by oral\nteaching of the scales of sound, in order that the invention may be applied\nwith uniformity.\" The reading of the paper gave rise to some discussion at\nthe Society of Arts, not as to the value and merit of the system itself,\nbut as to anything which the society can do in the matter. It is one rule\nof the society that no new invention shall be brought forward without a\nfull explanation of the _modus operandi_ as well as of the leading\nprinciples; and in this case, the objection lay that the inventor declined\nto make public, unless under some government agreement, the actual secret\nof his method. Mr. Bell replied that, if even he were to write a sentence\nin view of the audience, it would add very little to their real knowledge\nof the subject; but he furthermore said he was ready to explain the details\nof the system to any committee whom the council of the society, or any\nother scientific body, may appoint. To us it appears that neither Mr. Bell\nnor the society is open to blame in the matter. He has the right to name\nthe conditions under which he will make his system public; while they have\nthe right to lay down rules for the governance of their own proceedings.\nThe results actually produced struck the auditors generally with surprise;\nand there can be little doubt that the system will in some way or other, at\nall events, work itself into public notice.\n\n------\n\n{422}\n\n\n  Comparative Mortality of Great Capitals.\n\nOur recent alarm at the appearance and progress of the cholera in London\nmay have drawn the attention of many who had before been accustomed to pass\nthem by with indifference, to those columns in the papers in which the\nreports of the Registrar-General on the state of the public health are from\ntime to time recorded. But we are perhaps hardly yet sufficiently awake to\nthe importance and interest of the statistics there contained, any more\nthan to the value of the short and, at first sight, rather unintelligible\ntables which embody, day after day, the meteorological phenomenon collected\nin London from so many different points on our own coast and those of\nadjacent countries. These last statistics have an interest which does not\nyet belong to those which relate to the public health, in that they embrace\nreports from so many distinct places which can be compared together. We, of\ncourse, only publish our own statistics of health, disease, births, and\ndeaths; and we have not yet seen our way to the information that might be\ngathered by a comparison of our own condition in these respects with that\nof others under similar circumstances. The interest and value of such a\ncomparison is obvious enough; and some of the results which might be hoped\nfrom it, if it were systematically and scientifically made, may be guessed\nat by the perusal of a thin volume of less than two hundred pages, lately\npublished in Paris by M. Vacher, [Footnote 136] which at first sight may\nseem not to promise very much except to professional readers, but from\nwhich we shall take the liberty of drawing a few facts which certainly seem\nworthy of the attention of the more general public.\n\n    [Footnote 136: Etude M\u00e9dicale et Statistique sur la Mortalit\u00e9 \u00e0 Paris,\n    \u00e0 Londres, \u00e0 Vienne et \u00e0 New-York en 1865. D'apr\u00e9s les Documens\n    officiels, avec une Carte M\u00e9t\u00e9orologique et Mortuaire. Par le docteur\n    L. Vacher. Paris: F. Savy, 1866.]\n\nCanning once said, in answer to some one who alleged \"a well-known fact\"\nagainst him, that there was but one thing more fallacious than a fact, and\nthat was a figure. We must all be ready to allow that the results which we\nsee embodied so neatly in a set of figures in statistical tables are, after\nall, but approaches to the truth; and they are not put forward as anything\nmore. Still, there is often a wonderful accuracy about the average results\ngiven by statistical inquiries; and it is obvious that when the result of\none calculation is confirmed by that of another independent of the former,\nor when one uniform result is given by a continued series of inquiries, or\nwhen there is a very decided preponderance on one side of a comparison,\nsuch as cannot be accounted for by chance, it would be absurd to refuse to\nassent to conclusions thus obtained. With this single preliminary remark,\nlet us proceed to some of the facts collected for us by M. Vacher.\n\nHe begins by giving due credit to this country for having taken the lead in\nthe publication of the kind of statistics with which he has to deal. The\nreports of the Registrar-General are all that he can desire. New York and\nVienna have followed, more or less fully, the example set in London. It has\nalso been copied in St. Petersburg, as far as the registration of deaths is\nconcerned; and it is hoped that a weekly publication of the results will\nsoon be made in that city. Paris joined the movement at the end of 1864 or\nthe beginning of 1865.\n{423}\nThere is, however, some difference of system. The chief point is, that in\nEngland the medical man who attends a sick person reports the cause of\ndeath; in Paris there are certain official physicians, _v\u00e9rificateurs des\nd\u00e9c\u00e8s_, and these, instead of the attending physician, assign the cause.\nThe superiority of the English system seems to be acknowledged. M. Vacher's\nbook is founded on the reports thus produced.\n\nHis first business is, of course, to settle approximately the population of\nthe four capitals with whose statistics he deals--a matter of considerable\ndifficulty, even with all the results of the census before him. He\ncalculates the number of the inhabitants of Paris in 1865 at 1,863,000;\nthose of London were 3,028,600; those of Vienna, 560,000; and those of New\nYork, 1,025,000, (in 1864.) At the present rate of increase, Paris will\ndouble its population in 32 years, London in 40, Vienna in 44, and New York\nin 13\u00bd. On the other hand, this increase is not to be set down to the\nexcess of births over deaths, which in London, in 20 years before 1861, was\nonly 328,189--about a third of the actual increase, (35 per cent.) In a\nsimilar period, the births exceed the deaths in Paris by only 13 (and a\nfraction) per cent of the whole increase. Immigration has therefore the\nlargest share in the increase of the population. A flow is continually\nsetting in from the country to the town in the age in which we live, and it\nenriches the largest towns, and the capitals especially. New York,\nreceiving annually so many immigrants from Europe, is, of course, beyond\nthe others in its gains from this source. Paris has undergone great\nvicissitudes as to the number of its inhabitants. In 1762, the population\nseems to have been about 600,000. It fell off immensely during the\nRevolution; even in 1800 it was only 547,756. From 1790 to 1810 the number\nof deaths exceeded the number of births. Since that time the proportion has\nbeen reversed, except in years of great epidemics.\n\nOf the four capitals with which M. Vacher deals, Vienna, the smallest, had\nthe largest proportion of deaths in 1865. In Vienna the proportion was 1 to\n31 of the inhabitants; in Paris, notwithstanding the ravages of the cholera\nin October--causing 6591 deaths (nearly an eighth of the whole)--it was 1\nto 36; in New York, 1 to 40; in London, 1 to 41. In Paris, London, and New\nYork, the death rate has diminished in its proportion to the population for\nsome time past. In Paris, in the three decades of years from 1830 to 1860,\nit fell successively from 1 to 31, to 1 to 34, and then to 1 to 38. There\nhas been the same improvement in the other two cities. In New York, fifteen\nyears ago, the rate of deaths was 1 to 22--nearly twice as high as at\npresent. We do not see any statement in M. Vacher's pages as to the case of\nVienna. He attributes the improvement in Paris to some extent to the great\npublic works and measures for securing the health of the population which\nhave marked the second empire; but much more, it would seem, to the better\nmanagement of the hospitals. In Paris and Vienna a much larger proportion\nof the inhabitants die in hospitals than in New York and London; and, as\nfar as we are concerned, M. Vacher includes workhouses and asylums of all\nkinds under the general name of hospitals. He finds, on comparing some\nscanty statistics of the last century with the facts of the present, that\nin old times the number of deaths in hospitals was far greater in\nproportion to the cases admitted than now; and he thinks that, in Paris at\nleast, this almost explains the improvement in the death-rate. In New York\nthe same improvement may have had many causes, but it is remarkably\ncoincident as to time with the magnificent changes made, at an immense\ncost, in the water supply of that city. From some meteorological tables\ncompiled with great care by M. Vacher, we gather the rather surprising\nresult that the variations of temperature during the year, which have\nconsiderable influence on the death-rate, are greatest at Vienna, (nearly\n27\u00b0,) next at New York, (25\u00b0,) much lower in Paris (17\u00b0,) and lowest of all\nin London, (15\u00b0.)\n\n{424}\n\nOne of the most interesting questions at the present time on this subject\nis that of the water supply. M. Vacher begins with a cordial tribute to the\nRomans on this head. The magnificent aqueducts by which the city of Rome\nwas supplied date from the time of the early republic, though the emperors\nincreased their number. At an early point of their history, therefore, the\nRomans were wise and liberal enough to dispense with the waters of the\nTiber for drinking. They carried their system everywhere when they became\nthe masters of the world; in France, in Spain, and in Italy many aqueducts\ncan still be traced which were their work. We may be quite certain that if\nBritain were now a Roman province, the Thames water companies would never\nbe allowed to supply water except for the streets, and great aqueducts\nwould long since have brought us the pure water of Bala Lake or Windermere.\nThanks to the popes, modern Rome though not so profusely supplied as in\nimperial times, is still very far in advance of all other cities in the\nworld in this respect. [Footnote 137] M. Vacher reckons the water supply in\nancient Rome as 1492 _litres_ a day for each inhabitant; in modern\nRome it is 1040; in New York, 159; in Vienna. 134; [Footnote 138] in Paris,\naccording to the new system, 109; in London, 132. But no city seems to have\nits _houses_ so well supplied as London; in Rome a great quantity of\nwater is wasted, being left to run away from the fountains, while the\nhouses are not conveniently provided with water. We suppose that our old\nfriend the house-cistern, against which we have heard so many complaints\nlately, is not an essential feature in our system of house supply.\n\n    [Footnote 137: M. Vacher attributes the salubrity of Rome--for,\n    considering its position, it enjoys remarkable salubrity--to the\n    abundance and good quality of its water. Lancisi, who practiced there\n    as a physician in the last century, accounts for the longevity of its\n    inhabitants in the same way. At all events, remarks M. Vacher, \"il est\n    impossible de n'\u00e9tre pas frapp\u00e9 de ce fait, que les historiens ne\n    mentionnent pas un seul example de peste \u00e0 Rome, et qu'au moyen age et\n    dans les temps modernes elle a constainment \u00e9chapp\u00e9 aux atteintes de la\n    pests et du chol\u00e9ra, qui ont s\u00e9vi \u00e0 plusteurs reprises en Italie.\" But\n    Rome has certainly been visited by the cholera more than once, and the\n    rest of the statement is surely contrary to history.]\n\n    [Footnote 138: This statement is, however, an anticipation. The\n    municipality of the Vienna has undertaken some immense works in order\n    to improve the water supply, at a cost of 16,000,000 florins. The works\n    are not yet completed: but M. Vacher gives the quantity of water for\n    each inhabitant which they are expected to furnish. Hitherto the city\n    has been supplied, it would seem, partly from the Danube, partly by\n    wells. The new supply will be drawn from three different sources among\n    the neighboring mountains.]\n\nM. Vacher gives the following conclusions as to the sanitary effect of good\nand abundant water. He tells us that inorganic substances contained in\nwater are comparatively innocuous to the health of those who drink it; on\nthe other hand, great injury is caused by the presence of organic matter.\nThe best water in Paris--that of the springs on the north--contains nine\ntimes as much of calcareous salts as the water of the Seine; but it is\njustly preferred for drinking purposes. On the other hand, M. Vacher quotes\nthe testimony of M. Bouchut, a professor at the Ecole de M\u00e9decine, for the\nfact that he noticed the frequency of epidemic diarrhoea during the summer\nmonths in the Quartier de S\u00e8vres and that it had been almost stopped in\ncases where the doctors had ordered the water of the Seine to be no longer\nused, and had substituted for it water from the artesian well of Grenelle.\nHe adds his own experience at the Lyc\u00e9e Napoleon, which is supplied from\nthe reservoir of the Pantheon, which receives its water from the Seine and\nthe aqueduct d' Arcueil. He had known as many as fifteen students at once\nill of diarrhoea, and the disease was stopped by the \"alcoholization of all\nthe water.\" [Footnote 139]\n\n    [Footnote 139: P, 106. M. Vacher here cites the Indian case quoted by\n    Mr. Farre in is cholera report. The natives in India drink boiled water\n    as a preventative against cholera; and it has been found that out of a\n    great number in the family of a single proprietor in Calcutta, all of\n    whom took this precaution, not a single person had been attacked even\n    in the worst times of the prevalence of cholera. But Dr. Frank has\n    disapproved at least the universality of this fact.]\n\nAs regards cholera, the proof is even more striking than that lately\nfurnished in the case of London by the great and almost exclusive ravages\nof that disease in the eastern districts.\n{425}\nMortality by cholera seems ordinarily, as M. Vacher tells us, to follow the\nlaws of general mortality, that is, it prevails most in those districts\nwhich are ordinarily the most unhealthy. But the one element of good or bad\nwater supply seems to be enough to counterbalance the influence of the\nother causes which affect the comparative mortality of districts. For\ninstance, difference of elevation is supposed to be one of these causes.\nMr. Farre tells us that the mortality of a district is in inverse\nproportion to the elevation: that in nineteen high districts the proportion\nof deaths by cholera was as 33 to 10,000; in the same number of low\ndistricts, as 100 to 10,000. This law, however, is not enough, nor is it\nfree from exception. Sometimes places loftily situated are attacked and\nlower places are spared. The elevation of Montmartre is almost equal to\nthat of Belleville; but Montmartre had last year 3.6 cholera cases to 1000,\nBelleville only 1.1. Again, a rich quarter has ordinarily immense\nadvantages over a poor quarter. The mean mortality by cholera in the poorer\n_arrondissements_ of Paris was almost three times as great as that in\nthe rich _arrondissements_. The reason is obvious: the poor work hard,\nhave insufficient food, and are crowded together in discomfort and want;\nthe rich are well fed, not overworked, well and healthily housed. Yet there\nwas one _arrondissement_ of Paris, and that one of the very poorest,\nwhich in the three first visitations of cholera (1832, 1849, 1854) had\nactually the lowest proportion of deaths by cholera of all these districts.\nIn 1865, it had barely more deaths than the very richest of all, that of\nthe Op\u00e9ra, which headed the list on that occasion as the most lightly\nvisited. This _arrondissement_ was Belleville. Another cause of\ncomparatively greater mortality is density of population; but here again we\nare met by the fact that this fortunate Belleville is very densely\npopulated. The nature of the soil is another. M. Vacher mentions a number\nof departments in the centre of France which have never yet been attacked\nby cholera. They are those which consist of a huge granitic mass, like an\nisland in the midst of the more recent formations around them.\nNevertheless, though this will explain much, and though Belleville has an\nadvantage in this respect over many of the _arrondissements_ of Paris,\nstill it has the same geological formation as Montmartre, which had three\ntimes as many deaths (in proportion) from cholera. In short, there is no\nway left of accounting for its comparative exemption, except that which we\nhave already mentioned, the superior character of the water consumed by its\ninhabitants. The argument certainly seems as complete as it can possibly\nbe, and we know that it has been strongly confirmed by our own late\nexperience. Let us hope that no time may be lost in acting on the lesson\nwhich we have received.\n\nWe pass over some interesting statements on the meteorological phenomena\nwhich were observed during the prevalence of the cholera last year in\nParis. [Footnote 140]\n\n\n    [Footnote 140: M. Vacher here tells a story of his endeavor to make\n    some ozonometrical observations in the Paris hospitals, which were\n    prohibited by the Directeur de l'Assistance publique--an officer of\n    whom M. Vacher is continually complaining on the ground that they would\n    frighten the patients. He remarks that on one occasion when travelling\n    in the pontifical states, some gendarmes found in his possession a\n    psychrometer and an aneroid barometer, and thought they were weapons of\n    destruction. He would have been arrested but for M. Matteucci, then\n    Director of Police. He complains bitterly of the comparative want of\n    enlightenment in the \"administration\" of his own country. But no\n    hospital would have allowed his experiments.]\n\nM. Vacher rather contradicts current opinion by some remarks he has made as\nto the relation of cholera to other diseases. Sydenham has remarked that\nwhen several epidemic diseases are rife during the same season, one of them\nusually absorbs to itself, as it were, the bulk of the mortality,\ndiminishing the influence of the rest even below the ordinary level. Thus\nin the year of the great plague in London, just two centuries ago, the\nsmallpox was fatal to only thirty-eight persons, its average being about\neleven hundred.\n{426}\nHowever, the general fact is now questioned. In October last, though\n4653 persons were carried off by cholera, the mortality by other diseases\nin Paris was greater than in any other month of the year. Yet October is\nusually one of the most healthy of all the months; and the epidemic\nmaladies which ordinarily rage during the autumn--typhoid fever, small-pox,\ndiphtheria, croup, whooping-cough, erysipelas, and puerperal fever--were\nprevalent to an extraordinary degree. It is curious also that there was an\nunusual number of children born dead.\n\nThe most destructive of all ordinary complaints is undoubtedly consumption.\nAt Vienna it actually causes 25 per cent of the deaths, at Paris 16 per\ncent, at London nearly 12 per cent, at New York 14 per cent. It is more\nfrequent in women than men; it is twice as destructive in poor quarters as\nin rich quarters; the age which suffers most from it is between 25 and 40.\nThe difference between the sexes M. Vacher attributes to the more confined\nand retired life led by women. If observations in Paris are to be taken as\nenough to furnish a general conclusion, it would appear that more\nconsumptive patients die in the spring than in the autumn. Here again a\ncommon opinion is overthrown. The most destructive months are March, April,\nand May: the least destructive are September, October, and November. We\nbelieve that in this country the fewest consumptive patients die in winter,\nand the most in summer. M. Vacher also attacks the notion that maritime\nclimates are the best for consumptive cases. New York is situated on the\nsea, but it loses as many by consumption as London; and in the maritime\ncounties of Kent, Sussex, Hampshire, Dorset, and Devonshire, the deaths by\nconsumption are as 1 in 7 of the whole; while in the Midland counties of\nWarwickshire, Buckinghamshire, Worcestershire, and Oxfordshire, they are as\n1 in 9. \"Les phthisiques qu'on envoie \u00e0 Nice et \u00e0 Cannes, ou m\u00eame sur les\nbords du Nil, sur la foi d'un passage de Celse, y meurent comme ceux qui\nrestent sous le ciel natal. Ceux-la, seuls en reviennent gu\u00e9ris, chez qui\nle mal n'\u00e9tait pas sans ressources et qui auraient gu\u00e9ri partout ailleurs,\"\n(p. 129.) We must remember, however, that if such patients are sent to the\nseaside, and die there, they raise the death-rate there unfairly. M. Vacher\ninsists that the guiding principle in selecting a place for the residence\nof a consumptive patient should be the absence of great variations in the\ntemperature rather than the actual number of deaths by the disease.\nConsumption, he says, is unknown in Iceland; but that is not a reason for\nsending a consumptive patient to that island. As to New York, we have\nalready quoted his observation as to the variableness of the temperature\nthere, notwithstanding its maritime position.\n\nAlthough we have already stated the results of a general comparison of the\nmortality in the four capitals--results very favorable to the salubrity of\nLondon--it may be interesting to our readers to learn the state of the case\nwith regard to particular classes of disease. In most cases, of course, we\nhave the list in actual numbers: our comparative immunity is only evident\nwhen the great excess of our population is considered. In zymotic diseases\nwe have little more than a majority of a thousand over Paris; but then we\nmust remember that in the year of which M. Vacher speaks between 5000 and\n6000 persons in Paris died of cholera. This, therefore, would seem to be\none of the classes of disease as to which we are really worst off. As to\nconstitutional diseases, consumption, cancer, scrofula, gout, rheumatism,\nand others, Paris exceeds us in proportion; and it is the same with\ndiseases of the nervous system. From diseases of the heart we lose between\ntwo and three times as many as the Parisians; this proportion, therefore,\nis greatly against us. On the other hand, in diseases of the digestive\norgans, Paris, notwithstanding its inferior population, exceeded London by\na hundred deaths in the last year.\n{427}\nLondon, however, regains a sad preeminence when we come to diseases of the\nrespiratory organs, asthma, bronchitis, influenza, and the like: Paris\nlosing between 7000 and 8000 a year against our 12,500. It is in the\ncommoner diseases that the worst features of London mortality in 1865 were\nfound. Typhoid was nearly three times as fatal last year in London as in\nParis; measles four times as fatal; scarlatina not far short of twenty\ntimes; whooping-cough more than thirteen times. As the population of London\nis to that of Paris as five to three, it is clear to how great an extent\nthe balance was against us. It was probably an accident. These diseases\nprevail very generally for a time, and then retire: and we have lately been\nvisited by a period of their prevalence.\n\nWe have hitherto spoken only of diseases; but M. Vacher's researches extend\nto the comparative frequency of deaths of other kinds. In suicides, New\nYork has the best account to give, Paris the worst. To speak roughly,\nLondon has twice as many suicides as New York, Vienna twice as many as\nLondon, Paris more than twice as many as Vienna--in comparison, that is,\nwith the total number of deaths of all kinds. The _actual_ numbers\nstand thus: Paris 716, London 267, Vienna 813, New York 36. For the last\nnine years there has been little change in the number in London; in New\nYork it has diminished, in Paris it has increased, having more than doubled\nitself since 1839. The two years, 1848 and 1830, which were marked by\nrevolutionary movements, were also marked by a diminution in the number of\nsuicides. The relative proportion of suicides increases with age; that is,\nit is four times as frequent with people above 70 as with people between 20\nand 30. Paris has for a long time been noted as a city in which there were\nmore suicides than any other. More than eighty years ago, Mercier noted\nthis, and attributed it to the rage for speculation. Other writers have\nsince attempted to find a reason for it in the prevalence of democratic\nideas. We suppose that both democratic ideas and speculation are not\nunknown in New York, yet that city (and indeed the State itself) is\nremarkably free from suicides, and a great number of those that occur are\nsaid to be of Europeans.\n\nBut if Paris bears the palm in self-slaughter, no city can vie with London\nin slaughter of another kind. Violent deaths are nearly three times as\nfrequent in London as in Paris. As many as 2241 persons were slain in\nLondon last year; as many, that is, as would be enough for the number of\nthe killed in a sanguinary battle: 328 were burnt, 405 were suffocated,\n(this probably includes children overlaid by their mothers,) 40 were\npoisoned, 767 disposed of by \"fractures and contusions,\" 232 were killed by\ncarriage accidents; leaving 469 to be laid to the account of other\naccidents. In the other three capitals the proportion of deaths by\naccidents to the whole number of deaths ranges from under one per cent to\nunder two per cent; in London it is just three per cent. Finally, London\nhad 132 murders to give an account of in 1865, Paris had 10, and New York\nonly 5.\n\nWe are sorry that the last fact which we glean from M. Vacher's interesting\ntables must be one rather disparaging to the great Transatlantic city which\nwe have last named. Disparaging, that is, positively rather than\ncomparatively; and we fear that, if the statistics which we are now to\nquote do not reveal a terrible state of things in London also, it is\nbecause on this head our admirable system of registration has given M.\nVacher no assistance at all. \"Quant \u00e0 la ville de Londres,\" he says, \"il\nm'a \u00e9t\u00e9 impossible d'arriver \u00e0 connaitre le chiffre de ses _mort-n\u00e9s_.\nLe Bulletin des Naissances et des Morts ne donne d'ailleurs aucun\nrenseignement \u00e0 ce sujet.\" He expresses his opinion that, if the numbers\nwere given, London would have quite as bad a tale to tell as Paris or New\nYork. But the figures in these cities are sufficiently startling.\n{428}\nIn Paris the children \"born dead\" are to the whole number of deaths as one\nto ten; in New York as one to fifteen; in Vienna they are as one to\ntwenty-three. Twenty years ago, the Pr\u00e9fet of the Seine addressed a\ncircular to the _maires_ of Paris, in which he drew their attention to\nthe great number of these children, and pointed out that it was natural to\nconclude that their deaths were too often the result of crime. In New York\nsimilar complaints have been made, and we are significantly told that full\nreports cannot be obtained on the subject. As to London, we find a large\nnumber of deaths, 1400 or 1500 a year, set down to \"premature birth and\ndebility.\" We fear it would be quite impossible to give an account of the\nnumber of births which are _prevented_--contrary to the laws of God\nand man alike. We need hardly do more than allude to the frightful increase\nof infanticide, on which Dr. Lankester has lately spoken so strongly. Mr.\nHumble's Essay on the subject in Mr. Orby Shipley's volume contains some\nvery startling statistics. There are as many as 12,000 women in London to\nwhom this crime may be imputed. \"In other words,\" says Mr. Humble, \"one in\nevery thirty women (I presume, between fifteen and forty-five) is a\nmurderess.\" We must hope that there is exaggeration about this; but if it\nwere one in every thirty thousand, it would be bad enough--a state of\nthings calling down the judgments of heaven on the land.\n\nThe Anglican writer to whom we have just alluded speaks with some apparent\nprejudice against the most obvious remedy for infanticide--the\nestablishment of foundling hospitals, perfectly free. There may be some\nobjections to these institutions, but we must confess that, in the face of\nthe facts on which we are commenting, they seem to us rather like arguments\nagainst life-boats because they may encourage oversecurity in exposure to\nthe dangers of the sea. If Mr. Humble will read, or read again, Dr. Burke\nRyan's Essay on Infanticide, which gained the Fothergillian prize medal\nsome time ago, and in which the fact seems to be proved that the crime is\nmore common in England than anywhere else, he will perhaps see reason to\nconclude, from the French statistics there adduced, that foundling\nhospitals are more effectual in preventing this abominable evil than\nanything else that has ever been devised.\n\n------\n\n    Miscellany.\n\n\n_New Electric Machines_.--At the conversazione given by the president\nof the Royal Society at Burlington House, London, the display of newly\nconstructed astronomical, optical, and other philosophical instruments\nafforded a gratifying proof of improvements in the mode of construction,\nand of increased skill on the part of the constructors. The large\nspectroscope, which is to be used in combination with Lord Rosse's monster\ntelescope, was a triumph of workmanship and of philosophical adaptation of\nmeans to ends; and we may expect ere long to hear of important discoveries\nin spectroscopic phenomena. Mr. C. W. Siemens and Professor Wheatstone\nexhibited each one a remarkable electric machine of his own invention,\nwhich demonstrated in a surprising way the convertibility of mechanical\nforce into electricity. In these machines, a bar of soft iron, wrapped\nlengthwise in copper wire, is made to rotate between two other bars of soft\niron, which are fixed. The rotating bar is inoculated, so to speak, with a\nsmall touch of magnetism, and then being set spinning very rapidly, the\nsmall touch is generated into a stream of electricity, which passes off\nwith a crackling noise, increasing or diminishing in proportion to the\nrotation.\n{429}\nIn a laboratory, such a machine would be highly serviceable, as it could be\nused to generate large quantities of electricity very cheaply, and there is\nno doubt but that many other ways of turning it to account will be\ndiscovered. Mr. Siemens has already discovered one most important way,\nnamely, the lighting-up of buoys and beacons at a distance from the shore,\nby sending a current of electricity to them through a submarine cable. That\nis the way in which he purposes to employ the electricity generated by his\nmachine: his method has been approved by the Commissioners of Northern\nLight-houses, who intend to apply it to light the buoys and beacons that\nmark the most dangerous spots round the coast of Scotland. But of all\nwonderful electric machines, the one invented by Mr. H. Wilde of Manchester\nis the most wonderful. A machine which weighs about four and a half tons,\nincluding one ton of copper wire, and which requires an eight-horse\nsteam-engine to keep its armature in rotation, must necessarily produce\ntremendous effects. It gives off electric fire in torrents: the light\nproduced is intense, and is quite as useful to photographers as sunlight,\nwith the advantage over the sun, that it can be used on dark days and at\nnight. This light, as we hear, is already employed in manufacturing\nestablishments, and is to be introduced into light-houses. A French\ncompany, who have purchased the right to use it in France, will try it\nfirst in the light-house on Cape Grisnez, whence, as is said, the light\nwill radiate not only all across the Channel, but some distance into the\nsouthern counties of England. Besides the production of light, the new\nmachine is applicable to important manufacturing purposes; the size of the\nmachine being altered to suit special circumstances. A well-known firm at\nBirmingham are about to use it, instead of a galvanic battery, for the\ndeposition of copper on articles required to be coated with that metal. In\nthis case, the electricity of the machine is substituted for the acid and\nzinc of the battery, and will cost less. In another instance, the machine\nis to be used for the production of ozone in large quantities for\nemployment in bleaching operations. Professor Tyndall exhibited the\nsensitive flame, on which he had given a lecture at the Royal Institution:\nor, to be more explicit, he made experiments to show the action of sound on\nflame. The results are remarkable. A tall flame, looking like an ordinary\ngas-flame, issuing from a circular orifice in an iron nipple, behaves in an\nextraordinary way when, by increased pressure, it is raised to fourteen or\nsixteen inches in length. If a shrill whistle be blown in any part of the\nroom, it suddenly drops down to about half the length, and rises again\nimmediately on cessation of the sound. A blow of a hammer on a board\nproduces a similar effect; and still more so when the blow is on an anvil:\nthe flame then jumps with surprising briskness, the reason being that the\nring of the anvil combines those higher tones to which the flame is most\nsensitive. So tuning-forks, at the ordinary pitch, produce no effect; but\nif made to vibrate one thousand six hundred, or two thousand, or more times\nin a second, the flame responds energetically. In another experiment, a\nfiddle is played in presence of a flame twenty inches in length--the low\nnotes produce no effect; but when the highest string is sounded, \"the jet,\"\nto quote Professor Tyndall's own words, \"instantly squats down to a\ntumultuous bushy flame, eight inches long.\" And the same effect is produced\nby strokes on a bell at twenty yards' distance: at every stroke the flame\ndrops instantaneously. This last experiment is a good illustration of the\nrapidity with which sound is propagated through air, for there is no\nsensible interval between the bell-stroke and the shortening of the flame.\nAnother flame, nearly twenty inches long, is yet more sensitive, for the\nrustle of a silk dress, a step on the floor, creaking of boots, dropping of\na small coin, all make it drop down suddenly to eight inches, or become\nviolently agitated. At twenty yards' distance, the rattle of a bunch of\nkeys in the hand shortens the flame, and it is affected even by the fall of\na piece of paper, or the plashing of a raindrop. To the vowel U, it makes\nno response; to O, it shakes; E makes it flutter strongly; and S breaks it\nup into a tumultuous mass. Many more instances might be given, but these\nwill suffice to show that surprising effects are produced by sound. To the\nscientific inquirer they will be serviceable as fresh illustrations in the\nscience of acoustics. _Chambers's Journal_.\n\n------\n\n{430}\n\n    Original.\n\n    New Publications.\n\n\n  American Boys And Girls.\n  Two Essays from the recently published volume,\n  \"American Leaves.\" By Samuel Osgood,\n  Minister of the Church of the\n  Messiah, New-York. Harpers. 1867.\n\nThese essays were reprinted, the author tells us, at the request of a lady,\nfor general circulation, with the hope of doing some good to the rising\ngeneration, and those who have the charge of bringing them up. We hope they\nmay do good, and they certainly will if they exercise any practical\ninfluence at all upon either parents or young people. Their literary merit\nis undeniable. The topics they touch upon are, however, so painfully\nmomentous that it is impossible to dwell with mere critical enjoyment upon\ntheir readable qualities as essays to be amused with during a leisure hour.\nTheir charm of style is only to be appreciated as a means of alluring\nattention to the very grave and alarming truths which they contain. The\nauthor touches with a light and delicate hand upon a very sore and diseased\nspot in our social system, and hints, in a manner which is intelligible to\nthe instructed without being dangerous to the innocent, at evils which may\nwell awaken the alarm of every one who is solicitous for the well-being of\nthe family, the community, and the race. We are especially pleased with his\nvery sound remarks upon the luxury, extravagance, and effeminacy which are\nexercising such a corrupting influence upon American society. We think,\nhowever, the doctor is more successful in pointing out the evils which\nexist than in proposing a remedy for them. The sacramental doctrine of\nmatrimony, the Catholic law maintaining its absolute indissolubility, the\nsacrament of penance, and the authority of a church which is a supreme\njudge and lawgiver, executed by a priesthood who are independent of the\nopinions, caprices, and trammels of worldly society, are alone sufficient\nto reform the vitiated, or preserve the integrity of youth. It were as easy\nto catch the devil in a mouse-trap as to renovate society by any means\nwhich Unitarian Christianity has at its disposal.\n\nThe author's very irrelevant digression upon the Catholic doctrine of\ncelibacy adds one more to the numberless instances in which respectable\nwriters criticise rashly without understanding their subject. He says, (p.\n109,) \"We know very well that theorists of extreme classes, who have noted\nthe decrease in the number of marriages in high life, are inclined to\nrejoice at it, and for opposite reasons: the one class because they think\ncelibacy to be the higher condition.\" After several more passages, in which\nthe language is very ambiguous, and may easily be understood as veiling a\ncovert insinuation against the Catholic clergy and religious communities,\nthe author concludes his remarks thus: \"We believe that a true Christian\nwife has a purity that angels may not scorn and many a nun might covet, and\nthat the man who keeps his marriage vows need not ask of any ghostly monk\nfor lessons in manly virtue. The longer we live the more we reverence God's\nobvious law, and the less we admire the devices of men who forbid marriage,\nand so undertake to be wiser than God.\"\n\nIt is quite the reverse of truth that a Catholic moralist, whether\n\"ghostly\" or otherwise, approves of or recommends or rejoices in a general\npractice of celibacy among either the wealthy or the poorer classes. The\nCatholic clergy recommend and favor marriage for the generality of persons\nas by far the best and happiest state for them. The Catholic doctrine does\nnot disparage the purity of Christian wives, or the virtue of married men\nwho are faithful to their matrimonial obligations. The spectral gentleman,\nwhose lessons the doctor politely declines in advance, would probably, if\nhe had the chance to give one, pass over the evangelical counsels, and\nenlarge on the moral duty of representing things as they are. The Catholic\nChurch does not \"forbid marriage.\" She teaches that it is a sacrament. The\nGreek Church has corrupted it by permitting divorce; every Protestant\nChurch has done the same; the civil law has laid its barbarous hand upon it\nto drag it from the protecting power of the church. The Roman Church alone\nhas first raised it to its proper elevation and indissolubility, and\nafterward defended it by her uncompromising law from desecration.\n{431}\nWe advise the doctor to turn his attention more undividedly to the work of\nrehabilitating marriage in the rights of which corrupt morals and\nlegislation have deprived it, and not to distress himself with the fear\nlest the sacrament should be despised or neglected by Catholics.\n\n\n  Sermon On The Dignity And Value Of Labor.\n  By the Rev. Joseph Fransioli,\n  Pastor of St. Peter's Church, Brooklyn, L.I.\n\nThis is a first-class popular sermon; plain, practical, and encouraging.\nThat Christianity has redeemed the masses in elevating and dignifying\nmanual labor is plain enough to the student of history. That which was a\ncurse in Adam is turned into a blessing in Christ. It is equally true that\nwhen men forget the Christian aim of life and suffer themselves to be\nguided, as too large a class of our modern society does, by heathen\nprinciples, labor becomes contemptible, poverty becomes a misfortune, and\nthe wearing of patches and rags a crime. The preacher thus fitly\ncharacterizes labor: \"Work is of divine origin. It is not a human\ninvention, or a system adopted by civil society for its wants in the\ndifferent classes; it is a divine institution, an obligation imposed by\nGod's eternal wisdom upon all men without distinction whatsoever. It is a\ndivine institution distributing labor in its various branches among all\nmen, not creating, properly speaking, different classes. Work is leading\nmen towards God, the centre of perfection. Work, then, ennobles man, and\nthe true dignity and worthiness of a man is to be measured by the\nproportion of his work.\"\n\nAgain, he is justly severe upon the modern distinction of \"low\" and\n\"respectable\" classes in this false sense. \"The father who carries the\nshovel on his shoulders to dig the foundation of your buildings; the son\nwho, early in the morning, is seen walking, tools in hand; the washerwoman\nand the servant girl who clean your clothes and honestly and faithfully do\nthe work of your houses, are not low. They discharge a noble task which\ntheir families appreciate and which God will reward. Do you know who belong\nto the very lowest classes of men and Christians? Those that speculate on\nthe lives of the poor laborers by building monstrous tenement houses, where\nbad ventilation, poor light, scarcity of water, and dilapidated rooms lead\nthe over-crowded and over-taxed inmates to misery and a premature death.\nThose that sue for divorces in the courts, ride in carriages, and display\nthemselves in public with more than one wife, more than one family, more\nthan one God; trampling on human and divine law. Those that spend their\nnights in gambling, their days in hypocritical schemes, who never balance\ntheir expenses with their revenues, and consume double the amount of their\nsalaries, and leave their bills unpaid or shamefully defraud their\nemployers. These and many others of the same stamp, whose number is\ncountless; these swell the figures of the low classes.\" This is preaching\nwhich reasons \"of judgment and justice,\" and tells the truth without fear\nor favor. It is a refreshing sermon, and lacks in nothing but in having\nbeen too hastily printed, being full of typographical errors.\n\n\n  Frithiof's Saga.\n  From the Swedish of Esaias Tegn\u00e9r, Bishop of Wexi\u00f6. By the Rev. William\n  Lewery Blackley, M.A. First American edition, edited by Bayard Taylor:\n  pp. 201, 12mo. New-York, Leypoldt & Holt. 1867.\n\nSeveral translations of this beautiful poem have been made in English, each\nof which had its own peculiar merit. An accurately literal translation of a\nforeign book possesses the value of presenting to us just what the author\nsays; but the manner of his speech, the true spirit which gives life and\ncharacter to his work, must necessarily be wanting. Such was the\ntranslation of Tegn\u00e9r's poem, by Prof. George Stephens, published at London\nin 1839. Prof. Longfellow was more successful in the poetic versions he\ngave in an article on the poet contributed by him to the North American\nReview of July, 1837. That of Mr. Blackley before us is not only a faithful\ntranslation, but is also English poetry, preserving in its style enough of\nthe wild Scandinavian spirit to mark its origin. As a specimen we subjoin\nthe following extract from \"Frithiof at Sea.\" The hero is compelled to make\na dangerous voyage by two kings, Helge and Halfdan, whose sister Ingeborg\nhe is wooing contrary to their consent:\n\n{432}\n\n      \"Now, King Helge stood\n         In fury on the strand,\n       And in embittered mood\n         Adjured the storm-fiend's hand.\n\n  \"Gloomy is the heaven growing,\n     Through desert skies the thunders roar,\n   In the deep the billows brewing\n     Cream with foam the surface o'er.\n   Lightnings cleave the storm-cloud, seeming\n     Blood-red gashes in its side;\n   And all the sea-birds, wildly screaming,\n     Fly the terrors of the tide.\n\n        \"Storm is coming, comrades;\n         Its angry wings I hear\n         Flapping in the distance,\n         But fearless we may be.\n         Sit tranquil in the grove,\n         And fondly think on me,\n         Lovely in thy sorrow,\n         Beauteous Ingeborg.\n\n    \"Now two storm-fiends came\n       Against Ellida's side;\n     One was wind-cold Ham,\n       One was snowy Heyd.\n\n  \"Loose set they the tempest's pinions,\n     Down diving in ocean deep;\n   Billows, from unseen dominions,\n     To the god's abode they sweep.\n   All the powers of frightful death,\n     Astride upon the rapid wave,\n   Rise from the foaming depths beneath,\n     The bottomless, unfathomed grave.\n\n      \"Fairer was our journey\n       Beneath the shining moon,\n       Over the mirrory ocean,\n       To Balder's sacred grove.\n       Warmer far than here\n       Was Ingeborg's loving heart;\n       Whiter than the sea-foam\n       Heaved her gentle breast.\n\n       ......\n\n    \"Now ocean fierce battles:\n       The wave-troughs deeper grow,\n     The whistling cordage rattles,\n       The planks creak loud below.\n\n  \"But though higher waves appearing\n     Seem like mountains to engage,\n   Brave Ellida, never fearing,\n     Mocks the angry ocean's rage.\n   Like a meteor, flashing brightness,\n     Darts she forth with dauntless breast,\n   Bounding with a roebuck's lightness\n     Over trough and over crest.\n\n      \"Sweeter were the kisses\n       Of Ingeborg in the grove,\n       Than here to taste in tempest\n       High-sprinkled, briny foam.\n       Better the royal daughter\n       Of Bele to embrace,\n       Than here in anxious labor\n       The tiller fast to hold.\n\n    \"Whirling cold and fast,\n       Snow-wreaths fill the sail;\n     Over deck and mast\n       Patters heavy hail.\n\n  \"The very stern they see no more,\n     So thick is darkness spread,\n   As gloom and horror hovers o'er\n     The chamber of the dead.\n   Still, to sink the sailor, dashes\n     Implacable each angry wave;\n   Gray, as if bestrewn with ashes,\n     Yawns the endless, awful grave.\"\n\nThe Swedish language is full of melody and of imitative harmony; as the\nauthor himself calls it:\n\n  \"Language of honor and conquest,\n     how manly thy accents, and noble!\n   Ring'st like the smitten steel,\n     and mov'st like the march of the planets.\"\n\nIt is, therefore, difficult of translation, and one who would attempt it\nmust not only be well versed in that language, but must also possess a more\nthan ordinary knowledge of English. Mr. Blackley has, we think,\naccomplished his task with no small degree of success.\n\n\n\n  Moore's Irish Melodies.\n  With a Memoir of the poet.\n  Illustrated by D. Maclise, R.A., and William Riches. Columbus, Ohio:\n  Riches & Moore, Engravers, Printers, and Publishers.\n\nThe enterprising publishers of this work have certainly spared no pains in\nits profuse illustration, the engravings being of such a character as to\noccupy at least two thirds of the space in each page. The many admirers of\nthe melodious verses of the great Irish poet will welcome this new and\nelegant edition of them.\n\nA copy of the designs, if furnished by the pencil of Maclise, should alone\nbe worth the price of the book. It is sold only by subscription.\n\n\n\n  Eug. Cummiskey, Philadelphia, announces\n  for immediate publication the first\n  series of his Juvenile Library, in twelve\n  vols. The following are the titles of\n  the volumes of the first series:\n    The Great Tenabraka;\n    Miss Touch-All;\n    The Young Raiders;\n    The Old Beggar;\n    George, the Little Chimney-Sweep;\n    The Lost Child;\n    The Desert Island;\n    Bethlehem;\n    Pat, the Little Emigrant;\n    Idleness;\n    Negligence;\n    The Little Gardeners.\n  These tales will\n  form a collection of stories for children.\n  The price of the set is to be $5.40. He\n  has also in press Barbarossa; an Historical\n  Tale of the Twelfth Century, and The\n  Vengeance of a Jew.\n\n\n--------\n\n{433}\n\n  The Catholic World\n\n  Vol. V., No. 28 July, 1867.\n\n------\n\n  Original.\n\n  Catholic Congresses.\n\n\nWe do not hesitate to say that but few Catholics in this country are aware\nof one of the most important events in the modern history of the church in\nEurope, the meeting of the Catholic congresses.\n\nInaugurated by a council of twenty-six bishops at W\u00fcrzburg, and a general\nconvention of the clergy and laity at Mayence in 1848, the Catholic\ncongresses became an accomplished fact, and since that time each succeeding\nyear has recorded the meeting of one or more of these assemblies held in\ndifferent cities of Belgium and Germany.\n\nThe renewal of Catholic life, the strengthening of Catholic principles, and\nthe steady and sure return of the people of those countries to the faith,\nis, in a great measure, due to the influence which these reunions have\nexerted on the public mind. In the beginning they appear to have received\ntheir impetus chiefly from a desire to place the church, so long enslaved\nin Germany beneath the tyranny of Protestantism, trammelled by state\ninterference, and so desperately attacked by the wide-spread infidelity of\nthe day, upon a free and independent footing.\n\nFeeling themselves strong enough to speak, they spoke and demanded the\nfreedom of the church. An universal response was thus elicited, not only\nfrom the clergy, who are the ordinary mouth-pieces in matters of the\nwelfare of the church, but there started up at once zealous and devoted\nlaymen, who were competent to take part in the discussion of questions of\ninterest to Catholic society. Expression stimulated thought, and the\ninfluence of these conventions soon permeated every class of society,\nawakening in all minds a desire to contribute something to the general\nstock of information and experience which these assemblies began to gather\nin, like so much latent force, wherewith to repel the attack of\nadversaries, and to advance the cause of truth and pure morality.\n\nIt was truly a Catholic project, and which none but Catholics could attempt\nwithout weakening the cause they would undertake by a certain manifestation\nof discordant and irreconcilable principles and the consequent loss of\npower. But Catholics may unite for mutual edification and enlightenment,\njoined as they are as brethren in a common faith, whose principles and aims\nare alike in every country and with all people, and be sure of reaping\nthereby solid fruits, and of adding new triumphs for religion.\n\n{434}\n\nThese general conventions in Germany culminated finally in the great\nCatholic congresses of Malines and W\u00fcrzburg, the first of which opened at\nthe former city in 1863. \"This congress,\" says a writer, \"exerted a magic\ninfluence; the drowsy were aroused from their lethargy, and the\nfaint-hearted were inspired with confidence: they saw their strength and\nfelt it. In that congress we see the beginning of a new epoch in the\nreligious history of Belgium.\"\n\nThe great benefits arising from this movement were recognized and\nencouraged from the start by the Holy Father, in honor of whose approval\nthe different associations took the name of \"Piusvereine,\" a name still\nretained by those held in Switzerland. The first great congress of Malines\nwas opened under the auspices of his eminence, Cardinal Sterckz, archbishop\nof that city, to which the Pope also sent an autograph letter containing\nhis august sanction and words of benediction.\n\nEverywhere and by all classes the most lively interest was shown in the\nwork, and men of merit flocked to take part in the deliberations, members\nof the clergy, secular and regular, the nobility, statesmen, philosophers,\neditors, professors in every department of science, painters, sculptors,\nmusicians, architects, builders, heads of pious and charitable societies;\neach and all vying with one another in bringing in the fruits of their\nlearning and experience, that their brethren in the faith might be\nbenefited by them, and the Catholic cause be strengthened and advanced by\nthe results of their united efforts. The sentiments with which they were\ninspired may be gathered from the following extract of the reply sent by\nthe congress of Malines to the Holy Father:\n\n  \"It is true the trials of our times are great and grievous, and if they\n  be, they at least should make us Catholics understand the necessity of\n  organizing with more union and with greater energy than ever, to assure\n  the liberty of the church and of all the works which she inspires. If\n  associations are formed from one end of the world to the other for all\n  the interests of life, and too often for the propagation of evil, we\n  Catholics have the right, and are in duty bound, to associate ourselves\n  together for the interests of the good and the true. This sacred right we\n  intend to exercise with that perseverance and self denial which become\n  the disciples of Christ.\n\n  \"On every hand the enemies of our faith league together to shake the\n  foundations of the church of God. We, devoted children of that church,\n  will put together all our forces to defend it. We wish to strengthen the\n  bonds of charity between us, fortify ourselves against the seductions of\n  the age, enlighten and encourage one another--to seek, in fine, the means\n  of comforting and consoling the little ones and the poor, whom our Lord\n  Jesus Christ loved with such a tender love.\"\n\nThe report of the assembly records that the reading of this was received\nwith unanimous and prolonged acclamations.\n\nThat the members of these congresses meant work in coming together is\nevident from the report of their proceedings. We have before us two large\noctavo volumes of 400 pages each, closely printed, which contain the\naccounts of only the congress of Malines, held in 1863. It gives the\nspeeches, discussions, reports of committees, etc., at length, and is a\nrecord of immense and patient labor, of deep scientific research, and of\nearnest and devoted effort. Another volume of equal size is the published\nreport of the department of religious music alone. In this as well as in\nother branches of art and science prizes have been offered of a notable\nvalue for original productions. We observe in a late report of the congress\nof Malines of 1866, that the prize offered for a mass, composed according\nto the rules adopted by a former congress, brought in seventy-six original\ncompositions, of which the musical critics (of whose severity there can be\nlittle doubt) reported twenty-one as of first class, and twenty-six of\nmedium merit.\n{435}\nThe programme of the next congress in the same city, to be opened next\nSeptember, offers among others a prize of 1000 francs for the design of a\nchurch. We hope that, among the many of our bishops and distinguished\nlaymen who will visit Europe this summer, some will be able to find the\ntime to be present at this great Catholic assembly, and examine its\nprojects and working.\n\nThe clergy have from the start seconded these congresses with all their\ninfluence, and a very large number of them are regular and active members.\nDiscourses were pronounced before them by several distinguished prelates,\namong whom we remark the names of Cardinal Wiseman and Bishop Dupanloup.\nYet all the members meet upon a perfect equality. The title to membership\nis that of merit alone, and the guarantee that one has something positive\nto offer for the furtherance of the objects for which the congress is\nconvened. No one appears as a general delegate of veto, or as a committee\nof one on objections; but each one comes well posted up in the department\nin which he is interested, well prepared with his documents, notes of\nexperience, authorities, etc., and hence their deliberations are based upon\nsolid matter and not upon visionary ideas or imaginary schemes. It is easy\nto see how these congresses have produced such practical results as the\nadvanced state of Catholicity has shown in the last few years throughout\nGermany and Belgium. Art in its relations to religion and the church has\nbeen so well encouraged that the congress of 1864 saw over one hundred\nartists and archaeologists assembled in council. All that contributes to\nthe propriety and majesty of the divine service in church decoration and\nfurniture received special attention, and numerous works have been\npublished in consequence.\n\nCatholic journalism received such an impetus that Belgium, small as it is,\nnow boasts of fifty Catholic periodicals. In Europe they understand the\nimportance of fostering and purifying this department of public\ninstruction. A late German writer says: \"Journalism is an important\nprofession, whose members should be conscientious and honorable men. The\njournalist addresses his language to an audience far more numerous than the\nprofessors, and at present his influence is, so to say, unlimited; he\nreaches every part of educated society, and sways public opinion. He is\ncalled to be the standard-bearer of liberty and truth. He must, therefore,\nimplant sound principles in the popular mind, and, standing above the reach\nof paltry prejudice, unite in himself a high degree of intelligence and\ntrue devotion to the eternal laws of the church. Without independence,\ndignity, and moral freedom he cannot do justice to the task imposed on him\nby God. _'Impavidum ferient ruinae.'_ In England, America, and\nBelgium, the press wields a powerful influence; it has become sovereign,\nand is necessary to the nation's life. Science feels that, unless it is\ndiffused, it is powerless, and that the school-room is too narrow a field.\"\nThe foundation of a great Catholic university for Germany is now under\nconsideration, and a large sum is already subscribed toward it. In this\nrespect Belgium is far in advance of its more populous and powerful\nneighbor. By persistent and united effort the university of Louvain was\nestablished, and it now numbers 800 more students than those of the three\nstate universities put together. We cannot refrain from transcribing the\nfollowing earnest words of the writer already quoted. Speaking of Germany,\nhe says:\n\n  \"We must found a new university, a purely Catholic and free institution,\n  untrammelled by state dictation, and entirely under the direction of the\n  church. To do this, the bishops, the nobles, and the clergy must use\n  their best endeavors; but the professors, too, must do their share, and\n  not look on with cool indifference, as is the case with most of them. ...\n  There is neither truce nor rest for us until we are _not only equal,\n  but superior_ to our opponents in every branch of science.\"\n\n{436}\n\nThe congress of W\u00fcrzburg founded a \"Society for the Publication of Catholic\nPamphlets,\" and it was so well received that in two years' time the number\nof its subscribers amounted to 25,000. Few of its many projects proposed\nand discussed appear to have met with such an enthusiastic reception and\ninspired such lively interest as this. In passing, let us be permitted to\nhope that a similar society lately founded in the United States may meet\nwith a like encouragement, and that our people will appreciate the\nnecessity of supporting with all their energies this truly apostolic work.\n\nIt is not surprising that the attention of these congresses was turned in\nan especial manner to the subject of charity, both corporal and spiritual.\nIt is the spirit of Catholic charity that prompted these reunions and gave\nto them both their life and fruit. Says the writer above quoted, on this\nsubject:\n\n  \"Charity is the culminating point of all activity, for what is religion\n  but practical love of God and of our neighbor? Truth must not only be\n  proved, but felt; science and art are the necessary fruits of true\n  religion; science is not the light, but is to give testimony of the\n  light. The object of art is the beautiful; of science, the true; and of\n  charity, the good; but the beautiful, the true, and the good are the\n  three highest categories--the indispensable conditions of intellectual\n  activity--the connecting links between the intellect and God, who is the\n  fountain head and prototype of all being, as well as the last end of\n  human investigations and aspirations.\"\n\nThe deliberations of these congresses, therefore, embraced every form of\ncharity, while they confined themselves to such branches of art and science\nas have more or less direct relation to religion. The report of the\ncongress of Malines before us refers to discussions, resolutions, etc.,\nupon a vast number of charitable projects, the titles of some of which we\nare tempted to lay before our readers, that they have some adequate idea of\nthe herculean labors of these zealous assemblies.\n\n  Catholic Society for the Burial of the Poor;\n  Society for the Propagation of the Faith;\n  Establishment at London of a Seminary for\n    Missions among the Heathen;\n  Missions of Herz\u00e9govines in Turkey;\n  Erection of a Catholic Church and Schools in St. Petersburg;\n  Foundation of a Belgian Mission in China;\n  Pilgrimages to Rome;\n  Means of consolidating and developing Catholic\n    Charitable Institutions;\n  Extension of the Society of St. Vincent of Paul;\n  Societies of St. Francis Xavier and\n    St. John the Baptist for workmen;\n  OEuvre of the Ladies of Mercy;\n  OEuvre of Mothers of Families;\n  Means of extending and propagating Instruction in Free Schools;\n  Diffusion of Good Books;\n  Foundation of Public Libraries;\n  Schools for Deaf-Mutes;\n  Foundation of a Chair, in the University of\n    Louvain, of Industry and Mining;\n  The Subject of the Marriage of Soldiers;\n  Protectorates of Children;\n  Protectorates of Students;\n  do. of Apprentices;\n  do. of Young Journeymen;\n  Young Men's Societies in Ireland and elsewhere;\n  Orphanages;\n  Hospitals, etc., etc.\n\nIf so much in the matter of charity alone forms the subject of\nconsideration at one of these congresses, our readers will naturally be led\nto suppose that a large number of persons must be brought together on these\noccasions. In this they are not mistaken, for at the congress at W\u00fcrzburg,\nin 1864 the number of delegates amounted 7000. What a truly magnificent and\ninspiring spectacle must have been presented at the opening of this\nassembly, when those _seven thousand_ Catholic men, one in faith, and\nunited in charity, full of zeal and whole souled devotion to the holy\nchurch, assisted in a body at the grand solemn mass of the Holy Ghost, and\nimplored on bended knees the benediction of God upon their future labors!\n\n{437}\n\nWith this scene before our eyes, are not we Catholics of America tempted to\nenvy them with a holy envy the glorious work in which they are engaged, and\nto wish that it was in our own land and for the good of our own people that\nall this was done? Is there one who glances at the titles we have given\nabove of some of their labors, who does not see that we too need, even more\nthan our brethren in Europe, to have all these subjects relating to the\nadvancement of religion, the instruction of the people, and the comfort of\nthe poor brought under consideration, the best means of their\naccomplishment discussed, the knowledge and experience of our best Catholic\nmen, both clergy and laity, brought under contribution, unity and\norganization furthered, and, by combining our forces, strike a good blow\nfor the glory of God and the good of our fellow-men? The laity think of\nnothing but of contributing their money when called upon to aid some good\nwork, and our over-tasked clergy are left to devise, plan, superintend, and\ncarry out every religious project under heaven.\n\nNow, it cannot be denied that there are thousands of our laymen fully\ncompetent to co-operate with the clergy in every branch of religious\nscience, art, and charity. If they would add their minds to their money,\nand put their own individual energies to the wheel, a power would at once\nbe created in the church of the United States irresistible to its enemies,\nand a certain guarantee of the glory and triumph of our holy faith.\n\nThe want of such a congress has already been the subject of much serious\nreflection with many persons, whose position and duties oblige them to\nrecognize the necessity of union and cooperation in carrying out the\nvarious good works in which they are engaged. If we are truly imbued with\nthe spirit of our holy religion, we should not only be far from grudging\nthe communication of our knowledge and experience to our brethren, but\nshould rather burn to impart it, to make it profitable to the church at\nlarge; and we are convinced that in no other way could this be so\neffectually done as in a congress modelled upon those of Belgium and\nGermany.\n\nThe form of their congress is precisely that to which we are well\naccustomed here in organized assemblies. All projects are first referred to\nparticular committees and put in proper shape to be presented before the\nwhole congress, where they are quickly disposed of according to their\nmerits. The statutes or rules under which they meet are of such a character\nas to produce perfect harmony in their discussions, and the subjects which\nare admitted as proper for deliberation and deserving of encouragement are\njust such as the good of religion demands attention to and united action\nupon at our hands.\n\nNot a few of the first scientific men in the United States are Catholics.\nTrue science must necessarily be in harmony with the true religion. It has\nbeen the fashion of late to consider that they are in no way related to or\ndependent one upon the other.\n\nThe doctrine of Luther, that reason must be left out of account in\nreligion, and that its judgments are not to be sought for nor relied upon\nin matters of faith, has resulted in turning scientific men out of the\nchurch.\n\nMen will reason, will claim and use their reason as they should, by divine\nright; and if you divorce reason from religion, what wonder that they will\naccept the decision and look upon science as a department of human\nknowledge and belief over which religion has no control? The Catholic\nChurch has never professed this degrading doctrine; on the contrary, she\nhas stoutly condemned all propositions implying it in any sense; but still,\nCatholic men of science must associate with scientific infidels as\nscientific men; they must correspond, deliberate, examine, and discuss\nquestions of vital importance with them, who make no hesitation in assuming\npremises and forming theories the conclusions of which are contradictory to\nfaith. We are not here accusing our brethren, or casting suspicion upon\ntheir orthodoxy.\n{438}\nWhat we intend to imply is simply this, that for want of fraternal\nco-operation and mutual recognition and encouragement the false principle\nwe have alluded to above is gradually gaining ascendency in the popular as\nwell as in the scientific mind. Had we a \"Catholic Academy\" composed of the\nmen who stand high in intellectual culture and scientific research, such an\n\"academy\" as the European congresses are now striving to found, we should\nbe able to present a bold front in the arena of science, and compel\nattention to its true principles and to the fact of their consonance with\nthe teachings of faith. Thus a right arm of power would be given to the\nchurch from a source which now practically ignores it. It has been our\npleasure to meet in different cities of the Union with many men, devout\nCatholics, whose names would grace an academic roll of first class merit.\nIndeed, and we say it knowingly, in every profession--in philosophy,\nmedicine, law, geology, as well as in the army and navy, Catholics rank\nwith the foremost. What they need, and what the church needs on their\naccount, we say again, is union, opportunity, and mutual acquaintance and\nsupport. It is impossible to estimate what influence a body of such men\nwould exert, or with what respect for our holy religion they would inspire\nthe American public.\n\nNeither must it be forgotten that the church alone possesses an universal\nand complete system of Christian philosophy. For the want of this,\nProtestantism has in the main abandoned all attempts to reconcile the\ndeductions of reason with the dogmas of revelation. Hence, its systems of\ndogmatic theology are extremely jejune and discordant. Let us bring this\nfact before the minds of the intellectual men of our age and country, and\nat once Protestantism as a reasonable system of religion must fall below\ntheir contempt.\n\nBut the institution of a Catholic academy must be consequent upon the\nfoundation of a Catholic university. We have some good schools, where a\nmore scholarly knowledge of the classics can be acquired than in\nprofessedly Protestant colleges, but they surpass us in all other branches\nof science and intellectual culture. And the reason is plain. Their\nprofessorial chairs are filled by men of superior attainments, whose\nservices are secured by good salaries.\n\nTheir standard for graduation is, however, extremely low compared to that\nrequired by the European colleges and universities. Indeed, most of our\nProtestant and Catholic colleges, too, accord the diploma to all their\nstudents, irrespective of their merits. We ourselves have been called upon,\nby a graduate of one of the oldest and most respectable Protestant colleges\nin the country, to translate his diploma into English, that the old folks\nat home might know what it meant. We need to raise our own colleges to a\nhigher standard than they now possess, and to offer to our men of talent\nthe means of completing the imperfect education of an ordinary college\ncourse. To do this we must have an university whose requirements for\nmatriculation shall demand a rigid examination, in which the candidate must\ncome off thoroughly successful; whose chairs shall be filled with\nfirst-class professors, and which shall possess an ample endowment for its\npurposes.\n\nThis great work, which is the hope of all the scholars in the country, can\nonly be carried out by united effort on the part of the episcopate and the\nwealthy laity, and a congress would be a most fitting opportunity for\nbringing the matter to a definitive and practical conclusion. Great men in\ncouncil will do great things, and generous souls will be stimulated to\nemulate examples of heroic sacrifice. It is a word to the wise.\n\nOf all the departments of public instruction, the press needs amongst us\nthe improvement, encouragement, and sanction which a congress is calculated\nto give.\n{439}\nThink of Belgium, with only 5,000,000 inhabitants, supporting over\n_fifty_ Catholic periodicals, and possessing numerous societies for\nthe publication of cheap religious books and pamphlets! Our Catholic\npopulation of the United States is at least equal in number to that of the\nwhole of Belgium. Yet with all our numbers and means we have not one daily\npaper under Catholic supervision, a most important work, to the\nestablishment of which one of the first efforts of a Catholic congress with\nus should be directed. Those who complain of our Catholic press, and make\ninvidious comparisons between the literary merit of our periodicals and our\nneighbors', should remember that editors are professional men, and not to\nbe obtained for the wages of a day laborer; and that a first-class\nperiodical must have a first-class circulation. A congress of editors would\ntend to elevate the tone of the Catholic press, and its voice would\nstimulate all classes to greater effort in promoting a more generous\ndiffusion of this kind of literature. An increased circulation would enable\nthe conductors of our journals to pay for original contributions, and\nengage the services of first-class writers; an outlay which very few of\nthem have now the means of making.\n\nThat the Catholic Publication Society, now successfully founded, needs the\ninfluence of a congress to extend its operations to the different cities\nand towns of the Union, is plain to be seen. There are hundreds of zealous\npersons of every condition of life who are waiting to be told what to do to\nadvance its interests, who want to see some system of local organization\nproposed and sanctioned by some proper authority. Its friends wish to meet\ntogether, to know each other, and after due deliberation to frame fitting\nresolutions for action, which upon their return to their respective homes\nthey may carry into effect.\n\nThis important project cannot be fully realized, and be fruitful, under\nGod, in instructing and edifying thousands of souls unto salvation, unless\na public and general interest be excited in its success, and with the\nactive co-operation of the great charitable associations and pious\nconfraternities now established amongst us.\n\nThere is also a pressing necessity for us to obtain fuller information, and\ncome to a decision about the subject of church architecture, and all that\nrelates to the exterior of divine worship. We are building cathedrals and\nchurches in every style, and on principles which are as various as there\nare fancies and theories in the brains of architects. Immense sums of money\nare needed and collected for this purpose, and it is of the greatest moment\nthat they be wisely expended.\n\nThe time has come when every church we erect should be an honor to us for\nits architectural beauty, its substantial character, and adaptability to\nour needs, and when the generous alms of the faithful should no longer be\nthrown away upon unsightly, badly planned, and worse built edifices, of\nwhich so many exist in our country, to the great discomfort of both priest\nand people, and monuments (happily not lasting ones) of the want of\nknowledge and experience of those who constructed them.\n\nIt becomes us, therefore, to encourage our Catholic architects who\nunderstand the meaning and use of a church. We cannot look for Protestants\nto care much for the requirements of the ritual in their designs, or to\nappreciate the necessity of insisting upon what the church insists. Their\nchief aim is to please their patrons, and carry out whatever is proposed to\nthem. Few of our Protestant architects know any more about the proper\ninterior disposition of a Catholic church than they do of a Moslem mosque.\n\nSee, again, how much we suffer from the wretched altar furniture and\nsacerdotal vestments imported for our use, and which our clergy are obliged\nto take and make a display in their sanctuaries of things belonging in\nstyle to every age of the church.\n{440}\nHow often have we not seen a priest clothed in Roman vestments celebrating\nmass at a Gothic altar furnished with Byzantine crucifix and candlesticks,\nand a miscellaneous job lot of tawdry French artificial flowers, while the\nsacred precinct of the sanctuary would be furnished with carpet and chairs\nthat smack of the drawing-room or the kitchen?\n\nThese evils existed and do exist in other countries besides our own, and we\nsee that the congresses of Belgium have done a great deal to correct them\nby calling Catholic architects together in council, and offering prizes for\ndesigns of perfect churches built and furnished according to the Ritual,\nthe Ceremoniale Episcoporum, the Missal, and the decrees of the\nCongregation of Rites.\n\nThe music of our churches, what shall we say of it? Are our city churches\nto be turned into fashionable concert-rooms where hired Protestant, Jewish,\nand infidel artists are to sing their _morceaux de l'opera_ for our\nedification? Are our country churches never to witness a high mass\ncelebrated in them, and the people in those localities never to be convened\nfor the Vesper service or comforted with the Benediction of the Blessed\nSacrament because there is no one to teach the children at least to sing a\nTantum Ergo? Are our organists always to be irresponsible musicians, guided\nby no rubrics, ignorant of fast days and festivals, outraging every sense\nof propriety, and banishing all sentiment of piety and devotion by their ad\nlibitum roulades and fantasias of the most degraded taste? If we must pay\nothers to sing the praises of God for us, why not also engage others to do\nour praying likewise? Cannot we have, as other countries have, voluntary\nchoirs? Why cannot all the people sing at proper times and seasons, and\njoin in that part of worship which from its very nature is the best\ncalculated to awaken the deepest emotions of the soul!\n\nThe question of the feasibility of voluntary choirs or of congregational\nsinging is no longer wholly a doubtful one. We know of several churches in\nthe country that have always had voluntary choirs, and we were present\nduring the past Lent at the services of one of our city churches where the\nwhole congregation joined with full voices in a popular Lenten service, and\nin the solemn recitation of the Way of the Cross, for which they were\nprepared at a single public rehearsal in the church.\n\nThe subject of church music, as we have already said, was one to which the\nBelgium congresses paid a great deal of attention. The March number of the\nRevue Generale of Brussels gives a most interesting report, by Canon\nDevroye, of the proceedings of the jury to whom were referred the\nadjudication of the prizes offered for an original popular mass, composed,\nas says the worthy canon, \"according to the rules laid down by the church,\nand enforced by our general assembly;\" and he observes in another place\nthat they must \"redouble their efforts to procure universal observation of\nthe rules adopted by the congress, and which are also the rules of the\nchurch and of common sense.\" Let us hasten to imitate this example of zeal\nfor the glory of God's house and for the decency and dignity of divine\nworship. If we have not many original composers, we have, at any rate,\nseveral good judges among our organists and directors of choirs. Their\nunited opinion would have a powerful influence in bringing about, what we\ndo not fear to say is greatly needed, a thorough reformation in our church\nmusic.\n\nIn works of charity we have done a great deal already--enough, it may be,\nto hide a multitude of sins; but charity is never content with what it has\ndone, nor will the objects of its care ever be wanting. \"The poor ye have\nalways with you,\" said our Lord. They take his place in our midst, and by\ntheir helplessness and suffering soften our selfish hearts, and win from us\nthose things in the inordinate love of which we are too apt to forget our\ntrue destiny.\n{441}\nMen may give themselves up with too great ardor to the pursuit of science\nand devotion to art, but charity has no dangerous limits which we may not\noverpass. What we do for the poor we do for God, and no one can do too much\nfor him. Yet charity needs wisdom, demands thought, and profits by good\ncounsel. So that we see men instinctively band themselves together in\nassociations, that the ignorant, the suffering, the tempted, and the sinful\nmay be more wisely aided, and more speedily comforted. The religious orders\nof charity have their own special rules and organization, and know how to\ndo their work well. But there are many forms of suffering and of corporal\nand spiritual destitution which they cannot reach, or which their rule of\nlife prevents them from attending to. Enterprises that can embrace these\nneedy cases for charity in their scope must, therefore, be conducted more\nor less entirely by the laity. To be truly effective, these enterprises\nneed rules and organization, as much as an order of Sisters of Charity or\nof Mercy; and organization demands cooperation, deliberation, and union.\nThe glorious society of St. Vincent de Paul is one of these, and its works\nare manifest. Millions of God's beloved poor will rise up at the last day\nto praise these devoted children of the church and call them blessed. But\nthey cannot do all that is to be done. There is great need, especially in\nour larger cities and towns, of patronages, protectorates, associations of\nyoung apprentices and workmen, and what are called in Europe \"Catholic\nCircles,\" and with us \"Young Men's Institutes,\" which enable our Catholic\nyouth particularly to enjoy honest recreation and amusement in honest\nsociety, and at the same time improve their minds and refine their manners.\nSuch institutes have been already founded among us by several zealous\npastors with the most signal success. Our Sunday-schools also have been of\nlate much improved by the establishment of Sunday-School Unions, which\nmight be extended to every diocese in the country. To give a proper impetus\nto all these works of charity, to make their character and working known,\nand encourage their establishment throughout the country, would be one of\nthe principal subjects to come up for consideration before a congress.\n\nWe have shown enough reasons, we think, why such an assembly should be\nconvened. Many persons have the matter at heart; and we have perused with\ngreat pleasure some communications on the subject which show a thoughtful\nappreciation of its great importance. We trust that what we have written\nmay help to encourage them and others to give expression to their\nsentiments, and thus prepare the public mind, so that the whole body of our\nclergy and intelligent laity may be ready to take an active part in it as\nsoon as the proper authorities shall summon them to meet. A good proposal\nhas been made, which merits consideration: that the meeting of a congress\nbe made coincident with the assembling of the General Council of the\nSociety of St. Vincent de Paul, which now does so much of the work of a\ncongress in the matter of charity, and which brings together so many men of\nthe right stamp from all portions of our vast country. This would enable\nthe congress to profit by the fruits of their experience and influence in a\ndepartment where none are more competent than they to give advice and aid.\n\nOur holy religion is making such rapid advances that there is an urgent\ncall upon every Catholic to bestir himself, and do all that lies in his\npower to aid and support the clergy in their herculean efforts to feed and\ncomfort the flock of Christ. Converts are pouring in from all quarters, out\nof all classes of society. Many of them have been earnest laborers in their\nway in the cause of religion and of charity. Let them not find us idle,\nneither must we allow them to be idle. Their influence with their\nProtestant brethren is great, and we should give them the means of using it\nand bringing it to good account.\n\n{442}\n\nThe charitable power in the church, and the devotion of the clergy to the\nspiritual good of the people, has in an especial manner been brought before\nthe minds of the American public by the events of the late war. Prejudice\nis dying out on all sides, and we begin to find it easier to obtain a\nhearing from those who have hitherto considered it a duty to turn a deaf\near to our words of truth. Our hands are full of work, and if we are alive\nto our opportunity, we shall accomplish glorious things for God, and not\nfail of placing our divine faith, always so fruitful in good works, first\nin rank and the highest in esteem before all those fragmentary, defective,\nand inefficient forms of Christianity that have up to the present held sway\nover the minds and hearts of so large a portion of the American people, and\nkept them from the knowledge of that church which, as the church of God, is\nCatholic, perfect, and, therefore, alone able to do the work which humanity\nclaims at the hands of religion.\n\n------\n\n    Original.\n\n    Regret.\n\n\n  They say she says, \"I have no heart.\"\n    Could she have seen my tears,\n  She'd know I keenly felt the smart\n    That broke the loving tie of years.\n\n  They say she says, \"I have no heart.\"\n    'Twere cruel thus to say,\n  When I, to act the firmer part,\n    Keep from her sight away.\n\n  They say she says, \"I have no heart,\"\n    When sight, with tears grows dim;\n  To think that pride should keep apart\n    Such friends as we have been.\n\n  They say she says, \"I have no heart,\"\n    For her, to whom my soul had grown\n  So closely--that, even when apart,\n    I felt no joy--because alone.\n\n  Again she says, \"I have no heart,\"\n    When oft she staid the swelling tear;\n  As those who loved I saw depart,\n    I felt they left a sister here.\n\n  How can she say, \"I have no heart,\"\n    When night and morn I ask in prayer\n  That we may not be called apart,\n    Till both breathe forth forgiveness here?\n\n------\n\n{443}\n\n\n     Impressions Of Spain.\n\n     By Lady Herbert.\n\n\n  Gibraltar And Cadiz.\n\nThe journey from Granada was, if possible, more wearying than before, for\nthe constant heavy rains had reduced the roads to a perfect Slough of\nDespond, in which the wretched mules perpetually sank and fell, and were\nflogged up again in a way which, to a nature fond of animals, is the most\ninsupportable of physical miseries. Is there a greater suffering than that\nof witnessing cruelty and wrong which you are powerless to redress? It was\nnot till nearly eleven o'clock the following day that our travellers found\nthemselves once more in their old quarters on the Alameda of Malaga. By the\nkindness of the superior of the hospital, the usual nine o'clock mass had\nbeen postponed till the arrival of the diligence: and very joyfully did one\nof the party afterwards take her old place at the refectory of the\ncommunity, whose loving welcome made her forget that she was still in a\nstrange land. The following three or four days were spent almost entirely\nin making preparations for their journey to Gibraltar, _via_ Ronda,\nthat eagle's nest, perched on two separate rocks, divided by a rapid\ntorrent, but united by a picturesque bridge, which crowns the range of\nmountains forming the limits of the kingdom of Granada. The accounts of the\nmountain-path were not encouraging; but to those who had ridden for four\nmonths through the Holy Land, no track, however rugged and precipitous,\noffered any terrors. But when the time came, to their intense\ndisappointment, the road was found to be impassable on the Gibraltar side,\nowing to the tremendous torrents, which the heavy rains had swollen to a\nmost unusual extent. Two officers had attempted to swim their horses over,\nbut in so doing one of them was drowned; so that there seemed no\nalternative but to give up their pleasant riding expedition, and, with it,\nthe sight of that gem of the whole country which had been one of their main\nobjects in returning to Malaga. Comforting themselves, however, by the hope\nof going there later from Seville, our travellers took berths in the\nsteamer Cadiz, bound for Gibraltar; and after a beautiful parting\nbenediction at the little convent of the Nuns of the Assumption, they took\nleave of their many kind friends, and, at six o'clock, (accompanied by\nMadame de Q---- and her brother to the water's edge,) stepped on board the\nboat which was to convey them to their steamer. Their captain, however,\nproved faithless as to time; and it was not till morning that the cargo was\nall on board and the vessel under weigh for their destination. After a\ntedious and rough passage of nineteen hours, they rounded at last the\nEuropa Point, and found themselves a few minutes later landing on the Water\nPort quay of the famous rock. Of all places in Spain, Gibraltar is the\nleast interesting, except from the British and national point of view. Its\nhouses, its people, its streets, its language, all are of a detestably\nmongrel character.\n\nThe weather, too, during our travellers' stay, was essentially British,\nincessant pouring rain and fog alternating with gales so tremendous that\ntwenty vessels went ashore in one day. Nothing was to be seen from the\nwindows of the Club-House Hotel but mist and spray, or heard but the boom\nof the distress gun from the wrecking ships, answered by the more cheering\ncannon of the port.\n{444}\nBut there is a bright side to every picture: and one of the bright sides of\nGibraltar is to be found in its kind and hospitable governor and his wife,\nwho, nobly laying aside all indulgence in the life-long sorrow which family\nevents have caused, devote themselves morning, noon, and night to the\nwelfare and enjoyment of every one around them. Their hospitality is\nnatural to their duties and position; but the kind consideration which ever\nanticipates the wishes of their guests, whether residents or, as our\ntravellers were, birds of passage, here to-day and gone to-morrow, springs\nfrom a rarer and a purer source.\n\nAnother object of interest to some of our party was the charitable\ninstitutions of the place. The white \"cornettes\" of the Sisters of Charity\nare not seen as yet; but the sisters of the \"Bon Secours\" have supplied\ntheir place in nursing the sick and tending all the serious cases of every\nclass in the garrison. Their value only became fully known at the late\nfearful outbreak of cholera, to which two of them fell victims: but they\nseemed rather encouraged than deterred by this fact. They live in a house\nhalf-way up the hill on the way to Europa Point, which contains a certain\nnumber of old and incurable people and a few orphan children. They visit\nalso the sick poor in their homes, and in the Civil Hospital, which is\ndivided, drolly enough, not into surgical and medical wards, but according\nto the _religion_ of the patients! one half being Catholic, the other\nProtestant, and small wards being reserved likewise for Jews and Moors. It\nis admirably managed, the patients are supplied with every necessary and\nwell cared for by the kind-hearted superintendent, Dr. G----. The \"Dames de\nLorette\" have a convent towards the Europa Point, where they board and\neducate between twenty and thirty young ladies. They have also a large\nday-school in the town for both rich and poor, the latter being below and\nthe former above. The children seem well taught, and the poorer ones were\nremarkable for great neatness and cleanliness. The excellent and charming\nCatholic bishop, Dr. Scandella, vicar apostolic of Gibraltar, has built a\ncollege for boys on the ground adjoining his palace, above the convent,\nfrom whence the view is glorious; the gardens are very extensive. This\ncollege, which was immensely needed in Gibraltar, is rapidly filling with\nstudents, and is about to be affiliated to the London University. In the\ngarden above, a chapel is being built to receive the Virgin of \"Europa,\"\nwhose image, broken and despoiled by the English in 1704, was carried over\nto Algeciras, and there concealed in the hermitage; but has now been given\nback by Don Eugenio Romero to the bishop, to be placed in this new and\nbeautiful little sanctuary overlooking the Straits, where it will soon be\nonce more exposed to the veneration of the faithful. The bishop has lately\nbuilt another little church below the convent, dedicated to St. Joseph, but\nwhich, from some defect in the materials, has been a very expensive\nundertaking.\n\nIt was very pleasant to see the simple, hearty, manly devotion of the large\nbody of Catholic soldiers in the garrison, among whom his influence has had\nthe happiest effect in checking every kind of dissatisfaction and\ndrunkenness. His personal influence has doubtless been greatly enhanced by\nhis conduct during the cholera, when he devoted himself, with his clergy,\nto the sick and dying, taking regular turns with them in the administration\nof the Last Sacraments, and only claiming as his privilege that of being\nthe one always called up in the night, so that the others might get some\nrest. He has two little rooms adjoining the church, where he remains during\nthe day, and receives any one who needs his fatherly care.\n\nThe Protestant bishop of Gibraltar, a very kind and benevolent man, resides\nat Malta, and has a cathedral near the governor's house, lately beautified\nby convict labor, and said to be well attended. It is the only Protestant\nchurch in Spain.\n\n{445}\n\nOf the sights of Gibraltar it is needless to speak. Our travellers, in\nspite of the weather, which rarely condescended to smile upon them, visited\nalmost everything: the North Fort, Spanish Lines, and Catalan Bay, one day;\nEuropa Point, with the cool summer residence of the governor, (sadly in\nneed of government repair,) and St. Michael's Cave, on the next; and last,\nnot least, the galleries and heights. From the signal tower the view is\nunrivalled; and the aloes, prickly pear, and geranium, springing out of\nevery cleft in the rock, up which the road is beautifully and skilfully\nengineered, add to the enjoyment of the ride. The gentlemen of the party\nhunted in the cork woods when the weather would allow of it; and the only\n\"lion\" unseen by them were the monkeys, who resolutely kept in their caves\nor on the African side of the water during their stay at Gibraltar. The\ngarden of the governor's palace is very enjoyable, and contains one of\nthose wonderful dragon-trees of which the bark is said to bleed when an\nincision is made. The white arums grow like a weed in this country, and\nform most beautiful bouquets when mixed with scarlet geranium and edged by\ntheir large, bright, shining green leaves.\n\nThe time of our travellers was, however, limited, especially as they wished\nto spend the Holy Week in Seville. So, after a ten days' stay, reluctantly\ngiving up the kind offer of the port admiral to take them across to Africa,\nand contenting themselves with buying a few Tetuan pots from the Moors at\nGibraltar, they took their passages on board the \"London\" steamer for\nCadiz.\n\nBy permission of the governor, they were allowed to pass through the gates\nafter gun-fire, and got to the mole; but there, from some mistake, no boat\ncould be found to take them off to their vessel, and they had the pleasure\nof seeing it steam away out of the harbor without them, although their\npassages had been paid for, and, as they thought, secured. In despair, shut\nout of the town, where a state of siege, for fear of a surprise, is always\nrigorously maintained by the English garrison, they at last bribed a little\nboat to take them to a Spanish vessel, the \"Allegri,\" likewise bound for\nCadiz, and which was advertised to start an hour later. In getting on board\nof her, however, they found she was a wretched tub, heavily laden with\nparaffine, among other combustibles, and with no accommodation whatever for\npassengers. There was, however, no alternative but going in her or\nremaining all night tossing about the harbor in their cockle-shell of a\nboat; so they made up their minds to the least of the two evils, and a few\nminutes later saw them steaming rapidly out of the harbor toward Cadiz. The\nyounger portion of the party found a cabin in which they could lie down:\nthe elder lay on the cordage of the deck, and prayed for a cessation of the\nrecent fearful storms, the captain having quietly informed them that in the\nevent of its coming on to blow again he must throw all their luggage\noverboard as well as a good deal of his cargo, as he was already too\nheavily laden to be safe. However, the night was calm, though very cold,\nand the following morning saw them safely rounding the forts of Cadiz, and\nstaring at its long, low shores. But then a new alarm seized them. The\nquarantine officers came on board with a horrible yellow flag, and talked\nbig about the cholera having reappeared at Alexandria, and the consequent\nimpossibility of their being able to produce a clean bill of health. The\nprospect of spending a week in that miserable vessel, or in the still more\ndismal lazaretto on the shore, was anything but agreeable to our\ntravellers. However, on the assurance of the captain that the only vessel\narrived from Egypt before they left Gibraltar had been instantly put into\nquarantine by the governor, they were at last allowed to land in peace, and\nfound very comfortable rooms at Blanco's hotel, on the promenade, their\nwindows and balconies looking on the sea.\n{446}\nIn the absence of the bishop, who was gone to Tetuan, Canon L---- kindly\noffered his services to show them the curiosities of the town, and took\nthem first to the Capuchin convent, now converted into a madhouse, in the\nchurch adjoining which are two very fine Murillos: one, \"St. Francis\nreceiving the Stigmata,\" which, for spirituality of expression, is really\nunrivalled; the other, \"The Marriage of St. Catherine,\" which was his\n_last_ work, and is unfinished. The great painter fell from the\nscaffolding in 1682, and died very soon after, at Seville, in consequence\nof the internal injuries he had received. From this convent they proceeded\nto the cathedral, which is ugly enough, but where the organ and singing\nwere admirable. The stalls in the choir, which are beautifully carved, were\nstolen from the Cartucha at Seville. There is a spacious crypt under the\nhigh altar, with a curious flat roof, unsupported by any arches or columns,\nbut at present it is bare and empty. Their guide then took them to see the\nworkhouse, or \"Albergo dei Poveri,\" an enormous building, which is even\nmore admirably managed than the one at Madrid. It contains upwards of a\nthousand inmates. The boys are all taught different trades, and the girls\nevery kind of industrial and needle work. The dormitories and washing\narrangements are excellent; and all the walls being lined, up to a certain\nheight, with the invariable blue and white \"azulejos,\" or glazed tiles,\ngives a clean, bright appearance to the whole. The dress of the children\nwas also striking to English eyes, accustomed to the hideous workhouse\nlivery at home. On Sundays they have a pretty and varied costume for both\nboys and girls, and their little tastes are considered in every way. They\nhave a large and handsome church, and also a chapel for the children's\ndaily prayers, which they themselves keep nice and pretty, and ornament\nwith flowers from their gardens. The whole thing is like a \"_home_\"\nfor these poor little orphans, and in painful contrast to the views which\nProtestant England takes of charity in her workhouses, where poverty seems\ninvariably treated as a crime. The children are in a separate wing of the\nbuilding--the girls above, the boys below. On the other side are the sick\nwards, and those for the old and incurable, where the same minute care for\ntheir comfort and pleasure is observed in every arrangement. Nor is there\nthat horrible prison atmosphere, and that locking of doors as one passes\nthrough each ward, which jars so painfully on one's heart in going through\nan English workhouse. There are very few able bodied paupers; and those are\nemployed in the work of the house and garden. There is a spacious \"patio,\"\nor court, with an open colonnade of marble columns, running round the\nquadrangle, the centre of which is filled with orange-trees and flowers.\nThis beautiful palace was founded and endowed by the private benevolence of\none man, who dedicated it to St. Helena, in memory of his mother, and\nplaced in it the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, who have the\nentire care of the whole establishment. There are fifteen sisters, all\nSpaniards, but affiliated to the French ones, and with the portrait of N.\nT. H. P\u00e8re Etienne in the place of honor in their \"parloir\" and refectory.\nThe superior is a most remarkable woman, little and \"contrefaite,\" but with\na soul in her eyes which it is impossible to forget. The institution is now\nin the hands of the government, who have wisely not attempted to make any\nalterations in the administration. There are upward of fifty of these\nSisters of Charity in Cadiz, they having the sole charge of the hospitals,\nschools, workhouses, etc.; and the admirable cleanliness, order, and\ncomfort in each which is the result, must commend them to the intelligent\napproval of every visitor, even should he be unmoved by the evidence of\nthat unpaid charity which, with its soft finger-touch, stamps all their\nworks with the very essence of divine love.\n\n{447}\n\nThe next day being Palm Sunday, our travellers went to service in the\ncathedral. It was very fine, but extremely fatiguing. There are no chairs\nor seats in Spanish churches. Every one kneels on the floor the whole time,\nnot even rising for the Gospel or Creed. On one of the party attempting to\nstand up at the long Gospel of the Passion, she was somewhat indignantly\npulled down again by her neighbors. During the sermon, the Spanish women\nhave a peculiar way of sitting on their heels--a process which they learn\nfrom childhood, but which to strangers is an almost intolerable penance.\nHere, as everywhere in Spain, the hideous fashion of bonnets or hats was\nunknown, and the universal black mantilla, with its graceful folds and\nmodest covering of the face, and the absence of all colors to distract\nattention in the house of God, made our English ladies sigh more eagerly\nthan ever for a similar reverent and decent fashion to be adopted at home.\nOn returning for the vesper service in the afternoon, a beautiful, and, to\nthem, novel, custom was observed. At the singing of the \"Vexilla Regis,\"\nthe canons, in long black robes, knelt prostrate in a semicircle before the\nhigh altar, and were covered by a black flag with a red cross. This they\nsaw repeated daily during the Passion Week services at Seville. In the\nevening there was a magnificent benediction and processional service round\nthe cloisters of the church called \"Delle Scalze.\" It was impossible to\nimagine anything more picturesque than the multitude kneeling in the open\n\"patio,\" or court, shaded by orange-trees, and full of beautiful flowers,\nwhile round the arches swept the gorgeous procession carrying the Host, the\nchoir and people singing alternate verses of the \"Lauda Sion,\" the curling\nsmoke of the incense reflecting prismatic colors in the bright sunshine,\nand the whole procession finally disappearing in the sombre, dark old\nchurch, of which the centre doors had been thrown wide open to receive it.\nOne longed only for Roberts's paint-brush to depict the scene. Returning to\ntheir hotel, our party found the Alameda gay with holiday folk, and full of\nthe ladies whose beauty and charm have been the pride of Cadiz for so many\ngenerations. Do not let our readers think it invidious if we venture on the\nopinion that their beautiful and becoming dress has a great deal to do with\nthis, just as, in the East, every turbaned Turk or burnoused Arab would\nmake a perfect picture. Dress your Oriental in one of Poole's best-fitting\ncoats and trousers, and give him a chimney-pot hat, and where would be his\nbeauty? In the same way, if--which good taste forefend--the Spanish ladies\ncome to imagine that a bonnet stuck on the back of the head, and every\ncolor in the rainbow, is prettier than the flowing black robe and softly\nfolded lace mantilla, shading modestly their bright dark eyes and hair,\nthey will find, to their cost, that their charm has vanished for ever.\n\nNothing more remained to be seen or done in Cadiz but to purchase some of\nthe beautiful mats which are its great industry, and which are made of a\nflat reed or \"junco,\" growing in the neighborhood; and these the kind and,\ngood-natured English consul undertook to forward to them, when ready, to\nEngland.\n\n\n  Seville.\n\nArmed with sundry letters of introduction sent them from Madrid, our\ntravellers started by early train for Seville, the amiable Canon L----\nhaving given them a five o'clock mass before starting, in his interesting\nold circular church dedicated to S. Filippo Neri, he being one of the\nOratorians. They passed by Xeres, famous for its sherry cellars, called\n\"bodegas,\" supplying more wine to England than to all the rest of the world\nput together, and for its Carthusian convent, once remarkable for its\nZurbaran pictures, the greater portion of which have now followed the\nsherry to the British Isles; then by Alcal\u00e0, noted for its delicious bread,\nwith which it supplies the whole of Seville; for its Moorish castle and\nbeautiful river Aira, the waters of which, after flowing round the walls of\nthe little town, are carried by an aqueduct to Seville; and so on and on,\nthrough orange and olive groves, and wheat plains, and vineyards, till the\ntrain brought them by mid-day to the wonderful and beautiful city which had\nbeen the main object of their Spanish tour.\n\n{448}\n\nThe saying is strictly true:\n\n  Quien no ha visto Sevilla,\n  No ha visto maravilla.\n\nScarcely had they set foot in their comfortable hotel, the \"Fonda de\nLondres,\" when an obliging aide-de-camp of the Spanish general came to tell\nthem that, if they wanted to see the Alcazar, they must go with him at\nonce, as the infanta, who had married the sister of the king's consort, was\nexpected with his wife to occupy the palace that evening, when it would\nnaturally be closed to visitors. Dusty, dirty, and hot as they were,\ntherefore, they at once sallied forth with their kind cicerone and the\nEnglish consul for this fairy palace of the Moors. Entering by the Plaza\ndel Triunfo, under an arched gateway, where hangs, day and night, a lamp\nthrowing its soft light on the beautiful little picture of the Virgin and\nChild, they came into a long court, in the midst of which are orange-trees\nand fountains, and this again led them by a side door into the inner court\nor \"patio\" of the palace.\n\nLike the Alhambra, it is an exquisite succession of delicate columns, with\nbeautifully carved capitals, walls, and balconies, which look as if worked\nin Mechlin lace; charmingly cool \"patios,\" with marble floors and\nfountains; doors whose geometrical patterns defy the patience of the\npainter; horse-shoe arches, with edges fringed like guipure; fretted\nceilings, the arabesques of which are painted in the most harmonious\ncolors, and tipped with gold; lattices every one of which seems to tell of\na romance of beauty and of love: such are these moresque creations,\nunrivalled in modern art, and before which our most beautiful nineteenth\ncentury palaces sink into coarse and commonplace buildings. They are the\nrealization of the descriptions in the \"Arabian Nights,\" and the exquisite\ndelicacy of the work is not its sole charm. The _proportions_ of every\nroom, of every staircase, of every door and window, are perfect: nothing\noffends the eye by being too short or too wide. In point of sound, also,\nthey, as well as the Romans, knew the secret which our modern builders have\nlost; and in harmony of color, no \"azulejos\" of the present day can\napproach the beauty and brilliancy of the Moorish tints. Nor are historical\nromances wanting to enhance the interest of this wonderful place. In the\nbed-chamber of the king, Pedro the Cruel, are painted three dead heads, and\nthereon hangs a tale of savage justice. The king overheard three of his\njudges combining to give a false judgment in a certain case about which\nthey had been bribed, and then quarrel about their respective shares of\ntheir ill gotten spoils. He suddenly appeared before them, and causing them\nto be instantly beheaded, placed their heads in the niches where now the\npaintings perpetuate the remembrance of the punishment. Less excusable was\nanother tragedy enacted within these walls, in the assassination of the\nbrother of king, who had been invited as a guest and came unsuspicious of\ntreachery. A deep red stain of blood in the marble floor still marks the\nspot of the murder. Well may Spain's most popular modern poet, the Duque de\nRivas, in his beautiful poem, exclaim:\n\n  \"Ann en las losas se mira\n   Una tenaz mancha oscura; ...\n   Ni las edades la limpian! ...\n   Sangre! sangre! Oh cielos! cuantos,\n   Sin saber que lo es, la pisan!\" [Footnote 141]\n\n    [Footnote 141:\n    \"One still sees on the pavement a dark\n    spot--the lapse of ages has not effaced it!\n    Blood! blood! O Heaven! how many tread\n    it under foot without knowing it!\"]\n\n{449}\n\nThe gardens adjoining the palace are quaintly beautiful, the borders edged\nwith myrtle and box, cut low and thick, with terraces and fountains, and\nkiosks, and, \"surprises\" of \"jets d'eau,\" and arched walls festooned with\nbeautiful hanging creepers, and a \"luxe\" of oriental vegetation. On one\nside are the white marble baths, cool and sombre, where the beautiful Maria\nde Padilla forgot the heat and glare of the Seville sun. It was the custom\nof the courtiers in her day to _drink_ the water in which the ladies\nhad bathed. Pedro the Cruel reproached one of his knights for not complying\nwith this custom. \"Sire,\" he replied, \"I should fear lest, having tasted\nthe sauce, I should covet the bird!\"\n\nThe Alcazar formerly extended far beyond its present limits; but the ruined\ntowers by the water-side are all that now remain to mark the course of the\nold walls.\n\nOur travellers could not resist one walk through the matchless cathedral on\ntheir way home; but reserved their real visit to that and to the Giralda\ntill the following day. The kind Regente de la Audiencia and his wife, to\nwhom they had brought letters of introduction, came to them in the evening,\nand arranged various expeditions for the ensuing week.\n\nEarly the next morning the Countess L---- de R---- came to fetch one of the\nparty to the church of S. Felipe Neri, which, like all the churches of the\nOratorians, is beautifully decorated, and most devout and reverent in its\nservices. It is no easy matter to go on wheels in the streets of Seville.\nThere are but two or three streets in which a carriage can go at all, or\nattempt to turn; and so to arrive at any given place, it is generally\nnecessary to make the circuit of half the town. In addition to this, the\nso-called pavement, angular, pointed, and broken, shakes every bone in\none's body. To reach their destination on this particular morning, our\nfriends had to traverse the market place, and make an immense _d\u00e9tour_\nthrough various squares, passing meanwhile by several very interesting\nchurches; but it was all so much gain to the stranger.\n\nAfter mass, one of the fathers, who spoke English, kindly showed them the\ntreasures of his church, and amongst other things a beautiful silver-chased\nchapel behind the high altar, containing some exquisite b\u00e9niti\u00e8res,\ncrucifixes, and relics. The wooden crucifixes of Spain, mostly carved by\ngreat men, such as Alonso Ca\u00f1o or Montan\u00e9s, are quite wonderful in beauty\nand force of expression; but they are very difficult to obtain. They have a\npretty custom in this church of offering two turtle doves in a pure white\nbasket when a child is devoted to the Blessed Virgin, which are left on the\naltar, as in the old days of the Purification, and the white basket is\nafterward laid up in the chapel. After breakfast the whole party arrived at\nthe cathedral. How describe this wonderful building! To say it is such and\nsuch a height, and such and such a width, that it has so many columns, and\nso many chapels, and so many doors, and so many windows. ... Why, Murray\nhas done that far better than any one else! But to understand the cathedral\nat Seville, you must know it; you must feel it; you must live in it; you\nmust see it at the moment of the setting sun, when the light streams in\ngolden showers through those wonderful painted glass windows, (those\n_chefs d'oeuvre_ of Arnold of Flanders,) jewelling the curling smoke\nof the incense still hanging round the choir; or else go there in the dim\ntwilight, when the aisles seem to lengthen out into infinite space, and the\nonly bright spot is from the ever-burning silver lamps which hang before\nthe tabernacle.\n\nOne of the party, certainly not given to admiration of either churches or\nCatholicity, exclaimed on leaving it: \"It is a place where I could not help\nsaying my prayers!\" The good-natured Canon P---- showed them all the\ntreasures and pictures. They are too numerous to describe in detail; but\nsome leave an indelible impression. Among these is Murillo's wonderful St.\nAntony, in the baptistery; Alonso Ca\u00f1o's delicious little Virgin and Child,\n(called Nuestra Se\u00f1ora de Belem;) Morales's Dead Christ;\n{450}\na very curious old Byzantine picture of the Virgin; and in the sacristy,\nthe exquisite portraits by Murillo of St. Leander, archbishop of Seville,\nthe great reformer of the Spanish liturgy, whose bones rest in a silver\ncoffin in the Capilla Real, and of St. Isadore, his brother, who succeeded\nhim in the see, called the \"Excellent Doctor,\" and whose body rests at\nLeon. Here also is a wonderful \"Descent from the Cross,\" by Campana, before\nwhich Murillo used to sit, and say \"he waited till he was taken down;\" and\nhere, by his own particular wish, the great painter is buried. There is,\nbesides, a fine portrait of St. Teresa; and round the handsome chapter-room\nare a whole series of beautiful oval portraits by Murillo, and also one of\nhis best \"Conceptions.\" Among the treasures is the cross made from the gold\nwhich Christopher Columbus brought home from America, and presented to the\nking; the keys of the town given up to Ferdinand by the Moorish king at the\nconquest of Seville; two beautiful ostensorios of the fifteenth century,\ncovered with precious stones and magnificent pearls; beautiful Cinquecento\nreliquaries presented by different popes; finely illuminated missals in\nadmirable preservation; an exquisitely carved ivory crucifix; wonderful\nvestments, heavy with embroidery and seed-pearls; the crown of King\nFerdinand; and last, not least, a magnificent tabernacle altar-front,\nangels and candle-sticks, all in solid silver, beautiful in workmanship and\ndesign, used for Corpus Christi, and other solemn feasts of the Blessed\nSacrament. One asks one's self very often: \"How came all these treasures to\nescape the rapacity of the French spoilers?\"\n\nThe Royal Chapel contains the body of St. Ferdinand, the pious conqueror of\nSeville, which town, as well as Cordova, he rescued from the hands of the\nMoors, after it had been in their possession five hundred and twenty-four\nyears. This pious king, son to Alphonse, king of Leon, bore witness by his\nconduct to the truth of his words on going into battle: \"Thou, O Lord! who\nsearchest the hearts of men, knowest that I desire but thy glory, and not\nmine.\" To his saint-like mother, Berangera, he owed all the good and holy\nimpressions of his life. He helped to build the cathedral of Toledo, of\nwhich he laid the first stone, and, in the midst of the splendors of the\ncourt, led a most ascetic and penitential life. Seville surrendered to him\nin 1249, after a siege of sixteen months, on which occasion the Moorish\ngeneral exclaimed that \"only a saint who, by his justice and piety, had won\nheaven over to his interest, could have taken so strong a city with so\nsmall an army.\" By the archbishop's permission, the body of the saint was\nexposed for our travellers. It is in a magnificent silver shrine; and the\nfeatures still retain a remarkable resemblance to his portraits. His\nbanner, crown, and sword were likewise shown to them, and the little ivory\nVirgin which he always fastened to the front of his saddle when going to\nbattle. The cedar coffin still remains in which his body rested previous to\nits removal to this more gorgeous shrine. On the three days in the year\nwhen his body is exposed, the troops all attend the mass, and lower their\narms and colors to the great Christian conqueror. A little staircase at the\nback of the tomb brings you down into a tiny crypt, where, arranged on\nshelves, are the coffins of the beautiful Maria Padilla, of Pedro the\nCruel, and of their two sons: latterly, those of the children of the Duc\nand Duchesse de Montpensier have been added. Over the altar of the chapel\nabove hangs a very curious wooden statue of the Virgin, given to St.\nFerdinand by the good king Louis of France. King Ferdinand adorned her with\na crown of emeralds and a stomacher of diamonds, belonging to his mother,\non condition that they should never be removed from the image.\n\n{451}\n\nThe organs are among the wonders of this cathedral, with their thousands of\npipes, placed horizontally, in a fan-like shape. The \"retablo\" at the back\nof the high altar is a marvel of wood-carving; and the hundreds of lamps\nwhich burn before the different shrines are all of pure and massive silver.\nOne is tempted to ask: \"Was it by men and women like ourselves that\ncathedrals such as this were planned and built and furnished?\" The chapter\nwho undertook it are said to have deprived themselves even of the\nnecessaries of life to erect a basilica worthy of the name; and in this\nspirit of voluntary poverty and self-abnegation was it begun and completed.\nNever was there a moment when money was so plentiful in England as now, yet\nwhere will a cathedral be found built since the fifteenth century?\n\nAt the west end lies Fernando, son of the great Christopher Columbus, who\nhimself died at Valladolid, and is said to rest in the Havana. The motto on\nthe tomb is simple but touching:\n\n  A Castilla y \u00e1 Leon,\n  mundo nuevo di\u00f3 Colon.\n\nOver this stone, during holy week, is placed the \"monumento,\" an enormous\ntabernacle, more than 100 feet high, which is erected to contain the sacred\nhost on Holy Thursday: when lighted up, with the magnificent silver\ncustodia, massive silver candlesticks, and a profusion of flowers and\ncandles, it forms a \"sepulchre\" unequalled in the world for beauty and\nsplendor.\n\nPassing at last under the Moorish arch toward the north-east end of the\ncathedral, our travellers found themselves in a beautiful cloistered\n\"patio,\" full of orange-trees in full blossom, with a magnificent fountain\nin the centre. In one corner is the old stone pulpit from which St. Vincent\nFerrer, St. John of Avila, and other saints preached to the people: an\ninscription records the fact. Over the beautiful door which leads into the\ncathedral hang various curious emblems: a horn, a crocodile, a rod, and a\nbit, said to represent plenty, prudence, justice, and temperance. To the\nleft is the staircase leading to the Columbine library, given by Fernando,\nand containing some very interesting MSS. of Christopher Columbus. One book\nis full of quotations, in his own handwriting, from the Psalms and the\nProphets, proving the existence of the New World; another is a plan of the\nglobe and of the zodiac drawn out by him. There is also a universal\nhistory, with copious notes, in the same bold, clear, fine handwriting; and\na series of his letters to the king, written in Latin. Above the\nbookshelves are a succession of curious portraits, including those of\nChristopher Columbus and his son Fernando, which were given by Louis\nPhilippe to the library; of Velasquez; of Cardinal Mendoza; of S. Fernando,\nby Murillo; and of our own Cardinal Wiseman, who, a native of Seville, is\nheld in the greatest love and veneration here. A touching little account of\nhis life and death has lately been published in Seville by the talented\nSpanish author, Don Leon Carbonero y Sol, with the appropriate heading,\n\"Sicut vita finis ita.\" Our party were also shown the sword of Fernand\nGonsalves, a fine two-edged blade, which did good service in rescuing\nSeville from the Moors.\n\nRedescending the stairs, our travellers mounted the beautiful Moorish tower\nof the Giralda, built in the twelfth century by Abu Yusuf Yacub, who was\nalso the constructor of the bridge of boats across the Guadalquiver. This\ntower forms the great feature in every view of Seville, and is matchless\nboth from its rich yellow and red-brown color, its sunken Moorish\ndecorations, and the extreme beauty of its proportions. It was originally\n250 feet high, and built as a minaret, from whence the muezzin summoned the\nfaithful to prayers in the mosque hard by; but Ferdinand Riaz added another\n100 feet, and, fortunately, in perfect harmony with the original design. He\ngirdled it with a motto from Proverbs xviii.: \"Nomen Domini fortissima\nturris.\"\n\n{452}\n\nThe ascent is very easy, being by ramps sloping gently upward. The Giralda\nis under the special patronage of SS. Justina and Rufina, daughters of a\npotter in the town, who suffered martyrdom in 304 for refusing to sell\ntheir vessels for the use of the heathen sacrifices. Sta. Justina expired\non the rack, while Sta. Rufina was strangled. The figure which crowns the\ntower is that of Faith, and is in bronze, and beautifully carved.\n\nThe bells are very fine in tone; but what repays one for the ascent is the\nview, not only over the whole town and neighborhood, but over the whole\nbody of the huge cathedral, with its forest of pinnacles and its\nwonderfully constructed roof, which looks massive enough to outlast the\nworld. The delicate Gothic balustrades are the home of a multitude of\nhawks, (the _Falco tinunculoides_,) who career round and round the\nbeautiful tower, and are looked upon almost as sacred birds.\n\nThe thing which strikes one most in the look of the town from hence is the\nabsence of streets. From their excessive narrowness, they are invisible at\nthis great height, and the houses seem all massed together, without any\nmeans of egress or ingress. The view of the setting sun from this tower is\na thing never to be forgotten; nor the effect of it lit up at night, when\nit seems to hang like a brilliant chandelier from the dark blue vault\nabove.\n\nTired as our travellers were, they could not resist one short visit that\nafternoon to the Museum, and to that wonderful little room below, which\ncontains a few pictures only, but those few unrivalled in the world.\n\nHere, indeed, one sees what Murillo could do. The \"St. Thomas of\nVillanueva,\" giving alms to the beggar, (called by the painter himself his\n_own_ picture;) the \"St. Francis\" embracing the crucified Saviour; the\n\"St. Antony,\" with a lily in adoration before the infant Jesus; the\n\"Nativity;\" the \"San Felix de Cantalicia,\" holding the infant Saviour in\nhis arms, which the blessed Virgin is coming down to receive; the \"SS.\nRufina and Justina;\" and last, not least, the Virgin, which earned him the\ntitle of \"El Pintor de las Concepciones.\" Each and all are matchless in\ntaste, in expression, in feeling; above all, in devotion. It is impossible\nto meditate on any one of these mysteries in our blessed Lord's life\nwithout the recollection of one of these pictures rising up instantly in\none's mind, as the purest embodiment of the love, or the adoration, or the\ncompunction, which such meditations are meant to call forth; they are in\nthemselves a prayer.\n\nIn the evening one of the party went with the regent to call on the\nvenerable cardinal archbishop, whose fine palace is exactly opposite the\neast front of the cathedral. It was very sad to wind up that fine\nstaircase, and see him in that noble room, groping his way, holding on by\nthe wall, for he is quite blind. It is hoped, however, that an operation\nfor cataract, which is contemplated, may be successful. He was most kind,\nand gave the English stranger a place in the choir of the cathedral for the\nprocessional services of the holy week and Easter--a great favor, generally\nonly accorded to royalty, and of which the lady did not fail to take\nadvantage. M. Leon Carbonero y Sol, the author and clever editor of the\n\"Crux,\" paid them a visit that evening. By his energy and perseverance this\nmonthly periodical has been started at Seville, which is an event in this\nnon-literary country; and he has written several works, both biographical\nand devotional, which deserve a wider reputation than they have yet\nobtained.\n\nThe following, day, being Wednesday in holy week, the whole party returned\nto the cathedral, to see the impressive and beautiful ceremony of the\nRending of the White Veil, and the \"Rocks being rent,\" at the moment when\nthat passage is chanted in the Gospel of the Passion. The effect was very\nfine; and all the more from the sombre light of the cathedral, every window\nin which was shaded by black curtains, and every picture and image shrouded\nin black. [Footnote 142]\n\n     [Footnote 142: Faber says very beautifully: \"Passion-tide veils the\n     face of the crucifix, only that it may be more vivid in our hearts.\"]\n\n{453}\n\nAt vespers, the canons, as at Cadiz, knelt prostrate before the altar, and\nwere covered with a black red-cross flag. At four o'clock our travellers\nwent to the Audiencia, where the regent and his kind wife had given them\nall seats to see the processions. How are these to be described? They are\ncertainly appreciated by the people themselves; but they are not suited to\nEnglish taste, especially in the glare of a Seville sun: and unless\nrepresentations of the terrible and awful events connected with our Lord's\npassion be depicted with the skill of a great artist, they become simply\nintensely painful. The thing which was touching and beautiful was the\norderly arrangement of the processions themselves, and the way in which men\nof the highest rank, of royal blood, and of the noblest orders, did not\nhesitate to walk for hours through the dusty, crowded, burning streets for\nthree successive days, with the sole motive of doing honor to their Lord,\nwhose badge they wore.\n\nThe processions invariably ended by passing through the cathedral and\nstopping for some minutes in the open space between the high altar and the\nchoir. The effect of the brilliant mass of light thrown by thousands of wax\ntapers, as the great unwieldy catafalque was borne through the profound\ndarkness of the long aisles, was beautiful in the extreme; and\nrepresentations which looked gaudy in the sunshine were mellowed and\nsoftened by the contrast with the night. The best were \"The Sacred\nInfancy,\" the \"Bearing of the Cross,\" and the \"Descent from the Cross.\" In\nall, the figures were the size of life, and these three were beautifully\nand naturally designed. Less pleasing to English eyes, in spite of their\nwonderful splendor, were those of the blessed Virgin, decked out in\ngorgeous velvet robes, embroidered in gold, and covered with jewels, with\nlace pocket-handkerchiefs in the hand, and all the paraphernalia of a fine\nlady of the nineteenth century! It is contrary to our purer taste, which\nthinks of her as represented in one of Raphael's chaste and modest\npictures, with the simple robe and headdress of her land and people; or\nelse in the glistening white marble, chosen by our late beloved cardinal as\nthe fittest material for a representation of her in his \"Ex Voto,\" and\nwhich speaks of the spotless purity of her holy life. Leaving the house of\nthe regent, the party made their way with difficulty through the dense\ncrowd to the cathedral, where the Tenebrae began, followed by the Miserere,\nbeautifully and touchingly sung, without any organ accompaniments, at the\nhigh altar. It was as if the priests were pleading for their people's sins\nbefore the throne of God. The next day was spent altogether in these solemn\nholy Thursday services. After early communion at the fine church of S.\nMaria Magdalena, thronged, like all the rest, with devout worshippers, our\nparty went to high mass at the cathedral, after which the blessed\nsacrament, according to custom, was carried to the gigantic \"monumento.\" or\nsepulchre, before mentioned, erected at the west door of the cathedral, and\ndazzling with light. Then came the \"Cena\" in the archbishop's palace, at\nwhich his blindness prevented his officiating; and then our travellers went\nround the town to visit the \"sepulchres\" in the different churches, one\nmore beautiful than the other, and thronged with such kneeling crowds that\ngoing from one to the other was a matter of no small difficulty. The heat\nalso increased the fatigue; and here, as at Palermo, no carriages are\nallowed from holy Thursday till Easter day: every one must perform these\npious pilgrimages on foot. At half past two, they went back to the\ncathedral for the washing of the feet. An eloquent sermon followed, and\nthen began the Tenebrae and the Miserere as before, with the entry of the\nprocessions between: the whole lasted till half-past eleven at night.\n\n{454}\n\nGood Friday was as solemn as the same day is at Rome or at Jerusalem. The\nadoration of the cross in the cathedral was very fine: but women were not\nallowed to kiss it as in the Holy City. After that was over, some of the\nparty, by the kind invitation of the Duc and Duchesse de Montpensier, went\nto their private chapel, at St. Elmo, for the \"Tre Ore d'Agonic,\" being\nfrom twelve to three o'clock, or the hours when our Saviour hung upon the\ncross. It was a most striking and impressive service. The beautiful chapel\nwas entirely hung with black, and pitch dark. On entering, it was\nimpossible to see one's way among the kneeling figures on the floor, all,\nof course, in deep mourning. The sole light was very powerfully thrown on a\nmost beautiful picture of the crucifixion, in which the figures were the\nsize of life. The sermon, or rather meditation on the seven words of our\nLord on the cross, was preached by the superior of the oratory of S.\nFelippo Neri, a man of great eloquence and personal holiness. It would be\nimpossible to exaggerate the beauty and pathos of two of these meditations;\nthe one on the charity of our blessed Lord, the other on his desolation. A\nlong low sob burst from the hearts of his hearers at the conclusion of the\nlatter. The wailing minor music between was equally beautiful and\nappropriate; it was as the lament of the angels over the lost, in spite of\nthe tremendous sacrifice! At half-past three, the party returned to the\ncathedral, where the services lasted till nine in the evening, and then\ncame home in the state of mind and feeling so wonderfully represented by De\nla Roche, in the last portion of his \"Good Friday\" picture. Beautifully\ndoes Faber exclaim: \"The hearts of the saints, like sea-shells, murmur of\nthe passion evermore.\"\n\nThe holy Saturday functions began soon after five the next morning, and\nwere as admirably conducted as all the rest. Immense praise was due to the\n\"maestro de ceremonias,\" who had arranged services so varied and so\ncomplicated with such perfect order and precision: and the conduct of the\nblack-veiled kneeling multitude throughout was equally admirable; one and\nall seemed absorbed by the devotions of the time and season.\n\nThat evening, the Vigil of Easter was spent in the cathedral by some of our\nparty in much the same manner as they had done on a preceding one in the\nHoly City two years before. The night was lovely. The moon was streaming\nthrough the cloisters on the orange-trees of the beautiful \"patio,\" across\nwhich the Giralda threw a deep sharp shadow, the silver light catching the\ntips of the arches, and shining with almost startling brightness on the\n\"Piet\u00e0\" in the little wayside chapel at the south entrance of the court.\nAll spoke of beauty, and of peace, and of rest, and of stillness, and of\nthe majesty of God. Inside the church were groups of black or veiled\nfigures, mostly women, (were not women the first at the sepulchre?)\nkneeling before the tabernacle, or by the little lamps burning here and\nthere in the side chapels. Each heart was pouring forth its secret burden\nof sorrow or of sin into the sacred heart which had been so lately pierced\nto receive it. At two in the morning matins began, \"Haec dies quam fecit\nDominus;\" and after matins a magnificent Te Deum, pealed forth by those\ngigantic organs, and sung by the whole strength of the choir and by the\nwhole body of voices of the crowd, which by that time had filled every\navailable kneeling space in the vast cathedral. Then came a procession; all\nthe choristers in red cassocks, with white cottas and little gold diadems.\nHigh mass followed, and then low masses at all the side altars, with\nhundreds of communicants, and the Russian salutation of \"Christ is risen!\"\non every tongue. It was \"a night to be remembered,\" as indeed was all this\nholy week: and now people seemed too happy to speak; joy says short words\nand few ones.\n{455}\nMany have asked: \"Is it equal to Jerusalem or Rome?\" In point of services,\n\"Yes;\" in point of interest, \"No;\" for the presence of the Holy Father in\nthe one place, and the vividness of recollection which the actual scenes of\nour blessed Lord's passion inspires in the other, must ever make the holy\nand eternal cities things apart and sacred from all besides. But nowhere\nelse can \"fonctions\" be seen in such perfection or with such solemnity as\nat Seville. Everything is reverently and well done, and nothing has changed\nin the ceremonial for the last three hundred years.\n\nA domestic sorrow had closed the palace of the Duc and Duchesse de\nMontpensier as far as their receptions were concerned; but they kindly gave\nour party permission to see both house and gardens, which well deserve a\nvisit. The palace itself reminded them a little of the Duc d'Aumale's at\nTwickenham: not in point of architecture, but in its beautiful and\ninteresting contents; in its choice collections of pictures, and books, and\nworks of art, and in the general tone which pervaded the whole. There are\ntwo exquisite Murillos; a \"St. Joseph\" and a \"Holy Family;\" a \"Divino\nMorales;\" a \"Pieta;\" some beautiful \"Zurbarans;\" and some very clever and\ncharacteristic sketches by Goya. They have some curious historical\nportraits also, and some very pretty modern pictures. The rooms and\npassages abound in beautiful cabinets, rare china, sets of armor, African\ntrappings, and oriental costumes. In the snug low rooms looking on the\ngarden, and reminding one of Sion or of Chiswick, there are little\nfountains in the centre of each, combining oriental luxury and freshness\nwith European comfort. The gardens are delicious. They contain a\nmagnificent specimen of the \"palma regis,\" and quantities of rare and\nbeautiful shrubs; also an aviary of curious and scarce birds. You wander\nfor ever through groves of orange, and palms, and aloes, and under\ntrellises covered with luxuriant creepers and clustering roses, with a\nfeeling of something like envy at the climate, which seems to produce\neverything with comparatively little trouble or culture. To be sure there\nis \"le revers de la m\u00e9daille,\" when the scorching July sun has burnt up all\nthis lovely vegetation. But the spring in the garden of St. Elmo is a thing\nto dream about.\n\nFrom this enjoyable palace our party went on to visit \"Pilate's House,\" so\ncalled because built by Don Enrique de Ribera, of the exact proportions of\nthe original, in commemoration of his pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1519. It\nis now the property of the Duque de Medina Sidonia. Passing into a cool\n\"patio,\" you see a black cross, marking the first of the stations of a very\nfamous Via Crucis, which begins here and ends at the Cruz del Campo outside\nthe town. There is a pretty little chapel opening out of the \"patio,\"\nornamented with Alhambra work, as is all the rest of this lovely little\nmoresque palace. It is a thorough bit of Damascus, with its wonderful\narabesqued ceilings, and lace-like carvings on the walls and staircases,\nand cloistered \"patios,\" and marble floors and fountains. Behind is a\nlittle garden full of palms, orange-trees, and roses in full flower, and,\nat the time our travellers saw it, carpeted with Neapolitan violets; quaint\nlow hedges, as in the Alcazar gardens, divided the beds, and broken\nsculpture lay here and there.\n\nOne of the great treasures of Seville had yet been unvisited by our party,\nand that was the Lonja, formerly the Exchange, a noble work of Herrera's.\nIt stands between the cathedral and the Alcazar, and is built in the shape\nof a great quadrangle, each side being about two hundred feet wide.\nAscending the fine marble staircase, they came to the long \"sala\"\ncontaining the famous \"Indian Archives,\" that is, all the letters and\npapers concerning the discovery of South America.\n{456}\nThere are thousands of MS. letters, beautifully arranged and docketed; and\namong them the autographs of Fernando Cortes, Pizarro, Magellan, Americo\nVespuzio, (who could not write his own name, and signed with a mark,) Fra\nBartolomeo de las Cazas, and many others. There is also the original bull\nof the pope, granting the new South American discoveries to the Spaniards;\nand another, defining the rights between the Spaniards and the Portuguese\nin the matter of the conquered lands. The librarian, a very intelligent and\ngood-natured personage, also showed them a curious list, sent home and\nsigned by Fernando Cortes, of the silks, painted calabashes, feathers, and\ncostumes presented by him to the king; and a quantity of autograph letters\nof Charles V., Ferdinand and Isabella, and of Philip IV. Fernando Cortes\ndied at Castilleja, on December 3, 1547, and the following day his body was\ntransported to the family vault of the Duque de Medina Sidonia, in the\nmonastery of San Isidoro del Campo. The Duc de Montpensier has purchased\nthe house, and made a collection of everything belonging to the great\ndiscoverer, including his books, his letters, various objects of natural\nhistory, and some very curious portraits, not only of Cortes himself, but\nof Christopher Columbus, Pizarro, Magellan, the Marques del Valle, (of the\nSicilian family of Monteleone,) Bernal Diaz, Velasquez, of the historian of\nthe conquest of Mexico, Don Antonio Solis, and many others.\n\nIn the afternoon, the Marques de P---- called for our travellers to take\nthem to the university, and to introduce them to the rector and to the\nlibrarian, whose name was the well-deserved one of Don Jos\u00e9 Bueno, a most\nclever and agreeable man, whose pure Castilian accent made his Spanish\nperfectly intelligible to his English visitors. He very good-naturedly\nundertook to show them all the most interesting MSS. himself, together with\nsome beautiful missals, rare first editions of various classical works, and\nsome very clever etchings of Goya's of bull-fights and ladies--the latter\nof doubtful propriety. In the church belonging to the university are some\nfine pictures by Roelas and Alonso Cafio, some beautiful carvings by\nMontan\u00e9s, and several very fine monuments. In the rector's own room is a\nmagnificent \"St. Jerome,\" by Lucas Kranach, the finest work of that artist\nthat exists. There are 1,200 students in this university, which rivals that\nof Salamanca in importance.\n\nTaking leave of the kind librarian, the Marques de P---- went on to show\nthem a private collection of pictures belonging to the Marques Cessera.\nAmidst a quantity of rubbish were a magnificent \"Crucifixion,\" by Alonso\nCa\u00f1o; a Crucifix, painted on wood, by Murillo, for an infirmary, and\nconcealed by a Franciscan during the French occupation in 1812; a Zurbaran,\nwith his own signature in the corner; and, above all, a \"Christ bound with\nthe Crown of Thorns,\" by Murillo, which is the gem of the whole collection,\nand perfectly beautiful both in coloring and expression.\n\nComing home, they went to see the house to which Murillo was taken after\nhis accident at Cadiz, and where he finally died; also the site of his\noriginal burial, before his body was removed to the cathedral where it now\nrests.\n\nBut one of the principal charms of our travellers' residence in Seville has\nnot yet been mentioned; and that was their acquaintance, through the kind\nBishop of Antinoe, with Fernan Caballero. She may be called the Lady\nGeorgiana Fullerton of Spain, in the sense of refinement of taste and\ncatholicity of feeling. But her works are less what are commonly called\nnovels than pictures of home life in Spain, like Hans Andersen's\n\"Improvisatore,\" or Tourgeneff's \"Sc\u00e8nes de la Vie en Russie.\"\n\nThis charming lady, by birth a German on the father's side, and by marriage\nconnected with all the \"bluest blood\" in Spain, lives in apartments given\nher by the queen in the palace of the Alcazar.\n{457}\nGreat trials and sorrows have not dimmed the fire of her genius or\nextinguished one spark of the loving charity which extends itself to all\nthat suffer. Her tenderness toward animals, unfortunately a rare virtue in\nSpain, is one of her marked characteristics. She has lately been striving\nto establish a society in Seville for the prevention of cruelty to animals,\nafter the model of the London one, and often told one of our party that she\nnever left her home without praying that she might not see or hear any\nill-usage to God's creatures. She is no longer young, but still preserves\ntraces of a beauty which in former years made her the admiration of the\ncourt. Her playfulness and wit, always tempered by a kind thoughtfulness\nfor the feelings of others, and her agreeableness in conversation, seem\nonly to have increased with lengthened experience of people and things.\nNothing was pleasanter than to sit in the corner of her little\ndrawing-room, or, still better, in her tiny study, and hear her pour out\nanecdote after anecdote of Spanish life and Spanish peculiarities,\nespecially among the poor. But if one wished to excite her, one had but to\ntouch on questions regarding her faith and the so-called \"progress\" of her\ncountry. Then all her Andalusian blood would be roused, and she would\ndeclaim for hours in no measured terms against the spoliation of the\nmonasteries, those centres of education and civilization in the villages\nand outlying districts; against the introduction of schools without\nreligion, and colleges without faith; and the propagation of infidel\nopinions through the current literature of the day.\n\nPrevious acquaintance with the people had already made some of our\ntravellers aware of the justice of many of her remarks. Catholicism in\nSpain is not merely the religion of the people; _it is their life_. It\nis so mixed up with their common expressions and daily habits, that, at\nfirst, there seems to a stranger almost an irreverence in their ways. It is\nnot till you get thoroughly at home, both with them and their language,\nthat you begin to perceive that holy familiarity, if one may so speak, with\nour divine Lord and his Mother which impregnates their lives and colors all\ntheir actions. Theirs is a world of traditions, which familiarity from the\ncradle have turned into faith, and for that faith they are ready to die.\nAsk a Spanish peasant why she plants rosemary in her garden. She will\ndirectly tell you that it was on a rosemary-bush that the blessed Virgin\nhung our Saviour's clothes out to dry as a baby. Why will a Spaniard never\nshoot a swallow? Because it was a swallow that tried to pluck the thorns\nout of the crown of Christ as he hung on the cross. Why does the owl no\nlonger sing? Because he was by when our Saviour expired, and since then his\nonly cry is \"Crux! crux!\" Why are dogs so often called Melampo in Spain?\nBecause it was the name of the dog of the shepherds who worshipped at the\nmanger at Bethlehem. What is the origin of the red rose? A drop of the\nSaviour's blood fell on the white roses growing at the foot of the cross\nand so on, for ever! Call it folly, superstition--what you will. You will\nnever eradicate it from the heart of the people, for it is as their flesh\nand blood, and their whole habits of thought, manners, and customs run in\nthe same groove. They have, like the Italians, a wonderful talent for\n\"improvising\" both stories and songs; but the same beautiful thread of\ntender piety runs through the whole.\n\nOne day, Fernan Caballero told them, an old beggar was sitting on the steps\nof the Alcazar: two or three children, tired of play, came and sat by him,\nand asked him, child-like, for \"a story.\" He answered as follows: \"There\nwas once a hermit, who lived in a cave near the sea. He was a very good and\ncharitable man, and he heard that in a village on the mountain above there\nwas a very bad fever, and that no one would go and nurse the people for\nfear of infection.\n{458}\nSo up he toiled, day after day, to tend the sick, and look after their\nwants. At last he began to get tired, and to think it would be far better\nif he were to move his hermitage up the hill, and save himself the daily\ntoil. As he walked up one day, turning this idea over in his mind, he heard\nsome one behind him saying: 'One, two, three.' He looked round, and saw no\none. He walked on, and again heard: 'Four, five, six, seven.' Turning short\nround this time, he beheld one in white and glistening raiment, who gently\nspoke as follows: 'I am your guardian angel, and am _counting the steps\nwhich you take for Christ's poor_.'\"\n\nThe children understood the drift of it as well as you or I, reader! and\nthis is a sample of their daily talk. Their reverence for age is also a\nstriking and touching characteristic. The poorest beggar is addressed by\nthem as \"tio\" or \"tia,\" answering to our \"daddy\" or \"granny;\" and should\none pass their cottage as they are sitting down to their daily meal, they\nalways rise and offer him a place, and ask him to say grace for them,\n\"echar la benedicion.\" They are, indeed, a most lovable race, and their\nvery pride increases one's respect for them. Often in their travels did one\nof the party lose her way, either in going to some distant church in the\nearly morning, or in visiting the sick; and often was she obliged to have\nrecourse to her bad Spanish to be put in the right road. An invariable\ncourtesy, and generally an insistence on accompanying her home, was the\nresult. But if any money or fee were offered for the service, the indignant\nrefusal, or, still worse, the _hurt_ look which the veriest child\nwould put on at what it considered the height of insult and unkindness,\nvery soon cured her of renewing the attempt.\n\nAnother touching trait in their character is their intense reverence for\nthe blessed sacrament. In the great ceremonies of the church, or when it is\npassing down the street to a sick person, the same veneration is shown. One\nday, one of the English ladies was buying some photographs in a shop, and\nthe tradesman was explaining to her the different prices and sizes of each,\nwhen, all of a sudden, he stopped short, exclaiming: \"Sua Maest\u00e0 viene!\"\nand leaving the astonished lady at the counter, rushed out of his\nshop-door. She, thinking it was the royalties, who were then at the\nAlcazar, went out too to look, when, to her pleasure and surprise, she saw\nthe shopman and all the rest of the world, gentle and simple, kneeling\nreverently in the mud before the messenger of the Great King, who was\nbearing the host to a dying man. On the day when it is carried\nprocessionally to the hospitals, (one of which is the first Sunday after\nEaster,) every window and balcony is \"parata,\" or hung with red, as in\nItaly at the passage of the Holy Father; every one throws flowers and\nbouquets on the baldachino, and that to such an extent that the choir-boys\nare forced to carry great clothes-baskets to receive them: the people\ndeclare that the very horses kneel! The feast of Corpus Christi was\nunfortunately not witnessed by our travellers. Calderon, in his Autos\nSacramentales, speaking of it, says:\n\n  \"Que en el gran dia de Dios,\n   Quien no est\u00e1 loco, no es cuerdo!\"\n\nHere is indeed \"a voice from the land of faith.\" The choir on the occasion\ndance before the host a dance so solemn, so suggestive, and so peculiar,\nthat no one who has witnessed it can speak of it without emotion. Fernan\nCaballero talked much also of the great purity of morals among the\npeasantry. Infanticide, that curse of England, is _absolutely unknown in\nSpain_; whether from the number of foundling hospitals, or from what\nother reasons, we leave it to the political economists to discover. A\nwell-known Spanish writer describes the women as having \"Corazones\ndelectos, minas de amores,\" and being \"puros y santos modelos de esposas y\nde madres.\" (Exceptional hearts, mines of love, and being pure and holy\nmodels of wives and mothers.)\n{459}\nThey are also wonderfully cleanly, both in their houses and their persons.\nThere are never any bad smells in the streets or lodgings. Fleas abound\nfrom the great heat; but no other vermin is to be met with either in the\ninns or beds, or in visiting among the sick poor, in all of which they form\na marked contrast to the Italian peasantry, and, I fear we must add, to the\nEnglish!\n\nTheir courtesy toward one another is also widely different from the\nordinary gruff, boorish intercourse of our own poor people; and the very\nrefusal to a beggar, \"Perdone, Usted, por Dios, hermano!\" [Footnote 143]\nspeaks of the same gentle consideration for the feelings of their neighbors\nwhich characterizes the race, and emanates from that divine charity which\ndwells not only on their lips, but in their hearts. One peculiarity in\ntheir conversation has not yet been alluded to, and that is their passion\nfor proverbs. They cannot frame a sentence without one, and they are mostly\nsuch as illustrate the kindly, trustful, pious nature the people. \"_Haz\nlo bien, y no mira \u00e1 quien._\" (Do good, and don't look to whom.)\n\"_Quien no es agradecido, no es bien nacido._\" (He who is not\ncourteous is not well born.) \"_Cosa cumplida solo en la otra vida_.\"\n(The end of all things is only seen in the future life.) And so on _ad\ninfinitum_.\n\n    [Footnote 143: \"Forgive me, for the love of God, brother!\"]\n\nNo description of Seville would be complete without mention of the \"patio,\"\nso important a feature in every Andalusian house; and no words can be so\ngood for the purpose as those of Fernan Caballero, which we translate\nalmost literally from her \"Familia de Alvareda:\"\n\n  \"The house was spacious and scrupulously clean; on each side of the door\n  was a bench of stone. In the porch hung a little lamp before the image of\n  our Lord, in a niche over the entrance, according to the Catholic custom\n  of placing all things under holy protection. In the middle was the\n  'patio,' a necessity to the Andalusian; and in the centre of this\n  spacious court, an enormous orange-tree raised its leafy head from its\n  robust and clean trunk. For an infinity of generations had this beautiful\n  tree been a source of delight to the family. The women made tonic\n  concoctions of its leaves, the daughters adorned themselves with its\n  flowers, the boys cooled their blood with its fruits, the birds made\n  their home in its boughs. The rooms opened out of the 'patio,' and\n  borrowed their light from thence. This 'patio' was the centre of all--\n  the 'home,' the place of gathering when the day's work was over. The\n  orange-tree loaded the air with its heavy perfume, and the waters of the\n  fountain fell in soft showers on the marble basin, fringed with the\n  delicate maiden hair fern; and the father, leaning against the tree,\n  smoked his 'cigarro de papel;' and the mother sat at her work; while the\n  little ones played at her feet, the eldest resting his head on a big dog\n  stretched at full length on the cool marble slabs. All was still, and\n  peaceful, and beautiful.\"\n\n------\n\n{460}\n\n\n      From Once a Week.\n\n      Sir Ralph De Blanc-Minster.\n\n      The Vow.\n\n   Hush! 'tis a tale of the elder time,\n   Caught from an old barbaric rhyme,\n   How the fierce Sir Ralph of the haughty hand\n   Harnessed him for our Saviour's land!\n\n  \"Time trieth troth!\" thus the lady said,\n  \"And a warrior must rest in Bertha's bed;\n   Three years let the severing seas divide,\n   And strike thou for Christ and thy trusting bride!\"\n\n   So he buckled on the beamy blade,\n   That Gaspar of Spanish Leon made,\n   Whose hilted cross is the awful sign:\n   It must burn for the Lord and his tarnished shrine!\n\n\n     The Adieu.\n\n  \"Now a long farewell! tall Stratton tower,\n     Dark Bude! thy fatal sea:\n   And God thee speed, in hall and bower,\n     My manor of Bien-aim\u00e8!\n\n  \"Thou, too, farewell! my chosen bride,\n     Thou rose of Rou-tor land:\n   Though all on earth were false beside,\n     I trust thy plighted hand.\n\n  \"Dark seas may swell, and tempests lower,\n     And surging billows foam;\n   The cresset of thy bridal bower\n     Shall guide the wanderer home!\n\n  \"On! for the cross! in Jesu's land,\n     When Syrian armies flee,\n   One thought shall thrill my lifted hand,\n     I strike for God and thee!\"\n\n{461}\n\n    The Battle.\n\n   Hark! how the brattling trumpets blare!\n   Lo! the red banners flaunt the air!\n   And see! his good sword girded on,\n   The stern Sir Ralph to the war is gone!\n\n   Hurrah! for the Syrian dastards flee:\n   Charge! charge! ye western chivalry!\n   Sweet is the strife for God's renown,\n   The Cross is up and the Crescent down!\n\n   The weary warrior seeks his tent:\n   For the good Sir Ralph is pale and spent;\n   Five wounds he reaped in the field of fame,\n   Five in his bless\u00e8d Master's name.\n\n   The solemn leech looks sad and grim,\n   As he binds and soothes each gory limb;\n   And the girded priest must chant and pray,\n   Lest the soul unhouseled pass away.\n\n     The Treachery.\n\n   A sound of horsehoofs on the sand!\n   And ha! a page from Cornish land.\n  \"Tidings,\" he said, as he bent the knee;\n  \"Tidings, my lord, from Bien-aim\u00e8.\n\n  \"The owl shrieked thrice from the warder's tower:\n   The crown-rose withered in her bower:\n   Thy good gray foal, at evening fed.\n   Lay in the sunrise stark and dead!\"\n\n  \"Dark omens three!\" the sick man cried;\n  \"Say on the woe thy looks betide.\"\n  \"Master! at bold Sir Rupert's call,\n   Thy Lady Bertha fled the hall!\"\n\n    The Scroll.\n\n  \"Bring me,\" he said, \"that scribe of fame,\n   Symeon el Siddekah his name;\n   With parchment skin, and pen in hand,\n   I would devise my Cornish land!\n\n  \"Seven goodly manors, fair and wide,\n   Stretch from the sea to Tamar-side,\n   And Bien-aim\u00e8, my hall and bower,\n   Nestles beneath tall Stratton tower!\n\n{462}\n\n  \"All these I render to my God!\n   By seal and signet, knife and sod:\n   I give and grant to church and poor,\n   In franc almoign for evermore!\n\n  \"Choose ye seven men among the just,\n   And bid them hold my lands in trust,\n   On Michael's morn and Mary's day\n   To deal the dole and watch and pray!\n\n  \"Then bear me, coldly, o'er the deep,\n   'Mid my own people I would sleep:\n   Their hearts shall melt, their prayers will breathe,\n   Where he who loved them rests beneath.\n\n  \"Mould me in stone, as here I lie,\n   My face upturned to Syria's sky;\n   Carve ye this good sword at my side,\n   And write the legend, 'True and tried!'\n\n  \"Let mass be said, and requiem sung;\n   And that sweet chime I loved be rung:\n   Those sounds along the northern wall\n   Shall thrill me like a trumpet-call!\"\n\n   Thus said he and at set of sun\n   The bold crusader's race was run.\n   Seek ye his ruined hall and bower?\n   Then stand beneath tall Stratton tower!\n\n     The Mort-main.\n\n   Now the demon watched for the warrior's soul\n   'Mid the din of war where blood-streams roll;\n   He had waited long on the dabbled sand\n   Ere the priest had cleansed the gory hand.\n\n   Then as he heard the stately dole\n   Wherewith Sir Ralph had soothed his soul,\n   The unclean spirit turned away\n   With a baffled glare of grim dismay.\n\n   But when he caught those words of trust,\n   That sevenfold choice among the just,\n  \"Ho! ho!\" cried the fiend, with a mock at heaven,\n  \"I have lost but one I shall win the seven!\"\n\n------\n\n{463}\n\n    Original.\n\n    Guett\u00e9e's Papacy Schismatic. [Footnote 144]\n\n  [Footnote 144: The Papacy: Its Historic Origin and Primitive Relations\n  with the Eastern Churches. By the Abb\u00e9-Guett\u00e9e, D.D. Translated from the\n  French, and prefaced by an original biographical notice of the author,\n  with an Introduction by A. Cleveland Coxe, Bishop of Western New York.\n  New York: Carleton. 1867, pp.383.]\n\nThis volume purports to be the translation of a late French work entitled,\n\"The Papacy Schismatic; or, Rome in her Relations with the Eastern\nChurch--_La Papaut\u00e9 Schismatique; ou Rome dans ses Rapports avec I'Eglise\nOrientate_.\" Why the translator or editor has changed the title we know\nnot, unless it has been done to disguise the real character of the work,\nand induce Catholics to buy it under the impression that it is written by a\nlearned divine of their own communion.\n\nWhether equal liberty has been taken with the text throughout we are unable\nto say, for we have not had the patience to compare the translation with\nthe original, except in a very few instances; but there is in the whole get\nup of the English work a lack of honesty and frank dealing. On the\ntitle-page we are promised an Introduction by the Protestant Episcopal\nBishop of Western New York, but in the book itself we find only the\n\"Editor's Preface\" of a few pages. Even this preface lacks frankness, and\nseems intended to deceive. \"The author of this work,\" writes the editor,\n\"is not a Protestant. He is a French divine reared in the communion of\nRome, and devoted to her cause in purpose of heart and life.\" This gives\nthe impression that the author is still a member, and a devoted member, of\nthe communion of Rome, which is not the case. \"But his great learning\nhaving led him to conclusions contrary to those of the Jesuits, he fell\nunder the ban;\" that is, we suppose, was interdicted. This carries on the\nsame deception, making believe that he was interdicted because he rejected\nsome of the conclusions of the Jesuits, while he remained substantially\northodox and obedient to the church, a thing which could not have happened,\nunless he had impugned the Catholic faith, the authority, or discipline of\nthe church in communion with the apostolic See of Rome.\n\nWe read on: \"Proscribed by the papacy, ... he accepts at last the logical\nconsequences of his position, ... receiving the communion in both kinds at\nthe hand of the Greeks in the church of the Russian Embassy at Paris.\" Why\nnot have said simply: The author of this work was reared in the communion\nof Rome, but, falling under censure for opinions emitted in his writings,\nhe left that communion, or was cut off from it, and has now been received\ninto the Russian Church, or the communion of the non-united Greeks, and has\nwritten this book to prove that the communion, that has received him is\nnot, and the one in which he was reared is, schismatic? That would have\ntold the simple truth; but we forget, the editor is a poet, and accustomed\nto deal in fiction.\n\nThe editor, who has a rare genius for embellishing the truth, tells us that\n\"the biographical notice prefixed to the work ... gives assurance of the\nauthor's ability to treat the subject of the papacy with the most intimate\nknowledge of its practical character.\" It does no such thing, but, on the\ncontrary, proves that he never was devoted in purpose and life to the\ncommunion of Rome, and that even from his boyhood he assumed an attitude of\nreal though covert hostility to the papacy. His first work was a history of\nthe church in France, the plan of which was conceived and formed while he\nwas in the seminary, and that work is hardly less unfavorable to the papacy\nthan the one before us.\n{464}\nIts spirit is anti-Roman, anti-papal, full of venom against the popes, and\nhe appears to have carried on his war against the papacy under the guise of\nGallicanism, till even his Gallican bishop could tolerate him no longer,\nand forbade him to say mass.\n\nHis biographer gives a fuller insight into his character, perhaps, than he\nintended. \"From a very early age,\" he says, \"his mind seems to have\nrevolted against the wearisome routine\" of instruction prescribed for\nseminarians, \"and, in its ardent desire for knowledge and its rapid\nacquisition, worked out of the prescribed limits ... and read and studied\nin secret.\" That is, in plain English, he was impatient of direction in his\nstudies, revolted against making the necessary preparation to read and\nstudy with advantage, rejected the prescribed course of studies, and\nfollowed his own taste or inclination in broaching questions that he lacked\nthe previous knowledge and mental and spiritual discipline to broach with\nsafety. There are questions in great variety and of great importance which\nit is very necessary to study, but only in their place, and after that very\nroutine of studies prescribed by the seminary has been successfully\npursued. Most of the errors into which men fall arise from the attempt to\nsolve questions without the necessary preparatory knowledge and discipline.\nThe studies and discipline of the college and the seminary may seem to\nimpatient and inexperienced youth wearisome and unnecessary, but they are\nprescribed by wisdom and experience, and he who has never submitted to them\nor had their advantage feels the want of them through his whole life, to\nwhatever degree of eminence he may have risen without them. It is a great\nloss to any one not to have borne the yoke in his youth.\n\nIt is clear from M. Guett\u00e9e's biography that he never studied the papal\nquestion as a friend to the papacy, and therefore he is no better able to\ntreat it than if he had been brought up in Anglicanism or in the bosom of\nthe Greek schism. He is not a man who has once firmly believed in the\nprimacy of the Holy See, and by his study and great learning found himself\nreluctantly forced to reject it; but is one who, having fallen under the\npapal censure, tries to vindicate himself by proving that the pope who\ncondemned him has no jurisdiction, and never received from God any\nauthority to judge him. He is no unsuspected witness, is no impartial\njudge, for he judges in his own cause. His condemnation preceded his change\nof communion.\n\nThe editor speaks of the great learning of the author, and says \"he writes\nwith science and precision, and with the pen of a man of genius.\" It may be\nso, but we have not discovered it. His book we have found very dull, and it\nhas required all the effort we are capable of to read it through. To our\nunderstanding it is lacking in both science and precision. It is a book of\ndetails which are attached to no principles, and its arguments rest wholly\non loose and inaccurate statements or bold assumptions. A work more\ndeficient in real logic, or more glaringly sophistical, it has seldom been\nour hard fortune to meet with. As for learning, we certainly are not\nlearned ourselves, but the author has told us nothing that we did not know\nbefore, and nothing more than may be found in any one of our Catholic\ntreatises on the authority of the see of Peter and the Roman pontiff. All\nhis objections to the papacy worth noticing may be found with their answers\nin The Primacy of the Apostolic See Vindicated, by the lamented Francis\nPatrick Kenrick, late archbishop of Baltimore, a work of modest\npretensions, but of a real merit difficult to exaggerate.\n\nThough M. Guett\u00e9e's book is far from bewildering us by its learning or\noverwhelming us by its logic, we yet find it no easy matter to compress an\nadequate reply to it within any reasonable compass.\n{465}\nIt is not a scientific work. The author lays down no principles which he\nlabors to establish and develop, but dwells on details, detached\nstatements, assertions, and criticisms, which cannot be replied to\nseparately without extending the reply some two or three times the length\nof the work itself, for an objection can be made in far fewer words than it\ntakes to refute it. The author writes without method, and seems never to\nhave dreamed of classifying his proofs, and arranging all he has to say\nunder appropriate heads. Indeed, he has no principles, and he adduces no\nproofs; he only comments on the proofs of the papacy urged by our\ntheologians, and endeavors to prove that they do not mean what we say they\ndo, or that they may be understood in a different sense. Hence, taking\nthese up one after another, he is constantly saying the same things over\nand over again, with most tiresome repetition, which require an equally\ntiresome repetition in reply. Had the author taken the time, if he had the\nability, to reduce his objections to order, and to their real value, a few\npages would have sufficed both to state and to refute them. As it is, we\ncan only do the best we can within the limited space at our command.\n\nThe author professes to write from the point of view of a non-united Greek,\nwho has little quarrel with Rome, save on the single question of the\npapacy. He concedes in some sense the primacy of Peter, and that the bishop\nof Rome is the first bishop of the church, nay, that by ecclesiastical\nright he has the primacy of jurisdiction, though not universal\njurisdiction; but denies that the Roman pontiff has the sovereignty of the\nuniversal church by _divine right_. He says his study of the subject\nhas brought him to these conclusions:\n\n  \"1. The bishop of Rome did not for eight centuries possess the authority\n  of divine right that he has since sought to exercise;\n\n  2. The pretension of the bishop of Rome to the sovereignty of divine\n  right over the whole church was the real cause of the division,\" or\n  schism between the East and the West. (P. 31.)\n\nThese very propositions in the original, to say nothing of the translation,\nshow great lack of precision in the writer. He would have better expressed\nhis own meaning if he had said: The bishop of Rome did not for eight\ncenturies hold by divine right the authority he has since claimed, and the\npretension of the bishop of Rome to the sovereignty of the whole church by\ndivine right has been the real cause of the schism. We shall soon object to\nthis word _sovereignty_, but for the moment let it pass.\n\nThese two propositions the author undertakes to prove, and he attempts to\nprove them by showing or asserting that the proofs which our theologians\nallege from the Holy Scriptures, the fathers, and the councils, do not\nprove the primacy claimed by the bishop of Rome. This, if done, would be to\nthe purpose if the question turned on admitting the claims of the Roman\npontiff, but by no means when the question turns on rejecting these claims\nand ousting the pope from his possession. The author must go further. It is\nnot enough to show that our evidences of title are insufficient; he must\ndisprove the title itself, either by proving that no such title ever\nissued, or that it vests in an adverse claimant. This, as we shall see, he\nutterly fails to do. He sets up, properly speaking, no adverse claimant,\nand fails to prove that no such title ever issued.\n\nIt suffices us, in reply, to plead possession. The pope is, and long has\nbeen, in possession by the acknowledgment of both East and West, and it is\nfor the author to show reasons why he should be ousted, and, if those\nreasons do not necessarily invalidate his possessions, the pope is not\nobliged to show his titles. All he need reply is, _Olim possideo_.\n\nThat the pope is in possession of all he claims is evident not only from\nthe fact that he has from the earliest times exercised the primacy of\njurisdiction claimed for him, but from the council of Florence held in 1439.\n{466}\n\"We define,\" say the fathers of the council, \"that the holy apostolic see\nand the Roman pontiff hold the primacy in all the world, and that the Roman\npontiff is the successor of blessed Peter, prince of the apostles and true\nvicar of Christ, and head of the whole church, the father and teacher of\nall Christians, and that to him is given in blessed Peter, by our Lord\nJesus Christ, full power to feed, direct, and govern the universal church;\n_et ipsi B. Petro pascendi, regendi, et gubernandi plenam potestatem\ntraditam esse._\"\n\nThis definition was made by the universal church, for it was subscribed by\nthe bishops of both the East and the West, and among the bishops of the\nEast that accepted it were the patriarchs of Constantinople and Alexandria,\nand the metropolitans of Russia, with those of Nicaea, Trebizond,\nLacedaemon, and Mytilene. We know very well that the non-united Greeks\nreject this council, although the Eastern Church was more fully represented\nin it than the Western Church was in that at Nicaea, the first of\nConstantinople, Ephesus, or Chalcedon; but it is for the non united Greeks\nto prove that, in rejecting it and refusing obedience to its decrees, they\nare not schismatic. At any rate, the council is sufficient to prove that\nthe pope is in possession by the judgment of both East and West, and to\nthrow the burden of proof on those who deny the papal authority and assert\nthat the papacy is schismatic.\n\nBefore producing his proofs, the author examines the Holy Scriptures to\nascertain \"whether the pretensions of the bishop of Rome to a universal\nsovereignty of the church have, as is alleged, any ground in the word of\nGod.\" (P. 31.) The translation here is inexact; it should be: \"Whether the\npretensions, etc., to _the_ universal sovereignty of the church have,\nas is alleged, _their_ foundation in the word of God.\" The author\nhimself would have expressed himself better if he had written \"the\nsovereignty of the universal church,\" instead of \"universal sovereignty of\nthe church.\" But the author mistakes the real question he has to consider.\nThe real question for him is not whether the primacy we assert for the\nRoman pontiff has its ground in the written word, but whether anything in\nthe written word denies or contradicts it. The primacy may exist as a fact,\nand yet no record of it be made in the Scriptures. The constitution of the\nchurch is older than any portion of the New Testament, and it is very\nconceivable that, as the church must know her own constitution, it was not\nthought necessary to give an account of it in the written word. The church\nholds the written word, but does not hold from it or under it, but from the\ndirect and immediate appointment of Jesus Christ himself, and is\ninconceivable without her constitution.\n\nThe author makes another mistake, in using the word _sovereignty_\ninstead of _primacy_. Roman theologians assert the primacy, but not,\nin the ecclesiastical order, the _sovereignty_ of the Roman pontiff.\nSovereignty is a political, not an ecclesiastical term; it is, moreover,\nexclusive, and it is not pretended that there is no authority in the church\nby divine right but that of the Roman pontiff. It is not pretended that\nbishops are simply his vicars or deputies. In feudal times there may have\nbeen writers who regarded him as suzerain, but we know of none that held\nhim to be sovereign. He is indeed by some writers, chiefly French, called\n_sovereign_ pontiff, but only in the sense of _supreme_ pontiff,\nPontifex maximus, or summus pontifex, to indicate that he is the highest\nbut not the exclusive authority in the church. The council of Florence, on\nwhich we plant ourselves, defines him to be primate, not sovereign, and\nascribes to him plenary authority to feed, direct, and govern the whole\nchurch, but does not exclude other and subordinate pontiffs, who, though\nthey receive their sees from him, yet within them govern by a divine right\nno less immediate than his. The real and only sovereign of the church, in\nthe proper sense of the term, is Jesus Christ himself.\n{467}\nThe pope is his vicar, and as much bound by his law as the humblest\nChristian. He is not above the law, nor is he its source, but is its chief\nminister and supreme judge, and his legislative power is restricted to such\nrescripts, edicts, or canons as he judges necessary to its proper\nadministration. The sovereign makes the law, and the difference, therefore,\nbetween the power of the sovereign and that claimed for the Roman pontiff\nis very obvious and very great. Could the author, then, prove from the\nwritten word that the pope or the Holy See is not the universal sovereign\nof the church, he would prove nothing to his purpose. Yet this, as we shall\nsee, is all he does prove.\n\nThe author pretends, p. 32, that the papal authority, sovereignty he means,\nis condemned by the word of God. The assertion, understanding the papal\nauthority as defined by the council of Florence, is to his purpose, if he\nproves it. What, then, are his proofs? The Roman theologians, that is,\nCatholic theologians, say the church is founded on Peter, and cite in proof\nthe words of our Lord, St. Matt. xvi. 18: \"I say unto thee that thou art\nPeter, and upon this rock will I build my church, and the gates of hell\nshall not prevail against it.\" But this does not prove that Peter is the\nrock on which the church is founded. The church is not founded on Peter,\nor, if on Peter, in no other sense than it is on him and the other\napostles. The rock on which the church is built is Jesus Christ, who is the\nonly foundation of the church. St. Paul says, 1 Cor. iii. 11: \"Other\nfoundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ\nhimself.\"\n\nThat Jesus Christ is the sole foundation of the church in the primary and\nabsolute sense, nobody denies or questions, and we have asserted it in\nasserting that he is the real and only sovereign of the church; but this\ndoes not exclude Peter from being its foundation in a secondary and\nvicarial sense, the only sense asserted by the most thorough-going papists,\nas is evident from what St. Paul writes to the Ephesians, ii. 20, as cited\nby the author: \"You are built on the foundation of the apostles and\nprophets, Jesus Christ being himself the chief cornerstone.\" The principal,\nprimary, absolute foundation is Christ, but the prophets and apostles are\nalso the foundation on which the church, the mystic temple, is built. The\nauthor says, same page: \"The prophets and apostles form the first layers of\nthis mystic edifice. The faithful are raised on these _foundations_,\nand form the edifice itself; finally, Jesus Christ is the principal stone,\nthe corner-stone, which gives solidity to the monument.\" This is very true,\nand we maintain, as well as he, that there is \"no other foundation\" in the\nprimary sense, \"no other principal corner-stone than Jesus Christ;\" but he\nhimself asserts, as does St. Paul, other \"foundation\" in a secondary sense.\nSo, though our Lord is the principal or first foundation in the sense in\nwhich God is the first cause of all creatures and their acts, yet nothing\nhinders Peter from being a secondary foundation, as creatures may be and\nare what philosophers terms second causes.\n\nBut in this secondary sense, \"all the apostles are the foundation, and the\nchurch is no more founded on Peter than on the rest of the apostles.\" Not\nfounded on Peter to the exclusion of the other apostles certainly, but not\nfounded on Peter as the prince of the apostles, or chief of the apostolic\ncollege, does not appear, and it is never pretended that Peter excludes the\nother apostles. Our Lord gave, indeed, to Peter alone the keys of the\nkingdom of heaven, thereby constituting him his steward or the chief of his\nhousehold; but he gave to all authority to teach all nations all things\nwhatsoever he had commanded them, the same power of binding and loosing\nthat he had given to Peter, and promised to be with them as well as with\nhim all days to the consummation of the world. There is in this nothing\nthat excludes or denies the primacy claimed for Peter, or that implies that\nour Lord, as the author says, merely \"gave to Peter an important ministry\nin his church.\"\n\n{468}\n\nThe author labors to refute the argument drawn in favor of the primacy of\nPeter from the command of our Lord to Peter to \"confirm his brethren,\" and\nthe thrice repeated command to \"feed his sheep;\" but as we are not now\nseeking to prove the primacy, but simply repelling the arguments adduced\nagainst it, we pass it over. He attempts to construct an argument against\nthe primacy of Peter from the words of our Lord to his disciples, St. Matt,\nxxiii. 8: \"Be ye not called Rabbi; for one is your Master, and all you are\nbrethren. And call none your father on earth; for one is your Father, who\nis in heaven. Neither be ye called masters; for one is your master, Christ.\nHe that is greatest among you shall be your servant.\" \"Christ, therefore,\"\np. 48, \"forbade the apostles to take, in relation to one another, the\ntitles of master, doctor, or even father, or pope, which is the same\nthing.\" Why, then, does the author take the title of _Abb\u00e9_, which\nmeans father, or suffer his editor to give him the title of Doctor of\nDivinity? His non-united Greek friends also come in for his censure; for\nthey call their simple priests _papas_ or popes, that is, fathers;\nnay, if he construes the words of our Lord strictly, he must deny all\necclesiastical authority, and, indeed, all human government, and even\nforbid the son to call his sire father. This would prove a little too much\nfor him as well as for us.\n\nThe key to the meaning of our Lord is not difficult to discover. He\ncommands his disciples not to call any one master, teacher, or father, that\nis, not to recognize as binding on them any authority that does not come\nfrom God, and to remember that they are all brethren, and must obey God\nrather than men. God alone is sovereign, and we are bound to obey him, and\nno one else; for, in obeying our prelates whom the Holy Ghost has set over\nus, it is him and him only, that we obey. He commands his disciples to\nsuffer no man to call them masters: for their authority to teach or govern\ncomes not from them, but from their Master who is in heaven, and therefore\nthey are not to lord it over their brethren, but to govern only so as to\nserve them. \"Let him that is greatest among you be your servant.\" Power is\nnot for him who governs, but for them who are governed, and he is greatest\nwho best serves his brethren. The pope, in reference to the admonition of\nour Lord, and from the humility with which all power given to men should be\nheld and exercised, calls himself \"servant of servants.\" The words so\nunderstood--and they _may_ be so understood--convey no prohibition of\nthe authority claimed for the Roman pontiff as the vicar of Christ, and\nfather and teacher of all Christians, by divine authority, not by his own\npersonal right.\n\nHere is all the author adduces from the Scriptures, that amounts to any\nthing, to prove \"that the papal authority\" is \"condemned by the word of\nGod,\" and nothing in all this condemns it in the sense defined by the\ncouncil of Florence, which is all we have to show.\n\nFrom the Scriptures the author passes to tradition, and first to \"the views\nof the papal authority taken by the fathers of the first three centuries.\"\nHe does not deny that our Lord treated Peter with great personal\nconsideration, and thinks Peter may be regarded in relation to the other\napostles as _primus inter pares_, the first among equals, but without\njurisdiction; and he says, p. 48, \"We can affirm that no father of the\nchurch has seen in the primacy of Peter any title to jurisdiction or\nabsolute authority in the church.\" But the first father he finds who, as he\npretends, absolutely denies the primacy Catholics claim for Peter, and\nconsequently for his successor, is St. Cyprian, who seems to us very\npositively to affirm it.\n\n{469}\n\nThe author has a theory, which he pretends is supported by St. Cyprian, and\nwhich explains all the facts in the early ages which have been supposed by\nRoman theologians to be favorable to their doctrine of the papacy. He does\nnot bring it out very clearly or systematically, and we can collect it only\nfrom scattered assertions. He denies that Peter had any authority not\nshared equally by the other apostles; or that the bishop of Rome had or has\nby divine right any pre-eminence above any other bishop; or that the church\nof Rome has any authority not possessed equally by the other churches that\nhad apostles for their founders. He concedes that Peter and Paul founded\nthe church of Rome, but denies that St. Peter was ever its bishop or bishop\nof any other particular see. How, then, explain the many passages of the\nfathers of the first three centuries, which undeniably assert Peter as \"the\nprince of the apostles,\" \"the chief of the apostolic college,\" the\nsuperiority and authority of \"the see of Peter,\" \"the chair of Peter.\" and\nrecognize the jurisdiction actually exercised in all parts of the church by\nthe bishop of Rome? No man can read the early fathers, and deny that the\nchurch of Rome was regarded as the church that \"presides,\" as St. Ignatius\ncalls it, as the root and matrix, as St. Cyprian says, of the church, as\nholding the pre-eminence over all other churches, with whose bishop it was\nnecessary that all others should agree or be in communion. The author does\nnot deny it; but Peter meant \"the faith of Peter,\" \"the chair of Peter\nmeant the entire episcopate,\" which was one and held by all the bishops\n_in solido_, and the pre-eminence ascribed to the church of Rome was\nin consequence of her exterior importance as the see of the capital of the\nempire. This is the author's theory, and he pretends that he finds it in\nthe Treatise on the Unity of the Church, by St. Cyprian.\n\n\"In fact,\" he says, p. 79, \"he (St. Cyprian) positively denies the primacy\nof St. Peter himself; he makes the apostle merely the type of unity which\nresided in the apostolic college as a whole, and by succession in the whole\nepiscopal body, which he calls the See of Peter.\" \"After mentioning the\npowers promised to St. Peter, St. Cyprian remarks that Jesus Christ\npromised them to him alone, though they were _given to all_. 'In order\nto show forth unity,' he says, 'the Lord has wished that unity might draw\nits origin from one only.' 'The other apostles certainly were just what\nPeter was, having the same honor and power as he.' 'All are shepherds, and\nthe flock nourished by all the apostles together is one, in order that the\nchurch of Christ may appear in its unity.'\"\n\nBut to this explanation of St. Cyprian there is a slight objection; for we\nare not able to see from this how the unity of the apostolic college or of\nthe church of Christ is shown forth, manifested, or made to appear, that\nis, rendered visible, which is the sense of St. Cyprian, or how it can be\nsaid to draw the origin of unity from one when it only draws its origin\nfrom many conjointly. St. Cyprian says our Lord, \"ut unitatem manifestaret,\nunam cathedram constituit, unitatis ejusdem originem ab uno incipientem sua\nauctoritate disposuit;\" that is, that our Lord established by his authority\none chair, made the origin of unity begin from one, that the unity of the\nbody might be manifested or shown forth. St. Cyprian evidently teaches that\nthe unity of the church derives, as the author holds, from the unity of the\nepiscopate, and the unity of the episcopate from the unity of the apostolic\ncollege; but that the unity of the apostolic college or apostolate may be\nmanifested, and hence the unity of the church be shown forth, or rendered\nvisible, our Lord made its origin begin from one, that is, Peter. All the\napostles, indeed, had what Peter had, that is, the apostolate, partook of\nthe same gift, honor, and power; but the beginning proceeded from unity,\nand the primacy was given to Peter, that the church of Christ and the\nchair, the apostolate, by succession the episcopal body, if you will, may\nbe shown to be one.\n{470}\nAll are pastors, and the flock, which is fed by all the apostles in\nunanimity, is shown to be one, that the unity of the church of Christ may\nbe demonstrated. \"Hoc erant utique et caeteri apostoli quod fuit Petrus,\npari consortio praediti et honoris et potestatis, sed exordium ab unitate\nprofiscatur; et _primatus Petro datur_, ut una Christi ecclesia et\ncathedra una monstretur. Et pastores sunt omnes, et grex unus ostenditur,\nqui ab apostolis omnbus [omnibus?] unanimi consensione pascatur, ut\necclesia Christi, una monstretur.\" [Footnote 145]\n\n    [Footnote 145: Opp. Cypriani, Migne's Edition, De Unitate Ecclesiae,\n    pp. 498-500. The words primatus Petro datur, are wanting in some\n    manuscripts, and are rejected by Baluze and some others as an\n    interpolation, and Archbishop Kenrick does not cite them in his\n    Primacy, when they would have been much to his purpose. It is thought\n    that they were originally a marginal note, and have crept into the text\n    through some ignorant copyist; but it is just as easy to suppose that\n    they were omitted from the text by some careless copyist, and placed in\n    the margin by way of correction, and afterward restored to their proper\n    place in the text. When several years ago we examined the question with\n    what ability we possess, we came to the conclusion that they are\n    genuine, or, at least, that there is no sufficient reason for regarding\n    them as spurious. They express what is obviously the sense of St.\n    Cyprian, and seem to us to be necessary to carry on and complete his\n    argument. Nevertheless, we have made none of our reasoning against M.\n    Guett\u00e9e rest on their genuineness.]\n\nSt. Cyprian endeavors to show not simply that the church is one and the\nepiscopate also one, but that our Lord has so arranged it that the unity of\neach may be made to appear and both be seen to be one. The unity of the\napostles, of the pastors, or of the church, regarded as a collective body,\nis invisible. How, then, if it does not arise from one, or if it has no\nvisible centre and beginning in the visible order, is it to be made to\nappear? St. Cyprian evidently holds that the unity of the apostolic body\nestablishes the unity of the episcopal body, since he holds the bishops to\nbe the successors of the apostles; and the unity of the episcopal body\nestablishes the unity of the flock, which in union with the body each\npastor feeds, and therefore the unity of the entire church of Christ. But\nhe just as evidently holds that the apostolic unity in order to exist must\nbegin from a central point, or have its centre and source whence it\nproceeds, and radiates, so to speak, through the whole apostolic body,\nmaking of the apostolate not an aggregation, but a body really one, with\nits own central source of life and authority; an organic and not simply an\norganized body, for an organized body has no real unity. Hence, he makes\nthe unity start and radiate from one, as it must if unity at all. This one,\nthis central point, he holds, is, by the ordination of the Lord, Peter. Of\nthis there can be no doubt.\n\nAs we understand St. Cyprian, whose treatise on the Unity of the Church is,\nperhaps, the profoundest and most philosophical ever written on that\nsubject, the church is an organism with Jesus Christ himself for its\ninvisible and ultimate centre and source of life. But as the church is to\ndeal with the world and operate in time and space, it must be visible as\nwell as invisible. Then the invisible must be visibly expressed or\nrepresented. But this cannot be done unless there is a visible expression\nor representation in the exterior organic body of this interior and\ninvisible centre and source of unity, life, and authority, which our Lord\nhimself is. To establish this exterior or visible representation, our Lord\ninstitutes the apostolic college and through that the episcopal body,\nthrough whom the whole flock becomes in union with their pastors, who are,\nin union with the apostles, one organic body; but only on condition of the\nunity of the apostolic college which unity must start from one, from a\nvisible centre and source of unity. Hence, our Lord chose Peter as the\ncentral point of union for the apostolic college, and Peter's chair, the\n\"una cathedra,\" as the visible centre of union for the episcopal body, and\nthrough them of the whole church, so that the whole church in the\napostolate, in the episcopate, and in the flock is shown to be one,\nrepresented with the unity and authority it has in Jesus Christ.\n\n{471}\n\nThe trouble here with the author's theory is, not that it makes Peter the\nsign and type of the unity or authority of the apostolic college, and the\nchair of Peter the type and figure, as he says, of the unity and authority\nof the episcopate, but that it does not do so; for it recognizes no visible\napostolic or episcopal unity, since it recognizes no visible centre or\nsource from which it originates; and hence neither the apostolate nor the\nepiscopate, save as Jesus Christ, is a unity, but an aggregation, as we\nhave said, a collection, or at least, a sort of round robin. By denying the\nprimacy or centre and beginning of unity to Peter and Peter's chair\nindividually, it denies what St. Cyprian maintains was instituted to\nmanifest or show forth unity. It denies both the manifestation of unity and\nexternal unity itself, both of which are strenuously insisted on by St.\nCyprian, who, indeed, says expressly in his letter to St. Cornelius, the\nRoman pontiff, that \"the Church of Rome,\" that is, \"the chair of Peter,\" is\nthe centre whence sacerdotal unity arose.\n\nThe author says, p. 67, that \"St. Cyprian was right in calling the Church\nof Rome the chair of Peter, the _principal_ church, whence sacerdotal\nunity emanated. But for all that, did he pretend that the bishop enjoyed\nauthority by divine right? He believed it so little that, in his De Unitate\nEcclesiae, he understands by the chair of Peter the entire episcopate,\nregards St. Peter as the equal of the other apostles, denies his primacy,\nand makes him the simple type of the unity of the apostolic college.\" The\nChurch of Rome \"was the source of sacerdotal unity in this sense, that\nPeter was the sign and type of the unity of the apostolic college.\" St.\nCyprian makes St. Peter, p. 79, \"merely the type of the unity that resided\nin the apostolic college as a whole, and, by succession, in the episcopal\nbody, which he calls \"the see of Peter.\" \"The see of Peter, in St.\nCyprian's idea, is the authority of the apostolic body, and, by succession,\nof the episcopal body. All the bishops had the same honor and the same\nauthority in all that relates to their order, as all the apostles had the\nsame honor and authority as Peter.\" (Pp. 79, 80.)\n\nPeter, then, is the sign and type of apostolic and episcopal unity, and\n\"the chair of Peter,\" or \"the see of Peter,\" is the sign and type of\napostolic authority. But supposing this to be so, and Peter to have been in\nno respect distinguished from the other apostles, or to have held no\npeculiar position in the apostolic body, how came he to be regarded as the\nsign and type of apostolic unity, and his chair as the sign and type of\napostolic authority? There is a logic in language as well as in the human\nmind of which it is the expression, and there is a reason for every\nsymbolical locution that gains currency. If the fathers and the church had\nnot held Peter to be the prince of the apostles and his see the centre and\nsource of apostolic authority, would they or could they have made his see\nor chair the symbol of apostolic authority, or Peter himself the symbol,\n\"the sign and type,\" of apostolic unity? Why the see of Peter rather than\nthat of Andrew, James, or John? or Peter rather than any other apostle? The\nfact, then, that St. Peter and his see or chair were taken as symbolic, the\nsign and type, the one of apostolic unity, and the other of apostolic\nauthority, is a very conclusive proof that the primacy was given to him and\nhis see by our Lord, and by succession to the holy apostolic see and the\nRoman pontiff, as the fathers of Florence define and Roman theologians\nhold.\n\nAgain, how could Peter be a sign and type of apostolic unity or his see the\nsign and type of apostolic authority, if he, Peter, had no relation, and\nhis see none, to that authority not held equally by all the apostles and\ntheir sees? In the church of God there are and can be no shams, no\nmake-believes, no false signs or types, no unrealities, no calling things\nwhich are not as if they were. Signs which signify nothing are not signs,\nand types which represent nothing are simply no types at all. The real\napostolic unity and authority are internal, invisible in Jesus Christ\nhimself, who, in the primary and absolute sense, as we have seen, is the\nrock on which the church is founded, the sole basis of its solidity and\npermanence, the sole ground of its existence and fountain of its life,\nunity, and authority.\n{472}\nPeter and Peter's see, if the sign and type of this invisible unity, must\nrepresent it or show it forth in the visible order. But how can Peter\nrepresent that unity, unless he is in the visible order its real centre and\nsource, in which it begins and from which it emanates? Or how can the see\nor chair of Peter be the sign and type of the invisible apostolic\nauthority, unless it really be its source and centre in the visible order?\nThe external can represent the internal, the visible the invisible, only in\nso far as it copies or imitates it. In calling Peter the sign and type of\napostolic unity, the author then concedes that Peter represents our Lord,\nand that he is, as the council of Florence defines, \"the true vicar of\nChrist;\" and in making Peter's see the sign and type of apostolic\nauthority, he makes it the real centre in the visible order of that\nauthority, and consequently concedes the very points which he rejects, and\nundertakes to prove from St. Cyprian are only the unfounded pretensions of\nthe bishop of Rome.\n\nThat the primacy here unwittingly conceded by the author is not that\nabsolute and isolated sovereignty which the author accuses Catholic\ntheologians of asserting for Peter and for the bishop of Rome as his\nsuccessor, we readily admit, but we have already shown that such a\nsovereignty is not claimed. The pope is not the sovereign, but the vicar or\nchief minister of the sovereign. He governs the church in apostolic unity,\nnot as isolated from the episcopal body, but as its real head or supreme\nchief. His authority is said to be _loquens ex cathedra_, speaking\nfrom the seat of apostolic and episcopal unity and authority. He is the\nchief or supreme pastor, not the only pastor, nor pastor at all regarded as\nseparate from the church. He is the visible head of the church united by a\nliving union with the body; for it is as necessary to the head to be in\nliving union with the body, as it is to the body to be in living union with\nthe head. Neither can live and perform its functions without the other; but\nthe directing, controlling, or governing power is in the head. St. Ambrose\nsays, \"Where Peter is, there is the church;\" but he does not say Peter is\nthe church, nor does the pope say, \"L'Eglise, c'est moi,\" I am the church.\nSucceeding to Peter as chief of the apostolic college, he is the chief or\nhead of the church. The author's theory makes the church in the visible\norder as a whole, acephalous, headless, and therefore brainless.\n\nThe author bases his assertion that St. Cyprian denies the primacy of Peter\non the fact that he says, \"All the other apostles had what he had, the same\nhonor and the same power.\" This is with Mr. Guett\u00e9e a capital point. His\ndoctrine, so far as doctrine he has, is that the church has no visible\nchief; that all the apostles had equal honor and authority; that all\nbishops as successors of the apostles are equal; that one bishop has by\ndivine right no pre-eminence above another; and that, if one is more\ninfluential than another, he owes it to his personal character or to the\nexternal importance of his see. And this he contends is the doctrine of St.\nCyprian. But, if he had understood St. Cyprian's argument, he would have\nnever done that great saint such flagrant injustice. St. Cyprian's argument\nis, as is evident from the passage we have cited at length, that, although\nall the apostles received the same gift, the same honor, and the same\npower, yet, for the sake of manifesting unity, our Lord constituted one\nchair from which unity should begin, and gave the primacy to Peter, that\nthe unity of the apostolic or episcopal body and of the whole church of\nChrist might be shown. The author himself contends that the apostolate, and\nby succession the episcopate, is one and indivisible, and held by the\napostles or bishops _in solido_.\n{473}\nThen, if all the other apostles had the apostolate, they must have had\nprecisely what Peter had, and if the other bishops have the episcopate at\nall, they must have precisely what the Roman pontiff has, yet without\nhaving another apostolate or another episcopate than that which they all\nequally receive and hold in its invisible unity, or anything in addition\nthereto. He may, nevertheless, be the head or chief of the episcopal body\nand the centre in which episcopal unity and authority in the visible order\noriginate, and from which they radiate through the body, and from the\nbishops to their respective flocks, and bind them and the whole church\ntogether in one, which, as we understand it, is the precise doctrine of St.\nCyprian, and certainly is the doctrine of the Roman and Catholic Church.\n\nThe author, even if a learned man, does not appear to be much of a\nphilosopher or much of a theologian. There are depths in St. Cyprian's\nphilosophy and theology which he seems unable to sound, and heights which\nare certainly above his flight. He is, we should judge, utterly unaware of\nthe real constitution of the church, the profound significance of the\ngospel, the vast reach of the Christian system, its relation to the\nuniversal system of creation, or the reasons in the very nature of things\nthere are for its existence, and for the existence and constitution of the\nchurch. All the works of the Creator are strictly logical, and together\nform but one dialectic whole, are but the expression of one divine Thought.\nNothing can appear more petty or worthless than the author's shallow cavils\nto a man who has a little real theological science.\n\nThe author cites the controversy on the baptism of heretics, in proof that\nSt. Cyprian denied the jurisdiction of the bishop of Rome, or his authority\nto govern as supreme pontiff the whole church, but unsuccessfully. St.\nCyprian found the custom established in Carthage, as it was also in certain\nchurches in Asia, to rebaptize persons who had been baptized by heretics,\nand he insisted on observing the custom. He complained, therefore, of St.\nStephen, the Roman pontiff, who wrote to him to conform to the ancient and\ngeneral custom of the church. Whether he conformed or not is uncertain, but\nthere is no evidence that he denied the authority of the Roman pontiff, and\nhe certainly did not break communion with him, though he may have regarded\nhis exercise of his authority in that particular case as oppressive and\ntyranical. It would seem from the letter of St. Firmilianus to St. Cyprian,\nif genuine, of which there is some doubt, as there is of several letters\nascribed to Cyprian, and from the address of St. Cyprian to the last\ncouncil he held on the subject, which Mr. Guett\u00e9e cites at some length,\nthat the question was regarded as one of discipline, or as coming within\nthe category of those matters on which diversity of usage in different\nchurches and countries is allowable or can be tolerated, and on which\nuniformity has never been exacted. He insisted not that all the world\nshould conform to the custom he observed, but defended, as our bishops\nwould to-day, what he believed to be the customary rights of his church or\nprovince. That he was wrong we know, for the universal church has sustained\nthe Roman pontiff.\n\nWe do not think the author has been very happy in placing St. Cyprian on\nthe stand against the primacy of the holy apostolic see and the Roman\npontiff. The saint is a much better witness for us than for him.\n\nThe author, unable to deny the preponderating influence of the Roman\npontiff and his see in the government of the church, and the importance\neverywhere attached to being in communion with the bishop of Rome, seeks to\nevade the force of the fact by attributing it not to the belief in the\nprimacy of the Church of Rome, but to the superior importance of the city\nof Rome as the capital of the empire, as if the Catholic Church were merely\na Roman Church, and not founded for the whole world.\n{474}\nWe, indeed hear something of this when Constantinople, the New Rome, became\nthe rival of Old Rome, and its bishop, on account of the civil and\npolitical importance of the city, set up to be oecumenical bishop, and\nclaimed the first place after the bishop of Rome; but we hear nothing of it\nduring the first three centuries, and the author adduces nothing to justify\nhis assumption. All the fathers, alike in the East and the West, attribute\nthe primacy held by the Church of Rome not to the importance of the city of\nRome in the empire, but to the fact that she is \"the church that presides,\"\nis \"the principal\" or governing \"church,\" is \"the see of Peter,\" holds the\nchair of Peter, \"prince of the apostles,\" is \"the root and matrix of the\nCatholic Church,\" and that Peter \"lives\" and \"speaks\" in its bishops. Now,\nwhatever our learned author may say, we think these great fathers, some of\nwhom were only one remove from the apostles themselves, and nearly all of\nwhom gained the crown of martyrdom, knew the facts in the case as well as\nhe knows them, and that there is every probability that they meant what\nthey said and wrote.\n\n\"We see,\" says the author, p. 48, \"that as early as the third century the\nbishops of Rome, because St. Peter had been one of the founders of that\nsee, claimed to exercise a certain authority over the rest of the church,\ngiving themselves sometimes the title of 'bishop of bishops'; but we also\nsee that the whole church protested against these ambitious pretensions,\nand held them of no account.\" That the bishop of Rome was accused by those\nwhom the exercise of his authority offended of assuming the title of bishop\nof bishops, by way of a sneer, may be very true, but that he ever gave\nhimself that title, there is, so far as we are aware, no trustworthy\nevidence.\n\n\"The church protested against these ambitious pretensions.\" Where is that\nprotest recorded? That bishops were then as now jealous of their real or\nsupposed rights, and ever well disposed to resist any encroachment upon\nthem, is by no means improbable; and this, if the bishops generally held\nthat the Roman pontiff had no more authority by divine right over the\nchurch than any other bishop, must have made it exceedingly difficult for\nhim to grasp the primacy of jurisdiction over them. Their power to resist,\nin case they believed they could resist with a good conscience, must have\nbeen, being, as they were in the fourth century, eighteen hundred to one,\nsomewhat greater than his to encroach. That the bishops or simple priests\nwhom the Roman pontiff admonished or censured protested sometimes, not\nagainst his authority, but against what they regarded as its unjust,\narbitrary, or tyrannical exercise, is no doubt true, and the same thing\nhappens still, even with those who have no doubt of the papal authority;\nbut that the whole church protested is not proven; and in all the instances\nin which protests were offered on the part of individual bishops that came\nbefore an ecclesiastical council, the universal church uniformly sustained\nthe Roman pontiff. When St. Victor excommunicated the Quartodecimans, some\nbishops remonstrated with him as being too severe, and others opposed his\nact, but the council of Nicaea sustained it. Even before that council, the\nauthor of the Philosophumena, whose work must have been composed in the\nearly part of the third century, treats the Quartodecimans as heretics,\nalthough, except as to the time of keeping Easter, their faith was\nirreproachable. So on the question of the baptism of heretics, the whole\nchurch, instead of protesting against the decision of St. Stephen, approved\nit, and follows it to this day. It will not do to say the whole church\ntreated the acts of these popes \"as of no account.\"\n\nThe writers of the letters attributed to St. Cyprian and Firmilianus are\ngood evidence that the popes claimed and exercised jurisdiction over the\nwhole church in the controversy on the baptism of heretics, and Tertullian\naffords no mean proof of the same fact at a yet earlier date.\n{475}\nIn a work written after he had fallen into some of the heresies of the\nMontanists, he writes, as cited by our author, p. 78, \"I learn that a new\nedict has been given, a peremptory edict. The sovereign pontiff, that is,\nthe bishop of bishops, has said: 'I remit the sins of impurity and\nfornication.' O edict! not less can be done than to ticket it--GOOD WORK!\nBut where shall such an edict be posted? Surely, I think, upon the doors of\nthe houses of prostitution.\" This passage undoubtedly proves that\nTertullian himself, fallen into heresy, did not relish the papal decision\nthat condemned him, and perhaps that he was disposed to deny the authority\nof the Roman pontiff; but if it had been generally held that the Roman\npontiff was no more in the church than any other bishop, and therefore that\nhis decision could have no authority out of his diocese or province, would\nhis decision have so deeply moved him, and called forth such an outburst of\nwrath? If the claim to the primacy of authority in the whole church, and\ntherefore to jurisdiction over all bishops, was not generally recognized\nand held, what occasion was there for so much indignation? What point would\nthere have been in the sneer, or force in the irony, of calling him the\nsovereign pontiff, or the bishop of bishops? Tertullian's language, which\nwas evidently intended to exaggerate the authority claimed by the Roman\npontiff, plainly enough implies that he was generally held to have\nauthority to make decisions in doctrine and discipline for the whole\nchurch, and that a censure from him was something of far more importance\nthan that from any other bishop or patriarch.\n\nThe author cites to the same effect as Tertullian the work published at\nParis a few years ago under the name of Origin, entitled Philosophumena,\n\"justly attributed,\" he says, \"to St. Hyppolytus, Bishop of Ostia, or to\nthe learned priest Caius.\" The authorship of the work is unknown, and no\ndocuments have yet been discovered that enable the learned to determine\nwith any degree of certainty by whom it was or could have been written. The\nwork, however, bears internal evidence of having been written by some one\nbelonging to the East, and who lived during the pontificates of St. Victor,\nSt. Zephyrinus, St. Callistus, St. Urban, and perhaps St. Pontian, bishops\nof Rome, that is to say, from 180 to 235, certainly not later. The work,\nwhen published by M. Miller at Paris, in 1851, attracted the attention of\nEnglish and German Protestants by its gross charges against the two\nvenerated Roman pontiffs and martyrs, St. Zephyrinus and St.\nCallistus--charges which for the most part refute themselves. But though\nProtestants have not been able to make much of it against the papacy,\nCatholics have found in it new and unexpected proofs of the authority\nextending over the church in all parts of the world, exercised by the popes\nof that early period. \"In his invectives,\" says the Abb\u00e9 Cruice, \"the\nadversary of Callistus acknowledges his great power, and furnishes new and\nunexpected proofs of the supremacy of the holy see.\" The Abb\u00e9 Cruice, who,\nwe think, we have heard recently died Bishop of Marseilles, published at\nParis, in 1851, an interesting History of the Church of Rome under the\npontificates of St. Victor, St. Zephyrinus, and St. Callistus, in which he\nhas incorporated these proofs with great judgment and effect. As we are not\nnow considering the affirmative proofs of the primacy of the Holy See, but\nthe arguments intended to prove the papacy schismatic, we can only refer\nthe reader to this learned work and to the Philosophumena itself. We will\nonly remark that the unknown author is far more bitter against the popes\nthan his contemporary Tertullian, and leaves more unequivocal evidence to\nthe extent of the papal power. No one can read the Philosophumena without\nperceiving in the complaints and incidental remarks of the author that the\nhierarchy at the end of the second century was as regularly organized as\nnow, and precisely in the same manner, with the Roman pontiff at its\nsummit.\n\n{476}\n\nThe author, p. 82, says Tertullian, who in several passages refers to the\nChurch of Rome as a witness to the apostolic tradition, \"does not esteem\nher witness testimony superior to that of others.\" Perhaps so, for in the\ncases referred to Tertullian had no occasion to discriminate between one\napostolic church and another. He is using against heretics the argument\nfrom prescription. Their doctrines are adverse to the apostolic tradition,\nand therefore false. If any one would know what is the apostolic tradition,\nhe may learn it from any of the churches founded by apostles \"where their\nsees still remain, where their epistles are still read, where their voice\nstill resounds, and their face, as it were, is still seen. Is it Achaia\nthat is near thee? thou hast Corinth; if thou art not far from Macedonia,\nthou hast the Philippians; if thou canst go to Asia, thou hast Ephesus; if\nthou dwellest near Italy, thou hast Rome, whose authority is near us,\" that\nis, near us in Africa. It is true Tertullian pronounces a eulogium on the\nChurch of Rome that he does not on the others, but no great stress need be\nlaid on that. Any one of the apostolic churches was sufficient for\ndetermining the apostolic tradition, and there was no reason why he should\nmention the primacy of the see of Peter if he held it, and it would have\nweakened his argument if he had appealed to that primacy, doubtless then as\nnow rejected by heretics.\n\nBut this leads us to a remark which it may be well to bear in mind. All the\nchurches founded by the apostles were during the whole of the first three\ncenturies in existence, and preserved the apostolic doctrine or tradition,\nand it could be learned from Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, Ephesus, etc.,\nwithout the necessity, at least on ordinary occasions, of recurring to the\nsupreme authority of Rome. The author quotes several of the fathers who\ncall the see of Antioch Peter's see; he might have gone further, and shown\nthat each of the four great patriarchal sees, Rome, Alexandria, Antioch,\nand Jerusalem, were so-called, and because they were held to have been\nfounded by Peter. This is the reason why they received the dignity and\nauthority of patriarchal churches. Peter was held to survive and govern in\neach one of them, but more especially in Rome, where he gave his life for\nhis faith, and where stands his tomb. It is Peter who governs one and\nindivisible in them all, and consequently, to get Peter's authority, it was\nnot, except in the last resort, necessary to apply to his successor in the\nsee of Rome. It is this fact, misapprehended by the author, that has made\nhim assert that the see of Peter, or the chair of Peter, means the\nuniversal episcopate which all the bishops, as St. Cyprian says, hold _in\nsolido_. Every bishop in communion with Peter's see, no doubt, was\nregarded as _solidaire_ with the whole episcopal and apostolic body,\nas we have already explained; but we have not found the \"see of Peter,\" or\n\"chair of Peter\" applied to any particular churches, except those tradition\nasserted were founded by Peter, and only those sees had originally\npatriarchal jurisdiction, and this fact is in itself no slight proof that\nthe primacy was held to be vested in Peter as we have already explained,\nand the author has given us the opportunity of proving from St. Cyprian.\n\nThis fact that Peter was held to govern in the four great patriarchal sees,\nthough supremely only in the Church of Rome, explains why it is that in the\nearly ages we find not more frequent instances of the exercise of\njurisdiction beyond his own patriarchate of the West by the Roman pontiff.\nThe bishops of these Petrine churches were not originally called\npatriarchs, but they exercised the patriarchal power long before receiving\nthe name, and probably from times immediately succeeding the apostles. So\nlong as these patriarchs remained in communion with the bishop of Rome,\ntheir head and chief, most of the questions of discipline, and many of\nthose of faith, could be, and were, settled by the patriarch, or local\nauthority, without resort to the Roman pontiff.\n{477}\nBut when these sees fell off from unity into heresy or schism, Peter\nremained only in the Roman see, and all causes that had previously been\ndisposed of by the patriarchs of the East had to be carried at once to\nRome, before the supreme court.\n\nRome, Alexandria, and Antioch were the three chief cities of the empire,\nand the capitals the first of the empire itself, and the others of its two\nlargest and most important prefectures. This fact may seem to favor the\nauthor's theory that the ecclesiastical superiority is derived from the\ncivil superiority; but had this been so, Jerusalem would hardly have been\nselected as the seat of the third patriarchate of the East. The\ngeographical position and civil and political importance of these cities\nmay have influenced the apostle in selecting them to be the chief seats of\nthe ecclesiastical government he under Christ was founding, but could not\nhave been the ground of their superior ecclesiastical jurisdiction, because\nthe church was not organized as a national religion, or with a view to the\nRoman empire alone, and the apostles themselves carried the gospel beyond\nthe farthest limits of that empire, into regions never penetrated by the\nRoman eagles. The church was catholic, and was to subsist in all ages and\nteach all nations, as well as all truth. Our Lord said, \"My kingdom is not\nof this world;\" it does not hold from the kingdoms of this world, and is\nindependent of them, both in its constitution and in its bowers. These\nremain always and everywhere the same, whatever the revolutions or the rise\nand fall of states and empire. The authority of the church is immediately\nfrom God; her grandeur and glory are spiritual, and not derived from the\ngreatness, grandeur, wealth, or power of earthly cities. St. Augustine\nmakes the city of Rome the type of the city of the world, which he\ncontrasts with the church or city of God. The idea that the rank or the\nauthority of the bishop derived from the civil rank and importance of the\ncity in which he held his see was a Constantinopolitan idea not heard of\ntill the fifth century, and, as we shall see in its place, one of the chief\ncauses of the schism between the East and the West.\n\nThe author denies that St. Peter was ever, in the proper sense of the word,\nbishop of Rome, or of any particular see. If he is right, how could the\nunity of the church have a visible starting-point or centre? or how could\nit be said to begin from Peter or the chair of Peter, as his own witness,\nSt. Cyprian, asserts? If Peter had no particular see, established his see,\nor set up his chair, his cathedra, nowhere in particular, the whole\nargument of St. Cyrian [Cyprian?] as to the origin and manifestation of\nunity is baseless, and goes for nothing. Besides, it is contradicted by\nuniversal tradition. The testimony that Peter had his chair at Rome is\nample, and leaves nothing to be desired. But this is not the point. It is\nfor the author to prove that he was not bishop of Rome; for he has\nundertaken to prove the papacy is schismatic, and at every step he takes,\nthe burden of proof is on him. Where are his proofs?\n\nThe author says St. Linus was bishop of Rome when Peter first arrived in\nthat city. A church which has a bishop is already a church founded and\nconstituted. Yet the author allows and cites authorities that prove that\nPeter was the founder, or at least one of the founders, of the Roman\nChurch! That St. Linus was the first bishop of Rome after St. Peter there\nis no doubt; that he was the first bishop, or bishop of Rome, before the\narrival of St. Peter in the city, there is no evidence, but any amount of\ntestimony to the contrary. We say there is no evidence. The lists given by\nthe fathers sometimes enumerate him as first and sometimes as second, as\nthey do or do not include the apostle; but all make him the successor of\nSt. Peter. The fathers, in giving the lists of other apostolic sees, are\nnot uniform, and sometimes they include and sometimes they exclude the\napostle, and reckon only from his death.\n{478}\nEusebius says, as cited by the author, p. 144, \"After the martyrdom of Paul\nand Peter, Linus was the first that received the episcopate at Rome.\"\nTertullian, as also cited by the author, p. 145, says that \"Peter sat on\nthe chair of Rome;\" but he contends that Tertullian \"does not mean that he\nwas bishop, but that he taught there,\" that is, St. Peter was a professor\nof theology at Rome! This might do if Tertullian had been treating of the\nSorbonne, or of the French university, but will not answer here. In\necclesiastical language, _chair, cathedra_, means simply the seat of\nthe bishop, and, figuratively, the episcopal authority. To say Peter sat in\nthe chair or cathedra of Rome is saying simply he was bishop of Rome. The\npresumption is, that Tertullian meant what he said, understood according to\nthe usages of the language he used. Besides, if chair _may_ sometimes\nbe used figuratively for teaching, it is the author's business to prove\nthat it must mean so in this particular case. This he does not and cannot\ndo.\n\nThe author pretends that the tradition which makes Peter seven years bishop\nof Antioch and twenty-five years bishop of Rome is obviously false; for any\none can see by counting that there was not time enough for it between the\nday of Pentecost and the martyrdom of Peter. We do not pretend to be very\ngood at counting, but as we count, seven years bishop of Antioch and\ntwenty-five years bishop of Rome make in all thirty-two years. The day of\nPentecost, according to the usual reckoning, was in A.D. 33, and St. Peter\nsuffered martyrdom at Rome under Nero, A.D. 66, or at the earliest 65.\nTillemont says 66, which leaves thirty-three, at least thirty-two years;\nand we see no reason to suppose that the organization of the church at\nJerusalem and committing it to the care of James, its first bishop, and the\nsetting up of his chair at Antioch, might not all have been done before the\nclose of the year of the crucifixion. But even an error in the chronology\nwould not prove that Peter was not bishop of Rome.\n\nThe pretence that it was incompatible with the dignity of an apostle to be\nthe bishop of a particular see has nothing to sustain it. It is not\nnecessary to suppose Peter, by establishing his see at Rome, was obliged to\nconfine his whole attention and labor to that particular church, or that he\nremained constantly at Rome. Indeed, it is very possible, and thought by\nmany to be very probable, that he committed the care of that church daring\nhis absences to St. Linus as his vicar, and there are several authorities\nto that effect. Some of them join St. Anacletus, Cletus, or, as the Greeks\nsay, Anencletus, and St. Clement, successively bishops of Rome, with St.\nLinus in the government of the Roman Church under Peter during his\nlifetime; but, however this may have been, tradition is constant that St.\nLinus was the immediate successor of Peter, which at least implies that\nPeter was regarded as having held the see as well as having assisted in\nfounding it; for otherwise St. Linus could not have been regarded as his\nsuccessor, and no reason could be assigned why he was called the successor\nof Peter rather than of Paul, who also assisted in founding it, and is\nhonored even to-day by the Roman Church as one of its founders.\n\nWe have taken up the author's theory point by point, and we find him\nutterly failing to establish it in whole or in part. His allegations are\nset forth with great confidence, but the authorities he cites do not\nsustain them, and are either not to his purpose or, like St. Cyprian, point\nblank against him. He may have demolished the man of straw which he himself\nhad set up, but he leaves standing the papacy as held by the Catholic\nChurch and defined by the council of Florence.\n{479}\nHe has asserted in very strong terms the ignorance, the chicanery, the\nsophistry, and the dishonesty of the Roman theologians, and leaves no doubt\nin the minds of intelligent readers that he greatly excels them in the\nqualities and practices he ascribes to them; but he adduces nothing beyond\nhis own assertions and misrepresentations against their fairness and\ncandor, and their intelligence and learning. His sneers at them are pointed\nonly by his own ignorance or malice, and present him in a most unfavorable\nlight. His cant, so abundant against them, is very stale and simply\ndisgusting. From first to last he proves that he lacks, we will not say the\nhumility of the Christian, but the modesty and reserve of real learning and\nscience, and that he is moved not by love of truth, but by a spirit of\nhatred and revenge.\n\nHere we might well close, for the author has refuted from St. Cyprian\nhimself, by proving by his own witness the primacy of jurisdiction by\ndivine right was possessed even in the third century, while he has left all\nthe arguments and authorities adduced by the Roman theologians from\nScripture and tradition to prove affirmatively the papal authority by\ndivine right, or by the positive appointment of Jesus Christ in their full\nforce. But the reasons which induced us in the first place to begin the\nexamination of the author's lucubrations induce us to go through with them.\nThe work has been translated and published here under Protestant auspices,\nset up as an important work against the papal authority and the Church of\nRome, \"the root and matrix of the Catholic Church,\" as says St. Cyprian,\nand, were it left unnoticed or unreplied to, many people might take it to\nbe really what it is represented to be, and conclude that we cannot answer\nit because we have not done it.\n\nBesides, the controversy between large classes of Protestants and Catholics\nis narrowed down to two questions, the honor we render to Mary the mother\nof God, and the authority we attribute to the Holy See and the Roman\npontiff. M. Guett\u00e9e, having been reared in our communion and gone out from\nus because he was not of us, and having in this work done his best to prove\nthe papacy schismatic, and that its assertion has been the cause of the\nschism between the East and the West, affords us as good an occasion as we\ncan expect to discuss the latter question, and to consider the arguments,\nfacts, and authorities alleged in their defence by those who refuse their\nobedience to St. Peter in his successor. The work is rambling, and made up\nof details most wearisome to read, and difficult to bring into a shape in\nwhich its real value can be brought to the test, but it is a fair specimen\nin spirit and arrangement of the works written against the Roman and\nCatholic Church, and contains in some form all that schismatics allege\nfirst and last against her. We may as well make it our text-book for the\ndiscussion as any other. But we have already trespassed long enough on the\npatience of our readers for this month.\n\n------\n\n{480}\n\n\n    Translated from the French.\n\n\n    The Crucifix of Baden.\n\n    A Legend of the Middle Ages.\n\n\nWill you follow me to Baden? Not to that elegant and wild and whirling\nBaden of painted faces and flashy toilettes, where gentlemen of the turf\ndisplay their horsemanship on the plain of Iffezheim; where the majesty of\nold Germany elbows, in the Trinkhalle, the princes of Bohemia; but to the\nfresh, dark, silent, almost unknown nooks of that Baden which God has made\nand which man has yet left untouched; where the artist wanders for his\npicture, the poet for his inspiration, the dreamer for his vision, the\nChristian to murmur his prayer; for it is to a burial-ground that I am\nabout to lead you. But fear not on that account; this burial-place of Baden\nhas comparatively but little of the mournful in its appearance; it is\ntruly, as its name declares, the _Fried Hof_--the Court of Peace.\nUnder that green turf, under those flower-clad hillocks, there lie bodies\nthat suffer no more, but sleep in quiet; their souls may suffer, indeed,\nand be in pain, but their souls are no longer there; and can repose alone\nbe frightful? Look around, and, as far as the eye can reach, what beauty\nshines in the landscape, what a charm invests the distant meeting of earth\nand sky! Look up to the gray blue heaven, pale and transparent, as is ever\nthat sky which stretches over the valley of the Rhine; to those pure white\nclouds floating like distant sails on a stormless sea; to those distant\nhills, with outlines softening as they recede; to the green woods that\nfringe their sides; to those walls which time has breached; those crumbling\ntowers; those ruined castles which seem to overhang the plain of the\ndead--man's work, and the hands that created it, becoming dust together.\nThese sights may, indeed, be melancholy, but they are peace-giving too; for\nthere in the midst hangs Christ bowing his weary head and stretching out\nhis bruised arms in yonder great crucifix of stone.\n\nIn a churchyard, nothing is more frequent, nor, so to speak, more natural,\nthan to see a crucifix. It is there like the flag on the bastion, the mast\non the vessel. Without it the place would be accursed and desolate, for\nhope would be wanting there. All know and acknowledge this, but,\nnevertheless, few passers-by bestow a glance on the holy image. Some\nfaithful ones may, when they see it, make the sign of the cross; others\nbend slightly before it; well-bred people uncover; free-thinkers, with\nproud look and step, with unbending knee and body erect, pass it by, they\nwho would bow so low before the coronet of a prince or even the key of a\nchamberlain.\n\nAnd certainly indifferent, timid, and free-thinking ones come to the\n_Fried Hof_ of Baden; but _there_, few stop not and marvel, if by\nchance their eyes fall upon its crucifix. There is upon that rigid\nface--those features of stone--a look of life, of flesh and blood, which\nenchains you, moves the depths of your heart, speaks to you. To understand\nthat gaze, it is not necessary to be a Christian; alas! it is enough to be\na man. Those lips, half parted in a sigh, tremble in the stone; those\nhalf-closed eyes seem really to weep; agony sits upon every feature;\nbitterness of soul has worn every one of those furrows, the arch of the\nbrows has been contracted, the pure lines of the profile broken, the calm\nof the forehead destroyed by a sorrow, overwhelming, silent, inconsolable;\nand you would have before you the image of human misery the most complete,\nthe deepest, the most horrible, if a ray from the Majesty on high did not\ncome to elevate and illumine that petrifaction of grief.\n\n{481}\n\nWhen you have long studied those features and contemplated their agony, you\ninvoluntarily ask yourself: Where did the sculptor find so suffering a\nface, so living an agony? whence came his model? for you feel that those\nfeatures once were the flesh of one to whom ordinary grief were as nothing.\nThat look of life, that pain so real, came certainly from a human heart\nthat once beat beneath them, and in them painted its wounds, its tortures,\nand its agony. They were _seen_, and not merely created in the\nartist's brain.\n\nYes; you are right. Those features are those of a suffering, repentant, and\nmiserable man. If you approach the base of the crucifix, you will see\ngraven in the once soft stone, in long Gothic letters, and in the Suabian\ndialect of the fifteenth century, these short and simple words, which are\nthe explanation and the ending of its story:\n\n    \"MINA, OTHO.\n  \"May God receive you and pardon me.\"\n\nNothing more; no signature to the work, nor name added to the prayer. But\nyoung souls, simple hearts, poetic spirits, which still may be found at\nBaden, in spite of \"sport\" and \"the turf,\" will relate to you the birth of\nthe work and the fate of the artist; for, alas! the story of the crucifix\nis also the story of the sculptor.\n\n----\n\n  Chapter I.\n\n\nIt was a populous, busy, and bright city, Baden of old, as it flourished in\nthe fifteenth century, in the days of the Margrave Bernard of Staehberg.\nLess noisy than to-day, it was more picturesque. Where great hotels, white\nvillas, and regular edifices now rise, then only narrow crooked streets\nwere seen; where Gothic houses, those old German dwellings, of which a few\nstill stand at Augsburg, at Ulm, and especially at Nuremberg, reared their\nsculptured gables and pointed roofs, wherein were set windows looking like\nhalf-opened eyes, while beams projected from the wall beneath and supported\nlittle balconies, and long, narrow windows with leaden sashes glistened in\nthe glory of their little, thick, greenish hued and diamond-shaped panes.\n\nNevertheless, those streets in which the sun-rays rarely penetrated,\n(caught as they were in their way by the projecting fronts of the houses,)\nwere one day of the beautiful month of May, 1435, filled with people in\nholiday dress, bearing curious and smiling faces, with fluttering pennons,\nshining armor, and broad banners. It was the day of the tournament, and the\ngossips grouped themselves together to see pass the barons of the mountains\nand plains, and to relate to each other the high achievements of each\ndoughty noble and the traditions of his family, while they awaited the\nreturn from the _burg_ of the proud victors or humbled vanquished.\n\nBut of the general joy, the cries that rang through the town, only a few\nfaint and expiring echoes reached a lonely and distant street, where the\nhouses, lower and more scattered, no longer stood close together, but began\nto grow scattered through the fields. One of these houses, the largest and\nalmost the last, was distinguished from its neighbors by two peculiarities.\nThe front of the first story, instead of being cut by those narrow\nleaden-sashed openings joined one to the other, through which the light of\nday might scarcely enter, offered to the gaze a huge window with larger,\nneater, and more regular panes than any around. Through the openings on the\nground floor a narrow spiral staircase might be seen winding its polished\nsteps and balustrade of stone, carved like lace, beneath a roof of wood\ndelicately cut in graceful flowers, branches, arabesques, and interlaced\nfigures.\n{482}\nAbove all, in a little wooden niche, a little carved shrine, which\nsurmounted the pointed gable, was the form of an angel with folded wings,\nchiselled in pure white marble. One might imagine that the heavenly\nmessenger had stopped there to rest in the middle of some long journey;\nthat he gazed calmly down and protected with his frail hands the high gray\nhouse which he seemed to bless; so that the gossips, who all knew the\ndwelling and held its master in high esteem, called his abode The House of\nthe Angel.\n\nAnd the good burgesses wondered not to see the white statue on that gray\nfront, nor did they marvel at the graceful scrolls and arabesques of the\npretty staircase, and that huge dazzling window, for they knew that the\nlast served to light the studio of the sculptor Sebald Koerner, and that\nthe two ornaments of the house, the marble angel and the carved roof, were\nhis work.\n\nSebald Koerner was justly esteemed and even admired by the burgesses of\nBaden. It was not that he was very famous or very rich; that he earned much\nmoney or made much noise in the world. But it was because he was honest,\npatient, true; at once pious and dreamy, modest and intelligent. He lived\nonly for his art, and scarcely partook at all of the passions, the aims,\nthe entrancements of the crowd. He did not place himself above it, but\nwithout it, and men hold in high respect those who from a calm retreat\nbehold the torrent of human life rush by. As an artist, he had rivals, but\nno enemies; as a man, he had his failings, but no vices; as a father, he\nhad a treasure, a fair-haired daughter, named Mina, who had seen the\nflowers of seventeen springs bloom. Sebald Koerner might call himself a\nhappy man.\n\nBut he was not only a happy man, he was a wise one, and what God had given\nhim of strength, genius, calm, and happiness he guarded carefully, lest he\nmight lose it in the tumult of the life of men. Therefore the day of the\ntournament, which had so stirred the peaceful city of Baden with rumors of\npleasure and joy, saw old Sebald shut himself up in his atelier. He had\nworked since dawn, while the swords of others were clashing and shields and\nbreastplates resounding, while plumes and banners flashed through the air,\nand horns and clarions awoke the echoes; and he had first prayed, for such\nwas his custom, and he imagined that prayer brightened his\ninspirations--men were so ignorant and barbarous in those \"dark ages\"! Then\nwith a skilful and pious hand he wielded hammer and chisel through long\nhours well employed, and now, although the sun was sinking behind the\nmountains, he still worked, standing before his great stone bas-relief,\nonly interrupting himself from time to time to cast a glance full of\nparental love on his daughter Mina.\n\nUpon Mina fell the last ray of the sun, which, after kissing the verdure of\nthe mountain, shone through the panes and made her long silver-gray gown\nglitter like silver itself, and seemed to light a beam of dark light in the\ncentre of each of her large black eyes. Those were splendid eyes, and\nrarely seen in one so fair, for Mina was a blonde, and the golden threads\nof her purse were not brighter than those her hair, but only less soft and\nclose. Nothing could equal the perfect purity and grace of her forehead and\ncheeks, the whiteness of her skin, the delicacy of the lines of her face:\nshe seemed a beauteous statue, to which God, in reward to its designer, had\ngiven life and motion, and a loving heart and golden hair.\n\nThe bas-relief which the old sculptor was finishing seemed indeed as if\nlong and difficult labor had been spent upon it. It represented a religious\nsubject, for any but religious subjects were scarcely known, in those times\nwhen minds were so simple, imagination so quiet, and intelligence so\nlimited, according to our strong-minded ones of this age; in those times\nwhen pilgrims marvelled at the beauty of a Child Jesus, or the chaste grace\nof a Virgin Mary; when the Apollos, the Minervas, the Venuses and Adonises,\nforgotten or unknown, were yet buried in the darkness of centuries and\nunder the dust of ruins.\n\n{483}\n\nWhat Sebald Koerner wished to represent was the dawn of the resurrection\nday.\n\nThe cave of the sepulchre was there, rocky, vaulted, and low. At the\nentrance knelt Peter, with wide-opened eyes and trembling lips, and\nMagdalene wept, stretching forth her arms. Yes, she wept, for the sepulchre\nwas empty. The stone which closed the tomb moved to one side, allowed the\nscattered bands which wrapped the sacred body and the abandoned\nwinding-sheet to be seen, and the angel seemed to announce to the two\nfaithful followers the glad and great tidings--the tidings of triumph and\nof consolation--_Resurrexit: non est hic:_ words graven on the\nbanderole which hung from his hand.\n\nOld Sebald's angel was noble, radiant, and beautiful, as became a messenger\nof heaven. The sculptor, with something of artistic caprice, had placed a\ngolden star upon his forehead, and with the fond pride of a father had\ngiven to his face the features of his beautiful Mina, so that, when he\nsmiled upon his angel, it seemed to him that he smiled upon his daughter,\nand, when he turned to his daughter, he became grave, and moved as if he\nlooked upon a celestial visitant.\n\n\"I am satisfied with thee, my daughter,\" said he, after silently comparing\nfor some moments the two faces. \"I find nothing to change in thy pure brow,\nthy modest attitude, or thy soft gaze. All that I cannot copy is thy smile.\nAnd thy smile is sweet, my Mina, but it is too lively, too childish, too\nmocking; it is earthly, and not, I am sure, the smile of the bright ones\nabove.\"\n\n\"Marvel not that it should be so, my father,\" replied Mina, while her eyes\nglistened: \"Above, angels smile in ecstasy, love, and piety, while I here\ncan only bear the smile of youth and hope.\"\n\n\"Thou art right, my child; I would not blame thee. Hope is natural to the\nyoung. Long years are before them; they may expect to see their projects\naccomplished, their brightest dreams realized. Melancholy and weariness are\nthe lot of old fathers, old dreamers, and old workers such as I.\"\n\n\"And why, father,\" returned Mina gayly, \"shouldst thou be sad? Hast thou\nnot an art which is better than a fortune? a name which is known throughout\nBaden as well as those of our oldest barons and bravest knights? Thou art\nnever idle; thou lackest a companion never. Noble ladies and proud lords\noffer thee a respectful salute as they pass the door of the House of the\nAngel; and, when they are not here, thy little Mina remains; and thou\nthyself makest holy companions for thyself when carving some beautiful\nVirgin or sweet child-Jesus.\"\n\n\"'Tis that which often makes me tremble, my child. Hath my spirit enough of\ninspiration, are my hands pure enough to reproduce those holy features? to\ngive to stone, or marble, or wood the charm and majesty of those divine\nforms which from their golden halos call and smile on me? to express the\nsweetness of the Christ-child, the tenderness of Christ the Mediator, or\nthe virginal motherhood of his holy mother? No; to inspiration must be\nadded the heart of a Christian; and if I have dared too much and but ill\nsucceeded; if to those sacred faces I have given too much of man's fall and\nmisery, then am I guilty, and then have I failed in my aim--in more than my\naim, for then my peace of conscience and repose of soul, too, are lost.\nThese, Mina, are the fears that weaken and the questions that disquiet me,\nand so often render my hand unsteady, and mark care upon my brow.\"\n\n\"Thou art very wrong to be so troubled, my father,\" said Mina, lifting her\nhead with a little air of triumph. \"From Strasburg to Nuremburg, from\nConstance to Augsburg, all who have hearts and eyes and frequent the\nchurches say there is in this world no man like thee to carve angels and\nsaints.\"\n\n{484}\n\n\"Ay; so say men,\" replied Sebald, \"but God hath not yet said it, he who\nsees and judges my works; and from him must come my courage and my\nstrength, for I would destroy all the works of my hands if by them I knew\nthat he was offended. Look, my child, this bas-relief is nearly completed,\nand until now I was satisfied with it, but a scruple comes and weighs\nheavily upon my mind. This angel is very beautiful, Mina, since he bears\nthy face, but have I not presumed too much in giving him thy features? As\none of the host of heaven he is perfect, so far as aught beneath God\nhimself can be perfect. But thou art but a child of earth; thou art good,\nthou art tender to thy old father; thou art his only treasure, and yet more\nbeautiful than this angel, but wilt thou be always calm, pure, and radiant\nas he?\"\n\n\"I will try, my father,\" answered Mina, with an air of half rebellious\nresolution, mingled at the same time with deep tenderness.\n\n\"Promise me, Mina, that thou wilt ever seek to be angelic and joyous, and\nin the midst of the world to live retired from it, that the weaknesses and\ngriefs of men may ever remain far from thee and never afflict thee. I am\nold, and, when I shall rest in the tomb, thou wilt be the heiress of my\nname and the guardian of my memory. Then learned men, princes, travellers,\nwho may perchance have heard of my fame, may come. Thou wilt salute them at\nthe threshold, and when they ask for old Sebald, thou, pointing to my\ndeserted studio and empty seat, wilt reply, '_Resurrexit: non est\nhic_: He hath succeeded; he hath finished his years of toil, and\nreposeth in his fatherland.' And I, my Saviour!\" continued old Koerner, \"I\nwill then know whether I knew thee on earth. After thou hast done this, my\ndaughter, dismiss the travellers and bid the princes farewell. Live in\nsimplicity and retirement with a few old friends, my poor child, for thou\nhast no mother, or with some faithful companion whom thou mayest wed.'\n\n\"Father, father!\"' cried the young girl, \"why speak of sorrow and death in\nthe beautiful spring, when the sun shines so brightly, and when thou art\nfinishing the beautiful angel to whom thou hast given such radiance and\nyouth? If thou couldst give him youth, my father, it is because thou yet\npossessest youth and long wilt possess it. And thinkest thou that, if thou\nwert no longer on earth, many would give a thought to thy little Mina, who\nis young and ignorant, and who is not a lady? No, those to whom strangers\nwould come to speak of thy fame, whom, after thy departure, they would\nseek, are sure to be thy pupils Johann Muller, Franz Steinbach, and\neven--and even--Sir Otho of Arneck, who carves so bravely, and wears such\nglistening arms.\"\n\n\"As to the two first, thou art perhaps right, my daughter,\" said Koerner,\nwho had again begun to work, and was lightly polishing the tunic of the\nangel with the edge of his chisel. \"Franz hath ardor and Johann almost\ngenius. But for the knight, Sir Otho, he amuses himself with sculpture as\nwith training his hawks or with the wrestling of his varlets.\"\n\n\"Art not too severe?\" asked Mina lowering her eyes and puckering her rosy\nlips into a little pout. \"I thought the knight of Arneck had something of\ntalent; that thou thyself saidst the day he modelled the great St.\nMichael.\"\n\n\"In good truth, he might have talent, were he more pious, more humble, and\nwere he not a noble. Thinkest thou, Mina, that inspiration will come in the\nmidst of the clamors of a passage-at arms, the charms of a concert of\nlutes, or of a circle of great ladies listening to the words of a handsome\ncavalier, or the lays of a minnesinger? No; who would consecrate his labors\nto the honor of God and the saints must seek his inspiration, looking\nupward to heaven, studying the mountains and the fields, or praying in the\nchurches. Then let him return and work and adore, lest the holy vision fly\nor the sweet fervor grow cold.\"\n\n{485}\n\n\"Nevertheless, my father, the Chevalier Otho, is very assiduous, and I have\nmore than once heard thee marvel at his zeal.\"\n\n\"Assuredly, he has been zealous. But can he really bear that zeal in his\nheart, wherein he bears the pride of his high lineage, the gallantry of a\ncourteous knight, and all the cares of his seigneury? No; his ardor is but\nthe flame of burning straw, which quickly dies. I cannot even understand\nwhy the knight of Arneck should take up the chisel--he who should content\nhimself with the sword.\"\n\n\"Yes, yes, father, he wields it marvellously!\" cried Mina, in a burst of\nenthusiasm.\n\n\"And therefore should be content with it. But Sir Otho knows not what he\nwants. To day he practises a new thrust, and to-morrow he cuts stone or\nmodels a statue. See, he has not finished the fine armor of his archangel,\nand yet he could not keep from the tournament. And nevertheless, he\npromised to be here before evening.\"\n\nMina did not reply to these last words, but threw a vague, sorrowful glance\ntoward the sun, which yet shone, but was fast sinking.\n\nSebald, yet touching up various parts of his bas-relief, did not turn his\nhead, and for some moments silence reigned in the atelier.\n\nSoon the fall of a light and vigorous step was heard on the little pointed\nblack stones which formed the pavement of the street.\n\n\"It is perhaps Sir Otho,\" said Sebald, and continued his work.\n\n\"If it were he, he would come on horseback,\" replied Mina, whose cheeks,\ndespite her, were covered with the blush of expectant happiness, and in a\nmoment she had left her seat, opened a portion of the large window, and was\nleaning joyfully over the sculptured balcony.\n\nBut she soon returned, looking sad.\n\n\"No, father, it is not he; it is only Johann,\" said she, and she seemed to\nawake from a dream.\n\n\"Then let him come up quickly,\" replied the old man, well pleased with the\nnews, but still working on.\n\nA moment after he arose, as he heard the footfalls on the stair, and turned\nto greet the most beloved and studious of all his pupils.\n\n\n\n  Chapter II.\n\nThe new-comer was a young man of perhaps twenty-eight years, pale,\ndelicate, and slightly stooped. His large blue eyes, candid and\nintelligent, gave a charm to his young though thoughtful face, whence light\nemotions seemed to be banished to give place to the workings of a vigorous\nmind. Johann, at first sight, did not seem handsome, but he became more and\nmore interesting on acquaintance. The simplicity of this look and costume--\na dark gray doublet, leathern belt, and cap without either clasp or plume--\ncertainly neither attracted nor retained the gaze. Johann saluted the\nbeautiful Mina, who returned his greeting with a look of playful anger, and\nthen hastened to greet his master.\n\n\"Well, Johann, what news?\" asked Sebald, advancing with outstretched hand.\n\n\"That I have not come alone, master. Your business is done; the prior of\nthe monastery of Fremersberg is here. I have spoken in your name, and he\nbinds you neither by designs nor advice. You will be at full liberty to\nexecute according to your own will the sculpture of the chapel. You need\nonly confer with him as to the time and conditions of the work. The prior\nwished much to visit your atelier and see your beautiful bas-relief, of\nwhich the fame has spread far and wide, but you know that he is old and\ninfirm. The stair was too steep for him to mount, and I left him in the\nhall below, where he awaits you.\"\n\n{486}\n\n\"Very good; I go, my brave boy and thanks to thee. Hast been in the city,\nJohann?\"\n\n\"Yes, master, I was carried away by the crowd and could not avoid the\ntournament.\"\n\n\"Very well, then, amuse Mina with the story of all the fine things that\nthou hast seen. An old father and his statues are not very joyous company\nfor a girl of seventeen.\"\n\nWith these words Koerner left the room, and Mina, who until now had\nremained silent and pouting, came forward with animated looks and flashing\neyes:\n\n\"Then you saw the tournament, Johann?\" she began.\n\n\"Yes, Demoiselle Mina.\"\n\n\"Who were the victors?\"\n\n\"There were three, as there were three encounters. The Gaugrave Siegfried\nof Ehrenfels; the old Count of Arenheim; and our acquaintance, our fellow\nof the studio, Otho of Arneck, who triumphed on foot and on horse, and\nreceived the finest of all the crowns.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" exclaimed Mina, with a joyous sigh, while a sudden blush overspread\nher countenance.\n\n\"And,\" continued Johann, \"it was the richest and most beautiful of the\nladies of the Margravate who gave it him--the Countess Gertrude of\nHorsheim, whose father possesses the entire valley of the Murg.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" exclaimed Mina again, but this time her sigh was one of anguish, and\nshe grew pale.\n\nJohann Muller gazed on her a moment in silence, then turned away and walked\na few paces with the air of one who meditates some resolution or prepares a\ndiscourse; then he returned, and stood with downcast eyes before the young\ngirl.\n\n\"Demoiselle Mina,\" said he, \"we have known each other since infancy. Would\nyou, for the sake of our old friendship, allow me to ask you one question,\nand then to offer you a single counsel?\"\n\n\"I will reply to your question, if it be suitable for me to do so, and I\nwill list your counsel if it be good,\" replied the girl with a slight\nhaughtiness in her manner.\n\n\"You shall judge,\" said Johann. \"Demoiselle, you take much interest in all\nthat passes in the city.\"\n\n\"I seek not to conceal it. I am young and full of life, and I love to gaze\nupon brilliant cavalcades, shining breast-plates, floating plumes and\nbroidered doublets; I like to hear of the nuptials of such a baron, or the\nmourning of such a castellan. My father forbids it not, nor think I that\nyou will blame it. Such tastes are far from marvellous at my age.\"\n\n\"Nor marvel I at them; but if they are imprudent, demoiselle?\" asked Johann\nwith a look of affliction.\n\n\"Imprudent! Why?\" returned Mina quickly, a flash gleaming from beneath her\nlong lashes.\n\n\"Because--because,\" stammered Johann, \"to me it seemeth that the happiness\nof a young maiden like thee, beautiful, good, and virtuous as thou art, is\nbetter assured when it flourishes beneath the shadow of her home.\nBaronesses and countesses may display their great names and fine apparel at\ncourts and tourneys; but for thee, demoiselle, _thy_ pride, _thy_\nrich apparel, and _thy_ true dignity are thy sweet virtue in the first\nplace, and, after, the renown of thy father, and such gifts are but little\nprized by the great ones of the world. Thou wilt better enjoy them and\nbetter preserve them by not exposing them without thy dwelling.\"\n\n\"And have I not remained there?\" cried Mina, almost in tears. \"Go I ever to\nrejoicings unless my father bears me company? Was I ever seen, while he\nworks here, to babble or even to smile without?\"\n\n\"'Tis not that I would charge,\" replied Johann, \"All see thee ever here,\ntranquil, smiling, and pure, like yon bright marble cherubim, which hovers\nover thy house, and, even if he were not there, still might thy dwelling be\ncalled the House of the Angel.\n{487}\nBut if thy thoughts wander abroad whilst thou remainest here; if thou dost\nalways desire ardently to see those rejoicings of which thou knowest\nnaught, or that world which thou scarcely knowest, thou wilt become\nunhappy, demoiselle, and it is that evil I wished--that thou must escape.\"\n\n\"But why, my good Johann, disquiet thyself about my happiness?\" asked Mina\nin a kinder tone.\n\n\"Why, Mina, why? Because from childhood I have grown by thy side; because\nfor long years it seemed thou wert my sister; because later I thought thee\nmy friend; because I would gladly bear the burden of thy sorrows, and count\nthy hopes as mine own.\"\n\n\"I thank thee, Johann; thy heart is good and true,\" replied the girl, while\nher eye sought the distant mountain behind which the setting sun was soon\nto sink.\n\n\"Sayest thou so, Mina? I know nothing of that; I but feel that I have a\nheart that loves thee that would regard no effort, recoil from no sacrifice\nthat would bring to thee joy, glory, or happiness.\"\n\n\"Truly art thou generous, Johann,\" replied the girl, nodding her fair head.\n\"But I need naught; I am tranquil and happy, and will probably never find\noccasion for the exercise of thy devotion.\"\n\n\"Ah! if some day thou mayst find aught of consolation in my tenderness!\"\ncried Johann, clasping his hands and fixing a timid glance full of emotion\nupon her. \"Mina--I sometimes dreamt--pardon me--but thy father was always\nso affectionate to me, and thou hast often been so kind--I sometimes dreamt\nthat some day Sebald Koerner might call me son--that thou, Mina--thou\nmightest give me a name dearer, tenderer, holier yet. But your looks tell\nme I have hoped in vain before your mouth has spoken--and yet, to thee\nwould I have consecrated so much of devotion and love, if thou hadst become\nmy wife!\"\n\nThe maiden motioned with her hand and turned away with a sigh.\n\n\"We would be neither rich nor powerful,\" continued Johann, \"but\nnevertheless I thought we might be happy. If thou shouldst desire fine\napparel, Mina, I would have given thee them from the rewards of my toil; if\nthou shouldst desire glory, I would have worked until thou wouldst bear my\nname with pride. For thee would I have strained my uttermost strength, what\ntalent I may own, my youth--and of thee I would have asked only that thou\nshouldst remain joyous and beautiful, and shouldst love me a little. And\nhow peacefully would thy old father live--how happily die, seeing thee\nhappy and beloved, ay, adored! Yes--adored, Mina; I have said the word and\nwill not unsay it.\"\n\nUttering these last words, Johann lowered his eyes and bent his head before\nher, as if to express by his mien the deep tenderness of his heart. She\nstretched forth her hand, moved by these simple declarations of a love\nalmost hopeless, but yet so full of life.\n\n\"Dear Johann--faithful Johann,\" said she at length, \"thou art good and\nkind, but--speak no more thus. Thou hast said that in our childhood thou\nlovedst me as a sister. Let me still be thy sister. I will never be thy\nwife. I will neither lie nor forswear myself. I would shelter myself behind\nthe grating of the cloister of Lichtenthal or sleep in yonder cemetery\nrather than give thee my hand, because with it I should not give my heart,\nand thou wouldst not see remorse and regret in the heart of thy wife.\nJohann! let us be friends, and, if thou lovest me, try to forget thy\ndream.\"\n\n\"I may never forget it,\" murmured the young sculptor. \"My love is as old as\nI, Mina; it forms part of my life. But if God, some day allows its flame to\nbe quenched, it will be because he will light in its place a purer and\nloftier one, and God alone may console me, Mina, when I shall have lost--\"\n\nAt this instant the joyous notes of far off-trumpets broke the calm silence\nof the air.\n\n\"What sounds are those?\" asked Mina, turning to the window.\n\n{488}\n\n\"Probably the departure of the vanquishers of the tourney. After the\ndistribution of the crowns, they were invited to the _burg_, and are\nnow separating, doubtless to change their costume for the ball of the\nevening. Perhaps, too, some of the barons may be returning to their\ncastles, and, if so, their banners will soon appear at the end of the\nstreet.\"\n\n\"I am very curious to see them pass,\" said Mina, and, leaving Johann alone\nin the atelier, she pushed a stool upon the balcony, and there, leaning\nupon the railing, her little head with its golden hair supported by her\nwhite hand, she awaited the coming of the brilliant _cortege_.\n\n\n  Chapter III.\n\nToward evening, indeed, knights, bannerets, squires, and men-at-arms\nscattered themselves through the roads and the streets of the town. One of\nthe most brilliant, though least numerous parties were making their way\ntoward where the town became confounded with the country. Two nobles rode\nin advance, helmet on head and lance in hand, attired in brilliant armor,\nover which were thrown pourpoints of fine velvet. Behind, their squires\nbore their banners, one showing gilt battlements in a field gules, the\narmorial bearings of the barons of Arneck, the other the green oak and\nargent field of the rich counts of Broeck.\n\n\"My dear Otho,\" said the last named, throwing upon his young companion a\nglance of almost paternal affection, \"I am well satisfied with thee; thy\ndeeds shone bright in to-day's joustings. Thy brothers-in-arms had begun to\nlaugh at thee, and to say thou hadst become but an image-maker. But to-day\nshowed that the noble remained in thee.\"\n\n\"You are very kind, my lord count,\" replied the young knight.\n\n\"Not so, in sooth; I but look to thy interest, as in duty bound. Although\nthy domains, my friend, be of limited extent, thou hast a name ancient\nenough, a brilliant fame, and a brave enough form to make it a pleasure for\nmany a rich and proud demoiselle to give thee her hand and dowry, and to\nchange name and title for those of the barons of Arneck.\"\n\n\"You flatter me, lord count,\" replied Otho, raising himself in his saddle\nand joyfully stroking his mustache. \"Hath one of those fair ladies of whom\nyou speak deigned to cast a glance upon me?\"\n\n\"More than one has done so, as well thou knowest,\" returned he of Broeck;\n\"and even to-day the richest and most beautiful of them all, Gertrude of\nHorsheim, spoke and smiled graciously as she placed the crown upon thy\nbrows.\"\n\n\"Lady Gertrude,\" said Otho, \"hath truly a sweet voice and teeth of\nexceeding whiteness.\"\n\n\"Moreover, she hath two castles in the valley of the Murg and a thriving\nvillage in the plain. Her father is a stout lord, who, I well know, will\nnot object to thee for a son-in-law. I know, Otho, that Master Sebald\nKoerner has a pretty daughter, and that thou art sometimes charged with\nwishing to espouse her. But wouldst thou truly, in the lightness of thy\nheart, add to the battlements of thy shield the chisel of such a\nfather-in-law? They say that you make between you a complete company of\nstone-cutters, and that thou art the mason and he the sculptor. I wish thee\nwell, my friend, and therefore do I scold and mock thee. I know that in thy\nheart's depth thou art as proud as thou art brave. So far thou art Sir\nOtho, Baron Otho, and all noble ladies smile upon and salute thee. Wouldst\nbe called Otho the citizen, Otho the image-maker, and have all ladies turn\ntheir backs upon thee or point thee out as some wonder?\"\n\n\"Truly, not so: and never will I give them reason for so doing,\" replied\nthe young knight, with a face scarlet with shame.\n\n{489}\n\n\"Then,\" said De Broeck, \"reply suitably to the invitation I am about to\noffer thee. In a fortnight I give a festival at my castle. There will be\njousts in the great court, banquets in the great hall, balls and hunts,\ntilting for the ring, and shooting with the bow. The Countess Gertrude will\nbe there, and thou canst enroll thyself among the number of her suitors.\nSiegfried of Thunn will be there, too; he bore the ring from thee lately,\nand thou hast thy revenge to take. All this, I hope, promises enough of\npleasure, and is better than thy statues and images. So, Otho, thou wilt\ncome? I may count upon thee!\"\n\n\"Assuredly, my lord count, it is an honor and happiness to obey you,\"\nreplied the young knight, taking leave of his protector with a courteous\ninclination.\n\nThe two escorts separated, and Otho, dismissing his, took the direction of\nthe house of the old sculptor.\n\nA few moments after, Mina and Johann saw him enter the atelier.\n\n\"Here I am at last, my dear master,\" said he, pressing the old artist's\nhands with real affection. \"Did you think I had forgotten you in the midst\nof tiltings and passages-at-arms?\"\n\n\"There was certainly reason that you might,\" replied Sebald, smiling. \"In\nthe midst of thrusts of lance and crushing of helms, you could scarce think\nof kneading clay or cutting statues.\"\n\n\"That may be, but a pupil can always find time to give his dearest, his\noldest friend and most excellent master pleasure. And what think you,\nMaster Koerner, I bring to-day?\"\n\n\"Firstly, a crown, if rumor speaks truth,\" answered the sculptor;\n\"secondly, some broken casques and battered harness. Those, I believe, are\nthe gleanings of the tilt-yard.\"\n\n\"Then, master, you are wrong. I bring something different from all these.\nWould you know what? An order from the margrave, written with his own hand\nand sealed with his own seal, for Master Sebald Koerner to begin, with no\ngreater delay than a month at most, the decoration of the chapel and the\ngrand hall of his castle of Eberstein.\"\n\n\"How! The margrave choose me!\" cried Sebald, his eyes lighting up with joy.\n\n\"And certes, my master, could he have made a better choice? After the\ntournament we met in his castle, and he there spoke of his castle of\nEberstein and the embellishments he proposed, but he had not yet fixed his\nchoice upon a sculptor. In short, I brought forward your name; I praised\nyour St. Christopher; I recalled your Virgin Mary to his mind; some other\nnobles seconded me, and--here is the order written upon parchment.\"\n\n\"Thanks! thanks! my true friend! my dear pupil!\" cried the old master,\npressing the young knight's hand. \"Through your good offices some memories\nof me may remain in my country. The thick walls of the castle of Eberstein\nwill protect and preserve my statues, and they may perhaps be gazed on when\ntime shall have crumbled into dust the saints I have carved for the\npediments of the houses of the city, and the Christs I have raised by the\nroadsides. And it is you, noble Otho, who have brought to me the brightest\ncrown, the sweetest joy, a sculptor can wear or taste--the assurance of the\nduration--mayhap the glory of his works!\"\n\n\"Dear master, why so much of compliment and gratitude? Would I not do much\nmore for the love of art and of you?\"\n\nAnd while he spoke, the knight's eyes sought those of Mina, smiling and\nblushing in a corner, and repeated in their silent language, \"And for the\nlove of thee, too, fair girl.\"\n\n\"This day is a day of gladness for me,\" continued old Sebald. \"Johann\nconducted hither after vespers the prior of the Augustines, who hath\nconfided to me the decoration of his chapel.\"\n\n\"Pah! a monastery of poor monks!\" exclaimed Otho, shrugging his shoulders\nslightly, and throwing a disdainful glance on the humble Johann and his\ngray doublet.\n{490}\n\"Not a very brilliant or lucrative undertaking, I should say. You will\nneither win a load of glory nor mountains of gold there, my dear master.\nBut each brings what he finds and gives what he has,\" said the young\nknight, withdrawing his gaze from Johann and turning on his heel.\n\n\"I could find nothing better,\" said Johann in a tone of discouragement,\n\"although I, too, would work for the glory and fortune of my master.\"\n\n\"And thy master accepts thy good intentions with joy, my son,\" answered old\nSebald, taking his hand, \"for he knows that they come from a devoted soul\nand a sincere heart. I have not only a noble art and a good daughter; I\nhave also two brave pupils, two true friends. God be thanked, he hath made\nme a happy man!\"\n\nHappy, O poor Sebald! Ay, if thou hadst no daughter. Alas! why does Mina\ngaze with such simple admiration upon the noble countenance and gilt spurs\nof the knight? Why does she hang enchanted upon the sweet accents of his\nvoice?\n\nAs long as he came regularly to the studio, Mina was smiling and happy; but\none day he came not, and on the next she received a letter.\n\n\n  Chapter IV.\n\nFrom the day Mina received that letter she lost her freshness and gayety.\n\nThen commenced a long and bitter series of nights without repose and days\nwithout hope. She sometimes said sadly to herself that, as the sun shines\nnot always clearly, as the sky is not for ever blue, so the smiles and joys\nof maidens are of short life; and that, while timid women remain around the\nhearthstone, young and valiant knights must depart to the wars or on long\njourneys, like the great silver herons which pass a season on the borders\nof limpid waters, and then depart on outspread wing to return, when the\ngloomy winter has passed, to find once more their nests in the long grass,\nand their clean bath among the budding reeds. She thought all this, and\nthen reasoned a little and prayed much more; but she often trembled; she\never was in pain, and, becoming weak, she became unhappy.\n\nHer cheeks grew pale; her brow clouded; her eyes ceased to sparkle. She no\nlonger took pleasure in seeing from her balcony the archers of the margrave\npass, nor in confining with golden cords and tassels her shining hair or\nwaving robe. Her sadness and languor at last attracted the attention of her\nfather. He thought that his frequent absences, the solitude of the house,\nalone caused his daughter's weariness and illness. Ceasing for a while his\nlabor, he passed a few days with her, or brought her with him from time to\ntime, hoping to wean her thoughts from their melancholy by the sight of the\ngreat ornamented halls and the beautiful park of the castle of Eberstein.\n\nBut often, when he had led her to the great park and allowed her to wander\nthere, going himself to finish a keystone, to carve a capital, or decorate\na moulding, he found her not on his return crowned with wild flowers, or\nculling odorous berries and grapes, or following with eager eye the\nbounding deer. No; almost always Mina sat by the margin of some solitary\npond, plucking the leaves from willow branch or pulling a wild rose to\npieces. But her gaze bent not to the branch or to the flower. It wandered\nover the surface of the water, slowly and sadly, and ofttimes seemed to\nseek some invisible form in its depths, and then turned tearful from the\nwaves, as if sorrowing at not therein perceiving the object of its\nlongings.\n\nThe old sculptor wondered and grew sad, as a good father would, and then\nconsoled himself with the reflection that often tender hearts were subject\nto passing griefs, and that it takes but little to trouble the gayety of\nthe happiest maidens.\n{491}\nBut it was the weariness of idleness he feared most for Mina, and he made\nevery effort to distract her thoughts.\n\n\"Listen, my child,\" said he one beautiful morning in July, when the earth\nsmiled fresh and glittering in the dew--\"listen. It is too fine a day for\nme to wish to work in. In my old age I must have from time to time a little\nrecreation--fresh air and sun-light; if it please thee, we will go to the\ncity.\"\n\n\"As thou wishest, father,\" replied Mina, rising with vacant eye and dreamy\nair.\n\n\"And methinks a little walk and a few cheerful visits would do thee\nwondrous good. It is long since I have seen Master Hans Barthing, the\ngold-smith, mine ancient neighbor and old friend, and his daughters Jeanne\nand Bertha will not be vexed to have thee their companion for a day. Let us\nstart, then, my daughter. Ah! here is Johann! Well, let him come. Johann is\nan excellent youth, and is always welcome with Master Barthing as with me.\nJohann, my son,\" continued the old sculptor, turning to the young man, \"it\nis useless to take up the chisel to-day. Thou shalt help me to buckle my\nmantle. We are going to take a walk, and I invite thee to accompany us.\"\n\n\"I will go willingly,\" replied Johann, who rarely went out in Mina's\ncompany, and who, poor boy, marked with a white mark those days when the\npretty girl deigned him a friendly look or word.\n\nSoon the three visitors arrived at the house of Master Barthing, the\njeweller, whose talent was well known and valued even beyond the frontiers\nof the margravate of Baden, and whose frank cordiality and joyous humor\nwere justly prized by his friends and neighbors.\n\n\"You here at last, Master Koerner!\" cried the old goldsmith, rising from\nhis leathern arm-chair and doffing his furred cap as soon as he perceived\nhis visitors. \"Come you to examine my treasures or to ask a diamond from my\nshop? But, pshaw, my old Sebald, you need them not; you have other\ntreasures and owe no man for them; and here,\" he continued, looking on\nMina, \"is your most brilliant, your most precious diamond. Come. Jeanne!\nBertha! here is a happy visit a charming friend.\"\n\nThe two girls rushed forward and gave their ancient neighbor a thousand\ncaresses and a thousand kisses.\n\n\"How changed thou art, Mina!\" exclaimed Jeanne suddenly.\n\n\"Thou art wearied, I am sure,\" added Bertha, \"in thy great lonely house. It\ncannot be very diverting to have ever around thee but marble and stone, and\nplaster and statues. Why dost come so seldom to visit us? Together we can\namuse each other; we can recount legends as we spin; or Jeanne, who hath a\ngood voice, can trill some love-lay of the minnesingers. And what will\namuse thee perhaps more than aught else will be to see the beautiful and\nshining jewels in our father's workshop. I know well, my dear friend, that\nmany fine things are to be seen in thy father's atelier, but there\neverything is white for ever white, and that must be somewhat saddening.\nBut a young girl is always rejoiced and glad when she contemplates at her\nleisure rich diadems and rings, enamelled flasks, and glittering\nnecklaces.\"\n\n\"Courage, child! courage, Bertha!\" cried the goldsmith, laughing. \"It is a\ndutiful daughter who to love of her father joins love of his trade. Well,\nif thou thinkest Mademoiselle Mina will take pleasure in seeing my enamels,\nmy jewels, and my diamonds, as soon as our collation is finished thou shalt\ntake her to my atelier. I have there something I think exceeding fine, in\nfact a veritable master-piece. But it becomes me not to praise myself. You\nwill see; you will judge, and you will give me your opinion.\"\n\nHalf an hour after they entered the long and narrow gallery where the\ngoldsmith showed forth his richest jewels, his most massive and skilfully\nchiseled pieces of silver, his best finished and most precious works.\n{492}\nBrilliant lights seemed to sparkle and shine from all sides in this room of\nwonders. Everywhere glittered gold, rubies, sapphires, while pearls lent\ntheir soft white light, and diamonds and opals their thousand colors. Great\nshow-cases full of enamellings shone like the sun; rings, reliquaires,\nclasps, laid out on tables, seemed to form a vast train of sparks whose\nfires mingled in shining light, and chains and necklaces formed slender\ngarlands of stars and variegated flame.\n\nAnd while the two old men followed, chatting, behind, the three young girls\nwandered with light step in advance hither and thither, trying on this\nnecklace, toying with these rings, admiring that reliquaire, tearing their\nentranced eyes from those wildernesses of beautiful forms, of rays and\ncolors. Between the two groups came Johann, the poor youth feeling no\ninclination to join one and not daring to approach the other; lonely\nJohann, who admired alone, and from time to time sighed.\n\nSuddenly Master Hans advanced before the girls, and, taking a key from the\nhuge purse which hung at his belt, he unlocked a casket of cedar wood, and\nunrolled a carpet of emeralds on a field of glittering gold, before the\neyes of the spectators.\n\n\"How beautiful! how dazzling!\" cried the maidens.\n\n\"Whence came such splendid jewels, such magnificent stones?\" asked Master\nSebald. \"One would think the treasures of the Eastern magicians, of whom\ncrusaders' legends tell, were spread before him.\"\n\n\"This,\" replied Master Hans, plunging his hand into the casket and drawing\nforth a chain set with emeralds, \"is the treasure of the house of Horsheim,\nto which I have added, by the order of the present lord, some of my rarest\nstones. The count is about to celebrate the marriage of his daughter, and,\nbesides her dowry of beauty and of castles, he wishes to give her a\nsplendid one of jewels.\"\n\n\"Ah! then beauteous Lady Gertrude is to be married at last,\" said Mina,\nwith a sigh of relief, for she had not yet forgotten how on the day of the\ntournament Johann had told her that Otho had received the crown from the\nhands of the young countess.\n\n\"Yes, Demoiselle Mina; and the wedding, they say, takes place in a\nfortnight, and will be one of the most brilliant ever celebrated in the\nmargravate of Baden.\"\n\n\"But whom doth the countess marry?\" asked Johann, who, without knowing why,\nfelt his heart beat painfully.\n\n\"If rumor speaks sooth, a knight of but moderate fortune, but of goodly\nform, large heart, and name of renown. They say 'tis the Baron of Arneck;\nbut of this I am not sure, for I have never seen the count and lady\ntogether when they come the city.\"\n\n\"What! Otho, my pupil?\" interrupted Master Sebald.\n\n\"And why not, old friend? If, as I think, it be he, thou wilt henceforth\nsee him but rarely, for hereafter he will have much else to do besides\nmoulding clay or chiselling statues.\"\n\n\"Ah! I fear me much the brave knight is lost to sculpture,\" replied Sebald,\nsmiling.\n\nBut Johann smiled not. He drew near Mina and followed her movements with\nlooks of anguish. He saw her cheek blanch and a cloud come over her eyes,\nand, fearing lest she should faint, pushed a seat to her.\n\nBut Mina refused it with a resolute gesture, and without trembling\napproached the casket.\n\n\"Are you sure that it is Otho of Arneck she marries?\" asked she in a\nstrange tone, gazing fixedly upon Hans Barthing. \"In any event, the bride\nwill be brave in this glistening chain. Ah! if it were I--if I were rich\nand possessed castles, and were a countess--think you that I would not be\nbeautiful with these green flashings and diamonds in my hair and about my\nneck?\"\n\nMina, speaking thus with a bitter laugh and vacant stare, twined the chain\naround her neck and through her wavy tresses, and, in doing so, her little\nfingers moved so fast that none could see how they trembled.\n\n{493}\n\nBut suddenly her words ceased, her eyes closed, her hands fell by her side,\nand with a feeble cry she fell upon the chair.\n\n\"My daughter! O my daughter! What aileth thee?\" cried old Sebald, running\nto her.\n\n\"'Tis naught; a weakness; nothing more.\" said the goldsmith. \"The heat of\nto-day was, indeed, enough to make a young girl faint. Quick, Bertha!\nJeanne! bring hither the Queen of Hungary's water and open the windows.\"\n\n\"It is doubtless the influence of the stones that hath made poor Mina ill.\"\nmurmured one of the jeweller's daughters, who seemed to stand\nterror-stricken. \"Thou knowest, father, that the sapphire brings happy\ndreams, the opal misfortune on its possessor, and the beryl can cause\nfaintings. It is then perhaps, the emeralds which cause Mina's illness. She\nis not accustomed to gaze upon them, and they glitter so--the shining\nstones!\"\n\n\"Yes, it is certainly the jewels and their light and the heat,\" stammered\nJohann, who, on his knees, was holding the fainting girl's hands within his\nown, and trying to restore their warmth. \"But Demoiselle Mina recovers not.\nThink you not, Master Sebald, that it would be well to take a litter and\nreturn to your dwelling?\"\n\n\"Assuredly,\" replied Master Koerner, surprised and anxious at his\ndaughter's swoon.\n\n\n  Chapter V.\n\nOn the way home Mina opened her eyes, but she remained mute and mournful.\nBut when, after she had been placed on a lounge in the lower hall of her\ndwelling, she saw that her father was about to direct Johann to hasten the\narrival of a leech, she bent over to the old sculptor and retained him with\na hand cold as ice.\n\n\"I would speak a word with Johann alone,\" she murmured. \"Wilt thou permit\nme, my father?\"\n\n\"Surely,\" replied the old man, fixing upon her a look of wonder, but\nhastening to leave the chamber.\n\nThen Mina feebly called Johann, and made him a sign to sit at her feet.\n\n\"Thou saidst one day, my good brother Johann,\" said she, \"that thou wouldst\nspare no effort, recoil from no risk to procure me joy or happiness.\"\n\n\"So said I; so will I do,\" answered the poor youth, bending on her a look\nfull of emotion.\n\n\"Then, Johann, thou canst preserve my greatest happiness, cause my greatest\njoy. I know that I cannot deceive thee; I noted thy gaze when Hans Barthing\nspoke of the marriage of Otho and Gertrude. Know then, Johann, that the\nknight of Arneck is my true--my only love; and now I would know if he hath\nbetrayed me. It is peace of heart I need for my cure, Johann, and not the\nskill of the leech. Depart then, good Johann, and go to Horsheim. There\nthou wilt easily learn who is the countess's betrothed. And thou mayest\neven, without being perceived, see them pass by together, speaking low,\nwalking hand in hand, believing themselves alone. Thou wilt return and tell\nme all, Johann, and I will gain strength to live until thy return; for it\nwould be too bitter to die if Otho remaineth faithful. Thou wilt go--wilt\nthou not, my brother--my only friend?\"\n\nJohann's only reply was a kiss imprinted on Mina's hand and a silent\npressure of her taper fingers, while two great tears rolled from his eyes.\nThen he departed from the House of the Angel, and, after having called the\nphysician, saddled his horse and left the town that very evening, following\nthe line of the high hills which stretched away toward the Rauhe Alps, at\nthe foot of which was the castle of Horsheim.\n\n\n  To be Continued.\n\n------\n\n{494}\n\n\n    Original.\n\n\n    Forebodings.\n\n\n  Pretty Nan to Flora said,\n    \"Prithee, why so gay?\"\n  Dark-eyed Flora bent her head:\n    \"_He_ is gone away.\"\n\n  \"Strange!\" quoth Nan. \"If 'twere my heart,\n    None could be more sad.\n  Absence gives the keenest smart.\n    Tell me, why art glad?\"\n\n  Dark-eyed Flora, with a sigh,\n    'Gan to braid her hair,\n  Whilst to Nan she made reply:\n    \"Hark! my sister dear.\n\n  \"Chanced it on a summer morn,\n    Laughingly I chose\n  These long tresses to adorn\n    With a beauteous rose.\n\n  \"Of the flower he made request,\n    I in wilfulness\n  Did refuse, and as a jest\n    Gave _it_ a caress.\n\n  \"But I did not long deny.\n    Said I: Plucked for you,\n  Take; but care it tenderly,\n    'Tis my rose-love true.\n\n  \"Nameless was the pain and dread\n    Filled my aching heart.\n  Soon I saw my rose-love dead,\n    Idly torn apart.\n\n  \"Thus he would my heart's love fling\n    Coldly, idly by.\n  Than to wear his wedding-ring,\n    Rather would I die.\n\n  \"Ah! the cruel, ugly smart!\n    Fear my love did slay.\n  Pined I sadly in my heart\n    Till he went away.\n\n  \"'Gainst the power of his voice\n    All in vain I strove.\n  Freed by absence, I rejoice,\n    Now I dare to love!\"\n\n------\n\n{495}\n\n    Abridged from The Dublin University Magazine.\n\n    The Minor Brethren.\n\n\n  [The ensuing portion of an article from which we have stricken out the\n  remainder on account of its objectionable statements, although not\n  strictly in conformity with the Catholic view of the lives of the saints,\n  furnishes a graphic sketch of the life of St. Francis, and an evidence of\n  the approximation many Protestants are making toward a more candid and\n  reasonable view of Catholic subjects.--ED. C. W.]\n\n\nThe towns of Italy were in advance of those of other countries; many of\nthem were beautifully built, and celebrated for their wealthy and powerful\ncitizens. Such a town was Assisi in Umbria, and such a citizen was Pietro\nBernadone when his son Francisco was born--Francisco Bernadone, afterward\nPater Minorum, Pater Seraphicus, then St. Francis, with a place among the\nsaints in the hagiology of the church, now high up on stained-glass windows\nof thousands of churches, in illuminated missals, imperishable in history,\nand honored by men of all subsequent times and creeds as a great reformer\nand benefactor to humanity, an ardent, enthusiastic Christian. We shall\ncontemplate the character and work of St. Francis as the \"SALT\" infused\ninto the world at one of those periods of its corruption, and in order to\ndo this we shall endeavor to delineate the man as clearly as we can from\nthe acts of his life and the emanations of his mind; then examine his great\nwork, and its effect upon the church in general, and upon that of our own\ncountry in particular.\n\nWe shall endeavor to portray St. Francis, the founder of the Friars Minors,\nnot according to the phantoms of imagination, or the caricatures of\nprejudice, but from the records of his life, and still more efficiently\nfrom his works and sayings. Fortunately the materials are ample. There is a\nlife of St. Francis, written by Thomas of Celano, the probable author of\nthe sublime mediaeval hymn, the \"Dies Irae,\" and, as he was a follower and\nan intimate friend of the saint, he writes with authority. At the command\nof Gregory IX., he committed to writing his knowledge of the life of St.\nFrancis, which work was called the \"Legenda.\"\n\nA second life was written by John of Ceperano; a third by an Englishman,\nbeing a metrical version of that of Celano; a fourth by three companions of\nthe saint, (_a Tribus Sociis_,) Leo, Angelus, and Ruffinus, compiled\nat the command of the minister-general of the order, Father Crescentius; a\nfifth by the same Thomas of Celano, being a fuller sketch, at the request\nalso of Crescentius; and a sixth, written at the request of nearly the\nwhole order by St. Bonaventura, who, when a child, had seen the saint.\n\nAll of these biographies are extant in the Acta Sanctorum, written in what\nCarlyle would term \"monk or dog Latin, still readable to mankind.\"\n[Footnote 146] His works are scanty, but such as they are, they bear the\nimpress of the man's mind. It must be remembered that St. Francis made no\npretensions to being a scholar, a theologian, or an author; in fact, he was\na little inclined to deprecate these things; therefore, his literary\nremains are only a few letters, hymns, addresses, colloquies, predictions,\nand apothegms.\n\n    [Footnote 146: Past and Present.]\n\nHis father, though an avaricious man, yet lived in the profuse style\ncharacteristic of the leading Italian merchants, and young Francisco was\nbrought up accordingly, so that his youth, up to the age of twenty-five,\nwas spent in vanity.\n{496}\nDuring that time, he excelled all his companions in gay frivolity, and the\nvices common to a young man with a rich father, proud of his son. He was\nthe admiration of all, and led many astray by his example. He dressed in\nsoft and flowing robes, spent his time in jesting, wanton conversation, and\nsinging songs. Being rich, he was not avaricious, but prodigal; not having\nto work for his fortune, he cheerfully set about spending that of his\nfather.\n\nAn incident is recorded in the life by the three companions which is not\nmentioned by Thomas of Celano nor Bonaventura.[Footnote 147] It is, that\nduring a disturbance between the citizens of Assisi and the people of\nPerugia, young Francisco was captured, and, with others, placed in prison.\nWhilst there his manner was so different from the rest, they being sad and\nhe more gay than ever, that they asked him the reason. \"What do you take me\nfor?\" said he. \"I shall yet be adored all over the world.\" He spent nearly\na year in this durance, and, when peace was declared, returned to Assisi,\nand devoted his attention to the sale of his father's wares, until his\nconversion, which happened some years later. During the interval he fell\nill, and began to lament for the sin of his past life, and to make\nresolutions of amendment. He recovered, and, with the recovery, the\npenitence and the resolutions all vanished.\n\n    [Footnote 147: It is alluded to, however, in the life of St. Columba\n    Reatina.]\n\nHe pursued his former life until a circumstance happened which very nearly\nchanged his whole career. A certain nobleman of Assisi was about to\nundertake a military expedition against Apulia, and young Francisco was\nimmediately fired with the longing to become a soldier. He had a mysterious\ndream, which he misinterpreted into an encouragement. After making all\npreparations, he set out and reached as far as Spoleto, where he had\nanother dream which convinced him of his mistake, and sent him back to\nAssisi. From that time he began to reflect, and in the embarrassment of his\nthoughts would retire into solitary places, and pray to God to guide him\nand direct him what to do.\n\nHe spoke in enigmas, and told his friends that he should not go to Apulia,\nbut would make his name famous at home. In reply, they demanded what were\nhis plans? was he going to take a wife? \"I am\"--said Francisco--\"I am going\nto take a more beautiful and noble wife than you have ever seen, who will\nexcel in beauty and wisdom all women.\"\n\nHe now took to fasting, prayer, and almsgiving. The mysterious work had\ncommenced; his whole nature changed; he isolated himself from all his\ncompanions, began to hear voices from heaven, to see visions, and to listen\nto calls from the Invisible.\n\nWhilst in this state, he was one day returning from a neighboring market,\nwhere he had sold some of his father's goods, and passed by the church of\nSt. Damian, which had fallen into ruins. A light flashed upon his mind. He\nhad previously, when praying in the fields, heard a voice say to him,\n\"Francis, go and repair my house,\" and therefore, without a moment's\nhesitation, he entered the church, found the old priest, bowed before him,\nkissed his hands, implored him to accept the money which he was taking\nhome, and permit him to remain there. The cautious priest allowed him to\nremain, but refused to take his father's money, when Francisco, in a fit of\nindignation, threw it aside contemptuously.\n\nBy this time the father began to be uneasy about the fate of his eccentric\nson and set out to make inquiries for him. Francisco then retired to a\nneighboring cavern. Here he staid some time, but at last, resolving to\nbrave it out, he returned, wasted and wan, to Assisi. The people thought\nhim mad, and pelted him through the streets, when his father, hearing a\nnoise, went out, and, recognizing his son, seized him, dragged him home\nchastised him severely, shut him up in a dark place, and firmly bound him,\nthat he might be safe till he returned from a journey he was about to take.\n\n{497}\n\nIn the father's absence, however, the mother, after trying in vain to\nreason with him, let him go, and he immediately returned to the church\nwhere he had been hiding. His father, upon his return, upbraided his wife\nfor releasing his disobedient son, and resolved upon bringing the matter to\na settlement.\n\nTo this end he went to the church, saw Francisco, and, finding him more\nobstinate than ever, decided upon letting him have his own way, but, with\ncharacteristic prudence, demanded the money from his son which he had\nreceived for his goods. This being restored, he was appeased, and then\nsuggested that, as Francisco had devoted himself to poverty, he would not\nrequire any patrimony, and might release his father from all claim upon\nhim. To this Francisco willingly consented. A formal document was prepared,\nand the parties appeared before the bishop, when Francisco not only\nrenounced his inheritance, but, taking off his clothes, threw them to his\nfather, with these words: \"Up to now I have called thee my father on earth,\nbut now I can securely say, My Father, who art in heaven.\" The bishop was\nso delighted that he embraced him, and gave him his cloak.\n\nThus was Francisco divorced from the world, from father, mother, and\nkindred, and married to poverty, to whom from this time forth he devoted\nhis life. An incident is recorded of him here which was indicative of one\nportion of his great work. He was out alone on a certain day, when a\nwretched leper crossed his path. Francisco instinctively shrunk from the\nsight, but, suddenly recollecting that his object was to subdue himself, he\nran after the leper, seized his hand, and kissed it.\n\nFrom that time he resolved to adopt the care of the lepers as a peculiar\nportion of his work, and we find him shortly afterward entering the leper\nhospital and devoting himself to their service, washing their sores with\nhis own hands, dressing them, and once even kissing them.[Footnote 148]\nThen he returned once more to Assisi, the scene of his youthful revelry,\nand in the garb of a mendicant begged in the streets from those who once\nknew him in luxury, for money to rebuild the church of St. Damian, as he\nfelt the injunction to do so was still upon him.\n\n  [Footnote 148: Bonaventura says: \"Educebat plagarum putredinem et saniem\n  abstergebat.\"]\n\nHis enthusiasm told upon men's minds, and money flowed in rapidly, so that\nhe not only rebuilt that church, but another also, St. Mary of Porzioncula,\nwhich he then frequented, and to which he was ever afterward deeply\nattached. One day when attending mass in this church, and the gospel was\nread, the words, \"Take nothing for your journey, neither staves nor scrip,\nneither bread nor money, neither have two coats apiece,\" sank deep into his\nsoul. He went out of the church, took off his shoes, laid aside his staff,\nthrew away his wallet, contented himself with a small tunic and a rope for\na girdle, struck out for the strict apostolic rule, and endeavored to\npersuade others to follow his example.\n\nThe first instance of the mighty contagion of that example occurred in the\nconversion of one Bernard de Quintavalle, a man of wealth and repute, who\ncame to Francisco, and offered himself and his all to him. The saint\nproposed that they should go to the church of St. Nicholas and seek for\nguidance. They did so, and, when the mass was over, the priest opened the\nmissal, after making the sign of the cross. The first response was, \"If\nthou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor;\"\nthe second, \"Take nothing for your journey;\" and the third, \"If any man\nwill come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow\nme.\" \"Let us obey the divine command,\" said Francis. Bernard immediately\ndid so to the letter, and adopted the same dress as his master.\n\n{498}\n\nThus was the foundation laid of that great order of Minor Brethren. It is\npossible that St. Francis, for we must call him now by his canonized name,\nhad not dreamt of such a thing as founding an order; but converts\nincreased; Peter of Catania and four others. Egidius Sabbatini, John de\nCapella, and Sylvester were then added, and they all retired to a hut in\nthe plain of Rivo Torto.\n\nWhen they numbered eight, St. Francis gave them a solemn charge, and\ndismissed them by twos in different directions to preach the gospel of\npeace and forgiveness. They met after a short time, and, as their numbers\nincreased so rapidly, St. Francis drew up his first rule, which differed\nvery little from that of the Benedictines, save that it enjoined at the\noutset a solemn injunction, ingeniously evaded afterward, that they should\nhave no property, but live in obedience and chastity. \"Regula et vita\nistorum patrum haec est scilicet vivere in obedientia et in castitate et\nsine proprio.\" Their clothing was to be of the poorest kind; for novices\nfor one year, \"duas tunicas sine caputio et cingulum et braccas et\ncaparonem usque ad cingulum;\" for those who were finally admitted, \"unicam\ntunicam cum caputio et aliam sine caputio, in necesse, fuerit et cingulum\net braccas.\" No brother should be called \"prior,\" but all should be termed\nMinor Brethren, \"fratres minores,\" and the one should wash the other's\nfeet.\n\nHumility was strictly enjoined. They were to live on charity; to beg their\nbread if necessary, and not to be ashamed, but rather to remember that our\nLord Jesus Christ was not ashamed, was poor and a stranger, and lived on\ncharity, both he and his disciples. They were stringently cautioned against\nwomen, or, as St. Francis ungallantly puts it, \"A malo visu et frequentia\nmulierum.\" Wherever they went, they were to remember that, and no one of\nthem was to counsel women in secret. They were to travel on foot; not to\nhave any beast, save from extreme infirmity, or the most urgent necessity.\n[Footnote 149]\n\n    [Footnote 149: Quod nullo modo apud se nec apud alium, nec aliquo modo\n    bestiam aliquam habeant.]\n\nHaving drawn up this rule, St. Francis, with two or three of his followers,\nwent to Rome to procure the pope's sanction to the order. They met the pope\non a terrace of the Lateran Palace, and threw themselves at his feet. He,\nannoyed at the interruption, turned away indignantly from these men with\nbare, unwashed feet and coarse attire, and bid them begone. They retired to\npray, whilst Innocent III. in the night had a vision which induced him to\nsend the next morning for those strange men whom he had repulsed. He\nreceived them graciously, approved of their rule, and they departed in joy\nto Assisi. His march back was a triumph. The people came out to meet him\nfrom the villages, and many deserted their homes to join him on the spot.\nThe next step taken by St. Francis was to make a modification in his rule:\nhe found many people were converted to his views, but from the ties of\nchildren and business occupations could not possibly follow him.\n\nTo meet such wants, he instituted what was called an Order of Penitents, by\nwhich those who joined were compelled to pray, to fast, and to live\naccording to certain rules, and wore beneath their ordinary garb the\npenitential girdle. This Order included both sexes, and people of all\nclasses. One member of it was, however, destined to greater things, the\nyoung and beautiful Clara, a daughter of the house of Ortolana. She had,\nfrom childhood, been brought up most religiously by her mother, and the\nweird eloquence of St. Francis finished the task.\n\nAn interview was arranged, and the saint suggested an elopement, which was\nsuccessfully effected, and Clara was abducted by St. Francis to the church\nof Porzioncula. Many other young ladies soon followed, and it was then\nnecessary to institute new rules for these fair converts.\n{499}\nThe church of St. Damian, which St. Francis had rebuilt, was turned into a\nconvent, with Clara (who was afterward canonized as St. Clara) as its\nabbess. A letter is extant in the works of the saint, which runs as\nfollows: \"Francis, to his very dear Sister Clara, and the Convent of the\nSisters of St. Damian, health in Christ. Because by the inspiration of our\nLord ye have made yourselves daughters and handmaidens of the Highest, of\nthe most high King and heavenly Father, and have betrothed yourselves to\nthe Holy Spirit to live according to the teaching of the gospel; it is my\nwill, and I promise that I and my brethren will have always for you the\nsame diligent care and special solicitude as for ourselves. Farewell in the\nLord.\"\n\nIn the year 1216, the first general council of the new order was held in\nthe Porzioncula, when Tuscany, Lombardy, Provence, Spain, and Germany were\nassigned to the principal followers of St. Francis as mission grounds. The\nsaint himself took France as his own field of operations. At this point a\nmeeting took place between St. Francis and one who stands in the church\nalmost on an equality with him, Dominic, the founder of the order of Friars\nPreachers.\n\nThree years after the first, the second council was held, and a grand sight\nit was--five thousand brethren encamped around the church. To this great\nbody, infused with the spirit of one man, Ugolino was introduced, and made\nsuch a flattering speech, and gave such glowing predictions of their future\npower and glory, that St. Francis became alarmed, and quickly perceived\nthat, if the protector were allowed to have free play, he would soon ruin\nhis charge. He therefore interfered, reiterated the severity of their rule\nwhich forbade all dreams of glory or power, told them they must always be\nthe Minor Brethren, the poor of the world, and after redistributing them\namongst several countries, broke up the assembly never more to venture on\nanother gathering into one spot of such inflammable materials. When they\nwere all dispersed, their great founder went upon a holy mission to the\narmy then under the walls of Damietta. He advised the Christians not to\nengage with the Saracens, and predicted their defeat if they did, but the\narmy were too eager for plunder and bloodshed. They engaged, and six\nthousand slaughtered Christians fulfilled the prophecy.\n\nThen St. Francis resolved upon taking a step which made his name still more\nfamous in history. Confiding his project to only one, who was to accompany\nhim, Illuminatus [Footnote 150] by name, St. Francis, although a reward was\nset upon the head of every Christian, wandered up to the lines of the\nenemy, was seized, and taken before the sultan. Strange to say, instead of\nordering him to be executed, the sultan received him courteously, listened\nto his preaching patiently, and asked him to remain with him in his tent.\nSt. Francis replied, \"I will remain willingly with you, if you and your\npeople will only become converted to Christ; but if you doubt, order a fire\nto be kindled, and I will enter into it with your priests, and see who is\nright.\" The sultan, who had perceived that one of the chief priests had\nvanished at these words, replied: \"I do not think any of my priests would\nsubmit to the torture for the sake of their religion.\" Then said St.\nFrancis: \"If you will promise for yourself and your people to adopt the\nChristian religion if I come out uninjured, I will enter it alone.\" The\nsultan, however, declined, and after vainly offering rich presents to St.\nFrancis, sent him back in safety to the Christian camp.\n\n    [Footnote 150: It is sometimes stated that St. Francis went alone, but\n    the lives by St. Bonaventura, by the Tres Socii, and by St. Thomas of\n    Celano, all mention this Illuminatus as his companion.]\n\n{500}\n\nAfter this memorable interview. St. Francis returned, preaching in all the\ncountries as he passed through. One day after his return, as he was praying\nin the church of St. Mary, Porzioncula, a vision of our Saviour appeared,\nand promised that, to all who should thereafter confess their sins in that\nchurch, plenary remission should be granted. St. Francis immediately went\nto the pope at Perugia, and procured the granting of the indulgence, in\nconsequence of which a ceremony is held to this day annually, in the church\nof St. Mary of the Angels, when the peasantry assemble to confess their\nsins and receive the promised indulgence.\n\nThen comes the last great tradition of his life--the receiving the\nstigmata. It is recorded, and firmly attested by the great men who wrote\nhis biography, that, on a certain morning, at the hour of the holy\nsacrifice, when St. Francis was praying on the side of Mount Avernia, Jesus\nChrist appeared to him under the form of a seraph crucified on the cross,\nand when the vision had disappeared, St. Francis was marked with the wounds\nof Christ in his hands, his feet, and his side.\n\nVarious grave discussions arose amongst the faithful about the truth of\nthis legend. Only nineteen years after its presumed occurrence a Dominican\npreacher had declared openly his disbelief of it, but then he was a\nDominican. The Bishop of Olmutz, however, followed in the wake, when Pope\nGregory IX. (Ugolino of old) wrote, reproaching them with their want of\nfaith; and Alexander IV., who succeeded, declared he had seen with his own\neyes the stigmata of St. Francis.\n\nShortly after this incident, St. Francis sickened, and, exhausted by long\nfastings and vigils, wasted gradually, until, as Bonaventura says, he was\nonly skin and bone--\"quasi sola cutis ossibus cohaereret.\" One day, during\nhis illness, a companion said to him: \"Brother, pray to God that he may\nhave mercy upon thee, and not lay his hand so severely upon thee.\" St.\nFrancis reproved him for such a speech, and, though he was very weak, threw\nhimself on the ground, and, kissing the earth, said: \"I thank thee, O Lord\nGod, for all my pains; and I pray thee, if it be thy will, multiply them a\nhundred-fold, because it will be most acceptable to me; for the fulfilment\nof thy will in me will be my supreme consolation.\" And his brethren noticed\nthat, as his bodily pains increased, his joy was greater. He predicted the\nday of his death, and begged to be carried to his beloved Porzioncula, that\nhe might yield up his spirit at that spot where he had first received\ndivine grace. It was done, and he insisted upon being laid naked upon the\nbare ground, when he turned to his companions and said: \"I have done my\npart; what yours is, may Christ teach you.\" When his last hour was come, he\nhad all the brethren on the spot called to him, addressed them kindly on\npreserving their vows of poverty, and upholding the faith of the Catholic\nChurch; he then laid his hands upon them, and pronounced his blessing upon\nall present and absent. \"Farewell,\" said he, \"all my sons; be strong in the\nfear of God, and remain in that always; and since future temptation and\ntribulation are near, blessed are they who continue in the things they have\nbegun. But I hasten to God, to whose grace I commend you all.\" Then he\ncalled for a copy of the gospels, and asked them to read him that of St.\nJohn, beginning at the words, \"Before the day of the passover,\" etc., when\nhe suddenly broke out into the psalm: \"Voce mea ad Dominum clamavi, voce\nmea ad Dominum deprecatus sum,\" continued to the words, \"Me expect justi\ndonec retribuas mihi,\" when, as they died away on his lips, the spirit of\nthe great founder passed gently out of his poor emaciated body, and\nreturned to its Maker.\n\nThus died St. Francis, in the odor of sanctity; and perhaps we cannot more\nappropriately conclude this brief outline of his life than by giving a\ntranslation of a sketch of his character and personal appearance, as\nwritten by one who knew him, Thomas of Celano, the author of the Dies Irae.\n{501}\nIt forms a graphic portrait of the man, and may serve as a fair specimen of\nhagiography. In his life of the saint, he thus writes:\n\n  \"Oh! how beautiful, how splendid, how glorious did he appear in the\n  innocence of his life, in the simplicity of his words, in the purity of\n  his heart, in his love of God, in brotherly charity, in fragrant\n  obedience, in angelic aspect! Gentle in manners, placid in nature,\n  affable in conversation, faithful in undertakings, of admirable foresight\n  in counsel, able in business, gracious to all, serene in mind, gentle in\n  temper, sober in spirit, stable in contemplation, persevering in grace,\n  and in all things the same; swift to indulge, to anger slow, free in\n  intellect, in memory bright, subtle in dissertation, circumspect in\n  choice, simple in all things; rigid toward himself, pious toward others,\n  discreet to everybody; a most eloquent man, of cheerful aspect, and\n  benevolent countenance, free from idleness, void of insolence. He was of\n  the middle stature, rather inclined to shortness; his head was of the\n  medium size, and round, with an oblong and extended face, a small smooth\n  forehead, black and simple eyes, dark brown hair and straight eyebrows;\n  his nose was thin, well proportioned, and straight; his ears erect and\n  small, and his temples were smooth; his tongue was placable, though fiery\n  and sharp; his voice was vehement, though sweet, clear, and sonorous; his\n  teeth well set, regular, and white; his lips of moderate size; his beard\n  was black, and not very thick; his neck thin; his shoulders straight,\n  with small arms, thin hands, long fingers and nails; he had thin legs,\n  small feet, a delicate skin, and very little flesh. He wore a rough vest,\n  took very little sleep, and though he was most humble, he showed every\n  courtesy to all men, conforming himself to the manners of every one. As\n  he was holy amongst the holy, so amongst sinners he was as one of them.\"\n  [Footnote 151]\n\n    [Footnote 151: Thomas de Celano in Vita Sti. Francisci. Acta Sanct.]\n\nBefore we advance further, we must say a few words upon a subject well\nknown to all who have investigated the originals of ecclesiastical\nhistory--the miracles attributed to the saints. Their biographies are\nspangled with miracles--that of St. Francis especially. The Acta Sanctorum\nis a compilation of some fifty or sixty folio volumes, containing sometimes\nfive or six different lives of each saint, written by men in different ages\nand countries, ranging from the eighth to the fourteenth century. All these\nwriters unite in one thing, the ascription of miraculous powers to the\nsaints. The question then arises, can this be wholly and entirely false?\ncan it be utterly without one grain of truth in it?--a tissue of falsehoods\nwilful, wanton falsehoods consistently written by men at vastly different\ntimes, and in remotely distant countries? We must premise at once that we\nare not for a moment going to defend the absolute truth of the wonders\nattributed to the saints. We do not believe for an instant that their\nbodies were sometimes lifted from the earth, and carried up into the sky,\nlike St. Francis; or that they walked dry-footed over the sea, as did St.\nBirim, when he left the corporalia behind him at Boulogne; nor that\ncommands and directions were given them direct from heaven, through the\nmedium of crosses, images, or pictures; but we cannot help reflecting as to\nwhether it is possible for such a systematic body of history to be handed\ndown to posterity in one continuity of falsehood for some eight or nine\ncenturies; or whether we may come to the conclusion that it is a\nsuperstructure of exaggeration built up upon some basis of truth. It may\nhelp us, perhaps, at the outset, to notice what were the characters of the\nwriters of these lives; were they men likely to be deluded by fanaticism,\nor likely to lend themselves to the perpetration and perpetuation of wanton\nfalsehood?\n\n{502}\n\nIf we turn over the volumes of the Acta Sanctorum, we shall find, on the\ncontrary, some of the brightest names in the annals of literature, piety,\nand philanthropy; some of the deepest scholars, the most acute reasoners,\nthe most elaborate thinkers recorded in the annals of fame; of men whose\nworks have been and still are the guiding lights of theological and\nphilosophical investigation. There are Bridferth, Eadmer, Lanfranc, Anselm,\nWilliam of Malmesbury, Thomas \u00e0 Kempis, Bonaventura, and many others, all\ndistinguished for intellect and piety. Some of them, too, were honored by a\npersonal acquaintance with the subjects of their memoirs, as in the case of\nBridferth, the contemporary of Dunstan, of Eadmer of Anselm, of Thomas of\nCelano and St. Francis. Can it be that these scholars, trained to\nphilosophical investigation--these profound thinkers--these holy\narchbishops and bishops should connive together to delude posterity with a\ntissue of lies--of wanton lies, which might have been easily contradicted\nby contemporary writers, many of whom were bitter enemies both of the\nwriters and their religion? Yet we find no such contradiction.\n\nWe have plenty of contemporary history handed down tolerably perfect as\nregards incidents, dates, accurate reports of great councils, descriptions\nof battles and sieges, lives of statesmen, warriors, and scholars, with\nviews of both sides, debated, refuted, or confirmed. And are we to believe\nthat in this matter of the lives of the saints only have all contemporary\nwriters, friends and foes, scholars, holy men, great benefactors of their\nage, conspired successfully together to hand down an enormous fabric of\nfalsehood, and at the same time secure the silence of all contemporary\nhistory? This is the great difficulty.\n\nA distinguished English writer, the elder D'Israeli, has endeavored to\naccount for these strange tales in the lives of the saints by suggesting\nthey were written as exercises and religious theses, when each student\nfilled up his outline with all the wonders he could invent to invest his\nsubject with greater glory. That is a theory accepted by many who are\nalready prejudiced toward its acceptation; but it is a frivolous theory, to\nwhich we object the improbability of these great men, whose names are\nalready mentioned, being set down, some of them in the maturity of their\nlives, to write religious exercises of that nature. Is it not rather\npossible that there may be something in all this history which we can\nneither understand nor explain?\n\nLet us examine for a moment into what we may venture to call the natural\nhistory of miracles. We find the Bible itself is an immense repertoire of\nmiracles from Moses down to the apostles, and it contains no distinct\nannouncement of a withdrawal of that power from the church. It was\nconfirmed by Christ, who endowed his apostles with the same power, and who\nsaid one or two things in his addresses to them which, we think, will throw\nsome light upon this vexed question.\n\nIt is quite certain that there have never been any miracles wrought in the\nworld by any who did not receive the power from God. We are not prepared to\nestimate what degree of change was produced in the relations between man\nand God by the fall; we are certain of this, that a gap was placed between\nthe two, so wide that Christ was sent to bridge it over; that an apostasy\nensued, and a disunion so complete that his death alone was able to provide\nthe means of reunion and reconciliation. Then it follows that faith was the\nonly possible mode to man of recovery of what was lost by man; faith before\nthe promise and faith after its fulfilment, and in the proportion of the\nstrength of that faith, and the consequent change of life in the heart and\nnature of him who possessed it, was the reunion with God promised. But how\ndoes this bear on miracles? In this way. Turn to the Bible, and it will be\nseen that of every man who is recorded to have performed miracles, it is\nalso recorded that he had this immovable faith, and that his life was\nordered accordingly.\n{503}\nFaith, prayer, and fasting have ever been the elements of the life\nnecessary to miracles, and we are not prepared, nor are we able to estimate\nwhat would be the result of such a course of severe discipline as some of\nthe saints went through toward a recovery of that lost union with God. It\nis a singular fact that, in the life of Christ, we find it was only after\nhis fasting and prayer in the wilderness that he began to perform miracles,\nas though during that severe trial of temptation, fasting, and prayer the\nperfect union between himself and his Father had been sealed by the final\ngift of miraculous power. And thus was it that, when in after times his\ndisciples were unable to cast out the devils, and appealed to him for the\nreason of their inability, he replied, \"This sort goeth not out but by\nfasting and prayer;\" and we are told elsewhere that the disciples of Jesus\ndid not fast. So that we find in the Bible there is a close connection\nbetween the active development of the spiritual, and the subjugation of the\ncorporeal life, and the working of miracles.\n\nAll the prophets led that life, they were given to prayer, fasting, and\nsolitude. It was the peculiar life of Jesus; retired to the mountains, the\ndeserts, and by-places for prayer, and he attributed the miraculous power\nto the results of this life. [Footnote 152] Is it, then, possible for a man\nby strong faith, accompanied by fasting and prayer, in these later days to\nregain that close, mysterious communion with his Maker which should give\nhim a supernatural power? We reply that we have not the means of answering\nthe question, for the simple reason that we never have an opportunity of\nseeing it tried. Without wishing to insinuate anything invidious, have we\nany record in ecclesiastical or other history, of bishops, priests, or men\nof any class during the last 400 years spending whole nights in prayer, or\nconsecutive days in fasting, such as we read, upon indisputable authority,\nwas the practice in the olden times of the prophets, and the later times of\nmen who devoted their lives to the imitation of Christ? [Footnote 153]\n\n    [Footnote 152: In the life of St. Francis we are told that \"solitaria\n    loca quaerebat,\" \"una die dum sic sequestratus oraret,\" \"cum die quadam\n    egressus ad meditandum in agro,\" \"dum per sylvam iter faciens.\"]\n\n    [Footnote 153: Our Protestant fasts are a \"lucus a non lucendo,\"\n    consisting of fish of various descriptions, curiously prepared by the\n    protean art of cookery, with very substantial adjuncts, and accompanied\n    by good wine. No miracles were ever wrought upon that diet.]\n\nThere are plenty of hints scattered throughout the Bible and Testament that\nthere is a mysterious connection yet to be recovered between man and God,\nif men will only fulfil the required condition, and we repeat that it is\nnot in our power to estimate the results of such a life as we have\nmentioned--a life of spiritual discipline, of development of the soul, and\nsubjugation of the body--because we have no examples around us; but we ask,\nif such life were pursued, what is there to prevent our believing that to\nsome extent the words of our Divine Master, who led that life himself,\nwould yet be verified, and \"this sort\" would still \"go out through fasting\nand prayer\"? Nay, further, we may add in illustration that the phenomena\nwhich are recorded as attending the careers of such men as Whitefield,\nWesley, and Irving have never yet been explained away by any scientific\ntheory or law; so that, in conclusion, as we find in the Bible an emphatic\nand reiterated record of miraculous power accorded to persons of a certain\nhabit of life and thought, as our Lord, when on earth, attributed that\npower to the pursuing of that peculiar life--as in every instance where\nmiracles are attributed to men, they are proved to have led such lives--it\ncannot be thought too much to suggest that, making great deductions and\nallowances for exaggeration, there may be some basis of truth underlying\nthat fabric of historical and traditional record of the lives of the\nsaints.\n\nMany of those incidents described so mysteriously are capable of\nexplanation. It is often recorded of these men that they saw visions and\nheard voices.\n{504}\nFor instance, it is said of St. Francis that, on one occasion, when he was\nlong praying in a solitary place, the Lord appeared to him as if on the\ncross, and so visible was this [Greek text] to him that ever afterward,\nwhen any thought of Christ's sufferings came into his mind, he could not\nhelp bursting into tears; also, that one night the Lord appeared to him,\nand said, \"Francisce, quis potest melius facere tibi dominus aut servus?\"\nAnd again, on another occasion, \"Francisce, vade et repara domum meam.\"\nWithin the range of our own experience, who is there amongst us who has not\nhad similar visions in the slumbers of the night, or heard similar voices\nin the day? Have we not had sweet converse with dear departed friends, and\nheard voices that have long been silent? What bereaved mother has not often\nheard the cry of her lost infant, or solitary widow seen the form of a lost\nhusband in the phantasms of the night? If such things happen to ordinary\nmen, we submit that we are unable to estimate the result of the mode of\nlife and the severity of spiritual training which those men underwent,\nbecause it is foreign to our habits, and not within the range of our\nexperience.\n\nWe now proceed to give a brief criticism upon the intellect of St. Francis.\nHe has left very little behind him. Only a few sermons, hymns, letters, and\nsayings, from which we can glean that he must have been an earnest preacher\nof the true popular type, driving home his truths by familiar\nillustrations, the type of that peculiar preaching which rendered his order\nso popular, and paved the way for their marvellous success. We subjoin a\nfew extracts, which illustrate not only his style, but the design of his\norder. In one of his epistles he says: [Footnote 154]\n\n    [Footnote 154: Ep. ii. Ad universes Christi fideles.]\n\n  \"Let us not be wise and prudent according to the flesh, but simple,\n  humble, and poor; and let us hold our bodies in contempt, because we are\n  all miserable and putrid; as the Lord says through the prophet, I am a\n  worm and not a man. We should never desire to be above others, but\n  subjected and submissive to every human creature, for the sake of God.\n  And upon all who do so, and persevere unto the end, the holy spirit will\n  rest, and make in them his tabernacle and his mansion, and they shall be\n  sons of the heavenly Father, whose works they do, and shall be the\n  brides, brothers, and mothers of our Lord Jesus Christ. Brides are we,\n  since faithful souls are joined to the Holy Spirit; brothers are we of\n  Jesus Christ, when we do the will of his Father who is in heaven; mothers\n  are we, when we bear him in our hearts and bodies through love, and bring\n  him forth by the sacred operation of our example, which ought to shine\n  before others. Oh! how glorious and great to have a Father in heaven! Oh!\n  how holy to have a betrothal of the Spirit! Oh! how sacred, how\n  delightful, well pleasing, peaceful, sweet, loving, desirable above all,\n  is it to have a brother who has laid down his life for the sheep, and has\n  prayed his Father for us, saying, 'Father, keep through thine own name\n  those whom thou hast given me. Father, all those whom thou hast given me\n  in the world are thine, and thou hast given them to me, and the word\n  which thou hast given me I have given them, and they have received it,\n  and know well that I came from thee, and have believed that thou hast\n  sent me. I pray for them: I sanctify myself, that they may be sanctified\n  as we are. And I will, O Father! that where I am there they may be also,\n  and see my glory in my kingdom.'\" [Footnote 155]\n\n    [Footnote 155: We translate from the Latin of St. Francis, which is\n    somewhat different from our version.]\n\nA graphic picture of a death-bed scene follows soon after the above\nbeautiful passage in the same epistle.\n\n{505}\n\n  \"The body droops, death draws near, relatives and friends come, and say,\n  'Arrange thy house.' And behold, his wife and his sons, his relatives and\n  friends, pretend to weep; and he, looking up, sees them weeping, and is\n  moved, and says, my soul and my body, and all my goods, I place in your\n  hands. Verily, that man is cursed who deposits his soul, his body, and\n  all his goods in such hands; or, as the Lord says by the prophet, cursed\n  is that man who places his trust in man. And then they send for the\n  priest, who says to him, 'Dost thou wish to receive absolution from all\n  thy sins?' he replies, 'I do.' Wilt thou make restitution from thy\n  substance for those things which thou hast obtained through fraud and\n  deception?' He says, 'No.' 'Why not?' asks the priest. 'Because I have\n  divided all amongst my relations.' And then his speech begins to fail,\n  and he dies miserably. But let all men know that wherever any man dies in\n  sin, without making satisfaction, which he can, but will not make, such a\n  demon seizes his soul, and drags it from the body with such agony that no\n  one can conceive who has not experienced it. And all his money, power,\n  and knowledge, which he thought he had, are taken from him; and his\n  relations and friends, to whom he has given his goods, take them, and\n  divide them, and then say, Cursed be his soul, who might have given us\n  more, and did not; who might have hoarded more, and did not. Worms\n  destroy his body, demons his soul; and thus he loses both soul and body\n  for the sake of this brief life.\"\n\nHumility, deep and sincere, was the great characteristic of his life. He\nwas in his own words, \"Franciscus parvulus et vester servus in Domino;\"\n\"Homo vilis et caducus;\" \"minus servorum;\" \"indigna creatura Domini.\" Being\nasked, one day, why he wore such scanty clothing in the depth of winter, he\nreplied, \"If we are clothed within with the flame of our heavenly country,\nwe shall easily bear this external cold.\" One of the brethren asked him why\nhe scarcely took anything to sustain nature. \"Because,\" said St. Francis,\n\"it is difficult to satisfy the necessity of the body without indulging the\nlonging of the senses.\"\n\nOn an occasion a brother asked him if he might have a psalter. \"When you\nhave got a psalter,\" replied St. Francis, \"then you will want a breviary;\nand when you have got a breviary, you will sit in your chair as great as a\nlord, and you will say to your brother, 'Friar, fetch me my breviary.'\"\nThere was a competition amongst the brethren as to who should bring in the\ngreatest number of female devotees, when St. Francis checked their ardor by\nthe caustic remark, \"I am afraid, my brethren, that when God forbade us\nwives the devil gave us sisters.\" Here we must take our farewell of the\nsaint. Willingly would we devote more space to him; but we have much yet to\nsay about his work, especially as it influenced the destinies of our own\nland. He was a great man, an enthusiast in the highest sense of the word;\nhis character and career remind us forcibly of John the Baptist; his food\nwas locusts and wild honey, his raiment was scanty, he was a voice crying\nin the wilderness of a wicked world, and his name will last for ever.\n\nBut we advance to investigate the doings of the order in England. At the\nsecond general chapter held by St. Francis, at Porzioncula, in the year\n1219, when the brethren were divided into parties and sent out on their\nmissions, England was one of the first mission stations assigned. France\nwas the first, then came England, chiefly, it is thought, through the\ninfluence of an Englishman, one William, who was a follower of St. Francis.\nThe honor of leading this mission was assigned to Brother Angnello\n[Footnote 156] de Pisa, who was made minister-general of the order in\nEngland.\n\n    [Footnote 156: _Angnellus_ sic, in Eccleston MSS., and in\n    Monumenta Franciscana.]\n\nHis authority was as follows: \"Ego Frater Franciscus de Assisio minister,\ngeneralis praecipio tibi Fratri Angnello de Pisa per obedientiam, ut vadas\nin Angliam et ibi facias officium ministeriatus. Vale. Anno 1219.\nFranciscus de Assisio.\" [Footnote 157]\n\n    [Footnote 157: Collectanea Anglo-Minoritica, p. 5.]\n\n{506}\n\nThey were also fortified with letters recommendatory from Pope Honorius,\naddressed to all \"archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, and other prelates\nof the church,\" enjoining them to receive the bearers as Catholics and true\nbelievers, and to \"show them favor and courtesy.\" The actual date of their\nlanding in England is disputed. Eccleston in his MSS., \"De Primo Adventu\nMinorum,\" gives the year 1224, but the more probable date is 1220, which is\ngiven by Wadding, the annalist of the order, and confirmed by Matthew\nParis, who under the year 1243 speaks of the Friars Minors, \"who began to\nbuild their first habitations in England scarcely _twenty-four_ years\nago.\" As they had no money of their own, and lived upon what was given\nthem, they were transported to England from France by the charity of some\nmonks of F\u00e9camp. They were nine in number, four clergymen and five laymen.\nThe former were Angnellus, a native of Pisa, Richard de Ingeworth, Richard\nof Devonshire, and William Esseby. The laymen were Henry de Cernise, a\nnative of Lombardy, Laurence de Belvaco, William de Florentia, Melioratus,\nand James Ultramontanus. They landed at Dover and proceeded to Canterbury,\nwhere they were hospitably received and staid two days at the Priory of the\nHoly Trinity. Then four of them set out for London to present the\napostolical letters to Henry III., who received them very kindly, which, as\nthey did not want any money, he would be most likely to do.\n\nThe other five were housed at Canterbury at the Priests' Hospital, where\nthey remained until a place could be procured for them; such accommodation\nwas found in a small chamber beneath the school-house, where they remained\nshut up all day, and at evening, when the scholars had gone home, they\nentered the room, kindled a fire, and sat round it. The four monks who went\nto London were kindly received by the Dominicans, with whom they staid a\nfortnight, until one John Travers hired a house for them in Cornhill, which\nthey divided into cells by stuffing the interstices with straw.\n\nThe citizens, at the instigation of one Irwin, who afterward became a lay\nbrother, removed them to the butchery or shambles of St. Nicholas, in the\nWard of Farringdon-within, close to a place called Stinking-lane, where\nthey built a convent for them. The foundations were laid at Christmas,\n1220, and it was five years in course of building. The different portions\nwere built by different citizens. William Joyner built the choir, William\nWalleys the nave, Alderman Porter the chapter-house, Bartholomew de\nCastello the refectory, Peter de Haliland the infirmary, and Roger Bond the\nlibrary; even in those days the citizens, when they did anything in the way\nof charity, did it royally. Two brethren, however, were sent on to Oxford,\nwhere they were also kindly received by Dominican friars, according to\nEccleston; but a story is told in the annals of the order of the two\nbrethren who were making their way toward Oxford, when they came to a sort\nof manor-house, about six miles from Oxford, which was a cell of\nBenedictine monks, belonging to the abbey of Abingdon.\n\nBeing very hungry and tired, they knocked at the gate; and the monks, from\ntheir strange dress and extraordinary appearance, taking them for\nmasqueraders, admitted them, hoping for some diversion. But, when they\nfound they were a new order of friars, they turned them out of doors; but\none, more gentle than the rest, went after them, brought them back, and\npersuaded the porter to let them sleep in the hay-loft. Both versions may\nbe right, as the circumstance occurred outside Oxford; and Eccleston's\naccount commences with their advent in that city when they were received by\nthe Dominicans, with whom they remained for about eight days, until a rich\ncitizen, Richard Mercer, let them a house in the parish of St. Ebbs. Then\nthe two brethren go on to Northampton, where they were received into an\nhospital. They procured a house in the parish of St. Giles, over which they\nappointed one Peter Hispanus as guardian.\n\n{507}\n\nThen they went to Cambridge, where the townspeople gave them an old\nsynagogue, adjoining the common prison; but afterward, ten marks being\ngiven them from the king's exchequer, they built a rough sort of oratory on\na plot of ground in the city. After that another settlement was made in\nLincoln, and gradually in many other cities; so that in thirty-two years\nfrom their arrival they numbered 1242 brethren in forty-nine different\nsettlements. Their first convert was one Solomon, of good birth and\nconnections.\n\nWhen only a novice, he was appointed procurator of his house; that is, he\nhad to go out to beg for it. The first place he went to was the residence\nof a sister, who gave him some bread, with the following remark: \"Cursed be\nthe hour when I ever saw thee!\" So strict was their poverty, that one of\nthe brethren being ill, and they having no means to make a fire, got round\nhim, clung to him, and warmed him with their bodies, \"sicut porcis mos\nest.\" [Footnote 158]\n\n    [Footnote 158: Eccleston de Adventu Minorum.]\n\nThey walked about barefooted through the snow, to the horror of the\nspectators. Brother Solomon injured his foot so severely that he was laid\nup for two years; and whilst ill the Lord appeared to him, accompanied by\nthe apostle Peter. And by way of contrast, we are told shortly after that\nthe devil appeared to one Brother Gilbert de Vyz, when he was alone, and\nsaid to him, \"Do you think to avoid me? At least you shall have this,\" and\nthrew at him a fistful of vermin, and then vanished: \"et projecit super eum\nplenum pugillum suum pediculorum et evanuit,\" so states Master Eccleston.\n\nThe second convert was William of London; then followed Jocius of Cornhill,\na clerk, who went to Spain, labored, and died; John, another clerk; Philip,\na priest, who, being a good preacher, was sent to Ireland, and died there.\nThen came several magistrates, amongst whom were Walter de Burg, Richard\nNorman, Vincent of Coventry, Adam of Oxford; but one of the greatest\naccessions was in the person of Adam Marsh, better know as Adae de Marisco,\nwho was destined to found that distinguished school at Oxford which boasts\nsuch names as Scotus, Occam, Roger Bacon, and others. Adam was called\nDoctor Illustris. After him came John of Reading, abbot of Ozeneyae, and\nRichard Rufus. Then came some military men, Dominus R. Gobion, Giles de\nMerc, Thomas Hispanus, and Henry de Walpole.\n\nAs their numbers continued to increase, people built churches and convents\nfor them in all parts of the country. The master of the Priests' Hospital\nat Canterbury built them a chapel; Simon de Longeton, archdeacon of\nCanterbury, helped them; so Henry de Sandwyg, and a certain noble lady,\nInclusa de Baginton, who cherished them in all things, as a mother her\nsons: \"quae sicut mater filios sic fovit eos in omnibus.\"\n\nAngnellus now set out upon an inspection of the different settlements, and,\nafter pausing for a time at London, came on to Oxford, where, as things\nwere promising and converts gradually coming in, he founded a community,\nover which he placed William Esseby as guardian of the house, which\nIngeworth and Devonshire had hired. Adam of Oxonia joined the company, and\nthen Alexander Hales, whom St. Francis, it is thought, admitted in the year\n1219, as Hales passed through France on his way to England. Angnellus then\nconceived the idea of having a school of friars at Oxford, and built one\nnear their house. He then addressed himself to Doctor Robert Grostete, one\nof the most distinguished lecturers in the university, to beg him to\ninstruct the brethren. Grostete consented, and the school was soon thronged\nwith ardent Franciscan converts, who listened with delight to the lectures\nof that man who, as bishop of Lincoln, was destined to such a glorious\ncareer.\n\n{508}\n\nAnd now Angnellus was instant in encouraging the brethren to attend the\nlectures, and make progress in the study of the Decretals and canon law;\nand as he found them very diligent, he thought he would honor them with his\npresence at one of their meetings and see how they progressed; but when he\narrived there, he was horrified, to hear that the subject under discussion\nby these young monks was whether there was a God!! _Utrum esset Deus_!\nFrightened out of his propriety, the good man exclaimed: \"Alas! alas!\nsimple brethren are penetrating the heavens, and the learned dispute\nwhether there may be a God!\" [Footnote 159] It was with great difficulty\nthey calmed his agitation. He only submitted upon their promise that, if he\nsent to Rome for a copy of the Decretals, they would avoid such mighty\nquestions, and keep to them.\n\n     [Footnote 159: \"Hei mihi, hei mihi, fratres simplices coelos penetrant\n     et literati disputant utrum sit Deus.\" See Wood, Antiq. Oxon, lib. i.\n     p. x.]\n\nThe first Franciscan who taught in the school was William Eton, under the\ndirection of Grostete, who was not a Franciscan: he was succeeded by Adam\nde Marisco, who is sometimes called the first of the order who taught; he\nwas, however, the first who taught alone, the others teaching under the\ndirection of Grostete. Sixty-seven distinguished men filled this chair,\nsome of whose names have been immortalized.\n\nThe influence of the study of Aristotle was telling vitally upon the\ntheology of the schools. At first his writings were studied through very\nimperfect translations made from the Arabic, with Arabic commentaries--then\na mixture of Neo Platonism was infused, and the devotees of scholastic\ntheology at Paris fell into such errors that the study of his works was\nprohibited by the synod of that place in the year 1209. Six years afterward\nthis prohibition was renewed by the Papal Legate; but as men began to find\nthat there was a great difference between the philosophy of Aristotle,\nfiltered through Arabic commentators and Arabic translators, and Aristotle\nhimself, a revival took place in favor of the Stagyrite, and Gregory IX.,\nin 1231, by a bull modified the restriction. New translations were now made\nand purged from errors.\n\nA new era in scholasticism commenced; the two rival orders, the Dominicans\nand Franciscans, began to apply the Aristotelian method to theological\nquestions; Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas [Footnote 160] taking the\nlead in the former order, in opposition to the teaching of Alexander\nHales.[Footnote 161] the Franciscan, who lectured at Paris. Bonaventura\n[Footnote 162] endeavored to amalgamate scholasticism with mysticism; but\nat length appeared John Duns Scotus, [Footnote 163] who lectured at Oxford,\nParis, and Cologne, a Franciscan, and worthy opponent of the Dominican,\nThomas Aquinas. We must not omit another distinguished member of the Oxford\nschool who flourished at the same time, Roger Bacon, [Footnote 164] perhaps\nthe most distinguished man of the age.\n\n    [Footnote 160: Doctor Angelicas.]\n\n    [Footnote 161: Doctor Irrefragabilis.]\n\n    [Footnote 162: Doctor Seraphicus.]\n\n    [Footnote 163: Doctor Subtilis.]\n\n    [Footnote 164: Doctor Mirabilis.]\n\nHe taught at Oxford. He, however, saw the prominent errors of the\ndisputation of the times, and has left on record, in the preface to his\nOpus Majus, the following criticism, which is worthy of attention: \"There\nnever was such an appearance of wisdom, nor such activity in study in so\nmany faculties, and so many regions, as during the last forty years; for\neven the doctors are divided in every state, in every camp, and in every\nburgh, especially through the two studious orders, (Dominicans and\nFranciscans,) when neither, perhaps, was there ever so much ignorance and\nerror. The mob of students languishes and stupefies itself over things\nbadly translated; it loses time and study; appearances only hold them, and\nthey do not care what they know so much as what they seem to know before\nthe insensate multitude.\"\n\n{509}\n\nAgain, in lib. ii., he says: \"If I had power over the books of Aristotle, I\nwould have them all burnt, because it is only a loss of time to study in\nthem, a cause of error and multiplication of ignorance beyond what I am\nable to explain.\" We must give Roger Bacon the credit of speaking more\nparticularly of the wretched translations in use, though his view of\nAristotelian philosophy was strangely confirmed centuries afterward by his\nstill greater namesake, Lord Bacon, who said, after many years of devotion\nto Aristotelianism, that it was \"a philosophy only strong for disputations\nand contentions, but barren of the production of works for the benefit of\nthe life of man.\" Thus were ranged under two scholastic standards the two\ngreat orders of mendicant friars, the Dominicans and the Franciscans; the\nformer being called Thomists, and the latter Scotists. A fierce doctrinal\ncontroversy then raged between them, the animosity of which was heightened\nby a jealousy which had always existed on the part of the Dominicans from\nthe time when St. Francis rejected their founder's overtures to unite the\ntwo orders.\n\nIn the year 1400 England maintained and included sixty convents; and at the\ntime of the dissolution, the Franciscans alone of the mendicant orders had\nninety convents in England, besides vicarships, residences, and nunneries.\n\nTo a generation of men who had heard no preaching, or, if any, nothing they\ncould understand, the enthusiastic discourses of these men were like\nrefreshing showers on a parched soil; for in the thirteenth century the\nsermon had fallen into such disuse that an obscure and insignificant\npreacher created a great sensation in Paris, although his preaching was\nrude and simple. Both doctors and disciples ran after him, one dragging the\nother, and saying, \"Come and hear Fulco, the presbyter, he is another\nPaul.\" [Footnote 165] The Franciscans diligently cultivated that talent,\nand from the general favor in which they were held by nearly all classes of\nthe community, especially by the common people, we may conclude that the\nstyle they adopted was essentially a popular and engaging style, in direct\ncontradistinction to the scholastic discourses delivered at rare intervals\nfrom the pulpits of the churches. Then a Franciscan mingled amongst the\npoor; he too was poor, one of the poorest, and the poor saw their condition\nelevated to an apostolic sanctity; his raiment was coarse like theirs; his\nfood also as coarse, for it was their food shared often with him at their\nown tables; they sat at his feet and listened to him, not in trembling\nservitude, as at the feet of one whom they had been taught to regard with\nsuperstitious awe, but as at the feet of a dear brother, one of themselves,\nwho had hungered with them and sorrowed with them.\n\n   [Footnote 165: Vide Jacobi, a Vitriaco Hist. Occident, c, 6.]\n\nThen the Franciscan preached everywhere--at the street corner, in the\nfields, on the hill-side; his portable altar was set up, the sacrament\nadministered to the people, and the gospel preached as in the old apostolic\ntimes, by the river-side, in the high roads and by-ways, under the bare\nheavens. No wonder that they won the hearts of the degraded populations of\nthe countries in which they settled, that the poor ran to them and flocked\nround them, and that the good and great were soon drawn over to their side;\nit was the revival of apostolic simplicity, and as the excited crowds were\nswayed under their fervent eloquence, and myriads of tearful eyes were\nturned up to their gaze, it was like the miracle in the wilderness, the\nrock had been smitten, and the waters gushed forth.\n\n------\n\n{510}\n\n\n  The Souls of Animals\n\n\nA number of years ago, when the census enumerators were going through\nCanada, they found an old lady in Quebec, who, to the question what\nreligion she professed, replied that she believed in the transmigration of\nsouls. To what particular form of the doctrine she clung; whether she\nbelieved, with the sages of the Ganges, that the soul begins its life in\nthe mineral or vegetable world, and must pass through no fewer than\neighty-eight progressive stages before it rises to human consciousness; or,\nwith the priests of the Nile, that the spiritual part of a man has lived\nfor three thousand years in the forms of lower animals before it gets a\nhuman body; whether she was a Pythagorean, or a Neo-Platonist, or a\nCabalist; whether she refused animal food for fear of eating unwittingly\nthe flesh of some deceased friend or relative, and could not see a roast\nchicken without thinking of a cannibal; these are curious questions which\nwe fear will never be answered. Plato believed in ten grades of migrations,\neach of a thousand years, in which souls were purified and punished before\ntheir return to an incorporeal existence with God; and the more virtuously\nthey lived, the fewer grades they had to pass through. For a good, honest\nphilosopher, about three grades were thought sufficient. Porphyry taught\nthat bodies themselves are punishments imposed upon souls for offences\ncommitted in a previous state of which we retain no consciousness. A gross,\nsensual, very material body indicated a very criminal career in the\nprevious existence. A virtuous life led by degrees through the states of\nheroes, angels, and archangels; and an archangel, if he behaved himself,\nmight hope to be absorbed, in the course of time, into the divine essence\nitself; while for the wicked there was a similar but descending scale of\ntransformations into devils of various degrees of moral blackness. The\nCabalists held that God created originally a certain number of Jewish\nsouls, some of which are still on earth in human form, while there are\nalways many others doing penance for their sins in the bodies of animals.\nSo they were careful, we trust, in their treatment of dumb beasts, not\nknowing but any pig or jackass they encountered might be a Jew in disguise.\nA conscientious Cabalist would not dare turn a dog out of doors, for fear\nhe might be kicking his grandfather, and ought to shun fish, flesh, and\nfowl as religiously as he would object to dining off a blood relation. The\ngreat Christian philosopher, Origen, himself believed in the transmigration\nof the souls of men into the bodies of the lower animals; and adopted this\ndoctrine as the readiest way of explaining why there are so many\nimperfections in animated nature; the divine Creator purposely made animals\nimperfect, because he meant that bodies should be the instruments of\npunishment and expiation for sinful souls. The Gnostics, and Manichaeans,\nand some other heretical sects, had the same idea, and it was also a part\nof the doctrine of the ancient British Druids, as it is at the present day\nof the Druses and other tribes of Asia, as well as of some of the African\nnations. Fourier allowed the soul no fewer than eight hundred and ten\nlives, each of them averaging a hundred years in duration, and it was to\npass one third, or twenty-seven thousand of all these years, on our earth.\nWhen all the transmigrations had been accomplished, the soul was to lose\nits separate existence, and become confounded with the soul of the planet.\nBut the French philosopher did not stop here.\n{511}\nThe body of the planet was to be in its turn destroyed, and its soul to\ntransmigrate into a new earth, rising by successive stages to the highest\ndegrees in the hierarchy of worlds.\n\nWhich of these many systems of metempsychosis was the one embraced by the\neccentric old lady of Quebec we have, as we said before, no means of\ndeciding, nor perhaps, since she appears to have founded no school of\ndisciples, is the problem worth investigation. We can imagine what a\nsingular position the solitary adherent of that old pagan creed must have\noccupied in the society of the quaint French city; how pious Catholics must\nhave stared at her with mingled awe and horror as a relic of the times of\nPythagoras and Plato, or perchance as an Indian Buddhist some centuries\nold, whom Time in his flight had forgotten to gather into his garner, where\nall her kith and kin had been laid asleep for ages. It was certainly a very\nuncomfortable belief, and, if it ever became general, it would play the\nmischief with family relations. Just think of the possibility of a man's\nbeing his own grandmother or his own posthumous son! It may have had its\nconveniences, but, upon the whole, we are glad it has died out.\n\nWe once heard an accomplished theologian maintain that, however\nphilosophically absurd that doctrine might be, and however inconsistent\nwith the spirit of Catholic teaching, there was yet no dogmatic decision\nwhich forbade a man's holding it, if he chose to be such a fool. A man\nmight be a good Catholic and still believe that one of God's ways of\npunishing sin was to imprison the offending soul after death in the body of\na beast; this might be a sort of purgatory. Perhaps he was right; but so we\nmight say there is no article of faith which forbids us to believe that the\nmoon is made of green cheese, that the earth is flat instead of round, that\nthe Rocky Mountains are five thousand miles high, or that King Arthur was\nthe first President of the United States. There is a sort of\ntransmigration, however, in which reputable Catholic theologians are not\naltogether unwilling to believe; and this brings us to the statement of a\nfact which, for all that it is admitted by the mass of authorities on such\nsubjects, will, no doubt, sound paradoxical to a great many of our readers;\nthat is, that dumb beasts, if they have not borrowed the souls of human\nbeings, have, at any rate, souls of their own. In our loose way of talking\nabout things, we are but too apt to speak of the soul as one of the\ndistinguishing prerogatives of man, and reason as another; whereas the fact\nis that man shares both these in common with the brute kingdom. Every\nanimal has a soul, though not an immortal soul; and all the higher\nanimals--probably _all_ animals--are gifted to a greater or less\nextent with reason. Deny souls to beasts, and you reduce them to a level\nwith the vegetable creation, in which life and motion are merely the\nnecessary operations of external laws which the plant has no power either\nto further or obstruct. Nor need we fear that, by admitting they have\nsouls, we raise them too near an equality with ourselves. The divine gift\nof immortality, the power of knowing and loving God, the right to\nparticipate in his everlasting glory--these are distinctions which must\nseparate us by an immeasurable gulf from all inferior creatures. If beasts\nhave no souls, it will puzzle us to define the exact difference between a\ndead dog and a live one.\n\nBut we have wandered away, from our speculations about metempsychosis, and\nare apparently in danger of forgetting the proposition which we set forth\nin the last paragraph, namely, that there is a certain kind of\ntransmigration of souls in which many good theologians seem very much\ninclined to believe. It is an open question whether the souls of animals\npass from body to body; whether, for instance, when a dog dies, its soul is\nannihilated, or is transferred to the body of another brute just that\nmoment born; whether the souls of the lower orders of creatures have only\nthe brief life which appears to be granted them, or whether their existence\nmay not be prolonged to the end of this world.\n{512}\nIt certainly accords with what we know of the divine economy, in which\neverything has its permanent use and no created object seems ever to be\ndestroyed, to suppose that, after a soul has performed its functions in the\nbody of one beast, it may be designed by Almighty God to perform similar\nfunctions in the body of another. The plant which springs up, and blossoms,\nand withers, returns to life in other forms; a part of it is consumed as\nfood and passes into the tissue of animals; a part crumbles away into\nvegetable mould and is assimilated by the parent earth; a part, dissolving\ninto the constituents of the atmosphere, serves to nourish and increase\nother plants. The animal body itself, which decays and is changed to dust,\nis destined to live again in other shapes. Modern science has discovered\nthat not even a motion is lost. The blow of the hammer which is struck upon\nthe anvil is perpetuated in one form or another through all time. The heat\nof the fire which blazes for an hour and is then extinct was not created at\nthe moment the fire was kindled, and will not be lost when the fire goes\nout. The sum of all the forces which act in nature is constant,\nunchangeable. Heat, electricity, magnetism, chemical action, may be\nexpended and apparently lost, but it is only to manifest themselves in\nother ways. Nothing, in a word, seems to be destroyed, and, so far as our\nknowledge enables us to judge, God has never annihilated any material\nobject which he has once created. And if matter is thus preserved through\nvarious changes, processes of decay and processes of renovation, why should\nnot spirit be likewise kept in existence? The soul of man, after it leaves\nthis body, has still eternal functions to perform in another world, either\nof punishment or of reward. What objection is there, then, to believing\nthat the incorporeal part of the brute has permanent use in this world as\nlong as the world endures?\n\nPerhaps when we have learned to look upon the brute soul as something\nrather more honorable than we have been wont to regard it; as something\nwhich it is quite possible (we won't say probable) God may have designed to\nlast till the very end of time, and not as the creature of one short day,\nwe may be prepared to recognize in its true dignity the brute's power of\nreason, which seems naturally to follow from the possession of a soul. It\nis a common fallacy to distinguish the intelligent faculty in man as\nreason, and in dumb animals as instinct. The truth is, reason and instinct\nare two things quite different in kind; neither takes the place of the\nother, and each of them belongs both to man and to beast. Without aiming at\nstrict philosophical accuracy, we may define reason as the faculty by which\nwe weigh the relations of things, and freely and deliberately choose what\nwe deem eligible, and reject what we consider hurtful. Instinct is an\ninnate force or impulse inciting us under certain circumstances to act in a\ncertain way. For example, if a man walking on a plank should feel it\nunexpectedly shift under his feet, he would catch at the nearest object, or\nendeavor to balance his body by stretching out his hands. These acts would\nbe acts of instinct, done on the impulse of the moment, before reason had\ntime to consider whether they ought to be done or not. Max M\u00fcller has some\nexcellent remarks on this subject in his Lectures on the Science of\nLanguage. Instinct, he observes, is more prominent in brutes than in man;\nbut it exists in both, as much as intellect is shared by both. \"A child\ntakes his mother's breast by instinct; the spider weaves its net by\ninstinct; the bee builds her cell by instinct. No one would ascribe to the\nchild a knowledge of physiology because it employs the exact muscles which\nare required for sucking; nor shall we claim for the spider a knowledge of\nmechanics, or for the bee an acquaintance with geometry, because _we_\ncould not do what they do without a study of these sciences.\n{513}\nBut what if we tear a spider's web, and see the spider examining the\nmischief that is done, and either giving up his work in despair, or\nendeavoring to mend it as well as may be? Surely here we have the instinct\nof weaving controlled by observation, by comparison, by reflection, by\njudgment.\" Brutes indeed have all the faculties which pertain to reasoning\nbeings. They have sensation, perception, will, memory, and intellect. They\nsee, hear, taste, smell, and feel, just like ourselves. They experience\nsensations of pleasure and pain, a dog that is fondled or chastised\nbehaving exactly as a child would behave under the same circumstances. They\nare able to compare and distinguish; they show signs of shame and pride, of\nlove and hatred. To admit all this, and deny that they have souls and\nreason, is merely to dispute about terms.\n\nAn interesting little book has just been published in England on The\nReasoning Power in Animals, by the Rev. John Selby Watson, and we purpose\ngiving our readers a few illustrative anecdotes from this work, together\nwith some instances that have fallen under our own observation,\nconfirmatory of the principles we have stated in the preceding pages.\n\nSeneca denied memory to beasts. When a horse, he says, for instance, has\ntravelled along a road and is brought the same way again, he recognizes it;\nbut in the stable he remembers nothing of it. This, however, cannot be\nproved. Almost every one has seen a dog dreaming, and acting over in his\ndreams what he has done in his waking moments. If he thinks of events and\nplaces in his sleep, why should he not think of them awake? And if a dog\ncan think of them, why cannot a horse? The stories of the memory of\nelephants are numberless. One of these animals was being exhibited some\nyears ago in the west of England, when a practical joker among the\nspectators dealt out to him in small quantities some gingerbread nuts, and,\nafter he had secured the elephant's confidence, presented him with a large\nparcel weighing several pounds. The beast swallowed it at once, but,\nfinding it too hot, roared with pain, and handed his bucket to the keeper,\nas if asking for water, and, as soon as he had quenched his thirst, hurled\nthe bucket with great force at the joker's head, fortunately missing his\naim. A year afterward the elephant returned to the same place, and among\nthe spectators was the joker, again provided with sweet cakes and hot\ncakes. He gave the elephant two or three from the best packet, and then\noffered a hot one. But no sooner had the animal proved the pungency of it\nthan he seized the coat-tails of his tormentor, and whirled him aloft in\nthe air, until, the tails giving way, he fell prostrate to the ground, half\ndead with fright. The elephant then quietly inserted his trunk into the\npocket containing the best nuts, and, with his foot on the coat-tails,\nleisurely despatched every one of them. When he had finished, he trampled\nthe hot nuts to a mash, tore the coat-tails to tatters, and flung the rags\nat the discomfited joker. The old story of the elephant revenging himself\nby spirting dirty water over a tailor who had wounded him with a needle is\ntoo well known to be repeated. A similar story is related in Captain\nShipp's Memoirs. The captain had given an elephant cayenne pepper with\nbread and butter, and six weeks afterward the animal remembered it and\npunished Captain Shipp by drenching him with dirty water.\n\nDogs have excellent memories, and every child is familiar with narratives\nof their recollecting murderers and leading to their detection. The\ncelebrated story of the dog of Montargis, who killed the assassin of his\nmaster; of the dog who pointed out to Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, two soldiers\nwho had slain his master, as related by Plutarch; of the dog of Antioch,\ncommemorated by St. Ambrose; and of a dog who, according to Giraldus\nCambrensis, in the thirteenth century, fought a public combat with a\nsuspected murderer, a sort of wager-of-battle, in fact, in which the dog\nproved his case, are examples of this memory.\n{514}\nBenvenuto Cellini had a watch-dog that drove away a burglar who tried one\nnight to break into the house, and some time afterward recognized the thief\nin the street and seized him. A lady removing from Poitou to Paris left a\nspaniel behind her. Ten years afterward she sent some clothes packed by\nherself to the person who had charge of the dog. The little creature no\nsooner smelt them than he gambolled round them and showed every mark of\nexcessive joy.\n\nThe horse has an excellent memory both for persons and places. He never\nforgets a road he has once travelled. A horse accustomed to be employed\nonce a week on a journey with the newsman of a provincial paper always\nstopped at the houses of the several customers, sixty or seventy in number.\nThere were two persons on the route who took one paper between them, and\neach claimed the privilege of having it first on the alternate Sunday. The\nhorse soon became accustomed to this regulation; and, though the parties\nlived two miles apart, he stopped at the door of each in his regular turn.\nHere was certainly a very remarkable exercise of memory. A wonderful\nexample of the use of the same faculty is seen in the facility with which\nanimals that have been carried away from home find their way back. The\nwriter had a Newfoundland slut which was sent away with one of her pups a\nconsiderable distance by railroad, shut up in a box-car. A fortnight\nafterward Jet and her offspring were found at their old home, foot-sore and\nhalf starved. How they had made their way back over roads which they could\nonly have seen in occasional glimpses from the door of the car always\nremained a mystery. But far more wonderful instances of canine memory than\nthis are on record. A terrier that was taken from Arundel to London in a\nclose cart, and tied up in the evening in a yard near Grosvenor square, was\nfound at Arundel, sixty miles distant, the following afternoon. A Scotch\ndog having been taken to Frankfort, and having there seen its master\ndrowned in the Oder, after having made ineffectual efforts to save him,\nfound its way from Frankfort to Hamburg, from Hamburg to Hull, and from\nHull to Edinburgh. Lord Lonsdale sent two hounds from Leicestershire to\nIreland, and at the end of three weeks they reappeared in Leicestershire. A\nMr. Edward Cook, having lived some time with his brother at Togsten in\nNorthumberland, came to America, bringing with him a pointer dog, which,\nwhile shooting in the woods near Baltimore, he lost. Some time afterward\nMr. Cook's brother, who continued to reside at Togsten, was aroused one\nnight by the barking of a dog, which, on being let in, proved to be the\nlost pointer. He remained there until his master came back from America. By\nwhat vessel he had made his way across the Atlantic was never ascertained.\nThe persistency with which cats will return to places from which they have\nbeen sent away is well known. Lord Brougham, in his Letters on Instinct,\nmentions one that was taken to the West Indies, and on the return of the\nship to London, found her way through the city to Brompton, whence she had\nbeen taken. Mrs. Lee tells the following story in her Anecdotes of Animals:\n\n  \"When living at Four Paths, Clarendon, Jamaica, I wanted a cat, and had\n  one given to me which was nearly full-grown. It was brought from Morgan's\n  Valley estate, where it was bred, and had never been removed from that\n  place before. The distance was five miles. It was put into a canvas bag,\n  and carried by a man on horseback. Between the two places there are two\n  rivers, one of them about eighty feet broad and two and a half deep, and\n  over these rivers there are no bridges. The cat was shut up at Four Paths\n  for some days, and when considered to be reconciled to her new dwelling\n  she was allowed to go about the house.\n{515}\n  The day after obtaining her liberty she was missing, and upon my next\n  visiting the estate she was brought from, I was quite amazed to learn\n  that the cat had come back again. Did she swim over the rivers at the\n  fords where the horse came through with her, or did she ascend the banks\n  for a considerable distance in search of a more shallow place, and where\n  the stream was less powerful? At all events, she must have crossed the\n  rivers in opposition to her natural habits.\"\n\nA farmer living on the borders of the New Forest in Hampshire, bought a\nmare near Newport, in the Isle of Wight, and took it home with him,\ncrossing to the main-land in a boat. During the night the animal escaped\nfrom the enclosure in which the farmer had fastened it, and made its way\nhome again, swimming across the strait. The nearest distance from the\nHampshire coast to the Isle of Wight is five miles. A cow which had been\nsent to grass at a place twenty-one miles from her owner's residence\nremained there contentedly all summer; but, as soon as the grass began to\nfail, travelled home to her old pasturage. A cow was separated from her\nyoung calf and driven twelve miles to Smithfield to be sold, but early the\nnext morning she was found at home, having escaped from the market and made\nher way through all the intricacies of London. Dr. John Brown, in one of\nhis inimitable dog-papers, gives an instance of a dog finding his way home\nfrom a distance, under circumstances which almost seem to justify his\nnotion that the canine race have an idea of humor. A Scottish shepherd,\nhaving sold his sheep at a market, was asked by the buyer to lend him his\ndog to take them home. \"'By a' manner o' means take Birkie, and when ye'r\ndune wi' him just play so,' (making a movement with his arm,) 'and he'll be\nhame in a jiffy.' Birkie was so clever, and useful, and gay, that the\nborrower coveted him; and on getting to his farm shut him up, intending to\nkeep him. Birkie escaped during the night, and took the entire hirsel\n(flock) back to his own master! Fancy him trotting across the moor with\nthem, they as willing as he.\"\n\nThere are some well-authenticated instances of animals finding their way\nhome by roads they never travelled before which are difficult of\nexplanation. In March, 1816, an ass, the property of Captain Dundas, R. N.,\nwas shipped at Gibraltar on board the Ister frigate, bound for Malta. The\nvessel having grounded off Point de Gat, the animal was thrown overboard to\ngive it a chance of swimming ashore--a poor one, for the land was some\ndistance off and the sea running very high. A few days afterward, however,\nwhen the gates of Gibraltar were opened in the morning, the ass presented\nhimself for admittance, and proceeded to a stable which he had formerly\noccupied. He had not only swum ashore, but, without guide, compass, or\ntravelling map, and with no previous knowledge of the route, had travelled\nfrom Point de Gat to Gibraltar, a distance of more than two hundred miles,\nthrough a mountainous and intricate country intersected by streams; and he\nhad done it in so short a time that he could hardly have made single false\nturn. What directed him on this wonderful journey it is impossible to\nconjecture, unless we suppose that he had the good sense to follow the line\nof the coast; and that he should have known that such a course would lead\nhim home certainly argues a very large share of the reasoning faculty. In\npoint of fact, however, there is a curious and incomprehensible instinct\nfor finding the way which belongs not only to the lower animals, but to man\nhimself in the savage state. The migrations of birds afford familiar\nexamples of it, swallows especially, returning year after year to build\ntheir nests in the same place. Two or three years ago six swallows were\ntaken from their nests at Paris, and conveyed to Vienna, where a small roll\nof paper with a few words written on it was affixed to the wing of each;\nand they were let go one morning at a quarter past seven. Two arrived at\nParis a little before one; one at a quarter past two; and one at four.\n{516}\nThe other two did not return at all, having perhaps met with some mishap. A\nfalcon was taken from the Canaries to Andalusia and returned in sixteen\nhours, a distance of six hundred miles. Salmon are supposed to return in\nall cases to the river where they were bred. Crabs may be carried two or\nthree miles out to sea, and they will find their way back to their old\nhaunts. Mr. Jesse, in his Gleanings in Natural History, relates an\nextraordinary story of a tortoise which was captured at the Island of\nAscension in the South Atlantic, and carried with several others to\nEngland. It had lost one fin, and was consequently named by the sailors the\nLord Nelson. The voyage was very long, and most of the turtles died, and as\nthe Lord Nelson seemed sickly when they drew near port, the sailors, in\norder \"to give it a chance,\" threw it overboard in the English Channel,\nafter it had been branded in the usual way, with certain letters and\nnumbers burnt upon its under shell with a hot iron. Wonderful to relate,\nthe same turtle was taken at the Island of Ascension two years afterward,\nhaving found its way three thousand five hundred miles through the watery\nwaste to that little speck in the midst of the ocean. The unerring\ncertainty with which bees fly in a straight line to their hives is\nproverbial, and bee-hunters discover the nests by catching two of the\ninsects, carrying them to some distance apart, and letting them go. Each\nwill at once take a straight line toward the nest, and by observing these\nlines and calculating where they ought to intersect, the honey is found.\nThis instinct is the more remarkable as bees are very near-sighted, not\nbeing able, it is supposed, to see more than a yard before them. We have\nmentioned that savages have something of the same instinct, finding their\nway for long distances, not always by their acuteness of observation, but\nby an indescribable faculty which is like nothing so much as the instinct\nof birds. Mr. Jesse tells a story of a traveller in Australia, who lost his\nway in the interior, and was guided by one of the natives more than a\nhundred miles in a straight line to the place he wanted to reach. The\nsavage, he was assured, could have led him almost as well blindfold, for he\ntravelled as accurately when the sun was obscured as when it was visible,\nand was not assisted by marks on the barks of trees, or any of the other\nfamiliar landmarks of the wilderness. Our own frontiersmen have the same\nfaculty to a greater or lesser degree. We ourselves, on two occasions,\nafter a long day's hunt in the far West, in which we followed the game\nthrough so many twists and turns as to lose all idea of the points of the\ncompass, were conducted by a trapper twelve or fifteen miles back to camp,\non a perfectly dark night, across an utterly trackless prairie. There was\nneither tree, nor hill, nor footprint to mark the way, but our course was\nas straight as the bee flies. The trapper could not explain how he did it:\nit was by a species of instinct. The Newfoundland slut Jet, mentioned on a\npreceding page, once found her way to the writer's house, under\ncircumstances which indicated the exercise of reason much more unmistakably\nthan the instances just cited. The family were about moving from one house\nto another some two miles distant; but as the new dwelling was not ready\nfor occupation when the lease of the old one expired, the furniture was\nstored in the neighborhood, and we all went away for a few weeks, leaving\nJet behind. When we came to take possession of the new house, we found Jet\nthere before us, although nothing belonging to us had yet been carried to\nthe premises, and, so far as we knew, she had never been there in our\ncompany. Another dog belonging to us had been there, however, once or twice\nwith one of the servants, and Jet perhaps had learned the secret from him.\nBut it certainly showed great mental acuteness in the animal that she\nshould not have followed the furniture, knowing apparently that it was only\nstowed away for a time, but, by putting this and that together, should have\nfound out where her master meant to establish himself.\n\n{517}\n\nThe power of putting this and that together is emphatically a reasoning\nfaculty; in other words, it is the power of tracing the relation between\ncause and effect. The literature of natural history abounds in examples of\nthe possession of this faculty by animals, and so does the experience of\nevery one who has ever kept dogs or horses. Jet had it to an eminent\ndegree. When she was about to bring forth a litter, she always tried to dig\na cave for them under the steps of the front door. This, of course, was\nforbidden, but she was resolute, and many a time she had her cavern nearly\nfinished before she was detected. The bell-wire passed under the steps, so\nthat in the course of her digging she was very apt to ring the bell, and it\nwas some time before the servants found out whence the mysterious ringing\noriginated; but, when the secret was discovered, Jet was pulled out and\npunished. Punishment did not break her of the habit; indeed, she was an\nincorrigibly obstinate dog, and never was broken of any trick she once set\nher mind upon; but after that, whenever she heard the bell, she ran out of\nthe hole and hid at the corner of the house until the coast was clear, when\nshe would go back to work, taking more pains to avoid the wire. If her\nmaster was at home and suspected who rang the bell, he often answered the\ndoor himself, and looking toward the side of the house he was sure to see\nJet peeping cautiously round the corner with such a mischievous and comical\nexpression in her eyes that he rarely refrained from a hearty laugh;\nwhereupon the dog would pluck up heart, and come forward, grinning and\napologizing, as if to say, \"I am very sorry I've given you so much trouble;\nI didn't know it was wrong, and I won't do so again.\" She was a dreadful\nliar, (for dogs can lie with their eyes and faces, as well as men can lie\nwith their tongues.) but it was all very funny. Her understanding the use\nof a door-bell reminds us of a story told of an Italian greyhound at\nBologna, which was accustomed every morning to visit a dog of its own\nspecies at a neighboring house. At first it used to wait in the street\nuntil the door was opened, but after a time it learned to use the knocker.\nMr. Nassau Senior, in one of his articles in The Quarterly Review, gives an\ninstance from his own knowledge of the way in which a terrier used to\nobtain admission to the common-room at Merton College, Oxford, whose sacred\nthreshold, be it known, dogs are strictly forbidden to cross. \"The animal's\ncunning,\" says Mr. Senior, \"would have done honor to an Old Bailey\nattorney.\" We give the narrative in his own language: \"It happened one\nevening that a couple of terriers had followed their masters to the door,\nand while they remained excluded, unhappily followed the habits rather of\nbiped than of quadruped animals, and began to quarrel like a couple of\nChristians. The noise of the fight summoned their masters to separate them,\nand as it appeared that the hero of our tale had been much mauled by a\nsuperior adversary, the severe _biens\u00e9ances_ of the place were for\nonce relaxed, and he was allowed to enjoy during the rest of the night the\nsoftness of a monastic rug and the blaze of a monastic fire, luxuries which\nevery initiated dog and man will duly appreciate. The next day, soon after\nthe common-room party had been assembled, the sounds of the preceding\nevening were renewed with tenfold violence. There was such snapping and\ntearing, and snarling and howling, as could be accounted for only by a\ngeneral engagement:\n\n  'The noise alarmed the festive hall,\n   And started forth the fellows all.'\n\nBut, instead of a battle royal, they found at the door their former guest,\nin solitude sitting on his rump, and acting a furious dog-fight, in the\nhope of again gaining admittance among the _quieti ordines deorum_.\n{518}\nWe have heard that he was rewarded with both the _grandes_ and the\n_petites entr\u00e9es_; but this does not rest on the same authority as the\nrest of the narrative.\"\n\nMr. Watson's book abounds with other instances of intelligence in animals,\nwhich it is almost impossible to avoid attributing to the operation of\nreason. He gives an anecdote, for instance, of an elephant which, seeing an\nartillery-man fall from the tumbril of a gun, in such a situation that in a\nsecond or two the wheel of the gun carriage must have gone over him,\ninstantly, without any warning from its keeper, lifted the wheel with its\ntrunk and kept it suspended until the carriage had passed clear of the\nsoldier. Here the elephant manifestly reasoned for himself. A still more\nremarkable manifestation of the reasoning faculty is recorded of an animal\nof the same species. An elephant in a menagerie was trained to pick up\ncoins with his trunk. On one occasion a sixpence was thrown down which fell\na little beyond his reach (he was chained) and near the wall. After several\nvain attempts to pick it up, he stood motionless a few seconds, evidently\nconsidering how to act; he then stretched his proboscis as far as he could\nin a straight line, a little distance above the coin, and blew with great\nforce against the wall. The blast of air, rebounding from the wall, caught\nup the sixpence and drove it toward him, as he evidently intended it\nshould. Another elephant was once seen to blow a potato which was just\nbeyond his reach against the wall, and catch it when it rebounded. The\ningenuity displayed in these cases is something akin to the use of tools\nwhich has been declared a characteristic of man alone. This, however, is a\nmistake. The club which the gorilla is known to wield with such terrible\npower, the palm-branches with which elephants brush away flies, the stones\nwhich monkeys and even birds have been seen to use either in breaking open\nshells or keeping them distended while they extracted the shell-fish--what\nare these but tools? Foxes have been seen to set cods' heads as baits for\ncrows, and pounce upon the birds when they came to eat them. The ingenuity\nof rats in getting at toothsome morsels is well known; there are many\ninstances of their using their tails to extract oil from narrow-necked\nbottles--all these cases being equivalent to the use of tools. A\nNewfoundland dog at Torquay, wanting water, took a pail from the kitchen\nand carried it to the pump, where he sat down until one of the men-servants\ncame out, to whom he made such significant gestures that the man pumped the\npail full for him. The most remarkable part of the story is that, when the\ndog had finished, he carried back the pail to the place in the kitchen from\nwhich he had taken it. That was something all the same as a tool which the\neagle of St. Kilda, mentioned by Macgillivray, used when, attacking two\nboys who had robbed her nest, she dipped her pinions first in water and\nthen in sand, to give greater force to the blows which she struck with\nthem. A rat has been seen conducting a blind companion by means of a stick,\neach of the animals holding one end of it in his mouth. Cats have often\nbeen known to learn the use of a latch; and a terrier pup, only two months\nold, belonging to the writer of this article, has so good an idea of the\npurpose of the same article that he manifests a desire to get out of the\nroom by ineffectual jumps at the door-handle. A London pastry-cook had a\nnumber of eggs stolen from a store room at the top of the house; a watch\nbeing set for the thief, two rats were detected carrying an egg downstairs.\nOne of the rats, going down one step, would stand on his hind-legs with his\nfore paws resting on the stair above, while the other rolled the egg toward\nhim; then, putting his fore-legs tightly round it, he lifted it down to the\nstep on which he was standing, and held it there till the other came down\nto take charge of it. Rats have been known to convey eggs up-stairs by a\nsomewhat similar process.\n\n{519}\n\nA very clear example of reasoning occurs in a story told of a water-hen,\nwhich, having observed a pheasant feed out of a box which opened when the\nbird stood on a rail in front of it, went and stood in the same place as\nsoon as the pheasant quitted it. Finding that its weight was not sufficient\nto raise the lid of the box, it kept jumping on the rail to give additional\nimpetus. This only succeeded partially; so the clever bird went away and\nfetched another of its own species, and the weight of the two had the\ndesired effect. An anecdote is told by Mrs. Lee of a magpie which is almost\nenough to persuade one that the creature had the gift of language. The bird\nused to watch about a neighboring toll-gate at times when he expected the\ntoll-keeper's wife to be making pastry; and, if he observed her so\nemployed, he would perch upon the gate and shout, \"Gate ahoy!\" when, of\ncourse, if her husband were absent, she would run out to open it; the bird\nwould then dart into the house and carry away a billful of her pie-crust,\neating and chattering over it with the greatest glee. Surely no one will\ndeny that in this case the bird exercised the faculty of reason.\n\nSomewhat analogous to this case are the many stories related of animals\napparently understanding what is said in their presence. In reality they\nprobably have no conception of the meaning of the words uttered, but their\nkeenness of observation enables them to detect slight changes in the tone\nof voice and notice little things which escape our coarser vision; and from\ntrifling signs they draw reasonable conclusions. The writer had a cat which\nalways knew when the servant was told to fetch food for her, though the\nexperiment was often tried of giving the order in various tones of voice\nand without any look or sign that would be likely to attract pussy's\nattention. During our last war with England there was an old Newfoundland\ndog on board the British ship Leander, stationed at Halifax. He had been\nattached to the ship several years, and the sailors one and all believed\nthat he understood what was said. He was lying on the deck one day when the\ncaptain in passing remarked: \"I shall be sorry to do it, but I must have\nNeptune shot, he is getting so old and infirm.\" The dog immediately jumped\noverboard and swam to another ship, where being taken on board he remained\ntill he died. Nothing could ever induce him to go near the Leander again,\nand if he happened to meet any of her boats or crew on shore, he made off\nas fast as he could.\n\nAnimals certainly have the power of communicating thoughts to each other,\nas the following story proves: \"At Horton, in Buckinghamshire, (a village\nwhere Milton passed some of his early days,) about the year 1818, a\ngentleman from London took possession of a house, the former tenant of\nwhich had moved to a farm about half a mile off. The new inmate brought\nwith him a large French poodle, to take the duty of watchman in the place\nof a fine Newfoundland dog which went away with his master; but a puppy of\nthe same breed was left behind; and he was incessantly persecuted by the\npoodle. As the puppy grew up, the persecution still continued. At length he\nwas one day missing for some hours; but he did not come back alone; he\nreturned with his old friend, the large house-dog, to whom he had made a\ncommunication; and in an instant the two fell upon the unhappy poodle and\nkilled him before he could be rescued from their fury. In this case the\ninjuries of the young dog must have been made known to his friend, a plan\nof revenge concerted, and the determination formed to carry the plan into\neffect with equal promptitude.\" Count Tilesius, a Russian traveller, who\nwrote at the beginning of the present century, tells a wonderful anecdote\nof a dog of his which had been sadly worried by a larger and stronger\nanimal. For some days it was observed that he saved half his food and laid\nit up as a private store.\n{520}\nWhen he had accumulated a large supply, he went out and gathered around him\nseveral dogs of the neighborhood, whom he brought to his home and feasted\non his hoard. The singular spectacle of a dog giving a supper-party\nattracted the count's attention, and he determined to watch their\nproceedings. As soon as the feast was over, they went out in a body,\nmarched deliberately through the streets to the outskirts of the town, and\nthere, under the leadership of their entertainer, fell upon a large dog and\npunished him severely. This incident not only shows that dogs can\ncommunicate their thoughts to one another, and can follow out a fixed plan\nof action, but it looks very much as if they had what is generally supposed\nto be peculiar to man--namely, some idea of a bargain. They can be\nmagnanimous in their behavior toward their fellows, and the measures which\nlarge dogs occasionally adopt to get rid of the annoyance of little curs\ndisplay a great deal of judgment and good feeling. In Mr. Youatt's book, On\nthe Dog, we have a story of a Newfoundland dog in the city of Cork which\nhad been greatly worried by a number of noisy curs. He took no notice of\nthem until one carried his presumption so far as to bite him in the leg,\nwhereupon the large animal ran after the offender, caught him by the back\nof the neck, and carried him to the quay. There, after holding him\nsuspended over the edge for a few moments, he dropped him into the river.\nBut he had no purpose to inflict more than a mild punishment, for after the\ncur had been well ducked and frightened and was beginning to struggle for\nhis life, the Newfoundland dog plunged into the water and brought him safe\nto land. That animal certainly showed good sense, a good heart, and a\nlively appreciation of what was just and proper. A very comical example of\na dog's feeling of propriety is quoted by Mr. Watson from Jesse's Gleanings\nin Natural History. \"A gentleman going out shooting obtained the loan of a\npointer from a friend, who told him that the dog would behave very well as\nlong as he killed his birds: but that, if he frequently missed, it would\nleave him and run home. Unhappily the borrower was extremely unskilful.\nBird after bird was put up and fired at, but flew off untouched, till the\npointer grew careless. As if willing, however, to give his client one\nchance more, he made a dead stop at a fern bush, with big nose pointed\ndownward, his forefoot bent, and his tail straight and steady. In this\nposition he remained firm till the sportsman was close to him, with both\nbarrels cocked; he then moved steadily forward for a few paces, and at last\nstood still near a bunch of heather, his tail expressing his anxiety by\nmoving slowly backward and forward. At last out sprang a fine old black\ncock. Bang, bang, went both barrels, but the bird escaped unhurt. This was\nmore than the dog could bear; he turned boldly round, placed his tail\nbetween his legs, gave one long, loud howl, and set off homeward as fast as\nhe could.\"\n\nPerhaps, after all, one of the most curious exhibitions of reason is\nafforded by the crows, which, in the northern parts of Scotland and in the\nFaroe Islands, hold extraordinary meetings every now and then, apparently\nfor the purpose of judging and punishing evil-doers among their community.\nThe sessions are sometimes prolonged two or three days; and as long as they\nlast, flocks of crows continue to arrive in great numbers from all quarters\nof the heavens. In the mean while, some of the assembly are active and\nnoisy; others sit with drooping heads as grave as judges. When the\ngathering is complete, a very general noise ensues--we are tempted to call\nit _talking_--and then the whole body fall upon one or two individuals\nand put them to death. Justice thus vindicated, the convention straightway\ndisperses.\n{521}\nNow, the crows show every appearance of having been summoned to these\ncouncils; indeed, it is almost inconceivable that they should meet by\nchance; but how the summons is given; how they know when all have arrived;\nwhat are the offences they punish; whether the criminals know the fate that\nawaits them, and are restrained by force from making their escape; and how\nthe knowledge of the crime is dispersed amongst the whole assembly--these\nare curious questions to which we fear no satisfactory answer will ever be\ngiven. The idea of hundreds of birds sitting in deliberation, like a court\nof justice, is indeed marvellous. We can only say that the narrative, as we\nhave given it, seems to be well authenticated, and we leave our readers to\ndraw their own conclusions.\n\nWe think we have quoted anecdotes enough to prove that brutes have souls\nand reason; or, if they have not, that they are much more wonderfully made\nthan man, since they can perform without assistance from the reasoning\nfaculty actions which in us require the exercise of the highest\nintelligence. And although we do not go to the length of saying, with the\nRabbi Manasseh of old, and Dr. John Brown, the author of Spare Hours, in\nour own day, that there is a next world for the brute creation; and do not\nbelieve with another modern writer (the Rev. J. G. Wood) that divine\njustice absolutely requires that God should make amends to animals in the\nfuture life for the sufferings they endure in this--perhaps our readers\nwill agree with us that we have shown it to be no ways impossible that God\nmay have designed the souls of dumb beasts to outlast in this world their\nperishable bodies; that the intelligent part of the sagacious dog may\nanimate a long succession of Rabs and Pontos; and the spirit of the dead\npet may return into bodily form to delight new generations of masters.\n\n------\n\n  From The Month.\n\n  The Gladiators' Song.\n\n\n  Round about this grim arena, by the ghosts of thousands haunted,\n  Beckoned by our slaughtered comrades, move we on with hearts undaunted--\n    _Ave, Caesar Imperator, morituri te salutant!_\n  Dark the world and always darker, none to comfort, none to love us,\n  Grisly hell beneath us yawning, deaf or dead the gods above us--\n    _Ave, Caesar Imperator, morituri te salutant!_\n  Life and flesh and soul and sinew, beating heart and thought upsoaring--\n  Was the goblet of our being crowned but for this wild outpouring?\n    _Ave, Caesar Imperator, morituri te salutant!_\n  Voices come through dreary silence, still for righteous vengeance calling--\n  So we chant our stern defiance false relentless Rome is falling!\n    _Ave, Caesar Imperator, morituri te salutant!_\n  Countless years have tortured nations learned the truth of Roman mercies--\n  Ah! she falls in waste and carnage, 'mid the world's triumphant curses!\n    _Ave, Caesar Imperator, morituri te salutant!_\n  Gleams of vengeance, long delaying, scantly sate the spirit's yearning--\n  Guessing, groping, craving, hoping, must we go without returning?\n    _Ave, Caesar Imperator, morituri te salutant!_\n  Onward to our slaughtered comrades, round the arena, shadow-haunted,\n  On to endless night or morning pass we on with hearts undaunted!\n    _Ave, Caesar Imperator, morituri te salutant!_\n\n------\n\n{522}\n\n\n    From Once a Week\n\n    Lakes of Lorraine.\n\n\nOn certain sultry and thunderous days in the middle of July, 1866, was\ncelebrated, with f\u00eates and fireworks, illuminations by night, and brilliant\nshows by day, the first centenary of the union of the province of Lorraine\nto France. The scene was the city of Nancy, and splendor was added to the\nfestival by the presence of the Empress Eug\u00e9nie and the imperial prince,\nwho lodged in the former palace of King Stanislaus of Poland, the last duke\nof Lorraine, and witnessed from its balcony the defiling of a long\nallegorical procession, representing in order the historical personages of\nthe province, conspicuous among whom was the Maid of Orleans, personated by\na youth of the town bearing in his hand a facsimile of her consecrated\nbanner. The romance of the mediaeval spectacle was a little marred by\ncertain laughable incongruities which the critical eye might detect; for\ninstance, the arquebusiers of the sixteenth century were armed with\npercussion muskets; and the portly nymphs representing France and Lorraine\nseemed in consequence of the heat to be in somewhat too melting a mood for\nperfect dignity. The spectacle as a whole was, however, very imposing, and\nwent off with a success peculiarly French, the clean and handsome city\nbeing crowded with well-behaved strangers from all the neighborhood, in\nsuch vast numbers that, in spite of their good behavior and good temper,\nthey were fain to fight for their places in the trains, and one party had\nto wait till two A.M. at the station, after being in time to get away by\nten at night. In bearing patiently such inconveniences in the pursuit of\npleasure, our neighbors of the other side of the channel most undeniably\nsurpass us. It was pleasant as a contrast to pass without let or hinderance\nthe same station a few days later, following the line which runs parallel\nto the course of the Moselle past \u00c9pinal to Remiremont, on a visit to the\nlakes which lie in the country between that town and the terminus of St.\nDi\u00e9, which ends another branch of the Paris and Strasburg railway. Between\nNancy and \u00c9pinal the stream of the Moselle is met winding through fertile\nmeadows in a broad valley with low elevations on each side; near \u00c9pinal the\nscenery becomes more picturesque; there are more trees near the river, and\nthe long level reaches are broken by occasional rapids with rocks about\nthem. When \u00c9pinal is passed, the valley becomes narrower and prettier, shut\nin between two spurs of the Vosges, until the basin is reached, where\nRemiremont itself lies, and the waters of the Mosellote join those of the\nMoselle, each branch of the river from this point to the source having the\ncharacter of a considerable mountain brook. The town of Remiremont itself\nresembles Freiburg in the Breisgau, minus its magnificent cathedral, in its\nsize and general character, and especially in the abundance of fountains\nand runnels permeating the streets, which in their main portions are\nfronted with arcades like those of Bern or Bologna, a pleasant protection\nagainst sun and shower, and duly appreciated in the tempestuous summer of\n1866.\n\nThe busy little town derives its euphonious name from one Saint Romary. In\nthe circle of mountains enclosing the town one of conical shape is\nremarked, called Mont Habend, from _Castrum Habendi_, a camp erected\non its site by the Romans.\n\n{523}\n\nIn the seventh century this holy mountain was the chosen retreat of two\nanchorites, Am\u00e9 and Romary, who founded there two monasteries, one for\nwomen, another for men, and were canonized after their deaths. The\nmonasteries were destroyed by the Huns in the tenth century, but the site\nof one was repeopled again by monks a century later, while the nuns,\nabandoning the mountain, fixed themselves in the valley. The convent of\nRemiremont was governed during its long existence by sixty-four abbesses,\nthe last of whom, Louise Ad\u00e9laide de Bourbon Cond\u00e9, died in 1824. It was a\nfoundation even more exclusive and aristocratic in its character than All\nSouls', Oxford. The abbesses were generally princesses, and royal honors\nwere accorded them. When each abbess entered the town for the first time, a\ngreat holiday was kept, and the mayor, instead of presenting the keys of\nthe city, offered her the wine of the spot in a cup of gold, which she just\ntouched with her lips before she passed within the walls to be enthroned\nwith great state in the palatial apartments prepared for her. One of the\nnumber of these religious princesses, Catherine de Lorraine, distinguished\nherself in 1637 beating off from the walls of Remiremont the great Turenne,\nwho was endeavoring to take the town from the Duke of Lorraine.\n\nThe town is now famous chiefly for the production of some excellent cakes\nwith the quaint name of \"_quiches_\" probably only a corruption of the\nGerman K\u00fcchlein.\n\nTo the guests at the baths of Plombi\u00e8res, the lake region which lies\nbetween Remiremont and St. Di\u00e9 is better known than to the general world,\nas it lies out of the way of tourists' thoroughfares; but though it cannot\nquite compete in beauty with the English or Scotch lakes, or Killarney, it\nis well worth a visit to those who are not obliged to go a great distance\nto see it. Instead of going due east to the source of the Moselle and the\npass over the main chain of the Vosges which leads to Wesserling, and\nthence by rail to Basel, the road to G\u00e9rardmer turns to the left along a\nvalley parallel to the line of the mountains, and flanked by lower hills,\nwell wooded, on its other side. The foregrounds have the usual broken and\ndiversified character of a granitic country, and the height of the hills is\nsufficient to make the distant views in many parts highly pleasing. There\nis enough picturesque incident to beguile very pleasantly the eighteen\nmiles or so which the diligence traverses to G\u00e9rardmer. The name, derived\nfrom G\u00e9rard, a duke of Lorraine, has been given to a fine oblong sheet of\nclear water, about two miles long, and half a mile broad, bounded for the\ngreatest part of its circumstance by long slopes covered with meadows and\nwhite cottages at intervals, but on the east by a pine forest and rocks,\nwhich give a more savage aspect to its further banks. From the Swiss villas\nbuilt on its banks, the numerous pleasure-boats, and the general lively\naspect, it brings to mind the lake of Zurich in miniature. At its further\nend is an immensely long village, also called G\u00e9rardmer, the most\ndistinguishing mark of which is an enormous wych elm of unknown antiquity,\nstanding in the market place.\n\nIn the summer, G\u00e9rardmer is full of visitors, who are well entertained at\nthe H\u00f4tel de la Poste and the H\u00f4tel des Vosges at a moderate rate. The\nlatter of these is conducted by an indefatigable little landlady, who is\nfull of civilities, assisted by a good-natured, gigantic husband, who seems\nto superintend the kitchen department, and generally was seen during our\nvisit lounging somewhere about the entrance, conspicuous in white trousers\nand a shirt of violet flannel, trimmed with scarlet. The wide road beyond\nG\u00e9rardmer branches to the right and left. The left branch leads into a\nvalley choked with a primaeval pine forest, in the depths of which roars\nthe torrent of the Vologne. The trees are of immense size, and completely\nclad with pendants of moss and lichen, telling of a considerable elevation\nof site, and of such weird and grand forms as to make one wish that the art\nof forest culture which fells the trees at a premature age had never been\nintroduced.\n{524}\nIn one spot, not far from the so-called \"Basse des Ours,\" or Bear Bottom,\nwhere the huge granite-blocks that have fallen from the crest of a mountain\nhave been huddled together, a natural ice-house has been formed in the\ninterstices, called \"La glaci\u00e8re,\" and the fact of our finding no ice in it\nwas accounted for by the summer not having been sufficiently hot to produce\nthe necessary amount of evaporation. The road to the right passes over the\ntorrent, by a bridge, and then divides again, its right branch leading over\nthe mountains into the valley of M\u00fcnster in Alsace, and its left to St.\nDi\u00e9. On the road to St. Di\u00e9 two pines are seen which have grown together\nlike Siamese twins.\n\nNear the bridge is a cascade of singular beauty, which, from a peculiarity\nit possesses in changing its entire aspect as the spectator changes his\nground, is called the _Cascade des F\u00e9es_. Not far from this cascade is\na large slab of granite, and a fountain where Charlemagne is said to have\ndined when he passed out of Alsace over the Vosges into Lorraine, at a time\nwhen all the country was wild forest. A rough bridle road to the right\nleaves the main road to the Schlucht pass and the valley of M\u00fcnster, and,\nmaking for a gap in the hill, soon discloses the beautiful piece of water\ncalled Longemer, or \"The Long Lake,\" the Ullswater, as G\u00e9rardmer is the\nWindermere of Lorraine. It runs in a long trough between beautifully wooded\nsteeps for about two miles, with a slightly serpentine direction, prettily\nbroken by spits of grassy land with a few low trees upon them. At the upper\nend is seen, above woody heights, the bald summit of the Honeck, (Hoheneck,\n\"The High Corner\",) an eminence about four thousand feet high. At the lower\nend, shaded by lofty trees, is a little chapel on a tongue of land,\ndedicated to St. Bartholomew by an anchorite named Bilon, and near it a\nsolitary villa belonging to a medical gentleman of the neighborhood, who\nspends his summer holidays in this Arcadian seclusion, boating and fishing\nin the lake and the clear stream that runs out of it. By a path to the\nright, following the sinuosities of the lake, a rocky barrier is reached,\ndown whose face tumbles, among rocks and trees, a lovely waterfall; and\nwhen this is passed, another lake is disclosed, a round, low-lying basin,\namong dense woods and frowning escarpments, one of them called the Rock of\nthe Devil, which bears the name of Retournemer, or \"The Lake of Return.\" A\nsolitary dwelling, backed by fine beeches and other trees, stands on the\nbrink, the cottage of the forester, where the wanderer to this end of the\nworld finds hospitable entertainment. But notwithstanding the impassable\nlook of the scenery round, a zig-zag path through the trees climbs the\nheight behind the house, and joins the road which leads to the Col de la\nSchlucht, where a beautiful view opens into Alsace, its most prominent\nobjects being that long spur of the Vosges which terminates by Colmar, and\non the other side a broken granite wall, crowned by a peculiarly imposing\ncap of rock, under which the road descends to the green slopes about\nM\u00fcnster, which are variegated with acres of bleaching linen, the product of\nthe weaving industry which pervades the whole country. On the Col itself is\na spacious chalet or hotel, with excellent accommodation and abundant fare,\nto which appetites whetted by the bracing mountain air are inclined to do\nfull justice. From this point, by walking up a long slope in a southerly\ndirection, the top of the Honeck is reached, grazed over by herds of cattle\ntinkling with Alpine bells, and commanding a spacious view over the valley\nof the Rhine to the distant Black Forest, with tremendous precipices in the\nforeground on the side of Alsace. Instead of returning from this point\ndirect to G\u00e9rardmer, I walked through a forest of apparently blasted\nhorn-beam, as grisly as the trees in Gustave Dor\u00e9's drawings, into a long\nvalley, which led in course of time to a busy place called La Bresse, and\nthence, turning to the right, over a moderately high pass back to\nG\u00e9rardmer.\n{525}\nBesides the three lakes already mentioned, there is Blanchemer, or the\n\"White Lake,\" in the valley of the Mosellote; the Lac de Corbeaux,\nso-called from an overhanging cliff frequented by ravens; the Lac de\nLispach, rich in fish, divided by a ridge from Longemer, and the Lac de\nMarchet, on the flank of a mountain not far from Bresse. The so-called\nWhite, Black, and Green lakes belonging to Alsace are situated further to\nthe north on that side of the Vosges chain which looks toward the Rhine. On\none of the mounds of the Honeck mountain there is an abundant and perennial\nspring, called La Fontaine de la Duchesse, which perhaps possesses a higher\nclaim to be the source of the Moselle than the more trifling stream which\ndescends by Bussang, though the latter pours its contribution in a more\ndirect line. The sources of rivers, whether small or great, are generally\ncontrovertible. Some consider the Inn, which rises in the Grisons, as\nhaving more claim to be the real Danube than the river which rises at\nDonaueschingen, and, between the rival claims of the Victoria Nyanza of\nSpeke and the Albert Nyanza of Baker, the real head of mighty Nilus himself\nstill remains an open question for geographers.\n\n------\n\n    Original.\n\n    Columbus\n\n\n  Three Scenes.\n\n  'Tis midnight; through the lozenge panes\n    Flashes a southern storm;\n  And the lightning flings its livid stains\n    O'er a bowed and wearied form.\n  He stands, like a ship once staunch and stout\n    By billows too long opprest;\n  And a fiercer storm than whirls without\n    Tears through his heaving breast.\n  His hand is pressed on his aching brow,\n    And veils his eyes' dark light,\n  And a twinkling cresset's dim red glow,\n  When the lightning pales, doth sadly flow\n  O'er locks where many a thread of snow\n    Tells of time's troubled flight.\n  He stands--a fading, a clouded star,\n  Half-hid in the rack of heaven's war;\n  Or, like a vanquished warrior, one\n  Whose heart is crushed, whose hopes are gone\n    After many a gallant fight.\n\n{526}\n\n  He turns and he paces the damp stone floor,\n    And his glance seeks the damper wall,\n  Where the charts, o'er which he had loved to pore,\n    Like arras rise and fall.\n  There is his heart's most cherished store,\n  There lie the fruits of his deepest lore,\n  And his lips, as he views them o'er and o'er,\n    His withered life recall:\n\n  \"And was it all a dream?\n    Is this the bitter waking?\n   And is hope's heavenly beam\n     For aye my soul forsaking?\n  I thought to see the cross unfurled\n  Upon the hills of a far-off world!\n  To bear the faith of the Crucified\n  Far o'er the wild Atlantic's tide!\n  To see adored the Christian's God\n  Where Christian foot hath never trod!\n    Sure brighter dreams from heaven ne'er fell\n    And I wake in this cold, dim cell!\n\n   \"And were they, too, but dreams----\n      Those lands far in the West,\n    Where robed in sunset beams\n      The Seven Cities rest?\n  Far, far beyond the blue Azores,\n  I thought to press the ocean's shores;\n  The heaving, restless main to span,\n  And give--and give--a world to man!\n  A new-born world of vernal skies\n  Fresh with the breath of paradise--\n  A world that yet would place my name\n  The foremost on the scroll of fame.\n  And now I wake, poor, friendless, lone,\n  'Mid these dripping walls of stone.\n\n    \"And was it but a dream\n       I left fair Italy?\n     To chase the churchyard gleam\n       Of false expectancy--\n  That light which, like the swamp's pale glare,\n  Lures but to darkness and despair?\n  To crush the visions youth built up?\n  Drink to its poisoned dregs the cup\n  Of hope deferred and trust misplaced?\n  To feel heart shrink and body waste?\n  And still like drowning wretch to cry,\n  'One more effort and I die!'\"\n\n\n{527}\n\n  II.\n\n  The drear, chill gray of dawning day\n    Dies in a golden glow,\n  And merrily on the dancing sea\n    The rippling sunbeams flow;\n  And they glance and glint, in many a tint,\n    Over minaret and tower,\n  Where the lofty cross shows the Paynim's loss\n    And the wane of Moslem power.\n  And waving high in the brightening sky,\n    Floating o'er town and sea,\n  And gleaming bright in the morning light,\n     Spain's flag flaunts haughtily.\n\n  Who passes through the antique street\n    Worshipped by all around?\n  Whom do the thousand voices greet\n    That to the heavens resound?\n  Proud is the flash of his dark eye,\n  Yet tempered with humility;\n  The softened radiance, high yet meek,\n  That doth the Christian soul bespeak;\n  Proud is his heaving bosom's swell,\n  And proud his seat in velvet selle;\n  His very courser paws the earth\n  As conscious of its master's worth.\n\n  And now his armed heel loud rings\n    Through a high, carved hall,\n  Where blazoned shields of queens and kings\n    Hang fluttering on the wall.\n  Around, the noblest of the land\n  In deepest awe uncovered stand:\n  Princes, whose proud sires had well\n  Upheld the cross with Charles Martel;\n  And knights, whose scutcheons flashed amid\n  The fiercest fights where blazed the Cid;\n  Soldiers, who by their sovereign's side\n  Hurled back in blood the seething tide\n  Of Moslem war; and churchmen sage,\n  The men who smoothed that iron age.\n  And all alone, 'mid that bright throng,\n  _His_ voice arises clear and strong.\n  He stands before a throne; even now\n  His dark plume waves above his brow,\n  As he, of all the courtier train,\n  Rivalled the majesty of Spain.\n  Fortune like this, what fate can mar?\n  He stands--a cloudless, risen star.\n\n{528}\n\n  III.\n\n  Once more 'tis the mid hour of night;\n    Once more the storm beats high;\n  But now it whirls its fearful might\n    Along the cloud-fraught sky\n  Which spans the drear Atlantic's waste,\n    All whitened with wild foam,\n  That cleaves the air, as sea-birds haste\n    At even to their home.\n\n  But even there, where nature's power\n    Laughs puny man to scorn,\n  Man lords it for his little hour\n    O'er fellow-man forlorn.\n  Within a Vessel's creaking sides\n    A chained prisoner sits;\n  Drooped, weary, careless what betides\n    His tired soul, ere it flits\n  Far from a world where gratitude\n  Yields ever to the selfish brood\n  That gold and thirst for honor bring\n  To breast of peasant and of king.\n  What now avails the world he gave\n  To thankless Spain? It cannot save\n  From slavish chains its whilom lord,\n  Nor shield him from the hatred poured\n  O'er his bowed head by those who late\n  But formed the puppets of his state.\n  Gone is his kindly mistress--laid\n  To sleep among Spain's royal dead.\n  Dead is her smile, her beaming gaze\n  So full of hope when darkening days\n  Hung o'er the crown she wore so well;\n  Yea, dead is queenly Isabel!\n  And where are now the crowds that hung\n  Upon his steps when every tongue\n  Shouted his praise? The station high\n  Above all Spain's plumed chivalry?\n  The high commands? Away! each thought\n  With saddening memory so deep fraught!\n  Call not pale flashes from afar\n  To mock with light a fallen star!\n  The past is dead, the future read,\n  Ay! see a broken, moss-grown stone,\n  And on it view a kingly meed\n      Of thanks to genius shown--\n    Ay! trace o'er that forgotten grave--\n    \"ANOTHER WORLD COLUMBUS GAVE\n       TO CASTILE AND L\u00c9ON.\"\n\n                         Front-de-boeuf.\n\n------\n\n{529}\n\n\n    Original.\n\n    The Two Lovers of Flavia Domitilla.\n\n    by Clonfert.\n\n\n\n  Chapter II.\n\n  The Slaves' Feast.\n\n\nThe great Festival called _Saturnalia_ was being celebrated in Rome\nwhen these events took place. The occurrence of this feast enabled the\nChristians from many parts of the world to assemble in the city, and to\ncelebrate under cover of it the feast of Christmas. History does not light\nus with certainty to the precise time at which this latter feast was\ninstituted, but shows it in matured existence at a very early period.\nTradition has surmised that it had its birth in the first century, and that\nit was celebrated in secret and security under shadow of the pagan\nfestivities of the _Saturnalia_.\n\nThe _Saturnalia_, in honor of _Saturnus_, to whom the Latins\ntraced the introduction into Italy of agriculture and the civilizing arts,\nfell toward the end of December. The agricultural labors of the year being\nthen over, it became a kind of harvest-home with the rural population.\nAfter the Julian addition of two days to the month of December, it\ncommenced on the 16th of the Kalends of January, that is, on the 17th\nDecember, and continued for three days. But the people generally\nanticipated the time and prolonged it to the end of the month, especially\nto the 24th, when it became merged in another feast called\n_Sigillaria_, on account of the earthenware figures then hawked about\nas toys for children.\n\nDuring the feast the slaves were allowed great liberty of act and of\nspeech. Throwing off their sombre garments of brown and black, which,\ntogether with their slippers, made up the servile dress, (_vestis\nservilis_,) they donned their masters' clothes, assumed like freedmen\nthe _pileus_, or felten cap, considered the badge of freedom. Their\nallowance of bread and salt and oil was increased and made palatable by the\naddition of wine. Their masters often waited on them at table, where\nthoughts were freely uttered in joke and song as well as in sober earnest\nwithout restraint or blame. The whole people made merry; the toga was laid\naside, and the loose-fitting garment _synthesis_ put on with a\nhigh-peaked skull-cap without brim, (_pileus_.) Wax-tapers were given\nas presents, particularly by slaves to their owners and by the clients to\ntheir patrons; with these lighted in their hands, they went along the\nstreets shouting \"_Io Saturnalia!_\" Stores and courts were closed;\nschools kept holiday; war could not be proclaimed; evil-doers could not be\npunished; gambling, prevented by law at other times, was permitted. In\nprivate circles mock-kings were chosen, who ruled the sports with right\nroyal dignity. All these and greater privileges, were granted the slaves.\n\nAurelian was in no mood for enjoyment since his interview with Flavia.\nKnowing that many strangers would be calling at his Roman palace, he\navoided them by betaking himself to his suburban villa. There, too, he\ncould with less fear of discovery keep his engagements with Zoilus and\nSisinnius for the 8th of the Kalends of January. He was nervously anxious\nto prove the truth of what the former had told him.\n\nHe retired, therefore, to the country. Thither he invited Sisinnius to meet\nhim on the day agreed on with Zoilus, under plea of seeing his slaves\ncelebrate the feast in rural style.\n{530}\nSisinnius found him in the _Tablinum_, a room opposite the hall door,\nwhere family records and archives were kept. Seeing Aurelian, thin, pale,\nand dull, writing on a parchment roll, he asked:\n\n\"Is it making your will you are? You remind me of the shade of Dido! This\ncomes of neglecting the gods and their feasts, and shutting yourself up\namong those woods and stone-walls like a vestal. If you staid in the city,\nand lighted your wax-taper, and sang your song to Saturn like a good jolly\nfellow, you would be far more cheerful and comely!\"\n\n\"Perhaps so. But the three destinies are not all and always kind. I have\nhad my happy times; it is fair my sad ones should come.\"\n\n\"Pshaw, Aurelian! Pour out a libation to Bacchus and then empty off the\ngoblet yourself, and you shall find the jolly god will stiffen up your\ndrooping spirits! I know the cause of all this--your interview with that\nwilful girl! Cheer up! women are like the summer clouds, one time damp and\ndark, the next beaming with the sunshine of love and beauty.\"\n\n\"Very poetical, Sisinnius, but Flavia is not after the ordinary mould.\nTonight, however, will decide my doubts and hopes for ever. You remember\nour engagement with Zoilus?\"\n\n\"Yes, I am half sorry I made it. I cannot read that slave. He seems to know\nevery one and everything; and one can scarcely distinguish between his\njocose and his serious moods. Do you know where I met him as I came to the\ncrossway of the Appian and Latin roads? Talking to that Jewish beggar who\nsits morning, noon, and night asking pennies from the passers-by near the\nEgerian fountain.\"\n\n\"I allowed him into the city to arrange for our admission to the\nmeeting-place of the Christians. He certainly does know a great deal, and\nmust be a clever deceiver. Otherwise he could not have crept into the\nsecrets of those mysterious, plotting Jewish sects without being\ndistrusted. However, in the present instance he is serious and to be\ntrusted; for I have promised him and a female slave--a Jewess also, who has\nfascinated him--their liberty, in case he convinces me that Flavia has\nbecome a Christian. But, hush! here he comes. Well, Zoilus, you have\nreturned sooner than I expected. What news from the city?\"\n\n\"Hail, noble Sisinnius!\" said the Greek, bowing. \"Well, master, the divine\nDomitian is in a fury; the exhibition of games in the new amphitheatre has\nbeen a failure. He had ordered, it is said, nearly ten thousand beasts and\na proportionate number of gladiators, a number exceeding that with which\nhis brother Titus had dedicated it. The play of Hercules and Omphale was to\nbe enacted before the people. A gladiator was under training for many weeks\nto sustain the character of Hercules, and was to have been burned alive at\nthe end in a skirt set on fire with vitriol and tar. The gladiator went\nthrough the preparatory training well, and seemed to enjoy the good things\nordered him by the emperor with the view of making him fleshier and fatter\nfor the burning. But, while being brought to the amphitheatre this morning,\nhe slipped his head between the spokes of the cart-wheel, and, without\ngratitude for the good things, or feeling for the disappointment of the\nimperial god, suffered his neck to broken. This was really too bad of mere\nslave! [Footnote 166]\n\n   [Footnote 166: An historical fact. _Friedlander_.]\n\n\"So another had to substituted; what comfort or cause of laughter would\nthere be in witnessing the burning of the corpse? A live substitute was\nfound, who most ungraciously refused to move either hand or foot in the\nlove-making of Hercules and Omphale. However, this could be borne in\nanticipation of the fiery ending; but, wonderful to relate, when the skirt\nwas put on and the flames were lighted, he stood unscorched in their midst,\ncalling on the Christian God. Was not the emperor in a rage!\n{531}\nThe water was let into the arena and the crocodiles and other amphibious\nmonsters were swimming about, devouring each other; and the man was thrown\nin, but they would not touch him! Floating on the surface of the water,\nwith upturned face and clasped hands, he prayed the Christian God to have\npity on Domitian. This so angered the latter that, standing up from his\nseat above the arena, he cursed the Christian and the Christian's God, in\nthe name of his own and of Jupiter's divinity. When, lo! as if Jupiter was\nprovoked, a thunderbolt like a burning globe came flashing as if from\nhighest heaven, and went hissing through the water in the arena, killing\nevery living thing within it except the floating Christian! The veil of the\namphitheatre, with the machinery by which it was sustained, was set on fire\nand torn away. The people rushed from their seats; it is not known how many\nlives were lost. The emperor himself was terrified, and, running from his\nthrone to his chariot, drove furiously to his palace, to find it also\nstruck by the lightning.\" [Footnote 167]\n\n    [Footnote 167: These facts are substantially true. Tillemont's Lives of\n    the Emperors, and the History of the Flavian Amphitheatre, or\n    Colosseum, relate things as wonderful of Domitian's reign.]\n\n\"This will hasten the edict of persecution against the Christians; and it\nis time,\" observed Aurelian.\n\nThe villa stood on a farm of many hundred acres. A wooded hill, from which\nit was separated by a stream emptying into the Tiber, sheltered it from the\nwintry winds. The stream drained the land, which otherwise would have been\na marsh, and thus prevented the unhealthy effluvia which unfitted many\nparts near the city for human resilience. Its distance of some miles from\nthe great southern road saved it from many visitors, and thereby rendered\nit a secure retreat for a mind seeking solitude. Attached to the villa, but\nat some hundred yards from it, were the dwelling-places of the outdoor\nslaves, in and around which they were now feasting. It consisted of two\nopen courts, [Footnote 168] an outer and an inner one.\n\n    [Footnote 168: Cohortes, chortes, cortes--courts.]\n\nIn the buildings around the former was the kitchen, an apartment large\nenough to contain the whole _family_ employed on the farm.\n_Family_ (_familia_) was the word used to designate the total\nnumber of slaves employed on an estate or in a household. Near the kitchen\nwere the baths, the oil and wine-presses, the cellars, and in the upper\nstories the granaries, carefully protected from damp, heat, and insects. At\nthe entrance-gate of this court were the apartments for the\n_Villicus_, or chief steward, and for the _Procurator_ of the\n_family_. In the inner court were the stables, stalls, and sheds,\n(_equilia, bubilia,_ and _ovilia_.) In the centre of each court\nwas a large reservoir, into which the water from the stream was carried\nthrough terra-cotta pipes, or Roman-arched drains. The reservoir in the\nouter court was generally used for cleansing and soaking vegetables; that\nin the inner was carefully supplied with fresh water for poultry and\ncattle. Around both courts were the chambers (_cellae_) of the slaves,\nwhich fronted southward so as to catch the sun's light and heat. Near these\nchambers, but partly underground, was the prison for refractory or fugitive\nslaves; it was partially lighted by long and narrow windows.\n\nAurelian and Sisinnius strolled leisurely from the villa, accompanied by\nZoilus, and discussing the wonderful events he had related. When they\nreached the courts, they found the slaves engaged in different amusements.\nIt was a bright, bracing day; the sun shone in a cloudless sky, which had\nbeen swept by the wind. There was nothing to remind them of December, save\nonly the long, dry branches of the trees rustling and swaying on the\nhillside, and the gusts sweeping at times in eddies round the courts as if\nthey had lost their way. Some of the slaves were playing at quoits; others\nat draughts (_latrunculi_) in sheltered nooks. Some indulged in the\nusually forbidden game of dice, while younger ones took a boyish pleasure\nin rattling the cylindrical dice-boxes of bone or ivory,\n(_fritillus_.)\n{532}\nA group in the central area of the outer court played at odd and even,\n(_par impar ludere_;) while another was gathered around a slave with\nlong-flowing philosophic beard, who proposed puzzles on the abacus, or\ncalculating tray. Many sat quietly apart; others walked moodily about,\nwrapped in thoughts that seemed tinged with disappointment and gloom. But\nthe great body of the family was in the kitchen, which resounded with\nsinging, music, and dancing. As soon as Aurelian and his companions had\nentered the last-named apartment, a little slave with hunchback, wiry frame\nbounded from a couch and seized the skirt of his master's toga, which was\nslung in walking style over the left shoulder.\n\n\"The gods will be angry with the senator for wearing his toga during the\nfeast, and for not waiting on Caipor as he did last year,\" exclaimed the\ndwarf.\n\n\"No, no, Caipor! Saturnus has given me leave to retain the toga; because I\nam not well, and he fears I would catch cold if I laid it aside for a\nlighter dress.\"\n\nThe face of Caipor darkened and tears brightened through his eyelashes.\n\n\"Poor master is not well and shall die! Then what will Caipor do? Villicus\nwill whip him and put him in the _furca_ for ringing his bells; or\nthey will sell him and he will never more see or love good master or\nbeautiful Flavia.\"\n\nAurelian assured him that there was no danger of his own death, and that he\nmight ring his bells and should not be whipped. The little fellow shook his\nPhrygian cap, and rang a tiny peal from the tiny bells attached around it.\nThe jingle caused him to laugh out with idiotic delight.\n\n\"Villicus cannot whip Caipor for shaking his bells, ha, ha! Villicus\nwhipped Lucius to-day until the big drops of blood came from between the\nshoulders, and put him on the mill in the prison.\"\n\n\"Impossible!\" said Sisinnius. \"It is not lawful to punish or imprison\nduring the feast.\"\n\n\"Lucius said so. But Villicus would not listen. Lucius is a big, strong man\n--why did he not kill Villicus? He did not cry or stir, but he kept calling\non Jesus to help him; but Jesus did not come. Master, who is Jesus?\" asked\nthe fool.\n\nAurelian's curiosity was aroused. On questioning the steward, he was told\nthat Lucius, with many other slaves, refused to join in honoring Saturn or\nany of the gods, or to award divinity to the emperor; that it was necessary\nto punish some one for example's sake, and that Lucius, other wise quiet\nand inoffensive, was chosen as being principal among the recusants.\n\n\"What is to come next?\" said Aurelian bitterly to Sisinnius. \"Our wives and\ndaughters, and now our lowest slaves, are lured by this Christian seducer!\nLike the pestilence from the marshes, his influence is creeping into every\ncorner and poisoning the whole atmosphere of our social system. Something\nmust be done to check its deadly progress. A stronger dose than that\nadministered by Nero is requisite to kill it.\"\n\nCaipor was clinging affectionately to his master's side. At length, drawing\nthe toga by a sudden jerk, he looked up into Aurelian's face and said:\n\n\"Caipor waits upon the senator the year round. Will not the senate wait\nupon Caipor during the festival?\"\n\n\"Certainly, I will be your slave and wait on you, my Caipor! Where is your\ncouch?\"\n\nCouches with, small tables for the guests had been arranged in form of a\ntriclinium at one end of the large apartment. Leading Aurelian to one of\nthese seats, the hunchback fool reclined upon his elbow in [a] most\napproved dining attitude; and, as Aurelian rolled the table to his side and\nhelped him to wine and fruit, looked around the room with mingled pride and\npleasure at being the only one so honored.\n\nMeantime Zoilus told Sisinnius the history and character of several slaves.\nThere were about four hundred present.\n{533}\nOur readers may give us credit for exaggeration if we draw attention to the\nvast numbers, the varied origin, and occupations of slaves owned by noble\nRomans in the age of Domitian. Slavery arose from three causes, namely,\nfrom birth, from civil punishment, and captivity in war. The captives by\nwar alone would swell the number enormously. In the reign of Augustus a\nfreedman died leaving by will over four thousand slaves, after having lost\nother thousands in the civil wars. Historians say that many Romans had from\nten to twenty thousand. Juvenal puts the test of a person's fortune in the\nquestion, \"_Quot pascit servos?_\" \"How many slaves does he support?\"\nDuring the empire they filled every position, from the most menial to the\nmost literary. They were tillers and caretakers of the territories of the\npatricians in Italy, Sicily, and in the provinces beyond the mountains and\nthe seas. They were employed as bakers, barbers, cooks, stewards, and\nartisans; as tutors, clerks, amanuenses, readers, teachers, physicians,\nastronomers, rhetoricians, poets, and philosophers. The literature and\nscience of the Roman world, the \"Orbis terrarum\" found many a worthy\nrepresentative in their ranks. Hence it has been well said that the martial\nprowess of Rome conquered that of foreign nations, but that the\ncivilization and learning of foreigners conquered or rather produced hers.\n\nWe need not wonder, therefore to find hundreds of slaves in the household\nof Aurelian. His family was among the oldest and noblest of the city.\nCounting those on his Italian and foreign estates, they numbered many\nthousands. In the assemblage which Sisinnius was scanning, many\nnationalities had representatives--Phrygians, Cappadocians, Thracians,\nBritons, Greeks, and Jews.\n\n\"Whence was Caipor purchased?\" asked Sisinnius.\n\n\"The mother of Aurelian,\" answered Zoilus, \"was driving in her four-wheeled\nchariot (_rheda_) through the streets of Rome. Her attention was drawn\nto a dwarfish figure, who, emerging from the forum of Augustus, followed\nthe chariot-wheels, clapping his hands and crying out, 'Well done! little\nwheel. Run fast! Big wheel can't catch you; well done, little wheel!' He\nwas in ecstasies on seeing the smaller wheels of the carriage, as it rolled\nquickly on, keep their position at the same distance from the larger. The\nslave-dealer from whom he had wandered came up and scourged him severely.\nHe cried piteously and called on the lady for protection. Moved with pity,\nshe made her husband buy him at a cost of ten thousand sestertia,\n($50,000.) [Footnote 169] Since that time he has been the pet fool of the\nhousehold (_morio_,) and was, according to custom, named Caipor\n(_Caii puer_) after my noble master's father.\"\n\n    [Footnote 169: A _morio_, or fool, in the reign of Nero cost\n    $15,000! _Dio_.]\n\n\"What is the name of that female yonder? How beautiful is the symmetry of\nher face and figure! But there is determined purpose in her lip and eye.\"\n\n\"That is Judith the Jewess,\" said Zoilus, slightly confused. \"She was\nbought like myself from among the slaves left by the late Consul Domitilla.\nShe was a little girl during the siege of Jerusalem; and, having\nmiraculously escaped was, like other girls of her age and beauty, brought\nto grace the triumphal return of the conqueror Titus. During the procession\nshe was perched like a winged Iris on the same chariot with Venus and\nApollo.\"\n\n\"And that other near her?\"\n\n\"Is the daughter of a Roman plebeian, and by birth a free woman. But,\nhaving secretly married a slave, she was on discovery reduced to his level.\nShe bears her lot patiently, however, because she cannot be separated by\nsale from her husband.\"\n\n\"I see two strongly built slaves sitting near each other. One of them wears\nhis beard; and the fair locks of the other are down to his shoulders. They\nseem to look contemptuously on the amusements.\"\n\n{534}\n\n\"One of these is a Getulian, the other a Briton. They were both chiefs and\nwarriors in their respective countries. You perceive the mark\n(_stigma_) burned into the former's forehead? When first exposed in\nthe slave-market, having on his neck the tablet (_titulus_) describing\nhis various qualities, a physician was brought, before whom he was to be\nstripped and examined. Before they had time to so treat him he snatched up\na staff, and, having prostrated slave dealer and physician, with a sweep\nbounded over the railing of the area and escaped among the buildings of the\nold forum. It cost the lives of three slave-hunters before he was captured.\nHe was branded as a dangerous character and condemned to die as a\ngladiator. But Aurelian succeeded in procuring him. Since he came on this\nestate he has made no attempt at escape. Being allowed a percentage\n(_peculium_) on his work like many others employed by our master, he\nhas become industrious, and hopes after some years to be able to purchase\nhis liberty by his savings. The Briton is similarly situated. If they\nsucceed in procuring freedom, depend upon it, they will return to their\nnative hills and relight the torch of war.\"\n\n\"Who is that old man with bald head and long white beard, to whom Aurelian\nis now speaking?\"\n\n\"That is Bathus, the tutor and caretaker of Aurelian's youthhood. He wears\nthe long beard and cloak of a philosopher by license of the festival. He\nhates the emperor on account of his late edict of expulsion against the\nphilosophic tribe. He also professes grammar and rhetoric. Next [to] him is\nTritonios, a disciple of Hippocrates. He is famous for his skill in\nbleeding and in amulets. His bored ears show his Eastern origin, probably\nin Arabia. You may find him any morning before sunrise gathering herbs for\ncharms. There is scarcely a slave, or a tree on the estate that has not a\ntriangular Abracadabra, or some other amulet suspended on him or it, as a\nprotection against disease and the evil genii.\"\n\nWhile Zoilus and Sisinnius were thus conversing, those in the other parts\nof the apartment were not without their own topics and amusements. It was\nobservable that they instinctively took their places according to their\nposition and rank in the family. Those born in the household, the\n_vernae_, were more forward and talkative than the others; they well\ndeserved the character given of them by the poet as the \"_vernae\nprocaces_.\"\n\nA Roman slave-family contained all the sources of social enjoyment and\nhappiness, such as was possible for persons in their condition, provided\nthe owner and the superintendents were not inclined to tyranny. Their\nmarriage was not indeed sanctioned by law; but the _contubernium_,\nwhich permitted them to live as man and wife under the same roof, was\nrespected in its relations as much perhaps among the pagan, as among\nChristian nations, among whom slavery flourished. [Footnote 170]\n\n    [Footnote 170: Cod. iii. 23.]\n\nAn enactment was passed by the senate that in sales and divisions of\nproperty husband and wife, parent and child, brother and sister, should not\nbe sundered. Roman jurists, no doubt, defined slavery to be a\n\"_constitutio juris gentium, qu\u00e2 quis contra naturam alterius dominis\nsubjicitur_,\" thus strictly giving the master power to do much as he\nliked with the slave; to sell, punish, and put to death. In consequence\ngreat cruelties were often inflicted. But generally social intercourse and\npositive morality softened down their severity. Positive legislation also\ncame to the aid of the slave. Under the Antonines, a man putting his slave\nto death without a justifying cause was subject to a heavy penalty. If a\nslave were treated too harshly, he might bring the case before the public\ntribunal and claim to be sold to another master. If a sickly or aged slave\nwere exposed by the owner, he became free; and, if put to death, the crime\nwas punished as murder. Christianity, though it did not proclaim slavery to\nbe an essential evil, made way for emancipation.\n{535}\nThe great principles of charity were urged by the first Christian writers\nand fathers of the church. Clement of Alexandria devoted much of his\neloquence to this subject. Gradually this Christian spirit impregnated\nsociety, especially after the triumph of the cross under Constantine.\nSlaves who became priests, monks, nuns, or were promoted to any clerical\norder, were made free by law. Owing to these circumstances, the number of\nslaves became very much lessened. Many Christian masters emancipated all\nthey possessed; others kept them, until they were instructed and converted,\nand then gave them freedom. Justinian particularly did much for the\noverthrow of slavery: his legislation, inspired by the Catholic Church,\nwould have wholly extinguished it, but for the invasion of the northern\nbarbarians. These brought with them their slaves, who were mostly\nSclavonians, (_sclavi_, or _slaves_,) and reduced many of the\nconquered to the same level. The church was true to her policy of not\nsuddenly tearing up any of the foundations of society when not essentially\nwrong; but she never ceased to preach, \"in season and out of season,\" the\ngreat principle of \"doing unto others as we would have them do unto us.\"\nThis is the mirror she has always held up before master and slave. Seeing\ntheir duties here reflected, the evils of slavery, and finally the system\nitself, began to fade like snow under the softening influence of the sun.\nThe voice of the Catholic Church was the herald of freedom from the\nbeginning. Wondrous changes were brought about without those calamities\naccompanying sudden transitions. The echoes of her teaching have been taken\nup by religious and political parties. But they have had the injustice of\nappropriating it as their own, and the ingratitude to forget that the\nCatholic Church was the mother at whose knees mankind learned the lessons\nof Christian charity and liberty! But we must return.\n\nDuring the conversation between Zoilus and Sisinnius, the jests and\nlaughter of the \"vernae\" were heard above all other sounds.\n\n\"Observe Zoilus,\" said one, \"he looks as sober and serious as Rhadamanthus\non the judgment-seat. What is the matter with him?\"\n\n\"He is expecting to be a freedman one of these days, and thinks it time to\nbecome a gentleman and quit his old habits and associates.\"\n\n\"Why, as to that matter, he is as free as the wind on the hill-side. He is\nin and out of the city as often as he likes. What induces master to give\nhim so much freedom? There is something in it.\"\n\n\"See Murena, too! He expects in a few months to buy himself out with the\nprofits of his peculium.\"\n\n\"That accounts for his being so great a miser. The barber told me that,\nafter having his hair cut and nails pared the other day, Murena gathered\nthe cuttings in order to make a denarius on them!\"\n\nThis observation of the physician Tritonios caused laughter and was not\nunheard by Murena, who replied:\n\n\"O doctor! that is a stale joke stolen from Plautus. Next time I will\npreserve the parings for your amulets, they may be as good for the\ntoothache or the colic as the hairs on the goat's chin which you hung upon\nthe arm of Marcus!\"\n\n\"Take care, Murena!\" said a third, \"you don't know how soon you may require\nTritonios to assist you.\"\n\n\"Yes, and share the fate of Procax, who only saw the doctor in a dream, and\nawoke no more, though he carried an amulet.\"\n\nThe conversation was interrupted by the entrance of two slaves, a male and\nfemale, dressed in short and close garments for the dance. They wore\nleathern skull-caps for protection of the head in case of falling, because\nas they danced they flung themselves on their heads and alighted again upon\ntheir feet. Another slave played appropriate airs on the flute.\n{536}\nAfter engaging in this dance, in which, after Spartan style, the hands and\nhead and eyes were in motion as well as the feet, a rope was extended\nacross the room. The female dancer ascended, carrying a thyrsus bound with\nwhite fillet and ending in a bunch of vine and ivy leaves mixed with\nberries. Balancing herself with this, she danced in many graceful\nattitudes, representing satyrs, fauns, bacchanals, and other mythological\nbeings. Then exchanging the thyrsus for a crater of wine and a small\ndrinking-cup, she danced and meantime poured the wine from one vessel into\nthe other, balancing herself by the action, and then descended amid great\napplause. After the dance the amanuensis of Aurelian declaimed with great\nspirit the beautiful passage of Homer in which the death of Hector at the\nhands of Achilles is described. Here some one remarked that Zoilus had not\nsung or improvised during the evening, and a unanimous call was made on\nturn, with which, after some hesitation, he complied by singing the\nfollowing:\n\n    The Song of Saturnus.\n\n  A hymn to Saturnus, a grateful hymn,\n  With goblets festooned to the bead-crowned brim,\n      On his festival we sing:\n    Who once in the year\n    Doth freedom and cheer\n      To slave and to master bring,\n          Bring,\n      To slave and to master bring.\n\n  He taught unto men how to till the hard soil,\n  To plant the green grape and to draw the fat oil\n      Which flows in the olive's heart,\n    To prune the vine\n    And to tap the mine,\n      And every useful art.\n\n  He breathed on the earth; and his breath is the spring\n  Which flowers and fruits on its bosom doth fling,\n      And sweetens the summer breeze\n    As it freshly blows\n    Where the water flows\n      Through the roots of the leaf-clad trees.\n\n  He breathed on the sea; and the ripples came\n  Like smiles o'er its face, and its amorous frame\n      Kissed with its cooling lip\n    The shore in the hours\n    When the sky sends its showers\n      For the thirsty earth to sip.\n\n  He breathed on the air; and its brow grew white\n  With rays scarce concealed by the veil of night;\n      And the sun from its blue looked down\n    With a smile so bland\n    As to free the land\n      From the chill of his winter frown.\n\n  He breathed on the springs; and the streams rushed out\n  From their mother's lap with a mirthful shout:\n      \"Oh! come to the fields,\" they sang,\n    \"For the parched meads\n    Need our limpid beads,\"\n      And they laughed as they onward sprang.\n\n  Then a hymn to Saturnus, a grateful hymn,\n  With goblets festooned to the wine-crowned brim,\n      On his festival we sing:\n    Who once in the year\n    Doth freedom and cheer\n      To slave and to master bring!\n\n\"Why, Zoilus, you rival Martial the Spaniard in wooing the virgin Nine,\"\nsaid Bathus. \"If the emperor only knew your powers, he would patronize you\nas well as Juvenal, Quinctilian, and the Jew Josephus.\"\n\n\"The renegade from his race and creed!\" said Ephrem, a Jewish slave, in an\nunderbreath to Judith, who sat beside him.\n\n\"The golden age of poesy, like that of philosophy, has departed,\" remarked\nZoilus in answer to Bathus. \"The emperor has lost his early love of\nverse-making, and betaken himself to the burning of vestals [Footnote 171]\nand of Christians.\n\n    [Footnote 171: Vestals were burned in the reign of Domitian for\n    violation of their vows.]\n\n\"By the way, Bathus, have you heard that Epictetus and the whole host of\nphilosophers have been exiled? They say that Dio Chrysostom is consoling\nhimself in the Getulian desert with a tract of Plato and a speech of\nDemosthenes. I would advise you strongly to shave your beard and lay aside\nthe philosopher's cloak, or the beard may be cut off with the head attached\nto it. Genius is at a low ebb nowadays; that is my reason for having ceased\nto be one.\"\n\n\"Beware, lest you might share a like fate; your tongue wags very freely,\"\nobserved Aurelian, who overheard the conversation.\n\n\"Noble master, this is the feast of free speech. To-morrow I will padlock\nmy lips, and nothing but a golden key will open them.\" said the slave,\nglancing knowingly at his master. Then turning to Ephrem the Jew, \"Sing us\nthat ode to your native land I heard you repeat the other day, Ephrem.\"\n\n\"It is in Hebrew, and would not be understood.\"\n\n{537}\n\n\"No matter; the metre and air are sweet and melancholy. I will have it\ntranslated into Latin hexameter by your countryman Josephus, one of these\ndays, if you like.\"\n\n\"Name him not, the arch-sycophant, who lives by flattering tyrants,\"\nwhispered Judith with a fierce tone and glance, before which Zoilus\nblanched and trembled.\n\n\"Fair Judith, be not angry; I meant it only in joke.\"\n\n\"Jokes at the expense of others' feelings deserve not the award of wit,\"\nsaid Ephrem, who, standing up, declaimed the following with a vehement\nearnestness:\n\n  Ode of the Exiled Jew to Jerusalem.\n\n  I.\n\n  Thy heart, Jerusalem! is desert and drear,\n  Thy children no more in thy bosom appear;\n  In the land of the Gentiles they sigh and they moan,\n  While thou, dear mother! dost pine all alone.\n\n  II.\n\n  Thy turrets, and temple, and beautiful gate--\n  The gems that shone bright in the crown of thy state--\n  Like the ark of the prophets, no longer remain,\n  And the Philistine foxes thy beauty profane!\n\n  III.\n\n  The gold harp of David awakens no more\n  Thy echoes where pontiff and people adore;\n  Thy silver-voiced trumpets are silent and dead,\n  No smoke from thy temple ascends overhead.\n\n  IV.\n\n  Like the weeds on the beach by the ocean-tide hurled,\n  Thy daughters are cast on the shores of the world;\n  Thy eye's filled with weeping, thy heart's filled with woe,\n  And thy brow once so fair in the dust is laid low!\n\n  V.\n\n  The dust of thy kings in thy bosom remains\n  Where the hoofs of the Gentiles insult thy sad plains,\n  And their lamps sacrilegious invade the deep glooms\n  That wrap them to rest in thy Valley of Tombs!\n\n  VI.\n\n  Jerusalem, mother! we pray unto Him\n  Who has filled up thy chalice of woe to the brim:\n  \"A curse on the tyrants whose impious hands\n  Have seized thee, denied thee, and bound thee in bands!\n\n  VII.\n\n  \"O send down, Jehovah! by night and by day,\n  Thy blight on apostate impostors, we pray;\n  The Christian deceivers, whose God we nailed fast [Footnote 172]\n  To the tree of the cross as a sail to the mast!\n\n    [Footnote 172: The Jews cursed the Christians three times a day in\n    their synagogues, says Epiphanius in this direful form, \"Send down thy\n    curse, God! on the Christians.\"]\n\n  VIII.\n\n  \"Since the hour he was crucified outside thy gate,\n  His blood like a poison has mixed in thy fate!\n  May the God of thy fathers, the God of our race,\n  From thy forehead, Jerusalem, wipe the disgrace!\n\nDuring the delivery of the first verses tears flowed down the cheeks of\nJudith. During the last part fire seemed to flash from her eyes.\n\nAfter Ephrem others were induced to sing or deliver pieces in the languages\nof their respective countries. In the reign of Domitian, the Sarmatians,\nDacians, Parthians, and the German tribes beyond the Rhine had been\ncompletely subdued. Agricola had broken on the Grampians the fierce\nhardihood of the tribes beyond the Tay and Tweed. The success of the Jewish\nwar in the two preceding reigns had scattered that unfortunate race over\nthe earth. We can thence understand how on a large estate like that of\nAurelian so many nationalities met. Leaving them to amuse themselves, we\nwill follow Zoilus.\n\nHe left the hall quietly, crossed the outer court and a paddock between it\nand the villa, and entered through a low-arched door into the garden behind\nit. Between this garden and the villa was the peristyle, a rectangular area\nso named from having stone pillars around it. In its centre was a xystus\nwith box and other shrubs, shaped like tigers, lions, and galleys. The\ndeepening shades of evening brought out their figures with weird-like\nindistinctness. Judith the Jewess stood between two pillars, and as she\nstood, tall, straight, and motionless, might have passed for the guardian\ngoddess of the place.\n\n\"I have been expecting you, Zoilus.\"\n\n\"You do not forget your promise, then?\"\n\n\"No! my part shall be fulfilled as soon as you have complied with the\nconditions.\"\n\n\"Judith! these conditions are hard. I have my misgivings and fears about\nthe part I have to play.\"\n\n\"Fears and misgivings?\" she repeated. \"These account for your changed\nmanner this evening?\"\n\n{538}\n\n\"Yes, I have never known any one to end well who interfered with the\nChristians.\"\n\n\"Ha, ha!\" she laughed ironically. \"You fear the uncircumcised dogs!\"\n\n\"Not them; but I fear their God.\"\n\n\"_Their_ God! Is it the Galilean impostor?\"\n\n\"Moreover,\" he went on, not noticing her question, \"I do not like to betray\nthe niece of our former owner Domitilla the consul. She was always good and\nkind to me.\"\n\n\"Look here,\" said the Jewess, baring her right arm, \"see that scar, which\nafter many years leaves a red seam behind. It was that girl, so good and\nkind, that drove her ivory hair-pin into the very bone, because I did not\nplat her hair to her liking. Was she not good and kind to me, Zoilus?\"\n\n\"She was then young and thoughtless, but she is now different,\" he said.\n\n\"You see that tiger,\" she pointed to a shrub shaped like that animal, \"does\nnot the young cub betray the instincts of the full grown beast? But she is\ndifferent, you will perhaps say, since she became a Christian. As well\nmight you expect the drugs of Locusta [Footnote 173] to cure the leprosy.\nHave you heard what takes place in the private meetings of those fully\ninitiated? Ah! _there_ she can indulge her liking for human blood!\"\n\n    [Footnote 173: A famous poisoner in the time of Nero.]\n\nZoilus was silent. Some struggle of feeling with principle was going on.\nJudith, observing him, exclaimed:\n\n\"A lustrum of five long years has gone by since you asked me to become your\nwife. I told you I would never be a wife, or have a husband, in slavery. It\nis in your power now to procure freedom for both. Do so, and Judith will be\nyours to-morrow. Hesitate now, and she takes back for ever the promise and\nthe pledge she made you!\" She left the peristyle before he had time to\nanswer.\n\n  To Be Continued.\n\n------\n\n    From The Popular Science Review.\n\n    On the Struggle for Existence Amongst Plants.\n\n\nThe quaint dictum, \"Plants do not grow where they like best, but where\nother plants will let them,\" which is credited to the late eminent\nhorticulturalist, Dean Herbert of Manchester, expresses a truth not yet\nhalf appreciated by botanists. It is a protest against the prevalent belief\nthat circumstances of climate and soil are the omnipotent regulators of the\ndistribution of vegetables, and that all other considerations are\ncomparatively powerless. The dean's crude axiom has lately found a\nphilosophical exposition and expression in Mr. Darwin's more celebrated\ndoctrine of the \"struggle for life, and preservation thereby of the favored\nraces,\" and if to it we add that great naturalist's more fruitful discovery\nof the necessity for insect and other foreign agencies in ensuring\nfertility, and hence perpetuating the species, we shall find that the\npowers of climate and soil are reduced to comparatively very narrow limits.\nBefore proceeding to show what are the causes that do materially limit the\ndistribution of species, it may be well to inquire how far the hard pressed\nsoil and climate theory really helps us to a practical understanding of one\nor two great questions that fall under our daily observation; of these, the\nfollowing are the most prominent.\n\n{539}\n\nThat very similar soils and climates, in different geographical areas, are\nnot inhabited naturally either by like species or like genera; that very\ndifferent soils and climates will produce almost equally abundant crops of\nthe same cultivated plants; and that, in the same soil and climate, many\nhundreds, nay, thousands of species, from other very different soils and\nclimates, may be grown and propagated for an indefinite number of\nsuccessive generations.\n\nOf the first of these statements, the examples embrace some of the best\nknown facts in geographical botany; as, for example, that the flora of\nEurope differs wholly from that of temperate North America, South Africa,\nAustralia, and temperate South America, and all these from one another. And\nthat neither soil nor climate is the cause of this difference is\nillustrated by the fact that thousands of acres in each of these countries\nare covered, year after year, by crops of the same plant, introduced from\none to the other; and by annually increasing numbers of trees, shrubs, and\nherbs, that have either run wild or are successfully cultivated in each and\nall of them. The third proposition follows from the two others, and of this\nthe best example is afforded by a good garden, wherein, on the same soil\nand under identical conditions, we grow, side by side, plants from very\nvarious soils and climates, and ripen their seeds too, provided only that\ntheir fertilization is insured. The Cape geraniums, London pride, and\nLysimachia nummularia in our London areas, the pendent American cacti in\nthe cottage windows of Southwalk and Lambeth, are even more striking\nexamples of the comparative indifference of many plants to good or bad\nclimate or soil; and what can be more unlike their natural conditions than\nthose to which ferns are exposed in those invaluable contrivances, Ward's\ncases, in the heart of the city? True, the conditions suit them well, and,\nwith respect to humidity and equability of temperature, are natural to\nthem; but neither is the absolute temperature, nor the constitution, nor\nfreshness of the air, the same as of the places the ferns are brought from;\nnor is any systematic attempt made to suit the soil to the species\ncultivated; for, as Mr. Ward himself well shows, the arctic saxifrage, the\nEnglish rose, the tropical palm, and desert cactus live side by side in the\nsame box, and under precisely similar circumstances, and, as it were, in\ndefiance of their natal conditions.\n\nLet it not be supposed that we at all underrate such power as soil and\nclimate really possess. In some cases, as those of chalk, sand, bog, and\nsaline and water plants, soil is very potent; but the number of plants\nactually dependent on these or other peculiarities of the soil is much more\nlimited than is supposed. Of _bon\u00e2-fide_ water-plants there are few\namongst phaenogams. Sand plants, as a rule, grow equally well on stiffer\nsoils, but are there turned out by more sturdy competitors; and with regard\nto the calcareous soils, it is their warmth and dryness that fits them, to\nso great an extent, for many plants that are almost confined to them, or\nare absolutely peculiar to them. So, too, with regard to temperature, there\nare limits, as regards heat, cold, and humidity, that species will not\noverstep and live; but, on the other hand, so much has been done by\nselection in procuring hardy races of tender plants, and so much may be\ndone by regulating the distribution of earth-temperature, etc., that we\nalready grow tropical plants in the open air during a portion of the year,\nand eventually may do so for longer periods.\n\nAmongst the most striking examples of apparent indifference to natural\nconditions of soil and climate, I would especially adduce two. One is the\n_Salicornia Arabica_, a plant never found in its natural state, except\nin most saline situations, but which has flourished for years in the\nSucculent House at Kew, in a pot full of common soil, to which no salt has\never been added; the other is the tea-plant, which luxuriates in the hot,\nhumid valleys of Assam, where the thermometer ranges between 70\u00b0 and 85\u00b0,\nand the atmosphere is so perennially humid that watches are said to be\ndestroyed after a few months of wear; and it is no less at home in\nnorth-western India, where the summers are as hot and cloudless as any in\nthe world, and the winters very cold.\n{540}\nI may add that the tea-plant has survived the intense cold of this last\nJanuary, at Kew, on the same wall where many hardy and half-hardy plants\nhave been killed.\n\nIt is, further, a great mistake to suppose that the native vegetation of a\ncountry suffers little and very exceptionally by abnormal seasons. The most\nconspicuous instance of the contrary that ever fell under my observation\nwas the destruction of the gigantic gum-tree (_Eucalyptus_) forests in\nthe central districts of Tasmania, which occurred, if I remember right,\nabout the year 1837. In 1840, I rode over many square miles of country,\nthrough stupendous forests, in which every tree was, to all appearance,\nabsolutely lifeless. The district was totally uninhabited, consisting of\nlow mountain ranges, 2,000 feet above the sea, separating marshy tracts\ninterspersed with broad fresh-water lakes. The trees, much like the great\ngaunt elms in Kensington Gardens during winter, but much larger, were in\ncountless multitudes, 80 to 180 feet high, close set, and ten to twenty\nfeet in girth; their weird and ghostly aspect being heightened by the fact\nof most being charred for a considerable distance up the trunk, the effects\nof the native practice of firing the grass in summer during the kangaroo\nhunting season; and by the bark above hanging from their trunks in\nstreaming shreds, that waved dismally in the wind; for the species was the\nstringy-bark gum, that sheds its bark after this fashion. And not only had\nthe gum-trees suffered, but the hardier _Leptospermum_ (tea tree bush)\nand many others were killed, some to the ground and some altogether; so\nthat, though my journey was in spring and the weather was delightful, the\naspect of the vegetation was desolate in the extreme.\n\nIn such climates as our own, similar devastations are unknown, and, though\nwe know that our island was once covered with other timber than now clothes\nit, we have every reason to suppose that the change was slow, and the\neffect either of a gradually altered climate, or of the immigration of\ntrees equally well or better suited to the conditions of the soil and\nclimate, but which had not previously had the opportunity of contesting the\nground with the ruling monarchs of the forest.\n\nMaking every allowance, then, for the influence of soil and climate in\nchecking the multiplication of individuals, we have still two classes of\nfacts to account for: the one, that plants which succeed so well, when\ncultivated, that we are assured both soil and climate are favorable to\ntheir propagation, nevertheless become immediately or soon extinct when the\ncultivator's care is withdrawn; the other, that plants of one country, when\nintroduced into another, even with a very different soil and climate, will\noverrun it, destroy the native vegetation, and prove themselves better\nsuited to local circumstances than the aboriginal plants of the country. In\nthe first case, the reasons are very various, all of them relating to the\nconditions of the plant's existence. Of these the two most potent are, the\nabsence of fertilizing agents, and the destruction of seeds and seeding\nplants. In the present state of our knowledge it is impossible to say which\nof these is most fatal in its effect. In the case of our annual plants or\nour cereals, which never run wild, it is the latter certainly; for they\nseed freely enough; in the case of many perennials, shrubs, and trees, it\nmay be the former, as with the common elm and lime, which rarely or never\nseed in England, though the latter is so notably frequented by insects\nduring its flowering season; whilst a third cause is to be found in their\nseedling plants being smothered by others, of which we have numerous\nexamples in our common pasture grasses, which are, perhaps, the most\nprejudicial in this respect.\n{541}\nA most conspicuous example of this is afforded by the common maple, of\nwhich the seedlings come up early in spring by thousands in the\nneighborhood of the parent tree, in lawns and plantations, but scarcely\never survive the smothering effects of the common summer grasses as soon as\nthese begin to shoot.\n\nWhen I visited the cedar grove on Mount Lebanon, in the autumn of 1860, I\nfound thousands of seedling plants, but every one of them dead; and so\neffectual is the annual slaughter of the yearlings in that grove, that,\nthough the seeds are shed in millions, and innumerable seedlings annually\nspring up, there is not a plant in the grove less than about sixty years\nold. It may hence have been sixty years since a cedar there survived the\nfirst year of its existence; that is to say, has struggled through its\ninfancy, and reached the age even of childhood!\n\nOn the other hand, when once the natural conditions of a country have been\ndisturbed, the spread and multiplication of immigrants is so rapid that it\nshortly becomes impossible to discover the limits of the old, indigenous\nflora. Take the English flora, for example. If we contrast the cultivated\ncounties with the uncultivated, the difference of their vegetation is so\ngreat that I have often been compelled to doubt whether many of the most\nfamiliar so called wild flowers of the cultivated counties are indigenous\nat all; nay, more, I have been tempted to suspect that some of the more\nvariable of them, as some species of _chenopodium_ and fumitory, may\nhave originated since cultivation began. In the uncultivated counties the\nproportion of annual plants is exceedingly small, whereas in the cultivated\ncounties annuals are very numerous; and the further we go from cultivation,\nroads, and made ground, the rarer they become, till at last, in the\nuninhabited islets of the west coast of Scotland, and in its mountainous\nglens, annuals are extremely rare, and confined to the immediate vicinity\nof cottages. Let any one who doubts this contrast between the floras of\ncultivated and uncultivated regions compare the annuals in such florae as\nthose of Suffolk or Essex, the North Riding or Cumberland, with those of\nthe Isle of Wight and the Isle of Arran. And it is not only that annuals\nabound in the cultivated districts, but that so many are nearly confined to\nground that is annually or frequently disturbed. The three commonest of all\nBritish plants, for example, are, perhaps, groundsel, shepherd's purse, and\n_Poa annua_. I do not remember ever having seen any of these plants\nestablished where the soil was undisturbed, or where, if undisturbed, they\nhad not been obviously brought by man or the lower animals; and yet I have\ngathered one of these, the shepherd's purse, in various parts of Europe, in\nSyria, in the Himalayas, in Australia, New Zealand, and the Falkland\nIslands. Were England to be depopulated, I believe that in a very few years\nthese plants, and a large proportion of our common annual \"wild flowers,\"\nwould become exceedingly rare or extinct, such as the poppies, fumitories,\ntrefoils, fedias, various species of speed-well, polygonum, mallow,\neuphorbia, thlaspi, senebiera, medicago, anthemis, centaurea, linaria,\nlamium, etc., etc.\n\nIt is usually said of some of the above-named plants that they prefer\ncultivated ground, nitrogenous soil, and so forth; and this is no doubt\ntrue, but that they will flourish where no such advantages attend them, a\nvery little observation shows; and that they do not continue to flourish\nelsewhere is due mainly to the fact that, being annuals, their room is\ntaken as soon as they die, and the next year's seedling has no chance of\nsuccess in the struggle with perennials.\n\n{542}\n\nFor good instances of this rapid replacement of annuals by perennials, the\nnew railroad embankments should be examined. Whence the plants come from\nwhich spring up like magic in the cuttings many feet below the surface of\nthe soil, is a complete mystery, and reminds us of the so-called\nspontaneous generation of protozoa in newly made infusions or in distilled\nwater. In the south of Scotland in 1840-50, and many parts of the north of\nEngland, the first plant that made its appearance was _Equisetum\narvense_, which covered the new-formed banks, for miles and miles, with\nthe most lovely green forest of miniature pines. In the following year\ncomparatively few of these were to be seen, and coltsfoot, dandelions, and\nother biennials, especially umbelliferae, with a great number of annuals,\npresented themselves. For many successive years I had no opportunity of\nwatching the struggle for life on these banks, but when I last saw them\nthey were clothed with perennial grasses, docks, plantains, and other\nperennial rooted plants.\n\nThe destruction of native vegetations by introduced is a subject that has\nonly lately attracted much attention, but it has already assumed an aspect\nthat has startled the most careless observer. Some thirty years ago the\nfecundity of the horse and European cardoon in the Argentine provinces of\nSouth America, so graphically described by Sir Edmund Head, drew the\nattention of naturalists to the fact that animals and plants did not\nnecessarily thrive best where found in an indigenous condition; and the\nspread of the common Dutch clover, _Trifolium repens_, in North\nAmerica, where it follows the footsteps of man through the pathless\nforests, has long afforded an equally remarkable instance of vegetable\ncolonization. Still more recently in South Africa, Australia, and Tasmania,\nthe Scotch thistle, brier rose, xanthium, plantain, docks, etc., have all\nbecome noxious weeds; and this leads me to the last and most curious point\nto which I shall allude in this article, namely, that the same annuals and\nother weeds that are held so well in check by the indigenous perennial\nplants of our country, when transplanted to others, show themselves\nsuperior to the perennial vegetation of the latter. Of this New Zealand\nfurnishes the most conspicuous example; it was first visited scarcely more\nthan 100 years ago, and it is not yet fifty since the missionaries first\nsettled in it, and scarce thirty since it received its earliest colonists.\nThe islands contain about 1,000 species of flowering plants, amongst which\nno fewer than 180 European weeds have been recorded as intruding themselves\nand having become thoroughly naturalized; and probably double that number\nwill yet be found, as they have never been systematically collected; but\nthe most curious part of the history is this, that whereas of indigenous\nNew Zealand plants scarcely any are annual, no less than half the\nnaturalized European ones are annual.\n\nOf the effect of these introduced European plants in destroying the native\nvegetation, I have given examples in an article that appeared in the\nNatural History Review, (January, 1864,) from which I quote the following:\n\n  In Australia and New Zealand, the noisy train of English emigration is\n  not more surely doing its work than the stealthy tide of English weeds,\n  which are creeping over the surface of the waste, cultivated, and virgin\n  soil, in annually increasing numbers of genera, species, and individuals.\n  Apropos of this subject, a correspondent, (W. T. Locke Travers, Esq.,\n  F.L.S.,) a most active New Zealand botanist, writing from Canterbury,\n  says: \"You would be surprised at the rapid spread of European and other\n  foreign plants in this country. All along the sides of the main lines of\n  road through the plains, a _Polygonum_, (_aviculare_,) called\n  'cow-grass,' grows most luxuriantly, the roots sometimes two feet in\n  depth, and the plants spreading over an area from four to five feet in\n  diameter. The dock (_Rumex obtusifolius_ or _R. crispus_) is to\n  be found in every river-bed, extending into the valleys of the mountain\n  rivers until these became mere torrents.\n{543}\n  The sow-thistle is spread all over the country, growing luxuriantly\n  nearly up to 6,000 feet. The watercress increases in our still rivers to\n  such an extent as to threaten to choke them altogether; in fact, in the\n  Avon, a still, deep stream running through Christ Church, the annual cost\n  of keeping the river free for boat navigation and for purposes of\n  drainage exceeds \u00a3300. I have measured stems twelve feet long and three\n  quarters of an inch in diameter. In some of the mountain districts, where\n  the soil is loose, the white clover is completely displacing the native\n  grasses, forming a close sward. Foreign trees are also very luxuriant in\n  growth. The gum-trees of Australia, the poplars, and willows particularly\n  grow most rapidly. In fact, the young native vegetation appears to shrink\n  from competition with these more vigorous intruders.\"\n\nDr. Haast, F.L.S., the eminent explorer and geologist, also writes to me as\nfollows:\n\n  \"The native (Maori) saying is, 'As the white man's rat has driven away\n  the native rat, as the European fly drives away our own, and the clover\n  kills our fern, so will the Maoris disappear before the white man\n  himself.\" It is wonderful to behold the botanical and zoological changes\n  which have taken place since first Captain Cook set foot in New Zealand.\n  Some pigs, which he and other navigators left with the natives, have\n  increased and run wild in such a way that it is impossible to destroy\n  them. There are large tracts of country where they reign supreme. The\n  soil looks as if ploughed by their burrowing. Some station-holders of one\n  hundred thousand acres have had to make contracts for killing them at\n  sixpence per tail, and as many as twenty-two thousand on a single run\n  have been killed by adventurous parties without any diminution being\n  discernible. Not only are they obnoxious by occupying the ground which\n  the sheep farmer needs for his flocks, but they assiduously follow the\n  ewes when lambing, and devour the poor lambs as soon as they make their\n  appearance. They do not exist on the western side of the Alps, and only\n  on the lower grounds on the eastern side where snow seldom falls, so that\n  the explorer has not the advantage of profiting by their existence, where\n  food is scarcest. The boars are sometimes very large, covered with long\n  black bristles, and have enormous tusks, resembling closely the wild boar\n  of the Ardennes, and they are equally savage and courageous,\n\n  \"Another interesting fact is the appearance of the Norwegian rat. It has\n  thoroughly extirpated the native rat, and is to be found everywhere, even\n  in the very heart of the Alps, growing to a very large size. The European\n  mouse follows it closely, and, what is more surprising, where it makes\n  its appearance, it drives, in a great degree, the Norway rat away.\n  Amongst other quadrupeds, cattle, dogs, and cats are found in a wild\n  state, but not abundantly.\n\n  \"The European house-fly is another importation. When it arrives, it\n  repels the blue-bottle of New Zealand, which seems to shun its company.\n  But the spread of the European insect goes on very slowly, so that\n  settlers, knowing its utility, have carried it in boxes and bottles to\n  their new inland stations.\"\n\nBut the most remarkable fact of all has been communicated to me since the\nabove was printed, namely, that the little white clover and other herbs are\nactually strangling and killing outright the New Zealand flax, (_Phormium\ntenax_,) a plant of the coarsest, hardest, and toughest description,\nthat forms huge matted patches of woody rhizomes, which send up tufts of\nsword-like leaves six to ten feet high, and inconceivably strong in texture\nand fibre. I know of no English plant to which the New Zealand flax can be\nlikened so as to give any idea of its robust constitution and habit to\nthose who do not know it; in some respects the great matted _tussocks_\nof _Carex paniculata_ approach it.\n{544}\nIt is difficult enough to imagine the possibility of white clover invading\nour bogs, and smothering the tussocks of this carex, but this would be\nchild's play in comparison with the resistance the phormium would seem to\noffer.\n\nThe causes of this prepotency of the European weeds are probably many and\ncomplicated; one very powerful one is the nature of the New Zealand\nclimate, which favors the duration of life in individuals, and hence gives\nboth perennials and annuals a lengthened growing season, and, in the case\nof some, more than one seed crop in the year. This is seen in the tendency\nof mignonette and annual stocks to become biennial and even perennial, in\nthe indigenous form of _Cardamine hirsuta_ being perennial, and in the\nfact that many weeds that seed but once with us seed during a greater part\nof the year in New Zealand. Another cause must be sought in the fact that\nmore of their seeds escape the ravages of birds and insects in New Zealand\nthan in England; the granivorous birds and insects that follow cultivation\nnot having been transported to the antipodes with the weeds, or, at least,\nnot in proportionate numbers.\n\nStill the fact remains as yet unaccounted for, that annual weeds, which,\nexcept for the interference of man, would with us have no chance in the\nstruggle with perennials, in New Zealand have spread in inconceivable\nquantities into the wildest glens long before either white men or even\ntheir cattle and flocks penetrate to their recesses. Such is the testimony\nof Drs. Haast and Hector, and Mr. Travers, the original explorers of large\nareas of different parts of the almost uninhabited middle island, and who\nhave sent to me, as native plants, from hitherto unvisited tracts, British\nweeds that were not found in the island by the careful botanists (Banks,\nSolander, Forster, and Sparrmann) who accompanied Captain Cook in his\nvoyages; and which were not found by the earlier missionaries, but which of\nlate years have abounded on the lowlands near every settlement.\n\nThis subject of the comparative great vis-vitae of European plants, as\ncompared with those of other countries, involves problems of the highest\ninterest in botanical science, and the subject is as novel as it is\ninteresting; it is quite a virgin one, and requires the calmest and most\nunprejudiced judgment to treat it well. It cannot be doubted that the\nprogress of civilization in Europe and Asia has, whilst it has led to the\nincessant harassing of the soil, led also to the abundant development of a\nclass of plants, annual, biennial, and perennial, which increase more\nrapidly and obtain a greater development when transplanted to the Southern\nhemisphere than they have hitherto done in the Northern, and that, in this\nrespect, they contrast strikingly with the behavior of plants of the\nSouthern hemisphere when transplanted to the Northern; and hitherto no\nconsiderations of climate, soil, or circumstance have sufficed to explain\nthis phenomenon.\n\n------\n\n{545}\n\n      Original.\n\n      The Leaf of Last Year\n\n  I know I am dry and decayed;\n    My skin is all yellow and sere;\n  I know I ought not to have staid\n    To become an old leaf of last year.\n\n  You are youthful, and merry, and green.\n    I feel like a stranger up here;\n  And can see you're ashamed to be seen\n    By the side of a leaf of last year.\n\n  My wrinkled and shrivelled up face\n    Excites you to laugh and to sneer;\n  And the branch thinks that this is no place\n    For an old-fashioned leaf of last year.\n\n  I can tell, as you toss your proud heads,\n    What you whisper in each other's ear:\n  \"Old leaves should be gone to their beds,\n    'Tis no time for a leaf of last year.\"\n\n  You may flirt with the amorous winds;\n    With your joys I will not interfere:\n  But I'm sad; for my heart it reminds\n    How they jilted a leaf of last year.\n\n  Ay! flatter and laugh with the breeze,\n    You may think that its love is sincere,\n  But I know what it said to the trees\n    When I was a young leaf last year.\n\n  \"Each one of these silly green leaves\n    Is so flattered if I but come near,\n  That she dances, and smiles, and believes\n    I most surely will wed her this year.\n\n  \"With soft kisses the hours I beguile;\n    And their prattling is pleasant to hear.\n  When I tire, I depart with a smile\n    And a promise to meet them next year.\"\n\n  Then it came to my side with a bow,\n    Embraced me, and called me its 'dear.'\n  I was foolish to trust it, and now\n    It forgets its old love of last year.\n\n{546}\n\n  Away the false summer breeze hied;\n    And my fibres all quivered with fear.\n  One by one my mates withered and died,\n    And left me alone till this year.\n\n  Soon autumn will come with its blast.\n    And your beauty will, too, disappear.\n  When you think on the joys that are past,\n    You'll remember the leaf of last year.\n\n  This morn, when the sun rose, I wept;\n    On my cheek lingers yet a bright tear:\n  'Twas a dew-drop fell there whilst I slept\n    And was dreaming about the last year.\n\n  Not long will I cumber the tree,\n    For my hour of departure is near;\n  And your beautiful branch will be free\n    Of its faded old leaf of last year.\n\n------\n\n    Original.\n\n    The Influence of the Catholic Church Upon Modern Art.\n\n\nAs in many a sacred painting the divine persons are seen descending upon\nearth, attended by angels who, with trumpets, unheard by men, announce the\nvisitation; so religion, revealed to prepare men for the next world, sits\nenthroned in this with all the arts, its ministers and servants. It is a\nglory of the Catholic Church that it has recognized to the utmost the\nspirituality of art. It has denied the dogma, of all dogmas the most\nabsurd, that with the use of the highest powers of the imagination, and\nwith delight in the beauty with which God has clothed the world, his\nworship is incompatible. It has not made piety a thing ugly, repulsive,\nbarren; a mere assent of the will to an abstraction. The child of the\nchurch, standing in a world where the rainbow bends above him, and sunset\nopens the burning gates of heaven, is not taught to believe the seven\ncolors the seven sins, or, at least, but secular beauty, to be banished\nfrom the house of worship; with the voices of birds' and winds, and waters,\nand the gothic grandeur of forests around him, he is not taught that music\nand architecture interfere with piety, or, if used at all in worship, must\nbe limited to their lowest and simplest forms. Of creeds I do not need to\nspeak; but this much it is necessary to say in the strict limits of my\nsubject, that the world owes to Catholicism so much of its music, and\npainting, and architecture, that, had the world been without the church,\nthese arts, though of human origin, and though highly developed before the\nChristian era, would in their modern forms probably be still in their\ninfancy. In sculpture, undoubtedly, the Greeks surpassed even Michael\nAngelo; the statues of Phidias, though in ruins, are the wonder and despair\nof artists. The Roman empire built temples, roads, aqueducts, the\nColosseum, and, when it fell, the arts, even in these less imaginative\nforms, seem to have fallen with it.\n{547}\nFor a long time there was no art worthy of the name in Europe. Apollo,\nblind and dumb, wandered without a home or a temple; for, though in those\ncenturies there must have been men born to be composers, or painters, or\nsculptors, they were born too soon or too late. Athens had fallen;\nChristian Rome had not arisen to her destined greatness. So the world\nslumbered in darkness till the Catholic Church wrought the miracle by which\nthe arts were raised from their tombs and made her interpreters and\nministers. This cannot be denied, that she gave the impulse to the revival\nof art, encouraged its development, inspired it with energy, and purpose,\nand faith, and so sent it forth to bless and transfigure the world. In\nevery city in Europe she built a cathedral. In Rome, St. Peter's; in Paris,\nNotre Dame; in Vienna, the Dom Kirche; in Milan, La Duomo. No town was\nwithout its church, few of them, without beauty, many monuments of the\ngenius of their builders. Because the Saviour was born in a stable, it was\nnot held an article of faith that he should be worshipped in barn. The\nchurch believed that the temple should show that it was built not for the\nservice of man, but of God. To adorn these majestic buildings she summoned\nthe sister arts. Through the stained windows,\n\n        \"The panes\n  Of ancient churches, passionate\n  With martyred saints, whom angels wait,\n  With Virgin and with Crucified,\"\n\nthe light shone holier for that transfiguration. There the painter told in\nlanguage all could read the solemn story of the religion they believed. How\nin a manger the Christ was born, and worshipped by the wise men whom the\nmysterious star had led from the Chaldean plains; how the holy mother\njourneyed with Joseph into Egypt, bearing in her arms the babe who came\ninto the world himself to bear the burden of its grief; how he taught the\npoor and healed the sick, raised Lazarus from the grave, and bade the\nMagdalene sin no more; how he spake with God upon the mount, and was\ntempted by the fiend, betrayed by Judas, tried by Pilate, and crucified\nupon Calvary; how at the foot of the cross the Marys wept all night; and\nhow, when he was buried, angels rolled away the stone from the sepulchre,\nand apostles beheld him ascend into the depths of heaven. Upon the sacred\nwalls, which were to these pious, worshippers as windows opening into the\nHoly Land, they saw miracles, transfigurations, ascensions, the agonies of\nmartyrs, the adorations of saints, and--vision of all visions fairest--the\ntender face of the Virgin bending in prophetic sadness above the infant\nChrist. But with other than silent teachers the church appealed to the\nsoul. Music, whose miraculous voice utters all passions, pains, delights,\nand truths, breathed her beautiful religion on the air. She sang of what\nRaphael and Titian painted; of the birth, and the death, and the\nresurrection; of the prayers of penitence, the anguish of strife, the\nrapture of heaven, the torments of hell; and in her voice were heard sobs,\nand cries, and supplications, thunders of divine wrath, trumpets of doom\nand of redemption, and choruses upon choruses of angels proclaiming the\nglory of God. In all the arts the church embodied Christianity; as she\nconverted souls, so she converted music and painting. By the twelfth\ncentury, nay, before that, all the art of Europe was Catholic. In Italy,\nSpain, Germany, wherever a school of art existed, however humble, its\nhighest aspirations were through the Catholic Church. The ideality of art,\nas we may see in its remaining works, was then almost exclusively\nreligious; to be imaginative was to be pious. Centuries before the dawn of\nmodern painting, in the silence and seclusion of cloisters, laborious\nmonks, slowly perfecting their wonderful illuminated missals, were unawares\npreparing the advent of Cimabue and Giotto. The tradition that St. Luke was\na painter was carefully cherished by his disciples, who may have found\ninspiration in the legend that he painted the portrait of the Saviour.\n{548}\nThus it is probable, and other reasons might be cited, that modern art was\nnot adopted by the church, but, born within its monasteries, was cherished\ntill it grew too great for them alone, and then, as the child of the\nchurch, turned in natural faith and gratitude to the service of its parent.\n\nThe church was the chief patron of the early painters; it furnished not\nonly their inspiration, but their occupation. There is little trace of the\nearliest Christian art; but Eusebius, whose history was written in the\nreign of Constantine, mentions that images of Christ were then common. In\nthe third century pictures had been generally introduced in the churches of\nPalestine. But it was scarcely before the twelfth century that Catholic art\ngave promise of that splendor which in later days exalted it above all\nrivalry. We find Cimabue famous about the year 1250, and after him Giotto,\nalmost the father of Italian art, whose portrait of Dante, recently\ndiscovered, is acknowledged as the best likeness we possess of the author\nof the greatest Christian poem. He painted the Last Supper of Christ, at\nFlorence, and an idea of his influence may be formed from the fact that he\nhad one hundred pupils, some of whom were afterward renowned. To catalogue\nthe painters of this period would be unnecessary, but their close sympathy\nwith the church, and the encouragement they received from it, are\nunquestionable. In 1308, Duccio, an artist of Sienna, was called upon to\npaint an altar-piece, and in his contract pledged himself thus: \"I will\nexecute it according to my best ability, and as the Lord shall grant me\nskill.\" The picture when completed was carried in solemn procession to the\nchurch. When, in 1438, it was proposed to build the Sienna Cathedral, it\nwas ordained that \"no one even suspected of immorality shall be eligible\"\nto the position of its architect. A more earnest expression of the faith of\nthe early artists in the dignity of their work, and their religious duty,\nis found in the rules adopted by the painters of Sienna in 1335. They held\nthat, \"since we are teachers to ignorant men, and since in God every\nperfection is united, we will in our work earnestly ask the aid of the\ndivine grace.\" This spirit of devotion gave a higher direction to genius\nthat might without it have wasted itself in empty and unmeaning tasks; and,\nwhatever the artist was born to do, he found in the church his opportunity.\nTo paint, in those days, for the best of those men, was to serve God; to\nbuild, was to build his temples. The purpose ennobled the work. Not merely\nwith intellect Lorenzo Gbiberti labored when he wrought the doors of the\nbaptistery in the rear of the cathedral at Florence--doors of which\nMichael Angelo exclaimed in his enthusiasm, \"Worthy to be the gates of\nparadise!\" Casts of these wonderful carvings of scriptural subjects, are\nexhibited in the Academy of the Fine Arts at Philadelphia. These artists\nwere the worthy forerunners of greater men--of Domenichino, of Guido, of\nTitian, of Murillo, of Correggio, and of Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, and\nMichael Angelo. The greatest works of the three latter were upon Christian\nthemes. The Las Supper, painted by Da Vinci, in 1497, for the Dominican\nconvent at Milan, is accepted as the crowning proof of genius. The statue\nof Moses in St. Peter's, the Last Judgment, and the Dome of St. Peter's are\nthe master works of the mighty Angelo. Raphael, who began his beautiful\ncareer by painting altar-pieces, in the Transfiguration reached its highest\npoint, and questionings of the model who sat for his divine madonnas is\nidle, for not the loveliness of the face, but the holiness of the spirit\ngives them immortality. But I need cite no other instances. The highest\nsubjects of the Italian painters were found in their religion, and the\nchurch was their most generous patron.\n{549}\nAnd not only was this dedication of art to spirituality of direct value to\nits intellectual progress, but indirectly it ennobled art that aimed merely\nto paint the things of earth and not the dreams of heaven. The less gained\ndignity from the sacred office of the greater, and art became more strongly\nrooted in that which was of the world, because of its aspiration to that\nwhich was celestial.\n\nThe vast influence of religion upon art is signally exhibited in the\nhistory of English art. Neither painting nor architecture, it is true, had\nmade much progress in England up to the seventeenth century, as compared\nwith their success on the continent; for, when Italy was civilized, Great\nBritain was still rude, and in certain respects barbarian. Yet the\ncathedrals which still exist in ruins, monuments of Gothic grandeur, were\nthe expressions of a national art in close relation with religion. In\nEngland as in all other countries the Catholic Church gathered around her\nthe arts. But with a religion which professed to see in images nothing but\nidols, in paintings of Christ and the apostles and the prophets nothing but\nprofanity and blasphemy, came desolation and destruction. The Roundhead was\nnot satisfied with the downfall of a throne, with the death of one Stuart\nand the banishment of that royal line, nor with the proscription of the\nCatholic religion. The men who followed Cromwell were iconoclasts, who\ndestroyed Christian images to set up in their stead an idol of barbarian\nbigotry. They fired the churches, they shattered the statues, they made war\nupon the pictures of madonnas and martyrs without remorse or fear. They had\ndriven out the Cavaliers, they were resolved to drive out the saints; and,\nas they had banished the church, they were bent upon sending art to keep it\ncompany. They succeeded but too well. Puritan enmity to the employment of\npainting in church decoration--the sweeping principle that art and\nreligion could not be united and had different aims struck a blow at\nEnglish art which almost ended it for three reigns. It did not, indeed,\nfully recover from the effect until near the close of the eighteenth\ncentury, when, as little more than portraiture, it was re-established by\nGainsborough and Sir Joshua Reynolds. To this day it is only in portraiture\nand in landscape that a great English school exists. There are many fine\nVandykes, and Lelys, and Reynolds in the galleries of England, and many\nlandscapes and marines by Gainsborough, Wilson, and Turner; but where is\nthe historical painter who can be compared with Turner? Haydon, who\nbitterly complained that historical painting was not appreciated in\nEngland, and that those who by their wealth and position should have\nencouraged it cared only for their own faces on canvas, might have found\nthe cause of its decline in the absence of any religious inspiration in\nEnglish art. He admitted this truth, unconsciously perhaps, when he chose\nfor his own subjects of \"high art\" Christ in the Temple and Lazarus coming\nfrom the Tomb. In the landscapes and marines of Turner there is imagination\ngrander than Claude, or Poussin, or Salvator Rosa possessed; in Wilkie\nunsurpassed character is given to humble themes. But the English historical\nschool is infinitely below English landscape and portraiture. The Boydell\ngallery, in which the best artists of the time were employed to illustrate\nShakespeare, is an utter failure. Fuseli was fanciful and coarse; and,\nthough I know little of Blake's pictures, it is safe to presume they were\nnot equal to his strange and beautiful poetry. Did he ever realize with the\nbrush such verses as\n\n  \"Tiger, Tiger, burning bright\n  In the forests of the night\"?\n\nReynolds failed when he sought to be imaginative, as the Death of Dido and\nthe Deathbed of Cardinal Beaufort are proof.\n{550}\nThe defeat of the repeated efforts to establish an historical school of art\nin England must not be ascribed solely to a deficiency of genius in the men\nor in the character of the nation. Art and religion were divorced. Men\nworshipped God in one way, and painted in another. It is a significant fact\nthat the pre-Raphaelite school, however objectionable in some respects,\nowes its highest success to the religious element which inspires it.\nMillais and Hunt proclaim that the rudest art must be spiritual, and thus\nseek to atone for centuries of infidelity to that truth.\n\nUpon music the influence of the church has probably been even greater than\nupon painting, certainly as great. With no exaggeration, it may be said\nthat to write the history of the composers who have written for the church\nis to write the history of modern music. What this fact implies will be\nunderstood by those who know that in none other of the arts has the term\nmodern such significance; for, while ancient painting, sculpture, and\narchitecture were based upon the same general laws which are now recognized\nas absolute, the principles of music, like her own sweet sounds, have\nchanged and passed away from age to age. There is a known difference\nbetween what may be called the musical ear of this century and that of the\nsixteenth. What was then felt to be harmony, and embodied in the works of\nthe great masters, is now discord. There was a time when consecutive fifths\nwere common, a fact almost incredible to the musician of to-day. If such\nchanges have occurred within four or five hundred years, the gulf which\ndivides ancient and modern music must be deep and wide; and the latter,\nhaving little visible connection or known sympathy with the former, and\noriginating in Christian Europe, must inevitably owe much of its character\nto Catholic civilization.\n\nThe oldest form of music known to us belongs to the church; it is the\nEcclesiastical Chant of St. Ambrose and St. Gregory. The former, near the\nclose of the fourth century, endeavored to give a fixed form to church\nmusic, and we may judge of his success from his Te Deum. The words and the\nthe music of this noble canticle are still sung. Of the Ambrosian chant,\nSt. Augustine wrote: \"As the voices flowed into mine ears, truth was\ninstilled into my heart, and the affections of piety overflowed in tears of\njoy.\" It is said that St. Ambrose composed the Te Deum upon the conversion\nof St. Augustine. Two centuries later Pope Gregory vastly improved the\nsystem of sacred music; from him we have the celebrated Gregorian chant,\nsolemn, severe, and pure, and still heard in Lent and in the Holy Week.\nSuch value did St. Gregory place upon music that he established a school\nfor singers at Rome, which flourished till the tenth century. After the\nGregorian chant little reformation in music was accomplished for centuries;\nbut the next step was also taken within the church when Guido, a\nBenedictine monk, early in the eleventh century, discovered the musical\nscale now used. Modern rhythm was invented by a French priest about the\nsame time, and for many years music owed all its progress to religious\nenthusiasm. Thus, Odington, an English Benedictine monk, in 1240, wrote De\nSpeculatione Musicae, and John Muris in the fourteenth century did much to\nestablish fixed rules of harmony. Counterpoint was slowly developed; the\ncanon and the fugue were introduced; and the laws of music were gradually\nestablished as the basis of the grander and more ideal genius of the\nstrictly modern system. We need not follow the history of the art from that\ngreat master Palestrina through the long succession of famous names\ndestined to be remembered when those of kings are half forgotten.\n\nFrom the first it has been seen the church recognized the sacred offices of\nmusic, and did not merely permit, but authorized and developed its use. It\nis true that at one time use led to abuse. In the sixteenth century\ncomposers for the church frequently forgot religion in science.\n{551}\n\"In this kind of composition,\" says Alexander Cheron, \"the meaning of the\nwords was entirely overlooked, and its tendencies were only to the display\nof the genius of the composers or the powers of the singers.\" The evil\nbecame so great that the Council of Trent even deliberated upon the\nsuppression of music in religious service. Pope Marcellus II. had, indeed,\nresolved to banish all music but the Gregorian chant, when Palestrina\ncomposed a mass which made that step unnecessary. It was a revolution.\nSolemnity, grandeur, and purity were the elements of the new style, from\nwhich mere bravuras and all levities were excluded. Thus the power which\nauthorized the employment of music had the influence to redeem it from\ndegradation, till now the sacred music we possess embodies the genius of\nthree centuries, and will, perhaps, endure longer than the finest lyric\ndramas. That the religious purposes of great masters have had vast\ninfluence upon the merely lyric composition is not to be doubted. We cannot\nraise one form of art without raising all. The author of Don Giovanni might\nnot have achieved the full grandeur of that work had he not also composed\nhis marvellous masses. Of the influence of Catholic music upon such minds,\nan incident in Mozart's life is proof. In his youth he heard the famous\nMiserere sung in the Sistine chapel at Rome--that strange and solemn\nharmony, composed two hundred years ago by Gregorio Allegri, for the\nsublime ceremonial of the Passion week. Pontiff and cardinals, when the\nMiserere begins, kneel around the altar, the church is darkened, the voices\nswell in tenor, and die into silence. Mozart twice heard this wonderful\nwork, and then reproduced it note for note, and sang it with the exact\nmethod and feeling of the Sistine choir. And it is said that the effect of\nthis Miserere upon him may be traced in all his other works. Haydn's piety\nis found in all of his music, chiefly in those masses which are known to\nall lovers of music. \"In nomine Domini,\" \"Soli Deo Gloria,\" he invariably\nwrote at the beginning of his scores, and \"Laus Deo\" at their end. When\ncomposing, if his imagination failed, he repeated his rosary, and, before\nbeginning his greater works, he prayed to God for inspiration to praise him\nworthily. Of the composers inspired by religion, the list is long; longer,\nperhaps, that of those who unconsciously were influenced by it. When Haydn\nwas asked which of his works he considered the greatest, he replied, The\nSeven Words. It was written for the service called the \"Funeral of the\nRedeemer\" at Madrid, in which the seven words uttered by the Saviour on the\ncross were uttered by the bishop, who explained each, and between each\nexposition Haydn's music in sympathy with the word was given. Upon his\nmasses he lavished his pains, and generally required twice the time for a\nmass that he needed for a symphony.\n\nPalestrina, Porpora, Clementi, Haydn, Mozart, Rossini, Beethoven, are but a\nfew of the illustrious masters whose sacred music was dedicated to the\nCatholic Church. Handel's religious music was chiefly written for the\nEnglish, and is embodied, as well as that of Mendelssohn, in oratorio. But,\nfor my part, I do not think the form of the oratorio as well fitted for\nsacred music as that of the mass. An oratorio is generally sung in a\nconcert-room; the words are frequently poor adaptations of the language of\nthe Scriptures; its auditors expect to be entertained. Therefore, though\nthe music may be perfect in itself, as in the \"Total Eclipse\" or \"I know\nthat my Redeemer liveth\" of Handel, it does not seem that the form is\nsuited to express the deepest emotions of worship. It is in the Catholic\nChurch alone that music and religion are wedded. Who can translate into\nwords the profound devotion inspired by the solemn mass in the cathedral\nservice? Over the kneeling worshippers, the illuminated altar, the pictures\nof the crucifixion and the ascension, the intonation of the priest, \"the\ndim religious light\" shining through the stained windows, Music breathes\nher voice.\n{552}\nAs the great organ swells, and the deep-toned choir utters the despair of\nthe Miserere, the heavenly beauty of the Agnus Dei, the exultation of the\nGloria, the devotion of the Credo, etc., what soul is not bowed in sympathy\nwith grief, raised with gratitude, or bathed in heavenly peace? I know no\nmusic that has a more profound effect. It is a part of worship. It\nexpresses something to which words the most eloquent are inadequate. It is\nthe glory of the Catholic Church, I repeat, that she has so freely\nrecognized the spirituality of this act, and these who reject her creed are\ncompelled to admit the propriety and supremacy of her service. How cold are\nthe musical exercises of other churches, how little they express of this\nintense and passionate devotion. I do not think God is served by the\nexclusion of his greatest gifts from the ceremonial of worship, and that\npoint is conceded by all sects which sing his praise. But, if any music is\nused, why not the best? If a hymn, why not a mass? If an organ, why not an\norchestra? The objection that the Catholic Church would have its choirs\ncomposed of the best voices, its music written by the greatest composers,\nis too absurd to be answered; for, if the highest art is unfit for the\npurposes of worship, then by inevitable logic it must be shown that all art\nis unfit; those who hold such objections should consistently agree with the\nQuakers, and banish the simplest hymn. [Footnote 174]\n\n    [Footnote 174: The writer of this article is not a Catholic.--ED. C.W.]\n\nMore than this, if music may be worthily used, why not painting? The value\nof architecture is universally admitted, ever since it was shown by the\nCatholic Church, and music is more or less accepted as a mode of adoration\nby nearly all sects. Pictures, however, are admitted into Catholic churches\nalone. Is, then, the genius of Titian and Raphael less holy than that of\nBeethoven or Mozart? Is it right to sing the praise of God in his temple,\nwrong to paint the story of the Son of God upon the consecrated walls? We\nneed not answer such questions, which are only introduced to show how it is\nby the Catholic Church alone that the religious influences of the arts have\nbeen first and fully understood, and by it alone that they have been made\nagencies of worship.\n\nFurther examination of this important subject cannot now be made, for in\nthese limits it can be little more than suggested. If we generalize, we\ndiscover that all the great artists, in architecture, painting, and music\nhave found their highest employment in the church, and that its history\nincludes their biographies. Of its present influence it is unnecessary to\nspeak, but it is felt most in architecture, at least in this country; the\nnoblest church edifice in Philadelphia, perhaps in any American city, is\nincomparably the new cathedral. From what has been said, the depth, and\nextent, and value of the influence of the church upon art may be inferred;\nbut no one can imagine the condition of our art had it been without the\ninspiration of religion. Majestic and venerable stands the Church of Rome;\nupon her walls the arts have registered their victories; for her the muses\nhave forsaken the summits of Parnassus; to her the poet, painter, and\nmusician have dedicated their genius; and, giving all they brought to her\nhumblest and poorest worshipper, she has repaid the masters with perpetual\nrecognition and universal fame. Far as her realm extends are known the\nglories of Raphael, and Angelo, and Mozart.\n\n------\n\n{553}\n\n\n    Original.\n\n    Adelaide Anne Procter.\n\n\nNext to imagination, genius is, perhaps, the faculty of the human mind\nabout which we have had the most instructiveness and the least instruction.\nYet every one who knows anything of it at all knows the two great types of\ngenius that appear in history--extremes between which lie all minds of\nmark. One is the familiar form that the word itself at once suggests--the\nregular fashion, as it were, of being exceptional. This is the erratic,\nfitful, uncontrolled, keen, brilliant, sensitive, sympathetic, eccentric\ncharacter, who wears regardless collars, fights his publisher on less than\nno provocation, eats opium if he chooses, and sometimes chooses--or, if not\nopium, some other stimulant--has whims and moods and irritabilities, and\nthe biggest heart, and the best tongue, and the most heedless head, with\nthe most brilliant oddities in it, wherever he goes--a totally lopsided\norganism, where the soul cannot be kept from wearing its way through the\nbody, and where a few faculties, preternaturally developed, domineer over a\nwarped and stunted system, to the ultimate ruin of the whole man.\n\nThe other kind, calm, clear, broad, poised, equable, powerful, seems\nexactly the opposite of the first type. The strength of the one is in\nbalance, the force of the other in overbalance. Yet the difference is only\nthat the man of balance is symmetrically developed; it is the difference\nbetween the autumn maturity of the full-grown fruit and the hectic\nripeness, with the worm at the core, of the August windfall.\n\nOf these two types, the first is vastly the more frequent, the other the\nhigher in history. The reason is simply this, that a moderate degree of\nuniform development gives neither more nor less than mediocrity, while\ndisproportionate preponderance of the intellect, even where all the\nfaculties are below the average, will reproduce in miniature all the\nphenomena of the overbalanced kind of genius. Between Byron Don-Juanning it\nover his gin-and-water, and the brilliant Bohemian who dashes off the\ncleverest leader of the next day, fresh from the convivial influences of a\nroystering champagne supper, and the gentle youth who floods the rural\npoet's corner with heaven-scaling hankerings inspired by green tea, the\ndifference is not in kind, but in degree.\n\nMen of this order are the ones who achieve fame and famine. Their blossoms\nof promise are bright, their early graves are green on all the paths of\nhuman progress. History kindles at their high hopes and deeds, and blushes\nfor the petty failings that suffice to drag them down. Literature, above\nall, is a very Golgotha, all the ghastlier for its glory, of their\nself-conscious sensitiveness, their refined self-torture, their blasted\nlives and miserable deaths. Yet there is hardly one but has his little day,\nlonger or shorter, but with always some little sunshine and flowers of\npopular favor. Stimulated to their utmost by susceptibility to praise, they\nare the most brilliant and _bizarre_ in effects, and the most blindly\nadmired. Besides, their eccentricities are an advertisement in themselves,\nand very often first attract the attention which afterward discovers the\npowers underneath. The world, on the contrary, finds nothing about the\nother sort of genius to display any peculiar capabilities--a sort of\npleasant self-completeness, it may be, but no salient points and queer\nangles--and passes on, to gape at the man with half the brains and nothing\nto balance them.\n{554}\nByron woke up one morning and found himself famous: some one in Elizabeth's\nreign made a list (is it not D'Israeli who preserves it?) of the best\nwriters of his day, whereon the _thirteenth_ name is that of the\nsuccessful London manager and decidedly good fellow, William Shakspeare.\n\nIn fact, this latter type of genius is not only rare as all well-poised\norganisms are rare, but seems to evade public appreciation by some hidden\ninherent law of its nature. It has often happened with men of this order\nthat not only their families--of course, it is the exception, if a man's\nfamily ever discover his powers till the rest of the world thunders his\nfame into their ears--but their daily acquaintance, their most intimate\nfriends, nay, themselves, never suspect their greatness.\n\nBut, if such a man of genius is an event of his generation, and, with all a\nman's opportunities for appreciation, activity, acquaintance, and, above\nall, women and their ennobling influence, to bring out his best energies,\noften dies undiscovered, what chance is there for a woman of kindred\nabilities to struggle into the light of recognition? In literature, men are\nthe severest judges of women possible, except, of course, their own sex. To\nthe best of them the expression \"woman of genius\" is the mythical relic of\nsome lost tradition as old as Sappho's day, and \"women's thought\" a\ncontradiction in terms. All their experience teaches them to disbelieve in\nit utterly. The truth is, most women think very ill in print. The cause\nlies less in their nature than in their second nature of education. Their\nthought is beautiful enough--beauty is their mental as their bodily\ncharacteristic--but seldom strong, and then its strength is that of the\ntempered Toledo rather than the shearing Andrea Ferrara. It comes in April\ngleams from behind cloud after cloud. They lack concentration, terseness,\nsequence; in a word, training. This breeds, with mainly correct thought,\nconstant loose digressions, diffuseness of expression, and dilution of\nideas. (Hence that saddest thing on the earth, wherein women writers so\nabound, the _unexceptionable_ poem.) It seems as though women wrote as\nif conversing, forgetting how much of the charm is in themselves and\nevaporates on the pen. Every reader has noticed how the writings, and,\nabove all, the poems, of really extraordinary women--women that men of mind\nlooked up to--are to us such monuments of apparent mediocrity that we\nwonder what they found to worship. The most impartial critic's nose\ninclines involuntarily heavenward the moment a woman comes forward to claim\nany intellectual place of honor. And genius, the highest quality, man's\nspecial prerogative--horror of horrors! All reason says it cannot be; and\nunderneath a subtle male _esprit de corps_ too often adds that it\nshall not be. Of course, the intruder cannot climb the heights, but to\navoid accidents and disappointment she is seldom suffered to try. Such are\nthe difficulties which beset the path of even the most favored female\naspirant.\n\nIt ought not to surprise us, then, that Adelaide Anne Procter, even had she\nbeen the most pushing and irrepressible of blue-stockings, with every\nvantage-ground of circumstance, was not appreciated as she deserved. But,\nin addition to the original sin of being a woman, several reasons peculiar\nto herself concurred to render her, what we think she has been, one of the\nmost underrated writers of her day.\n\nFirst, she was an Englishwoman. Had she not been, she might never have been\nanything; but once being something, we do not think it was an utterly\ninestimable advantage. For, as being English, every one took for granted\nthat she must be a Protestant, and every one was disappointed and provoked\nto find her a Catholic. Now one of the circumstances which mitigate the\nglory of being English is that there is very little _achromatic_\ncriticism in England. As a wise and keen analyst [Footnote 175] complains,\neach of the reviews has some set of theses nailed to its doors, whose\nupholding is the first thing, to which all their criticism proper must\nstand subordinate.\n\n    [Footnote 175: Matthew Arnold, Essays in Criticism.]\n\n\n{555}\nEnglish bigotry, under nineteenth century forms, is to-day as patent, as\nunderstood, as calculable a mainspring and motive of public judgment as in\nArchbishop Laud's era. Miss Procter's chance of any high praise was thus\nnever very great. But appearing as she did on the scene of letters at a\ntime when the Church of England was yet in the full sanctimoniousness of\nrighteous reaction against the dismembering logic of the Puseyites, any\ngood there was in her was very safe from discovery by most of the critics.\nHad she been a self asserting sectarian, cramming her dogmas, as some of us\ndid their abolitionism, down her readers' throats, she might have been\nhunted down to fame by the indignant zeal of the saintly star-chamberers of\nletters, who lead public opinion much as the foam leads the wave.\nUnfortunately for this opening, Miss Procter was a lady, and such\nself-assertion the most foreign of traits to her nature. Not loud enough\nfor martyrdom, she was just firmly Catholic enough for misjudgment, or\nrather for denial of judgment. While the tribunals of criticism could not\navoid taking notice of a book by Barry Cornwall's daughter, still, with all\nthe little good and ill the reviewers said of her, they never did her the\none essential service they could render, of putting her name where the\nreading public would see it and pass judgment on her. There is a way of\npraising that keeps off, and a way of blaming that attracts, the mass of\nreaders.\n\nWith the returning tide of ritualism, she has begun to be more appreciated,\nbut it is only a beginning. We are so strongly inclined to think her poems\nat the outset of a new career in public favor, and we consider that so\nlittle justice has been done her in the critical journals of this country,\nthat we cannot help feeling toward them accordingly; and so, in range of\nour attempted discussion of her merits, and copiousness of citation, we\nhave treated her in all respects precisely as a new author.\n\nFor we believe sincerely that the clouds of circumstance and prejudice\nabout Miss Procter's entrance into literary life have obscured from us\npoetical powers not only of no common order, but of that calm, self-centred\nkind we have spoken of as rare enough in man, and the feminine counterpart\nof which is almost unknown in literary history. Her mind is not\nShakespeare's, nor Coleridge's, nor Goethe's, but the resistless river and\nthe fountain of the rocks may both be the overflow of the same sunless\nreservoir in the deep bosom of the mountains. And her poetry is indeed a\nfountain of the rocks; pure, placid, deep of source, shaded yet sparkling,\n\"making a quiet music all its own;\" with no torrent nor show of force, yet\nmusically passing all obstacles, and emerging, clear, bright, and\nbeautiful, in the sunlight beyond. Most varied and versatile in her choice\nof subjects, she brings to all a poetic insight, a freedom and fancy of\nexpression, a grasp of the topic, and, above all, a strange, noble\nearnestness, that altogether make up a style whose quiet charm we had\nrather easily illustrate than elaborately fail in describing.\n\nThe key-note of all her writings is thoughtfulness, and withal a peculiar\nkind of thoroughness of thought such as we have found in no other woman.\nMrs. Browning (perhaps we ought to add the new Mrs. Augusta Webster, whose\nperceptive powers are the theme of the English reviews) is the only one who\never has analyzed nearly so well, and she and all the others seem only\nincidentally, while Miss Procter is habitually, analytical. Her entire\nsuperiority, indeed, is the consequence and corollary of this curious depth\nof mind. Bold in abstractions, tender in revealings of the heart, ingenious\nin incident and invention, she is sure to have a well-defined thought at\nbottom, always suggestive, often philosophic, sometimes profound. The rare\ncombination of entire femininity with this thinking habit is an originality\nin itself. Very novel and very charming is the effect of seeing together\nwith this strong, clear, searching introspection, all the woman's delicacy\nof touch.\n\n{556}\n\nBut the reader is tired of our generalities, and would much rather see for\nhimself how well Miss Procter thinks. So we give him a fair example in the\npoem called\n\n\n    Incompleteness.\n\n  Nothing resting in its own completeness\n    Can have power or beauty; but alone\n  Because it leads and tends to further sweetness,\n    Fuller, higher, deeper than its own.\n\n  _Spring's real glory dwells not in the meaning,\n    Gracious though it be, of her blue hours,\n  But is hidden in her tender leaning\n    To the summer's richer wealth of flowers.\n\n  Dawn is fair because the mists fade slowly\n    Into day, which floods the world with light;\n  Twilight's mystery is so sweet and holy\n    Just because it ends in starry night._\n\n  Childhood's smiles unconscious graces borrow\n    From strife that in a far-off future lies;\n  _And angel glances (veiled now by life's sorrow)\n    Draw our hearts to some beloved eyes._\n\n  Life is only bright when it proceedeth\n    Toward a truer, deeper life above;\n  Human love is sweetest when it leadeth\n    To a more divine and perfect love.\n\n  Learn the mystery of progression duly:\n    Do not call each glorious change decay;\n  But know we only hold our treasures truly,\n    When it seems as if they passed away.\n\n  Nor dare to blame God's gifts for incompleteness;\n    In that want their beauty lies; they roll\n  Toward some infinite depth of love and sweetness,\n    Bearing onward man's reluctant soul.\n\nThis poem holds one of the great principles in Miss Procter's very noble\ntheory of life--a theory abundantly developed in her poems. Her cardinal\naxioms would seem to be three: The great rule of life is progression; its\ngreat agent, sorrow; its great fact and end, love. On these pillars she\nbuilds, and 'Incompleteness' is one of the most direct statements of one\npart of her creed. Another fine poem, in thought a kind of companion-piece\nto this, in which we readily recognize the same underlying thought, is\n\n\n    Beyond.\n\n  We must not doubt, or fear, or dread that love for\n      life is only given,\n  And that the calm and sainted dead will meet\n      estranged and cold in heaven:\n  Oh! love were poor and vain, indeed, based on so\n      harsh and stern a creed.\n\n  True that this earth must pass away\n      with all the starry worlds of light,\n  With all the glory of the day, and calmer tenderness\n      of night,\n  For in that radiant home can shine alone\n      the immortal and divine.\n\n  Earth's lower things--her pride, her fame,\n      her science, learning, wealth, and power,\n  Slow growths that through long ages came,\n      or fruits of some convulsive hour,\n  Whose very memory must decay--heaven is\n      too pure for such as they.\n\n  They are complete; their work done.\n      So let them sleep in endless rest.\n  Love's life is only here begun, nor is,\n      nor can be, fully blest;\n  It has no room to spread its wings,\n      amid this crowd of meaner things.\n\n  Just for the very shadow thrown upon its\n      sweetness here below,\n  The cross that it must bear alone,\n      and bloody baptism of woe,\n  Crowned and completed through its pain,\n      we know that it shall rise again.\n\n  So, if its flame burn pure and bright,\n      here where our air is dark and dense,\n  (And nothing in this world of night\n      lives with a living so intense,)\n  When it shall reach its home at length,\n      how bright its light! how strong its strength!\n\n  And while the vain weak loves of earth\n      (for such base counterfeits abound)\n  Shall perish with what gave them birth--\n      their graves are green and fresh around--\n  No funeral song shall need to rise\n      for the true love that never dies.\n\n  If in my heart I now could fear that,\n      risen again, we should not know\n  What was our life of life when here--the\n      hearts we loved so much below\n  I would arise this very day\n      and cast so poor a thing away.\n\n  But love is no such soulless clod;\n      living, perfected it shall rise,\n  Transfigured in the light, of God,\n      and giving glory to the skies:\n  And that which makes this life so sweet\n      shall render heaven's joy complete.\n\n\nAs a poem, this latter is superior, because it applies beautifully to a\nbeautiful subject the principle which the other merely enunciates. And the\nstyle is not less remarkable than the ideas. Can anything be more clearly,\ncalmly _right_ than the thought, more easy, lucid, _real_ than\nits utterance? And it is not the bald perspicuity, either, of mere logical\ndisquisition, but full of suggestion and spirit; and it does not flag;\nespecially in Beyond there is not a weak line nor lower thought. Now is not\nall this refreshing after the diffuse grace and dilute sweetness of female\npoetry in general? It is to the run of it as a copse of May's arbutus to a\nmeadow strewn with buttercups.\n\n_Apropos_ of this superiority, we find another poem which illustrates\nit even more strongly, because so very many women have fluttered about the\nsame thought.\n{557}\nEvery _femme incomprise_--and what poetess does not think she is one?\nis full of it; why have none of them said it so broadly and well as this?\n\n\n    Unexpressed.\n\n  Dwells within the soul of every artist\n    More than all his effort can express,\n  And he knows the best remains unaltered,\n    Sighing at what we call his success.\n\n  Vainly he may strive; he dare not tell us\n    All the sacred mysteries of the skies:\n  Vainly he may strive; the deepest beauty\n    Cannot be unveiled to mortal eyes.\n\n  And the more devoutly that he listens,\n    And the holier message that is sent,\n  Still the more his soul must struggle vainly,\n    Bowed beneath a noble discontent.\n\n  No great thinker ever lived and taught you\n    All the wonder that his soul received;\n  No true painter ever set on canvas\n    All the glorious vision he conceived.\n\n  No musician ever held your spirit\n    Charmed and bound in his melodious chains,\n  But be sure he heard, and strove to render\n    Feeble echoes of celestial strains.\n\n  No real poet ever wove in numbers\n    All his dream, but the diviner part,\n  Hidden from all the world, spake to him only\n    In the voiceless silence of his heart.\n\n  So with love; for love and art united\n    Are twin mysteries; different, yet the same:\n  Poor, indeed, would be the love of any\n    Who could find its full and perfect name.\n\n  Love may strive, but vain is the endeavor\n    All its boundless riches to unfold;\n  Still its tenderest, truest secret lingers\n    Ever in its deepest depths untold.\n\n  Things of time have voices, speak and perish:\n    Art and love speak, but their words must be\n  Sighings of illimitable forests,\n    Waves of an unfathomable sea.\n\nThe positive merit of this--passing the odious business of comparison--is,\nto our mind, the well-managed amplification of the main thought, and the\nswell both of sense and sound at the close, which we find a beauty of high\norder. The last two lines especially seize the melodic principle of the\nmetre, which, beyond almost any other we know, calls for long musical\nwords. Only \"voiceless silence\" strikes one as tautological to the last\ndegree. Miss Proctor very rarely makes outright mistakes, and she may have\nseen some subtle sense added by the word \"voiceless\" that we cannot. All\nthe silences we have ever known were strictly voiceless, and decidedly apt\nto terminate about the time any voice began.\n\nThe next great topic with our poetess is the sweet uses of adversity. She\nis never weary of celebrating the beauty and benignity of sorrow. In fact,\nshe appears to have a personal friendship for misfortune, as the great\nelevating and purifying dispensation of earthly existence. Grief,\ndisappointment, death, are to her philosophy but natural incidents, to be\nexpected and met without fear--processes tending to the higher result\nhereafter. But here is her whole thought, better set forth than we can say\nit:\n\n\n    Friend Sorrow.\n\n  Do not cheat thy heart and tell her\n    Grief will pass away,\n  Hope for fairer times in future\n    And forget to-day.\n  Tell her, if you will, that sorrow\n    Need not come in vain,\n  Tell her that the lesson taught her\n    Far outweighs the pain.\n\n  Cheat her not with the old comfort,\n    \"Soon she will forget:\"\n  Bitter truth, alas! but matter\n    Rather for regret.\n  Bid her not \"Seek other pleasures,\n    Turn to other things:\"\n  Rather nurse her caged sorrow\n    Till the captive sings.\n\n  Rather bid her go forth bravely\n    And the stranger greet,\n  Not as foes with spear and buckler,\n    But as dear friends meet;\n  Bid her with a strong clasp hold her\n    By her dusky wings,\n  Listening for the murmured blessing\n    Sorrow always brings.\n\nThis is only one of a large number of poems full of varied exposition of\nthese same views. Some are so ingenious and happy that we can hardly resist\nquoting them, were it not that, if those were the only qualifications, we\nshould have to cite the major part of her poems. In fact, this conception\nof sorrow as a hidden blessing is peculiarly strong in all she has written.\nAnd yet, while recognizing in tribulation an elevating grace that wins it a\nwelcome from her heart, she fully feels the sadness, the weariness, the\npoverty and pain of earthly lives. A strong instance of this is the \"Cradle\nSong of the Poor,\" with its singular, sad refrain:\n\n  \"Sleep, my darling, thou art weary,\n  God is good, but life is dreary.\"\n\n{558}\n\nAnd the miseries of the poor have evoked the only bitter lines she ever\nwrote, which, coming, as they do, the very last in her book, seem almost\nlike an after-addition--the strange strong lines called \"Homeless.\" There\nis a force in some of the lines that reminds us of Hood:\n\n  It is cold, dark midnight, yet listen\n    To that patter of tiny feet!\n  Is it one of your dogs, fair lady,\n    Who whines in the bleak, cold street?\n  Is it one of your silken spaniels\n    Shut out in the snow and the sleet?\n\n  My dogs sleep warm in their baskets,\n    Safe from the darkness and snow;\n  All the beasts in our Christian England\n    Find pity wherever they go.\n  (Those are only the homeless children\n    Who are wandering to and fro.)\n\n  Look out in the gusty darkness:\n    I have seen it again and again,\n  That shadow, that flits so slowly\n    Up and down past the window-pane:\n  It is surely some criminal lurking\n    Out there in the frozen rain!\n\n  Nay, our criminals all are sheltered,\n    They are pitied and taught and fed:\n  That is only a sister-woman,\n    Who has got neither food nor bed:\n  _And the Night cries, \"Sin to be living;\"\n    And the River cries, \"Sin to be dead.\"_\n\n   .....\n\nThere is one other piece perhaps even sadder than this when we penetrate\nits full, stern significance:\n\n\n    The Requital.\n\n  Loud roared the tempest, fast fell the sleet;\n  A little child-angel passed down the street\n  With trailing pinions and weary feet.\n\n  The moon was hidden; no stars were bright;\n  So she could not shelter in heaven that night,\n  _For the angels' ladders are rays of light._\n\n  She beat her wings at each window-pane,\n  And pleaded for shelter, but all in vain:\n  \"Listen,\" they said, \"to the pelting rain!\"\n\n  She sobbed, as the laughter and mirth grew higher,\n  \"Give me rest and shelter beside your fire,\n  And I will give you your heart's desire.\"\n\n  The dreamer sat watching his embers gleam,\n  While his heart was floating down hope's bright stream,\n  So he wove her wailing into his dream.\n\n  The worker toiled on, for his time was brief;\n  The mourner was nursing her own pale grief:\n  They heard not the promise that brought relief.\n\n  But fiercer the tempest rose than before,\n  When the angel paused at a humble door\n  And asked for shelter and help once more.\n\n  A weary woman, pale, worn, and thin,\n  With the brand upon her of want and sin,\n  Heard the child-angel and took her in.\n\n  Took her in gently, and did her best\n  To dry her pinions; and made her rest\n  With tender pity upon her breast.\n\n  When the eastern morning grew bright and red,\n  Up the first sunbeam the angel fled,\n  Having kissed the woman, and left her--dead.\n\nHuman waifs forgotten by all their kind are a sorrowful picture enough, but\nthis of a human heart so desolate, so blank, so seared, so far from all\nhope or joy in life, that even God its Creator does not deny its supreme\nwish to die, is inexpressibly dreary. This is worthy to stand beside\nTennyson's \"Mariana in the Moated Grange.\"\n\nOne touch worth noticing is the fiction by which the angel is detained on\nearth; that \"the angels' ladders are rays of light.\" It strikes us as one\nof the most ingenious we have ever met, and no less beautiful than happy.\nThe whole structure of the narrative indeed, is admirable; it is difficult\nto see how the parts could be fitted more nicely. This skill Miss Procter\nhas in an uncommon degree, and all her longer narrative poems exemplify it.\n\nOf course, such thoughts on life as these last verses contain blend\nnaturally with noble thoughts on death. Here, again, Miss Procter's\nprevailing thoughtfulness has developed her ideas into many beautiful\napplications. The lines called \"The Angel of Death,\" which so touchingly\nclose Charles Dickens's late sketch of her, the sweet, weary \"Tryst with\nDeath,\" and many others, are examples of this. But among them all there is\nnone which more truly embodies her conceptions, or which, at the same time,\nis more deeply instinct with the hopefulness which underlies all her graver\nutterances, than the admirable lines:\n\n\n    Our Dead.\n\n  Nothing is our own; we hold our treasures\n   Just a little time ere they are fled:\n  One by one life robs us of our treasures:\n    Nothing is our own except our dead.\n\n  They are ours, and hold in faithful keeping,\n    Safe for ever, all they took away.\n  Cruel life can never stir that sleeping;\n    Cruel time can never seize that prey.\n\n  Justice pales, truth fades, stars fall from heaven:\n    Human are the great whom we revere;\n  No true crown of honor can be given,\n    Till we place it on a funeral bier.\n\n  How the children leave us, and no traces\n    Linger of that smiling angel hand;\n  Gone, for ever gone; and in their places\n    Weary men and anxious women stand.\n\n{559}\n\n  _Yet, we have some little ones, still ours;\n    They have kept the baby smile, we know,\n  Which we kissed one day, and hid with flowers,\n    On their dead white faces, long ago._\n\n  When our joy is lost--and life will take it--\n    Then no memory of the past remains,\n  Save with some strange, cruel sting, to make it\n    Bitterness beyond all present pains.\n\n  _Death, more tender-hearted, leaves to sorrow\n    Still the radiant shadow, fond regret;_\n  We shall find, in some far bright to-morrow\n    Joy that he has taken, living yet.\n\n  \"Is love ours, and do we dream we know it\n    Bound with all our heart-strings all our own?\n  Any cold and cruel dawn may show it\n    Shattered, desecrated, overthrown.\n\n  _Only the dead hearts forsake us never:\n    Death's last kiss has been the mystic sign\n  Consecrating love our own for ever,\n    Crowning it eternal and divine._\n\n  _So when Fate would fain besiege our city,\n    Dim our gold or make our flowers fall,\n  Death, the angel, comes in love and pity\n    And, to save our treasures, claims them all._\n\nHer ideas regarding death are very lofty. They are equally removed from the\ntimorous, painful harping on dissolution that characterizes the\n_underdone_ poetic organism, from the graphic grimness of Miss\nRossetti's class of thinkers, who seem to take a ghastly delight in\nanatomizing the subject, and last from the passionate weak welcoming of the\nend--the coward courage which dares not live. In a word, Miss Procter was a\nChristian.\n\nIn quitting her poems of thought, it will perhaps be well to pretermit our\nlong course of praise, and speak of the faults of her writing, most of\nwhich are strongest in these very poems. In verbal correctness, she is far\nabove the average; for so voluminous a writer, singularly free from them.\nStill, by G. Washington-Moon-light, we can discover certain errors,\nprincipally of accent or collocation. Some few appear in the verses we have\ncited. In \"Beyond,\" \"baptism\" is made a trisyllable; though, standing where\nit does, an appeal might well be taken to the higher equity of rhythm\nagainst the arbitrary technicality of the law of orthoepy. Also, we doubt\nif \"perf\u00e9cted\" be the best pronunciation to-day. And in \"Homeless,\" in the\nexpression,\n\n  \"Is it one of your dogs, fair lady,\n  Who whines in the bleak, cold street?\"\n\nit might with all respect for the intelligence of the race at large, and,\nabove all, for the prodigious latent capabilities of all ladies' dogs--it\nmight be seriously questioned whether the canine personality is so marked\nas to admit of the relative \"who.\" We feel quite sure that the original\nidea was to reserve this particular pronoun for selfish mankind, and we\nfear that the slow science of grammar is still fettered, even as to the\nmost marvellous of the dog kind, by the trammelling traditions of\ncomparative anatomy.\n\nBut such flaws as these are venial, occurring as they do at rare intervals,\nin a very large number of verses, written young, and crowded into the\ncompass of a few years. Many of them were mere passing contributions to the\nperiodical press of the day, and, taken as a whole, compare to advantage\nwith the hasty emanations of almost any author.\n\nIn metre Miss Procter achieves no high effects, and attempts none. With\nvery fair taste in selection of metre, she is by no means an artist in\nrhythm, and appears to aim at little or nothing beyond passable metrical\ncorrectness. She is carelessly harsh and incidentally melodious. Once or\ntwice she tries some sort of irregular or lyric measure, and it appears\nrather to impede than aid her accustomed clear flow of thought.\n\nIn style she has two prominent though not great faults. One is her\nrefinement. She is so refined that it would, even had she reached the full\npromise of her life, have prevented her, in all probability, from ever\nbeing broadly popular. Her field is too high and narrow: she deals mainly\nwith sentiments and sympathies which interest only those who have not only\nsorrowed, but reflected. But this blame is praise in itself. The other is\nmore of a real fault. Miss Procter tempts us to believe that the\ndiffuseness which we have attributed chiefly to their education has some\nfoundation in woman's nature itself.\n{560}\nDifferent as she is from the ordinary type, her womanhood vindicates\nitself, though still in a way of her own. The effect on her style is not\nwhat we spoke of--dilution--but amplification. Sometimes she is led away by\nher fertility of illustration to illustrate too much. She holds up the idea\nin too many lights, more than are needful to understand her. There is a\nlittle of this even in \"Incompleteness,\" before cited, but the\nillustrations are so happy that the effect is not perceived: it is seldom\nwe are troubled with too many good things in a poem. Very often, however,\nthis practice of ramifying thoughts into so many applications--one natural\nresult of her thorough thinking--greatly injures the whole, and almost\nalways, where there is much of this amplification, it passes beyond the\nstrict limits of the strongest effect.\n\nThere are, furthermore, some few poems liable to cavil which seem to have\nbeen mere exercises or experiments, and call for other criticism than her\nfinished performances. Others suffer from their author's inveterate habit\nof seizing on every-day subjects. Now and then she takes up one so trite\nthat all the charm of her manner cannot mend it. The result is like a\npebble set in filigree.\n\nThe only grave artistic fault we ever found in her poems occurs in the\nLegend of Provence, one of her best narrative pieces, founded on the\nexquisite Legend of the Virgin Mary's assuming the personality and filling\nthe place of a nun who has proved false to her vows and fled her convent.\nRepentant at last, she returns, a worn-out beggar, to die where her\nreligion died, meets her semblance, recognizes it as what she might have\nbeen, and implores Mary's aid.\n\n  And Mary answered: \"From thy bitter past,\n  Welcome, my child! Oh! welcome home at last!\n  I filled thy place: thy flight is known to none,\n  For all thy daily duties I have done;\n  Gathered thy flowers and prayed, and sung, and slept;\n  Didst thou not know, poor child, thy place was kept?\"\n\nThis strikes us as a tremendous blunder. For the nun to know that her place\nwas kept would knock the bottom out of the entire legend. Who wouldn't sin\nwith his pardon drawn up in advance, and entire secrecy and perfect\nrestoration awaiting the first active twinge of repentance? We cannot\nimagine for an instant how Miss Procter could overlook this; unless we have\nmade some equally egregious error in our understanding of the poem and its\nscope.\n\nWe find, or fancy we find, in her writings, a shade of resemblance to the\ntaste and tact of her father, \"Barry Cornwall.\" Perhaps it was because she\nfeared her generic tendencies of style, that she has written few or no\nsongs, and none at all like his sort. If her object was to avoid suspicious\nresemblance, she has succeeded. The likeness is utterly intangible, and\nthere is not a trace anywhere of an imitation most natural to her relations\nwith him, and which must have proved easy to talent like hers.\n\nAnother noteworthy fact about her is also alluded to by Mr. Dickens. It is\nthe total absence of humor, and the sober and shaded style of what she has\nwritten. He takes occasion, while speaking of this prevailing seriousness\nin one so young, expressly to bar the inference that she was of the\nmelancholy moonlit sort, and mentions her abundant wit, and keen sense of\nthe ludicrous, and the joyous quality of her laugh. We do not think an\nobservant reader would misconceive her, as her kind-hearted biographer\napprehended. She lacks the distinctive element of morbidness. There is a\nsoundness in her sadness, so to speak, that makes us feel it to be the\nshadow of a soul that knows the sunshine also. Mournful people of the true\nchronic mournfulness show it far more by taking dismal views of ordinary\nsubjects than by dealing only in dismal things. But the fact itself\nsuggests a curious question which our aphorists have not yet answered. How\nis it that some men naturally rollick in print, while others, not less\nhumorous, write nothing but the gravest stuff?\n{561}\nWhat made Hood's pen merry on his death-bed, and took the wit so out of\nSydney Smiths's sermons? These two classes are so marked that one would\nthink there must be a principle of some sort dividing them. Yet no one has\never laid down this principle. We no more pretend to do this than the rest,\nbut merely raise the question, leaving it to some future critic to\ndisentangle us from a most Cartesian dubitation.\n\nThus far we have quoted mainly in illustration of Miss Procter's\ncharacteristics. It must not be inferred, however, that there are not in\nher books excellences not specially arising out of her peculiar ideas of\nlife. On the contrary, there are a number of pieces of that provoking class\nof good things which we might just as well have written ourselves--only we\ndidn't. Very few of our friends, though, would think of looking in an\nEnglish author for the following strong, spirited protest, written in 1861,\nwhen it was proposed to \"strengthen the hands\" of the mission for the\nconversion of Irish Catholics:\n\n    An Appeal.\n\n  Spare her, O cruel England!\n    Thy sister lieth low:\n  Chained and oppressed she lieth;\n    Spare her that cruel blow.\n  We ask not for the freedom\n    Heaven has vouchsafed to thee,\n  Nor bid thee share with Ireland\n    The empire of the sea.\n  Her children ask no shelter--\n    Leave them the stormy sky;\n  They ask not for thy harvests,\n    For they know how to die;\n  Deny them, if it please thee,\n    A grave beneath the sod;\n  But we do cry, O England,\n    Leave them their faith in God!\n\n  Take, if thou wilt, the earnings\n    Of the poor peasant's toil;\n  Take all the scanty produce\n    That grows on Irish soil,\n  To pay the alien preachers\n    Whom Ireland will not hear--\n  To pay the scoffers at the creed\n    Which Irish hearts hold dear:\n  But leave them, cruel England,\n    The gift their God has given;\n  Leave them their ancient worship,\n    Leave them their faith in heaven.\n\n  You come and offer learning--\n    A mighty gift, 'tis true,\n  Perchance the greatest blessing,\n    That now is known to you;\n  But not to see the wonders\n    Sages of old beheld\n  Can they peril a priceless treasure,\n    The faith their fathers held.\n\n  For in learning and in science\n    They may forget to pray:\n  _God will not ask for knowledge\n    On the great judgment day._\n\n  When, in their wretched cabins,\n    Racked by the fever pain.\n  And the weak cries of their children\n    Who ask for food in vain;\n  When, starving, naked, helpless,\n    From the shed that keeps them warm\n  Man has driven them forth to perish\n    In a less cruel storm;\n  Then, then we plead for mercy;\n    Then, sister, hear our cry;\n  For all we ask, O England,\n    Is--leave them there to die!\n  Cursed is the food and raiment\n    For which a soul is sold;\n  Tempt not another Judas\n    To barter God for gold.\n  You offer food and shelter\n    If they their faith deny;\n  What do you gain, O England!\n    By such a shallow lie?\n  We will not judge the tempted--\n    May God blot out their shame--\n  He sees the misery round them,\n    He knows man's feeble frame.\n  His pity still may save them.\n    In his strength they must trust\n  Who calls us all his children.\n    Yet knows we are but dust.\n\n  Then leave them the kind tending,\n    Which helped their childish years;\n  Leave them the gracious comfort\n    Which dries their mourner's tears;\n  Leave them to that great mother\n    In whose bosom they were born,\n  Leave them the holy mysteries\n    That comfort the forlorn;\n  And, amid all their trials,\n    Let the great gift abide,\n  Which you, O prosperous England!\n    Have dared to cast aside.\n  Leave them the pitying angels,\n    And Mary's gentle aid,\n  For which earth's dearest treasures\n    Were not too dearly paid.\n  Take back your bribes, then, England,\n    Your gold is black and dim;\n  _And if God sends plague and famine,\n    They can die and go to him._\n\nThis is by far the most unpolished and unequal thing Miss Procter has ever\nwritten, and full of faults of detail. But, spite of loose texture and\nrepetition, and weak lines, and identical rhymes, there is a strength in\nall the essential features, and a spirit everywhere, that contrast strongly\nwith the patriotic effusions that we have had so much of these last few\nyears.\n\nAnother poem which has incidentally attracted no little notice is Homeward\nBound, which anticipates the whole plot of Enoch Arden so completely that\nsome shallow people felt called upon to say a number of very foolish things\nabout the coincidence when Enoch Arden came out.\n{562}\nThe chief differences are that the ship-wrecked hero is thrown on a desert\nisland in the one and captured by Moors in the other. Enoch Arden also\nturns away from the agonizing picture of his forfeited home in silence,\nwhile Miss Procter's mariner reveals himself, kisses his wife once more\n_as if_ she were his, and departs, leaving the very awkward bigamy\nquestion wide open behind him, and in general evincing a noble ignorance of\nthe law of England. He also perpetrates the dramatic error of surviving in\na state of marine vagrancy for a quarter of a century. But, though inferior\nto Tennyson's, this poem has many excellent touches of pathos and nature,\nand must claim, equally with Enoch Arden, the full merit of its simple yet\nmost telling conception.\n\n_Apropos_ of resemblances, we are tempted to quote another of her best\nknown poems, both for its real beauty and because it subtly reminds us of\nLongfellow, and we should be thankful if some one would only tell us why:\n\n\n    The Storm.\n\n  The tempest rages wild and high;\n  The waves lift up their voice and cry\n  Fierce answers to the angry sky.\n                _Miserere Domine_\n\n  Through the black night and driving rain,\n  A ship is struggling, all in vain,\n  To live upon the stormy main.\n                _Miserere Domine_\n\n  The thunders roar, the lightnings glare,\n  Vain is it now to strive or dare;\n  A cry goes up of great despair.\n                _Miserere Domine_\n\n  The stormy voices of the main,\n  The moaning wind and pelting rain\n  Beat on the nursery window-pane,\n                _Miserere Domine_\n\n  Warm curtained was the little bed,\n  Soft pillowed was the little head:\n  \"The storm will wake the child,\" they said.\n                _Miserere Domine_\n\n  Cowering among his pillows white,\n  He prays, his blue eyes dim with fright,\n  \"Father, save those at sea to-night!\"\n                _Miserere Domine_\n\n  The morning shone all clear and gay\n  On a ship at anchor in the bay,\n  And on a little child at play.\n                _Gloria tibi Domine!_\n\n\nOut of many which commend themselves, we select only one more, a little gem\nwhich we were surprised and pleased to find copied the other day in a\nlittle New York evening paper. We think it very suggestive and sweet.\n\n\n    A Lost Chord\n\n  Seated one day at the organ,\n    I was weary and ill at ease,\n  And my fingers wandered idly\n    Over the noisy keys.\n\n  I do not know what I was playing,\n    Or what I was dreaming then,\n  But I struck one chord of music\n    Like the sound of a great Amen.\n\n  It flooded the crimson twilight\n    Like the close of an angel's psalm,\n  And it lay on my fevered spirit\n    With a touch of infinite calm.\n\n  It quieted pain and sorrow,\n    Like love overcoming strife;\n  It seemed the harmonious echo\n    From our discordant life.\n\n  It linked all perplexed meanings\n    Into one perfect peace,\n  And trembled away into silence\n    As if it were loth to cease.\n\n  I have sought, but I seek it vainly,\n    That one lost chord divine,\n  That came from the soul of the organ,\n    And entered into mine.\n\n  It may be that Death's bright angel\n    Will speak in that chord again,\n  It may be that only in heaven\n    I shall hear that grand Amen.\n\n\nWe have yet to speak of one great element in these poems, their religion.\nWith those who are born and bred in a church, their belief sits on them\nlike their clothes--becomes a part of themselves. With converts it is\noftener like a badge which they are proud to wear, and which some are fond\nof displaying. Miss Procter's was one of those rare natures in which\nreligion seems to stain back, as it were, and color the very fountain-heads\nof all thought and impulse, as they are colored by the associations of\nchildhood. In her, it was not like regalia for the processions of life or a\nreserve fund for emergencies, but thoroughly assimilated and vitalized; a\n_living_ faith; an actual, practical element in her daily doings, as\npresent in her consciousness as her own individuality. Nor had she any of\nthe combativeness of converts, whose zeal is apt sometimes to be\naggressively meek and intolerantly lowly. Hers was a faith full of the\ncharity that judges not.\n{563}\nLike all real feeling, it never obtrudes itself, and never shrinks from\nappearing in its proper place. Thus she has very few devotional and no\nsectarian pieces at all in her Legends and Lyrics, but once professedly\nentering on that line of thought, in her Chaplet of Verses, she is both\nChristian and Catholic throughout.\n\nYet among the few devotional pieces in the earlier series we find one of\nthe best:\n\n\n    The Peace of God.\n\n  We ask for peace, O Lord!\n    Thy children ask thy peace;\n  Not what the world calls rest,\n    That toil and care should cease;\n  That through bright sunny hours\n    Calm life should fleet away,\n  And tranquil night should fade\n    In smiling day:\n  It is not for such peace that we would pray.\n\n  We ask for peace, Lord!\n    Yet not to stand secure,\n  Girt round with iron pride,\n    Contented to endure;\n  Crushing the gentle strings\n    That human hearts should know,\n  Untouched by others' joy\n    Or others' woe:\n  Thou, dear Lord! wilt never teach us so.\n\n  We ask thy peace, Lord!\n    Through storm, and fear, and strife,\n  To light and guide us on\n    Through a long, struggling life:\n  While no success or gain\n    Shall cheer the desperate fight,\n  Or nerve what the world calls\n    Our wasted might;\n  Yet pressing through the darkness to the light.\n\n  It is thine own, Lord!\n    Who toil while others sleep;\n  Who sow with loving care\n    What other hands shall reap:\n  They lean on thee entranced\n    In calm and perfect rest:\n  Give us that peace, Lord!\n    Divine and blest,\n  Thou keepest for those hearts who love thee best.\n\n\nVery like this in sentiment are several of her best pieces, \"Per Pacem ad\nLucem,\" \"Ministering Angels,\" and \"Thankfulness.\" There are a number also\naddressed to the Virgin Mary, the best of which are too long for insertion.\nIt is this which will restrict our quotations to one more piece, which\nbreathes that lofty ardor that every struggling Christian has felt in his\nbrighter hours of exaltation, and sighed to know that common moods cannot\nrise to it.\n\n\n    Our Titles.\n\n  Are we not Nobles? we who trace\n    Our pedigree so high\n  That God for us and for our race\n    Created earth and sky,\n  And light and air and time and space,\n    To serve us and then die?\n\n  Are we not Princes? we who stand\n    As heirs beside the throne,\n  We who can call the promised land\n    Our heritage, our own;\n  And answer to no less command\n    Than God's, and his alone?\n\n  Are we not Kings? both night and day,\n    From early until late,\n  About our bed, about our way,\n    A guard of angels wait;\n  And so we watch and work and pray\n    In more than royal state.\n\n ......\n\n  Are we not more? our life shall be\n    Immortal and divine.\n  The nature Mary gave to thee,\n    Dear Jesus, still is thine:\n  Adoring in thy heart I see\n    Such blood as beats in mine.\n\n  O God! that we can dare to fail\n    And dare to say we must!\n  O God! that we can ever trail\n    Such banners in the dust,\n  Can let such starry honors pale\n    And such a blazon rust!\n\n  Shall we upon such titles bring\n    The taint of sin and shame?\n  Shall we, the children of the King,\n    Who hold so grand a claim,\n  Tarnish by any meaner thing\n    The glory of our name?\n\n\nBut, although just to-day, in the present undeveloped state of woman's\nintellect, Miss Procter may strike us most by her advance in thought beyond\nher sex, she has a far higher claim on us for the admiration due to true\nwomanhood. Where do these poets school their souls, that they come forth\nfull of the experience of threescore years and ten? We know that Miss\nProcter died in the prime and summer of her days, with most of the great\nepochs and experiences of a woman's life yet before her. It is not even\nsaid that she ever loved; for the sake of him who should lose her, we hope\nit may be so. Yet her poems hold more tenderness and truth, more of real\nlove, its anxiety, faith, fulfilment, more of woman's inner life, than any\nten of the sweet soft natures who have taken these things to be their sole\nprovince; who fancy their inkstands are in their souls, and devote a\nlifetime of harmless harpings to rhyming some flutterings of heart and more\nflutterings of nerves.\n{564}\nHere, as everywhere, we meet with Miss Procter's unfailing force and\nclearness, and tremble at first to meet it. For of all agonizing things (as\nmany a sensitive nature can testify) there is none like the unconscious\ncruelty of pure intellect when it comes to deal with the strange\nintuitions, the noble unreason, the holy follies of the heart. But hand in\nhand with her inborn analysis comes such a womanhood, so deep, so delicate,\nso full of sympathy and sweet counsel, as passes words. This union it is,\nas we said before, that stamps Miss Procter a poet. We men cannot half\nappreciate this; the sisterhood of sex that her poems must establish with\nwomen who have loved and suffered is for some woman only to set forth.\n\nIt is difficult to choose any one poem which stands pre-eminent in these\nqualities. One which will show her insight into the seemingly contradictory\nimpulses of a woman's breast is\n\n\n    A Woman's Question.\n\n  Before I trust my fate to thee,\n    Or place my hand in thine;\n  Before I let thy future give\n    Color and form to mine,\n  Before I peril all for thee.\n  Question thy soul to-night for me.\n\n  I break all slighter bonds, nor feel\n    A shadow of regret:\n  Is there one link within the past\n    That holds thy spirit yet?\n  Or is thy faith as clear and free\n  As that which I can pledge to thee?\n\n  Does there within thy dimmest dreams\n    A possible future shine,\n  Wherein thy life could henceforth breathe\n    Untouched, unshared by mine?\n  If so, at any pain or cost,\n  Oh! tell me before all is lost.\n\n  Look deeper still. If thou canst feel\n    Within thy inmost soul\n  That thou hast kept a portion back,\n    While I have staked the whole,\n  Let no false pity spare the blow,\n  But in true mercy tell me so.\n\n  Is there within thy heart a need\n    That mine cannot fulfil?\n  One chord that any other hand\n    Could better wake or still?\n  Speak now--lest at some future day\n  My whole life wither and decay.\n\n  Lives there within thy nature hid\n    The demon-spirit Change,\n  Shedding a passing glory still\n    On all things new and strange?\n  It may not be thy fault alone--\n  But shield my heart against thy own.\n\n  Couldst thou withdraw thy hand one day,\n    And answer to my claim\n  That fate, and that to day's mistake--\n    Not thou had been to blame?\n  Some soothe their conscience thus; but thou\n  Wilt surely warn and save me now.\n\n  Nay, answer _not_--I dare not hear,\n    The words would come too late;\n  Yet I would spare thee all remorse,\n    So comfort thee, my fate--\n  Whatever on my heart may fall,\n  Remember, I _would_ risk it all.\n\n\nThe strength of this is in the rendering of that eloquent instinct of love\nwhich intuitively strikes the most responsive chord. Here it hits on the\nstrongest appeal a woman can make to a man--to save her against himself.\nAnd no one can deny the boldness and beauty of the closing turn of thought.\n\nThe following poem bears a strong resemblance to the last in tone and train\nof analysis, with an element of calm fruition instead of the utter\ndevotion. The one is love's June of trust; the other its September of\nfulfilment.\n\n\n    A Retrospect.\n\n  From this fair point of present bliss,\n    Where we together stand,\n  Let me look back once more, and trace\n    That long and desert land\n  Wherein till now was cast my lot,\n  And I could live, and thou wert not.\n\n  ......\n\n  What had I then? A hope that grew\n    Each hour more bright and dear,\n  The flush upon the eastern skies\n    That showed the sun was near.\n  Now night has faded far away,\n  My sun has risen, and it is day.\n\n  A dim ideal of tender grace\n    In my soul reigned supreme;\n  Too noble and too sweet, I thought,\n    To live save in a dream;\n  Within thy heart to-day it lies,\n  And looks on me from thy dear eyes.\n\n  Some gentle spirit--love, I thought--\n    Built many a shrine of pain;\n  Though each false idol fell to dust,\n    The worship was not vain,\n  But a faint radiant shadow, cast\n  Back from our love upon the past.\n\n  And grief, too, held her vigil there;\n    With unrelenting sway,\n  Breaking my cloudy visions down,\n    Throwing my flowers away:\n  I owe to her fond care alone\n  That I may now be all thine own.\n\n  Fair joy was there: her fluttering wings\n    At time she strove to raise;\n  Watching through long and patient nights,\n    Listening long eager days:\n  I know now that her heart and mine\n  Were waiting, love, to welcome thine.\n\n  Thus I can read thy name throughout,\n    And, now her task is done,\n  Can see that even that faded past\n    Was thine, beloved one.\n  And so rejoice my life may be\n  All consecrated, dear, to thee.\n\n\n{565}\n\nThere could scarcely be a truer sign of poetic power than the fidelity and\nfinish of some of these heart-pictures. Out of many others we select two\nfor contrast: one tracing the deep, dreary introspection of passive\nsuffering; the other following out the subtle, restless impulses of pain\nwith pangs. The first we take from a longer poem, \"Philip and Mildred.\"\n\n\n  Dawn of day saw Philip speeding on his road to the great city,\n  Thinking how the stars gazed downward just with Mildred's patient eyes.\n  Dreams of work and fame and honor struggling with a tender pity,\n  Till the loving past receding saw the conquering future rise.\n\n  Daybreak still found Mildred watching, with the wonder of first sorrow,\n  How the outward world unaltered shone the same this very day,\n  How unpitying and relentless human life met this new morrow--\n  Earth, and sky, and man unheeding that her joy had passed away.\n\n  Then the round of weary duties, cold and formal, came to meet her,\n  With the life within departed that had given them each a soul;\n  And her sick heart even slighted gentle words that came to greet her;\n  For grief spread its shadowy pinions, like a blight, upon the whole.\n\n  _Jar one chord, the harp is silent; move one stone, the arch is shattered;\n  One small clarion-cry of sorrow bids an armed host awake.\n  One dark cloud can hide the sunlight; loose one string, the pearls are scattered;\n  Think one thought, a soul may perish; say one word, a heart may break._\n\n  Life went on, the two lives running side by side, the outward seeming,\n  And the truer and diviner hidden in the heart and brain:\n  Dreams grow holy put in action, work grows fair through starry dreaming:\n  But where each flows on unmingling, both are fruitless and in vain.\n\n\nWe hardly know which to like the better, the description itself or the\nmoralizing. Very different, very far from moralizing, and yet even more to\nthe life, is\n\n\n    A Comforter.\n\n  \"Will she come to me, little Effie,\n     Will she come to my arms to rest,\n   And nestle her head on my shoulder,\n     While the sun goes down in the west?\n\n  \"I and Effie will sit together\n     All alone in this great arm-chair:\n   Is it silly to mind it, darling,\n     When life is so hard to bear?\n\n  \"No one comforts me like my Effie.\n     Just, I think, that she does not try,\n   Only looks with a wistful wonder\n     Why grown people should ever cry;\n\n  \"While the little soft arms close tighter\n     Round my neck in their clinging hold:\n   Well, I must not cry on your hair, dear,\n     For my tears might tarnish the gold.\n\n  \"I am tired of trying to read, dear;\n     It is worse to talk and seem gay;\n   There are some kinds of sorrow, Effie,\n     It is useless to thrust away.\n\n  \"Ah! advice may be wise, my darling,\n     But one always knows it before;\n   And the reasoning down one's sorrow\n     Seems to make one suffer the more.\n\n  \"But my Effie won't reason, will she?\n     Or endeavor to understand;\n   Only holds up her mouth to kiss me,\n     As she strokes my face with her hand.\n\n  \"If you break your plaything yourself, dear,\n     Don't you cry for it all the same?\n   I don't think it is such a comfort,\n     One has only one's self to blame.\n\n  \"People say things cannot be helped, dear,\n     But then that is the reason why;\n   For, if things could be helped or altered\n     One would never sit down to cry.\n\n  \"They say, too, that tears are quite useless\n     To undo, amend, or restore:\n   When I think _how_ useless, my Effie,\n     Then my tears only fall the more.\n\n  \"All to-day I struggled against it,\n     But that does not make sorrow cease;\n   And now, dear, it such a comfort\n     To be able to cry in peace.\n\n  \"Though wise people would call that folly,\n     And remonstrate with grave surprise,\n   We won't mind what they say, my Effie;\n     We never professed to be wise.\n\n  \"But my comforter knows a lesson\n     Wiser, truer than all the rest,\n   That to help and to heal a sorrow,\n     Love and silence are always best.\n\n  \"Well, who is my comforter tell me!\n     Effie smiles, but she will not speak,\n   Or look up through the long, curled lashes\n     That are shading her rosy cheek.\n\n  \"Is she thinking of talking fishes,\n     The blue-bird, or magical tree?\n   Perhaps I am thinking, my darling,\n     Of something that never can be.\n\n  \"You long, don't you, dear, for the genii,\n     Who were slaves of lamps and of rings?\n   And I--I am sometimes afraid, dear,\n     I want as impossible things.\n\n  \"But, hark! there is nurse calling Effie!\n     It is bedtime, so run away;\n   And I must go back, or the others\n     Will be wondering why I stay.\n\n  \"So good-night to my darling Effie;\n     Keep happy, sweetheart, and grow wise:\n   There's one kiss for her golden tresses\n     And two for her sleepy eyes.\"\n\n\nWe do not know where to look for anything like this. It is so graphic, so\nsimple, so true. We, at least, never _realized_ a scene so vividly, so\nminutely, with all the details we would notice if it actually happened, and\nnot a touch beyond, unless perhaps after reading Maud M\u00fcller.\n{566}\nThe kind of force is in many respects the same, except that the woman-poet,\nas usual, says what the man-poet suggests of the inner life underlying. But\nit is excellently said, so well that one mentally declines to apply the\nprinciples of aesthetics, which would dictate Whittier's method as the more\nthoroughly artistic. How well the whole logic, or illogic, of that grand\nsolace, a good cry, is given, and how natural and how sweet if one could\nonly chance on an Effie that would not tell nurse all about it, to have a\nlittle \"comforter\" that would only know the grief and never care for the\ncauses!\n\nWe have only one more poem to quote--one which we consider in many respects\nMiss Procter's best. If feeling, delicacy, pathos, truth, make beauty and\npoetry, this alone ought to entitle its author to distinction. Bare of all\nfactitious ornament, carrying no overload of elegances, it goes straight to\nthe heart of every mother, and strikes the deepest key-note in the organism\nof the world--motherhood. And it seems to us that, if all men today were to\nleague against her memory, this poem should win her an immortality in the\nhearts of womankind:\n\n\n    Links With Heaven.\n\n  Our God in heaven, from that holy place\n    To each of us an angel guide has given;\n  But mothers of dead children have more grace,\n    For they give angels to their God and heaven.\n\n  How can a mother's heart feel cold or weary,\n    Knowing her dearer self safe, happy, warm?\n  How can she feel her road too dark or dreary,\n    Who knows her treasure sheltered from the storm?\n\n  How can she sin? Our hearts may be unheeding,\n    Our God forgot, our holy saints defied;\n  But can a mother hear her dead child pleading,\n    And thrust those little angel hands aside?\n\n  Those little hands stretched down to draw her ever\n    Nearer to God by mother love: we all\n  Are blind and weak, yet surely she can never,\n    With such a stake in heaven, fail or fall.\n\n  She knows that, when the mighty angels raise\n    Chorus in heaven, one little silver tone\n  Is hers forever; that one little praise,\n    One little happy voice, is all her own.\n\n  We may not see her sacred crown of honor,\n    But all the angels flitting to and fro\n  Pause smiling as they pass--they look upon her\n    As mother of an angel whom they know;\n\n  One whom they left nestled at Mary's feet--\n    The children's place in heaven--who softly sings\n  A little chant to please them, slow and sweet,\n    Or, smiling, strokes their little folded wings;\n\n  Or gives them her white lilies or her beads\n    To play with: yet, in spite of flower or song,\n  They often lift a wistful look that pleads\n    And asks them why their mother stays so long.\n\n  Then our dear Queen makes answer she will call\n    Her very soon: meanwhile they are beguiled\n  To wait and listen while she tells them all\n    A story of her Jesus as a child.\n\n  Ah! saints in heaven may pray with earnest will\n    And pity for their weak and erring brothers;\n  Yet there is prayer in heaven more tender still,\n    The little children pleading for their mothers.\n\n\nIn conclusion, we think the world will not know for a while yet how much it\nhas lost in Adelaide Anne Procter. Her time to be missed will come when\nCatholic England will need to be represented in the national literature.\nFor those who will force it into recognition, there will of necessity be\nstrong rather than fine intellects. Then the world will turn back to her\npages, and wish she were but there to represent Catholicity in England;\nthen she will be carefully read, and, once this happens, her place is\nassured. And yet, even then, we can never know her as she was; for beyond\nalmost any author we recall, Miss Procter impresses us as being far\nsuperior to her works. She is the best of examples of her own doctrine of\nimperfect expression. The fulness and fineness of her nature strike one\nfrom the beginning as being immeasurable by what she has written. There is\nsomething exalted and tender, rich and yet reserved, about the life which\nanimates her poems, that interests us uncommonly. And when we come to read\nof her, what was her life and what its aims, and, above all, when we see\nhow she is mourned by those who held her dear here, we recognize her for\none of those rare and beautiful hearts whom God loves too well to leave us\nlong, and conclude, in laying down these broken reflections of her spirit,\nthat her noblest poem was herself.\n\n------\n\n{567}\n\n\n    The Indissolubility of Christian Marriage.\n\n\n    Number One.\n\nThe frightful corruption in the legislation and practice respecting divorce\nwhich has spread so widely during the past few years in our country has at\nlast aroused the attention of those who are interested in the preservation\nof the public morals. They are beginning to write on the subject, and are\ncasting about for the means of protecting the endangered institution of\nmarriage. We feel it to be our duty to exercise what little influence we\nmay possess in the community at large, in the same direction. At present,\nwe shall restrict our remarks to one single point, which is the theological\nquestion of the lawfulness of divorce _a vinculo matrimonii_, for the\ncause of adultery, under the law of Christ. In order to make our intent and\nmeaning plain, we shall begin by stating the proposition we wish to\nmaintain. The marriage of Christians, validly ratified and consummated, is\nabsolutely indissoluble; and therefore there can be no legal and valid\ndivorce of the parties to such a marriage _a vinculo matrimonii_. The\nbest and ablest Protestant writers admit this with one exception, that is,\nof the innocent party in the case of a marriage which has been violated by\nadultery. We leave them, therefore, to defend the indissolubility of\nmarriage in all other cases, and confine ourselves to the one case in which\nthey permit divorce.\n\nThe sole argument for the lawfulness of divorce in this instance is derived\nfrom the following texts in St. Matthew's gospel. \"Whosoever shall put away\nhis wife, _excepting for the cause of fornication_, causeth her to\ncommit adultery.\" (v. 32.) \"Whosoever shall put away his wife, _except it\nbe for fornication_, and shall marry another, committeth adultery.\"\n(xix. 9.) The Catholic interpretation of these passages is, that our Lord\npermits a final separation _a mens\u00e2 et thoro_, for one cause, and one\nonly, which is the grievous crime mentioned in these texts. In accordance\nwith this interpretation, we explain these passages by the following\nparaphrase: \"Whoever, for any lesser cause than the crime of adultery,\nseparates himself finally from his wife, places both her and himself in the\ndanger of sinning, and is guilty of creating a proximate occasion of\nadultery. If he separates himself from her on account of the grievous crime\nabove mentioned, he is not responsible for her future crimes, nor is he\nguilty of placing himself without just cause in a condition in which the\nobservance of his marriage vows becomes more difficult. Nevertheless, if he\nmarries another, he commits adultery.\"\n\nIn order to sustain the truth of this interpretation, it is necessary to\ndefend three propositions. First. That our Lord declared the bond of\nmarriage indissoluble. Second. That he condemned all _soi-disant_\nmarriages of persons who were divorced, as adulterous. Third. That he\npermitted a final divorce _a mens\u00e2 et thoro_ simply, for the cause of\nadultery, and for no other.\n\nThe first proposition is established by all the texts of the New Testament\nwhich speak on the subject. We will first examine the text of St. Matthew,\nwhich includes the passage that is in dispute:\n\n  \"And the Pharisees came to him, tempting him, and saying: Is it lawful\n  for a man to put away his wife for every cause? And he answered and said\n  to them: Have ye not read, that he who made man in the beginning, made\n  them male and female?\n{568}\n  And he said: For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and\n  shall cleave unto his wife: and they two shall be in one flesh. Wherefore\n  they are no more two, but one flesh. _What therefore God hath joined\n  together, let not man put asunder_. They say to him: why then did\n  Moses command to give a bill of divorce, and to put away? He saith to\n  them: Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to put\n  away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so.\"\n\nIt is evident from these words of our Lord that the reason for the marriage\nof one man with only one woman, and for the perpetuity of this union, is\nfounded in the law of nature and the primitive revelation of God to the\nfounders of the human race. Also, that our Lord intended to restore\nmarriage to its primitive and perfect law, abrogating all temporary\ndispensations in favor of polygamy and divorce. His commandment not to put\nasunder what God hath joined is universal, and establishes the principle\nthat marriage is not dissoluble by human law. In the gospel of St. Mark we\nare further informed that \"in the house again his disciples asked him\nconcerning the same thing. And he said to them: Whosoever shall put away\nhis wife, and marry another, committeth adultery against her. And if the\nwife shall put away her husband, and be married to another, she committeth\nadultery.\" (x. 11.) St. Luke also relates the words of our Lord with the\nsame explicitness: \"Every one that putteth away his wife, and marrieth\nanother, committeth adultery; and he that marrieth her that is put away\nfrom her husband, committeth adultery.\" (xvi. 18.) The same doctrine is\nestablished by St. Paul in the Epistle to the Romans: \"For the woman that\nhath a husband, whilst her husband liveth, is bound to the law: but if her\nhusband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband. Wherefore,\nwhilst her husband liveth, she shall be called an adulteress if she be with\nanother man: but if her husband be dead, she is free from the law of her\nhusband: so that she is not an adulteress if she be with another man.\"\n(vii. 2, 3.) This passage lays down clearly and without exception the law\nthat the bond of marriage can only be dissolved by death. It is confirmed\nby other texts in the first epistle to the Corinthians: \"But to them that\nare married, not I, but the Lord commandeth, that the wife depart not from\nher husband: and if she depart, that she remain unmarried, or be reconciled\nto her husband. And let not the husband put away his wife.\" \"A woman is\nbound by the law as long as her husband liveth: but if her husband die, she\nis at liberty: let her marry to whom she will; only in the Lord.\" (vii. 10,\n11, 39.)\n\nThere can be no question between us and that class of strict Protestant\nmoralists who allow of divorce only in one case, and of re-marriage even in\nthat one case only by the innocent party, that the passages we have cited\nlay down in general terms the indissolubility of Christian marriage. The\nonly point to be discussed, therefore, is, whether they are right or wrong\nin so interpreting our Lord's words as to permit re-marriage in this one\nparticular case. If it cannot be shown that our Lord distinctly and\npositively releases the innocent party in this case from the _vinculum\nmatrimonii_, our proposition stands firm that this _vinculum_ is in\nall cases indissoluble except by death.\n\nIn regard to this point we remark, first, that obscure passages ought to be\ninterpreted in conformity with those which are clear, and not the reverse.\nThe passages we have cited which proclaim the indissolubility of the\nmarriage-bond are clear. Those which are cited in proof of the exception\nare obscure. It is not clear on the face of them how far the permission to\ndismiss the guilty wife extends, and the conclusion that this permission\nincludes the permission to marry another woman is a mere inference.\n{569}\nThe Catholic interpretation, that the permission extends no further than a\ndivorce _a mens\u00e2 et thoro_, harmonizes those passages with all others\nin the New Testament which speak on the subject, and is, therefore, in\nitself more probable.\n\nWe remark, secondly, that the opposite interpretation is intrinsically\nimprobable, because it contravenes the evident scope and intention of our\nLord's words, which were to abrogate the special dispensations of the\nMosaic law, and introduce a stricter law in conformity with the original\ninstitution of matrimony. Our opponents explain the law as giving the wife\nan equal privilege of divorcing her husband with that conceded to the\nhusband. But, according to the law of Moses, the woman could not divorce\nher husband for any cause whatever. If, now, our Lord gave her this\nprivilege, he relaxed the Mosaic law in an important respect. This is\nhighly improbable, seeing that it is only by inference that we can apply\nthe permission given the injured husband to dismiss his wife to the injured\nwoman in similar circumstances. We admit fully that, our Lord did intend to\ngive woman an equal right in the premises with that which he conceded to\nman. But, if that right had been the one claimed by our opponents it is not\nto be supposed that he would have failed to express it in clear and\ndistinct terms. We argue that, as his whole scope was to make the law of\nmarriage stricter, and as the law of Moses gave women no right of divorce,\nour Lord did not concede to Christian women that right. Our opponents admit\nthat no more was conceded to men than to women, therefore no right of\ndivorce was conceded to men.\n\nWe remark, thirdly, that the divorce permitted by our Lord cannot have been\na divorce _a vinculo_, from the concession of our opponents, who admit\nthat the guilty party is not released from it so as to be capable of\ncontracting a second marriage.\n\nThey admit that the guilty party commits adultery by attempting another\nmarriage, and that the person marrying the one divorced commits adultery.\nAdultery is not possible where there is no _vinculum matrimonii_\nsubsisting. But there can be no vinculum except between two parties. It is\nabsurd that a woman should be bound to keep faith with the man who has\nanother lawful wife. Therefore, on the principles of our opponents, since\nthe guilty party is still in the bonds of the first marriage, the innocent\nparty is so also.\n\nLet us now examine the passage itself, which permits the dismissal of a\nguilty consort, to see if it can fairly be interpreted in accordance with\nthe doctrine we have endeavored to establish. Our opponents argue that the\nsense of the passage is as follows: \"Whosoever shall put away his wife, and\nmarry another, commits adultery, unless the cause of his putting her away\nwas adultery on her part.\" Therefore, they say, if she was put away for the\ncrime above mentioned, he does not commit adultery, though he marries\nanother. The mere verbal construction admits of this interpretation, but\ndoes not positively require it. It may fairly be understood to mean this:\n\"Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, commits\nadultery, and whosoever shall marry another commits adultery.\" That is, he\nwho puts away his wife for any lesser cause, causes her to commit adultery,\nand exposes himself to the danger of committing the same sin, on account of\nthe facility given by the civil law to both parties to contract second\nmarriages, and also because of the danger in which a woman is placed, when\ncast off by her husband, of giving herself up to a bad life through want\nand desperation, especially in a state of society which is morally corrupt.\nAnd, much more, the one who actually does contract a second marriage during\nthe lifetime of the wife whom he has repudiated commits adultery, by\ncontracting an invalid marriage. Both acts are a violation of the marriage\nvows, the desertion of the wife, and the formation of a second, unlawful\nunion with another; and, therefore, both are classed together, although it\nis only the latter which is strictly and technically called adultery.\n\n{570}\n\nOur opponents may justly say that the text does not require this\ninterpretation, and that, if this really was the sense and meaning of our\nLord, the apostle has expressed it in an elliptical and obscure manner.\nVery true. And if we had no other information than that which is furnished\nby St. Matthew, the real doctrine of our Lord would be doubtful. This is\nnothing strange or surprising. The sacred writers frequently speak in an\nobscure, in artificial, and elliptical manner, which obliges us to\ninterpret their meaning from sources extraneous to the text. There is no\nevidence that all the words used by our Lord himself to explain his\ndoctrine to the by-standers in public, or to his disciples in private, have\nbeen recorded with verbal accuracy or completeness. St. Matthew gave a\nbrief summary of Christ's doctrine in his own language, which was\nintelligible to his readers at the time, because they already knew the law\nwhich had been promulgated in the Christian church. We hope to show\nhereafter what this law was, from evidence furnished by the early Christian\nwriters and by the uniform canonical practice of the church. Meanwhile, we\nthink we have proved that the general scope of the language of the New\nTestament sustains the doctrine of the indissolubility of Christian\nmarriage.\n\nOur second and third propositions have been established in the process of\nmaintaining the first, and flow from it obviously. It is evident that,\nwhere the _vinculum matrimonii_ subsists between two persons, either\nof them who attempts marriage with a third party violates the rights of the\nlawful consort, and makes an invalid contract, whatever the civil law may\ndecide to the contrary. It is also evident that our Lord did permit a final\ndissolution of the _connubium_ between married persons for one cause,\nand one only. If this dissolution is not a divorce _a vinculo_, it\nmust be _a mens\u00e2 et thoro_. We leave the subject here for the present,\nhoping to resume it again at a convenient opportunity; and we respectfully\nrecommend to our learned readers, who are desirous of investigating it\nfully, the work of Perrone, _De Matrimonio Christiano_, 3 vols. Rome,\n1858.\n\n------\n\n    Miscellany.\n\n\n_The Magnetic Polarity of Rifles_. Mr. J. Spiller has lately made some\nvery interesting observations respecting the magnetic power assumed by\nrifles. He finds that all the long Enfield barrels of the arms in the\npossession of the volunteers of his company exhibit magnetic polarity as\nthe result of the violent and repeated concussions attending their\ndischarge in a direction parallel to the magnetic meridian. The Royal\nArsenal range runs nearly north and south, and the rifles, when in use, are\nalways pointed either due north or a few degrees toward the west--in fact,\nnearly in the direction indicated by a compass-needle--so that the\nrepeated shocks brought about by the explosion of the powder may, Mr.\nSpiller thinks, be considered equivalent to so many hard blows from a\nhammer, which, as is well known, have a similar effect. Mr. Spiller goes on\nto say that the magnetic character appears to be permanent, which would not\nbe the case if the gun-barrels were of the softest description of malleable\niron; and the region of the breech is, in every instance, possessed of\nnorth polarity, since it strongly attracts the south pole of the compass\nneedle.\n{571}\nThese effects should not be noticed at all, or only to an inferior degree,\nin arms ordinarily fired in directions east and west; and it is supposed\nthat by reversing the usual practice, if it were possible, and firing\ntowards the south, the indications of polarity would be changed.\n\n\n_Mont Cenis Railway_.--In a paper read before the Institute of Civil\nEngineers, Capt. H. W. Tyler has fully described the results of experiments\nwith Mr. Fell's locomotive, which has been adopted for surmounting the\nsteep gradients and sharp curves of the Mont Cenis route. On Mr. Fell's\nsystem an intermediate or centre rail is adopted, against which horizontal\nwheels worked by the engine are pressed by springs, so as to yield any\nrequisite amount of adhesion. The engine constructed for the Mont Cenis\nline is partly of steel; its weight fully loaded does not exceed 17 tons.\nThere are two 15-inch cylinders working both the four coupled horizontal\nand the four coupled bearing wheels. The pressure on the additional\nhorizontal wheels can be varied by the engine-driver at pleasure; during\nthe experiments it amounted to from 2\u00bd to 3 tons on each wheel, or 10 tons\naltogether, but provision was made for increasing this pressure to 24 tons\nif necessary. During the official trials, with a load of 24 tons exclusive\nof the engine, on an average gradient of 1 in 13, with curves of 2 to 4\nchains radius, the speed of 6.65 miles to 7.46 miles per hour was attained\nin ascending. With a load of 16 tons the speed was 10 miles.\n\n\n_Fossil Man in the Rhine Valley_.--In the Lehm of the valley of the\nRhine, near Colmar, there is a marly deposit composed of a mixture of clay,\nfine sand, and carbonate of lime. It forms part of the diluvial beds, and\nin it M. Faudel has found a number of human and other remains. These\nconsisted of shells, bones of a huge stag, teeth of _Elephas\nprimigenuis_, and a human frontal and right parietal bone of a man of\nmiddle size. M. Faudel concludes that man was contemporaneous with the\nmammoth fossil stag and bison.\n\n\n_Tobacco Smoking Injurious to the Eyes_.--In a recent number (February\n15) of the Bulletin de Th\u00e9rapeutique, M. Viardin describes two cases of\nserious eye affection (amblyopia) resulting from the habit of smoking. M.\nViardin at once, on learning the habits of the patients, induced them to\nsmoke a much smaller quantity of tobacco than usual, and the result was a\ncomplete restoration of vision in a few weeks from the date of their\napplication.\n\n\n_Intermittent Fevers produced by Vegetable Organisms_.--Some time\nsince, we called attention to Dr. Salisbury's observations, tending to\nsupport the theory expressed above. More recently these ideas have been, in\nsome measure, confirmed by Professor Hannon, of the University of Brussels.\nIn 1843, says M. Hannon, \"I studied at the University of Liege; Professor\nCharles Morsen had created in me such an enthusiasm in the study of the\nfresh-water algae that the windows and mantel-piece of my chamber were\nencumbered with plates filled with vaucheria, oscillatoria, and confervae.\nMy preceptor said to me: 'Take care at the period of their fructification,\nfor the spores of the algae give intermittent fever. I have had it every\ntime I have studied them too closely.' As I cultivated my algae in pure\nwater, and not in the water of the marsh where I had gathered them, I did\nnot attach any importance to his remark. I suffered for my carelessness a\nmonth later, at the period of their fructification. I was taken with\nshivering; my teeth chattered; I had the fever, which lasted six weeks.\"\n\n\n\n_Origin of Petroleum_.--Although nearly all geologists are agreed as\nto the organic origin of petroleum, a great many are of opinion that the\nrock-oil is the result of a natural distillation of coal. Professor\nHitchcock, however, no mean authority, comes to a different conclusion.\nAdmitting, with all who have carefully studied the matter, that petroleum\nis of organic origin, he says that, in his opinion, it comes from plants,\nand that it is not, as some have suggested, a fish-oil or a substance\naltered to adipocere. It does not appear to be the result of a natural\ndistillation of coal, since its chemical composition is different from the\noil manufactured artificially from the cannels, containing neither\nnitro-benzole nor aniline. Moreover, petroleum occupied fissures in the\nsilurian and devonian strata long before the trees of the coal period were\ngrowing in their native forests. The nearly universal association of brine\nwith petroleum, and the fact of the slight solubility of hydrocarbons in\nfresh, but insolubility in salt water, excite the inquiry whether the salt\nwater of primeval lagoons may not have prevented the escape of the\nvegetable gases beneath, and condensed them into liquids.\n\n{572}\n\n_Structure of the Liver._--Dr. Lionel Beale's opinion as to the\nstructure of the vertebrate liver has been recently substantiated by the\nresearches of Herr Hering. This histologist states that the liver is\nconstructed like the other secreting glands. It is of the tubular type,\nwith canals, anastomosing in every direction, and having a tendency to form\na series of networks. Like other secretions, the bile travels along\nglandular canals surrounded by glandular cells. It is easy (he says) to\nobserve this arrangement in the livers of vertebrates. Five or more cells\nare disposed in simple layers around the circular and minute aperture of a\nhepatic utricle seen in transverse section. This arrangement loses itself\ninsensibly in that variety of structure in which there are no utricles\nproperly so called. Occasionally may be seen four, three, or even only two\ncells, uniting to form a biliary canal. The Russian anatomist denies the\nexistence of hepatic trabeculae of biliferous capillaries, and believes\nthat the biliary cells are persistent. He looks upon serpents' livers as\nthe only organs for minute inquiries upon the subject.\n\n\n\n_The Cometary Theory of Shooting-Stars--to whom does it belong?_--The\nAbb\u00e9 Moigno, who has broached this question, and who evidently feels\nstrongly on the point, makes the following observations in our\ncontemporary, the Chemical News, of March 15th: \"In a quite recent note\ninserted on March 3d, in the International Bulletin of the Imperial\nObservatory, and on the 8th inst. in the Bulletin of the Scientific\nAssociation of France, M. Le Verrier resumes on the cometary theory of\nshooting-stars, and persists in attributing the honor of it to himself,\nwithout condescending to mention the name of Schiaparelli, whose letters,\nhowever, have been published in a journal of great authority, the\nMeteorological Bulletin of the College of Rome, issued under the\nsuperintendence of the Rev. P. Secchi, and were translated by the writer\nbefore M. Le Verrier had published a single word of his researches. We are\nreally frightened by this system of organized cool-blooded appropriation,\nand more so by these lines, the effect of which has been even more coolly\ncalculated: _'Sir John Herschel, who, along with his son, Alexander\nHerschel, has paid great attention to shooting-stars, gives his complete\nassent to_ the theory of the swarms of November.' Poor M. Schiaparelli!\nHappily the Astronomische Nachrichten have collected the necessary papers,\nand he will soon be in a position of having his revenge.\"\n\n\n_New Form of Telegraphy._--An invention for the transmission of\ndespatches by an automatic electro-chemical method has been devised by MM.\nVavin and Fribourg. Its object is to utilize all the velocity of the\ncurrent on telegraphic lines. The Abb\u00e9 Moigno, who has called attention to\nit in England, gives the following description of it: It consists in the\ndistribution of the current through as many small wires, very short and\nisolated, as there are signals to be transmitted, all the while only\nemploying one wire on the main line. Each of these small isolated wires\ncommunicates, on the one hand, with a metallic plate, of a particular form,\nfixed in gutta-percha; and, on the other, with a metallic division of a\ndisc, which is also formed of an insulating substance. A group of eleven of\nthose small laminae form a sort of cipher, which will give all the letters\nof the alphabet by the suppression of certain portions of the fundamental\nform. \"Now,\" says the abb\u00e9, \"suppose rows of these compound characters to\nbe placed on a sheet of prepared paper of a metallic nature, the words of\nthe telegram to be sent are written on them with isolating ink, leaving the\nother parts of the small 'stereotyped' blocks untouched. The consequence is\nthat the current is intercepted at every point touched by the ink, and a\nletter is, imprinted on the prepared paper at the other end of the line\nwhere the telegram is to be received.\"\n\n\n_A Cheap and Ingenious Ice Machine._--M. Tonelli, says the Abb\u00e9\nMoigno, has just devised an ice-making machine which bids fair to become\nvery popular in this country, since it is convenient, cheap, and efficient.\nThe inventor calls it the \"_glacier roulante_.\" It is a simple\nmetallic cylinder mounted on a foot. The salt of soda and the salt of\nammonia are added in two operations, the smaller cylinder, containing the\nwater to be frozen, is introduced into the interior, and the orifice is\nclose by an india-rubber disc, and then by a cover fastened with a catch;\nthe cylinder is then placed in a sac, or case of cloth, and it is made to\nroll on the table with a slight oscillatory movement given by the hand.\n{573}\nAfter a lapse of ten minutes, the water in the interior of the cylinder\nbecomes a beautiful cylinder of ice. Nothing is more simple, more\neconomical, or more efficacious than the new \"glacier roulante\" which costs\n10 fr., and gives us, moreover, what could not hitherto be obtained with an\napparatus containing freezing mixtures the means of freezing a decanter of\nwater or a bottle of champagne. The apparatus, in a case, packed for\ntravelling, with 20 kilogrammes of refrigerating materials and a measure,\ncosts, at present, only 1_l._--_Popular Science Review._\n\n\n_The \"Cybele Hibernica.\"_--The invaluable work which Mr. Watson\nachieved for England is being imitated on the other side of the Irish\nChannel. Messrs. Moore & More have issued a volume upon the subject of the\ndistribution of Irish plants, and the facts it lays before the botanical\npublic are both numerous and interesting. Taking the number of species for\nBritain proper at Mr. Watson's estimate of 1,425 species, the authors of\nthe \"Cybele Hibernica\" claim for Ireland about 1,000 species. Of the 532\nplants of the British type, Ireland has all, or very nearly so. The\nAtlantic type is the only other one where she has decidedly more than half,\nforty-one species out of seventy. Of the boreal species, (Highland,\nScottish, and intermediate types taken together,) although there is not a\nsingle one of the twelve provinces in which there is not a hill of upward\nof 2,000 feet in altitude, Ireland has only 106 species out of 238. Of the\n458 English and local species she has just over one half; and, finally, out\nof the 127 Germanic species only 18.\n\n------\n\n    Original.\n\n    New Publications.\n\n\n  History Of England,\n  from the Fall of Wolsey to the death of Elizabeth. By James Anthony\n  Froude, M. A. Vols. VII., VIII., IX. and X. 12mo. New York: Charles\n  Scribner & Co.\n\nThe four volumes of this work which are now before us carry the history of\nthe reign of Elizabeth from her accession to the death of Maitland and\nGrange, and the consequent extinction of the Mary Stuart party in 1573. The\nwars and troubles in Ireland, the invasion of Ulster, the insurrections and\ndeath of Shan O'Neil, the quarrels of the Ormonds and the Desmonds; the\ncareer of John Knox; the reign of Mary Queen of Scots; the English maritime\nadventures of the sixteenth century; and the St. Bartholomew massacre, are\nsome of the exciting topics which Mr. Froude touches with his brilliant\npen, and upon which he lavishes his wonderful powers of narration and his\nskill of dramatic arrangement. That our readers should be satisfied with\nthe pictures he presents to them is not to be expected. They must not look\nin his pages for candor or judicial calmness. They will find Mary Stuart\npainted here in darker and more horrible colors than in any other modern\nwork; John Knox lauded as \"the one supremely great man that Scotland\npossessed;\" and the Huguenot massacre detailed with all the exaggerations\nand harrowing circumstances which the partisan spirit of former historians\nhas spread about it. Mr. Froude is too anxious to make an effective story\never to be an honest historian. A picturesque grouping of events and\npersons has a temptation for his refined literary taste which often\novercomes the cardinal principle of historical composition, to tell the\ntruth and the whole truth. The extravagant admiration of the Tudor dynasty\nwith which he began to write has not cooled with the progress of his\nlabors. The fealty which he held to Henry and Edward he has now transferred\nunshaken to Elizabeth; but there is this to be said for him, that\nElizabeth, with all her many faults, (and now and again even Mr. Froude\nrecognizes some of them,) possessed many really great qualities, which the\nmost uncompromising of her enemies must admire.\n\n{574}\n\nWe have no purpose to go into the vexed question of the character of Mary\nQueen of Scots; but it is only fair to mention that Mr. Froude fortifies\nhis unfavorable conclusions by copious references to authorities which have\nonly recently been brought to light, and that he has enjoyed in particular\na free use of the important manuscript archives of Simancas to which\nhistorians were so long denied access.\n\n\n  The Student Of Blenheim Forest; or,\n  The Trials of a Convert.\n  By Mrs. Anna H. Dorsey. John Murphy & Co. Baltimore.\n\nThis is a new and revised edition of an old work. It is a narrative of the\ntrials of a convert from Protestantism to the Catholic Church at the time\nit was written. These trials, thank God, are daily becoming less as the\ndoctrine and practice of the church become better known, and prejudice and\nmisrepresentation disappear. Not every convert is called to pass through\nsuch trials as the hero of this tale, although all should have the same\nwillingness to suffer for Christ, to give up friends and worldly hopes\nrather than be untrue to one's conviction.\n\nThe scene is laid in Virginia, and gives us a vivid picture of Southern\nlife. We think, in a book intended for general reading and the diffusion of\nCatholic truth, it would be better to omit unfriendly allusion to what the\nauthoress calls the \"cold customs of the North.\"\n\n\n  Studies In English; Or,\n  Glimpses Of The Inner Life Of Our Language.\n  By M. Schele de Vere, LL.D., Professor of Modern Languages in the\n  University of Virginia. London: Tr\u00fcbner & Co. New-York: Charles Scribner\n  & Co. Printed at the Riverside Press, Cambridge.\n\nThis is one of the few American books we are called upon to notice which\nmake a real and important addition to any solid and useful branch of\nlearning outside of the circle of the physical sciences. It is a thoroughly\nscholarly production, full of the most instructive information regarding\nthe history, formation, and component elements of the English language.\nThis information is communicated not in a dry, technical, and\ncollege-text-book manner, but in a graceful, charming, and entertaining\nstyle, rich in illustrations and apt references to classic authors, which\nmakes the reading of the book a true pleasure. Happily, the author does not\nride the Anglo-Saxon or any other hobby, but does full justice to the\nLatin, Celtic, and other elements of the language. It is especially\ninteresting to the Catholic reader to notice the abundant evidence the\nauthor furnishes of the ineffaceable impress the Catholic religion has\nstamped upon the English language. It is impossible to overestimate the\nimportance of a thorough study and right understanding of _words_ as\nthe signs of thoughts, the vehicles of the transmission of truths, the\ncurrent coin of the intellectual kingdom. It is this which is one great\nsecret of the power possessed by such great masters of the divine faculty\nof speech as Dr. Brownson and Dr. Newman. Sophists, like Carlyle, corrupt\nthought by corrupting language, and confused, inconsistent reasoners, like\nDr. Pusey, obscure truth by obscuring language. The volume before us will\nprove an invaluable aid to the scholar who wishes to study the pure, good,\nsound sense, and correct use of our mother tongue. We think the author\nbetrays some English prejudice, in ascribing a peculiar faculty of\nunderstanding the genuine doctrine of the Scriptures to the English people.\nThis is a spice of the Anglican \"True Church\" theory, which all the rest of\nmankind laugh at. We think, also, that he somewhat exaggerates the\nexcellence of the English language, and its influence on the world. We were\nreminded while reading his eulogium on the English language of the verse of\nKenelm Digby:\n\n  \"Greek's a harp we like to hear,\n  Latin hath a trumpet clear,\n  Italian rings like marriage-bells,\n  While Spain her solemn organ swells,\n  French with many a frolic mien\n  Tunes her jocund violin,\n  The German beats her heavy drum\n  As Russian's clashing symbols come;\n  But Britain's sons may well rejoice,\n  _For English is the human voice._\"\n\nThe English people are proud, and the American people are vain of a fancied\nsuperiority in all things, except the fine arts, over the rest of mankind.\nNeither are aware how far behind some other nations they are in many of the\nhighest branches of science and literature. A little boasting will,\ntherefore, add to the popularity of an author in the English language, as\nindeed it will in any other.\n{575}\nWe will not quarrel over this point with Professor De Vere, for nothing is\nmore difficult than a precisely accurate judgment concerning the relative\nmerits of the principal modern languages. We have a mother tongue with\nwhich we have every reason to be satisfied, and therefore let us try to use\nit well, and preserve it from corruption. On this head, we have great\nreason to fear for the future, and therefore we give a hearty welcome to\nthe learned professor's suggestion that an English Academy should be\nconstituted, which shall decide all questions respecting the spelling,\npronunciation, and right use of English words.\n\nIt is enough to say that this volume is from the Riverside press to\nguarantee its typographical excellence, and we hope this circumstance will\ncounterbalance, in those minds disposed to be rigid in excluding everything\nwhich has not the Boston stamp, the fact that the author hails from\nVirginia.\n\n\n  Antoine De Bonneval.\n  A Tale of Paris in the days of St. Vincent de Paul. By Rev. W. H.\n  Anderdon. Kelly & Piet, Baltimore.\n\nIn this narrative are portrayed some of the most exciting scenes in French\nhistory. It tells of that period in which Richelieu, Mazarin, St. Vincent\nde Paul, and Monsieur Olier figured so largely, and whose history is so\nsuggestive to the thoughtful reader. The style is vigorous and the volume\nworthy of a place in a Sunday-school or parochial library.\n\n\n  Etudes Philologiques Sur Quelques\n  Langues Sauvages De L'amerique.\n  Par N. O., Ancien Missionnaire.\n  Montreal: Dawson Brothers, 55 Grande Rue St. Jacques. 1866.\n\nThe Indian dialects of North America deserve a more attentive study than\nthey have yet received. If the inquirer did no more than confine his\nresearches to the languages spoken by the Algic tribes, (to use an epithet\nhappily devised by Schoolcraft to designate the native races found east of\nthe Alleghanies,) the compensation would be fairly worth the work. Resolved\ninto two groups, the Algonquin and Iroquois, these varieties of speech\npresent contrasts so striking and analogies so rare as to forbid the theory\nof a derivation from a common stock. The words of these two families of\ntongues are not only wholly dissimilar, but are, for the most part,\nmutually unpronounceable. The Algonquin cannot articulate an _f_ or an\n_r_; while the Iroquois, to whom these sounds are familiar, can make\nnothing of a _b_ or an _m_. The two languages, with the doubtful\nexception of a corrupt dialect, and then in words evidently borrowed from\nthe conqueror, agree in little else than an odd aversion to the letter\n_l_, and, we may add perhaps, in a plentiful lack of adjectives and a\nmost oppressive multiplicity of _verbs_.\n\nIt is in this last-mentioned field (the analysis of Algic verbs) that our\nauthor N. O. has exerted his main strength, and has given the best proofs\nof his linguistic skill. The Algonquin verb to love, _sakih_,\nexpatiates, in the course of twenty-two pages of this treatise, into two\nactive and three passive voices, served by eight moods, three past tenses,\ntwo futures, and two first persons plural, with participles and gerunds to\nmatch; and all subject to fifteen accidents, corresponding to the various\nmodifications of Semitic verbs. The Iroquois verb, though in quite another\nway, rejoices also in conjugations, moods, tenses, and numbers not unworthy\nof comparison with the Greek, subject to secondary forms more or less\nresembling the Semitic. The Algonquin participle may assume a negative\nshape, and it is this nullifying syllable _si_ that mainly\ndistinguishes the two words which in that language signify Catholic and\nProtestant. The Catholics are _tcipaiatikonamatizodjik_, literally,\n\"they who make upon their own persons the sign of the wood of the dead body\nof Christ.\" \"Protestants\" (having as usual failed to make themselves\nunderstood except as deniers of Catholicity, and who are _nothing if not\nnegative_) are _tcipaiatikonamatizosigok_, \"those who do _not_\nmake upon themselves the sign of the wood of the dead body of Christ.\" It\nis to be hoped that the theologians of the two professions have shorter and\nmore convenient terms when they resort, as they have been known to do, to\nthe refreshment of reciprocal objurgation.\n\nWe regret that we cannot go into details. The book is pleasantly written,\nlucidly arranged, and full of satisfactory evidence of a keen perception of\nphilological distinctions. We cordially recommend it to those who are\nambitious to gain an insight into the philosophy of the languages, before\nthey also (we mean the languages) take their inevitable turn to be numbered\nwith the dead.\n\n\n{576}\n\n  The Literary Character Of The Bible.\n  A Lecture delivered before the Wilmington Institute.\n  By H. Beecher Swoope, Attorney-at-law.\n\nThe author delivered and now publishes this as \"A Lawyer's tribute to the\nBible,\" and it is surely a very graceful one. It shows a just appreciation\nof the literary excellences of the sacred volume, of the grandeur of its\nhistory, the depth of its philosophy, the sublimity of its poetry. We\ndislike, however, this consideration of the inspired volume merely as a\nliterary production, without keeping in view its sacred character as the\nword of God. Containing as it does, the revelation of God's infinite\nperfections, it must necessarily contain all that is most beautiful,\nprofound, sublime. We agree with the author that, \"in order to bring out\nall the hidden beauties of the original Scriptures, we need a new\ntranslation brought fully up to the present standard of our language,\" and\nthat \"our present version of the Bible is sublime, grand, and beautiful,\nonly because many of the ideas and conceptions are so essentially great and\nlofty that they necessarily appear magnificent in the most artless dress.\"\n\n\n  Catholic Anecdotes; Or, The Catechism In Examples.\n  Illustrating the Sacraments.\n  By the Brothers of the Christian Schools.\n  Translated from the French by Mrs. J. Sadlier.\n  New-York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co.\n\nThis is the third and last part of this series of anecdotes. They are\nintended to assist those engaged in teaching the Christian doctrine, by\ngiving them examples illustrative of the subject they may be teaching. They\nare arranged in the same order as the subject matter of the Catechism, and\nare well adapted for this purpose.\n\n\n  Lives And Times Of The Roman Pontiffs.\n  2 vols. Sadliers.\n\nThis great work, in two large quarto volumes of nearly 1000 pages each, is\na translation from the French of the Chevalier Artaud de Montor. The author\nis both a well-informed historian and an elegant writer. Although there are\nsome faults in the translation, and some typographical errors, the value of\nthe work is nevertheless very great, and it is a noble addition to our\nCatholic literature. There is much beauty in the mechanical execution, and\nthe illustrations are numerous. Many of the portraits and other\nillustrations are excellent, though a few are quite indifferent. The\npreface is carelessly written, and has not the excellence which ought to\ncharacterize the introduction to such a great work. The hand of a finished\nscholar would have done great good in retouching the whole work, which is,\nnotwithstanding its minor defects, on the whole a superb one and a credit\nto its publishers.\n\n\n  Christianity And Its Conflicts, Ancient And Modern.\n  By E. E. Marcy, A.M.\n  New-York: Appleton & Co.\n  For sale by the Catholic Publication Society, 126 Nassau street.\n\nThis work comes upon our table just as we are going to press. A rapid\nglance over its contents shows us that it presents a comprehensive view of\nthe church and its work, contrasted with the vain and fruitless attempts\nmade by her enemies to set up a rival system of Christianity. It is a work\nwhich will be widely read and excite no little interest, and deserves at\nour hands a more extended critical notice, which we propose to give it in\nour next issue. It is not an ordinary book of controversy, and we advise\nour readers in the mean time to get a copy and read\nit.\n\n\nH. McGrath, Philadelphia, announces a new and illustrated volume of Poems,\nby E. A. S.\n\n\n  Books Received.\n\nFrom P. O'Shea, New-York.\nThe Beauties of Faith; or, Power of Mary's Patronage.\nLeaves from the Ave Maria. 1 vol. 12mo, pp. 272 and 145. Price, $2.\n\n\nFrom Charles Scribner & Co., New-York.\n  Liber Librorum; its Structure, Limitations, and Purpose.\n  A friendly communication to a reluctant sceptic.\n  1 vol. 12mo, pp. 232. Price, $1.50.\n\n  Studies in English; or, Glimpses of the Inner Life of our Language.\n  By M. Schele de Vere, LL.D. 1 vol. 12mo. Price, $2.50.\n\n\nFrom D. & J. Sadlier & Co., New-York.\nPeter of Castle and the Fetches.\nBy the Brothers Banim.\n1 vol. 12mo, pp. 348. Price, $1.50.\n\n\nFrom M. Doolady, New-York.\nThe History of Pendennis, etc.\nBy W. M. Thackeray.\n1 vol. 16mo, pp. 479. Diamond Ed.\n\n\nFrom the author.\nDion and the Sibyls; a Romance of the First Century.\nBy Miles Gerald O'Reilly, H. M. Colonial Secretary in Bermuda. 2 vols. 8vo\nRichard Bentlev, London.\n\n\nFrom Leypoldt & Holt, New-York.\n  Fathers and Sons. A Novel.\n  By Ivan Sergheievitch Turgeneff.\n  Translated from the Russian by Eugene Schuyler, Ph.D.\n  1 vol. 12mo. Price, $1.50.\n\n  The Man with the Broken Ear;\n  from the French of Edmond About.\n  By Henry Holt. 1 vol. l2mo. Price, $1.50.\n\n\nFrom P. F. Cunningham, Philadelphia.\n  Stories of the Commandments;\n  The Seven Corporal Works of Mercy;\n  Caroline, or Self-Conquest.\n  Being vols. 16, 17, and 18 of the Young Catholic's Library. Price, 50\n  cents each.\n\n------\n\n{577}\n\n    The Catholic World.\n\n    Vol. V., No. 29.--August, 1867.\n\n\n  Original.\n\n  Guett\u00e9e's Papacy Schismatic. [Footnote 176]\n\n  [Footnote 176: See The Catholic World, July, 1867.]\n\n\nM. Guett\u00e9e, it will be remembered, undertakes to establish two propositions\n--first, \"The bishop of Rome did not for eight centuries possess the\nauthority of divine right which he has since sought to exercise; and\nsecond, The pretension of the bishop of Rome to the sovereignty of divine\nright over the whole church was the real cause of the division,\" or schism\nbetween the East and the West. To the first proposition, we have replied,\nthe bishop of Rome is in possession, and it is for the author to prove that\nhe is not rightfully in possession. This he can do only by proving either,\nfirst, that no such title by divine right was ever issued; or, second, that\nit vests in an adverse claimant. He sets up no adverse claimant, but\nattempts to make it appear that no such title as is claimed was ever\nissued. This he attempts to do by showing that the proofs of title usually\nrelied on by Catholic writers are negatived by the Holy Scriptures and the\ntestimony of the fathers and councils of the first eight centuries. We have\nseen that he has signally failed so far as the Holy Scriptures and the\nfathers of the first three centuries are concerned; nay, that instead of\nproving his proposition, he has by his own witnesses refuted it, and proved\nthat the title did issue, and did vest in St. Peter, and consequently now\nvests in the bishop of Rome as Peter's successor.\n\nThis alone is enough for us, and renders any further discussion of the\nfirst proposition unnecessary. After the testimony of St. Cyprian, who is\nhis own witness, the author really has nothing more to say. He has lost his\ncase. But, ignorant of this, he proceeds in the fourth division of his work\nto interrogate the fathers and councils of the fourth and fifth centuries,\nbut even less successfully, as we now proceed to show. We only beg the\nreader to bear in mind that we are not adducing our proofs of the papacy by\ndivine right, but are simply examining the proofs the author adduces\nagainst it. We do not put forth the strength of our cause, which is not\nnecessary in the present argument; we are only showing the weakness of the\ncase the author makes against us.\n\nThe author attempts to devise an argument against the papal authority from\nthe sixth canon of the council of Nicaea. This canon, as he cites it,\nreads: \"Let the ancient custom be preserved that exists in Egypt, Lybia,\nand Pentapolis, that the bishop of Alexandria have authority in all these\ncountries, since that has also passed into a custom for the bishop of Rome.\n{578}\nLet the churches at Antioch and in the other provinces preserve also their\nprivileges.\" It must not be supposed that the author cites the canon with\nany degree of exactness, or faithfully renders it; but let that pass. From\nthis canon two consequences, he contends, necessarily follow: first, That\n\"the council declared that the authority of the bishop of Rome extended\nover a limited district, like that of the bishop of Alexandria; and second,\nThat this authority was only based on usage,\" (p. 95.)\n\nBut the authority of the bishop of Rome was not in question before the\ncouncil, for that nobody disputed. \"The object of the canon,\" the author\nhimself says, pp. 93, 94, \"was to defend the authority of the bishop of\nAlexandria against the partisans of Meletius, bishop of Lycopolis, who\nrefused to recognize it in episcopal ordinations; .... therefore was merely\nto confirm the ancient customs respecting these ordinations, and, in\ngeneral, the privileges consecrated by ancient usages. Now, according to an\nancient custom Rome enjoyed certain prerogatives that no one contested. The\ncouncil makes use of this fact in order to confirm the similar prerogatives\nof Alexandria, Antioch, and other churches.\"\n\nThe question before the council, and which it met by this canon, evidently\nwas not the primacy of the see of Rome--although it would seem from the\nform in which the papal legate, Paschasinus, quoted it, without\ncontradiction, in the council of Chalcedon, that the council of Nicaea took\ncare to reserve that primacy--but certain customary rights, privileges, and\ndignities which the bishops of Alexandria, Antioch, and some other churches\nheld in common with the bishop of Rome. As the ancient custom was preserved\nin the Roman Church, the council says, so let it be in Alexandria, Antioch,\nand other churches. The council refers to the custom in Rome as a reason\nfor confirming the similar custom which had obtained elsewhere, and which\nhad been violated by Meletius of Lycopolis in Egypt, and by his partisans.\n\nTo understand this, we must recollect that prior to the fall of the great\npatriarchates of Alexandria and the East, the administration of\necclesiastical affairs was less centralized than at present. Now nearly\nall, if not all bishops depend immediately on the Holy See, but in the\nearly ages they depended on it only mediately. The bishops of a province or\nof a patriarchate depended immediately on their exarch, metropolitan, or\npatriarch, and only mediately through him on the bishop of Rome. The\nappointment or election of the patriarch, and of the exarch or metropolitan\nof a church independent of any patriarch, as were the churches of Asia\nMinor, Pontus, and Thrace, needed the papal confirmation, but not their\nsuffragans, or the bishops subject to their immediate jurisdiction. The\npatriarch or metropolitan confirmed their election, ordained or deposed\nthem by his own authority, subject of course to appeal to Rome. Lycopolis,\nby ancient custom or canons of the fathers, depended on the bishop of\nAlexandria, who was its bishop's immediate superior. For some reason,\nMeletius, bishop of Lycopolis, had been deposed by the bishop of\nAlexandria, and deprived of his functions; but he refused to submit,\nordained bishops by his own authority, contrary to the ancient custom, and\ncreated a schism, was to meet this case, and others like it, that the\ncouncil decreed the sixth canon.\n\nThe authority confirmed by that canon was the authority of patriarchs, as\nthey were subsequently called, and of metropolitans by usage independent of\nany patriarchal jurisdiction, and therefore the authority of the bishop of\nRome which it recognized as derived from usage, could have been only his\nauthority as metropolitan of the Suburbicarian churches, called the Roman\nterritory, or as patriarch of the West.\n{579}\nThat this authority was limited, and dependent on ancient usage or custom,\nnobody disputes; but this is distinct from his authority as supreme pontiff\nor governor of the whole church. There are instances enough on record of\nmetropolitan churches, like Aquileia, and those of Illyrium and Bulgaria,\ndisputing their immediate dependence on the bishop of Rome, that never\ndreamed of calling in question his authority as supreme pontiff, or\ngovernor of the whole church. The schismatic Armenians do not deny and\nnever have denied the supreme authority in the whole church of the bishop\nof Rome; they only assert that the pope gave to their apostle, Gregory the\nIlluminator, and to his successors, the independent government of the\nchurch in Armenia. St. Cyprian depended on the bishop of Rome, and\nacknowledged the papal authority, but it is questionable if he depended on\nhim as patriarch of the West. We suspect Carthage was independent of\npatriarchal jurisdiction, and that St. Cyprian had no superior but the\npope. However this may have been, the fact that churches did not depend\nimmediately on the bishop of Rome did not in any sense deny or impair his\nuniversal authority as supreme pontiff. So the argument against the papacy\nfrom the sixth canon of the council of Nicaea, like the author's other\narguments, proves nothing to his purpose.\n\nM. Guett\u00e9e, in his blind hatred of Rome, after having alleged the authority\nof the council of Nicaea in his own favor, undertakes to prove that it was\nno council of the church at all, but merely a council of the empire. He\nlabors hard to prove that it was convoked by the Emperor Constantine by\nvirtue of his imperial authority alone, that the emperor presided in its\nsessions, and confirmed and promulgated its acts. Does he not see that if\nit was so, the council had no ecclesiastical authority, and therefore that\nits acts have no bearing on the question before us? If anything is certain,\nit is that the church, as a polity, is independent of the state, and that\ncivil rulers or magistrates, as such, have no authority in her government.\nCivil rulers have often usurped authority over the church and oppressed\nher: they did so at Constantinople, as Gregory III. complains; they\nattempted to do so all through the middle ages in the West, and they do so\nnow to a most fearful extent in the Russian empire, as in all European\nProtestant states; but the authority they exercise is usurped, and is\nrepugnant to the very nature and constitution of the church. Our Lord said,\n\"My kingdom is not of this world.\" The Non-united Greeks as well as\nCatholics hold that there is and can be no oecumenical council without the\nbishop of Rome to convoke it, preside over it, and to confirm and\npromulgate its acts; and hence they confess their inability to hold an\noecumenical council, and therefore really acknowledge that they are not the\nCatholic Church in its integrity though they claim to hold the orthodox\nfaith. They admit the Roman Church is the primatial see, and that the\npresidency of a general council belongs to the bishop of Rome by the right\nand dignity of his see. If he did not preside in the council of Nicaea in\nperson or by his legates or representatives, and approve formally or\nvirtually its acts, it could not, by their own doctrine, have the authority\nof a general council. The confirmation and promulgation of its canons by\nthe emperor might make them laws or edicts of the empire, but could not\nmake them canons of the church.\n\nIt would be no difficult matter to prove that the author is as much out in\nhis facts as in his inferences. The universal church has recognized the\ncouncil of Nicaea as a legitimate council, and there are ample authorities\nto prove that its convocation and indiction were at the request or with the\nassent of the Roman pontiff, that he presided over it by his legates,\nOsius, bishop of Cordova, and Vitus and Vincentius, two Roman presbyters;\nthat he virtually, if not formally, confirmed and published its acts; and\nthat whatever the emperor did was merely executory; but the question is\nforeign to our present argument, and we have no space to indulge in\nextraneous or irrelevant discussions.\n{580}\nIf we were endeavoring to prove the papacy, we should adduce the proofs;\nbut our line of argument requires us only to refute the reasons the author\nalleges for asserting that the papacy is schismatic. If the council of\nNicaea was simply an imperial council, we have nothing to do with it; if it\nwas a true general council of the church, it makes nothing for the author,\nfor the sixth canon, the only one relied on, has, as the author cites it,\nno reference to the jurisdiction of the Holy Apostolic See of Rome.\n\nM. Guett\u00e9e pretends that the third canon of the second general council, the\nfirst of Constantinople, contains a denial of the papal authority by divine\nright. The canon, as he cites it, which is only the concluding part of it,\nsays: \"Let the bishop of Constantinople have the primacy of honor\n(_priores honoris partes_) after the bishop of Rome, _because\nConstantinople is the new Rome._\" Hence he concludes that as the primacy\nconferred on the bishop of Constantinople was only a primacy of honor, the\nbishop of Rome had only a primacy of honor; and as the primacy of honor was\nconferred on the bishop of Constantinople because that city was the new\nRome, so the primacy of the bishop of Rome was conferred because he was the\nbishop of old Rome, or the capital of the empire. The reasoning, which is\nGuett\u00e9ean, if we may coin a word, is admirable, and we shall soon see what\nSt. Leo the Great thinks of it. But the canon does not affect the\nauthority, rank, or dignity of the bishop of Rome; it simply gives the\nbishop of Constantinople the precedence of the bishop of Alexandria, who\nhad hitherto held the first rank after the bishop of Rome. It conferred on\nhim no power, and took nothing from the authority of any one else. It was\nsimply a matter of politeness. Besides, the canon remained without effect.\n\nFrom the second general council the author rushes, pp. 96, 97, to the\nfourth, the council of Chalcedon, held under the pontificate of St. Leo\nMagnus, in 451, and lights upon the twenty-eighth canon of that council,\nwhich, as he gives it, reads: \"In all things following the decrees of the\nholy fathers, and recognizing the canon just read (the third of the second\ncouncil) by the one hundred and fifty bishops well beloved of God, we\ndecree and establish the same thing touching the most holy church of\nConstantinople, the new Rome. Most justly did the fathers grant privileges\nto the see of ancient Rome, because she was the reigning (capital) city.\nMoved by the same motive the one hundred and fifty bishops well beloved of\nGod grant equal privileges to the most holy see of the new Rome, thinking,\nvery properly, that the city that has the honor to be the seat of the\nempire and the senate should enjoy in ecclesiastical things the same\nprivileges as Rome, the ancient queen city, since the former, although of\nlater origin, has been raised and honored as much as the former. In\nconsequence of this decree the council subjected the dioceses of Pontus,\nAsia, (Asia Minor,) and Thrace to the jurisdiction of Constantinople.\"\n\nOf course the author cites the canon with his usual inexactness, and makes\nit appear even more illogical and absurd than it really was. The alleged\ncanon professes to decree and establish the same thing decreed and\nestablished by the one hundred and fifty bishops who composed the second\ncouncil, in their third canon, which as we have seen, was simply that the\nbishop of Constantinople should have the primacy of honor after the bishop\nof Rome, that is the second rank in the church. The canon, therefore, does\nnot deprive the Roman pontiff of his rank, dignity, and authority as\nprimate of the whole church, and therefore did not, as it could not, raise\nthe see of Constantinople to an equal rank and dignity with the see of\nRome. This was never pretended, and is not pretended by the author himself.\n{581}\nThe council never could, without stultifying itself, have intended anything\nof the sort, for it gave to the bishop of Rome the title of \"universal\nbishop,\" and it says expressly: \"We consider the primacy of all and the\nchief honor, according to the canons, should be preserved to the most\nbeloved of God, the archbishop of Rome.\" [Footnote 177] The Non-united\nGreeks and the author himself concede that the Church of Rome was and is\nthe first church in rank and dignity.\n\n    [Footnote 177: Act, xvi. col. 637. _Apud_ Kenrick.]\n\nWhatever value, then, is to be attached to this twenty-eighth canon it did\nnot and was not designed to affect in any respect the rank, dignity, or\nauthority of the Roman pontiff. What was attempted by it was to erect the\nnon-apostolic see of Constantinople or Byzantium into a patriarchal see,\nwith jurisdiction over the metropolitans of Pontus, Asia Minor, Thrace, and\nsuch as should be ordained in barbarous countries, that is, in countries\nlying beyond the limits of the empire, and to give its bishop the first\nrank after the patriarch of the West. It sought to reduce the bishop of\nAlexandria from the second to the third, and the bishop of Antioch from the\nthird to the fourth rank, but it did not touch the power or authority of\neither. It violated the rights and privileges of the metropolitans of\nPontus, Asia Minor, and Thrace, by subjecting them to a patriarchal\njurisdiction from which, by ancient usage, confirmed by the sixth canon of\nthe council of Nicaea, they were exempt.\n\nThe author relies on this canon because it asserts that the privileges of\nthe see of Rome were granted by the fathers, and granted _because_\nRome was the capital city of the empire. This sustains his position, that\nthe importance the fathers attached to the see of Rome was not because it\nwas the see of Peter, but because it was the see of the capital--a position\nwe showed, in our previous article, to be untenable and also that the\nauthority exercised by the Roman pontiff over the whole church, which he\ncannot deny, was not by divine right, but by ecclesiastical right. But even\nif this last were so, since there is confessedly no act of the universal\nchurch revoking the grant, the power would be legitimate, and the author\nand his friends the Non-united Greeks would be bound by a law of the church\nto obey the Roman pontiff, and clearly schismatics in refusing to obey him.\nBut we have seen from St. Cyprian, the author's own witness, that the\nprimacy was conferred by our Lord himself on the Roman pontiff as the\nsuccessor of Peter to constitute him the visible centre and source of unity\nand authority. Besides, a canon, beyond what it decrees or defines, is not\nauthoritative, and it is lawful to dispute the logic of a general council,\nand even the historical facts it alleges, at least so far as they can be\nseparated from the definition or decree itself. The purpose of the canon of\nChalcedon was not to define or decree that the privileges of the see of\nRome were granted by the fathers, and because it was the see of the capital\nof the empire, but to elevate the see of Constantinople to the rank and\nauthority of a patriarchal see, immediately after the see of Rome, and\nsimply assigns this as a reason for doing so; and a very poor reason it\nwas, too, at least in the judgment of St. Leo the Great, as we shall soon\nsee.\n\nBut there is something more to be said in regard to this twenty-eighth\ncanon of the council of Chalcedon. The council is generally accepted as the\nfourth general council, but only by virtue of the papal confirmation, and\nonly so far as the pope confirmed its acts. In many respects the council\nwas a scandalous assembly, almost wholly controlled by the emperor and the\nByzantine lawyers or magistrates, who have no authority in the church of\nGod. The part taken by the emperor and civil magistrates wholly vitiated it\nas a council of the church, and all the authority its acts had or could\nhave for the church was derived from their confirmation by St. Leo the\nGreat. But bad as the council was, the twenty-eighth canon never received\nits sanction.\n{582}\nIt was introduced by the civil magistrates, and when only one hundred and\nfifty bishops, all orientals, out of the six hundred composing the council,\nwere present, and no more subscribed it. It was resisted by the legates of\nthe Roman pontiff and protested against; the patriarchal churches of\nAlexandria and Antioch were unrepresented. Dioscurus, bishop of the former,\nwas excluded for his crimes, and Macarius of Antioch had just been deposed\nby the emperor and council for heresy and expelled; a large number of\nprelates had withdrawn, and only the rump of the council remained. It is\nidle to pretend that the canon in question was the act even of the council,\nfar less of the universal church.\n\nNow, either Leo the Roman pontiff had authority to confirm the acts of the\ncouncil of Chalcedon, and by his authority as supreme pastor of the church\nto heal their defects and make them binding on the universal church, or he\nhad not. If he had, the controversy is ended, for that is precisely what\nMr. Guett\u00e9e denies; if he had not, as Mr. Guett\u00e9e contends, then the acts\nof Chalcedon have in themselves no authority for the church, since through\nthe tyranny of the emperor Marcian and the civil magistrates it was not a\nfree council, and, though legally convoked and presided over, was not\ncapable of binding the church. The author may take which horn of the\ndilemma he chooses, for the pope refused to confirm the twenty-eighth\ncanon, and declared it null and void from the beginning.\n\nThe fathers of the council, or a portion of them, in the name of the\ncouncil, addressed a letter to the Roman pontiff in which they recognize\nhim as the constituted interpreter of the words and faith of Peter for all,\nexplain what they have done, the motives from which they have acted, and\npray him \"to honor their judgment by his _decrees_\"--that is, confirm\ntheir acts. St. Leo confirmed those of their acts that pertained to the\ndefinition of faith, but refused to confirm the twenty-eighth canon, which\nhe annulled and declared void, as enacted without authority, and against\nthe canons.\n\nMr. Guett\u00e9e says, pp. 97, 98, that the council did not ask the Roman\npontiff to confirm the canon in question, \"but by his own decrees to honor\nthe judgment which had been rendered. If the confirmation of the bishop of\nRome had been necessary, would the decree of Chalcedon have been a\njudgment, a promulgated decision, before that confirmation?\" An\nauthoritatively \"promulgated decision\" certainly not; but the author\nforgets that the canon had not been promulgated, and never became \"a\npromulgated decision.\" As to its being a judgment, a final or complete\njudgment it was not, and the council, by calling it _nostrum\njudicium_, do not pretend that it was. They present it to the Roman\npontiff only as an inchoate judgment, to be completed by his confirmation.\nThey tell the pope that his legates have protested against it, probably\nbecause they wished to preserve to him its initiation, and that in adopting\nit they \"had deferred to the emperor, to the senate, and the whole imperial\ncity, thinking only to finish the work which his holiness, who always\ndelights to diffuse his favors, had begun.\" The plain English of which is,\nWe have enacted the canon out of deference to the civil authority and the\nwishes of the imperial city, subject to your approval. \"Rogamus igitur,\nhonora et tuis sententiis nostrum judicium. We pray you, therefore, to\nhonor our judgment by your decrees.\" [Footnote 178] If this does not mean\nasking the pope to confirm their act or judgment, we know not what would so\nmean. It is certain that St. Leo himself, who is one of the author's\nanti-papal authorities, so understood it, as is evident from his replies to\nthe emperor, the empress, and Anatolius, Bishop of Constantinople, the\nassertion of M. Guett\u00e9e to the contrary notwithstanding.\n\n    [Footnote 178: Opp. S. Leo, tom. i. col. 960-962. Migne's edition.]\n\n{583}\n\nThe Emperor Marcian wrote expressly to St. Leo, begging him to confirm by\nhis apostolic authority the acts of the council, and especially the\ntwenty-eighth canon, because without his confirmation they would have no\nauthority. The Empress Pulcheria wrote him to the same effect, and finally\nAnatolius did the same. To the emperor the Roman pontiff replied, and set\nforth the reasons why he could not confirm the canon in question. He makes\nshort work with M. Guett\u00e9e's doctrine, broached in the second council, and\nextended in the twenty eighth canon of Chalcedon, that the rank and\nauthority of the see derive from the rank, authority, or importance of the\ncity in which it is established. He denies that the fact that\nConstantinople was the second capital of the empire, or the new Rome, was\nany reason for elevating its bishop to the patriarchal rank and authority.\n\"Let, as we desire, the city of Constantinople have its glory, and,\nprotected by the right hand of God, may it long enjoy the reign of your\nclemency; but different is the reason of secular things from the reason of\ndivine things, and no edifice will be stable unless it is built on that\nrock (St. Matthew xvi. 18) which the Lord has laid for a foundation. Who\ncovets what is not his due shall lose what is his own. Let it suffice this\nman, (Anatolius,) that by the aid of your piety and my assent and favor, he\nhas obtained the episcopate of so great a city. Let him not disdain the\nimperial city because he cannot make it an apostolic see; and let him by no\nmeans hope to enlarge his power at the expense of others.\"\n\nIt is very clear from this that St. Leo did by no means concede that the\nbishop of Constantinople was entitled to be clothed with patriarchal power\nand take precedence of the patriarch of Alexandria, because he had his see\nin what had become the second capital of the empire. \"Alia ratio est rerum\nsecularium, alia divinarum; nec prater illam petram quam Dominus in\nfundamento posuit, stabilis erit nulla constructio;\" that is, only what is\nbuilt on Peter, the rock, will stand, and in vain do you build on the\ngreatness, splendor, and dignity of earthly cities. [Footnote 179] If M.\nGuett\u00e9e had remembered this, he would never have turned from the chair of\nPeter, or allowed himself to be seduced by the nationalism of the Greek\nsophists, and the misguided ambition of the bishop of Constantinople. Alas!\nhe left his father's house, and, famished in the far country to which he\nhas wandered, he is forced to feed on husks with the swine he tends. What\ncan that man think of the church of God who holds that the dignity and\nauthority of its prelates have only a secular origin?\n\n    [Footnote 179: Ibidem, ad Marcianum Augustum, epist. civ.]\n\nSt. Leo unequivocally refuses, in his reply to the solicitations of the\nemperor, to confirm the twenty-eighth canon. \"And why,\" asks the author, p.\n98, \"did he refuse his assent? Because the decree of Chalcedon took from\nthe bishop of Alexandria the second rank, and the third from the bishop of\nAntioch, and was in so far forth contrary to the sixth canon of Nicaea, and\nbecause the same decree prejudiced the rights of several primates or\nmetropolitans,\" that is, of Pontus, Asia Minor, and Thrace. This we think\nwas reason enough, and proves that the Roman pontiff was not only the chief\ncustodian of the faith, but also of the canons. \"The bishop of\nConstantinople,\" says St. Leo, as cited by the author, \"in spite of the\nglory of his church, cannot make it apostolic; he has no right to\naggrandize it at the expense of churches whose privileges, established by\nthe canons of the holy fathers, and settled by the decrees of the venerable\ncouncil of Nicaea, cannot be unsettled by perversity nor violated by\ninnovation.\" St. Leo in the whole controversy appears as the defender of\nthe canons against innovation, and of the catholicity of the church against\nGreek nationalism.\n\n{584}\n\nThe author continues, same page, \"In his letter to the Empress Pulcheria,\nSt. Leo declares that he has 'annulled the decree of Chalcedon by the\nauthority of St. Peter.' These words seem at first sight to mean that he\nclaimed for himself a sovereign [supreme] authority in the church in the\nname of St. Peter.\" Undoubtedly, not only at first sight, but at every\nsight. The Pope uses the strongest terms to be found in the Latin language,\nand terms which can be used only by one having the supreme authority,\n_irritus_ and _cassare_. He refuses to ratify it, declares it\nnull, and says, \"per auctoritatem Beati Petri apostoli,\" he makes it void.\nHe could make no greater assumption of authority. \"But,\" adds the author,\nupon a more careful and unbiased examination of his letter and other\nwritings, \"we are convinced that St. Leo only spoke as the bishop of an\napostolic see, and that in this character he claimed the right, in the name\nof the apostles who founded his church, and of the Western countries which\nhe represented, to resist any attempt of the Eastern Church to decide alone\nmatters of general interest to the whole church,\" pp. 98, 99. If he is\nconvinced, we are not. If such was St. Leo's meaning, why did he not say\nso? Why did he annul when he only meant that the canon was null, because\ndecreed by Orientals alone; or why did he not assign that reason for\nannulling it, and not the reason that it was repugnant to the canons of the\nholy fathers and the decrees of the Council of Nicaea?\n\n\"The proof that he regarded matters in this light,\" (p. 99,) \"is that he\ndoes not claim for himself any personal authority of divine origin,\ndescended to him from St. Peter, but that, on the contrary, he presents\nhimself as the defender of the canons, and looks upon the rights and\nreciprocal duties of the churches as having been established by the fathers\nand fixed by the council of Nicaea. He does not pretend that his church has\nany exceptional rights, emanating from another source.\" This proof is\ninconclusive. St. Leo had no occasion to claim personal authority for\nhimself, for whatever authority he had was official, not personal, and\ninhered in him as the successor of Peter in the apostolic see of Rome, and\nin this capacity he most assuredly did claim to have authority, when he\ndeclared to the Empress Pulcheria, as we have seen, that, \"by authority of\nPeter, he annulled and made void and of none effect,\" the decree of\nChalcedon. What the author says he did not do, is precisely what he did do.\nHe does not annul and make void the decree by authority vested in him by\nthe canons, or which he holds by ecclesiastical right, but \"by the\nauthority of Peter.\" He, moreover, was not defending the rights and\nprerogatives of his own see, nor his authority as metropolitan, patriarch,\nor supreme pontiff, for this was not called in question; the council most\nfully recognized it, and in his letter defining the faith against Eutyches,\nit professed to hear the voice of Peter. He was defending the canons, not\nfor himself, nor for churches subjected to him as patriarch of the West,\nbut for Alexandria, Antioch, and the metropolitans of Pontus, Asia Minor,\nand Thrace, which the twenty-eighth canon of Chalcedon sought to subject to\nthe bishop of Constantinople; and he therefore had no occasion to dwell on\nthe exceptional rights, or rights not derived from the canons, but from God\nthrough Peter, of the Roman Church. It sufficed him to exercise them, which\nhe did do effectually.\n\n\"By ecclesiastical right he is the first bishop of the church,\" the author\ncontinues; \"besides, he occupies the apostolic see of the West; in these\ncharacters he _must_ interfere and prevent the ambition of one\nparticular church from impairing rights that the canons have accorded to\nother bishops too feeble to resist.\" Wherefore must he do so? In these\ncharacters he might offer his advice, he might even refuse his assent to\nacts he disapproved; but he could not authoritatively interfere in any\nmatters outside of his own particular diocese, or his own patriarchate, far\nless to annul and make void acts which did not concern him in either of\nthese characters.\n{585}\nHe had no right to interfere in the way he did, except as supreme pontiff\nand head of the whole church, and Roman theologians have never claimed for\nthe Roman pontiff greater power than St. Leo exercised in the case of the\ncouncil of Chalcedon.\n\n\"After reading all that St. Leo has written against the canon of the\ncouncil of Chalcedon, it cannot be doubtful what he meant.\" We agree to\nthat, nor is it doubtful what he did. He annulled and made void by\nauthority of Peter an act of a general council, and null and void it\nremained.\n\n\"He does not claim for himself the autocracy which Roman theologians make\nthe groundwork of the papal authority.\" Very likely not, for nobody claims\nit for the Roman pontiff, as we showed in our former article. He is the\nsupreme pastor, not the autocrat, of the church. \"In his letter to the\nfathers of the council of Chalcedon he only styles himself 'guardian of the\nCatholic faith and of the constitutions of the fathers,' and not chief and\nmaster of the church by divine right.\" Does he deny that he is chief and\nmaster by divine right? Certainly not, and no one can read his letters\nwithout feeling that in every word and syllable he speaks as a superior, in\nthe language and tone of supreme authority. His reply to Anatolius is such\nas could be written only by a superior not only in rank, but in authority,\nand while replete with the affection of a father, it is marked by the\nmajestic severity of supreme power.\n\nThe refusal of St. Leo to confirm the twenty-eighth canon gave rise to the\nreport that he had refused to confirm the acts of the council, and the\nEutychians, against whom its definitions of faith were directed, began to\nraise their heads and boldly assert that they were not condemned, that the\ndefinitions of the council against them counted for nothing, since the\nRoman pontiff had refused to confirm them, as he refused to confirm the\ndoings of the Ephesian Latrocinium. The imperial court became alarmed, and\nthe emperor wrote to St. Leo for an explicit statement of what he had done.\nSt. Leo answers that he has confirmed all the decrees of Chalcedon defining\nthe faith, but that he has not confirmed the decree erecting the church of\nConstantinople into a patriarchal church. This fact does not seem to favor\nthe author's theory that the Roman pontiff was held to have only a primacy\nof honor, nor that St. Leo did not claim universal jurisdiction.\n\nIt will have been observed that the council of Chalcedon undertakes to\nsupport, very illogically indeed, the twenty-eighth canon on the authority\nof the third canon of the first council of Constantinople, which gave the\nbishop of Constantinople simply the primacy of honor after the bishop of\nRome. But St. Leo, in the letter to the empress just cited, denies the\nauthority of that canon, on the ground that it had never been communicated\nto Rome, and therefore could have no effect.\n\nWe have dwelt at great length on the sixth canon of Nicaea, the third canon\nof Constantinople, and twenty-eighth of Chalcedon, because they are the\nauthor's three strongholds, and we have wished to show that they do not in\nthe least aid him--do in no sense contradict the papal authority, but, as\nfar as they go, tend to confirm it. The author claims St. Leo as a witness\nagainst the Catholic doctrine of the papal supremacy, and we have thought\nit well to show that he has in him about such a witness as he had in St.\nCyprian, or as he would have in our holy father, Pius IX., now gloriously\nreigning. Leo Magnus is our ideal of a pope, or visible head of the\nuniversal church, and we cannot sufficiently admire the hardihood or the\nstupidity that would claim him as a witness against the primacy he adorned,\nand the papal authority which he so gracefully and so majestically wielded,\nand with such grand effects for the church and the empire.\n{586}\nNo nobler man, no truer saint, no greater pontiff ever sat in the chair of\nPeter, and no higher or more magnificent character is to be found in all\nhistory. _Sancte Leo Magne, ora pro nobis_.\n\nThe author says, p. 102: \"The canons of the first oecumenical councils\nthrow incontestably a strong light upon the prerogatives of the bishop of\nRome. They are the complement to each other. The twenty-eighth canon\ncontains nothing less than the doctrine we defend, even though the\nopposition of the West in the person of the bishop of Rome should strip it\nof its oecumenical character, as certain theologians maintain.\" M. Guett\u00e9e\nfinds but two canons that in any respect favor his doctrine, the third of\nthe second general council, and the twenty-eighth of the fourth, neither of\nwhich was ever accepted by the universal church, and both of which have\nremained from the first without Catholic authority. A doctrine sustained or\nfavored only by irregularity and violent innovation needs no refutation.\n\"St. Leo,\" the author continues, \"did not protest against it, (the\ntwenty-eighth canon of Chalcedon,) as opposed to the divine and universal\nauthority of the see of Rome, _for which he claimed only an\necclesiastical primacy_, but simply because it infringed upon the sixth\ncanon of the council of Nicaea.\" That he claimed only an ecclesiastical\nprimacy for his see is not true, for he claimed to annul the canon _by\nauthority of Peter_. Nor did he object to it only because it infringed\nthe sixth canon of Nicaea, but because it contained a grave innovation in\nthe constitution of the church, and attempted to found the authority of\nbishops on a temporal instead of a spiritual and apostolic basis. It\nproposed to change entirely the basis of the pontifical authority, which\nhad hitherto rested on Peter, and to make it rest on the empire. The church\nof Constantinople was not an apostolic see, and only the bishop of an\napostolic see could be clothed with patriarchal authority. This seems to us\nto be the great objection of St. Leo. Therefore, he writes to the emperor,\nas already cited: \"Let not the bishop of Constantinople disdain the\nimperial city, which he cannot make an apostolic see.\" Hitherto only\napostolic sees, and indeed only sees founded by Peter, had been clothed\nwith the authority of patriarchal sees; and to give to a non-apostolic and\nnon-Petrine church authority over other metropolitan churches was to strike\nat apostolic authority itself, and especially at that of Peter. The whole\norganization of the church was from the first based on Peter as the\nimmediate representative of Christ and prince of the apostles. The\ntwenty-eighth canon of Chalcedon was therefore aimed at Peter, and in the\nname and by the authority of Peter, whom he fully represented, St. Leo\nannulled it, and declared it void, and the author, without knowing well\nwhat he concedes, says: \"St. Leo was right.\"\n\n\"One fact is certain, that they (the Roman pontiffs) did not convoke the\nfirst four oecumenical councils, that they did not preside over them, and\nthat they did not confirm them.\" This is certain only of the second general\ncouncil, or first of Constantinople. But suppose it, what follows? Simply\nthat they were not councils of the church at all--which will be very\npleasant news to Unitarians and Rationalists, who wish a Christianity\nwithout Christ--and can have the authority of general councils only by the\n_ex-post facto_ sanction of the universal church; but, as the two\ncanons on which the author bases his anti-papal theory have never received\nthat sanction, they have no authority, and never have had any. Hence, the\nauthor's theory, on any ground he chooses, has nothing in the church to\nsustain it. We shall, therefore, pass over what he adduces to prove the\npart taken by the civil authority in the councils, with the simple remark\nthat the acts of several of them depend entirely on the confirmation of the\nRoman pontiff and the _ex-post facto_ sanction of the church for their\nauthority.\n\n{587}\n\nM. Guett\u00e9e's proofs are not seldom proofs of the contrary of what he\nalleges. \"It is undeniable fact,\" he says, p. 118, \"that the dogmatic\nletter addressed by St. Leo to the fathers of the council was there\nexamined, and approved for this reason: that it agreed with the doctrine of\nCelestine [his predecessor] and Cyril, confirmed by the council of\nEphesus.\" That the letter was read in the council, and that the council\nadopted its definitions of faith, is true; but that it was approved for the\nreason alleged does not appear from the proofs the author adduces. He\ncontinues, pp. 118, 119: \"At the close of the reading, the bishops\nexclaimed: 'Such is the faith of the fathers; this is the faith of the\napostles. We all believe thus. Anathema to those who do not thus believe.\nPeter has spoken by Leo. Thus taught the apostles. Leo teaches according to\npiety and truth, and thus has Cyril taught.'\" Any one not bent on proving\nthe papacy schismatic would gather from this that the bishops approved of\nthe letter because they recognized in it the doctrine of the apostles and\nthe tradition of the fathers.\n\nThe author imagines that he gets an argument against the papacy from St.\nLeo's refusal to accept the title of _universal bishop_ offered him by\nthe council of Chalcedon, as we learn from Pope St. Gregory the Great. He\nalso thinks the argument is strengthened by the fact that St. Gregory\nhimself disclaimed it; and he therefore claims both of these great pontiffs\nand great saints as witnesses against the pretensions of the bishops of\nRome. If they had believed in their jurisdiction by divine right over the\nwhole church, would they have refused the title of universal bishop?\n\nJohn the Faster, Bishop of Constantinople, on some occasion summoned a\nparticular council, and signed its acts, which he transmitted to Pope\nPelagius II. as universal patriarch, for which, as St. Gregory says,\nPelagius, \"in virtue of the authority of the apostle St. Peter, nullified\nthe acts of the synod.\" Gregory succeeded Pelagius, and immediately on his\naccession to the pontificate wrote to the patriarchs of Alexandria,\nAntioch, and Jerusalem, condemning the title, and warning them and the\nwhole church of the danger it threatened; and also he wrote to John the\nFaster himself, admonishing him of the impropriety of the title, not only\nas savoring of pride and vanity, but as involving a most serious error\nagainst faith, and beseeching him to lay it aside, lest he be obliged to\ncut him off from the communion of the church, and depose him from his\nbishopric. He does not at all disclaim his own authority as supreme pastor\nand governor of the universal church, but quietly assumes it. Thus, he\nwrites to the emperor Maurice, as cited by the author: \"All who know the\ngospel know that the care of the whole church was confided by our Lord\nhimself to Peter, the first (St. Gregory says _prince_) of all the\napostles. Indeed, he said to him, 'Peter, lovest thou me? Feed my sheep.'\nAgain he said to him: 'Satan has desired to sift thee as wheat; but I have\nprayed for thee, that thy faith fail not; and when thou art converted,\nstrengthen thy brethren.' It was also said to him: 'Thou art Peter, and\nupon this rock will I build my church, and the gates of hell shall not\nprevail against it; and I will give thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven,\nand whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and\nwhatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.' He thus\nreceived the keys of the celestial kingdom; the power to bind and loose was\ngiven him; the care of all the church and the primacy\n[_principatus_--principality, or primacy of jurisdiction] were\ncommitted to him, and yet he did not call himself _universal apostle_.\nBut that holy man John, (bishop of Constantinople,) my brother in the\npriesthood, [cosacerdos,] would fain assume the title of _universal\nbishop_! O tempora! O mores!\" (Pp. 212, 213.)\n\n\"It is certain,\" St. Gregory continues, \"that this title was offered to the\nRoman pontiff by the venerable council of Chalcedon, to honor Blessed\nPeter, prince of the apostles.\n{588}\nBut none of us has consented to use this particular title, [title of\nsingularity,] lest by conferring a special matter on one alone, all priests\nwould be deprived of the honor which is their due. How, then, while we are\nnot ambitious of the glory of a title which has been offered us, does\nanother, to whom no one has offered it, have the presumption to take it?\"\n(Pp. 214, 215.)\n\nIn his letter to Eulogius of Alexandria and Anastatius of Antioch, St.\nGregory is more explicit still, \"As your holiness, whom I particularly\nvenerate, well knows, this title of _universal_, was offered by the\ncouncil of Chalcedon to the bishop [pontiff] of the apostolic see, which by\nGod's grace I serve. But none of my predecessors would use this impious\nword, because in reality, if a patriarch be called _universal_, it\ntakes from all others the title of patriarch.\" The author, after quoting a\npassage from another letter to Eulogius, adds: \"Thus did Pope Gregory\ncondemn even in the person of the bishops of Rome the title of pope and\nuniversal.\" But in this he is mistaken, as his own quotation shows.\nEulogius answers that he will not give the title of universal patriarch to\nthe bishop of Constantinople, but that he gives that of universal pope to\nthe Roman pontiff. \"No,\" says St. Gregory, \"if your holiness calls me\nuniversal pope, you deny yourself what I should then be altogether.\" The\nauthor interpolates in his quotation the copulative _and_, which is\nnot in St. Gregory's text. It is not to the title of pope that St. Gregory\nobjects, which was and is applied to simple presbyters, but the title\n_universal_, which he will not permit to be applied to any man,\nbecause it excludes others from all participation in the hierarchy, or even\nthe priesthood. If you call a man a universal presbyter, you deny that any\nothers are presbyters; if you call any one universal bishop, you exclude\nall others from the episcopate; if you call any one universal patriarch,\nyou deny the patriarchate to all others; and if you call the bishop of Rome\nuniversal pope, since as such he possesses the priesthood, and both the\napostolate and the episcopate in their plenitude, you exclude all others\nfrom sharing the priesthood, the episcopate, or the apostolate, even the\npope himself from the church, and deny the solidarity of apostles, bishops,\nand presbyters, asserted, as we have seen, by St. Cyprian.\n\nEulogius was priest, bishop, and patriarch, and as such was the brother of\nthe Roman pontiff. This brotherhood remained all the same, whether the\nRoman pontiff had or not supreme jurisdiction over the whole church. When\nEulogius called St. Gregory, not, as the author says, pope _and_\nuniversal, but universal pope, he denied this brotherhood, and deprived\nhimself of his own priestly, episcopal, and apostolic character. Hence, St.\nGregory, after saying to him and other bishops. \"I know what I am, and what\nyou are; by your place or office, you are my brothers, by your virtues, my\nfathers,\" he adds, in reference to the title of universal which Eulogius\nhad given him, \"I beseech your holiness to do so no more in future, for you\ntake from yourself what you give in excess to another. I do not ask to\nincrease in dignities, but in virtues. I do not esteem that an honor by\nwhich my brethren are deprived of theirs. For my honor is the honor of the\nuniversal church, my honor is the unshaken firmness of my brethren. Then am\nI truly honored when to no one is denied the honor that is his due. For, if\nyour holiness calls me universal pope, you deny that you are yourself what\nI should be confessed to be universally. Sed absit hoc, Recedant verba quae\nvanitatem inflant, et charitatem vulnerant.\" [Footnote 180]\n\n    [Footnote 180: Opp. S. Gregorii Magni, lib. viii. epist. xxx. Migne's\n    edition, tom, iii. col. 953.]\n\nWe may call the bishop of Rome pope of the universal church, but not\nuniversal pope, nor universal bishop, because he only possesses in its\nplenitude what is possessed in a degree by every member of the hierarchy,\nand even now, as always, the pope addresses the bishops in communion with\nhim as \"Venerable Brethren.\"\n{589}\nThe argument against the claim of the bishop of Rome to jurisdiction in the\nuniversal church, which the author attempts to build on the refusal of the\ntitle of universal bishop by St. Leo, and that of universal pope, _papa\nuniversalis_, by St. Gregory, is refuted by St. Gregory himself, as\ncited in the volume before us, pp. 212, 213. The holy pontiff and doctor,\nafter asserting that our Lord had given to Peter the primacy of\njurisdiction, and confided to him the care of the universal church, adds\nthat Peter \"did not call himself _universal apostle_.\" Peter was not\nthe only apostle, and the others could not be excluded from the\napostleship. He was prince of the apostles, their chief, the centre of\napostolic unity and authority, as St. Cyprian explains, and had the care\nand jurisdiction (_principatus_) of the universal church, as Gregory\nasserts, but inclusive, not exclusive of the other apostles. Peter held in\nrelation to the other apostles and the whole church all the supremacy\nclaimed by Catholics for the bishop of Rome. If, then, the refusal of the\ntitle of universal apostle by St. Peter did not negative his supreme\nauthority, why should the refusal of the title of universal bishop or\nuniversal pope by the bishops of Rome negative their supremacy, or their\nprimacy of jurisdiction in the whole church? Peter held that primacy, and\nyet was not universal apostle, and why not, then, the bishop of Rome,\nwithout being universal bishop or universal pope?\n\nThe author is unhappy in his witnesses, and they are all too decidedly\nRoman to testify otherwise than against him. He cites other eminent fathers\nof the fourth and fifth centuries, but he raises no new questions, and\nmakes no points in his favor not already met and disposed of; and we may,\ntherefore, pass over what he adduces, since, as we continue to remind our\nreaders, we are not adducing our proofs of the papal authority, but\nrefuting his arguments or pretended arguments against it.\n\nIn his fifth division, chapter, or section, the author examines \"the\nauthority of the bishop of Rome in the sixth, seventh, and eighth\ncenturies.\" We have anticipated him in regard to St. Gregory the Great, the\nmost prominent papal figure in these centuries, and shown that this great\npontiff and doctor, who justly ranks along with St. Leo, offers no\ntestimony in support of the author's vain attempt to prove the papacy\nschismatic. We have read this section of his book with care, but we find\nthat, while he shows very clearly that the Roman pontiff, to save the faith\nand the constitution and canons of the church from the attacks of the\nheretics and schismatics of the East, was obliged to intervene with his\nsupreme authority in the affairs of the Eastern churches more frequently\nthan in earlier ages, he brings forward nothing different from what has\nalready been refuted to prove that they did not possess the authority which\nthey exercised by divine right. We may say, then, that the author has\ntotally failed to establish his first conclusion, that \"the bishop of Rome\ndid not for eight centuries possess the sovereignty of divine right which\nhe has since sought to exercise.\" The facts he adduces prove that during\nthose centuries the popes did exercise all the authority they have as\nsupreme pontiffs since exercised, and that they professed to exercise it by\ndivine right, and without any contradiction by the universal church. No\ndoubt the author has adduced instances in which general councils have\nrecognized it, and made it the basis of their action; but this does not\nprove that the papal authority was conferred by the church, and was held\nonly by ecclesiastical right. No doubt the civil authority on more than one\noccasion recognized it and made it the law of the empire, but this does not\nprove that it was held as a grant of the emperor, but the reverse rather.\n{590}\nThe author, then, has not refuted the argument from possession, turned the\npresumption against the papacy, or proved that he and his friends the\nNon-united Greeks are not decidedly schismatics in resisting the council of\nFlorence, in which both the East and West were represented and united.\n\nThe author, having failed to establish his first conclusion,\nnotwithstanding his misquotations, mistranslations, and misrepresentations\nof facts, which are numerous and barefaced enough to excite the envy of his\neditor, the Protestant Episcopal bishop of Western New-York, cannot prove\nhis second conclusion, namely: The pretension of the bishops of Rome to the\nsovereignty of divine right over the whole church was the cause of the\ndivision. This depends on the first, and falls with it; for it is necessary\nto deny the divine authority of the pope to govern the whole church before\nhis assumption and exercise of that authority can be held to be a\nusurpation, and the cause of the divisions which result from resistance to\nit. Resistance otherwise is illegal, unauthorized, and conclusive evidence\nof schism, or, rather, is undeniably itself schism. The resistance on the\npart of the Eastern bishops and prelates to the Roman pontiff in the\nexercise of his legitimate authority was schism, as much so as an armed\ninsurrection against the political sovereign is rebellion, and the rebels\ncannot allege that the sovereign in the exercise of his legitimate\nauthority is the cause of their rebellion, and hold him responsible for it.\n\nThe author, forgetting that the pope is in possession, and that throughout\nthe presumption is in favor of his authority, argues as if the presumption\nwas on the other side, and the _onus probandi_ was on us. He,\ntherefore, concludes that every exercise of papal jurisdiction beyond the\npatriarchate of the West is a usurpation, and resistance to it justifiable,\nunless we are able to prove the contrary. We deny it, and maintain that it\nis for him to prove that jurisdiction is usurped, and not held by divine\nright. The laboring oar is in his hands. It is always for those who resist\nauthority to justify their resistance. The author can justify his\nresistance to papal authority only by producing some law of God or some\ncanon of the universal church that restricts the jurisdiction of the Roman\npontiff to the Western patriarchate, and forbids him to exercise\njurisdiction over the whole church. A law or edict to that effect of the\nempire or canon of the Eastern churches alone, could it be produced, would\nnot avail him; it must be a decision of the universal church, even\naccording to his own doctrine. He alleges no such act or canon, and can\nallege none, for all the acts or canons of the universal church bearing on\nthe question, unhappily for him, are the other way.\n\nThe author adduces the third canon of the second general council, and the\ntwenty-eighth of the fourth, but these canons, having never been assented\nto by the West, are without the authority of the universal church. And,\nbesides they do not distinctly deny the supreme authority of the bishop of\nRome, and only profess to confer the first rank and authority after the\nRoman pontiff on the bishop of Constantinople. It is a strong presumption\nagainst the author that he does not even allege any law or canon of the\nuniversal church which the popes have violated, and his charge against them\nis that of presenting themselves as defenders of the canons against\ninnovation, as in the refusal of St. Leo to accept the twenty-eighth canon\nof Chalcedon.\n\nBut the author, with his usual facility, refutes himself, and shows that it\nwas not the pretension of the bishops of Rome, but the pretensions of the\nbishop of Constantinople and of the secular government that caused the\ndivision. We have seen that the third canon of the second general council,\nand the twenty-eighth of the fourth, which was annulled by St. Leo, were in\nviolation of the canons, but were prompted by the ambition of the bishop of\nConstantinople and the secular authority.\n{591}\n\"We can perceive,\" says the author, p. 100. \"in the struggles between the\nbishops of Rome and Constantinople, respecting the twenty-eighth canon of\nthe council of Chalcedon, the origin of the dissensions which afterward led\nto an entire rupture.\" And why did these dissensions lead to an entire\nrupture? Certainly because the same parties continued to maintain the same\nclaims in relation to each other. The ground of the dissension remained\nalways the same. The question, then, is, which party in the beginning was\nin the right, and which was in the wrong? \"In principle,\" says the author\non the same page, \"St. Leo was right;\" that is, right in defending the\ncanons of the holy fathers and the decrees of the venerable council of\nNicaea against their violation and subversion by the innovations of\nConstantinople and Chalcedon. St. Leo, the author himself says, presented\nhimself as the defender of antiquity and the canons of Nicaea; he must,\nthen, have been right not only in principle, but in fact. The real cause of\nthe division was not the pretension of the bishops of Rome to an authority\nwhich they did not possess, but their refusal to assent to the violent and\nshameless usurpations of Constantinople. The attitude of the popes and the\nground on which they resisted from first to last, were distinctly taken by\nSt. Leo in his letter to the emperor, Marcian, already cited: \"Privilegia\necclesiarum, sanctorum Patrum canonibus instituta et venerabilis Nicaenae\nsynodi fixa decretis, nulla possunt improbitate convelli, nulla mutari\nnovitate.\" [Footnote 181]\n\n    [Footnote 181: Ad Marcianum Augustum, epist. 105, edit. Migne.]\n\nBut St. Leo \"could not deny,\" says the author, \"that one general council\nhad the same rights as another that had preceded it.\" But, even if so, none\nof the innovations proposed by the East and opposed by the bishops of Rome\nhave ever had the authority of a general council. There is and can be, even\naccording to the author and his schismatic Greek friends, no general\ncouncil without the bishop of Rome; and the canons on which the author\nrelies were from the first resisted by the Roman pontiff, and, therefore,\ncould not override or abrogate the decrees of the council of Nicaea.\n\nThe whole controversy originated in the attempt to raise the see of\nConstantinople, which was not an apostolic, a patriarchal or even a\nmetropolitan see, to the rank and authority of the first see in the church\nafter that of the see of Rome, contrary to the sixth canon of Nicaea, to\nthe constitution of the church, to ancient usage, and to the prejudice of\nthe bishops of Alexandria and Antioch, and the metropolitans of Pontus,\nAsia, (Minor.) and Thrace. On what ground does the author seek to defend\nthis attempt, always resisted by the Roman pontiffs and the whole West?\nSimply on the ground that the rank and authority of a see are derived from\nthe splendor and importance of the city in the empire. He assigns and\npretends to assign no other ground. \"The Nicaean council,\" he says, \"in\nconsecrating the usage by which the bishop of Rome was regarded as the\nfirst in honor in the church, had in view not as much the apostolic origin\nof his see as the splendor which he acquired from the importance of the\ncity of Rome. ... Why, then, should not the bishop of Constantinople have\nbeen received as second in rank, Constantinople having become the second\ncapital of the empire; since the bishop of Rome was first in rank, only\nbecause of its position as the first capital?\" (Pp. 100, 101.)\n\nThe argument is worthless, because its premises are false. In the first\nplace, the question is one of authority as well as of rank. In the second\nplace, the council of Nicaea did not consecrate the usage by which the\nprimacy, whether of honor or jurisdiction, was ascribed to the bishop of\nRome, but confirmed the usage by which the bishop of Alexandria, the bishop\nof Antioch, and other metropolitans held a certain rank, and enjoyed\ncertain privileges, and gave as their reason that a like usage or custom\nobtained with the bishop of Rome.\n{592}\nIn the third place, the council says not one word about the splendor\nacquired by the Roman pontiff from the importance of the city of Rome; and\nwe have proved that, whatever his rank and authority, he derived it from\nthe fact that his see was held to be the see of Peter, and he the successor\nof Peter, the prince of the apostles. Finally, the author has no ground for\nhis assertion, except the third canon of the second general council and the\ntwenty-eighth of the fourth, the latter authoritatively annulled and the\nformer declared to be without effect by St. Leo, and neither ever receiving\nthe sanction or assent of the universal church. The ground on which the\nbishop of Constantinople based his ambitious pretensions, that of being\nbishop of the second capital of the empire, is wholly untenable. \"Alia\nratio est rerum secularium, alia divinarum,\" says St. Leo. \"We laughed,\"\nsays Pope St. Gelasius as cited by the author, p. 198, \"at what they (the\nEastern bishops) claim for Acacius (bishop of Constantinople) because he\nwas bishop of the imperial city. ... The power of the secular empire is one\nthing, the distribution of ecclesiastical dignities is quite a different\nthing. However small a city may be, it does not diminish the greatness of\nthe prince who dwells there; but it is quite as true that the presence of\nthe emperor does not change the order of religion; and such a city should\nrather profit by its advantages to preserve the freedom of religion, by\nkeeping peaceably within its proper limits.\"\n\nFrom first to last, one is struck, in reading the history of the\ncontroversy, not only with the superior calmness and dignity of the Roman\npontiffs, but with their profound wisdom and catholic sense. They defend\nthroughout the catholicity of the church against Greek nationalism, and the\nindependence of the kingdom of Christ on earth against its subjection to\nthe secular empire, which was attempted and finally succeeded at\nConstantinople, and is the case in Russia, Great Britain, and all modern\nschismatical and heretical states and empires. The author sees and\nappreciates nothing of this; he comprehends nothing of the church as the\nmystic body of Christ, the continuous representation of the Incarnation;\nhis ideas are external, political, unspiritual, and, as far as appears from\nhis book, pagan rather than Christian. The church he recognizes, as far as\nhe recognizes any, is national, not catholic, and holds from the imperial\nauthority, not from Christ, and has no completeness in itself.\n\nIt was precisely in nationalism, in regarding the church as organized for\nthe Roman empire, not for the whole world, and in recognizing the authority\nof the civil power in theological and ecclesiastical matters, as the author\nhimself unwittingly shows, that the Greek schism originated. The bishop of\nConstantinople, having in the hierarchy no apostolic, patriarchal, or\nmetropolitan rank or authority beyond that which is held by every suffragan\nbishop, was obliged, in order to defend his ambitious aspirations to the\nsecond rank in the church, to give the hierarchy a secular origin, and to\nfall back on the imperial authority to support him. The idea was pagan, not\nChristian, and was but too acceptable to the Byzantine Caesars. In pagan\nRome the emperor was at once imperator and pontifex maximus, and held in\nhis own person the supreme authority in both civil and religious matters.\nHe preserved the tradition of this in Christian Rome, and continually\nstruggled to be under Christianity what he had been under paganism. In the\nWest the imperial pretensions were in the main successfully resisted,\nthough not without long and bitter struggles, which have not even yet\ncompletely ended; but in the East, owing to the ambition and frequent\nheresy of the bishop of Constantinople, rarely faithful to the church after\nConstantinople became an imperial capital, and the great patriarchates of\nAlexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, weakened by the Arian, Nestorian,\nmonophysite, and monothelite heresies, and betrayed by the heretics, had\nfallen, through the pride, treachery, and imbecility of the Byzantine\ncourt, under the power of the Mohammedans, those bitter enemies of the\ncross, the emperor was enabled to grasp the pontifical power, to bring the\nadministration of religion under his despotic control, to make and unmake,\nmurder or exile bishops at his will or the caprices of the ladies of his\ncourt. Hence the Greek schism.\n\n{593}\n\nAnd this is what M. Guett\u00e9e defends; and because the Roman pontiffs did all\nin their power to resist such open profanation and secularizing of the\nchurch, he has the impudence to contend that it was the usurpations of Rome\nthat caused the schism, and he has found a Protestant Episcopal bishop in\nWestern New-York ignorant enough or shameless enough to endorse him, and to\nassure us that he is a Catholic in the true sense of the word!\n\nNotwithstanding the author defends the usurpations of the imperial\nauthority and the ambitious pretensions of the courtly bishops of\nConstantinople, and maintains that all the general councils held in the\nEast were convoked and presided over by the emperors, he does not blush to\nobject to the council of Florence on the ground that the reunion effected\nin that council was brought about by the ambition of a few Eastern prelates\nand the undue pressure of the emperor of Constantinople. If the\nintervention of the emperor did not in his judgment vitiate the third canon\nof the first council of Constantinople, or the twenty-eighth canon of\nChalcedon, or the fifth or sixth general council, what right has he to\npretend that a far less intervention on the emperor's part vitiated the\ncanons of the council of Florence? On the principles he has defended\nthroughout, the emperor may convoke, preside over a council, dictate and\nconfirm its acts, without detriment to its authority as a general council.\nHe is by his own principles, then, bound to accept the canons of Florence\nas the voice of the universal church, for they were adopted by the East and\nWest united, and are and have been constantly adhered to by the West and\nthe Eastern churches proper, and resisted only by heretics and schismatics,\nwho have no voice in the church.\n\nWe need proceed no further. We have said enough to refute the author in\nprinciple, and are tired of him, as must be our readers. We said in the\nbeginning that he had told us nothing in his book that we did not know\nbefore; but we are obliged to confess that the examination of authorities\ninto which it has forced us has made us feel as we never felt before how\ntruly the church is founded on Peter, brought home to us the deep debt of\ngratitude the world owes to the Roman pontiffs, and enabled us to see more\nclearly than we ever had done the utter groundlessness, the glaring\niniquity, and the open paganism of the Greek schism. The author has made\nus, we almost fear, an ultra-papist, and certainly has strengthened our\nattachment, already strong, to the Holy Apostolic See. He has served to us\nthe office of the drunken Helotae to the Spartan youth. It is in relation\nto its purpose the weakest and absurdest book we have ever read, and has\nnot, so far as the author is concerned, a Christian thought from beginning\nto end. If this book fairly represents the Christian intelligence and\nsentiments of the Non-united Greeks, it is hard to see wherein they are to\nbe preferred to the Turks, or why Christendom should seek their deliverance\nfrom the Mohammedan yoke.\n\nIf M. Guett\u00e9e's readers will weigh well the arguments for the papacy he\nreproduces for the sake of refuting them, and his quotations from the\nfathers and the Roman pontiffs for the sake of blunting their force, they\nwill find that, in spite of misquotations, mistranslations, and\nmisrepresentations, the book carries with it its own antidote. It can do\nreal harm only to those who cannot weigh testimony, who never think, and\nare utterly unable to reason.\n\n------\n\n{594}\n\n\n    Impressions of Spain.\n\n    By Lady Herbert.\n\n\n  Excursions Near Seville.\n\nThe excursions in the neighborhood of Seville are full of beauty and\ninterest of various kinds. One of the first undertaken by our travellers\nwas to the ruins of Italica, the ancient Seville, formerly an important\nRoman city, and the birthplace of Trajan and of Adrian. In the church, half\nconvent and half fortress, are two very fine statues of St. Isidore and St.\nJerome, by Montan\u00e9s. Here St. Isidore began his studies. He was hopelessly\ndull and slow, and was tempted to give up the whole thing in despair, when\none day, being in a brown study, his eye fell on an old well, the marble\nsides of which were worn into grooves by the continual friction of the cord\nwhich let down the bucket. \"If a cord can thus indent marble,\" he said to\nhimself, \"why should not constant study and perseverance make an impression\non my mind?\" His resolution was taken, and he became the light of his age\nand country. The well which gave him this useful lesson is still shown near\nthe south door of the church. Here also is the monument of Do\u00f1a Uraca\nOsorio, a lady who was burnt to death by order of King Pedro the Cruel, for\nhaving resisted his addresses. The flames having consumed the lower part of\nher dress, her faithful maid rushed into the fire, and died in endeavoring\nto conceal her mistress. In the sacristy is a very curious Byzantine\npicture of the Virgin. Leaving the church our party went on to the\namphitheatre, which has recently been excavated, and must have contained\nten or twelve thousand people. A fine mosaic has lately been discovered,\nwhich evidently formed part of the ancient pavement. The custode was a\ncharacter, and lived in a primitive little cabin at the entrance of the\ncircus: a moss bed and a big cat seemed the only furniture. He was very\nproud of his tiny garden, poor old man! and of his wall-flowers, of which\nhe gave the ladies a large bunch, together with a few silver coins which\nhad been dug up in the excavations.\n\nOn their way home they passed by a cemetery in which was a very beautiful\nthough simple marble cross. On it were engraved these three lines:\n\n    Creo en Dios.\n  Espero en Dies.\n    Amo \u00e1 Dios.\n\nIt was the grave of a poor boy, the only son of a widow. He was not exactly\nan idiot, but what people call a \"natural.\" Good, simple, humble every one\nloved him; but no one could teach him anything. His intelligence was in\nsome way at fault. He could remember nothing. In vain the poor mother put\nhim first to school, and then to a trade; he could not learn. At last, in\ndespair, she took him to a neighboring monastery, and implored the abbot,\nwho was a most charitable holy man, to take him in and keep him as a lay\nbrother. Touched by her grief, the abbot consented, and the boy entered the\nconvent. There, all possible pains were taken with him by the good monks to\ngive him at least some ideas of religion; but he could remember nothing but\nthese three sentences. Still, he was so patient, so laborious, and so good,\nthat the community decided to keep him. When he had finished his hard\nout-of-door work, instead of coming in to rest, he would go straight to the\nchurch, and there remain on his knees for hours. \"But what does he do?\"\nexclaimed one of the novices.\n{595}\n\"He does not know how to pray. He neither understands the office, nor the\nsacraments, nor the ceremonies of the church.\" They therefore hid\nthemselves in a side chapel, close to where he always knelt, and watched\nhim when he came in. Devoutly kneeling, with his hands clasped, his eyes\nfastened on the tabernacle, he did nothing but repeat over and over again:\n\"Creo en Dios; espero en Dios; amo \u00e1 Dios.\" One day he was missing: they\nwent to his cell, and found him dead on the straw, with his hands joined\nand an expression of the same ineffable peace and joy they had remarked on\nhis face when in church. They buried him in this quiet cemetery, and the\nabbot caused these words to be graven on his cross. Soon, a lily was seen\nflowering by the grave, where no one had sown it; the grave was opened, and\nthe root of the flower was found in the heart of the orphan boy. [Footnote\n182]\n\n    [Footnote 182: This anecdote is from the lips of Fernan Caballero.]\n\nAnother morning our party visited the Cartucha, the once magnificent\nCarthusian convent, with its glorious ruined church and beautiful and\nextensive orange-gardens. Now all is deserted. The only thing remaining of\nthe church is a fine west wall and rose-window, with a chapel which the\nproprietor has preserved for the use of his workpeople, and in the choir of\nwhich are some finely carved wooden stalls; the rest have been removed to\nCadiz, where they form the great ornament of the cathedral. Here and there\nare some fine \"azulejos,\" and a magnificently carved doorway, speaking of\nglories long since departed. This convent, once the very centre of all that\nwas most cultivated and literary in Spain, a museum of painting,\narchitecture, and sculpture, is now converted into a porcelain manufactory,\nwhere a good-natured Englishman has run up a tall chimney, and makes ugly\ncheap pots and pans to suit the taste and pockets of the Sevillians. O for\nthis age of \"progress\"! It is fair to say that the proprietor, who kindly\naccompanied the party over the building, and into the beautiful gardens,\nand to the ruined pagoda or summer house, lamented that no encouragement\nwas given by the Spanish nobles of the present day to any species of taste\nor beauty in design, and that his attempts to introduce a higher class of\nchina, in imitation of Minton's, had met with decided failure; no one would\nbuy anything so dear. They had imported English workmen and modellers in\nthe first instance; but he said, that the Spaniards were apt scholars, and\nhad quickly learned the trade, so that his workmen are now almost\nexclusively from the country itself. The only pretty thing our travellers\ncould find, and which was kindly presented to one of the party, was one of\nthe cool picturesque-shaped bottles made, like the \"goolehs\" of Egypt, of\nporous clay, which maintains the coldness and freshness of any liquid\npoured into it.\n\nAmong the many charming expeditions from Seville, is one to Castilleja,\n(the village before alluded to as the scene of the death of Fernan Cortes)\nthrough the fertile plains and vine yards of Aljarafa. Here begins the\nregion which the Romans call the gardens of Hercules. It produces one of\nthe best and rarest wines in Spain: the plants having been originally\nbrought from Flanders by a poor soldier named Pedro Ximenes, who discovered\nthat the Rhine vines, when transplanted to the sunny climate of Andalusia,\nlose their acidity, and yield the luscious fruit which still bears his\nname. In the centre of this fertile plain stands a small house and garden,\nto which is attached one of those tales of crime, divine vengeance, and\ngodlike forgiveness, which are so characteristic of the people and country.\nAbout twenty years ago it was inhabited by a family consisting of a man\nnamed Juan Pedro Alfaro, with his wife and a son of nineteen or twenty.\nTheir quiet and peaceable lives were spent in cultivating their vineyard\nand selling its produce in the neighboring town.\n{596}\nThey were good and respectable people, living in peace with their\nneighbors, and perfectly contented with their occupation and position. One\nthing only was felt as a grievance. A lawyer, of the character of the\n\"Attorney Case\" in our childhood's story, had lately started an obnoxious\nnew tax on every cargo of wine brought into the city; and this tax, being\nboth unjust and illegal, they resolved to dispute. One day, therefore, when\nthe good man and his son were driving their mules to market with their\nfruity burden, they were stopped by the attorney, who demanded the usual\npayment. The younger man firmly but respectfully refused, stating his\nreasons. The attorney tried first fair words, and then foul, without\neffect, upon which he vowed to be revenged. The son, pointing to his\nAlbacetan poniard, on which was the inscription, \"I know how to defend my\nmaster.\" defied his vengeance; and so they parted. But never again was the\npoor wife and mother's heart gladdened by the sight of their returning\nfaces. In vain she waited, hour after hour, that first terrible evening.\nThe mules returned, but masterless. Then, beside herself with fear, the\npoor woman rushed off to the town to make inquiries as to their fate. No\none knew anything further than that they had been at Seville the day\nbefore, had sold their wine for a good price, and been seen, as usual,\nreturning cheerfully home. She then went to the Audiencia, or legal supreme\ncourt of the city, where the magistrates, touched by her tale, and alarmed\nalso at the disappearance of the men, who were known throughout the country\nfor their high character and respectability, caused a rigorous search to be\nmade in the whole neighborhood; but in vain. No trace of them could be\ndiscovered. By degrees, the excitement in the town on the subject passed\naway, and the poor muleteers were forgotten; but in the heart of the\nwidowed mother there could be no rest and no peace. The mystery in which\ntheir fate was involved was so inexplicable that, the hope of their return,\nhowever faint, would not die out; and for twenty years she spent her life\nand her substance in seeking for her lost ones. At last, reduced to utter\nmisery, and worn out both in mind and body, she was forced to beg her daily\nbread of the charity of the peasants: the \"bolsa de Dios,\" as the people\npoetically call it, a \"bolsa\" which, to do the Spaniards justice, is never\nempty. The little children would bring her eggs and pennies; the fathers\nand husbands would give her a corner by the \"brasero\" in winter, or under\nthe vine-covered trellis in summer; the wives and mothers knew what had\nbrought her to such misery, and had ever an extra loaf or a dish of\n\"garbanzos\" set aside for the \"Madre Ana,\" as she was called by the\nvillagers. She, humble, prayerful, hopeful, ever grateful for the least\nkindness, and willing in any way to oblige others, at last fell dangerously\nill. The cur\u00e9, who had been striving to calm and soothe that sorely tried\nsoul, was one day leaving her cottage, when his attention was attracted by\na crowd of people, with the mayor at their head, who were hurrying toward\nan olive wood near the village. He followed, and, to his horror, found that\nthe cause of the sensation was the discovery of two human skeletons under\nan olive-tree, the finger of one of which was pointing through the earth to\nheaven, as if for vengeance. The mayor ordered the earth to be removed: the\nsurgeon examined the bodies, and gave it as his opinion that they must have\nbeen dead many years. But on examining the clothes, a paper was found which\na waterproof pocket had preserved from decay. The attorney, who was\nlikewise present, seized it; but no sooner had his eyes lighted on the\nwords than he fell backward in a swoon. \"What is the matter? what has he\nread?\" exclaimed the bystanders as with one voice. \"It is a certificate\nsuch as used to be carried by our muleteers,\" exclaimed the mayor, taking\nthe paper from the lawyer's hand; and opening it, he read out loud the\nfollowing words: \"_Pass for Juan Pedro Alfaro._\"\n\n{597}\n\nHere, then, was the unravelling of the terrible mystery: the men had\nevidently been murdered on their way home. The attorney recovered from his\nfainting fit, but fever followed, and in his delirium he did nothing but\nexclaim: \"It is not I!--my hands are free from blood. It is Juan Ca\u00f1o and\nJoseph Salas.\" These words, repeated by the people, caused the arrest of\nthe two men named, who no sooner found themselves in the hands of justice\nthan they confessed their crime, and described how, having been excited to\ndo so by the attorney, they had shot both Juan Alfaro and his son, from\nbehind some olive-trees, on their way home from market, had robbed, and\nafterward buried them in the place where the bodies had been found.\nSentence of death was passed upon the murderers, while the attorney was\ncondemned to hard labor for life, and to witness, with a rope round his\nneck, the execution of his accomplices in the fatal deed. The poor \"Madre\nAna\" had hardly recovered from her severe illness when these terrible\nevents transpired. The indignation of the peasantry, and their compassion\nfor her, knew no bounds: they would have torn the attorney in pieces if\nthey could. The widow herself, overwhelmed with grief at this confirmation\nof her worst fears, remained silent as the grave. At last, when those\naround her were breathing nothing but maledictions on the heads of the\nmurderers, and counting the days to the one fixed for the execution of\ntheir sentence, she suddenly spoke, and asked that the cur\u00e9 should be sent\nfor. He at once obeyed the summons. She raised herself in the bed with some\neffort, and then said: \"My father, is it not true that, if pardon be\nimplored for a crime by the one most nearly related to the victims, the\njudges generally mitigate the severity of the punishment?\" He replied in\nthe affirmative. \"Then to-morrow,\" she replied, \"I will go to Seville.\"\n\"God bless you! my daughter,\" replied the old priest, much moved; \"the\npardon you have so freely given in your heart will be more acceptable to\nGod than the deaths of these men.\" A murmur of surprise and admiration, and\nyet of hearty approval, passed through the lips of the bystanders. The next\nday, mounted carefully by the peasants on their best mule, the poor widow\narrived at the Audiencia. Her entrance caused a stir and an emotion in the\nwhole court. Bent with age, and worn with sickness and misery, she advanced\nin front of the judges, who, seeing her extreme weakness, instantly ordered\na comfortable chair to be brought for her. But the effort had been too\nmuch; she could not speak. The judge, then addressing her, said: \"Senora,\nis it true that you are come to plead for the pardon of Juan Ca\u00f1o and\nJoseph Salas, convicted of the assassination of your husband and son? and\nalso for the pardon of the lawyer, who, by his instigation, led them to\ncommit the crime?\" She bowed her head in token of assent. A murmur of\nadmiration and pity spread through the court; and a relation of the\nlawyer's, who saw his family thus rescued from the last stage of\ndegradation, eagerly bent forward, exclaiming: \"Senora, do not fear for\nyour future. I swear that every want of yours shall henceforth be provided\nfor.\"\n\nThe momentary feebleness of the woman now passed away. She rose to her full\nheight, and, casting on the speaker a look of mingled indignation and\nscorn, exclaimed: \"You offer me payment for my pardon? I do not _sell_\nthe blood of my son!\"\n\nNo account of \"life in Seville\" would be complete without a bull-fight,\n\"corrida de toros;\" and so one afternoon saw our travellers in a tolerably\nspacious loggia on the shady side of the circus, preparing, though with\nsome qualms of conscience, to see, for the first time, this, the great\nnational sport of Spain. The roof of the cathedral towered above the arena,\nand the sound of the bells just ringing for vespers made at least one of\nthe party regret the decision which had led her to so uncongenial a place.\n{598}\nBut it was too late to recede. No one could escape from the mass of human\nbeings tightly wedged on every side, all eager for the fight. Partly,\nperhaps, owing to the mourning and consequent absence of the court, there\nwere very few ladies; which, it is to be hoped, is also a sign that the\n\"corrida\" has no longer such attractions for them. Presently the trumpets\nsounded. One of the barriers which enclosed the arena was thrown open, and\nin came a procession of \"toreros,\" \"banderilleros,\" and \"chulos,\" all\nattired in gay and glittering costumes, chiefly blue and silver, the hair\nof each tied in a net, with a great bow behind, and with tight pink silk\nstockings and buckled shoes. With them came the \"picadores,\" dressed in\nyellow, with large broad-brimmed hats and iron-cased legs, riding the most\nmiserable horses that could be seen, but which, being generally\nthoroughbred, arched their necks and endeavored, poor beasts! to show what\nonce they had been. They were blindfolded, without which they could not\nhave been induced to face the bull. The procession stopped opposite the\npresident's box when the principal \"torero\" knelt and received in his hat\nthe key of the bull's den, which was forthwith opened; and now the sport\nbegan. A magnificent brownish red animal dashed out into the centre of the\narena, shaking his crest and looking round him as if to defy his\nadversaries, pawing the ground the while. The men were all watching him\nwith intense eagerness. Suddenly the bull singled out one as his adversary,\nand made a dash at a \"banderillero\" who was agitating a scarlet cloak to\nthe left. The man vaulted over the wooden fence into the pit. The bull,\nfoiled, and knocking his horns against the wooden palings with a force\nwhich seemed as if it would bring the whole thing down, now rushed at a\n\"picador\" to the right, from whose lance he received a wound in the\nshoulder. But the bull, lowering his head, drove his horns right into the\nwretched horse's entrails, and, with almost miraculous strength, galloped\nwith both horse and rider on his neck round the whole arena, finally\ndropping both, when the \"picador\" was saved by the \"chulos,\" but the horse\nwas left to be still further gored by the bull, and then to die in agony on\nthe sand. This kind of thing was repeated with one after the other, till\nthe bull, exhausted and covered with lance-wounds, paused as if to take\nbreath. The \"banderilleros\" chose this moment, and with great skill and\naddress advanced in front of him, with their hands and arms raised, and\nthrew forward arrows, ornamented with fringed paper, which they fixed into\nhis neck. This again made him furious, and, in eager pursuit of one of his\nenemies, the poor beast leapt out of the arena over the six-feet high\nbarrier into the very middle of the crowded pit. The \"sauve qui peut\" may\nbe imagined; but no one was hurt, and the din raised by the multitude\nseemed to have alarmed the bull, who trotted back quietly into the circus\nby a side-door which had been opened for the purpose. Now came the exciting\nmoment. The judge gave the signal, and one of the most famous \"matadores,\"\nCuchares by name, beautifully dressed in blue and silver, and armed with a\nshort sharp sword, advanced to give the _coup de gr\u00e2ce_. This requires\nboth immense skill and great agility; and at this very moment, when our\nparty were wound up to the highest pitch of interest and excitement, a\nsimilar scene had ended fatally for the \"matador\"' at Cadiz. But Cuchares\nseemed to play with his danger; and though the bull, mad with rage, pursued\nhim with the greatest fury, tearing his scarlet scarf into ribbons, and\nnearly throwing down the wooden screens placed at the sides of the arena as\nplaces of refuge for the men when too closely pressed to escape in other\nways, he chose a favorable moment, and, leaping forward, dug his short\nsword right into the fatal spot above the shoulder.\n{599}\nWith scarcely a struggle, the noble beast fell, first on his knees, and\nthen rolled over dead. The people cheered vociferously, the trumpets\nsounded. Four mules, gayly caparisoned, were driven furiously into the\narena; the huge carcass, fastened to them by ropes, was dragged out,\ntogether with those of such of the horses as death had mercifully released,\nand then the whole thing began over again. Twenty horses and six bulls were\nkilled in two hours and a half, and the more horrible the disembowelled\nstate of the animals, the greater seemed the delight of the spectators. It\nis impossible, without disgusting our readers, to give a truthful\ndescription of the horrible state of the horses. One, especially, caused a\nsensation even among the \"habitu\u00e9s\" of the ring. He belonged to one of the\nrichest gentlemen in Seville, had been his favorite hack, and was as well\nknown in the Prado as his master. Yet this gentleman had the brutality,\nwhen the poor beast's work was ended, to condemn him to this terrible fate!\nThe gallant horse, disembowelled as he was, _would not die_: he\nsurvived one bull after the other, though his entrails were hanging in\nfestoons on their horns, and finally, when the gates were opened to drag\nout the carcasses of the rest, he managed to crawl away also and to drag\nhimself where? To the very door of his master's house, which he reached,\nand where he finally lay down and died. His instinct, unhappily wrong in\nthis case, had evidently made him fancy that _there_, at any rate, he\nwould have pity and relief from his agony: for the wounds inflicted by the\nhorns of the bull are, it is said, horrible in their burning, smarting\npain. Fernan Caballero was with the wife of a famous \"matador,\" whose chest\nwas transfixed by the bull at the moment when, thinking the beast's\nstrength was spent, he had leant forward to deal the fatal stroke, He\nlingered for some hours, but in an agony which she said must have been seen\nto be believed. Generally speaking, however, such accidents to the men are\nvery rare. Carlo Puerto, one of the \"picadores,\" was killed last year by a\nvery wary bull, who turned suddenly, and, catching him on his horns in the\nstomach, ran with him in that way three times round the arena!--but that\nwas the fault of the president, who had insisted on his attacking the bull\nin the centre of the ring, the \"picadores\" always remaining close to the\nscreen, so that their escape may be more easily managed. If the sport could\nbe conducted, as it is said to be in Salamanca and in Portugal, without\ninjury to the horses, the intense interest caused by a combat where the\nskill, intelligence, and agility of the man are pitted against the\ninstinct, quickness, and force of the bull, would make it perhaps a\nlegitimate as well as a most exciting amusement; but, as it is at present\nconducted, it is simply horrible, and inexcusably cruel and revolting. It\nis difficult to understand how any woman can go to it a second time. The\neffect on the people must be brutalizing to a frightful extent, and\naccounts in a great measure for their utter absence of feeling for animals,\nespecially horses and mules, which they ill use in a manner perfectly\nshocking to an Englishman, and apparently without the slightest sense of\nshame. But there is no indication of this sport becoming less popular in\nSpain. Combats with \"novillos,\" or young bulls, whose horns are tipped to\navoid accidents, are a common amusement among the young aristocracy, who\nare said to bet frightfully on their respective favorites; and thus the\ntaste is fostered from their cradles.\n\n{600}\n\n  The Charitable Institutions and Convents of Seville.\n\nA few days after the holy week, our travellers decided on visiting some of\nthe far-famed charitable institutions of Seville; and, taking the kind and\nbenevolent Padre B---- as their interpreter, they went first to the\nHospital del Sangre, or of the \"Five Wounds,\" a magnificent building of the\nsixteenth century, with a Doric fa\u00e7ade 600 feet long, a beautiful portal,\nand a \"patio,\" in the centre of which is the church, a fine building, built\nin the shape of a Latin cross, and containing one or two good Zurbarans.\nThere are between 300 and 400 patients; and in addition to the large wards,\nthere are--what is so much needed in our great London hospitals, and which\nwe have before alluded to at Madrid--a number of nicely-furnished little\nseparate rooms for a higher class of patients, who pay about two shillings\na day, and have both the skill of the doctors and the tender care of the\nsisters of charity, instead of being neglected in their own homes. There\nwas a poor priest in one of these apartments, in another a painter, and in\na third a naval captain, a Swede, and so on. The hospital is abundantly\nsupplied with everything ordered by the doctors, including wine, brandy,\nchickens, or the like; and in this respect is a great contrast to that at\nMalaga, where the patients literally die for want of the necessary extra\ndiets and stimulants which the parsimony of the administration denies them.\nIn each quadrangle is a nice garden, with seats and fountains, and full of\nsweet flowers, where the patients, when well enough, can sit out and enjoy\nthe sunshine. There is not the slightest _hospital smell_ in any one\nof the wards. The whole is under the administration of the Spanish sisters\nof charity of St. Vincent de Paul; and knowing that, no surprise was felt\nat the perfection of the \"lingerie,\" or the admirable arrangement and order\nof the hospital. They have a touching custom when one of the patients is\ndying, and has received the viaticum, to place above his head a special\ncross, so that he may be left undisturbed by casual visitors. The sisters\nhave a little oratory up-stairs, near the woman's ward, beautifully fitted\nup. An air of refinement, of comfort, and of _home_ pervades the whole\nestablishment.\n\nClose to this hospital is the old tower where St. Hermengilde was put to\ndeath, on Easter eve, by order of his unnatural father, because he would\nnot join the Arian heresy, or receive his paschal communion from the hands\nof an Arian bishop. This was in the sixth century; and is not the same\npersecution, and for the same cause, going on in Poland in the nineteenth?\n[Footnote 183] The old Gothic tower still remains, and in it his close\ndungeon. A church has been built adjoining, but the actual prison remains\nintact. There are some good pictures in the church, especially a Madonna,\nby Murillo; and a clever picture of St. Ignatius in his room, meditating on\nhis conversion. There is also a fine statue of St. Hermengilde himself, by\nMontan\u00e9s, over the high altar. The good old priest who had the care of this\nchurch lived in a little room adjoining, like a hermit in his cell,\nentirely devoted to painting and to the \"culte\" of his patron saint. St.\nGregory the Great attributes to the merits of this martyr the conversion of\nhis brother, afterward King Recared, the penitence of his father, and the\nchristianizing of the whole kingdom of the Visigoths in Spain.\n\n    [Footnote 183: The manner in which, during this very last Easter, the\n    poor Polish Catholics have been treated and forced to receive\n    schismatical communions through a system of treachery unparalleled in\n    the annals of the church, is unfortunately not sufficiently known in\n    England, where alone public opinion could be brought to bear on the\n    instigators of such tyranny. The strife between Russia and Poland has\n    ceased to be anything but a religious struggle: Russia is determined to\n    quench Catholicism out of the land. But the cry of hundreds of exiled\n    pastors of the flock is rising to heaven from the forests and mines of\n    Siberia; in the holy sacrifice (offered in earthenware cups on common\n    stones) they still plead for their people before the throne of the\n    great Intercessor. And that cry and those prayers will be answered in\n    God's own time and way.]\n\nFrom thence our travellers went on to the orphanage managed by the\n\"Trinitarian sisters.\" The house was built in the last century, by a\ncharitable lady, who richly endowed it, and placed 200 children there; now,\nthe government, without a shadow of right has taken the whole of the funds\nof the institution, and allows them barely enough to purchase bread. The\nsuperior is in despair, and has scarcely heart to go on with the work.\n{601}\nShe has diminished the number of the child and has been obliged to curtail\ntheir food, giving them neither milk nor meat except on great festivals.\nBut for the intervention of the Duc de Montpensier, and other charitable\npersons, the whole establishment must long since have been given up. There\nare twenty four sisters. The children work and embroider beautifully, and\nare trained to every kind of industrial occupation. From this orphanage our\nparty went to the Hospital for Women, managed by the sisters of the third\norder of St. Francis. It is one of the best hospitals in Seville. There are\nabout 100 women, admirably kept and cared for, and a ward of old and\nincurable patients besides. The superior, a most motherly, loving soul, to\nwhom every one seemed much attached, took them over every part of the\nbuilding. She has a passion for cats, and beautiful \"Angoras\" were seen\nbasking in the sun in every window-sill.\n\nThis hospital, like the orphanage, is a private foundation; but the\ngovernment has given notice that they mean to appropriate its funds, and\nthe poor sisters are in terror lest their supplies should cease for their\nsick. It is a positive satisfaction to think that the government which has\ndealt in this wholesale robbery of the widow and orphan is not a bit the\nbetter for it. One feels inclined to exclaim twenty times a day: \"Thy money\nperish with thee!\"\n\nBut of all the charitable institutions of Seville, the finest is the\nCaridad, a magnificent hospital, or rather \"asilo,\" for poor and incurable\npatients, nursed and tended by the Spanish sisters of St. Vincent de Paul.\nIt was founded in the seventeenth century, by Don Miguel de Ma\u00f1ara, a man\neminent for his high birth and large fortune, and one of the knights of\nCalatrava, an order only given to people whose quarterings showed nobility\nfor several generations. He was in his youth the Don Juan of Seville,\nabandoning himself to every kind of luxury and excess, although many\nstrange warnings were sent to him from time to time, to arrest him in his\nheadlong, downward course. On one occasion especially, he had followed a\nyoung and apparently beautiful figure through the streets and into the\ncathedral, where, regardless of the sanctity of the place, he insisted on\nher listening to his addresses. What was his horror, on turning round, in\nanswer to his repeated solicitations, when the face behind the mask proved\nto be that of a skeleton! So strongly was this circumstance impressed on\nhis mind, that he caused it afterward to be painted by Vald\u00e9s, and hung in\nthe council-room of the hospital. Another time, when returning from one of\nhis nocturnal orgies, he lost his way, and, passing by the church of\nSantiago, saw, to his surprise, that the doors were open, the church lit,\nand a number of priests were kneeling with lighted tapers round a bier in\nperfect silence. He went in and asked \"whose was the funeral?\" The answer\nof one after the other was: \"Don Miguel de Ma\u00f1ara.\" Thinking this a bad\njoke, he approached the coffin, and hastily lifted up the black pall which\ncovered the features of the dead. To his horror he recognized himself. This\nevent produced a complete change in his life. He resolved to abandon his\nvicious courses, and marry, choosing the only daughter of a noble house, as\nmuch noted for her piety as for her beauty. But God had higher designs in\nstore for him, and, after a few years spent in the enjoyment of the purest\nhappiness, his young wife died suddenly. In the first violence of his\ngrief, Don Miguel thought but of escaping from the world altogether, and\nburying himself in a monastery. But God willed it otherwise. There was at\nthat time, on the right bank of the Guadalquivir, a little hermitage\ndedicated to St. George, which was the resort of a confraternity of young\nmen who had formed themselves into brothers of charity, and devoted\nthemselves to the care of the sick and dying poor.\n{602}\nDon Diego Mirafuentes was their \"hermano mayor,\" or chief brother, and,\nbeing an old friend of Don Miguel's, invited him to stay with him, and by\ndegrees enlisted all his sympathies in their labors of love. He desired to\nbe enrolled in their confraternity, but his reputation was so bad that the\nbrotherhood hesitated to admit him; and, when at last they yielded,\ndetermined to put his sincerity and humility to the test by ordering him to\ngo out at once from door to door throughout Seville (where he was so well\nknown) with the bodies of certain paupers, and to crave alms for their\ninterment. Grace triumphed over all natural repugnance to such a task; and\nwith his penitence had come that natural thirst for penance which made all\nthings appear easy and light to bear, so that very soon he became the\nleader in all noble and charitable works.\n\nFinding that an asylum or home was sadly needed in winter for the reception\nof the houseless poor, he purchased a large warehouse, which he converted\ninto rooms for this purpose; and, by dint of begging, got together a few\nbeds and necessaries, so that by the Christmas following more than two\nhundred sick or destitute persons were here boarded and lodged. From this\nhumble beginning arose one of the most magnificent charitable institutions\nin Spain. The example of Don Miguel, his burning charity, his austere\nself-denial, his simple faith won all hearts. Money poured in on every\nside; every day fresh candidates from the highest classes pleaded for\nadmission into the confraternity. It was necessary to draw up certain rules\nfor their guidance, and this work was entrusted to Don Miguel, who had been\nunanimously elected as their superior. Nowhere did his wisdom, prudence,\nand zeal appear more strongly than in these regulations, which still form\nthe constitutions of this noble foundation. Defining, first, the nature of\ntheir work the seeking out and succoring the miserable, nursing the sick,\nburying the dead, and attending criminals to their execution--he goes on to\ninsist on the value of personal service, both private and public; on the\nhumility and self-abnegation required of each brother; that each, on\nentering the hospital, should forget his rank, and style himself simply\n\"servant of the poor,\" kissing the hand of the oldest among the sufferers,\nand serving them as seeing Jesus Christ in the persons of each. The notices\nof certain monthly meetings and church services which formed part of the\nrule of the community were couched in the following terms: \"This notice is\nsent you lest you should neglect these holy exercises, which may be the\nlast at which God will allow you to assist.\" Sermons and meditations on the\npassion of our Lord, and on the nearness of death and of eternity, formed\nthe principal religious exercises of the confraternity; in fact, the\nPassion is the abiding devotion of the order.\n\nHis hospital built, and his poor comfortably housed and cared for, Miguel\nturned his attention to the church, which was in ruins. A letter of his,\nstill extant, will show the difficulties which he had to overcome in this\nundertaking. \"We had hoped,\" he writes, \"that one of our brothers, who was\nrich and childless, would have given us something to begin the restoration;\nbut he died without thinking of the church, and so vanished our golden\nhopes, as they always will when we put our trust in human means to\naccomplish God's ends. I was inclined to despond about it; when, the next\nmorning, at eight o'clock, a poor beggar named Luis asked to speak to me.\n'My wife is just dead,' he said. 'She sold chestnuts on the Plaza, and\nrealized a little sum of eighty ducats. To bury her I have spent thirty:\nfifty remain; they are all I have; but I bring them to you, that you may\nlay the first stone of the new church. I want nothing for myself but a bit\nof bread, which I can always beg from door to door.'\"\nDon Miguel refused, the beggar insisted; and so the church was begun: and\nthe story spread, and half a million of ducats were poured into the laps of\nthe brothers; but, as Ma\u00f1ara added, \"the first stone was laid by God\nhimself in the 'little all' of the poor beggar.\" [Footnote 184]\n\n    [Footnote 184: How often, when buying chestnuts of one of the old women\n    in the Plaza of the Caridad, did the recollection of this story come\n    into the mind of our traveller!]\n\n\n{603}\n\nThis church was filled in 1680 with the chefs-d'oeuvre of Murillo and of\nVald\u00e9s Leal: an autograph letter from the great religious painter is still\nshown in the Sala Capitular of the hospital, asking to be admitted as a\nmember of the confraternity. \"Our Saviour as a child;\" \"St. John and the\nlamb;\" \"San Juan de Dios with an angel;\" the \"Miracle of the Loaves and\nFishes;\" but, above all, \"Moses striking the Rock,\" called \"La Sed,\" (so\nadmirably is _thirst_ represented in the multitudes crowding round the\nprophet in the wilderness,) were the magnificent offerings of the new\n\"brother\" toward the decoration of God's house and the cause of charity.\nEqually striking, but more painful in their choice of subjects, are the\nproductions of Vald\u00e9s, especially a \"Dead Bishop,\" awful in its contrast of\ngorgeous robes with the visible work of the worms beneath, and of which\nMurillo said \"that he could not look at it without holding his nose.\" Other\npictures by Murillo formerly decorated these walls; but they were stolen by\nthe French, and afterward sold to English collectors, the Duke of\nSutherland and Mr. Tomline being among the purchasers. After the church,\nthe most remarkable thing in the Caridad is the \"patio,\" divided into two\nby a double marble colonnade. Here the poor patients sit out half the day,\nenjoying the sunshine and the flowers. On the wall is the following\ninscription, from the pen of Ma\u00f1ara himself, but which loses in the\ntranslation: \"This house will last as long as God shall be feared in it,\nand Jesus Christ be served in the persons of his poor. Whoever enters here\nmust leave at the door both avarice and pride.\"\n\nThe cloisters and passages are full of texts and pious thoughts, but all\nassociated with the two ideas ever prominent in the founders mind--charity\nand death. Over what was his own cell is the following, in Spanish: \"What\nis it that we mean when we speak of death? It is being free from the body\nof sin, and from the yoke of our passions: therefore, to live is a bitter\ndeath, and to die is a sweet life.\"\n\nThe wards are charmingly large and airy, and lined with gay \"azulejos.\" The\nkitchen is large and spacious, with a curious roof, supported by a single\npillar in the middle. Over the president's chair, in the Sala Capitular, is\nthe original portrait of Don Miguel Ma\u00f1ara, by his friend Vald\u00e9s Leal, and,\nat the side, a cast taken of his face after death, presented to the\nconfraternity by Vicentelo de Leca. Both have the same expression of\ndignity and austerity, mingled with tenderness, especially about the mouth;\nand the features have a strong resemblance to those of the great Cond\u00e9. He\ndied on May 19th, 1679, amidst the tears of the whole city, being only\nfifty-three years of age: but a nature such as his could not last long. A\nvery interesting collection of his letters is still shown in the hospital,\nand his life has been lately admirably translated into French by M. Antoine\nde Latour.\n\nThe \"Sacr\u00e9 Coeur\" have established themselves lately in Seville, through\nthe kindness of the Marquesa de V----, and are about to open a ladies'\nschool--which is very much needed--on the site of a disused Franciscan\nconvent. The archbishop has given them the large church adjoining the\nconvent; and it was almost comical to see the three or four charming\nsisters, who are beginning this most useful and charitable work, singing\ntheir benediction _alone_ in the vast chancel, until the building can\nbe got ready for the reception of their pupils.\n\n{604}\n\nAnother convent visited by the ladies of the party was that of Sta. Ines,\nwhich stands in a narrow street near the church of St. Felipe Neri. The\ngreat treasure of this convent is the body of _Sta. Maria Coronel_,\nwhich remains as fresh and as life-like as if she had died but yesterday.\nHer history is a tragical one. Pedro the Cruel, falling madly in love with\nher great beauty, condemned her husband, who was governor of the Balearic\nIslands, to an ignominious death; but then, with a refinement of cruelty,\npromised his pardon to his wife on condition that she would yield to his\npassion. Maria Coronel, preferring death to dishonor, permitted the\nexecution of her husband, and fled for refuge to this convent, where the\nking, violating all rights, human and divine, pursued her. One night he\npenetrated into her cell. Maria, seeing no other mode of escape, seized the\nlamp which burnt on the table before her, and poured the boiling oil over\nher face, thus destroying her beauty for ever. The king, enraged and\ndisappointed, relinquished his suit; and the poor lady lived and died in\nthe convent. In the library of the university is an ancient MS. describing\nPedro the Cruel as \"tall, fair, good-looking, and full of spirit, valor,\nand talent!\" but his execrable deeds speak for themselves. The curious\nthing is, that the marks of the boiling oil are as clearly seen on Maria\nCoronel's face now as on the day when the heroic deed was committed. The\nsisters of this convent are dressed in blue, with a long black veil, and\ntheir cloisters contain some very curious pictures and relics.\n\nThe most interesting visit, however, paid by one of the party in Seville,\nwas to the strictly enclosed convent of Sta. Teresa, to enter which the\nEnglish lady had obtained special papal permission. Of the sorrows and\nperils which St. Theresa experienced in founding this house, she herself\nspeaks in writing to her niece, Mary of Ocampo: \"I assure you that of all\nthe persecutions we have had to endure, none can bear the least comparison\nwith what we have suffered at Seville.\" [Footnote 185]\n\n    [Footnote 185: For both this and other quotations regarding St.\n    Theresa's foundations, the writer is indebted to the charming life of\n    the saint published by Hurst & Blackett in 1865, and which, from its\n    wonderful truth and accuracy, is a perfect handbook to anyone visiting\n    the Carmelite convents of Spain. She trusts that its author will\n    forgive her for having, often unintentionally, used her actual\n    expressions in speaking of places and of things, from the impossibility\n    of their being described by an eye-witness in any other manner.]\n\nSuffering from violent fever, calumniated by one of her own postulants,\ndenounced to the inquisition, persecuted incessantly by the fathers of the\nmitigated rule, with no prospect of buying a house, and no money for the\npurchase, the saint could yet find courage to add; \"Notwithstanding all\nthese evils, my heart is filled with joy. What blessed things are peace of\nconscience and liberty of soul!\" It reminds one of another occasion, when\nit was necessary to begin a foundation which was to cost a great, deal of\nmoney, and the saint had but twopence-halfpenny. \"Never mind,\" she replied\ncourageously, \"twopence halfpenny and Theresa are nothing; but\ntwopence-halfpenny and God are everything!\" And the work was accomplished.\nIn the case of the Seville house her patience and faith met with a like\nreward. On the Feast of the Ascension, 1576, the blessed sacrament was\nplaced in the chapel of the new convent by the archbishop himself,\naccompanied by all his clergy, who wished to make public amends to St.\nTheresa and her nuns for the persecutions they had endured; and when\nTheresa knelt to ask for his pastoral benediction, the archbishop, in the\npresence of all the people, knelt to ask for hers in return, thus\ntestifying to the high estimation in which he held both her and her work.\n\nIt was this convent, untouched since those days of trial, which our\nvisitors now entered. There are twenty two sisters, of whom three are\nnovices, and their rule is maintained in all its primitive severity. They\nkeep a perpetual fast, living chiefly on the dried \"cabala,\" or stockfish,\nof the country, and only on festivals and at Easter tide allowing\nthemselves eggs and milk.\n\n{605}\n\nThey have no beds, only a hard mattress, stuffed with straw; this, with an\niron lamp, a pitcher of water, a crucifix, and a discipline, constitutes\nthe only furniture of each cell, all of which are alike. One or two common\nprints were pasted on the walls, and over the doors hung various little\nejaculations: \"Jesu, superabundo gaudio;\" \"O crux! ave, spes unica!\"\n\"Domine, quid me vis facere?\" or else a little card in Spanish, like the\nfollowing, which the English lady carried off with her as a memorial:\n\n      Aplaca, mi Dios, tu ira,\n      Tu justicia y tu rigor.\n      Por los ruegos de Maria,\n      Misericordia, Se\u00f1or!\n  Santo Dios, Santo fuerte, Santo inmortal,\n    Liberanos, Senor, de todo mal.\n\nAt the refectory, each sister has an earthenware plate and jug, with a\nwooden cover, an earthenware salt-cellar, and a wooden spoon. Opposite the\nplace of the superior is a skull, the only distinction. They are allowed no\nlinen except in sickness, and wear only a brown mantle and white serge\nscapular, with a black veil, which covers them from head to foot. They are\nrarely allowed to walk in the garden, or to go out in the corridor in the\nsun to warm themselves. Their house is like a cellar, cold and damp; and\nthey have no fires. Even at recreation they are not allowed to sit, except\non the floor; and silence is rigidly observed, except for two hours during\nthe day. They have only five hours sleep, not going to bed till half-past\neleven, on account of the office. At eleven, one of the novices seizes the\nwooden clapper, (or crecella,) which she strikes three times, pronouncing\nthe words: \"Praise be to our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the Blessed Virgin\nMary, his Mother; my sisters, let us go to matins to glorify our Lord.\"\nThen they go to the choir, singing the Miserere. They are called again in\nthe same manner at half-past four by a sister who chaunts a verse in the\nPsalms. At night a sentence is pronounced aloud, to serve as meditation. It\nis generally this:\n\n  My sisters, think of this:\n  a little suffering,\n  and then an eternal recompense.\n\nThey see absolutely _no one_, receiving the holy communion through a\nslit in the wall. The English lady was the first person they had seen face\nto face, or with lifted veils, for twelve years. They play the organ of the\nchapel, which is a public one, though they themselves are entirely\ninvisible; and they are not even allowed to see the altar, which is\nconcealed by a heavy black curtain drawn across the grating looking into\nthe church. They have an image of their great foundress, the size of life,\ndressed in the habit of the order, and to her they go night and morning and\nsalute her, as to a mother. Their convent is rich in relics, beautiful\npictures, and crucifixes, brought in by different religious, especially the\nDuchesse de Bega, who became a Carmelite about fifty years ago. But their\nchief treasure is an original picture of St. Theresa, for which she sat by\ncommand of the archbishop, and which has lately been photographed for the\nDuc de Montpensier. It is a very striking and beautiful face, but quite\ndifferent from the conventional representations of the saint. When it was\nfinished, she looked at it, and exclaimed naively: \"I did not know I was\ngrown so old or so ugly!\" There is also in this sacristy a very beautiful\nMorales of the \"Virgin and a Dead Christ,\" and a curious portrait of Padre\nGarcia, the saint's confessor. Up-stairs, in her own cell, they have her\ncloak and shoes, and the glass out of which she drank in her last illness.\nThe stranger was courteously made to drink out of it also, and then to put\non the saint's cloak, in which she was told \"to kneel and pray for her\nheart's desire, and it would be granted to her.\"\n\n{606}\n\nBut the most interesting thing in the convent is the collection of MSS.\nThey have the whole of the \"Interior Mansion,\" written in her own firm and\nbeautiful handwriting, with scarcely an erasure; besides quantities of her\nletters and answers from St. John of the Cross, from St. John of Avila,\nfrom Padre Garcia, and a multitude of others. The superior is elected every\nthree years, and the same one cannot be reelected till three years have\nelapsed. They require a \"dot\" of 8000 reals, or about a hundred pounds; but\ntheir number is full, and several candidates are now waiting their turn for\nadmission. The government has taken what little property they once had and\ngives them at the rate of a peseta (two reals) a day, so that, poor as\ntheir food is, they are often on the verge of starvation.\n\nIt was with a feeling almost of relief that the English lady found herself\nonce more in the sunshine outside these gloomy walls; yet those who lived\nwithin them seemed cheerful and happy, and able to realize in the fullest\ndegree, without any external aid, those mysteries of divine love and that\nbeauty of holiness which, to our weaker faith, would seem impossible when\ndeprived of all sight of our Lord in his tabernacle or in his glorious\ncreations. We are tempted to ask, why it is that convents of this nature\nare so repugnant to English taste? Every one is ready to appreciate those\nof the sisters of charity. People talk of their good deeds, of the blessing\nthey are in the hospitals, of the advantages of united work, etc. etc.; but\nas for the enclosed orders, \"They wish they were all abolished.\" \"What is\nthe good of a set of women shutting themselves up and _doing\nnothing_?\" Reader, _do_ they \"do nothing\"? We will not speak of the\nschools; of the evening classes for working women; of the preparations for\nfirst communions and confirmations; of the retreats within their sheltering\nwalls for those of us who, wearied with this world's toil and bustle, wish\nto pause now and then and gain breath for the daily fight, and take stock,\nas it were, of our state before God. These and other works like these, form\nalmost invariably a very important portion of the daily occupation of the\ncloistered orders. But we will dismiss the thoughts of any external work,\nand come to the highest and noblest part of their vocation. What is it that\nis to \"move mountains\"? What is it that, over and over again in Holy\nScripture, has saved individuals, and cities, and nations? Is it not united\nintercessory prayer? Is it nothing to us, in the whirl and turmoil of this\nwork-a-day life, that holy hands should ever be lifted up for us to the\nGreat Intercessor? Is there no _reparation_ needed for the sins, and\nthe follies, and the insults to the majesty of God, and to his sacraments,\nand to his Mother, which are ever going on in this our native country? Does\nit not touch the most indifferent among us to think of our self-indulgence\nbeing, as it were, atoned for by their self-denial?--our pampered appetites\nby their fasts and vigils? It is true that our present habits of life and\nthought lead to an obvious want of sympathy with such an existence. It has\nno public results on which we can look complacently, or which can be\nparaded boastfully. Everything seems waste which is not visible; and all is\ndisappointment which is not obvious success. It is supernatural principles\nespecially which are at a discount in modern days! Surely the time will\ncome when we shall judge these things very differently; when our eyes will\nbe opened like the eyes of the prophet's servant; and we shall see from\nwhat miseries, from what sorrows we and our country have been preserved by\nlives like these, which save our Sodom, and avert God's righteous anger\nfrom his people. [Footnote 186]\n\n    [Footnote 186: In a simple but touching French biography of a young\n    English lady who lately died in the convent of the \"Poor Clares\" at\n    Amiens, the writer's idea is far more beautifully expressed: \"A cette\n    heure de la nuit, peut-\u00e8tre qu'une jenne fille du monde, martyre (sans\n    couronne) de ses lois et de ses exigences, rentre chez elle, \u00e9puls\u00e9e\n    d'emotions et de fatigues. En longeant le mur du monast\u00e8re et en\n    entendant le son de la cloche qui appelle les recluses volontaires \u00e0 la\n    pri\u00e8re elle se sera adress\u00e9e cette question: 'A quoi servent done les\n    religieuses?' Je vais vous le dire: \u00e0 _expier_. Apr\u00e8s cette nuit\n    de plaisir que vous venez de passer au th\u00e9atre ou au bal, viendra une\n    autre nuit--nuit d'angoisses et de supr\u00e9me douleur. Vous \u00e9tes la\n    \u00e9tendue sur votre couche de mort en face de l'\u00e9ternit\u00e9 ou vous allez\n    entrer seule, et sans appui. Peut-\u00e9tre vous n'osez, ou vous ne pouvez\n    prier; mals quelqu'un a pri\u00e9 pour vous, et faisant violence au ciel, a\n    obtenu ce que vous n'etiez pas digne d'esp\u00e9rer. _Voila d quoi servent\n    les religieuses._\"]\n\n{607}\n\nOne more curious establishment was visited by our party at Seville before\ntheir departure, and that was the cigar manufactory, an enormous government\nestablishment, occupying an immense yellow building, which looks like a\npalace, and employing 1,000 men and 5,000 women. The rapidity with which\ncigars are turned out by those women's fingers is not the least astonishing\npart. The workers are almost all young, and some very beautiful. They take\noff their gowns and their crinolines as soon as they come in, hanging them\nup in a long gallery, and take the flowers out of their hair and put them\nin water, so that they may be fresh when they come out; and then work away\nin their petticoats with wonderful zeal and good humor the whole day long.\nThe government makes 90,000,000 reals a year from the profits of this\nestablishment, though the dearest cigar made costs but twopence!\n\nAnd now the sad time came for our travellers to leave Seville. In fact, the\nexorbitant prices of everything at the hotel made a longer stay impossible,\nthough it was difficult to say what it was that they paid for: certainly\n_not food_; for, excepting the chocolate and bread, which are\ninvariably good throughout Spain, the dinners were uneatable, the oil\nrancid, the eggs stale; even \"el cocido,\" the popular dish, was composed of\nindescribable articles, and of kids which seemed to have died a natural\ndeath. One of the party, a Belgian, exclaimed when her first dish of this\nso-called meat was given her at Easter: \"Vraiment, je crois que nous autres\nnous n'avons pas tant perdu pendant le Car\u00eame!\" An establishment has lately\nbeen started by an enterprising peasant to sell milk fresh from the cow, a\ngreat luxury in Spain, where goat's milk is the universal substitute; and\nfour very pretty Alderneys are kept, stall-fed, in a nice little dairy, \"\u00e0\nl'Anglaise,\" at one corner of the principal square, which is both clean and\ntempting to strangers. At every corner of the streets, water, in cool,\nporous jars, is offered to the passers by, mixed with a sugary substance\nlooking like what is used by confectioners for \"meringues,\" but which melts\nin the water and leaves no trace. This is the universal beverage of every\nclass in Spain.\n\nThere is little to tempt foreigners in the shops of Seville, and, with the\nexception of photographs and fans, there is nothing to buy which has any\nparticular character or \"chique\" about it. The fans are beautiful, and\nform, in fact, one of the staple trades of the place; there is also a sweet\nkind of incense manufactured of flowers, mixed with resinous gums, which\nresembles that made at Damascus. But the ordinary contents of the shops\nlook like the sweepings-out of all the \"quincaillerie\" of the Faubourg St.\nDenis.\n\nIt was on a more lovely evening than usual that our travellers went, for\nthe last time, to that glorious cathedral. The sorrow was even greater than\nwhat they had felt the year before in leaving St. Peter's: for Rome one\nlives in hopes of seeing again; Seville, in all human probability, never!\nThe services were over, but the usual proportion of veiled figures knelt on\nthe marble pavement, on which the light from those beautiful painted\nwindows threw gorgeous colors. Never had that magnificent temple appeared\nmore solemn or more worthy of its purpose; one realized as one had never\ndone before one's own littleness and God's ineffable greatness, mercy, and\nlove. Still they lingered, when the inexorable courier came to remind them\nthat the train was on the point of starting, and with a last prayer, which\nwas more like a sob, our travellers left the sacred building. At the\nstation all their kind Seville friends had assembled to bid them once more\ngood-by, and to re-echo kind hopes of a speedy return; and then the train\nstarted, and the last gleam of sunshine died out on the tower of the\nGiralda.\n\n------\n\n{608}\n\n        Original.\n\n        Il Duomo\n\n\n      A Vision.\n\n    IL DUOMO, being interpreted, signifies \"The Cathedral,\" and the subject\n    of the following poem is the picturesque and beautiful cathedral of\n    Milan. This splendid building is adorned externally by nearly five\n    thousand white marble statues, life size, of knights, martyrs, monks,\n    etc. etc., the roof being ornamented also externally with sculptured\n    buds and flowers in great profusion. Upward of fifty massive pillars\n    support the roof internally, and over the grand altar is suspended a\n    casket containing a nail from the true cross, and other relics. On the\n    topmost pinnacle of the cathedral stands, serene and splendid, a\n    glittering, gilded statue of the Madonna, who, with her eighteen feet\n    of stature, towers nobly above her magnificent body-guard of saints,\n    knights, and martyrs.\n\n\n  Faint with the sunny splendors of the king of light,\n  Nature disrobes, and from her wearied shoulders casts\n  The oppressive mantle of the burning day;\n  Flings to the glowing west her regal diadem of fire;\n  Upon her drooping brow all gladly binds\n  The calm and holy moon;\n  And with a zone of stars loops round her languid form\n  The cool sweet robe of night:\n  The placid moonbeams, o'er that stately fane,\n  Pour the rich affluence of their silvery light,\n  And with a chaste soft lustre, tint\n  The graceful slender spires,\n  The marble phalanx of the white-robed saints,\n  The silent knights, the multitudinous flowers,\n  The mother of our Lord,\n  And all the wonders of that wondrous roof!\n  With hushed and reverent step, through the wide doors I passed!\n  Passed from the outer splendors to the inner mystic gloom\n  Of the majestic pile;\n  Through the emblazoned windows streams the tempered light,\n  Showing dimly forth the shrines of holy men,\n  The sacred emblems, and the fifty marvellous pillars,\n  Dumb stony giants, who, with patient strength,\n  Bear up the ponderous roof;\n  Upon the altar steps I bend me down, and, awe-struck, rest.\n  Suddenly, through the deep stillness\n  Breathed a solemn sound, as sweet as mournful;\n  A hand unseen ran o'er the organ's keys,\n  And o'er the broad, dark air the harmonious waves\n  Rolled grandly on!\n  Entranced I heard, and soon the subtle strains\n  Distilled within my soul a deep oblivion\n  Of things terrestrial.\n\n{609}\n\n  A vision came upon me, and I saw\n  The darkness melt, the shades opaque dissolve,\n  And the dull, sombre midnight change\n  To day bright lustre!\n  With soft and lambent flame the fifty columns glowed\n  From base to branching head,\n  And with supernal light pierced the thick denseness\n  Of the arched roof:\n  And I saw the innumerable leaves,\n  The sculptured garlands of fair buds and flowers--\n  Strewn with such lavish hand o'er all that broad parterre--\n  With life-renewing tints endowed:\n  The sacred vessels on the altar ranged,\n  The pious gifts of ages passed away,\n  And all the saintly relics of that holy place\n  Glittered with new effulgence!\n  Mine unused eyes drank in amazed the dazzling scene,\n  And now upon mine ears arose the clang of music,\n  And the sound of men rejoicing!\n  From their huge stanchions 'scaped the massy doors,\n  And through the enfranchised portal paced\n  A wondrous train!\n  A thousand mail\u00e8d knights, the Duomo's guards,\n  Strode proudly in!\n  As when in life they marched, so came they now;\n  No marble corslets still their lofty hearts,\n  Rich suits of Milan steel enclasp them round,\n  Through the gold helmets' bars their dark eyes flash,\n  Bright banners wave above them, and their hands\n  Clasp as of old the trenchant blade!\n  A stately white-robed troop, the Duomo's priests,\n  The pageant swells.\n  No rigid garb of stone impedes their solemn steps;\n  Girt round with high, ecclesial pomp,\n  The sacred aisles they pace,\n  The jewelled crosiers grasp, the censers swing,\n  And, as of yore, the glad \"Hosannas\" raise!\n  Again the clash of steel, the armed tread,\n  The banners' silken folds--\n  And twice five hundred warriors\n  Pass the gaping doors!\n  Hark! in the air, a choir angelic sings:\n\n    Wake, jubilant harps! peal, ye clarions of silver!\n    Swell, ye loud organs! for mighty's the theme!\n    Bend lowly the knee, ye saints, knights, and martyrs,\n    With offerings of gold let the high altar gleam!\n    Fill the gemmed censers with myrrh and with amber,\n    Deck the rich shrines with a splendor ne'er seen,\n    Raise high the song, the loud hymn of devotion,\n    Give homage to Mary, our lady, our queen!\n\n{610}\n\n  Loud glorias peal, and with reverberant blast,\n  Throughout the illumined space,\n  The silver trumpets clang!\n  Doffed is the casque, the mitred head bent low,\n  The song subsides, and on that marvellous crowd\n  An awful silence dwells!\n  A Presence is among them--\n  A Being gracious as resplendent.\n  And the resuscitate host is filled with holy terror!\n  She smiles benignly on the kneeling throng,\n  And melts with heavenly look the still, deep fear!\n  Again the hymn breaks forth,\n  With heavenly, earthly voices join,\n  Monks, warriors, martyrs swell the raptured strain!\n\n    Lo! where she comes, all meek, yet all noble,\n    The glory celestial encircling her brows.\n    Fall prostrate, ye thousands, all lowly adore her;\n    Bare your swords, valiant knights, yet once make your vows;\n    Chant paeans, ye priests; let the harmonies roll\n    Till the gorgeous temple resounds to its veil.\n    Through our midst she is moving, the chosen, the holy:\n    Hail, Mary, Madonna, blest Virgin, all hail!\n\n  The voices ceased, the echoes died away,\n  The mighty pillars throbbed no more with flame;\n  The roof closed in, the pageant vanished,\n  And the darkness swathed once more\n  The sombre nave.\n  Still on the air the organ's notes float sad and wailing,\n  Still through the storied windows streams the moon's soft light,\n  Still rest the things of earth;\n  The mute Colossi yet bear up\n  The vaulted roof;\n  The shrines still glimmer in the dim night air,\n  The mystic glories of my vision\n  Gone!\n\n      Arthur Matthison.\n\n------\n\n{611}\n\n  Translated from Revue des Questions Historiques.\n\n  Americus Vespucius and Christopher Columbus.\n\n  The True Origin of the Name of America.\n\n\n  I.\n\nFor three centuries, the world has regarded it as an historical fact that\nChristopher Columbus, after enduring many wrongs at the hands of ungrateful\nSpain, had the unspeakable mortification of seeing a usurper, screened\nbehind public injustice, wrest from him not only the honor of bestowing his\nname on the world he had discovered, but the reward of glory, and the\nsupreme consolation of his last days. Fortunately this belief is erroneous.\nNeither was Americus Vespucius a despoiler, nor was Columbus the victim of\nso poignant an affront. It is true that the great navigator became after\ndeath the subject of shameful misapprehensions; but his countrymen should\nbe held as free from the responsibility of this injustice as Columbus was\nfree from suspicion or presentiment of coming evil. The facts are fully\nexplained by the illustrious Prussian _savant_, who has consecrated\nhis glorious career in great part to the study of the New World. [Footnote\n187]\n\n    [Footnote 187: M. Alexander Von Humboldt, Critical Examination of the\n    History and Geography of the New World. Vols. iii. and iv. are entirely\n    devoted to an examination of this problem. We merely offer here an\n    abstract of this work, which is little known, and, while exceedingly\n    interesting, demands a very attentive perusal. See also Washington\n    Irving, History of Christopher Columbus, vol. iv. app. 9, Americus\n    Vespucius.]\n\nAmericus or Alberic Vespucius, (Amerigo Vespucci,) born at Florence, March\n9th, 1451, of an important family, was educated by his uncle, Giorgio\nAntonio Vespucci, a Dominican monk, and one of the honorable personages\nconnected with the _Renaissance_. His fellow-student was Ren\u00e9 de\nVaud\u00e9mont, who, later in life, after gloriously defending his duchy of\nLorraine against Charles the Bold, exercised in peace a noble patronage of\nscience and letters.\n\nAmericus, when about forty years of age, left Italy for Spain, and entered\nthe flourishing commercial house founded at Seville by his countrymen the\nBerardi. At this period a large number of Italians established themselves\nin Spain, in Portugal, and even in England. Some became promoters of the\ncommerce fed by Portuguese discoveries, (the Marchioni at Lisbon;) others\n(Cadomosto, the Corte reali) traced out a route along the African coast or\nexplored the icy barrier that guards the north-west passage; while others\nagain, (Christopher Columbus, John and Sebastian Cabot,) crossed the\nAtlantic ocean, bringing back a wondrous discovery. This was one of the\nglories of Italy, so rich in all glory during the fifteenth century.\n\nAt first a clerk, and in 1496 the general accountant of the Berardi,\nAmericus Vespucius listened with passionate interest to narrations uttered\nby the lips of Christopher Columbus himself. He studied astronomy and the\nscience of navigation, and made four voyages; the first two under\nprotection of the Spanish flag, the last two under that of Portugal.\n\nHe naturally drew up an account of these expeditions. Like Columbus he\nrelated his foreign experiences to friends and patrons; first, in three\nsuccessive letters, describing his first three voyages, written to the\nFlorentine, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici; and later, after his\nfourth expedition, in a single narrative, containing a _r\u00e9sum\u00e9_ of all\nhis travels, addressed simultaneously, but not in the same form, to another\ncountryman, the gonfalonniere Piero Soderini, and to the Duke of Lorraine,\nRen\u00e9 II. This last was similar in tenor to a narrative sent by him a short\ntime before to Ferdinand the Catholic.\n\n{612}\n\nThese four voyages, so soon made famous, are extracts, varied by Vespucius\naccording to the correspondents for whom they were destined. He drew them\nfrom a complete and detailed account, written according \"to the weakness of\nhis puny talent,\" [Footnote 188] as his overstrained modesty expresses it;\na work executed with assiduous care, \"in order that coming generations\nmight remember him,\" but which he never published. It has not yet been\nbrought to light.\n\n    [Footnote 188: \"Juxta ingenioli mel tenuitatem.\" Crit. Exam, vol. iv.\n    p. 170, n. 1.]\n\nIt is, then, only by those of his printed letters that have come down to\nus--and they are not all preserved--that we know the dates and\ncircumstances of his voyages.\n\nIn the first voyage, which took place between May 20th, 1497, and October\n15th, 1499, he recognized the coasts of Surinam and of Paria, at the mouth\nof the Orinoco. In the second, dated from May 6th, 1499, to September 8th,\n1500, he crossed the equator and saw Cape St. Augustine off Brazil; and\nfrom there sailed north to Paria and Hispaniola. The dates of these two\nexpeditions contradict each other; for, according to them, his second\nvoyage must have begun five months before the first ended. Moreover, the\ndate 1497 for the beginning of the first voyage is inadmissible. The\nregisters of the Spanish administration (La Casa de Contratacion at\nSeville) prove that, from April, 1497, to May, 1498, Americus Vespucius was\ndetained at Seville and San Lucar, occupied with preparations for the third\nvoyage of Christopher Columbus. [Footnote 189]\n\n    [Footnote 189: Crit. Exam. vol. iv. pp. 267, 268. This third voyage\n    took place from May 30th. 1498, to November 25th, 1500.]\n\nFor this reason the Florentine has been accused of fabricating this\npretended voyage by disguising a few incidents drawn from the second; and\nof having antedated his departure from Spain, in order at one stroke to\nearn the credit of first touching terra firma at Paria, and deprive\nChristopher Columbus of that honor. We shall discuss this question later.\n\nIt is a singular fact that, without attributing to himself any share in the\ncommand, and even while distinctly stating that he was there under orders\n\"to aid in making discoveries,\" [Footnote 190] he does not name the chiefs\nunder whose authority he was placed.\n\n    [Footnote 190: M. Von Humboldt supposes him to have been the astronomer\n    of the expedition. Crit. Exam, vol. iv. p. 189, and following. In\n    several instances the other mariners failed to mention the name of\n    their captains.]\n\nBut, in spite of this reticence, we gather from the deposition of Alonzo de\nHojeda in the lawsuit brought against the crown by the son of Columbus in\n1508, that Vespucius served on the squadron of Hojeda. [Footnote 191]\n\n    [Footnote 191: He states that on this voyage (May 20th, 1499, to June,\n    1500) he took with him Juan de la Cosa, pilot, Morigo Vespuche, and\n    other pilots. (Crit. Ex; vol. iv. p. 188.)]\n\nA comparison between the narratives left by both leads to the conclusion\nthat the first voyage of Americus, so inaccurately dated, must be\nidentified with that of Alonzo. [Footnote 192]\n\n    [Footnote 192: Crit. Exam. vol. iv. pp. 195-200.]\n\nBut, instead of accompanying the latter during the entire expedition,\nVespucius, after exploring the coast of Paria with him, left him at\nHispaniola at the end five months. Then, having been absent only from May\n5th to October 15th, 1499, he must have returned to Spain in time to embark\nin the December of that year with the expedition Vicente Yanez Pinzon.\n[Footnote 193]\n\n    [Footnote 193: Crit. Exam. vol. iv. p. 290.]\n\nThis expedition, which ended in September, 1500 agrees in a host of details\nwith the second voyage of Vespucius. [Footnote 194]\n\n    [Footnote 194: Crit. Exam. vol. iv. pp. 293-316; vol. v. pp. 61-69,\n    212-213. M. Von Humboldt shows that the circumstances of each of the\n    two first voyages of Vespucius bear too distinctive a character to\n    render admissible the idea that they were but one voyage, that is, the\n    voyage which the Florentine is accused of calling the second, while its\n    elements, divided by him with more or less art, furnished fallaciously\n    the material for a first supposed voyage, bearing the false date of\n    1497. The first voyage was confined entirely in the northern\n    hemisphere, the second extended to southern regions.]\n\n{613}\n\nThese enterprises aroused the attention of the King of Portugal, Emmanuel\nle Fortune, in whose service our traveller let himself be enrolled. He\njoined a squadron (May, 1501, to Sept. 1501) sent to reconnoitre the land\nof Santa Cruz, or Brazil, discovered April 22d, 1500, by the Portuguese\nAdmiral Alvarez Cabral, who, while on his way to the Cape of Good Hope and\nthe East-Indies, had been dragged westward by winds and currents. In this\nvoyage Americus Vespucius passed the equator by a distance which he values\nat 52\u00b0. On this he boasts of having traversed one fourth of the world (40\u00b0\nlat. north of Lisbon to the equator 50\u00b0 lat. south; total 90\u00b0, or the\nquarter of a meridian.) He gives a brilliant description of the\ninhabitants, of natural features in that region, and of southern\nconstellations. The leader of this expedition is not known. One remarkable\nfact, the encounter at Cape Verd with the vessels of Alvarez Cabral,\nreturning from Malabar to Lisbon, and the details which Vespucius received\nfrom a member of that expedition concerning the admiral's adventures in the\nIndies, and transmitted to Pierfrancesco de' Medici, [Footnote 195] prove\nthe habitual veracity of the Florentine navigator, confirmed and attested\nin this instance by Portuguese documents. [Footnote 196]\n\n    [Footnote 195: Letter dated at Cape Verd, June 4th, 1501.]\n\n    [Footnote 196: Crit. Exam. vol. v. pp. 69-107 and 213-215.]\n\nThe fourth voyage, (June, 1503, to June, 1504,) made probably under the\ndirection of Gonzalo Coelho, had an object which Americus extols beforehand\nwithout clearly explaining it: \"I shall do many things,\" he writes to\nMedicis, \"for the glory of God, the good of my country, and the perpetual\ncommemoration of my name.\" It appears that the king of Portugal wished to\ndiscover a passage to the Indies further south than Brazil; and, if it be\ntrue that Vespucius had already penetrated to the fiftieth degree of\nsouthern latitude, he must have just missed giving his name to the straits,\nwhose discovery twenty years later immortalized Magellan. But results\ndisappointed these cherished hopes and anticipations. The incapacity of the\ncommander-in-chief, whose name the narrator conceals while roundly abusing\nhis presumption and folly, rendered it disastrous.\n\nEmmanuel, occupied at that period with grand projects of conquest in\nOriental India, abandoned all attempts directed to the West. Vespucius on\nhis side, disgusted with the barren service of Portugal, lent ear to King\nFerdinand's solicitations, and, with a facile change of patron not without\nprecedent among his contemporaries, returned to Castile. We find him\nleaving Seville for Valladolid, where the court was assembled, bearing an\nintroduction to Diego, son of Christopher Columbus, from the admiral\nhimself. Columbus recommends him (February 5th, 1505) as a man \"to whom\nfortune has been adverse, and who has not enjoyed the legitimate fruit of\nhis labors.\"\n\nHe received a commission to equip a squadron destined to seek a western\nroute to the \"land of spices.\" But after two years of preparation,\nFerdinand, wearied with dissensions with his son-in-law Philippe le Beau,\nabandoned the design. At all events, on the 2d of March, 1508, he appointed\nAmericus Vespucius to be pilot-in-chief (_piloto mayor_) at Seville,\nwith a salary of fifty thousand maravedis, with these duties: first, to\nmake sure that the pilots understood the use of astrolabe and quadrant;\nsecond, to make out a table of positions, to bear the name of _Padron\nreal,_ and serve the sole purpose of fixing maritime routes; third, to\noblige pilots after each voyage to explain, in the presence of the officers\nof _La Casa de Contratacion_ and of the _piloto mayor_, the exact\nposition of the newly discovered lands, and also any corrections in the\nbearings of coasts, in order that all necessary changes might be recorded\nin the _Padron real_.[Footnote 197]\n\n    [Footnote 197: Crit. Exam. vol. v. pp. 167, 168.]\n\nIt was while filling this eminent position that Americus Vespucius died at\nSeville, on the 22d of February, 1512, aged sixty-one years, without having\nmade another voyage.\n\n{614}\n\n  II.\n\nThus lived Americus Vespucius, joining actively and honorably for the last\ntwenty years of his life in the gigantic labors by which the mariners of\nCastile and Portugal wrenched one by one her secrets from the sea.\n\nValued and sought by kings as well as by the most illustrious men, a little\nvain himself, proud of the early education that had raised him above the\ngenerality of navigators, with a mind rather commonplace than brilliant,\nnowhere does he give evidence in his narratives of a dishonest leaning\ntoward usurpation; nor does a single act accuse him of such desires.\n\nAnd yet usurpation there was. Let us discover its source and the manner of\nits consummation.\n\nThe Italian friends with whom Americus was in correspondence probably took\nupon themselves to publish his letters. The first one put in print was the\nletter to Pierfrancesco de' Medici, containing an account of his third\nvoyage. Rich in curious details, and in vivid pictures of habits and\nmanners, this little work was the more striking to imaginations already\noverwrought, that the narrator's explorations had embraced vast coast\nregions of southern latitudes. [Footnote 198]\n\n    [Footnote 198: The fact that these discoveries of Americus had taken\n    place in southern regions added to their interest. Many persons still\n    persisted in the error of ancient cosmography, that the two temperate\n    zones, north and south of the equator, were alone habitable, and could\n    never hold communication with each other because of the burning\n    atmosphere of the torrid zone. We find a ludicrous and remarkable\n    specimen of this blind spirit of conservatism in a certain Zachariah\n    Sillus, who writes at Paris in 1515, that is to say, twenty-three years\n    after the first voyage of Christopher Columbus and seventeen years\n    after Vasco de Gama's expedition to the Indies: \"Between the torrid\n    zone and the glacial zones, two zones only are habitable. By whom is\n    the one corresponding to our own inhabited? Macrobius affirms it; no\n    one has ever known, no one ever will know. For the torrid zone placed\n    between them interdicts all intercourse between the men of these two\n    regions. The superior zone, then, only is inhabited, I mean the one\n    lying between the northern and equatorial regions.\" (Biblioth\u00e8que\n    Magazine, No. 16169.) Others understood no better the antipodes, the\n    men of the opposite hemisphere standing head downward. The voyages of\n    Vespucius contributed largely toward the solution of these problems.]\n\nThe first publication of this third voyage appears to have been made in\nItaly. The Latin language served it for a passport beyond the Alps, and\nfurnished the type for numerous French and German translations. The first\nLatin edition known is without date, and bears the name of the publisher\nLambert, in Paris. Afterward came those of Otmar, in Augsburg, 1504,\npublished previously under the title of _Mundus Nova_, an expression\nused by Americus himself; and those of Strasburg, published by Hupfuff, in\n1505; those of Leipzig, 1506.\n\nSoon the Italians with their _g\u00e9nie d'ensemble_ gather together into\never-increasing collections various narratives published separately. First\nappeared the \"Book of all the Expeditions of the King of Spain among the\nnewly discovered Islands and Mainlands,\" (printed in Venice, 1504, in\nquarto,) by Albertine Vercellese di Lisona. This collection comprises only\nthe first three voyages of Christopher Columbus, with those of Pietro\nAlonzo, and of Pinzon. Three years later, the great collection of Vicenzo\nabsorbs all these, adding to the voyages made by Spaniards those made by\nthe Portuguese, and placing _en vedette_, as we say nowadays, the name\nof Americus Vespucius: _Mondo Novo e Paesi Nuovamente ritrovati da\nAlberico Vespuxio, Florentine_, 1507. The author, who writes\nanonymously, was Alessandro Zorzi.\n\nThis book was also translated into Latin at Milan, 1508; into German by\nJobst Ruchamer, of Nuremberg, 1508; and into French, by Mathurin du\nRedouer, of Paris, without date. Of the French version, several editions\nfollowed each other in rapid succession about the year 1516.\n\nThus popularity became rapidly attached to the name of Americus Vespucius.\nThese collections, disseminated through the learned nations of Europe, gave\nthe Florentine the fame of having traversed a greater extent of newly\ndiscovered country than any other man, and predisposed public opinion to\ngive him all the credit of the essential discovery.\n\n{615}\n\nBut the decisive influence came from a remote corner of the Vosges.\n\nRen\u00e9 II., Duke of Lorraine, the old school companion of Vespucius, shared,\nas has been already said, the elevated tastes natural to princes of the\nRenaissance. He followed with attentive eye the explorations of navigators,\nand favored the progress of geographical science.\n\nAmericus Vespucius addressed to him, as we know, from Lisbon, in 1504, an\naccount or rather an abstract of his four voyages.\n\nThere lived in those days in Lorraine, in the little town of Saint Di\u00e9, a\nlearned bookseller, a native of Fribourg-en-Brisgau, and an ancient student\nin the university of that town. Following a custom of the time, he had, by\na Greek transformation, translated his name from Martin Waldsee Muller to\nMartinus Hylacomylus. [Footnote 199] He prepared an edition of Ptolemaeus.\nThe mathematician of Alexandria, the last exponent of geographical\nknowledge and of cosmography among the ancients, had been successively the\noracle of the immovable middle ages and of the invincible pioneers who\nopened the modern era. The world was never weary of making reprints of his\nwritings, adding in a supplement what antiquity had not known of our globe,\nor as the saying went, of lands outside Ptolemaeus, (_regiones extra\nPtolemaeum._)\n\n    [Footnote 199: Crit. Exam. vol. iv. p. 99 and following. See the\n    positive and sagacious researches which led M. Von Humboldt to discover\n    the true name of Hylacomylus. The passage is of great interest, not\n    only on account of the problem whose solution it presents, but as\n    showing with what persevering ardor the illustrious author devoted\n    himself to the elucidation of the truth.]\n\nBut before entering upon his great work, Hylacomylus published an\nintroduction to the cosmography, and as an addition precious as it was\nnovel, enriched it with the four voyages of Americus Vespucius, under this\ntitle \"Cosmographiae introductio cum qui busdam geometriae ac astronomiae\nprinciplis ad eam rem necessariis. Insuper quatuor Americi Vespucii\nnavigationes.\" He wrote anonymously, revealing his name only with the\nsecond edition in 1509.\n\nFrom whom did he obtain these four voyages, never before printed? No doubt\nfrom the Duke of Lorraine. But he is silent upon that point, limiting\nhimself to the information that they had been translated from Italian into\nFrench and from French into Latin.\n\nHere and there in the nine chapters that compose his work Hylacomylus\nalludes to the discoveries of Americus Vespucius, extolling their extent\nand their scientific importance. \"The torrid zone,\" he says, \"is habitable\nand inhabited. The Golden Chersonesus and Taprobane contain many human\nbeings, as well as a very considerable portion of the country entirely\nunknown until lately, when it was discovered by Americus Vespucius.\"\n\nFurther on, in a more decided manner, after mentioning the seven climates\ndescribed by Ptolemaeus, and named after several remarkable towns,\nmountains, or rivers of the northern hemisphere, Hylacomylus opposes to\nthem six others recently recognized in the southern hemisphere. The names\nof the first five repeat those of the north in symmetrical opposition.\n[Footnote 200] In the sixth, toward the antarctic region and the extremity\nof Africa, he places Zanzibar, discovered shortly before, the islands of\nJava Minor, (Sumatra,) Seula, (Ceylon,) with the fourth part of the world;\n\"and this quarter, since Americus discovered it, we may be allowed to call\nthe land of Americus, or America.\"\n\n    [Footnote 200: \"Pari modo dicendum est de eis quae sunt ultra\n    sequinoctialem ad austrum quorum sex contraria nomina habentia sunt\n    lustrata: et dici possunt antidia Meroes, antidia Alexandrias, antidia\n    Rhodon, antidia Rhomes, (sic,) antidia Borischener, (sic,) a graeca\n    particula antiquae oppositum vel contra denotat.\"-Ch. vii.]\n\nFinally, and it is here that this obscure author decides the question for\nfuture ages, he enumerates the countries comprised in Europe, Asia, and\nAfrica.\n{616}\nHe reminds us that Europe and Asia are the names of two queens, and\ncontinues: \"Now these three portions have been explored to their utmost\nlimits; and another, a fourth, has been discovered by Americus Vespucius,\n(as we shall see later.) Now I see no grounds upon which opposition can be\nmade to naming it America, or the land of Americus, after its discoverer,\nAmericus, a man of sagacious genius, since Europe and Asia owe their names\nto women.\"\n\nTwo series of distichs precede and announce the four navigations. We\nmention them merely for the characteristic enthusiasm that they exhale in\nhonor of the fortunate mariner. He alone who sang the maritime adventures\nof the Trojan hero, says the poet in closing his verses, could worthily\ncelebrate this theme. [Footnote 201]\n\n    [Footnote 201: The poetical part of the Cosmographiae Introductio is by\n    Philesius, (Ringmann,) a friend of the editor.]\n\nThis, then, was the baptism of the new-born world. It was in one of the\nhumblest cities of Lorraine that an unknown bookseller bade Europe and Asia\nhold it with him over the font, inscribing it in the classic family by a\nname thenceforth imperishable.\n\n\n  III.\n\nThis name became quickly famous in the Old World. Its birth in Lorraine was\nan advantage in the beginning. This country was fortunately placed for\nfacilities of intercourse between France and Germany, very near the Rhine,\nalong whose banks were crowded so many famous towns from B\u00e2le to Rotterdam,\nand close to Strasburg, that centre of powerful radiation.\n\nFrom the presses of Grieninger, or Gruninger, issued, in 1509, the second\nedition of the Cosmography, bearing this time the author's name affixed to\nthe dedication. Piquant selections were made from the four voyages of\nAmericus, and many persons, allured by its success, falsely claimed the\npaternity of the book. [Footnote 202] Long after the death of Hylacomylus\nhis work was destined to be reprinted at Venice in 1535 and in 1554. The\nsuffrage of Italy served not a little the popularity of the navigator and\nthe name of America.\n\n    [Footnote 202: Hylacomylus complains of this in a letter to Philesius,\n    dated 1509.]\n\nEverywhere an irresistible and universal concurrence enhanced the renown of\nAmericus Vespucius, as wave after wave bears its tribute to the rising\ntide. From the time of the appearance of that first edition, (1507,) maps\nand globes were printed in Strasburg and sold at low prices, bearing\nindication of the discoveries of Americus Vespucius, with his name.\n[Footnote 203]\n\n    [Footnote 203: Crit. Exam, vol iv. pp. 140-142. Letters of the\n    Benedictine Trithemius, Aug. 12th, 1507. Humboldt shows that this\n    letter is often dated incorrectly 1510. Trithemius makes Vespucius a\n    Spaniard.]\n\nIn 1509, the same year when the second edition of Hylacomylus appeared, an\nanonymous _opvscule_, another product of John Grieninger's active\npress, called, \"Globus mundi declaratio, sive descriptio mundi et totius\norbis terrarum,\" sanctions the proposition of the scholar of Saint-Di\u00e9.\nThis is the first geographical treatise in which the name of America takes\nundisputed possession as the designation of the New World. The phraseology\nin which it is couched is fantastic, and, independently of its\nsignificance, merits a moment's attention.\n\n\"Doctors,\" saith the cosmography \"compare our earth to the human frame as\npossessing all the parts contained in a body. First, the flesh is the earth\nitself; blood corresponds to water, bones to stones, veins to mountains.\nThe head is the East, or Asia; the feet are the West and America lately\ndiscovered. Africa is the right arm, and our own continent of Europe the\nleft.\"\n\nScience in her first essays was sometimes satisfied with very naive\npuerilities, and young America was received under strange auspices. But at\nthat time, perhaps, this was an advantage. The author of the Globus shows\nhimself more rational while undertaking to demonstrate clearly, even to\npersons of small education, the existence of antipodes whose feet are\nopposed ours; and the possibility of life in any portion of the globe,\nbecause the sun shines upon all parts of the earth--problems that disturbed\nmany minds.\n\n{617}\n\nNevertheless, great as is his admiration for Americus Vespucius, and for\n\"the fourth part of the world by him discovered, that island larger than\nEurope whose shores develop westward with relation to Europe and Africa,\"\nthe geographer of Strasburg does not inscribe the name of America on his\nmap. He is content with the appellation of the _New World_. [Footnote\n204] Pierre Apier, in 1520, was the first to enroll the name of America on\na map of the world added to an edition of Solinus. [Footnote 205]\n\n    [Footnote 204: Newe Welt. The indications on this map of the Globus are\n    in German.]\n\n    [Footnote 205: Crit. Exam. vol. iv. p. 255; vol. v. pp. 174, 188.]\n\nThen comes the author who, adding practice to precept, should have\nanticipated others--we mean Hylacomylus.\n\nHis ambition, like that of every cosmographer, was to re-edit the\nmathematician of Alexandria. The magnificent bounty of Ren\u00e9 II. furnished\nthe funds for the preparatory labors and provided for the engraving of\nmaps. But death interrupted the work in 1508 by snatching away its noble\npatron. [Footnote 206]\n\n    [Footnote 206: We find in a treatise of 1511, composed of a tract chart\n    of Europe by Hylacomylus, with a description of the same continent by\n    his friend Philesius, an interesting tribute to the memory of Ren\u00e9 II.\n    Hylacomylus dedicates this map, of which he is very proud, to Duke\n    Antony, Ren\u00e9's son and successor. He observes that the late duke was\n    \"the first among the first of princes to favor the liberal arts, full\n    of the love of letters and of lettered men. We ourselves remember the\n    indulgent ear, the smiling countenance, and the good grace with which\n    he received the general description of the globe, and other monuments\n    of our literary labors offered by us to him.\" This book (Biblio.\n    Magazine, No. 16169) is entitled: Instructio manuductionem praestans in\n    cartam itinerariam Martini Hilacomile, cum luculentiori ipsius Europae\n    enarratione \u00e0 Ringmanno Philesio conscripta. Strasbourg Imprimerie\n    Grieninger, April, 1511.]\n\nIn the language of the editors, two ecclesiastical dignitaries of\nStrasburg, it was aroused from its sleep among the rocks of the Vosges only\nafter six years of neglect. It was published at Strasburg in the year 1513,\nunder the superintendence of Philesius. The maps do not present the name of\nAmericus, nor the body of the work that of Hylacomylus. But, following\nthose belonging to the geography proper of Ptolemaeus, there is a rich\nsupplementary atlas, which represents the geographical state of the world\nin the sixteenth century, and offers us two very curious maps; a map of the\nworld, entitled \"Orbis typus universalis juxta hydrographorum traditionem,\"\nwith the profile of the western mainland and several islands of the\nAntilles and a special map of discoveries, Tabula Terre Nove, loaded with\nnames that mount in a grand scale up to the fortieth degree of south\nlatitude. This place is eminently suited to introduce the name of America,\n[Footnote 207] but we seek it in vain. It was destined to appear in a\nposthumous work of the bookseller of Saint-Di\u00e9.\n\n    [Footnote 207: On the contrary, we find this inscription: _Haec terra\n    cum adjacentibua insulis inventa est per Columbum Januensem ex mandate\n    Regis Castellae._ Elsewhere the preface of the supplement contains\n    this singular phrase _\u00e0 propos_ of the map of the world: \"Charta\n    autem marina quam hydrographiam vocant per admiralem quondam\n    serenissimum _Portugaliae regis Ferdinandi_ caeteros denique\n    lustratores verissimis peragrationibus lustrata.\" (Folio, Imperial\n    Lib., G. 10.) How place Ferdinand on the Portuguese throne then\n    occupied by Emmanuel? Who is this admiral? Remark that the names of\n    locality on the second map are Spanish. This extraordinary confusion of\n    names of kings will serve to explain other errors in after times.]\n\nIn 1522, Laurentius Phrisius, who must not be confounded with Philesius,\npublished a new edition of Ptolemaeus at John Grieninger's in Strasburg.\nHylacomylus was dead; but how could they do better than employ the maps\nprepared by him in his lifetime? \"That we may not seem,\" says Phrisius to\nthe reader, \"to arrogate to ourselves another's merit, know that these maps\nhave been lately prepared by Martin Hylacomylus, dead in Christ, and\nreduced to dimensions smaller than their first form. If they are good, to\nhim then, and not to us, peace and place among the celestial hierarchy, in\nthe bosom of him who separated the edifice of this world by spaces so\nmarvellous. For the remainder that follows, know that it is our own work.\"\n[Footnote 208]\n\n    [Footnote 208: Crit. Exam. vol. iv. p. 116.]\n\nNow, upon this map of the world, which is the work of Hylacomylus, and, is\nentitled as in the Ptolemaeus of 1513, \"Orbis typus universalis juxta\nhydrographorum traditionem,\" is displayed the name of America.\n{618}\nAnd what a triumphant commentary upon it is given in the preface written by\nThomas Aucuparius! \"Not less worthy of panegyric are those who, since the\ndays of Ptolemaeus, have succeeded by an incredible effort of genius in\nexploring new countries and islands. And in the first rank among them, and\ndeserving an extraordinary fame, stands Americus Vespucius, the illustrious\nand eminent man who discovered and explored and was the first guest of the\nland of America, called to-day America, or the New World, or the fourth\npart of the world; as well as of other new islands adjacent to it or lying\nat no great distance.\"\n\nThis enthusiasm was not free from confusion. The _savans_ on the\nborders of the Rhine received by repercussion the echoed reports of these\nwonderful Portuguese and Spanish discoveries, without distinguishing quite\nclearly the name and extent of each one. For instance, this Ptolemaeus of\n1522 repeats the map of 1513, with the indication that the continent in\nquestion with its neighboring islands was discovered by the Genoese\nColumbus under orders of the King of Castile. [Footnote 209]\n\n    [Footnote 209: We have not been fortunate enough to find the Ptolemaeus\n    of 1522. But there exists in the Biblioth\u00e8que Sainte Genevi\u00e8ve (G. 8)\n    an edition of 1525, made by Bilinald Pirckeymer, at Grieninger, in\n    Strasburg. The atlas, in the second part of the volume, evidently\n    repeats in a smaller form that of 1513. The maps are identical. Now,\n    the last Orbis typus universalis juxta hydrographorum traditionem\n    exactissime depicta bears, with the sacramental date of 1522, the name\n    of America upon the great tract of country in the south-western part of\n    the Western ocean. This, then, is the first document. After the date\n    come the initials L. P. (Laurentius Frisius. Frisius, another form of\n    Phrisius.)]\n\nThe same legend, under date of 1497, adjoining the words America provincia,\non Apian's map, appears in the edition of Pomponius Mela, by Vadianus,\n(Joacquin de Watt,) B\u00e2le, 1522. Yet the first pages in the book reproduce a\nletter from Vadianus to a friend, concerning the discovery of America by\nVespucius, and the remarkable proficiency in mathematics of this navigator.\nThe editor does not remark that the name of America upon the map is in\ncontradiction with that of Columbus in the legend, or that elsewhere he\nattaches erroneously to the third voyage of Columbus, during which the\ngreat navigator touched Paria, the pretended date (1497) of the discovery\nof Americus Vespucius. [Footnote 210]\n\n    [Footnote 210: Crit. Exam. vol. iv. p. 144. Columbus discovered the\n    terra firma of the delta of the Orinoco, (Isla Santa,) August 1st,\n    1498. The third voyage lasted from May 30th, 1498, to November 25th,\n    1500.]\n\nThis discrepancy among Rhenish geographers was not of long duration.\n\nSimon Grynaeus, author of a collection of voyages, (Orbis Novus, B\u00e2le,\nMarch, 1532,) in which he inserts the four voyages of Americus Vespucius\nand only the first of Columbus, does not hesitate in deciding their\nrespective importance; witness the following words in a little treatise by\nSebastian Munster, placed at the head of the collection: \"There has been\ndiscovered in our own day in the Western ocean, by Americus Vespucius and\nChristopher Columbus, what one may call a new world, and very correctly the\nfourth part of the globe, so that our earth no longer consists of three\nparts, but of four; because these Indian islands surpass Europe in size,\nespecially the one which takes its name of America from Americus, who\ndiscovered it.\" The same Munster writes in his Cosmography: \"What shall I\nsay of these great islands America, of Paria, Cuba, Hispaniola, Yucatan?\"\nAnd again, upon a map giving the southern part of the New World: \"Atlantic\nIsland, called Brazil and America.\"\n\nThe collection of Grynaeus was reprinted in Paris about the month of\nNovember, 1532, and several times afterward.\n\nApian and Phrisius, the same who worked upon the Ptolemaeus of 1522, say in\ntheir Cosmography: \"America takes its name from Americus Vespucius, who\ndiscovered it: others call it Brazil. Is it a continent or an island? We do\nnot yet know.\" Of Columbus not one word.\n\nThese references to Christopher Columbus, evoked _\u00e0 contretemps_, are\nonly exceptions of ever lessening frequency.\n{619}\nThe name of America in a few years had taken possession of maps and of\nscience, and passed into a brilliant and resonant notoriety with the\npublic. The erudite, those who controlled the printing press, and those\nwho, in the centre of Europe, formed opinions almost uninfluenced by Spain,\nand whose admiration, more or less enlightened, created fame, were fairly\ndazzled by Americus Vespucius. Columbus, after being faintly discerned from\ntime to time, at last disappeared, and was lost like a satellite in the\nnimbus of a principal star planet. No doubt he could lay claim to a few\nislands; but he who, unveiling the vast expanse of southern shores, had\ndiscovered a new world, was beyond dispute Americus Vespucius, the noble,\nthe illustrious traveller _par excellence_--egregius et nobilissimus\ninventor, visitator et primus hospes.\n\n\n  IV.\n\nBut why this silence respecting Christopher Columbus? Whence this apparent\nconspiracy against a man who in our own day rears himself like a giant\nabove all those who navigated the route opened by his genius? Where shall\nwe seek the cause of the ingratitude no longer peculiar of Spain, but\nattributable to all Europe, that pains our hearts?\n\nThe truth must be told: he himself was one of its principal causes.\n\nThe illustrious Genoese never courted publicity. The only papers printed\nduring his life, concerning his discoveries, were his first voyage, taken\nfrom his letter of March 14th, 1493, to the treasurer Sanchez; and his\nfourth, an account of which he addressed to the kings in a letter from\nJamaica, (July 7th, 1503;) [Footnote 211] the one in Latin at Rome, (1493,)\nthe other at Venice, translated into Italian, (1505.) The title of\n_Lettera rarissima_ by which this last document is designated, shows\nplainly that it was not for general distribution. Of the writings of\nColumbus these are all that were published up to the close of the\neighteenth century. [Footnote 212]\n\n    [Footnote 211: First voyage from August 3d, 1492, to March 15, 1493:\n    discovery of the Bahama islands, and of Hayti. Fourth voyage from May\n    11th, 1502, to November 7th, 1504; discovery of the coast of the\n    continent from Honduras to Puerto de Mosquitos, at the end of the\n    Isthmus of Panama. First notion of the existence of another sea to the\n    west.]\n\n    [Footnote 212: Crit. Exam. vol. ii. p. 330; vol. iv. p. 72 and note.]\n\nThis great man thought it for his interest to keep the secret, if not of\nhis discoveries, at least of the route he had followed. As his treaty of\nSanta F\u00e9 with Isabella and Ferdinand secured to him the government and a\npart of the fruits of the lands discovered by him, he had not cared to\nprovoke or facilitate competition. Indeed we have two letters from\nIsabella, (September 5th, 1493, and August 16th, 1494,) reproaching him for\nleaving the degrees of latitude blank, and asking for a complete chart of\nthe islands with their names and distances. [Footnote 213] He became still\nless communicative after the crown of Castile violated its engagements with\nhim, (1495,) and when his enemy Fonseca gave up his charts to the navigator\nHojeda. They had reduced him, he said, to the position of a man who opens\nthe door for others to pass through. Silence may, then, have seemed to him\na means of defending his legitimate possessions, or, at least, of\ndiminishing the force of attacks upon his just rights.\n\n    [Footnote 213: Crit. Exam. vol. iii. p. 340. We hear of a chart given\n    at Rome, in 1505, by Bartholemew Columbus, the admiral's brother, to a\n    canon of St. John of Lateran, and given by him to Alessandro Zozi,\n    author of the collection of 1507. Its fate is unknown. Crit. Exam. vol.\n    iv. p. 80, note. This does not look like publicity.]\n\nBesides, though his discovery anticipated by six years the arrival of the\nPortuguese in the East-Indies by the Cape of Good Hope, it was eclipsed by\nthe brilliant voyages of Vasco de Gama and Alvares Cabral, followed as they\nwere by immediate results. What were Spaniards and Portuguese in search of?\nThe Indies, the empire of Cathay, or of China, those regions depicted by\nantiquity and by the travellers of the middle ages as gorged with precious\nmetals, with pearls and diamonds, with spices and glittering tissues.\n{620}\nNow, the Portuguese had been wafted to the very source of these treasures.\nIn the earliest years of the sixteenth century, their fleets returned laden\nwith spoils from kingdoms of sonorous names, rendered famous by the songs\nor by the ambition of the poets and conquerors of classic antiquity. All\nthis time the Spaniards, following the steps of Christopher Columbus, were\ngroping in the western seas among remote regions supposed by them to belong\nto extreme Asia, finding only savage tribes where they had looked for\nimposing monarchies. They had picked up a few pearls, a little gold, and\nsome slaves, and had returned to Europe, unable to conceal from themselves\nthe fact that their rivals of Lisbon owed more to Vasco de Gama than\nCastile to Christopher Columbus.\n\nIf, then, in the eyes of history, the glory of the immortal Genoese lies in\nhaving sought with a reflective and discerning boldness, and discovered\nmore than he sought, namely, an unknown world independent of all other\nlands, at a time when the only aim in view was to open a western route to\nthe \"land of spices,\" in the beginning his voyage looked like a half\nsuccessful enterprise. Was the talk of discoveries, properly speaking? What\nwere a small number of islands compared with that southern country coasted\nby Americus to the fiftieth degree of south latitude without finding its\ntermination?\n\nThe discovery of the Southern sea by Balboa at the Isthmus of Panama,\n(1513,) the extraordinary conquests of Mexico and Peru, the adventures of a\nCortez and of a Pizarro, chilled yet more the public opinion toward him\nwhose works, considered then so humble, had given the impetus to these\nprodigious enterprises.\n\nA little while yet, and he was considered a simpleton for believing that\nhis navigation from east to west had brought him to Asia, and for having\nfound what he did not seek. John Beller, in reprinting at Anvers (1584) the\nCosmography of Apian and Frisius, adds a description of the Indies, drawn\nfrom the Cosmography of Jerome Girava, of Tarragona. The latter, _\u00e0\npropos_ of Cuba, explains that under the name of Indies are comprehended\nall the lands recently discovered. \"This name,\" he says, \"comes from the\nfact that the Genoese, Christopher Columbus, a distinguished mariner and a\npoor cosmographer, [Footnote 214] having obtained in 1492 the favor and aid\nof Ferdinand the Catholic and of Isabella to go in search of regions until\nthen unseen and unknown, called them the Indies. After making the\ndiscovery, he returned in the same year, saying that he had found the\nIndies. Therefore have these lands retained the name.\"\n\n   [Footnote 214:  Naucierus insignia ac mediocriter cosmographia peritus,\n   p. 167, Biblioth Magazine, 15824.]\n\nThus did Christopher Columbus lose ground so materially in the admiration\nof his contemporaries that his end was obscure and almost overlooked. Peter\nMartyr of Anghiera, who is called his friend, but hardly seems to have\nmerited the title, for two months and a half saw him upon the bed of pain\nto which the last great crisis nailed him at Valladolid. He does not speak\nof this illness in his letters, nor of his death which took place May 20th,\n1506, short time after his own departure. His Oceanic Decades mention it\nincidentally several years later.[Footnote 215]\n\n    [Footnote 215: It was between the years 1510 and 1514 that Pierre\n    Martyr thought proper to remember the great man's death.]\n\nWhy wonder, then, that the editors of Vicenzo's collection in 1507, and the\ntranslator of this collection into Latin in 1508, inform us that at the\nmoment they write the admiral and his brother are living honorably in the\nsplendid court of Castile? Grynaeus in 1532 speaks in the same terms in his\nOrbis Novus. [Footnote 216] So had fame abandoned the life and the grave of\nChristopher Columbus.\n\n    [Footnote 216: Crit. Exam. vol. iv. pp. 24, 124.]\n\n{621}\n\n  V.\n\nSo far we have traced the principal features of the nautical career of\nAmericus Vespucius. Still following the light of Humboldt's brilliant\nresearches, we have found in the bookstore of Saint-Di\u00e9, the inventor of\nthe name of America; we have shown how and at what period this appellation\npassed from the _Introduction of the Cosmography_ on to maps and into\npublic use; and how motives personal to Christopher Columbus, and the\nastounding exploits of Portuguese or Spanish conquerors, threw into the\nshade the services and genius of the most daring mariner the world has ever\nseen.\n\nWe have shown that a strong current of public opinion, self-formed in a\ncertain sense, had developed, without leaving room to suppose or suspect\nany culpable participation in Americus Vespucius. Strictly speaking, this\nshould absolve us from all obligation to justify him further from the\nreproach of usurpation. Yet it is our intention to conclude with a review\nof that side of the question.\n\nTo begin with, there exists no proof or presumption that he had any hand in\nthe publication of his voyage. The work contains details such as he would\ncertainly not have consigned to a writing intended for the public; as, for\nexample, when speaking of the second voyage, he complains, in a letter to\nSoderini, that the Queen Isabella had taken from him a shell to which were\nfound attached one hundred and thirty pearls. \"After that,\" he continues:\n\"I took good care how I showed her such precious things.\"\n\nDoes not he himself tell us that he has in reserve the project of\npublishing a complete and extended narrative, the object of his assiduous\ncares, and the hope of his future glory? So scrupulously, it appears, he\nobserved Horace's precept, (nonumque prematur in annum,) that death\nsurprised him while still hesitating to bring it to the light. Its destiny\nis unknown.\n\nLiving and writing at Seville, in the very centre of the excitement of\ndiscoveries, among a crowd of seafaring men who had seen, accompanied, or\ntalked with Christopher Columbus, whom he survived only six years, how can\nwe suppose that he could conceive the plan of attributing to himself an\nhonor known by all to belong to the admiral? And if he had dared to do so,\nhow could he with impunity have attempted it before such judges, without\ncalling forth a cry of indignation that should resound to the furthest\nextremities of Europe?\n\nIt is said that he gave to his first voyage, which really dates from May\n20th, 1499, the fraudulent date of May 20th, 1497, in order to rob Columbus\nof priority in the discovery of terra firma. [Footnote 217] But in that\ncase, would he not have adjusted his dates more adroitly? Would he have\ncommitted the gross blunder of assigning the end of this voyage to October\n15th, 1499, mentioning directly afterward that he began the second in May,\n1499, [Footnote 218] that is to say, five months before his return from the\nfirst? What answer could he have made to those who had the registers of La\nCasa de Contratacion in hand, [Footnote 219] and, armed with universal\ntestimony, would have told him that, pending the pretended duration of this\nfirst expedition, all Seville and Cadiz had seen him occupied with\npreparations for the third voyage of Columbus, who set sail May 30th. 1498.\n\n    [Footnote 217: Remember that Columbus touched terra firma at the delta\n    of the Orinoco, August 1st, 1498.]\n\n    [Footnote 218: The edition of Hylacomylus bears date 1489, a printer's\n    error.]\n\n    [Footnote 219: These registers bear their testimony at the present day.\n    We had occasion to refer to them in the first part of this article.]\n\nMoreover, these errors in dates were extremely common at the commencement\nof the sixteenth century. Education was incomplete. The means of\nverification were hard to obtain concerning expeditions that crossed each\nother in every sense. Thus, in the eighteen years following Vasco de Gama's\nexpedition, the king of Portugal sent no less than 294 vessels to India and\nto the land of the Holy Cross, (Brazil.) The fourteen expeditions that\nsailed from Spanish ports between 1496 and 1509, though less numerous,\nfollowed each other as closely, and were no less difficult to disentangle.\n\n{622}\n\nThe hurry of copying and of printing multiplied errors.\n\nThe different editions of the voyages of Vespucius are full of\ncontradictions in dates, a confusion that seems to exclude all reasonable\nsuspicion of intentional falsification. [Footnote 220]  Christopher\nColumbus erred as to the duration of the two passages of his first\nexpedition, and that at the very moment, when toward its close, he\napproached the shores of Europe. [Footnote 221] The most exact and\nattentive historians err constantly as to well-authenticated facts, as, for\ninstance, Orvi\u00e9do, the official historian of the Indies, in asserting as a\nnotorious fact that Columbus discovered the Indies in 1491. [Footnote 222]\n\n    [Footnote 220: Crit. Exam. vol. v. p. 111.]\n\n    [Footnote 221: Ibid. vol. v. p. 201.]\n\n    [Footnote 222: Instead of 1492. M. Humboldt cites many similar errors.]\n\nNot daring to misrepresent the facts in Andalusia, did Americus induce the\neditors in Lorraine to tell falsehoods at a distance, acting in his stead?\nOr, to speak more correctly, did he get them to decree to him the honors of\nthe discovery, and suggest to them the name of America? We have absolutely\nno ground for the supposition. Nowhere do the numerous publications taking\ntheir origin from the Cosmography of Hylacomylus allude to any relation\ndirect or indirect with the Florentine. If the maps of the editions of\nPtolemaeus in 1513 and 1522, had resulted from interested suggestions on\nthe part of Americus Vespucius, we should not find upon them, in large\ncharacters, the indication that the great southern country was discovered\nby Christopher Columbus, the Genoese. This southern country would assuredly\nhave extended to that famous fiftieth degree of south latitude, of which\nAmericus was so proud, instead of ending somewhere about the fortieth\ndegree. The editors of 1513 would not have fallen into the singular blunder\nof making Ferdinand the Catholic, king of Portugal. Some explanation would\nbe needed, too, of the impostor's having selected as an accomplice an\nobscure scholar in a still more obscure town of Lorraine, (which an eminent\nrepresentative of the scientific world tried lately to locate in the depths\nof Hungary,) [Footnote 223] where he had many Italian friends to whom he\nwould more naturally have addressed himself. And one might reasonably ask\nwhy the good people of Saint-Di\u00e9 and Strasburg (whom one cannot know\nthrough their writings without conceiving a high opinion of their character\nand of their devotion to science) could have participated so coolly in a\ndishonest action, or even have entered hoodwinked into a snare spread for\ntheir ingenuousness--a snare, too, of which no trace remains.\n\n    [Footnote 223: Navarrete. Crit. Exam. vol. iv. p. 103.]\n\nTo this accusation consisting of gratuitous and baseless assertions, there\nis a crowd of real motives to be opposed.\n\nIt is far more natural to admit, taking into consideration the extreme\ndifficulties of communication at that period, that the enthusiasm of\nHylacomylus and his Strasburg neighbors was spontaneous. Such is certainly\nthe character of the extracts we have presented to the reader. It is\nextremely probable that Americus Vespucius never saw the Cosmography of\n1507 or the Globus of 1509, and that he was to the end unconscious of the\ndangerous honor bestowed upon him at Saint-Di\u00e9. As to the maps illustrated\nwith his name, they appeared in 1520 and 1522, eight and ten years after\nhis death.\n\nBut for the tyranny of habit, which demands a response, point for point, to\ncharges once preferred against an individual, we should have suddenly\nadopted a more radical system, and have declared not only that Americus\nVespucius did not entertain the vile and criminal intentions ascribed to\nhim with regard to Christopher Columbus, but that, at the stage of ideas\nand of science existing in his day, he could not have conceived them.\n\n{623}\n\nIn using the expression New World, or the fourth part of the world, we\nattach to it the precise sense of the vast American continent. Our eyes\ninstinctively behold that colossal dike, which, stretching, so to speak,\nfrom pole to pole, restrains and divides the two oceans facing easterly\ntoward Europe and Africa, and westerly toward Asia, but separated by\nenormous distances from all three.\n\nWe must set aside this preconceived idea, and return in thought to the\nlatter days of the fifteenth century.\n\nThe ancients and the travellers of the middle ages prolonged Asia\nindefinitely eastward; and when at last they set a term to that country by\nIndia, the Mangi and Cathay, (China,) they continued it again by sowing in\nhandfuls through the neighboring seas innumerable archipelagoes. It was\nwhile more especially acting upon the words of antiquity that Christopher\nColumbus braved the awful solitudes of the Atlantic, and, bearing directly\nwestward, sought the Indies by another route than that used by the\nPortuguese. When the unknown land, the prize of his divination, rose from\nthe bosom of the waters, the admiral never for an instant doubted that he\nwas about to plant the standard of Castile upon an Asiatic island. He took\nCuba for the very continent of Asia, _the end and the beginning of the\nIndies_. \"I have discovered,\" wrote he to Pope Alexander VI. (February,\n1502,) \"333 leagues of the terra firma of Asia.\" On his third voyage, the\nspectacle of the immense flood of the Orinoco having suggested to him the\nvery rational idea that such a river must belong to a large country, he\nmade of it the India of the Ganges. In this conviction he lived and died.\n\nIn the same way Americus Vespucius, during his second voyage, coasting\nalong the country destined to bear his name, fully believed himself to be\nin Asia. He tried to find Cape Cattigara in the great gulf of Ptolemaeus;\n[Footnote 224] and followed for 400 leagues a shore which was, he said, the\nend of Asia, by the eastern side, and the commencement by the western side.\n\"This expedition has lasted thirteen months, during which we have run the\ngreatest risks, and discovered an infinite stretch of the land of Asia as\nwell as a number of islands.\" [Footnote 225] In passing over to the\nPortuguese service afterward, it was with a hope of pursuing his\ninvestigations, and of \"finding the Island of Taprobana, (Ceylon,) situated\nbetween the sea of the Indus and the sea of the Ganges.\" His fourth had for\nits object the Molucca Islands, the land of spices, and Malacca.\n\n    [Footnote 224: Sinus Magnus. Ptolemaeus took the Indian ocean for a\n    sea, bounded on the north by Asia, and on the south by Africa, the\n    latter continent widening from west to east, to form the southern\n    barrier of the Indian ocean.]\n\n    [Footnote 225: \"Discoprendo infinitissima terra de l'Asia e gran copia\n    d'isole.\"--Crit. Exam. vol. iv. p. 299 and note, et passim.]\n\nThe conviction of these two men decided general opinion, as is attested by\nthe name of the Indies applied to the western lands. Both had passed away\nbefore Balboa's march to the great ocean (1513) and Magellan's voyage\nunsealed all eyes and dissipated the dreams of Ptolemaeus.\n\nNow, since it is an indisputable fact that Christopher Columbus and\nAmericus Vespucius never had an intuition of their veritable discovery, and\nthat for the rest of their lives both of them firmly believed that they had\nreached the extreme end of the continent of Asia, how could the one have\nplanned to frustrate the other of the glory of having revealed a new world\nwhose existence they neither of them suspected? How could Vespucius\nundertake to slip surreptitiously into history, and impose a contraband\nname upon a continent that only seemed to him susceptible of bearing the\nname of Asia? Moreover, what personal advantage could he hope to reap from\nfraudulently dating his arrival at Paria during his first expedition, 1497,\nwhen the discovery of Oriental Asia was looked upon as accomplished by\nChristopher Columbus five years before?\n\n{624}\n\nLet us also take these expressions of _fourth part of the world_ and\n_new world_ according to their original sense, and not with the\nabsolute signification attached to them at the present day. In the mouth of\nAmericus Vespucius, the former meant simply that he had passed over,\nbetween Lisbon and the extreme point of his explorations, an arc of 90\u00b0,\nwhether the quarter of a grand circle or of the terrestrial circumference\nfrom one pole to the other. As to the latter, it was quite natural that the\nextraordinary and unexpected extent of the Asiatic lands, contemplated for\nthe first time, and the aspect of a nature of which nothing European could\ngive an idea, with inhabitants of a strange color and of cannibal habits;\nit was quite natural, we repeat, that the navigator should exclaim that\nbefore him lay a new world.\n\nCosmographers in their turn were struck by the interminable succession of\nshores, whose development south of the equator resolved, contrary to old\nprejudices, the problems so long agitated concerning the torrid zone and\nthe second temperate zone, and the question whether or not the sun\nenlightened the southern hemisphere in the same manner as the northern.\nSuch a theatre suddenly thrown open to geographic science appeared to them\nworthy to rival Europe by its gigantic proportions, and to be accounted a\nnew part of the world. And yet it was not considered the New World, as we\nunderstand it, until the time when, explorations being completed, it was\nknown to have nothing in common with the continent or the archipelagoes of\nAsia. If precaution had been taken to disengage this idea, the accusation\nagainst Americus Vespucius would have died a natural death in the\nbeginning.\n\nBut we are told that he abused his office of _piloto mayor_, and his\nright of rectifying the maps by inserting his own name upon them.\n\nThis assertion is not sustained by the shadow of a proof. Mariners were not\nin the habit of giving their own names to the lands they discovered,\nwhether Americus Vespucius, Columbus, Balboa, or Magellan. Had he done so,\nit would have had only the very restricted and allowable signification of a\nname applied to one of the numerous islands near Asia that seemed to spring\nfrom the sea on all sides to greet the eyes of navigators. The scholars of\nLorraine and Alsace had no other view in selecting for this destiny the\nlargest southern country. They treated as coequals in importance the great\nisland of America and the islands of Paria, Cuba, Hispaniola, and Yucatan.\n[Footnote 226] Finally, the name of America, applied to the whole of the\nNew World, resulted from the mistake by which the island (Cuba) was taken\nfor the mainland, and the mainland (Paria) for the island. When with time\nthe first error was recognized, they extended to the whole the appellation\ngiven to what had proved to be the principal part.\n\n   [Footnote 226: Cosmography of Munster, quoted above.]\n\nFor this Americus Vespucius could not have been responsible. He deserves,\nthen, to preserve in the estimation of posterity the esteem accorded to him\nby all his contemporaries. He was loved and respected during his life, and\nfrom this fact we shall in conclusion draw a new testimony.\n\n\n  VI.\n\nIn the first place, Americus Vespucius possessed the friendship of\nChristopher Columbus. At the commencement of our article we saw Vespucius\ngoing to Toro, (where was assembled the court of Castile,) recommended by\nthe admiral to his son Diego. We give the letter entire:\n\n{625}\n\n    SEVILLE, Feb. 5, 1505.\n\n  \"My Dear Son: Diego Mendez [Footnote 227] left here Monday, the 3d of\n  this month. Since his departure I have talked with Amerigo Vespuchy, who\n  is going to court, called thither by business concerning navigation. He\n  has always shown a desire to please me; and he is a very able man.\n  Fortune has shown herself adverse to him as to many others. His labors\n  have not proved so profitable to him as should have naturally been the\n  case. He is going to court in my behalf, and with an ardent desire of\n  effecting something useful to me, if occasion should offer. While in this\n  place I cannot specify in what way he can serve us, not knowing how they\n  stand affected toward him, but he is quite determined to do all in his\n  power for my good. You will see for yourself how you can best employ him,\n  for he will speak and set everything at work; I want it to be done\n  secretly, that nothing may be suspected. I told him everything I could\n  concerning our interests.\" [Footnote 228]\n\n    [Footnote 227: A faithful servant of Columbus.]\n\n    [Footnote 228: Crit. Exam. vol. iv. pp. 29,30, and Washington Irving,\n    vol. iv. App. No. 9.]\n\nHe who expressed himself thus concerning Americus had known him not merely\na day or two, but for long years.\n\nBut let us admit that he was the dupe of a consummate hypocrite. The\ntraitor was to be unmasked when death should relieve him of the obstacle\nwho had been a source of such insupportable impatience to him. Witnesses\nthere were, however, to denounce him. Let us hear them:\n\nSebastian Cabot, a worthy rival of the most illustrious navigators of his\nday, had been summoned from England to Spain about the year 1512, to\nsucceed Americus as corrector of geographic tables. Three years later he\ntook occasion to bear testimony to his expertness in the determination of\nlatitudes.\n\nPeter Martyr, whose hand falls willingly on all whom he suspects of\nintrigue, whether correctly or incorrectly, has only words of praise for\nVespucius, _\u00e0 propos_ of his knowledge of nautical astronomy and of\nthe art of navigation.\n\nRamusio, who employed thirty-four years of his life (1523-1557) in\npreparing and publishing his great collection of travels, and knew how to\nwither with his indignation all who enviously cavilled at Columbus,\n[Footnote 229] speaks five times in terms of high esteem, \"of that high\nintelligence, of the excellent Florentine endowed with such fair genius,\n_il signor_ Amerigo Vespucio.\"\n\n    [Footnote 229: Those who maintained that Columbus had stolen the\n    knowledge of the New World from a pilot who died in his house. Oviedo\n    echoed this calumnious report. (History of the West-Indies, 1535.)]\n\nBut a discordant voice arose. Michel Servet, in re-editing the geography of\nPtolemaeus at Lyons (1535, 1541,) says severe things of Americus, but not\nwithout making mistakes. \"Columbus,\" he says, \"discovered during a new\nvoyage the continent and many more islands, of which the Spaniards are now\ncompletely masters. They then are totally misled who would call this\ncontinent America, since Americus never touched it until long after\nColumbus, and since he went there not with the Spaniards, but with the\nPortuguese, and to make trade.\"\n\nWithout pausing to notice details, we will confine ourselves to the\nmorality of Vespucius which the author does not attack. He only blames\nthose who invented the name of America. [Footnote 230]\n\n    [Footnote 230: M. Von Humboldt, vol. iv. p. 137, note, corrects\n    Servet's inaccuracies. Vespucius made a voyage for Spain with Hojeda in\n    1499. It was assuredly not in the character of a merchant, but probably\n    of an astronomer. A striking circumstance! this edition of 1535\n    contains after all the map of 1522, bearing the name of Americus.]\n\nTo this accusation, such as it is, the History of India, by Gomara, (1551,)\nanswered contemptuously: \"There are persons who enjoy blackening Alberico\nVespucio's reputation, as may be seen by some editions of Ptolemaeus in\nLyons.\"\n\nNow, having seen the proofs drawn from those who have spoken, let us look\nat the counter-proofs of those who have not spoken--a testimony not without\nsignificance.\n\nWitness, for example, Oviedo, who systematically cries down Christopher\nColumbus. He is silent as to the supposed pretension of Vespucius to\npriority in the discovery of the mainland. Is it to be supposed that, if\nthe Florentine had actually claimed this honor, Oviedo would not have taken\nhim under his protection, and used his claim to make a breach in a\nreputation that annoyed him?\n\n{626}\n\nBut there is another silence more decisive. Two years after the death of\nChristopher Columbus, that is to say in 1508, Don Diego, his eldest son,\nbrought a lawsuit against the crown before the council of the Indies, to\nrecover dignities and privileges that had been guaranteed to the admiral in\nthe treaties acceded to by Ferdinand and Isabella. It was essentially\nimportant to the fiscal to prove that Columbus had been anticipated by some\none else in Paria, in order to deprive the heirs of all claim to the\nrevenues drawn from that country at least. Nor, although in this debate\nefforts were made to draw from the seamen testimony inimical to Columbus,\nand although the fiscal disdained to use no rumor, however vague or futile\nit might be--descending to every refinement of deceit and fraud, and\npushing the hostility of the investigation even to extravagance, according\nto Las Casas; yet neither Americus Vespucius, who was still alive during\nthe first four years, nor John Vespucius, his nephew, a renowned pilot,\never brought forward any claim to priority in the discovery. They were not\ncalled up as witnesses; the cosmographies printed in other countries in his\nhonor were not mentioned; [Footnote 231] and the lawsuit came to an end in\n1527, after nineteen mortal years, without the name of Vespucius having\nbeen brought forward in opposition to the great victim of injustice.\n\n    [Footnote 231: It is quite possible that they had not been seen in\n    Seville. This furnishes a strong though indirect proof that Vespucius\n    did not know of their existence.]\n\nAbout the year 1513, Fernando Columbus, the admiral's second son, put the\nlast touches to the history of his father. An openly expressed and pious\nindignation animated him against those who had embittered with so many\nmortifications that illustrious career. He leaves the memory of Americus\nVespucius in peaceful repose. Evidently there was nothing to avenge in that\nquarter.\n\nSole and last of his contemporaries, finishing in extreme old age, at\neighty-five, in the year 1559, a general history of the Indies, Las Casas\naccuses Vespucius of having falsified the date of his first voyage, and\ngiven the number 1497 to the editors of Lorraine, with the premeditated\ndesign of robbing Christopher Columbus of a glory so dearly acquired.\n[Footnote 232] Nevertheless, he does not prove this, nor try to do so. Las\nCasas was in fact mistaken. Americus Vespucius was a posthumous usurper,\nand absolutely irresponsible.\n\n    [Footnote 232: Humboldt shows that mistakes in dates occur in Las Casas\n    as in all the works of that day. Vol. iv. p. 139; vol. v. p. 191.\n    Charlevoix (History of St. Domingo,) says that Diego Columbus, in\n    gaining the suit raised by the fiscal, condemned Vespucius. Diego\n    simply proved that the admiral was the first to touch the coast of\n    Paria, 1498. He never thought of condemning Vespucius, who did not\n    appear in the case. The records of the lawsuit were not printed before\n    1829. Crit. Exam. vol. v. p. 204, and note 2.]\n\nBut a reaction came to the public conscience in favor of Christopher\nColumbus. To ingratitude, to the base passions and mean motives so cruelly\nleagued against him, there succeeded a more sound appreciation, in\nproportion as, further removed by time, perspective views re-established\nmatters in their true position. He, who in 1492, had found the small island\nof San Salvador in the little group of the Bahamas, was not known to have\nthat day discovered the New World. And yet it was another man's name that\nhis discovery was destined to immortalize! Then opinion, deceived in the\nfirst instance about Christopher Columbus, erred in regard to Americus\nVespucius. The latter had to bear the weight of an error he had not\nprovoked, and, condemned without a hearing by a sort of universal consent,\nto incur the sad celebrity of imposture unveiled.\n\nBut to-day, we believe, a more enlightened judgment has acquitted him. His\nfame is pure. Christopher Columbus does not accuse one who was his friend.\nOne glory does not mar another. It is sweet to have at least one injustice\nless to inscribe in the martyrology of great initiators.\n\n------\n\n{627}\n\n  Translated from the German.\n\n  Three Leaves From an Old Journal.\n\n\n  I.\n\n  Milan, May 4, 1811.\n\nI arrived at Milan, at eight P.M., two days ago. I had never before seen\nthe magnificent cathedral, and I had everything to set off the picture on\nwhich I came unexpectedly. The slender sickle of the new moon hung in the\nviolet sky, crimsoned in the west with the lingering sunlight: the\nstreet-lamps, just lighted, threw before me a line of red glow; the bronze\nstatue surmounting the lofty obelisk rose in the clear blue above; around\nit silence, with a tumult below of a crowd hurrying to the theatre. While I\nstood lost in admiration, I saw two men, dressed for travel like myself,\nemerge from the shadow of one of the pillars. Their voices as they\napproached told me who they were, though I had not seen them in five years.\n\n\"Hermann! Adolph!\" I exclaimed; and they greeted me with joy.\n\nIn a few moments we were seated at a table near the door of the nearest\ncafe, flasks of the Lombard champagne, the foaming wine of Asti, before us,\neach telling his adventures since our separation. From the same Fatherland,\nwe had travelled far in different directions. They had just come from the\nTyrol; from beholding the holy strife waged against the overbearing power\nof France by those brave sons of the mountains. We talked of those events,\nof those true-hearted patriots, and of our trust in justice human and\ndivine. Adolph had visited the noble hero, Hofer, and read us a poem he had\ncomposed in his dwelling. I took a copy of the verses.\n\nWe had little thought of our imprudence in thus discoursing, as we talked\ntill midnight, when the people were returning from the theatre. With\npromises of another meeting, we then parted and I went to my lodgings.\nBefore I had walked far, I heard heavy, jingling steps close behind me,\nand, turning, saw a French gendarme. I crossed toward a side street; he\nfollowed, and suddenly seized me by the arm. \"_Monsieur, votre\nportefeuille_.\" he said; and, when I gave it up, bade me follow him.\n\nHe led me to a lofty old building, the large door of which was secured with\nheavy bolts. When it swung open, I saw French soldiers on guard. My captor\nspoke apart with an officer, who presently gave me in charge to two\nsoldiers. A turnkey, bearing a lamp, preceded us, and, going up-stairs, we\nentered a gloomy gallery. An iron-barred door was opened, and I was thrust\ninto a narrow cell, ventilated only by a small grated window, through which\ngleamed a ray of starlight. The gendarme then came in, searched me, and\ntook away my papers, handing back my watch and purse. I was then asked if I\nwanted anything; to which I replied with a bitter laugh; and with a not\nuncourteous \"_au revoir_,\" the soldiers departed.\n\nI threw myself on the straw mattress, and ruminated in the darkness on my\nown imprudence and my probable fate. I was only twenty-one, and full of the\nhope of great deeds in my country's service. I had parents, sisters, and\none dearer than all; yet, for my love to them and to my native land, I\nshould, no doubt, on the morrow be forced to kneel and receive the fire of\nthe soldiers. Thought was agony, but I could not help thinking. Suddenly\nthe dead silence of night was broken by a tone of melody so soft, so\nexquisite, so melancholy, that it penetrated my soul. It was no song; it\nwas simply a strain of melody--such as brought tears to my eyes--such as\nwas never heard before.\n{628}\nOrpheus might have drawn it forth! It was--yes, I was sure it was--the\nsound of a violin!\n\nOnly a violin and yet such music--in my cold despair, with the galleys or\ndeath before me--it raised me to the summit of rapture! With the\nprofoundest feelings of solemnity, it blended all the joy of freedom! How\nit stole on the stillness of night, wafted through the bars of my window;\nclear, softly swelling, plaintive, imploring like a prayer of\nlove--yielding like the timid bride--how did that wondrous harmony possess\nmy soul! Various airs were apparently improvised; sometimes the tones\nglided like magic; then rising into power, they melted into the most\nenchanting melody; ever clear, as if the notes had been distinct\npearl-drops. Then the rhapsodical strains passed, by a strange but charming\ntransition, into deep and wonderful pathos. It was full of sadness sweet\nand tender, like a mourner's sigh; now it rose into silvery richness, now\ngradually faded away; the melancholy plaint of an imprisoned king! It\nfilled me with calmness and trust in the midst of misfortunes.\n\nThe music continued at intervals. I knew not whether to wonder most at the\ncomposition or the execution of the player. Then he passed into strange\ncombinations, into bolder and wilder flights; his music was full of fire;\nhe seemed under the influence of inspiration. He seemed to create\ndifficulties only to triumph over them, and surpassing harmony was in all.\nI had played the violin, (I have never attempted it since,) and could never\nhave imagined the instrument capable of what I heard. When the music\nceased, it lingered unforgotten in my soul.\n\nAt daylight I heard the beating of a drum, and I climbed to my window to\nsee what was going on. It overlooked the court, and I saw a company of\nsoldiers, with three prisoners standing in front of them. The officer gave\na sign, and they marched away. Just then, my cell door was opened by the\njailer, who, in reply to my questions, said: \"Those prisoners are to die in\nan hour. They are suspected of treason; of having favored the insurrection\namong the Tyrolese.\"\n\nThese words were my death-warrant. I listened, shuddering, but with\ncomposure. The jailer then informed me that the prisoners were allowed to\ngo into the court at that hour, and I could descend if I chose. I did so. I\nfound myself in a crowd of rough men, collected out of Lombardy, as its\nscum, by the energy of the French government. At a distance from the\nothers, leaning against a pillar, his eyes turned toward the rising sun, I\nsaw a young man about twenty-five, apparently worn out with suffering. His\nform was emaciated, his face deadly pale; his eyes were sunken; his nose\nwas aquiline; his forehead broad and high; and his tangled mass of black\nhair, with a long beard, gave him a wild aspect. But there was a touching\ninterest in the sorrowful expression of his chiselled mouth and the lines\nof his blanched face. He noticed no one, and was quite unconscious of my\nlong, earnest gaze.\n\nSuddenly he went up to the guard who had charge of the cells, and spoke to\nhim earnestly in Italian. I heard his voice in moving accents of entreaty.\n\n\"No, you cannot!\" replied the old man, sternly. \"And if you are not quiet\nof nights, I will even cut your last string for you.\"\n\n\"It is the musician!\" I cried to myself, and I hastened to speak to him.\nBut my steps were checked by hearing my own name pronounced behind me. The\ngendarme who had arrested me stood there, and sternly bade me follow him. I\ndared not hesitate. We went out of the door, and I saw a carriage in\nwaiting. My conductor motioned me to get in, and followed me. After a short\ndrive the carriage stopped before a handsome house. The French soldier\nalighted, held the door open for me, and led me up the steps and into the\nhouse. We stood in the hall some time; at length a door opened, and a voice\ncried, \"_Entrez!_\" I went in alone.\n\n{629}\n\nA gentleman in military dress stood in the room, and extended his hand to\nme. I recognized him at once. Four years before, in Berlin, General K. had\nbeen brought wounded to the house of my father. Though a political enemy,\nhe had received tender care and nursing till restored to strength.\n\nHe grasped my hand cordially. \"You have been imprudent, my young friend,\"\nhe cried. \"Had I not occupied this post, nothing could have saved your\nlife. You are now at liberty.\"\n\n\"And Hermann--and Adolph,\" I questioned.\n\n\"They are free also.\"\n\nI poured out thanks, which the general interrupted. \"You must all be my\nguests to-day,\" he said. \"To-morrow I leave Milan with my troops, and you\nmust depart, or your adventure might still have serious consequences. I\nhave had your passports made out--to Germany.\"\n\n\n  II.\n\n  Paris, April 13, 1814.\n\nA distinguished musical amateur--an intimate friend, to whom I had told\nthe story of my imprisoned violinist, and who thought it a romance highly\ncolored by imagination--sent me a note to say that I was to be treated to a\nviolin concert, by way of curing my enthusiasm. Lafont had promised to give\nit; my friend took him at his word. It was to come off that evening, and\nBaillot, Kreuzer, and Rode were invited to take part in the music.\n\nDuring the last four years I had heard the best violin players in the\ndifferent cities where I had sojourned, but none even approached the\nunknown performer. Now, my ideal was to be tested by hearing the four most\ncelebrated masters in the world!\n\nThe saloon was brilliantly lighted, and filled with a crowd of the artistic\nand fashionable. The splendor was distasteful to me; I thought of the\ndungeon in Milan, and the melody that seemed wafted from heaven.\n\nAfter the overture, Lafont opened the concert. He displayed the most\nfinished grace in andante as in allegro; the most exquisite polish and\nsilvery clearness of tone; but his playing--compared to my prisoner's--was\nlike a delicate miniature beside a grand historical painting.\n\nKreuzer played next. His tones were full and clear, and rose into rare\nboldness and strength; many passages were brilliant as a string of\ndiamonds; but it was the brilliancy of polished metal or jewels, not the\nliving beam that penetrates the soul.\n\nNext we heard Baillot. His performance glowed with a noble fire. He drew\nforth a full, energetic harmony that thrilled me; it was glorious! He ruled\nthe realm of sound like a monarch. But my prisoner ruled it like a god!\n\nRode appeared last. His form was impressive in grace and dignity; his\nfeatures were expressive and full of magnetic attraction. I started when he\nbegan to play; for he stirred memory to its depths. He seemed to embody the\npicture that had been floating before my fantasy. His music breathed the\nsame fire and fervor, restrained by kindred power. At one moment, he rose\nto a height that seemed to equal the stranger's; but he could not sustain\nit. I felt the difference. In Rode it was a wonderful, a masterly effort--\nthat which my prisoner accomplished with perfect ease. _His_ chainless\nspirit would have soared upward and onward, seeking prouder heights, more\nfathomless depths. _He_ swept the empyrean till nearing the confines\nof purer worlds, and gave back to men in unrivalled melodies the music\nheard from other spheres.\n\nAfter the concert was over, my friend M---- introduced me to the celebrated\nartists, to whom I was bound to praise their admirable performances. I said\nnothing of my adventure in Milan; but Lafont, who had heard of it from\nM----, questioned me, and then I related the occurrence.\n{630}\nThey all laughed except Rode. I tried to describe the mysterious music,\nmentioning peculiar difficulties overcome in a wonderful manner by the\nprisoner. \"Oh! you are jesting!\" exclaimed Lafont. They did not believe me.\nI was not well pleased, and soon after took my leave. Some one followed me\nas I walked from the house. It was Rode.\n\nHe expressed himself deeply affected by what I had told them, and asked me\nif it was certainly true. I assured him it was.\n\n\"I can believe you,\" he said, \"and, furthermore, I am sure there is but one\nman on earth who can be your mysterious prisoner. I heard him myself\nfifteen years ago. I was in Genoa, and going home late one evening, when I\nheard a violin played in a manner that filled me with surprise. The music\nwas enchanting. At length I discovered the performer to be a youth hardly\ngrown out of boyhood. He stood on a garden wall, and was looking up toward\na window, while he drew from the instrument sounds which revealed mysteries\nin music of which I had never dreamed before. I stood in the shadow and\nlistened. The moon came out from behind a cloud, and shone full on the\nboy's face and form; he was like what you have described.\n\n\"When he ceased playing, the window was softly opened, and the face of a\nyoung girl appeared. The next moment I heard a harsh voice exclaim:\n'_Traditore! pel diavolo!_' The boy sprang from the wall into the\nstreet, plunged into a dark alley, and disappeared. A head peered over the\nwall, and oaths and menaces were profusely poured forth. The light in the\nwindow had been quickly extinguished. Some love affair, of course! After\nwaiting some time, I went on, and as I passed by the wall trod upon\nsomething. It was a violin bow, no doubt dropped by the lad as he leaped\nfrom the wall. I kept the bow in hopes of finding the owner. It was marked\nwith a P. But I could not trace him; I had to leave Genoa, and have heard\nnothing of him since. But to him I owe the improvements I have introduced\ninto my performance, for I never lost the impression of his music. I call\nit a revelation: I owe to it the best part of my fame!\"\n\nI listened to the great artist with astonishment. Then I told him of the\nstrange, fitful resemblances I had found in his playing to that of the\nstranger. Both of us cherish the hope that we shall yet discover him. So\nmighty a genius must one day sway the world.\n\n\n  III.\n\n  Berlin, March 30, 1829.\n\nAfter my long residence in the north, I returned here yesterday. It was\nhalf-past eight when I had changed my travelling dress and dined. I asked\nthe butler if there was anything new at the theatre. \"Nothing, _mein\nHerr_,\" he replied. \"But the concert is an attraction. There is a violin\nplayer--\"\n\n\"I have had enough of violin players.\"\n\n\"This one, sir, is called a wonder. See, in the paper, here, what the\ncritic--Rellstab--says of him.\"\n\n\"Never mind, I care little for the critic's praise. What is the name of\nthis wonderful performer?\"\n\n\"His name? I will tell you directly. Strange--it has just gone out of my\nhead! He is an Italian--\"\n\n\"An Italian?\" I exclaimed, starting up.\n\n\"Yes--and the name .... it begins with a P.\"\n\n\"With a P! I must go instantly Where can I procure a ticket?\"\n\n\"At the bureau opposite.\"\n\nIn a moment I had rushed across the street, and had the ticket.\n\nAt the door of the concert hall I found the crowd so great I could not\nforce my way in. I was compelled to stand outside with the others.\nGradually I edged myself nearer. The tutti of the last composition was\nended; the solo--apollacca--began.\n\n{631}\n\nThe tones struck deep in my heart. I had heard them before; they were\nunforgotten. But what a miracle! Do two play--or three? That I have never\nheard. No, I could not trust my ears. If I might but see the player! but\ngain one look! In vain! the crowd surged against the open door, yet none\ncould make way through the swaying mass. At least I could hear now--and I\nlost not one note.\n\nThe music ceased, and a thunder-burst of applause shook the building. I\npressed forward again, striving to get a sight of the player; but others,\nequally eager, pushed before me. I was again disappointed. With swelling\nheart I waited, impatient to hear him commence again.\n\nAt last: \"Now he plays on the G string,\" said some one near me. He began. I\nwas not deceived. That was the very melody I heard in prison! Those were\nthe self-same tones that once--calming, elevating, faith-inspiring, as if\nsent direct from heaven--sent light into my gloomy soul!\n\nWith renewed efforts I forced my way into the hall. I saw once more the\npale, melancholy brow, the sunken eyes, the long, dark hair, the attenuated\ncheeks, the enfeebled aspect of the whole person. It was HE! The mystery of\neighteen years was at length solved. The stranger who had so charmed my\nsoul, filling me with feelings unutterable--who had ceaselessly accompanied\nme since, like a veiled phantom--familiar, yet from which I could not tear\nthe covering stood before me. I heard--I saw--PAGANINI!\n\n------\n\n    Original.\n\n    Mary's Dirge.\n\n    By Carolus.\n\n\n    \"Manibus date lilia plenis.\"\n\n  O THOU, whose awful mandate goes\n  Throughout a wondering world of woes,\n      Mysterious, still the same,\n  In moments such as this, we feel,\n  When grief is boundless, we must kneel\n      And bless THY holy name.\n\n  Ah, MARY! what avails thee now\n  Thy radiant eyes, thy classic brow,\n      And form of queenly mould;\n  The charms of polished culture's art,\n  Thy trusting, noble woman's heart,\n  Now pulseless, senseless, cold?\n\n  What now avails it to have stood,\n  In mind's keen conquest of the good,\n      Peerless among thy mates?\n  Or that a widowed mother wound,\n  Like NIOBE, her arms around\n      Her last, whom death awaits?\n\n{632}\n\n  Alas! when heaven such gifts bestows,\n  It would, to earth-stained souls, disclose\n      A gleam of its own light,\n  But ere we learn how dear the prize,\n  All fades before our longing eyes,\n      Save sorrow, dreams, and night.\n\n  But where can friends so stricken find\n  A solace for the anguished mind,\n      Except in Him who sends\n  The grief that clouds, the joy that cheers,\n  The course of checkered, fleeting years.\n      And whilst he smites befriends?\n\n  As now I stand beside thy form,\n  So late in youth and beauty warm,\n      And sad, hushed vigil keep,\n  The eye would be as rayless grown,\n  As tearless, MARY, as thine own,\n      Could see--and could not weep.\n\n  Behold that lovely ruined shrine,\n  That marble waste where thought divine\n      Still seems to sit enthroned;\n  Those pallid lips whose every word,\n  Like sweet a\u00ebolian music heard,\n      A hymn to nature toned.\n\n  In pity, strew the virgin flower,\n  By virgin hands, in tender shower\n      Upon her virgin breast;\n  There sleeps she, purity's picked rose--\n  An angel snatched from earthly woes\n      To calm, eternal rest.\n\n  Though death's resistless, ruthless might\n  Sweeps beauty's loveliest forms from sight,\n      The soul retains her love,\n  And MARY'S spirit, ever near\n  The friends her young life cherished here,\n      Will lead their thoughts above.\n\n\nPittsburg, Jan. 21, 1867.\n\n------\n\n{633}\n\n  Abridged from the Dublin University Magazine.\n\n  Sir Thomas More.\n\n\nSir Thomas More did not account his own death an evil; not only, in his\nlast moments, did he mention the king with sweet loyalty, but he also\ndisplayed a cheerfulness which has scandalized some writers. Holinshed, for\ninstance, charges him with having been \"a jester and scoffer at the houre\nof his death.\" This mirthful disposition of More's has made his character\nan interesting subject of inquiry. But irreverence has nothing in common\nwith that genial tendency which Southey has called pantagruelism, and the\ndesirability of which he has advocated. For pantagruelism is not\nbuffoonery, levity, cynical insensibility; neither does it consist in mere\nplay of wit, intellectual tumbling, and playful freaks of fancy. Jests are\nbut its effects, the ripples, fitfully reflecting the sunlight on the\nsurface, and showing that the underlying mass is a running stream and not a\nstagnant fen. Music and prayer are sisters; cheerfulness is the music of\nlife, and harmonizes human passions into rest; it is most consistent with\nthat holy creed, the apostle of which taught men to \"rejoice evermore;\" it\nis an ascensional force, a verbum, as the old mystics would have said,\nwhich carries the spirit upward, and turns human nature toward the bright\nside of things. He who was the teacher of its outwardly most grotesque\naspect has by implication defined pantagruelism as a \"marvellous contempt\nand holding cheap of fortuitous things,\" (Introd. to Gargantua;) its basis\nis a want of love for the things that are in the world; its effect is,\ntherefore, a sweet smile at the contrast, perpetual in this earthly life,\nbetween aspirations and realities. Hence More's pleasantry, always harmless\nand free from sarcasm--sparks issuing from a healthy and beautiful spirit.\nPantagruelism itself becomes linked, in some natures, to a gentle\nmelancholy, the sadness of the soul exiled from its eternal birthplace; in\nnorthern minds especially is this solemnity of reverie frequent; More, to\nwhom religion was a daily food, evinced this dreamy pensiveness, side by\nside with his mirth, from his youth to his death. It also seemed as if,\ngifted with the sagacity of a Machiavel, but without craft, he had in the\nmost prosperous moments of his life a power of intuition which could divine\nhis fate, and thus cast a softening radiance over what to other men would\nhave appeared a most dazzling brightness of worldly success. Hence there is\nin the expression of his features a sort of anxiety mixed with\ncheerfulness; the penetrative and humorous nose is like that of Erasmus;\nbut the bony, caustic traits of the humorist have otherwise an expression\nvery different from the melancholy which tempers More's face, the open gray\neyes, that seem anxiously anticipating the future or contemplating\nreligious things, the lips that half project in that pouting way to be\nnoticed on many Saxon types of countenances.\n\nWhen Henry VIII. ascended the throne, More ventured to express, in a poem\nwhich attracted the royal favor, a conceit which was at once a criticism of\nthe past reign, a hope, and a foreboding for the future:\n\n  \"So after six and thirty thousand year All things shal be the same which\n  once they were; After the Golden came the Silver age: Then came the\n  Brass, and Iron the last stage. The Golden age is revolv'd to your reign:\n  I now conceive that Plato did not feign.\"\n\nFrom that time began the prosperity of More; but his previous life had been\nboth happy in a domestic capacity, and remarkable in a literary point of\nview. He had already been an ascetic, a husband, and a poet.\n{634}\nAs Disraeli remarks, \"More in his youth was a true poet; but in his active\nlife he soon deserted these shadows of the imagination.\"\n\nWhether in poetry or in prose, More was to fulfil Cardinal Morton's\nobservation, that \"The child here waiting at table, whomever shall live to\nsee it, will prove a marvellous man.\" It was at the archbishop's that More\nwon his first spurs in wit, devising pageants and allegories. But while his\nairy character early manifested itself, his early poems also reflect a vein\nof ascetic thoughtfulness; as in the Ruful Lamentacion he wrote on the\ndeath of Queen Elizabeth, mother to King Henry VIII:\n\n  \"O ye that put your trust and confidence\n  In worldly joy and frayle prosperite,\n  That so lyve here as ye should never hence,\n  Remember death, and joke here uppon me.\n  Ensaumple, I thinke there may no better be.\n  Yourself wotte well that in this realme was I\n  Your quene but late, and lo, now here I lye.\n\n  \"If worship myght have kept me, I had not gone;\n  If wyt myght have me saved, I neded not fere;\n  If money myght have helpe, I lacked none.\n  But, good God, what vayleth all this gere?\n  When deth is come, thy mighty messengere,\n  Obey we must there is no remedy.\n  Me hath he summoned, and now here I ly.\n\n  \"Yet was I late promised otherwyse,\n  This yere to live in welth and delice.\n  Lo, whereto cometh thy blandishyng promyse,\n  O false astrology and devynatrice,\n  Of Goddes secrets makyng thyselfe so wyse.\n  How true is for this yere thy prophecy--\n  The yere yet lasteth, and lo, nowe here I ly.\"\n\nRhenanus, Brixius, Erasmus, commended his early poems; he was admitted\namong the brotherhood of those who cultivated lettered lore. This was a\nperiod of general renovation throughout Europe. For good or for evil, the\ntorch of knowledge had been lighted. Vocabularies and lexicons had reached\na fearful multiplication in Germany and Italy toward the close of the\nfifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth century. Nuremberg, Spires, Basil,\nteemed with rudimentary treatises, dictionaries, and grammars; men were\nfeeding on Latin and Greek, studying eight or ten hours at a stretch.\nEngland and Italy surpassed France in the literary movement; and Bud\u00e9\ncomplained that, in his countrymen's estimation, philological studies were\nthe hobbies of a few monomaniacs. More began his contributions to the\nlearning of the age by translating Lucian and Augustine's City of God.\nErasmus, in a letter to Hutten, described him as a unique genius in\nEngland. But he gave his attention to religion no less than to literature.\n\"Erudition,\" Stapleton quaintly remarks, \"however varied and extensive, is,\nwithout piety, like a golden ring in the nostrils; there is nothing more\nabsurd than to set a precious jewel in a decaying piece of wood. Knowledge\nis ill suited to a corrupt breast.\" To knowledge without goodness, Plato\nhad denied the name of wisdom, and given the inferior designation of\ncleverness. But the youthful More was no less eager to attain piety than to\nbecome proficient in learning. He manifested these aspirations according to\nthe tenets of his creed; he wore a hair-shirt, he slept on the bare floor,\nhis head resting on a wooden block; he restricted his hours of rest to four\nor five at longest; acquainted with watchings and fastings, he nevertheless\nmade no ostentatious display of these and similar austerities--often, on\nthe other hand, concealing them under as conventional an appearance as it\nwas possible to bear.\n\nFinding it useful to have some great man as an ideal, he translated Pico\ndella Mirandola's life. At that time, Colet, dean of St. Paul's, was\npreaching in London; More derived much comfort from his friendship, and\ncompared himself to Eurydice following Orpheus, but in danger of falling\nback into the realms of darkness. In a letter to the dean he thus\nexpatiates upon the annoyances of life in London: \"The roofs intercept a\ngreat portion of the light, and do not allow a free view of the sky. The\nair is not bounded by the circle of the horizon, but by the housetops.\nTherefore I the more willingly bear with you for not repenting of your\nresidence in the country, where you see good people around you, void of the\ncunning of towns; where, whithersoever you turn your eyes, the bland face\nof the earth delights you.\n{635}\nThere you see nothing but the benignant gifts of nature, and, as it were,\nthe sacred vestiges of innocence.\" As for his literary study, Lilly and\nTonstall were his associates--Linacre and Grocinus his tutors. Now began\nthat series of friendships which he was through life always willing to\ncontract with educated men, such as Crooke, or Croke, one of the greatest\nstudents of the sixteenth century, who wrangled at Leipzig, \"de\ndogmatibilitatibus\" and other long things--schools then disputed on the\nweight of Hercules's club and the size of Diogenes's tub--who taught Greek\nto Henry VIII., and succeeded Erasmus in the chair of Greek at Cambridge;\nLee, who wrote against Erasmus; Fisher, who wrote sturdily against\nreformers; Dorpius, who was shocked at the new classical studies, hearing\npeople swear \"by Jove,\" and was desirous of limiting Grecian studies to the\nworks of Chrysostom and the Eastern fathers; Goclenius, who professed for\ntwenty years; Cornelius Crocus, who wrote Latin with Terentian elegance,\nand became a Jesuit when fifty years old; Grynaeus, who taught Greek, who,\nalthough a reformer, never insulted his antagonists and discovered six\nbooks of Livy; Peter AEgidius, or Giles, whom Erasmus called a most\nagreeable host, and who wrote a Greek lexicon while Luther was bewailing\nhis sins in a convent cell; Paulus Jovius, who spent twenty-seven years in\nwriting his Latin history, was esteemed by Leo. X. above Livy, and wanted a\ngreat lady to send him some jam from Naples, because he was getting sick of\nnew-laid eggs; Vives, who was one of the literary triumvirs of the age, and\nwho, at his lectures at Corpus Christi College, was often applauded by\nHenry and Queen Catherine. In the mean while he had, in a more practical\nsphere, taken the virile gown, before practising as a barrister, and at\ntwenty-eight years of age been elected to the office of perpetual\n\"shyrevus\" or sheriff. His business was to \"administer justice\" for the\nsubordinate sheriffs, \"_pro istis shyrevis_\" (Stapleton,) who were\nincompetent in matters of law. While he was filling this office, a riot\ntook place in the city. For several years past there had been a great\nincrease of foreign workmen, to the great annoyance of the native working\nclasses. A popular preacher of the day, Dr. Bell, preached a sermon, in\nwhich he urged the people to expel the foreign usurpers. Apprentices and\nartisans, therefore, agreed that on the first of May, after business, there\nshould be a massacre of the foreigners. This trades' demonstration,\nhowever, was baffled through the foresight of More. He issued an edict,\nenjoining all well-disposed persons to stay within doors after nine o'clock\non the first of May. On that day there was no disturbance. A few days\nafter, however, several riotous crowds of working-men gathered in their\nthousands, rushed to Newgate, and set free some tiny minorities of swains\nwho had been locked up for robbing, murdering, or otherwise annoying the\nforeigners. Hour by hour they mustered in huger strength; angry shouts in\nhomeliest Saxon rang through the air; the whirligig was getting louder and\nlouder to one's ears. It seemed at one time rather hard to say how all this\nwould end. More, being loved by the town mob, tried to speak to the crowd\nof small boys, big men, and roughs. Was it a Saturday night, that there\nshould be such noise in the streets? Did the working-men forget their duty?\nThey did; and it was at last needful to send for the red coats, who, with\nqueer-looking harquebuses, soon put the mob to flight. Thirteen ringleaders\nwere arrested and condemned to death; one only, however, was executed, the\nothers being saved through the intercession of three queens and the\ninfluence of More.\n\nIn 1503 he was made a member of Parliament, and opposed a grant of money to\nHenry VII. That monarch, who has been compared to Louis XI. of France, was\nnot to be bearded in this manner, and More was obliged to fly to the\ncontinent.\n{636}\nBut when Henry VIII. began his reign, More became the object of royal\nfavor. His literary talent and jovial mood were qualities too valuable not\nto be appreciated by the king, who was surrounding himself with all\nvarieties of genius. Like Gargantua, the young king was athirst of all that\ncould adorn his court; More was therefore bound to the court by a golden\nchain. He was made a knight, and one of the privy council. In return for\nthe royal favor he had to enliven the king with witty sayings, until this\nyoke became almost too heavy for him. He had scarcely any time left for his\nhome enjoyments and his literary pursuits. In self-defence he was at last\ndriven to a kind of stratagem; he affected dulness, and tried as much as he\npossibly could to become a bore. At last he succeeded and was allowed more\nfreedom and privacy.\n\nAt that period he resided in Chelsea, then a fashionable suburb. There Sir\nThomas lived in a semi-patriarchal fashion. So strict was he in religious\nobservances in his family that his house has been compared to a kind of\nconvent or religious abode. Meekness, order, industry characterized the\ninmates. He set every one an example of gentleness and wisdom. Roper says\nthat, during sixteen years spent with Sir Thomas, he never saw the latter\nin a \"fume.\" A young lady who had been brought up in the family used to\nbehave badly for the sole purpose of being chid by More, whose gentle pity\nand gravity were delightful to observe. In his second wife, Mrs. Alice\nMiddleton, who had an acrid and disagreeable temper, he had an opportunity\nfor taming a shrew, and had performed that feat with more credit to his\nskill and patience than pleasantness to himself. He used to give his wife\nand children plenty of sound ethical advice: \"It is now no mastery\n(difficulty) for you children to goe to heaven,\" he would say, \"for\neverybody giveth you good counsel and good example. You see virtue rewarded\nand vice punished, so that you are carried up to heaven as it were by the\nchins.\" He would encourage them to bear diseases and afflictions with\npatience, and to resist the devil, whom he would compare to an ape--\"for as\nthe ape, not well looked to, will be busie and bold to do shrewde turnes,\nand contrarily being spyed and checkt for them, will suddenly leap back and\nadventure no further; so the devil,\" etc. Thus at dinner and supper did he\nentertain his family with high moral purpose; he allowed them, for their\nrecreation, to sing or to play on \"violes.\" Some biographers allege that he\nonce cured his daughter of the sweating sickness. Ellis Haywood published\nat Florence a little book called \"Il Moro,\" in which many details are given\nrespecting the home life of More. Thus he is represented as entertaining\nsix guests at dinner. After the meal the party ascend the mound in the\ngarden, and, sitting on a greensward, they admire the meanderings of the\nriver, the hills undulating on the horizon, the turf and flowers of the\nriver side. His establishment, in its simplicity, greatly contrasted with\nWolsey's household, and its five hundred dependents, chancellors,\nchaplains, doctors, ushers, valets, and others. More, however, a jester,\nthe middle-ages custom of keeping a \"fool\" not yet having been\ndiscontinued. Henry VIII. had his Somers, Wolsey his Path, and More his\nPatterson.\n\nSir Thomas was desirous of appropriating his leisure to the production of\nsome notable work. Already, while still unnoticed by Henry, he had written\na History of Richard III., in which he gave the following portrait of that\nking:\n\n  \"Ill fetured of limmes, croke backed, his left shoulder much higher than\n  his right, hard-favoured of visage ... he was malicious wrathful,\n  envious, and from afore his birth, ever frowarde. ... Hee was close and\n  secrete, a deepe dissimuler, lowlye of countenance, arrogaunt of heart,\n  outwardly coumpinable where he inwardly hated, not letting to kisse whome\n  hee thoughte to kyll; dispitious and cruell, not for evill well alway,\n  but after for ambition, and either for the suretee or encrease of his\n  estate. Frende and foo was muche what indifferent, where his advantage\n  grew; he spared no man's deathe whose life withstoode his purpose. He\n  slewe with his owne handes King Henry the Sixt, being prisoner in the\n  Tower, as menne constantly saye.\"\n\n{637}\n\nShakespeare no doubt borrowed from this sketch some of the traits with\nwhich he depicted the ambitious monarch. On the other hand, Horace Walpole,\nin his \"Historic Doubts,\" will have it that this history was written \"from\na most corrupted source.\"\n\nMore now began to concentrate his energies for a work of more universal\ninterest. He became more abstemious than ever in his food and sleep; he\nsnatched as many hours as possible from his official pursuits, in order to\ncultivate literature. The result of this labor was the famous \"Utopia,\"\ncomposed in 1516. In a letter to Peter Giles or AEgidius, he describes the\nmanner in which that work was written: \"After having been engaged in\npleading or hearing causes, either as judge or arbiter, there is left me\nbut scant opportunity for literature. I return home; I must talk with my\nwife, amuse my children, confer of household affairs with my dependents. It\nis necessary to do all this unless you are to be a stranger in your own\nhouse. ... When therefore can I write? Neither have I mentioned the time\nnecessary for sleep or food.\" ... In fact he used at that time to rise at\ntwo o'clock in the morning, writing till seven. Under these difficulties he\neffected his purpose--he completed a work which won him a European\nreputation.\n\nPoets and philosophical dreamers react in their speculations against the\nbarrenness or terror of reality; and the more striking is this background,\nthe more impressive is the effect of the whole. More's book had an\nappropriate practical contrast in the political circumstances of the time.\nThere were rumors of great wars; the Moslem emperor was threatening\nChristendom. This fact, perhaps, not less than the intrinsic merit of the\nbook, explains the brilliant success of the \"Utopia.\" Every educated man\nread it. Morus [sic] was greatly delighted, and candidly gave expression to\nhis feelings. He was, he averred, more pleased with Tunstall's appreciation\nthan if he had received an Attic talent. Sometimes he fancied that his\nUtopians were about to elect him their king for ever. In reality, he was\nhighly praised by AEgidius, Jovius, Busleyden, Paludanus, and others. The\nnew republic, these friendly critics averred, transcended the polity of\nancient Athens or Rome. A way had been shown toward the attainment of true\nhappiness. The book was a masterpiece of erudition, philosophy, knowledge\nof the world. All this approbation was the more acceptable to More, that he\nhad been somewhat diffident concerning the reception of his work. In a\nletter to Peter AEgidius, or Giles, of Antwerp, he had indulged in that\nsuperciliousness toward the multitude which is the besetting temptation of\nsolitary thinkers. He complained of the discordances of criticism, the\nsmall qualification of many for the exercise of lettered appreciation:\n\n  \"The tastes of men are very different; some are of so morose a temper, so\n  sour a disposition, and make, such absurd judgments of things, that men\n  of cheerful and lively tempers, who indulge their genius, seem much more\n  happy than those who waste their time and strength in order to publishing\n  a book; which, though of itself it might be useful or pleasant, yet\n  instead of being well received, will be sure to be either laughed at or\n  censured. Many know nothing of learning, others despise it; a man that is\n  accustomed to a coarse and harsh style thinks everything is rough that is\n  not barbarous. Our trifling pretenders to learning think all is slight\n  that is not dress'd up in words that are worn out of use; some love only\n  old things, and many like nothing but what is their own. Some are so sour\n  that they can allow no jests, and others so dull that they can endure\n  nothing that is sharp; while some are as much afraid of anything gay and\n  lively, as a man with a mad dog is of water; others are so light and\n  unsettled, that their thoughts change as quick as they do their postures.\n  Some, again, when they meet in taverns, take upon them, among their cups,\n  to pass censures very freely on all writers, and with a supercilious\n  liberty to condemn everything they do not like; in which they have an\n  advantage, like that of a bald man, who can catch hold of another by the\n  hair, while the other cannot return the like upon him. They are safe, as\n  it were, from gunshot, since there is nothing in them solid enough to be\n  taken hold of; others are so unthankful, that even when they are well\n  pleased with a book, yet they think they owe nothing to the author.\"\n\n{638}\n\nAlthough More did meet with some of these ignorant or malevolent critics,\nhe must have been gratified at finding himself exalted into a modern Plato.\nNor was the praise he received partial or exaggerated. He had expressed the\nleading idea of the time. Casting a general glance over the social field,\nhe had applied the newly arisen spirit of research and criticism to the\nsurvey of society. Judging the actual, he had also evolved the ideal, which\nthe humanitarians of the age had more dimly viewed. Being a man of genius,\nhe had expressed a certain order of thought--concisely, but not the less\ncomprehensively--for all ages; and modern Positivists, Owenists,\nFourierists, and many other ists, might, from a study of the \"Utopia,\"\ngather another illustration of the great truth that there is nothing new\nunder the sun.\n\nThe plan of the work is as follows: More supposes himself in Flanders, in\nthe capacity of ambassador to Charles the Fifth, and in the company of\n\"that incomparable man, Cuthbert Tonstal, whom the king, with such\nuniversal applause, lately made master of the roles.\" At Antwerp, they\nbecome acquainted with Peter Giles, or AEgidius, \"a man of great honor and\nof good rank in his town, though less than he deserves;\" and they make\nanother acquaintance in this wise: \"One day, as I was returning home from\nmass at St. Mary's, which is the chief church, and the most frequented of\nany in Antwerp, I saw him (Petrus AEgidius, or Giles) by accident, talking\nwith a stranger, who seemed past the flower of his age; his face was\ntanned, he had a long beard, and his cloak was hanging carelessly about\nhim; so that by his looks and habits I concluded he was a seaman.\" This\nancient mariner, however, turns out to have travelled as an observer and\nphilosopher as well as a naval man; his name is Raphael Hythloday. He is a\nPortuguese, who has travelled with Americus Vespucius. It is in\nconversation with the stranger that More becomes acquainted with the\nhistory and manners of the Utopians. In the first part of the book, Raphael\ncensures the polity of ordinary countries; he complains that \"most princes\napply themselves more to affairs of war than to the useful arts of peace;\nthey are generally set more on acquiring new kingdoms, right or wrong, than\non governing well those they possess.\" Such opinions had a peculiar\npungency at a time when Selim was threatening to root out the Christian\nname from Europe. Raphael criticises those in power, and their conservative\nspirit; he betrays an implacable hostility toward those who \"cover\nthemselves obstinately with this excuse, of reverence to past times;\" he\nhad, he said, met with them chiefly in England, where he happened to be\nwhen the rebellion in the west was suppressed, \"with a great slaughter of\nthe poor people that were engaged in it.\" When relating his sojourn in\nEngland, Raphael also indulges in the eulogy of that reverend prelate, John\nMorton, Archbishop of Canterbury--in whose house More had been brought up--\n\"A man, Peter, (for Mr. More knows well what he was,) who was not less\nvenerable for his wisdom and virtues, for the high character he bore: he\nwas of a middle stature, not broke with age: his looks begot reverence\nrather than fear; his conversation was easy, but serious and grave; he\nsometimes took pleasure to try the force of those that came as suitors to\nhim upon business, by speaking sharply though decently to them, and by that\nhe discovered their spirit and presence of mind, with which he was much\ndelighted, when it did not grow up to impudence, as bearing a great\nresemblance to his own temper, and he looked on such persons as the fittest\nmen for affairs.\n{639}\nHe spoke both gracefully and weightily; he was eminently skilled in the\nlaw; had a vast understanding, and a prodigious memory; and those excellent\ntalents with which nature had furnished him were improved by study and\nexperience. When I was in England, the king depended much on his councils,\nand the government seemed to be chiefly supported by him; for from his\nyouth he had been all along practised in affairs; and, having passed\nthrough many traverses of fortune, he had with great cost acquired a vast\nstock of wisdom; which is not soon lost, when it is purchased so dear.\"\nMore's talent for keen observation and portraiture is also evinced in the\ndelightful sketch of the lawyer whom Raphael observes at Archbishop\nMorton's. This gentleman \"took occasion to run out in a high commendation\nof the severe execution of justice upon thieves, who, as he said, were then\nhanged so fast that there were sometimes twenty on one gibbet; and upon\nthat he said he could not wonder enough how it came to pass that, since so\nfew escaped, there were yet so many thieves left who were still robbing in\nall places.\" Raphael, who in that nineteenth century which takes upon\nitself to realize almost all the visions of dreamers, would have been a\nzealous advocate for the abolition of capital punishment, objects that\n\"this way of punishing thieves was neither just in itself, nor good for the\npublic; for as the severity was too great, so the remedy was not effectual;\nsimple theft not being so great a crime that it ought to cost a man his\nlife; no punishment, how severe soever, being able to restrain those from\nrobbing who can find out no other way of livelihood. Not only you in\nEngland, but a great part of the world, imitate some ill masters that are\nreadier to chastise their scholars than to teach them.\" Here is included\nthe modern fallacy about reforming criminals, which has been so much\ninsisted on, as if that reformation was so easy a task, as if so many\nprobabilities were not against it, as if it was not better for poor\ncriminals to be sent to a better world, than to be left open in this life\nto almost irresistible temptations. However, that form of sentiment called\nhumanitarianism--which would spare the wicked and lost, while the honest\nand useful are left to slow tortures, as in the case of merchant\nsailors--that humanitarianism is continually displayed by this Raphael, in\na completeness and energy beyond which no later speculations have attained.\nThe lawyer maintains about the thieves that \"there are many handicrafts,\nand there is husbandry, by which they may make a shift to live, unless they\nhave a greater mind to follow ill courses;\" and Raphael's rejoinder\ndiscloses a state of things which was not very well calculated to make the\narmy popular: \"That will not serve your turn, for many lose their limbs in\ncivil or foreign wars, as lately in the Cornish rebellion, and some time\nago in your wars with France, who, being thus mutilated in the service of\ntheir king and country, can no more follow their old trades, and are too\nold to learn new ones. He owns, however, that wars do not occur every day.\nThe following opinion of his may be advantageously recommended to the\ncareful study of enlightened and disinterested democrats, who, by the\nmagical power of their thought, can amplify it, transmogrify it, intensify\nit for the benefit of their country's flesh and blood: \"There is a great\nnumber of noblemen among you, that are themselves as idle as drones; that\nsubsist on other men's labors, on the labor of their tenants, whom, to\nraise their revenues, they pare to the quick.\" Applying this to his theory\nof thieves, Hythlodoeus says that these noblemen keep a great number of\nservants who, on their master's death, are turned out of doors and betake\nthemselves to larceny. The lawyer, in nowise disconcerted, answers that\nthese tatterdemalions, constitute a capital recruiting-ground for the army.\nRaphael retorts that a converse metamorphosis of efficient soldiers into\nable robbers is liable to take place.\n{640}\nHe also inveighs against France for keeping up a ruinous military\nestablishment: \"But this bad custom, so common among you, of keeping many\nservants, is not peculiar to this nation. In France there is yet a more\npestiferous sort of people; for the whole country is full of soldiers,\nstill kept up in time of peace, if such a state of a nation can be called\npeace; and these are kept in pay upon the same account that you plead for\nthose idle retainers about noblemen, this being a maxim of those pretended\nstatesmen, that it is necessary for the public safety to have a good body\nof veteran soldiers ever in readiness. They think raw men are not to be\ndepended upon, and they sometimes seek occasions for making war, that they\nmay train up their soldiers in the art of cutting throats; or, as Sallust\nobserved, for keeping their hands in use, that they may not grow dull by\ntoo long an intermission. But France has learned to its cost how dangerous\nit is to feed such beasts. The fate of the Romans, Carthaginians, and\nSyrians, and many other nations and cities, which were both overturned and\nquite ruined by those standing armies, should make others wiser.\" And\nHythloday in his enthusiasm adds a stinging taunt, the truth of which,\nhowever, subsequent agitations and rebellions have not confirmed: \"Every\nday's experience shows that the mechanics in the towns or the clowns in the\ncountry are not afraid of fighting with those idle gentlemen.\" He further\nattributes the great number of thieves to the increase of pasture, \"by\nwhich your sheep, which are naturally mild and easily kept in order, may be\nsaid now to devour men and unpeople not only villages, but towns;\" land was\nenclosed, tenants turned away, and Hythlodoeus points out a cattle plague\namong the results of this state of things, adding somewhat fiercely: \"To us\nit might have seemed more just had it fell on the owners themselves.\" He\ndoes not seem to perceive that by this enclosure the land is saved from\nthat exhaustion which must ultimately reduce Europe to a barren state, and\nthus annihilate civilization; but humanitarianism was never remarkable for\nexcess of foresight. The lawyer is about to reply in a speech divided into\nfour points, but the humane archbishop interferes, and \"eases him of the\ntrouble of answering;\" unfortunately, however, or perhaps from a relish for\nhumor, he allows Raphael to indulge in a long speech on the reasons against\nputting thieves to death. Hythloday recommends a punishment which no\nsensible thief would prefer to death, namely, that the criminal should be\nmade to work all his life in quarries or mines. But as this was the ancient\nRoman method, it is not perfect enough for the ingenious Raphael, who would\nmuch prefer a scheme according to which the thieves are let loose in the\ndaytime, engaged in working for the public; and, although liable to be\nwhipped for idleness, these debonair convicts punctually return to prison\nevery evening, and answer to their names before being locked up for the\nnight. The reformer adds somewhat naively, \"the only danger to be feared\nfrom them is their conspiring against the government.\" The unfortunate\nlawyer, rather taken aback at the idea of London being full of convicts\nwith cropped ears and a peculiar dress, playing the part of commissionaires\nor otherwise making themselves generally useful to Londoners, says that he\nfears this could not take place without the whole nation being endangered;\nthe sensible cardinal avoids this slight exaggeration, and answers with\nquiet irony that it is not easy to form a judgment with respect to the\nsuccess of this scheme, since it is a method that has never yet been tried.\nIf, in this exquisite scene, which evinces such dramatic genius, there is\nany trace of a lyrical element, this is most likely to be found in the\ncardinal's verdict, who is confessedly the most honored and reverend\npersonage, and withal one with a real prototype. There is no reason to\nsuppose that Morus was a Hythloday; of course, reflecting the thoughts of\nhis age, he had entertained similar ideas; but instead of petrifying them\nin his mind, he vaporized them, dramatized them, as it were, in the\ncharacter of Hythloday, contemplated their embodiment or type in an\nobjective, extraneous form, and thus remained, as to his inner self,\nimpartial and moderate.\n\n{641}\n\nNow, however, the Pantagruelistic element tends to predominate, and More\nwill expend some humor in satirizing friars, those _b\u00e9tes noires_ of\neducated men in the sixteenth century. A jester who is standing by gives it\nas his opinion that mendicants should become monks and nuns. A friar says\nthat even that transformation would not save the kingdom from beggars; the\njester calls the friars vagabonds; the friar falls into a passion and\noverwhelms the fool with epithets. Notwithstanding a scriptural reminder\nfrom the jester, \"in patience possess ye your souls,\" the friar wrests the\nwords of Scripture to the purposes of his anger. The cardinal courteously\nexhorts him to govern his passions; \"but,\" answers the friar, \"holy men\nhave had a good zeal--as it is said; the zeal of thine house hath eaten me\nup.\" \"You do this perhaps with a good intention,\" replies the cardinal;\n\"but in my opinion, it were wiser in you, and perhaps better for you, not\nto engage in so ridiculous a contest with a fool.\" The friar retorts that\n\"Solomon, the wisest of men, said to answer a fool according to his folly,\"\nand asserts that \"if the many mockers of Elisha, who was but one bald man,\nfelt the effect of his zeal, what will become of one mocker of so many\nfriars, among whom there are so many bald men? We have likewise a bull, by\nwhich all that jeer at us are excommunicated.\" Seeing the matter is not\nlikely soon to end, the archbishop sends the jester away and changes the\nsubject.\n\nAfter criticising the policy by which Henry VII. extorted money from his\nsubjects, Raphael Hythlodoeus, the radical, freely avows his opinion, that\n\"as long as there is any property, and while money is the standard of all\nother things, I cannot think that a nation can be governed either justly or\nhappily; not justly, because the best things will fall to the share of the\nworst men; nor happily, because all things will be divided among a few,\n(and even those are not in all respects happy,) the rest being left to be\nabsolutely miserable.\" An Owenite of the nineteenth century could not\nexpress himself more plainly. Again, he asserts that \"till property is\ntaken away, there can be no equitable or just distribution of things, nor\ncan the world be happily governed; for, as long as that is maintained, the\ngreatest and the far best part of mankind will be still oppressed with a\nload of cares and anxieties. I confess that, without taking it quite away,\nthose pressures that lie on a great part of mankind may be made lighter;\nbut they can never be quite removed.\"\n\nIn the second book Raphael gives up criticising the established order of\nthings, and describes the condition of Utopia. That island, once called\nAbraxa, lies on the other side of the Atlantic. In days of yore it was\nconquered and redeemed from a barbarous condition by the great legistor\nUtopus. There are fifty-four cities in the island, and Amaurot is the\nmetropolis. All these towns are as like one another, in outward\nconformation, laws, and customs, as possibility will admit. Farm-houses\nfill up the rural part of the island. Agricultural business is carried on\nby means of a kind of transportation from the cities; parties of\ninhabitants, in families of forty, are sent to rusticate for two years,\nafter which lapse of time they return to town and others are sent out.\nThere is in this manner a continual and well regulated supply and demand in\nagricultural labor; and the pursuits of tillage are conducted so\nintelligently as to avoid that scarcity of corn which would occasion\nunpleasant complications in so well-regulated a country. Among these\nhusbandmen's devices is a plan for the artificial hatching of eggs.\n{642}\nSo wonderful a system of Fetichism prevails in Utopia that \"he that knows\none of their towns knows them all, they are so like one another, except\nwhere the situation makes some difference.\" Raphael describes Amaurot,\nwhere he has resided for not less than four years. \"Their buildings are\ngood, and are so uniform that a whole side of a street looks like one\nhouse. The streets are twenty feet broad; there lie gardens behind all\ntheir houses, which are large but inclosed with buildings, that on all\nhands face the street, so that every house has both a door to the street\nand a back door to the garden.\" The magistrate was, of old, called the\nsyphogrant, but is now designated as the philarch; and over every ten\nsyphogrants is a higher functionary anciently called the tranibore, and now\nthe archphilarch. The syphogrants elect the prince by ballot--\"they give\ntheir voices secretly so that it is not known for whom every one gives his\nsuffrage.\" The prince is elected for life, with, however, this\nreservation--\"unless he is removed upon suspicion of some design to enslave\nthe people.\" The syphogrants in their council have it for their peculiar\nmission to prevent any conspiration being formed by the prince and the\ntranibores for the enslavement of the nation. Mechanics in Utopia have\ntheir day's work limited to six hours; the rest of the twenty-four hours\nbeing by them devoted to hearing lectures if they are of a studious turn,\nor to reading, eating, sleeping, etc. After supper, they go in winter to\nmusic halls; in summer, to gardens; or they divert themselves with games,\n\"not unlike our chess,\" between \"virtues and vices,\" in which are\nrepresented, in a manner combining instruction with amusement, \"the methods\nby which vice either openly assaults or secretly undermines virtue; and\nvirtue on the other hand resists it.\" There are no taverns or ale-houses.\nThe Utopians prefer iron to gold or silver; they make their commonest\nutensils of what to other nations are the precious metals; of silver and\ngold they also make chains for slaves, adding to the infamy of convicts by\nmaking them wear golden earrings or coronets. Pearls they find on the\ncoast, and diamonds on the rocks. The ambassadors of Anemolia were\ntherefore disappointed when, thinking to astonish the Utopians by a profuse\ndisplay of gold ornaments, they were only derided by this utilitarian race\nas wearers of useless metal.\n\nAs to knowledge, the Utopians are fortunate in having all the wisdom of the\nancients without the trouble of being acquainted with dead languages; for\nit seems that they themselves have made \"the same discoveries as the\nGreeks, both in musick, logick, arithmetick, and geometry.\" Their habit of\nmind, unlike that of the Scotch, is rather outer than inner, objective than\nsubjective, inclined to practical science rather than to metaphysics; they\nwould be unable to understand a definition of man in the \"aibstract.\" They\nare acquainted with astronomy, but eschew divination by the stars. Touching\nthe causes of things, and the problems of moral philosophy, there is by no\nmeans a perfect agreement among them: they have a tendency toward the\n'happiness' principle. Such is their aversion to war that, when compelled\nto enter the field, they immediately set a price on the head of the enemy's\nking, or of any of his ministers who may have been instrumental in bringing\nabout the outbreak of hostilities. The admirers of More have been somewhat\nshocked at this practice, more utilitarian than honorable; but there is no\nreason to suppose he would have consented to such a course in a similar\nconjuncture; it is as an artist, and to complete the necessary development\nof the Utopian character, that he has imputed to them this utilitarian,\npositivistic device; a nation which could be brought to regard war as an\nevil, damaging the happiness of the greatest number, would not stick at\nsacrificing a few princes in a quiet way in order to secure the advantage\nof the many through the ruin of the few.\n{643}\nHere's account of the high esteem in which the Utopians hold their priests,\nis, perhaps, more lyrical than consistent with the character of that\nimaginary nation; he makes them go so far in their reverence as to bring no\nsacerdotal criminals to account, the punishment of these offenders being\n\"left to God and to their own consciences.\" It must be recollected,\nhowever, that they have but few priests, and those chosen with great\ncaution. The Utopians have ritualistic tendencies. \"They burn incense, and\nother sweet odors, and have a great number of wax lights during their\nworship; not out of any imagination that such oblations can add anything to\nthe divine nature, which even prayers cannot do; but as it is a harmless\nand pure way of worshipping God, so they think those sweet savors and\nlights, together with some other ceremonies, by a secret and unaccountable\nvirtue elevate men's souls and inflame them with greater energy and\ncheerfulness during the divine worship.\" The priests' vestments \"are\nparti-colored; and both the work and colors are wonderful. ... They say\nthat, in the ordering and placing those plumes, some dark mysteries are\nrepresented, which pass down among their priests in a secret tradition\nconcerning them; and that they are as hieroglyphics, putting them in mind\nof the blessings that they have received from God, and of their duties both\nto him and to their neighbors.\" Raphael concludes the book by saying that\n\"there are many things in Utopia which I rather wish than hope to see\nfollowed in our governments;\" and this hint shows the dreamy nature of the\nscheme. The Utopia is, indeed, a mere philosophical romance, in which More\nsacrificed to the humanitarian tendencies of the age, but which left his\ndeep and inner convictions unshaken. His after life showed that he was free\nfrom any tendency to realize the Utopian idea; and the more so, perhaps,\nbecause he had written the Utopia; for there is in the utterance of thought\na peculiar virtue which clears the mind from the effects of a lingering and\nstagnating condition of ideas. Like Plato's Atlantis, the Utopia is an\ningenious play of fancy rather than a production intended to convey serious\ntruths under a veil; it is alike removed from the earnest intensity of\nthought pervading Cicero's Republic, and the semi-prophetic rapture of\nBacon's New Atlantis. And in relation to our age, the Utopia serves to show\nthat what enthusiasts have imagined, under the influence of the modern\nsceptical spirit, had been foreshadowed and included at the very dawn of\nthat spirit, by the comprehensiveness of genius; and that the class of\nschemes which are designated by the name of Sir T. More's production, are\nas far from their practical fulfilment now as they were three hundred or\nthree thousand years ago.\n\nLike every successful author, More had his literary quarrels. The favor\nwith which the Utopia had been received, excited the gall of a French man\nof letters, who had already broken a few lances with More. This Brixius,\nBrice, or Brie according to Rabelais, published a book called Anti-Morus,\nin which he carefully raked up every mistake in grammar and quantity to be\nfound in More's early Latin poem. He punned on More's name, likening it to\nM\u00f4ros, the Greek word for madman. Erasmus wrote to this critic, charging\nhim with being a very child compared with More. Sir Thomas speedily\nprepared an answer, but Erasmus advised him to meet the attack with silent\ncontempt. There is nothing so galling to fools. More perceived that to be\nattacked by dunces is an advantage rather than otherwise.\n\nIt was about that period that Oxford was convulsed by the introduction of\nGrecian studies. The \"Trojans,\" as they called themselves, evinced an\nimplacable hostility toward the \"new learning.\" Priam, Hector, Paris, waged\nwar against Hellenic writings.\n{644}\nBut the tide of grammars, aorists, accents, was no more to be staid than\nthe hosts of real invaders at the siege of Troy. More played the part of\nSinon. He wrote to the Oxonians that Greek was being learned at Cambridge,\nthat the king and Wolsey were in favor of Greek; that in the end the\nTrojans would have to be wise; and at last the reactionists gave in.\n\nIn 1523, Sir T. More was appointed speaker of the house of commons. This\nadvancement he accepted with some reluctance. In his opening speech, he\nbesought the clemency of the king in behalf of any man who, in the house,\nshould chance to speak unadvisedly and roughly: \"Such is the weight of the\nmatter, such is the reverent dread that the timorous hearts of your\nnaturall subjects conceive towards your highnesse, (our most undoubted\nsoveraign,) that they cannot in this point rest satisfied, except your\ngracious bounty therein declared, put away the scruple of their timorous\nmindes, and animate and encourage them from all doubt; may it therefore\nplease your majesty, (our most gracious king ) of your great goodnesse, to\npardon freely, without doubt of your dreadful displeasure, whatsoever shall\nhappen any man to speak in the discharging of his conscience, interpreting\nevery man's words, how unseemly soever couched, yet to proceed of good zeal\nto the prosperity of the kingdome, and the honour of your royall person.\"\nNot long after, a grant of money being before parliament, the cardinal,\nfearing it would not pass the lower house, bethought himself of attending\nthe debate. Previously there had been a slight disagreement or \"garboyle\"\nbetween the cardinal and the honorable members, with whom Wolsey was\ndispleased, because they were addicted to revealing in ale-houses what had\nbeen said within the walls of parliament. On this occasion, therefore, the\nnew speaker urged the necessity of the cardinal's entering the house in\nfull pomp: \"Masters,\" said Sir Thomas, \"for as much as my lord cardinall,\nnot long since, as ye all know, laid to our charge the lightnesse of our\ntongues, for things spoken out of this house; it shall not, in my judgment,\nbe amisse to receive him with all his pomp; his maces, his pillars, his\npole axes, his crosses, his hat, and great seal, too; that so if he blame\nus hereafter, we may be the bolder to excuse ourselves, and lay it upon\nthose that his grace bringeth hither with him.\" The house agreed to this,\nand the cardinal, in a \"solemn oration,\" gave many reasons for granting the\nmoney; but the house remained silent. He made another appeal: \"Masters, you\nhave many wise and learned men among you, and since I am, by the king's own\nperson, sent hither unto you for the preservation of yourselves and all the\nkingdome, I think it fit you give me some reasonable answer.\" Still every\nman held his peace, so that he called them by name. Mr. Murray (afterward\nLord Murray) and several others of \"the wisest of the house,\" when\nchallenged in this way, returned no answer, \"being before agreed.\" The\ncardinal expressed his surprise at \"this marvellous obstinate silence,\" and\ncalled on the speaker to answer. Sir Thomas, first meekly kneeling upon his\nknees, pleaded that the house was abashed by so illustrious a presence as\nthe cardinal's; showed that, besides, the ancient liberty of the house\nallowed the members to be silent; averred that he was quite unable to speak\nin their name, \"except every one of them could put their several wits into\nhis head.\" The poor cardinal retired in despair, and afterward gave vent to\nhis grief by saying to More, in the gallery at Whitehall: \"Would to God,\nMr. More, you had been to Rome when I made you speaker!\" \"Your grace not\noffended, so would I too, my lord.\" rejoined Sir Thomas. Then, with his\nusual kindly tact, he changed the subject.\n\n{645}\n\nAnd now More was to enter on the fiercer struggles of the theological\narena. He was to write in a weighty, but also nervous and popular manner,\noften condescending to the humorous anecdote, or \"merrie tale,\" those ample\ncontroversial treatises in which was laid the broad foundation stone of\nEnglish prose. Even for so dreamy and gentle a thinker, there could be no\navoiding the contests of the age. The times were too stirring for mere\nliterary dilettanteism. As Le Bas has remarked, \"Things which, for many a\ncentury, had been deemed by multitudes immutable as the laws of nature,\nwere now found to contain within themselves the elements of a change. The\nsupremacy of the Roman pontiff, more especially, had till then been very\ngenerally regarded as a fundamental principle of revealed religion. Yet\nthis was precisely the principle against which the first violence of the\nspirit now abroad was vehemently directed; and, what was still more\nastounding, the assault against it was either directed or assisted by men\nwho had pledged themselves to its maintenance by the most solemn sanctions\nwhich religion can impose. All this cannot have happened without a perilous\nconvulsion of the public mind. It may be said, without the smallest\nexaggeration, that no disturbance in the order of the physical world could\nhave produced, in many a heart, much more confusion and dismay than that\nwhich was occasioned by this rupture of immemorial prejudices and\nassociations. The fountains of the great deep were breaking up before their\neyes, and the summits of ancient institutions seemed in danger of\ndisappearing beneath the deluge.\" (Le Bas's Life of Cranmer.) More answered\nan attack which Luther had made on the king. In 1525, he wrote a very acrid\nletter against the Reformers, urging Erasmus to more decided action. But\nthe humanitarian had small anxiety for engaging in these disputes. More\nsoon found abundant work for himself. In 1524 or 1525, there was published\nan anonymous tract, entitled the Supplycacion of Beggers, which was a\nvirulent attack on the clergy.\n\nErasmus had said that, under a religious veil, the Reformation movement was\nthe quarrel of those who had not against those who had. This, the opinion\nof most educated men in the sixteenth century, appeared to be confirmed by\nthis tract, which urges a severe blow against the church, not on religious\ngrounds, but in behalf of the poor. In the Supplycacion the king is advised\nto take the wealth of the monasteries and give it to the poor. In this\nsingular production the long-winded sentences of the opening are the very\nwhine of mendicants:\n\n  \"Most lamentably complayneth theyre wofull misery unto your highness,\n  your poore, the wretched hidous monsters, (on whom scarcely for horror\n  any dare loke,) the foule unhappy sort of lepers, and other sore people,\n  nedy, impotent, blinde, lame, and sike, that live only by almesse, name\n  that theyre nombre is daily so sore increased that all the almesse of all\n  the well-disposed people of this youre realme is not halfe ynough for to\n  susteine theim, but that for very constreint they die for hunger. And\n  this most pestilent mischief comen uppon youre saide poore by the reason\n  that there is yn the tyrnes of youre noble predecessours passed craftily\n  creypt ynto this your realme another sort (not of impotent but) of strong\n  puissant and counterfeit holy and idell beggers and vacabundes, which\n  syns the tyme of theyre first entre by all the craft and wilinesse of\n  satan are nowe encreased under your sight not onely into a great nobre\n  but also ynto a kingdome. These are (not the herdes, but the ravinous\n  wolves going in herdes clothing devouring the flocke) the bisshoppes,\n  abbottes, priours, deacons, archedeacones, suffraganes, prestes, monkes,\n  chanons, freres, pardoners, and somners. ... The goodliest lordshippes,\n  maners, landes, and teritories, are theyrs. Besides this they have the\n  tenth part of all the corne, medowe, pasture, grasse, colts, calves,\n  lambes, pigges, gese, and chickens.\"\n\nHe calculates the salaries paid to the clergy as amounting to one hundred\nand thirty thousand angels. \"Whereof not foure hundreth yeres passed they\nhad not one peny.\" He gives historical illustrations to show the\ndesirableness of being freed from such tributes: \"The nobill king Arthur\nhad never ben abill to have caried his armie to the fote of the mountains\nto resist the coming downe of Lucius the emperoure if such yerely exactions\nhad ben taken of his people.\n{646}\nThe Grekes had never ben abill to have so long continued at the siege of\nTroie if they had had at home such an idell sort of cormorantes to finde.\nThe auncient Romains had never ben abil to have put all the hole world\nunder theyre obeisance if theyre people had byn thus yerely oppressed. The\nTurke nowe yn your tyme shulde never be abill to get so moche groande of\nCristendome if he had yn his empire such a sort of locustes to devoure his\nsubstance.\" As it proceeds, the tract becomes more and more nervous and\ntruculent. Irritated by the utterance of this \"beggars' proctour,\" More in\n1529 replied in his Supplycacion of Soules.\n\nThis purports to be an appeal from the \"holy souls in purgatory\" to all\ngood Christians. The Supplicacion of Beggars is called \"an unhappy boke.\"\nIt is urged that \"lacke of belief in purgatory bringeth a man to hell.\" He\nrefutes the \"beggars' proctour\" by showing that Peter's pence was paid\nbefore the conquest, and exclaims: \"Oh! the grevouse shipwrak of the comen\nweale; he sayeth that in auncient time before the coming of the clergye\nthere were but few pore people, and yet thei did not begge, but there was\ngyven them ynough unasked, because at that time he saith there was no\nclargy. ... In thys place we let pas his threfold foly.\" He says that this\n\"beggars' proctour\" should have concluded his \"supplycacion\" in such terms\nas these: \"After ye the clergy is thus destroied and cast out, then shall\nLuther's ghospel come in; then shal Tyndal's testament be taken up; then\nshal false heresies bee preached; then shal the sacramentes be set at\nnaught; than shal fasting and prayour be neglected; then shal holy saints\nbe blasphemed;... then shal the servantes set naught by theyr maysters, and\nvnruly people rebell against their rulers; then wyll ryse vp ryflyng and\nrobbery, murther and mischief, and playn insurreccion. ... all which\nmischief may yet be withstanden easilye, and with Godde's grace so shal it,\nyf ye suffer no such bold beggars to seduce you with sedycyouse billes.\"\nMore girds on the most substantial armor in the Dialogue concerning\nHeresies, and other polemical treatises. He maintains that the church\ncannot err in the interpretations of Scripture; that according to the\nteaching of early doctors it is lawful to venerate images and render homage\nto relics. He argues for the real presence, comparing it with St.\nChrysostom to one man's face reflected in several mirrors; all the hosts,\nalthough in different places, are but one body and divine oblation. He\nadduces as one of the reasons for which Tyndal's New Testament was burned,\nthat in that version the words priests, church and charity, are\nrespectively rendered \"seniours,\" \"congregation,\" and \"love.\" The word\nsenior, he maintains, would apply \"Englishly\" rather to aldermen of towns\nthan to priests of the church. The word congregation can be applied equally\nto a company of Christians and a company of Turks though the church is\nindeed a congregation, yet every congregation is not the church. \"Lyke\nwysedom was there in the change of this word (charitie) into love. For\nthough charitie be alway love, yet is not, ye wote well, love alway\ncharitie.\" He blames that \"greate arche heretike Wickliffe\" for having\ntaken it upon himself to make a new translation of the Scriptures. \"Whereas\nye hole byble was long before his dayes by vertuous and wel learned men\ntranslated into ye English tong, and by good and godly people with devocion\nand sobrenes wel and reverently red.\" He sees no reason why Scripture\nshould not be read in the vulgar tongue. Luther's books, however, should be\nproscribed, \"because his heresies be so many and so abominable;\" a \"ich and\ntikling of vanite and vain glory has set hym besyde hys minde.\" He shows\nthat \"it is a great token that the world is nere at an ende while we se\npeople so farre fallen fro God, that they can abide it to be content with\nthis pestilent frantike secte;\" that \"fayth may be without charitie, and so\nfervent that it may suffer a payneful death, and yet for fault of charitie\nnot sufficient to salvacion.\"\n{647}\nHe establishes that \"princes be bounden to punish heretykes.\" He charges\nheretics with being wont to perpetrate \"outrages, and temporall harmes\"\nwith \"destroying Christe's holy sacramentes, pulling down Christ's crosse,\nblaspheming his blessed saints, destroying all devocion.\" He contrasts\n\"Saynt Cypryane, Saynt Chrisostome, Saynt Gregory, and al the vertuous and\ncunning doctours by rowe,\" with the doctors \"of this newe secte, frere\nLuther and his wyfe, frere Lambert and his wife, and frantike Tyndall.\" It\nmust be remembered that the excesses and seditions brought forth by the\nReformation in Germany were calculated to establish an association between\nthe ideas of religious reformer and of rebel; nor does the experience of\nsucceeding centuries go very far toward destroying this link. As a\nstatesman, therefore, if on no other ground, More was inclined toward the\ndisplay of an uncompromising severity. Nor was he alone in this tendency.\nBoth in England and on the continent, heresy was a crime punishable by law.\nAt the same time, there is no reason for thinking that More carried his\ndoctrines on that point into practice, as Fox, Burnet, and others have\nasserted. This theory is based on a passage of Erasmus, which declares that\nwhile More was chancellor no one was put to death in England for adherence\nto the new doctrines. (Nisard.) In his apology, written after his fall,\nMore candidly exposes both his opinions and the facts of his\nadministration. He vindicates himself from the \"lies neither fewe nor\nsmall\" which certain \"blessed brethren\" had industriously spread concerning\nhim. \"Dyvers of them have said that of suche as were in my house while I\nwas chauncellour, I used to examine theym with tormentes, causynge them to\nbee bounden to a tree in my gardeine, and there pituously beaten.\" \"Of very\ntruth, albeit that for a greate robbery, or an heighnous murder, or\nsacriledge in a church, I caused sometyme suche thynges to be done by some\nofficers of the marshalsie, with which orderynge of them by their well\ndeserved paine, and without any great hurt that afterward should sticke by\nthem, I founde out and repressed many such desperate wretches as elles had\nnot failed to have gone farther abrode, and to have done to many good folke\na greate deale much more harme.\"\n\nOnly twice did he punish any heretic in this manner--a boy and a lunatic,\nwhose case he thus relates:\n\n  \"Another was one whiche, after that he had fallen into that frantik\n  heresies, fell soone after into plaine, open fransy beside; and albeit\n  that he had therefore bene put up in Bedelem, and afterward by beating\n  and corecion, gathered his remembrance to him, and begaune to come again\n  to himself, being thereupon set at liberty, and walkinge aboute abrode,\n  his olde fransies begaune to fall againe in his heade, and I was fro\n  dyvers good holy places advertised, that he used in his wandering about\n  to come into the churche, and there make many mad toies and trifles, to\n  the trouble of the good people in the divine service, and specially would\n  he be most busye at the time of most silence, while the priest was at the\n  secretes of the masse, about the levacion. ... whereupon I, being\n  advertised of these pageauntes, and being sent unto and required by very\n  devout, religious folke, to take some other order with him, caused him as\n  he came wanderinge by my doore, to be taken by the counstables and\n  bounden to a tree in the streete before the whole towne and ther they\n  stripped him with roddes therefore till he wared weary, and somewhat\n  longer; and it appeared wel that his remembrance was goode enoughe, save\n  that it went about in grasing till it was beaten home; for he could than\n  verie well reherse his fautes himselfe, and speake and treate very well,\n  and promise to doe afterward as well, and verylye, God be thanked, I\n  heare none harme of him now; and of al that ever came into my hand for\n  heresye, as helpe me God, saving, as I said, the sure keping of them, and\n  yet no so sure neither, but that George Constantine could stele away; els\n  had never any of them any stripe or stroke given them, so much as a\n  fylyppe on the forehead.\"\n\n{648}\n\nHe also gives an amusing instance of the manner in which slanderous\naccusations were fabricated against him. Simon Fryth, author of the\n\"Supplication of Beggars,\" charged More with having said that \"his heresye\nshoulde coste him the best blude in his body.\" More answers that:\n\n  \"Some truthe they might happe to heare, whereupon they myghte buylde\n  theyr lye. For so was it that on a tyme one came and showed me that\n  Frithe laboured so sore that he sweat agayne, in studieng and writing\n  against the blessed sacrament; and I was of trouth verie heavy to heare\n  that the younge fooly the felowe shoulde bestowe suche labour about suche\n  a develyshe woorke. For if that Fryth (quoth I) swete in laboring to\n  quench that faith that al true Christen people have in Christe's blessed\n  body and bloude, which all Christen folke veryly, and all good folke\n  frutfuly receive in the fourme of bread, he shal laboure more than in\n  vayne; for I am sure that Frith and al his felowes, with al the friendes\n  that are of theyr affiniti, shal neither be able to quench and put out\n  that faith, and over that if Frythe labour about the quenching thereof\n  till he sweate, I would some good friend of his shoulde showe hym that I\n  feare me sore that Christe wyll kyndle a fyre of fagottes for hym, and\n  make hym therin sweate the bloud out of his bodye here, and straight from\n  hence send hys soule for ever into the fyre of hell. Nowe in these wordes\n  I neyther ment nor meane that I would it wer so. For so help me God and\n  none otherwyse, but as I would be glad to take more labour, losse, and\n  bodelye payne also, then peradventure many a man would wene to winne that\n  yonge man to Christe and hys true faythe agayne, and thereby to preserve\n  and keepe hym from the losse and peryll of soule and body both.\"\n\nAnd in another part of the same treatise he declares that\n\n  \"as touching heretikes, I hate that vice of theirs, and not their\n  persons, and very faine would I that the one were destroied, and the\n  tother saved ... and if all the favour and pity that I have vsed among\n  them to theire amendement were knowen, it woulde I warrant you well and\n  plaine appere, whereof if it were requysite I could bring forth witnesses\n  more than men would wene.\"\n\nIn these earnest words is reflected his innocence of persecution. These\napologies for his career as chancellor were written after his fall.\n\nIn 1529, More had been made lord high chancellor of England. The new\ndignitary had been sounded by the king concerning the matrimonial cause.\nAlthough Sir Thomas excused himself from giving an opinion, on the plea\nthat he was no divine, he was evidently expected ultimately to concur in\nforwarding the accomplishment of the king's wishes. But More was too candid\nand unworldly to adopt a policy of self-interest. He had foreseen the\ndanger of his elevation, and in his opening speech had alluded to the sword\nof Damocles. One evening he had confided to Roper that he would gladly be\ntied up in a sack, and thrown into the Thames, if only there could be peace\non earth, unity in the church, and a good termination of the divorce\nquestion. At last the decisive moment came, and Henry requested More to\ntake the proposed divorce into consideration. The chancellor, falling on\nhis knees, lamented his inability to serve the king in this matter with a\nsafe conscience; he had, he said, borne in mind the words uttered by his\nmajesty on More's first entering office, namely, first to look unto God,\nand after God unto the king. Henry, concealing his vexation, expressed a\nhope that More could serve him in other instances.\n\nThen Cranmer broached his plan, and the universities began to dust folios\nand hold grave deliberations on the matrimonial cause. Not only Oxford and\nCambridge, but Paris, Anjou, Bruges, Orleans, Padua, Toulouse, summoned\ntheir doctors, regents, and canons, to weigh and consider the important\nquestion. There was \"much turning and searching of bookes;\" divine law,\ncivil law, were carefully discussed and examined. \"There was in the realme\nmuch preching, one lerned man holding against another,\" (Holinshed.)\nForeseeing the impending harvest of determinations and arbitraments, More\nperceived that the king would marry Anne Boleyn at any cost. In May, 1532,\nhe tendered his resignation. Henry accepted it in an affable manner, and a\nweight fell from More's heart--for the nonce he gave himself up to his\nharmless gaiety.\n{649}\nLady More lectured him severely for not having taken care of his pecuniary\ninterests when in office, and for relinquishing place through a selfish\nlove of ease, without thinking of the children. \"Tilly vally, what will you\ndo, Mr. More?\" cried Lady Alice; \"will you sit and make goslings in the\nashes? it is better to rule than to be ruled.\" More, quietly turning to his\ndaughters, asked whether they did not see \"that her nose standeth somewhat\nawry.\"\n\nWith calm dignity he proceeded to reduce his establishment; sent his jester\nto the lord mayor; and consulted with his children on the best means of\navoiding the breaking up of the family. His income was little more than\n\u00a3100 a year; Lady More must have been hard up for pin money wherewith to\nbuy gowns, coifs, and stomachers. He wrote to Erasmus that he had at last\nobtained freedom from public business; and he had his epitaph inscribed in\nthe parish church of Chelsea. He was beginning to have a foreboding of\napproaching danger; whether from the declining state of his health--he had\nbeen liable, through much writing, to an \"ache\" in his breast--or his\nacquaintance with the king's character, At the height of his friendship\nwith the monarch, when congratulated by Roper on the marks of favor he was\nreceiving, More had mournfully answered that if Henry, by beheading him,\ncould get one castle more in France, he would not scruple to do so. During\nseveral nights, it is said, he had been sleepless under the influence of a\nstrange, haunting anticipation; he prayed for strength, his delicate frame\nbeing averse to bodily pain--or, as he said, \"his flesh could not endure a\nfillip.\"\n\nIn the mean while the king married Anne Boleyn; Cheapside ran with claret.\nSir Thomas received an order to attend the procession, with twenty pounds\nto buy a gown; but he declined to be present. The king's displeasure began\nto arise. More was much esteemed, had considerable influence, and his\nprolonged opposition was anything but agreeable to Henry. More's enemies\nbegan to cast about for a ground of accusation against him. The adventure\nof the Maid of Kent furnished them with an opportunity. Elizabeth Barton\nwas a girl of cataleptic temperament, who had visions and uttered\nprophecies. Unfortunately for herself and others, she meddled with politics\nand inveighed against the king. More complained to Cromwell that he had\nbeen accused of communicating with that \"nun of Canterbury;\" whereas he had\nwritten to her, \"Good madam, I will hear nothing of other men's matters;\nand least of all of any matter of princes or of the realm.\" The poor \"good\nmadam\" was executed at \"Tiburne.\" More's name had been included in the act\nof attainder, and a royal commission was appointed to examine him. It soon\nbecame apparent that the Maid of Kent's case had little to do with this\nprosecution of Sir T. More, and that the real question at issue was, that\nhe should remember the king's former favors and give his consent to that\ndivorce which the hierarchy, parliament, and the universities had approved.\nMore answered, meekly but firmly, that he had hoped to hear no more of that\nmatter. In the Maid of Kent affair, his innocence was so evident that Henry\nwas obliged to yield to the pressure of the commissioners, who besought him\non their knees to dismiss More from the accusation. But More knew this was\nonly a reprieve. The commissioners had assured the king that they would in\ntime find another opportunity that would serve the royal turn better. \"Quod\ndiffertur non aufertur,\" answered More, when his \"Megg\" congratulated him\non the bill being withdrawn. There had been no chance of getting a verdict\nagainst him. But a \"meet matter\" for his enemies to act upon was not long\nin supervening. The succession to the crown for the issue of the new\nmarriage, and the king's ecclesiastical supremacy, became law. An oath of\nallegiance was required. Sir T. More and Bishop Fisher were recusants. More\ncould not be brought to imply that the marriage with Catherine had been\nillegal.\n{650}\nHis innate nobleness made him very little anxious as to the consequences of\nhis opposition. The Duke of Norfolk gave him advice one day. \"By the mass,\nMr. More, it is perilous striving with princes; therefore I would wish you\nsomewhat to incline to the king's pleasure, for, Mr. More, 'indignatio\nprincipis mors est.\" We can imagine the sweet smile with which More\nanswered, \"Is that all, my lord? then in good faith the difference between\nyour grace and me is but this, that I shall die to-day and you to-morrow.\"\n\nHe was too brave and merry not to despise death; but, the day he was\nsummoned to Lambeth, he was afraid to face his family on his departure.\nWhenever he went down the river, they used to accompany him to the boat and\nbe dismissed with kisses; but that morning he did not allow them to follow\nhim. With Roper he took boat to Lambeth. There the vicar of Croydon, and\nmany London clergy were sworn; after which proceeding, the reverend the\nvicar, \"Either for gladness or dryness, or else that it might be seen 'quod\nille notus erat pontifici,' went to my lord's buttery-bar and called for\ndrink, and drank 'valde familiariter.'\" (Sir T. More's Letters.) Sancho is\never near Quixote. Without blaming those who took the oath, More maintained\nthat his conscience would not be satisfied if he allowed himself to be\nsworn. In vain did \"my lord of Westminster\" charge him to \"change\" his\nconscience, because the great council of the realm had determined on\nacknowledging the points at issue. More said his opinion was backed by the\ngeneral council of Christendom. He and Roper were committed to the Tower,\nprobably through the influence of Queen Anne, who was herself \"behedded\" a\nfew years afterward.\n\nAnd now his greatness showed itself in adversity, as it had before\nbrightened his prosperity. He had something worse than a _vultus\ninstantis tyranni_ to endure, namely, the expostulations of his wife.\nHaving obtained leave to visit him, she gave him a lecture in her\npositivistic philosophy: \"I marvel that you, who hitherto have been taken\nfor a wise man, will now so play the fool to lie here in this close, filthy\nprison, and be content thus to be shut up among mice and rats, when you\nmight be abroad at your liberty, and with the favour and good-will both of\nthe king and his council, if you would but do as all the bishops and best\nlearned of this realme have done; and seeing you have at Chelsea a right\nfair house, your library, your gallery, garden, orchard, and all other\nnecessaries so handsome about you, where you might, in the company of me,\nyour wife, your children, and household, be merry, I muse what a God's name\nyou mean here still thus fondly to tarry.\" His daughter Margaret, however,\nproved a better comfort to him. She, too, attempted to persuade him to take\nthe oath; he playfully compared her to Eve, thinking more of his body than\nhis soul. She quoted all the instances of great doctors who had taken the\noath. At last she said that, like Cressida in Chaucer, she was at her wit's\nend; what could she say more but that his jester had said, \"Why does not he\ntake the oath? I have done so,\" and that she herself had taken it? More\nthan a year did he stay in that prison, to the detriment of his health. He\nwas then tried and found guilty. On his return from the trial, when he\nlanded at the Tower-wharf, his poor daughter rushed from the crowd and\nkissed him frantically several times. One more letter did he write to her\nwith a coal. As he had once written, pecks of \"cole\" would not have\nsufficed to express all his love for her. He expressed himself much\nindebted to the king, who was sending him out of this wretched world. He\nwanted to go on the scaffold in his best clothes, and sent the executioner\na piece of gold. On the platform he evinced that mixture of gayety and\npiety which was characteristic of him. The structure being somewhat cranky,\n\"I pray see me up safe,\" he said, \"and for my coming down, let me shift for\nmyself.\"\n{651}\nHe then knelt down and said a psalm. He then addressed the executioner:\n\"Thou will do me this day a greater benefit than ever any mortal man can be\nable to give me. Pluck up thy spirit, man, and be not afraid to do thy\noffice. My neck is very short; take heed, therefore, that thou strike not\nawry, for saving thy honesty.\" When about to lay his head on the block, he\ncraved time to remove his beard, \"as that had never committed treason.\"\n\"So, with great alacrity and spiritual joy, he received the fatal blow of\nthe axe, which, no sooner had severed the head from the body, but his soul\nwas carried by angels into everlasting glory.\"\n\nMargaret bought his head, enclosed it in a leaden box, and it was afterward\nburied with her at Canterbury. In the nineteenth century, the head was\nfound, with the metal covering corroded away in front. (See Gentleman's\nMagazine, 1837.)\n\nDr. Lark, rector of Chelsea, and More's friend, was so influenced by More's\ndeath that he soon after denied the supremacy, and was executed. More's\ndeath made a deep impression on men's minds throughout Europe. When the\nreport of the execution reached the king, he looked steadfastly on Anne,\nand said, \"Thou art the cause of this man's death,\" and soon after retired\nin sadness to his chamber. Scarcely, however, can readers of history\ndeplore a death which brought out the beauty of such a character.\n\n------\n\n    The Two Lovers of Flavia Domitilla.\n\n    By Clonfert.\n\n\n  Chapter III.\n\n  The Christian's Feast.\n\n\nThe large clepsydra in the atrium of the villa indicated the fourth watch\nof the night, an hour corresponding at the winter solstice to one o'clock\nin the morning, of the 8th of the Kalends, that is, the 25th of December.\nThe slaves had ended their merry-making and retired to rest, when Aurelian\nand Sisinnius, led by Zoilus, took their way by a by-path over the fields\ntoward the Latin road. The path crossed the stream and wooded hill near the\nvilla.\n\nStanding on the further slope of the hill, they paused to view the city and\nthe surrounding country. The darkness of the early night had been relieved\nby the rays of the moon. Her white disc was painted on the sky between the\nluminous edges of the thin clouds, which were driven by the wind, as if in\nreview, before her face. On the earth beneath, moonlight and shadow pursued\neach other over the woods and uplands. The palaces and monuments bordering\nthe Latin and Appian Ways showed at times as if they were roofed with\nsilver. Now and again her beams, stretching down like white bars between\nthe clouds, rested on the roofs, cupolas, and steeples of the distant city,\nwhich stretched in illimitable magnificence before them, flashed out, and\nthe next moment faded like a mirage into indistinctness and shadow. The\nlights in the streets and country villas flickered feebly \"few and far\nbetween.\"\n{652}\nThe hum of life and business was not, as in the daytime, borne on the wind\nto their ears from the metropolis, whose great heart, that in a few hours\nwould throb with the pulses of renewed activity through all its arteries,\nwas at rest, save only where the voice of the watchman or of the midnight\nreveller disturbed its slumber. Turning toward the Appian Way, which for\nfourteen miles was lined by a double row of monuments--homes for the\nliving and homes for the dead--the trees bowed and tossed their branches in\nthe fitful gusts like hearse-plumes above the tombs. In the lulls it was\nheard wandering and moaning within the vaults and the _columbaria_;\n[Footnote 233] so called because the ashes of the departed reposed in\nbronze and earthenware urns, ranged in hundreds, tier over tier, as in the\ncells of a dove-cote. The branches, dry and leafless, pointing their\nskeleton fingers skyward and creaking dolefully, might well remind a Greek\nor Roman imagination of imprisoned genii. And the melancholy wail of the\nbreeze might be mistaken for that of unearthly visitants weeping over the\nremains of the dead.\n\n    [Footnote 233: From _columba_, a dove.]\n\nHaving delayed to survey this sombre scene, they continued their journey,\nand soon reached the Latin road, along which they proceeded to the\nCrossway, formed by it and the Appian Way about a quarter of a mile outside\nthe Capena Gate. The old walls built by Servius Tullius around the city\nstill remained; through these the gate opened between the Aventine and\nCoelian hills, nearly a mile from the present entrance of the \"Queen of\nHighways\" into the forum through the walls built subsequently by the\nEmperor Aurelian. The Appian aqueduct, of which scarce a stone remains\nto-day, rose before them from the ground some sixty paces from the gate,\nand, travelling on high arches, emptied itself into the reservoir within\nthe walls. The lofty parapets of this gigantic structure, which carried the\nwater underground for eight miles, were marked in the moonlight against the\nsky as if they had been cut from pasteboard. Turning their backs to the\ngate and facing southward, they saw that great military highway, built by\nand named after the Censor Appius four hundred years previously, as it\ntopped the undulations of the country until it was lost in darkness and\ndistance. Its pavement, made of solid blocks of basaltic lava, as the\nfitful moonlight rested on its receding line, might by a stranger be\nmistaken for the surface of a glancing stream. The death-like stillness of\nthe sepulchral monuments and of the mysterious _columbaria_, and the\nmotion of the cypress and other funereal trees interspersed among them,\ncontrasted with the living magnificence and luxury of the villas, temples,\nand villages by which it passed. It was death beside life. The etymology of\nthe word _monuments_ [Footnote 234] proves that they were built\ndesignedly beside the public roads to warn travellers of the goal at which\nall their earthly journeyings would surely end. Thoughts like these passed\nthrough the minds of the three companions; nor were they put to flight by\nwhat followed.\n\n    [Footnote 234: Monumentum, _moners mentem_, to warn the mind.]\n\nA funeral procession was issuing from the gate as they arrived at the\nCrossway. They concealed themselves among the trees of the gardens known\nfor ages afterward as those of the poet Terence. Without being seen, they\nobserved the procession as it wended near them. In front of and at\nintervals through it were slaves carrying torches, whose glare colored the\nsky and the monuments on either side with a red glow. Musicians, playing\nmournful strains on the flute, the pipes, and the horn, startled the\nsilence of the time and place. They were aided by mourning females hired to\nchant the funeral song. After these came the mimics, directed by a\nprincipal, who represented the life and character of the deceased by\nimitations of his words and actions; slaves wearing the cap of freedom, as\na sign that they had been emancipated before his death, followed.\n{653}\nSome of these bore the images of himself and of his ancestors; others, the\ncivil and military crowns he had won, which proved him to have been\ndistinguished as a citizen and a soldier. The remains rested on an ivory\ncouch covered with drapery of purple and gold. Behind them were the\nchildren of the deceased, the sons in black mourning, with heads veiled;\nthe daughters in white, with heads bare, and hair dishevelled. The quick\nmarch of the procession, the restless flames of the torches, and the acting\nof the mimics seemed strangely out of place with the sad occasion, and\nmusic, with the dirge of the female mourners and the silence or suppressed\nsobs of the children of the departed. It was another picture of life and\ndeath beside each other--a union so frequent with the ancients.\n\n\"There goes the funeral of Senecio,\" said Zoilus.\n\n\"Herenius Senecio, the senator! What, did he too incur the imperial anger?\"\nasked Aurelian.\n\n\"He wrote a life of the proconsul Priscus, at the request of the widow\nFaunia.\"\n\n\"Is it Priscus who was put to death for the poem in which he was suspected\nto have caricatured under fictitious names the emperor's divorce from his\nwife?\"\n\n\"The very same.\"\n\n\"Senecio,\" said Sisinnius, \"ought to have been taught by the fate of\nRusticus, who was executed for having written the life of Thrasea at the\nrequest of Arria, Faunia's mother. But he was always outspoken and\nheadstrong in defence of friendship and truth. Hermogenes of Tarsus, who\nmet a like fate for a like offence, was another example to warn him.\"\n\n\"Well, well,\" said Aurelian, \"I do not wonder that Tacitus prefers to\ndrudge as a civil officer in a distant province to remaining at Rome,\nalthough his great father-in-law Agricola, the conqueror of Britain, needs\nhim to cheer his sinking spirits; nor that Pliny keeps himself so quiet and\nhidden.\"\n\n\"It was reported that Pliny was to have delivered Senecio's funeral\noration,\" said Zoilus.\n\n\"Pliny in the affair of Bebius Masia showed himself a man of courage. But\nhe has too much sense, I think, to do such an unnecessary thing in the\npresent state of the imperial temper,\" said Aurelian.\n\n\"Yes, indeed, when we see the poetess Sulpicia in danger of her head for\nher ode on the expulsion of the philosophers; when booksellers are\ncrucified; and when only those escape who, like Josephus, Juvenal, Martial,\nand Quinctilian, lay the unction of flattery unblushingly on, it were\nmadness to attempt it. Alas!\" continued Sisinnius, \"are we not returning to\na worse barbarism than that of the iron age? Philosophy, history, and poesy\ndivine in exile, in prison, or in the tombs! Never was there an age that\nhad more, purer, or nobler names to inscribe on the roll of fame! And all\nat the whim of one man who calls himself a god, and who thinks he proves\nhis divinity by having the road to the capitol crowded with the flocks to\nbe immolated to his statue!\"\n\n\"It is the story of arbitrary authority invested in individuals from the\nmonarch to the slave-owner, when its influence is not directed by humanity\nor religion,\" said Aurelian.\n\n\"Ay,\" interposed Zoilus, \"and to the slave himself, who is by law allowed a\nvicarious ownership (_dominium vacarium_) over others. The little\ntyrant who has not the fulness of power is the worst; he always strives to\nswell himself to the bull size, like the frog in the fable, and tramples on\nthe feelings where he cannot tread out the lives of his victims, just as\nrecklessly as the elephant in the arena tramples on the corns of the\ngladiators. One of these, whom I know well to my cost, compassed the death\nof Senecio, and is likely to bring red ruin to many others before he dies\nhimself.\"\n\n\"Who is he?\" asked Aurelian.\n\n{654}\n\n\"Arthus, who has crept up from low life to high favor with the powers that\nbe.\"\n\n\"Arthus!\" exclaimed Sisinnius, \"the poor wretch! whose suspiciousness and\nunbridled impulsiveness of tongue and passion have left him without a\nsincere friend in the profession, into which he has worked his upward way\nwithout any education to fit him for it. He is only a craze of one idea;\nevery one secretly laughs at his assumption of rank, knowing his origin; at\nhis assumption of professional knowledge, knowing his Boeotic ignorance;\nand at his assumption of power, knowing how he acquired it.\"\n\n\"I can tell you, it is no laughing matter for the poor slaves, most of whom\nare his own countrymen, whose very blood he is coining into stone for that\nlabyrinthine temple of which Domitian has permitted him to be the architect\nand builder. A joke perpetrated by Senecio in the life of Crispus with\nregard to this building is said to have angered him. Senecio compared the\ntemple to the Cretan labyrinth, and said the congregation would require a\nthread to find their way out.\"\n\n\"There was another cause of Arthus's hatred of Senecio. In early life he\nproposed for the hand of Senecio's cousin. The first moment she saw him,\nshe afterward declared she would as soon marry one of the brick walls he\nhas since been building; because his heart, filled only with facts,\nfigures, and money, seemed as cold, hard, and bloodless as the bricks and\nstones themselves. It is reported that she has since become a Christian.\nUnfortunately this creature Arthus has somehow found access to Domitian's\near, and manages with unsuspicious adroitness to have the first story about\nthose who displease him. Less cruel natures than Domitian's find it hard to\nrise above prejudices that have once preoccupied their judgments.\"\n\n\"Well, well, it is a sad state of things. The Christians have, I often\nimagine, been sent in punishment for our having fallen away from the stern\nvirtues of our ancestors, as the locust-clouds are sent in the East. But,\"\ncontinued Aurelian, \"the less we say in this style the better, if we do not\nwish to join Senecio in his voyage over the Stygian lake. Even here the\nproverb may apply: 'Silvae habent aures.'\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Sisinnius, \"here we are at the beginning of the ancient tombs,\namid the mighty dead whose names are the morning-stars of our history!\"\n\nThey walked silently and passed the monument of Horatia. Of cut stone, it\nwas, after more than seven centuries, in good preservation: nay more, in\nthe nineteenth century, after twenty-seven hundred years, it is\ncomparatively untouched by the hands of time and weather. She had been\nkilled by her victorious brother, the last of the three Horatii, because\nshe wept for her betrothed, one of the Curiatii, slain by him in the\ncontest of Rome and Alba for superiority. The sepulchres of the Metelli, of\nthe Scipios, and of other noble families stood near the Cross road not far\nfrom the gate.\n\nPointing to these, Sisinnius spoke as if giving utterance to a train of\nthought that had occupied his mind:\n\n\"Where are they now the great, the noble, the heroic men, by whose martial\ndeeds and unselfish patriotism the foundations of Roman greatness were\nplaced? Is this all that remains of them--a hollow tomb raised as in\nmockery over a little ashes, if even so much of them after five or six\nhundred years be left? Alas! Aurelian, does not death make you sad to think\non it?\"\n\n\"Yes; and therefore I put it away, on the epicurean principle that it\nincreases the misery of the destiny that inflicts it on us.\"\n\n\"Yet our ancestors did not take that view, and they have had repute for\nwisdom. They built their tombs in public places to remind living\ngenerations of the fleeting character of all things human. They placed a\nhorse's head over the inscriptions as a symbol that death is only the\ncommencement of another and a longer journey.\n{655}\nIf the epicurean philosophy be true, they were deceived; but, if they were\nright, we are wrong in turning our gaze away from death, which, alas! is a\nterrible reality! Would it not be wiser to try and pierce the mystery of\nthat horse's head, to draw aside the veil that shrouds that journey from\nour sight?\"\n\n\"Men like Plato, and Socrates, and Cicero, have endeavored to do so in\nevery age, and have failed. The great doubt, whether there be a hereafter\nor not, still puzzles the world. How can we hope to remove it when these\ngiants fail? It is much better for our peace and happiness to follow the\ncommon belief in elysium and in the gods, and to drown the thought of death\nin forgetfulness, and to enjoy the pleasures of the present.\"\n\n\"It is a hard alternative, especially when the insecurity of the present is\nbrought so strikingly before us by the passing away of men like Senecio and\nPriscus, and those of whom we were speaking. To believe in elysium and the\ngods is to rest our faith and hope on the creations of the poets. Enjoyment\nof the present does not bring happiness; and, even if it did, when these\npleasures are over, (and we don't know how soon,) what is to follow? But\nyesterday Senecio, whose funeral we have witnessed, swayed the senate by\nhis reason and eloquence. Does nothing of him remain now but the ashes\ngathered from the pyre? Why have the generations gone before erected those\nvast monuments, if all that is left be the dust in the urn? Fitter let it\nbe borne by the wind over the face of the earth, if no spirit remain to\ntake an interest in its preservation! Are the souls of the mighty dead, who\nslumber in those tombs around, 'nothing but a name'? Like the blast which\nbends the forest, and then, dispersed in air, is felt and heard no more?\nOh! my blood runs cold to think it!\n\n\"And yet there is no certainty it is not so--no hope, after so many\nattempts, of now obtaining it. Better, then, enjoy the present and leave\nthe future to fate,\" said Aurelian.\n\n\"No hope, no certainty!\" repeated Sisinnius twice over, \"no hope, no\ncertainty! And death approaching with his inevitable lance set! It may be\nto-day, it may be to-morrow. Oh! is it not a wretched destiny that keeps us\nthus in the dark? We come we know not whence, we go we know not whither.\nLike persons lowered into a deep pit, we see a little sky above, but our\ngaze cannot penetrate on either side of us. Is there no delivery from this\nstate of prison and anguish? What wretchedness is equal to that of the last\nsad moment? Who but the fool or madman, with such daily reminders of\nearthly life's vanity and shortness, can be deaf to the approaching\nfootfalls of death?\"\n\nThey had now arrived at the valley extending to the left, and watered by\nthe fountain of Egeria. Here it was that the nymph dictated the laws to\nNuma. The valley contained also a temple of the Camoenae, and a sacred\ngrove. At a little distance was a large village. The poet Juvenal complains\nthat in the reign of Domitian pompous marble had displaced the grass of the\nvale and concealed the rock from which the water gurgled; and that the\nfountain, the temple, and the wood were owned and occupied by Jewish\nbeggars:\n\n  \"Hoc sacri fontis nemus, et delubra locantur\n   _Judaeis_, quorum cophinus foenumque supellex.\n   Omnis enim populo mercedem penrtere jussa est\n   Arbor, et ejectis meudicat sylva Camoenis.\"\n      _Juv_. Sat. iii.\n\nJuvenal and the pagans of his time frequently confounded the Christians\nwith the Jews. But the acts of early martyrs, like those of St. Cecilia,\nclearly show that the Jews alluded to in these verses were Christians,\nperhaps converted from Judaism. The surmise of the Abb\u00e9 Gueranger is most\nlikely true, that, when the Emperor Claudius banished \"the Jews' from Rome\non account of their dissensions, the Christians also were forced to leave\nthe capital for a short time; but after their return many of them settled\nin this place outside the walls, and occupied the village called _Vicus\nCamaenarum_, where they seem to have rented the fountain as well as the\ntemple and grove.\n{656}\nHere they could dig vaults, open subterranean galleries wherein to bury\ntheir dead, and to hide themselves in times of persecution. What confirms\nthis supposition is, that here within the bowels of the earth commence the\nsombre galleries of the Christian catacombs. The statesmen and soldiers of\npagan Rome sleep the long sleep of ages above, in monuments rising to the\nface of heaven, with all the surroundings of material greatness; while the\nchampions and martyrs of the church repose in their lowly niches beneath,\nwhere a ray of sunlight never penetrates. What a contrast is here\nsymbolized, and how true! The pride of the world raising itself like\nLucifer to heaven, and the lowliness of the church bowing its head with\nChristian humility, and submitting to be trampled in the earth! As it was\nin the beginning, so it is, so it will be to the end.\n\nAt this point of the road Zoilus paused to impress upon his companions the\nrules by which they were to be guided. They were to pretend to be converts\nto the faith. He had succeeded in convincing those who had guard of the\navenues to the Christian meeting-place that Aurelian and Sisinnius would\nmake open profession of the new religion but for the dangers with which\nsuch a step would surround them and those dear to them; that they were\neager to be instructed privately as neophytes; and that they asked to be\nadmitted to the Christmas celebration in order to witness the ceremony by\nwhich one so dear to them as Flavia Domitilla was about consecrating\nherself to God. They did not wish, however, that Flavia or Theodora should\nbe aware of their presence or of their conversion. Zoilus, who had been\nbaptized by St. Polycarp at Smyrna, and who had made the Roman Christians\nbelieve that he was a zealous member of the church, succeeded in convincing\nthem of the truth of his representations, and in obtaining admission for\nAurelian and Sisinnius to the feast. The visits of Clement to the house of\nthe latter, together with the conversion of Theodora and Flavia, rendered\nthese representations plausible.\n\nNot far from the Egerian valley is a semicircular underground chamber of\nlarge dimensions. It was the only one, to which at this early time the name\nof _cata-tomb_, (meaning a place _near the tombs_,) or\n_catacomb_, (meaning a _deep_ and _low_ place, or place of\n_temporary rest_,) was given. In after times the name has been applied\nto all the cemeteries radiating from the Vatican and underlying the city\nand the country for many miles. Some authors ascribe this chamber to a\npagan origin. However this may be, it presents interiorly the appearance of\na chapel much more spacious than most of those which have been dug out of\nthe Roman campagna. Opening into it is a room which is said to have been\noccupied by many popes during the persecutions. In a corner of it there is\na pontifical throne in marble. A circular bench, also of marble, still\nclings to its ruined walls; this is supposed to have been used by the\npriests and other ministers. In its centre is an ancient altar, at the base\nof which the orifice of a pit, or well, over which it was erected, is\nvisible. Twelve arched tombs built into the walls form a cincture round it.\nIn this well, according to an old tradition preserved and believed by St.\nGregory, the bodies of Saints Peter and Paul were hidden by the oriental\nChristians, who attempted to steal these precious relics from the Roman\ncity, but were prevented by a thunder-storm. After having been transferred\nthence to the Vatican grotto, they were a second time, in the reign of\nHeliogabalus, brought back for preservation, and for a time to the same\nplace of concealment.\n\nHere, on the occasion of which we write, we find the chiefs of the\nChristian church assembled. The rumors and near approach of persecution\ninduced Pope Clement to select it for the celebration of the feast.\n{657}\nHere they could better avoid suspicion: their coming and going would be\neasily mistaken by outsiders for the visits of those whom curiosity or\naffection drew to the pagan monuments.\n\nMany missionary churches in Asia, Africa, Gaul, and other countries had\nsent delegates, who were now conversing with Pope Clement in the room next\nthe chapel. These delegates carried letters from the bishops and churches\nby whom they were delegated; and, having set out long before the festival\nand visited other churches on their way, they were able to give a faithful\nreport of the progress and condition of the faith in the countries through\nwhich they journeyed. There was Andronicus, a priest of Corinth, who\nbrought the sad tidings of the apostle St. John's arrest at Ephesus.\n\n\"Have you heard,\" said the pope, \"when he is likely to be in Rome?\"\n\n\"No; but the galley in which he sailed left the port of Corinth two days\nbefore my departure. Owing to the crowds coming to the _Saturnalia_ at\nRome, it was thought she was delayed at Ostium until after the festivities,\nwhen he is to be brought before the emperor himself.\"\n\n\"O my children! let us pray that God may soften the tyrant's heart, and\nthat this last golden link between our time and that of our divine Master\nmay not be yet taken away by martyrdom.\"\n\n\"I have been told by one of the brethren who was in Ephesus on the day of\nhis arrest that the blessed John himself assured the faithful that he had\nmuch yet to do and suffer before his hour would come.\"\n\n\"Thanks and glory be to God for this glad tidings,\" fervently ejaculated\nClement. \"We shall try, and, if possible, have an interview with him.\"\n\nThe churches of Antioch and of Alexandria had also representatives in the\nmeeting. The latter see, founded by St. Mark, who had been commissioned by\nSt. Peter for that purpose, was described as being in a most flourishing\nstate. From Gaul had come the missionary priest Galbinus, who had travelled\nthrough the Black Forest, and found many Christian communities among its\nfastnesses and along the Rhine and Rhone. He had delayed for a week at\nMarseilles, where he was entertained by Lazarus and Martha. Mary Magdalen\nhe had not met; but the fame of her penitential life in a solitude outside\nof that city had spread far and wide, and filled the whole district with a\nholy odor. From Marseilles he had journeyed by the coast until he reached\nthe Flaminian road. At the foot of the maritime Alps he had met many\nChristians practising the evangelical counsels in seclusion and peace. Thus\nthe holy pope, through the delegates from the various churches, had full\nand detailed information as to the condition, prospects, and number of the\nfaithful in the different regions of Christendom.\n\nThere was one visitor who more than others riveted the attention of all.\nThis was Nicodemus, [Footnote 235] who had taken our Lord's body down from\nthe cross. He arrived later than the others. When he entered, he knelt to\nreceive Pope Clement's blessing; but the latter, embracing, kissed him on\nthe cheek, and said:\n\n    [Footnote 235: It is very probable, says Tillemont, that Nicodemus\n    visited Rome toward the end of the first century.]\n\n\"My father and friend! It is I who ought to receive yours. I have heard you\nwere in the city for some days. Why not have come sooner to visit us?\"\n\n\"Yes, holy father; [Footnote 236] I arrived in the city two days ago, and\nreceived from the kindness of some of my own nation, who after the fall of\nSion came to reside in Rome, that hospitality and treatment which the\nwearied traveller requires. The last persecution--for I was then\nhere--taught us all a lesson not to create suspicion by visiting\nprematurely the locality in which the brethren meet or the presbyter\nresides. Hence, though I had learned the secret of where you intended\ncelebrating the feast, I deemed it well to delay my visit to the eve of\nit.\"\n\n    [Footnote 236: \"_Papa sancte_,\" a usual mode of addressing bishops\n    in the early ages.]\n\n{658}\n\n\"Always cautious, Nicodemus,\" said Clement, alluding to the furtive night\nvisit paid by Nicodemus to our divine Lord; but he checked the smile that\nplayed on his face, as he saw the tears rolling down the old man's cheeks.\n\n\"Pardon, pardon, my friend and brother! I did not mean to say aught\npainful.\"\n\n\"Nor have you. But I am overcome, in spite of myself, whenever I remember\nthe eyes which beamed out upon me through the darkness of that night, and\nthe face so transcendently beautiful, so tenderly compassionate, so\nprofoundly sorrowful! That face and look are impressed here\"--he laid his\nhand upon his heart--\"I always bear them about with me like precious\nrelics, which supply ample matter for my meditations. In the brightness of\nthe day those sorrowful eyes shine out, in the darkness of night that\nbeauteous face is luminous; in the desert and in the forum they alike are\nmy companions, as they shall be to the grave.\"\n\nHe was silent. His eyes and thoughts seemed turned inward; the former as if\nriveted with dazzled, loving gaze on some unseen object which wholly filled\nthe latter. After some moments, during which those present looked on in\nwonder, he became conscious of their presence and slightly embarrassed.\n\nClement, not seeming to notice the embarrassment, said:\n\n\"What changes have taken place since you and I became acquainted first!\nHaving delayed beyond the midnight hour on Mount Calvary, I was brought by\nblessed Paul, with whom I was then travelling, to your house. I regret that\naltered circumstances and thickening clouds compel me to make a return of\nhospitality in these poor quarters. All are welcome; none more so than\nNicodemus. I know all are satisfied while we have Him for whose love we\nresign all near us under the clouds,\" He pointed and bowed reverently\ntoward the chapel, and then retired to prepare for the celebration of the\nsacred mysteries.\n\nMeanwhile the eyes of all were fixed with curiosity on Nicodemus. His\ncountenance was of the most decided Jewish caste. His face bore the\nwrinkles of over a hundred years; but his frame, like the sturdy oak whose\nsurface may be serried by ages, did not present the appearance of decayed\nstrength or health.\n\nThe visitors and guests of Clement entertained themselves with anecdotes of\ntheir respective missions; of the divers ways in which Providence had\nenlightened them with the true faith; of the countries through which they\nhad preached, the people they had converted, the adventures they had met,\nand the miracles by which God had aided and rescued them. A history such as\nhas never been, and cannot now be written, might be gathered from these\nconversations. A great many, especially the younger portion, felt a wish to\nquestion Nicodemus. They desired to hear from his own lips more of that\nbeautiful face and those shining eyes that affected his imagination so\nmuch. They knew he referred to his nocturnal interview with the Redeemer;\nbut they longed to hear more.\n\n\"Pardon me, venerable father,\" said Andronicus, with more courage than the\nothers. \"We would like to hear from yourself the history of your first\ninterview with _him_. We do not ask through idle curiosity, but\nbecause we love to hear every little thing about him.\"\n\n\"That evening and night, my children--you will excuse the liberty one so\nmuch older than yourselves takes in thus addressing you--that evening and\nnight will never leave my memory. It was summer time. I was strolling to\n'drink the evening air' beyond the Taffa gate. The ringing laughter and\nwhite garments of the young people, as they visited the springs outside the\nwalls, aided with the freshness and beauty of the atmosphere and scenery in\ndispelling feelings of void and loneliness, which--I could not account for\nit--had been for some months creeping over me.\n{659}\nI felt as if there were nothing in life to satisfy my heart. It was the\nhour for the evening sacrifice; I heard the trumpets of the Levites ringing\nout through the evening calm; and I saw the column of sacrificial smoke\nrising up from the temple, like a pillar of sand in the desert, through the\nclear air, until it was flattened by the far vault of heaven into fleecy\nclouds, which hung about its summit like the frescoes of a Corinthian\ncapital. I stood to admire the beauty of its height and rounded\nstraightness, when I was struck by an unusual glow in the heavens. I saw\ndistinctly formed in the sky a golden crown, which seemed upheld over the\ninner court of the temple by a chain of sparks, as if suspended from the\ncolumn of smoke. I was drawn toward the place; and after a quarter hour's\nhurried walk found myself at the avenue leading up to the temple. I was\nsoon at the entrance, and, passing through the outer court, entered the\nopen one of Sacrifice, over which the crown appeared to rest. The incense\nfrom the Levites' censers was ascending in curls about the column of\nsacrificial smoke like a binding of white ribbon about a black column. The\ncourt and side galleries were crowded. I lost sight of the golden crown;\nand began to fancy it was some play of imagination working on the sunset\ncolors. I sought a remote corner of the hall, and, feeling a peculiar\ninfluence over me, bowed profoundly in the depths of my own soul before the\nmajesty of Jehovah. Raising my eyes toward the smoking altar, I was seized\nwith awe and terror in beholding the self-same crown resting over the head\nof a worshipper, who prayed in the shadow of a pillar. When the ceremony\nwas over, I managed to get a glimpse of the face, which I recognized as\nthat of Jesus of Nazareth. His eyes overflowed with tears. I yearned in my\nheart toward him by an almost invincible impulse; but I was afraid of being\nseen speaking to one so humble and so suspected. I waited and watched him\non his way home. I followed him in the dusk as he hurried along a street,\nwhich I afterward saw him mark with footprints in his own blood. Turning\nsuddenly at the cross formed by the road from the palace of Herod the\nAscalonite and that now known as the 'Dolorous Way,' he addressed me:\n\n\"'What do you seek, Nicodemus?'\n\n\"I was startled by the sound of my own name, not dreaming that he knew it;\nand I glanced hurriedly up and down the arms of the Crossway to see if any\none were within ear-shot.\n\n\"'Be not alarmed,' he said, in a voice which fell with velvet softness on\nmine ear. 'If you wish aught of me, enter here.' And he led the way to an\nhumble house on the street to Calvary. There were two men, one young, with\na cheek of downy softness, and the other middle-aged, with beard of\nbristling gray and fiery eye, awaiting him.\n\n\"'Rabbi!' they both exclaimed with glad surprise; but they hesitated when\nthey saw me. For, as I afterward learned, they both recognized me as a\nmember of the Jewish council, and therefore set me down as an enemy of\ntheir Master.\n\n\"'Peter,' he said, 'John and you will retire to another room. This man\nwishes to speak to me alone.'\n\n\"'But, Rabbi,' said Peter impulsively, 'do you know that he is one of--'\n\n\"'Peter! _I_ knew him before I saw him. Do as I direct.' And Peter\nwith reluctance left the room.\n\nWe were alone. Regarding me with a look which seemed to penetrate my whole\nbeing to the most hidden secrets and littleness of my soul, he again asked:\n\n\"'What do you seek, Nicodemus?'\n\n\"'Rabbi!' I ventured to say, subdued as I was by the mild radiance of those\npiercing eyes, 'we all know you are from God, for no one can work the\nwonders you perform if God be not with him. I seek knowledge of the kingdom\nthat is promised.'\n\n{660}\n\n\"'Amen, amen!' he answered solemnly, 'I say to you, no one can see that\nkingdom who is not born anew of water and the Holy Spirit.'\" Here Nicodemus\nrelated the conversation the substance of which is recorded in the third\nchapter of St. John's gospel.\n\n\"At parting,\" continued Nicodemus, \"I told him that, if at any time I could\nbe of service. I would be glad to render it. I shall never forget the\nanswer: 'My hour is not yet come. When it is, your charity shall not be\nforgotten. It will be your office to clothe for the last time the nakedness\nof this temple!' He pointed to himself. I did not then know his meaning:\nbut, when I saw his bloodless body on his blessed mother's lap, and had the\nhappy privilege of preparing it for burial, I remembered and understood his\nwords.\"\n\n\"I have heard a varied account of our Lord's personal appearance,\" said\nDamian, one of the missionaries, an Irishman, [Footnote 237] or, as the old\nannalists have it, a _Scotus_ by birth. \"My venerated master, Joseph\nof Arimathea, who had many opportunities of seeing him, said that he at one\ntime wore on his sacred humanity all the charms of godlike beauty, and at\nanother presented in appearance almost the opposite extreme?\"\n\n    [Footnote 237: _Scotia_, the ancient name of Ireland. In the reign\n    of Domitian an Irish prince was a guest at the court. Joseph of\n    Arimathea is said to have preached the gospel in the British Isles. At\n    this time Britain was first discovered to be an island.]\n\n\"I remember distinctly the night I saw him in the court of the temple. I\nknelt beside him; and in the glare of the many lights saw every line and\nundulation of the golden ringlets that floated down his neck and shoulders.\nThey were not of one color. At the summit they glowed with more than\nstar-like brilliancy, which faded into other dazzling hues reflected from\neach undulation to their extremities. They talk of the colors of the\nrainbow; these were all exhausted in the surpassing loveliness of that\nnoble head, above which the air-formed crown rested like a glory. When I\nsaw his face as he rose from his knees, though sad in its expression as\nfancy in its furthest flight could paint it, it beamed with a beauty such\nas lover's eye never invested the beloved with, such as I shall never see\nuntil I gaze on it again, as I hope, in that kingdom, where, after God's\nincreated beauty, it increases the happiness of the glorified to behold it.\nOnce again I saw him. But, oh! how changed the human beauty of that face\ndivine and those golden ringlets. They were matted in uncombed confusion\nwith dried and drying clots of blood! The face was disfigured and ugly. I\ncould scarcely imagine him the same person I had met in the court of the\ntemple. These different appearances under different circumstances will no\ndoubt account for the varying descriptions of him given by those who saw\nhim.\" [Footnote 238]\n\n    [Footnote 238: Tradition is divided as to our Lord's personal\n    appearance; some of the holy fathers describe him as a specimen of\n    manly beauty; others say the contrary. We have borrowed from the letter\n    of a Roman officer then in Judea.]\n\nDuring the recital the old man's cheeks were wet with tears and his voice\noften trembled.\n\nIt was now after two o'clock, the hour appointed for the commencement of\nthe celebration.\n\nSt. Justin, in his first apology to the Antonines, describes the manner in\nwhich the Christians celebrated their Sundays and other feasts. They met\nbefore sunrise and sang a hymn in praise of the Redeemer; then lessons from\nthe Old and New Testaments were read, with the addition of prayers for the\nwants of the faithful and the conversion of the unbelievers; the presiding\npresbyter, who is a bishop or a priest, addressed the congregation; and\nfinally, taking bread, blessed and brake it, saying, '_This is my\nbody;_' and in like manner he blessed and consecrated the chalice,\nsaying, '_This is the cup of my blood._' The saint who was living at\nthe period of which we write states the doctrine of the real presence and\nof the sacrifice as clearly as words can express them.\n\nClement, with his assistant deacon and subdeacons, sat in front of the\naltar. On the seats on each side were Nicodemus, Andronicus, Damianus, and\nthe other clergy and missionaries.\n{661}\nAurelian and Sisinnius were astonished to observe that their acquaintance\nand friend Clement was the chief in the Christian assemblage; and that his\nprincipal minister, in fact, his attendant deacon, was Vitus, the young\nofficer of the imperial household, who had made himself so remarkable the\nnight of the emperor's feast. But their amazement was doubly increased\nwhen, after the clergy had taken their seats, a procession of females\nveiled in black emerged from a side-door and knelt before Clement, opposite\nthe centre of the altar. In front were two matrons, and between them the\nslender figure of a younger female, whose head and shoulders were concealed\nby a white veil. Aurelian's breath came thick and fast; Sisinnius, too, was\nexcited. But Zoilus by a significant pressure restrained any open\nmanifestation of their feelings.\n\nThe hymn chanted was composed specially by one of the brethren for the time\nand feast. It was as follows:\n\n    Christmas Hymn.\n\n  The flocks lay on the midnight plains,\n    Where Jacob tended his of old, [Footnote 239]\n  Where David woke his earliest strains\n    And sang the Lion of Judah's fold,\n      _Gloria, gloria, gloria in excelsis Deo!_\n\n    [Footnote 239: The plains of Bethlehem, where Jacob\n    had tended the flocks of his father-in-law,\n    and David those of his father.]\n\n  When suddenly the skies grew bright,\n    And angel choirs in countless throng,\n  With flashing wings, lit up the night,\n    And chanted, as they passed along,\n      _Gloria, gloria, gloria in excelsis!_\n\n \"Now glory be to God on high,\n    And peace on earth to fallen man;\"\n  With star-like clearness through the sky,\n    'Twas thus the angel anthem ran,\n      _Gloria, gloria, gloria in excelsis!_\n\n  We saw them by the new star's light\n    Above the stable where He lay;\n  We watched them through the livelong night,\n    And through the heavens we heard them say,\n      _Gloria, gloria, gloria in excelsis!_\n\n\nAfter the hymn had been sung and the lessons from the sacred Scriptures had\nbeen read, the pope addressed the assembly in earnest words. He spoke of\nthe mystery of the incarnation and the birth of the Redeemer, by which the\npromises made to the patriarchs and prophets were fulfilled. He said that\nthere were amongst them that night those who, during his earthly life, had\nconversed with the \"Word made flesh.\" He pointed out Nicodemus, who had\ntaken the lifeless body of the Master down from the cross, and who had the\nsingular privilege of seeing Christ arisen in his glorified humanity. \"We,\ntherefore,\" he concluded, \"have no reason to repine, for we know in whom we\ntrust. We may be poor in subjection, exposed to persecution. The\namphitheatre and the beasts, the prison, the rack, and other tortures may\nawait us. But we are not like those who have no hope, no security of the\nunseen hereafter. We depend on that love which induced him to allow himself\nto be nailed in agony on the cross, and, what is more, to be yoked, as it\nwere, not only for time, but for eternity, to a body of flesh and blood\nlike ours. That love is the guarantee that he will use his power to raise\nus up as he has promised, if it be our happy lot to 'confess him before\nmen' by the shedding of our blood. And of his power how can we doubt? He\nwho, when dead himself, yet was able to raise himself from the tomb up to a\nglorious and impassible existence, has power, now that he is seated in\nglory at the Father's right hand, to do the same for us. Let us not be sad,\nthen, like those who have no hope. Let us gird ourselves for the contest\nbefore us.\" And he proceeded to strengthen his audience by showing how\nlittle the short sufferings of time were when balanced by the weight of\nglory to follow for ever. He then continued the ceremonies. As he\napproached the consecration, Aurelian and Sisinnius, despite the thoughts\nthat engaged their minds, were struck by the rapt devotion and fervent\nprayers of the crowd of worshippers in the body of the chamber. They\nthemselves had taken their place behind so as not to be observed; Zoilus\nhad arranged this. Between them and the altar there was a large and motley\ngathering: slaves, plebeians, and some whose dress belonged to the rank of\nRoman knights; Jews, Greeks, and barbarians; men of different colors,\nraces, and countries bowed before the altar and were animated by one\nspirit.\n{662}\nThere was no distinction, save only that shown in the separation of the men\nfrom the women on the two sides of the chapel. The words of consecration,\npronounced in a half-audible voice, fell ominously on the ears of Aurelian.\n\"_Hoc est CORPUS meum._\" Whose body? he asked himself. \"_Hic est\ncalix SANGUINIS mei._\" Whose blood was contained in that cup? Were not\nthose vague rumors true about the murder of infants in those Christian\nmeetings? Alas! it was horrible to think that his own beloved Flavia had\nbeen entrapped and was now a sharer in those bloody orgies. But he would\nrescue her, or lose his fortune or his life in the effort. Different\nsomewhat were the reflections of Sisinnius. The words of Clement had\ntouched in his heart a chord which still vibrated with a longing to hear\nmore. After all, had these men solved the mystery of death and of the life\nbeyond the grave?\n\nAfter the full completion of the sacrifice by the communion of the\ncelebrant, Clement resumed his seat in front of the altar, with his face to\nthe people. The golden plate which bound his temples flashed in the\nlamplight, and reminded many of Moses after his descent from the mount,\nwith the rays beaming from his forehead. The three females, who had knelt\nduring the ceremonies, now stood before the pope. The two matrons were\nturned sideways toward the congregation as they lifted the veil from the\nhead of the central figure. In one of these Sisinnius recognized his own\nwife; and in the other a member of the imperial household, Priscilla, who\nhad so gently restrained Vitus on the night of the emperor's feast from\ndrawing the sword from his scabbard as the words fell from the stage:\n\n\"Domitian! Domitian! Beware! Beware!\"\n\nAurelian's worst fears were confirmed as he saw, when the white veil was\nlifted, the beautiful features of Flavia Domitilla! But Zoilus kept beside\nhim.\n\n\"My daughter!\" said Clement, addressing Flavia, \"have you duly and fully\nconsidered the step you propose taking?\"\n\n\"Yes, father!\" she answered, in a low, tremulous voice.\n\n\"But is there no other love to divide your heart from Him whom you propose\nespousing? Have you not pledged your troth and allegiance to another?\"\n\n\"I did, when my eyes were shut to the eternal beauty of Him who has since\nrevealed himself to me. If other love I have had, I now uproot it from my\nsoul. I only ask to be permitted to devote myself to the service of Him\nwhom my heart has too lately known, too lately loved. All other allegiance\nI hereby renounce.\"\n\n\"In the name, then, of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, I\nreceive you as the spouse of him who has loved you from the beginning.\" He\nreplaced the white veil upon her head; and, receiving a ring from Vitus,\nwho stood beside him opposite Flavia, placed it on her finger. Then he\nadministered to her the most holy sacrament. A smile played like a ray of\nsunshine over her countenance, which manifested the deep and overflowing\nhappiness that welled upward from her soul.\n\nAurelian trembled like a reed as he heard her recall her promises to\nhimself. But she was not mistress of her actions, he reasoned. Had he not\nseen her drugged with that unholy flesh and blood which were given her?\nVitus, he thought, had so far succeeded; for was not he the only one\npresent to whom she could be thus wedded? Zoilus watched his companions\nclosely; and, when the assembly was dismissed, hurried them away by the\nprivate entrance.\n\n------\n\n{663}\n\n    Under The Violets\n\n\n  Under the violets blue and sweet,\n    Where low the willow droops and weeps\n  Where children tread with timid feet\n    When twilight o'er the forest creeps\n    She sleeps--my little darling sleeps.\n\n  Breathe low and soft, O wind! breathe low\n    Where so much loveliness is laid;\n  Pour out thy heart in strains of woe,\n    O bird! that in the willow's shade\n    Sing'st till the stars do pale and fade.\n\n  It may be that to other eyes,\n    As in the happy days of old,\n  The sun doth every morning rise\n    O'er mountain summits tipped with gold,\n    And set where sapphire seas are rolled;\n\n  But I am so hedged round with woe,\n    The glory I no more can see.\n  O weary heart that throbbest so!\n    Thou hast but this one wish--to be\n    A little dust beneath the tree.\n\n  I would thou hadst thy wish to-day,\n    And we were lying side by side\n  With her who took our life away\n    That heavy day whereon she died--\n    O grave! I would thy gates were wide!\n\n------\n\n{664}\n\n    From The Lamp.\n\n    An Irish Saint. [Footnote 240]\n\n   [Footnote 240: Montalembert's Monks of the West.]\n\nIt is consoling in these gloomy days to think of the time when Ireland was\nthe Island of Saints, and gloried in the patronage of St. Patrick, St.\nBridget, and St. Columbkill.\n\nIt is to a foreigner that we owe the biography of St. Columbkill--named\n\"Columba\" from the Dove of Peace, and \"kill,\" from the many cells or\nmonasteries that he founded. He was descended, says Montalembert, from one\nof those noble races in Ireland whose origin is lost in the night of\nages--the Nialls or O'Donnells of Tirconnel, who were monarchs of Ireland\nfrom the sixth to the twelfth century. The child was instructed in religion\nby the priest who had baptized him, and the legends tell of angels who\nwatched over him from his birth; and they say that he asked familiarly of\nhis guardian angel if all the angels were as bright and young as himself.\nFrom the house of the priest he was sent to the monastery of St. Frinan at\nClonard, where he studied and labored like the rest, and, though a prince,\nhe ground the corn they ate. One of his companions, afterward a saint, was\nangry at the influence which Columba naturally possessed over the rest; but\nan angel appeared to him, and showed him the hatchet of his father, the\ncarpenter, bidding him remember that he had only left his tools, but that\nColumba left a throne to enter the monastery. Clonard, says Montalembert,\nwas vast as the monastic cities of the Thebais, and 3000 Irish students\nlearnt there from the \"Master of Saints.\" Among the crowds who came to\nlearn was an aged bard, who was a Christian. He asked St. Frinan to teach\nhim, in return for his verse, the art of cultivating the soil. Columba was\na poet, and studied with the bard. One day a young girl, pursued by a\nrobber, was murdered at their feet, and Columba foretold his death, and was\nrenowned through the island as a saint. He was ordained a priest in 546,\nand became, when scarcely twenty-five, the founder of monasteries, of which\nthirty-seven are reckoned in Ireland alone. The most ancient of these was\nin the forest of Durrow, or the Field of Oaks, where a cross and well yet\nbear the name of Columba. It stood in Clenmalire, now in King's county; and\nthe noble monastery, as Bede calls it, became the mother of many others; so\nthat Dermach as well as Hy became nurseries for the hundred monasteries\nfounded by Columba. It has been said that St. Patrick had kindled such a\nflame of devotion that the saints were not satisfied with monastic life\nwithout retiring to the solitude of the surrounding forests, and there,\nunder the canopy of the vast oaks, which had for ages possessed the\nwilderness, they found a more silent and solemn cloister. Such had been the\nmonastery of St. Bridget at Kildare, and such was Durrow; and in the forest\nof Calgachus, in his native country, Columba built Derry, in a deep bay on\nthe sea which separates Ireland from Scotland. There he dwelt, and he would\nnot permit one of the oaks to be felled unless it was injured by age or\nstorms, and then it was used as fuel for the stranger or the poor. Here he\nwrote poems, of which, says Montalembert, only the echo has reached us. The\nfollowing verses might be written by his disciples, but they are in the\nmost ancient Irish dialect, and perhaps convey the thoughts, it not the\nwords, of Columba:\n\n  \"Had I all countries where the Scottish tribes\n   Have made their dwelling, I would choose a cell\n   In my own beauteous Derry, which I love\n   For its unbroken peace and sanctity.\n   There, seated on each leaf of those old oaks,\n   I see a white-winged angel of the sky.\n   O forests dear! home and cell beloved!\n   O thou Eternal in the highest heaven!\n   From hands profane my monasteries shield,\n   My Derry and my Durrow, Rapho sweet,\n   Drumhorne in forests prolific. Swords, and Kells,\n   Where sea-birds scream and flutter o'er the sea,\n   Sweet Derry, when my boat rows near the shore,\n   All is repose and most delicious rest.\"\n\n{665}\n\nThere are traces of the saint in these beloved foundations: among the ruins\nof Swords are still seen the chapel of St. Columba, and a round tower and\nholy well, but not the missal written by himself and given to the church.\nWe have the rule he wrote for the monasteries, but it is said to have been\nborrowed from the oriental monasteries. He founded Kells in 550, and\ndedicated it to the Blessed Virgin. St. Columba's devotion was not confined\nto his own monasteries; he loved that founded not long before by St.\nEudacus in Arran, the Isle of Saints:\n\n  \"Arran, thou art like sunshine, and my heart\n   Yearns on thee in thine Ocean of the West;\n   To hear thy bells would be a life of bliss;\n   And, if thy soil might be my last abode,\n   I should not envy those who sleep secure\n   Beside St. Peter and St. Paul. My light,\n   My sunny Arran! all my heart's desire\n   Lies in the Western Ocean and in thee!\"\n\nThere are eleven Irish and three Latin poems said to be written by St.\nColumba, and one of these is in praise of St. Bridget, who was living when\nhe was born. Columba was not only a poet himself, but the friend of the\nbardic order, who held from Druidic times so high a rank in society, and\nwho frequented monasteries as well as palaces. Columba received even the\nwandering bards of the highways into his monasteries, and especially in one\nwhich he founded in Loch Key, which was afterward the Cistercian House of\nBoyle. He employed them to write the annals of the monastery, and to sing\nto the harp before the community. He loved books as well as poetry; and his\npassion was transcribing manuscripts which he collected in his travels, and\nhe is said to have made with his own hand three hundred copies of the\ngospels or psalter. One of these remains. It is a copy of St. Jerome's\ntranslation of the four evangelists, and an inscription testifies that he\nwrote it in twelve days. He was once refused by an aged hermit the sight of\nhis books, and the legend says that, in consequence of his anger, the books\nbecame illegible at the hermit's death. The anger of Columba about another\nmanuscript led to more important consequences--his own conversion from a\nliterary monk to an ascetic missionary. While he visited his old master,\nSt. Frinan, he shut himself up by night in the church to make a secret copy\nof the psalter. His light was seen, and the abbot claimed possession of the\ncopy. Columba appealed to his kinsman, the supreme monarch Dermot, who was\nthe friend of monks; for, when an exile, he had found a refuge in the\nmonastery of St. Kieran, the schoolfellow of Columba, which they both had\nbuilt in an islet of the Shannon, and which became Clonmacnoise. Dermot\ndecided that the copy belonged to the abbot. Columba was indignant. The\nmurder of a prince of Connaught, whom he had protected, increased his anger\nagainst Dermot, and he foretold his ruin. His own life was in danger, he\nfled toward Tirconnel, and the monks of Monasterboys told him that his path\nwas beset. He escaped alone, and passed through the mountains, singing as\nhe went his song of confidence; and, as tradition says, these verses will\nprotect all who repeat them on their journeys:\n\n  \"I am alone upon the mountain, O my God!\n   King of the sun! direct my steps, and guard\n   My fearless head among a thousand spears;\n   Safer than on an islet in a lake\n   I walk with thee; my life is thine to give\n   Or to withhold, and none but thou canst add\n   Or take an hour from its appointed time.\n   What are the guards? they cannot guard from death.\n   I will forget my poor and peaceful cell,\n   And cast myself on the world's charity;\n   For he who gives will be repaid, and he\n   Who hoards will lose his treasure. God of life.\n   Woe be to him who sins! The unseen world\n   Will come when all he sees has passed away.\n   The Druids trust to oaks and songs of birds:\n   My trust is in the God who made me man,\n   And will not let me perish in the night.\n   Him only do I serve, the Son of God,\n   The Son of Mary--Holy Trinity,\n   The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, with him\n   Is my inheritance; my cell\n   Is with the monks of Kells and Holy Moen.\"\n\n{666}\n\nColumba reached his country, and stirred up his clan, the Hy Nialls of the\nnorth, against Dermot, and the Hy Nialls of the south; and with the aid of\nthe king of Connaught, whose son had been slain, Dermot was defeated, and\nfled to Tara. The victory was attributed to the prayers and fasts of\nColumba, and the manuscript which had caused this civil war became a\nnational relic with the O'Donnells. It was a Latin psalter, and was\nenclosed in a portable altar, and carried by a priest into all these\nbattles, and has been miraculously preserved to the present times.\n\nBut in the midst of his triumphs, Columba himself was conquered. He felt\nthe pangs of remorse, and suffered the reproaches of the religious. He was\nsummoned to a synod at Tailtan, and condemned, when absent, for having shed\nChristian blood. But Columba had always shared the contests of his clan,\nand, though a monk, was still a prince of the O'Donnells. He went to the\nsynod which had condemned him unheard, to dispute their decision. When\nColumba entered, the abbot Brendan, founder of Berr, rose up and gave him\nthe kiss of peace. All wondered, but the abbot said: \"If you had seen, as I\ndid, the fiery column and the angels who preceded him, you would have done\nthe same. Columba is destined by God to be the guide of a nation to\nheaven.\" The excommunication was reversed, and the sentence of Columba was,\nthat he should convert as many heathens as he had caused Christians to die\nin battle. Columba was safe, but not at rest; he went from desert to\ndesert, and from monastery to monastery, to seek some holy teacher of\npenance. One hermit reproached him as the cause of war.\n\n\"It was Diarmid,\" he replied.\n\n\"You are a monk,\" said the hermit, \"and should be patient.\"\n\n\"But,\" said Columba, \"it is hard for an injured man to repress his just\nanger.\"\n\nHe went to Abban, founder of many monasteries, one of which was called the\nCell of Tears. This meek soldier of Christ had often parted warriors in\nbattle and gone unarmed to meet a pagan brigand, whom he converted to be a\nChristian and a monk. Columba asked him to pray for those whose death he\nhad caused, and Abban told him their souls were saved. He then sought St.\nMolaisse, who was renowned for his study of the Holy Scriptures, and whose\nmonastery is yet traced in the isle of Inishmurray, on the coast of Sligo.\nThe stern solitary renewed the sentence of the synod, and added that of\nexile for life from his too beloved country. Columba obeyed. He told his\nwarlike kinsmen, the Nialls of Tirconnell, that an angel had bidden him go\ninto exile, on account of those whom they had slain on his account. None of\nthem opposed the sentence, and twelve disciples determined to follow him.\nOne was Mochouna, prince of Ulster. Columba refused at first the voluntary\nsacrifice, but yielded at last; and the devoted band left Ireland for ever.\n\nIt was in 563 that Columba left Ireland. Some say that he had offended King\nDiarmid by the severity with which he reproved vice. This is not the reason\ngiven by Adamnan, who succeeded him in his monastery of Hy, and left a\ncollection of records, written at the end of the seventh century, which\nreveals the intention of the heroic apostle; and, as it contains facts\nrelated by competent witnesses, this precious relic of antiquity is more\nvaluable than a well-arranged biography. It must have been from the\ntraditions of his monastery that he describes the saint, who was by nature\nso warlike and impatient, as retaining a tender and passionate love for his\ncountry, and a sympathy with all his national habits, while he quitted\nErin, in expiation of the crime to which that love had led him. Columba did\nmore than this; he sacrificed his poetic tastes and learned pursuits to\nconvert not only the half-Christian Dalirads, who had early left Erin for\nScotland, but more especially the heathen Picts of the North, the\ndescendants of the brave opponents of Agricola under Galgacus, who were not\nof his own Milesian race.\n\n{667}\n\nSt. Columbkill was forty-two when he left his country in a wicker coracle\ncovered with leather, in which he trusted himself with his twelve\ndisciples, confiding solely in God, to brave the tempests and the enormous\nwaves of the sea which parts the two countries, with only the light of\nfaith and the strength of prayers to guide them through the rocks and\nwhirlpools which beset the misty archipelago of isles lying below the\nmountains and deep bays, or fiords, of Lochaber. Adamnan describes his\nIrish tonsure, which showed an Eastern rather than a Roman teaching; the\ntop of his head shaven, and his hair hanging down his back; his majestic\ncountenance, whose pride was softened only by religion; his princely\nfeatures, whose severity was mingled with a cast of irony; and his voice,\nwhose tone commanded while it penetrated the heart, so that it is\nconsidered to have been one of the most miraculous of his gifts. Thus he\nbraved the future, trusting in the simplicity of charity for safety in a\nsavage land and savage tribes, to whom he brought the knowledge of truth\nand morals and the hope of heaven. His fiery temper, and the courage that\nfitted him for a soldier, and the genius which marked him for a poet or an\norator, were devoted to the conversion of hostile chiefs; and the violence\nof his own feelings enabled him better to influence the people, while it\nwas softened by the great sorrow of his life, the exile from his country.\nWith a heart yearning for Erin and its noble clans, he reached the desolate\nisland of Oronsay; and, ascending the highest part of the rock, he saw in\nthe south the distant mountains of Dalreida. He rejected the consolation,\nand left the island for Iona. Then, finding that he could not from its\nhighest point see the country he had abandoned, he fixed there his place of\nexile, and a heap of stones yet marks the spot where he discovered that the\nsacrifice was complete, and it is still called the Farewell to Ireland.\n\nThe island of Hy is low though rocky, and not a tree nor bush can live\nthere; for not only do the winds sweep over it, but the very spray of the\nAtlantic moistens it with salt showers. It lies amid the islets on the\ncoast of Morven, already celebrated by Ossian; Staffa and its basaltic\ncolumns are on the north, and Mull with its lofty mountains on the south.\nBarren islands lie on every side, separated by deep channels; and so narrow\nare the bays which run up between the mountains of the mainland that the\nwater becomes a lake and the land a peninsula. Forests then clothed their\nsides; and the clouds, which almost always hang on their summits, fall and\nrise above the precipices and waterfalls of that lofty coast, peopled by\nunrecorded emigrants from Erin, whence Ossian had gone to Tara, and Fingal\nhad made war and peace with the kindred tribes of Inisfail.\n\nIt was within sight of this repulsive field of labor, where his penance was\nto convert souls, that Columba and his missionaries founded a monastery\ndestined to be the centre of religion and civilization to Europe. The first\nbuilding was of twisted boughs inlaced with ivy, and it was many years\nbefore they cut down oaks in the forest of Morven to make the wooden\nedifices in use till the twelfth century. Thus Columba prepared for the\nfuture, but he had not forgotten the past. He felt the bitterness of exile,\nand wrote verses, in which he prefers \"death in Erin to exile in Albania;\"\nand then, in a plaintive but resigned tone, he sings:\n\n  \"Alas! no more I float upon thy lakes\n   Or dance upon the billows of thy gulfs,\n   Sweet Erin; nor with Comgall at my side\n   Hear the strange music of the wild swan's cry!\n   Alas that crime has exiled me, and blood--\n   Blood shed in battle--stains my guilty hand!\n   My guilty foot may not with Cormac tread\n   The cloisters of my Durrow, which I love;\n   My guilty ears may never hear the wind\n   Sound in its oaks, nor hear the blackbird's song,\n   Nor cuckoo, and my eyes may never see\n   The land so loved but for its hated kings.\n   'Tis sweet to dance along the white-topped waves,\n   And watch them break in foam on Erin's strand;\n   And fast my bark would fly if once its prow\n   To Erin turned and to my native oaks;\n   But the great ocean may not bear my bark\n   Save to Albania, land of ravens dire.\n   My foot is on the deck, my bleeding heart\n   Aches as I think of Erin, and my eyes\n   Turn ever thither; but while life endures--\n   So runs my vow--these eyes will never see\n   The noble race of Erin; and the tear\n   Fills my dim eyes when looking o'er the sea\n   Where Erin lies--loved Erin, where the birds\n   Sing such sweet music, and the chant of clerks\n   Makes melody like theirs. O happy land!\n   Thy youths are gentle, thine old men are wise,\n   Thy princes noble, and thy daughters fair.\n   Young voyager, my sorrows with thee bear\n   To Comgall of 'eternal life,' and take\n   My blessing and my prayer, a sevenfold part,\n   To Erin; to Albania all the rest.\n   My heart is broken in my breast; if death\n   Should come, it is for too much love of Gaels.\"\n\n{668}\n\nTime never effaced this passionate regret, and, as the legend says, when he\nwas aged, he foretold that a wearied bird would be cast on Iona, and he\nbade his monks feed it till it could return to Ireland. But these regrets\nstrengthened instead of dissipating his missionary ardor; and, while his\nnatural disposition was unchanged, he became the model of penitents and\nascetics and the most energetic of abbots. He received strangers and\nconverted sinners. He established a rule for his monks, and dwelt himself\nlike a hermit, lying on the bare ground upon a bed of planks. There he\nprayed and fasted, and there he continued to transcribe the sacred text,\nand to study the Holy Scriptures, so that three hundred copies of the\ngospel were written by his hand. Crowds of pilgrims visited him there, and\nmany did penance; but one in particular received from him the same penance\nhe was performing himself, an exile to the isle of Tiree and a banishment\nfrom the sight of Columba.\n\nSt. Columba was among his kindred in Lochaber. The Scots were a Dalradian\ncolony, allies of the O'Neills; and he was the kinsman of their king,\nConnall, and from him he obtained a grant of the island of Iona, and he\nlabored among these halt-formed Christians. Then, as if he would break even\nthis last tie to Erin, he became the apostle of the Picts, by descent\nScythians, by habits savages and heathens. Unconquered by Romans or\nChristians, they dwelt in glens, inaccessible except by water, and\ndeserved, like their ancestors, the description of Tacitus, as dwelling at\nthe extremity of the earth and of liberty; and to them he devoted the\nremaining thirty-four years of his life. He crossed the mountains which\ndivide the Scots from the Picts, and reached the chain of lakes which\nextends from sea to sea. He was the first to launch his fragile boat upon\nLoch Ness, and he penetrated to the fortress of their king, Brude, which\noccupied a rock north of Inverness. The king closed the doors of his\nfortress; but Columba made the sign of the cross, the doors rolled back on\nthe bolts, and Columba entered as a victor. The king trembled in the midst\nof his council, and rose to meet the missionary; he spoke to him with\nrespect, and became his friend, though it is not said that he became a\nChristian. But the Druids were his enemies. They were not idolaters, but\nworshipped the hidden powers of nature, the sun and stars, and believed the\nwaters and springs had the powers which were attributed by the Druids of\nGaul and Britain to oaks and forests. Columba drank their sacred water in\ndefiance, and they tried to hinder him when he went out of the castle to\nsing vespers. He chanted the psalm \"Eructavit cor meum;\" and they were\nsilenced.\n\nSt. Columba preached and worked miracles among the Picts, and, though he\nspoke by an interpreter, he made converts. One day on the banks of Loch\nNess he cried: \"Let us make haste to meet the angels, who are come down\nfrom heaven and await us beside the death-bed of a Pict, who has kept the\nnatural law, that we may baptize him before he dies.\" He was then aged\nhimself, but he outstripped his companions, and reached Glen Urquhart,\nwhere the old man expected him, heard him, was baptized, and died in peace.\nAnd once, preaching in Skye, he cried out, \"You will see arrive an aged\nchief, a Pict, who has kept faithfully the natural law; he will come here\nto be baptized and to die;\" and so it was.\n\n{669}\n\nHe once healed a Druid by miracle; but he attempted to arouse the powers of\nnature against the saint, and, as he foretold, a contrary wind opposed the\ndeparture of Columba. But he bade the sailors spread the sail against the\nwind, and sailed down the Loch Ness in safety. Nor did he end his labors\ntill he had planted churches and monasteries throughout these wild valleys\nand islands.\n\nIn 574, Connall was succeeded by Aidan on the throne of the Scots, and he\ndesired to be consecrated by the abbot of Iona. Columba refused till he was\ncommanded by an angel to perform the sacred ceremony at Iona--the first\ntime it had been done in the West.\n\nMontalembert observes that among the Celts the monastic was superior to the\nepiscopal office, and therefore the abbot consecrated the first of the\nScottish kings on a stone called the Stone of Destiny, which was ultimately\ncarried to Westminster Abbey by Edward I., and is now the pedestal of the\nEnglish throne. The Dalriads in Scotland were subject to the Irish kings,\nand it was to free them from their tribute that Columba was sent to Erin,\nwhich he thought never to see again. The new king went also, and they met\nthe monarch and chiefs at Drumheath. Aed or Hugue II. was now reigning, and\nhe it was who had given to his cousin Columba the site of Derry. Columba\nand St. Colman obtained the independence of Scotland; and afterward St.\nColumba attended another assembly, which was to decide the existence of the\nBardic order. There were three kinds of bards: the Fileas, who sung of\nreligion and war; the Brehons, who versified the laws; and the Sennachies,\nwho preserved the history and genealogy of the ancient races, and decided\non boundaries. These last frequented courts and even battle-fields, and\ntheir influence was now so much feared that the monarch proposed to abolish\nor to massacre the bards. They were, in truth, a Druidic order, but they\nbecame Christians, though they were independent of all but their own laws.\nColumba was a poet even to his old age, and he saved the bards from the\nanger of the king by proposing to regulate and diminish, instead of\ndestroying, the order. His eloquence prevailed, and thenceforth the bards\nand monks were united in spirit. Fergall, their blind chief, sung to\nColumba his hymn of gratitude; and Baithan, one of his monks, admonished\nhis abbot for his self-complacence. This Baithan was declared by Fririan,\nhis brother monk, to be superior to any one on this side of the Alps for\nthe knowledge of the Scriptures and the sciences. \"I do not compare him to\nColumba,\" said he; \"for he is like the patriarchs and prophets and\napostles; he is a sage of sages, a king among kings, a hermit, a monk, and\nalso a poor man among the poor.\"\n\nColumba made afterward, several visits to his monasteries in Ireland,\nworking miracles as he went; as when he went from Durrow to Clonmacnoise,\nand healed a dumb boy, who became St. Ernan. He was received there by the\nreligious, who walked in procession to meet him, chanting hymns. He had not\nonly a jurisdiction over all his monasteries, but a preternatural knowledge\nof all that went on there; and he once interrupted his labors at Iona to\npray with his monks for the safety of some workmen at Durrow, and for\nsoftening the heart of its abbot, who was too severe on his monks. Columba\nwas by nature impetuous and vindictive, and was still an O'Neill in party\nspirit. Often in the monastery of Iona he would pray for victory to his\nclan in battle, or he would pray for the men of his race or the kinsmen of\nhis mother; and once, when aged, he bade them sound the bell of the\nmonastery, (a little square bell, such as now hung round the necks of\ncattle,) and sound it quickly. The religious hastened around him, and he\nbade them pray for Aidan, his Dalraid kinsman, then in battle; and they\nprayed till he said, \"Aidan has conquered.\"\n\n{670}\n\nAdamnan tells us of his own sanctity. One day he retired alone to a distant\npart of the island, and he was seen with his hands and eyes lifted up to\nheaven, and surrounded by angels, and the place was named \"The Mount of\nAngels.\" As he grew older, he increased his austerity. He plunged himself\ninto frozen water; and, seeing a poor woman gathering bitter herbs to eat,\nhe forbade that any other food should be brought to him. He used to pray\nalone in the little isle of Himba, and his hut was lighted up by night from\nheaven, while he sang hymns in a tongue unknown to his hearers. Having been\nthere three days and three nights without food, he came out rejoicing that\nhe had discovered the mysterious sense of several passages of Scripture. He\nreturned to die at Iona, and was already surrounded by a halo of glory; so\nthat, when he prayed in the church at night, the brightness blinded the\nbeholders.\n\nOne day in his cell his attendants saw him in heavenly joy, and then in\ndeep sadness, and they asked the cause.\n\n\"It is thirty years,\" he said, \"since I began my pilgrimage in Caledonia;\nand I have long prayed that I might be released this year. I saw the angels\ncome for me, and I rejoiced; but they stood still down yonder on that rock,\nas if they could not come near me; for the prayers of many churches have\nprevailed, and I grieve that I must live four more years.\"\n\nAt the time appointed he was drawn on a car by oxen to take leave of the\nmonks who were working in the fields. Another day he blessed the granary of\nthe monastery, and foretold his death. This was on Saturday, and he said it\nwould be the Sabbath of his repose. As he returned he met the old horse\nwhich carried the milk to the monastery, and the horse laid his head upon\nthe shoulder of his master, as if to take leave of him, and the saint\ncaressed and blessed him. Then, looking down from a hill on the monastery\nand isle, he stretched out his hands to bless it, and prophesied its future\nsanctity. Then he entered his cell, and was transcribing the thirty-third\npsalm, where he came to the words, \"Those who seek the Lord shall want no\ngood thing;\" and he said, \"Here I must end; Baithan will write the rest.\"\nHe went into the church for the vigil of Sunday, and, returning, he sat\ndown on his bed of stone, and sent a message to his monks, and exhorted\nthem to charity. After that he spoke no more.\n\nHardly had the midnight bell rung for matins when he ran first to the\nchurch, and knelt before the altar. It was dark, and one monk followed him,\nand placed his venerable head upon his knees. When the community came with\nlights, they found their abbot dying. He received the last sacraments, and\nopened his eyes, and raised his right hand in silence, to bless his monks.\nHis hand fell, and he expired. He lay calm, and with the gentle sweetness\nof a man asleep in a heavenly vision. That very night two holy persons in\nIreland beheld Iona enveloped in light; and then miracles began to be done\nwhile his body lay in the little church of Iona.\n\nIn the ninth century, when pirates ravaged the coasts, the body of the\nsaint was removed to Down, and laid between those of St. Patrick and St.\nBridget. The pirates were punished by sudden death. The Norman, Strongbow,\ndied of a wound after destroying the churches of Columba and the saints,\nand De Lacy perished at Burrow while he built a castle against the\nmonastery.\n\n------\n\n{671}\n\n    From Chambers's Journal.\n\n    Charles V. at the Convent of Yuste.\n\n  Shade and sunshine play alternate on the convent's massy walls;\n  In the cloister's dim seclusion soft the stealthy footstep falls;\n  In the quiet garden-alleys underneath the citron's shade,\n  Pace the monks with open missals, downcast eyes, and silent tread.\n  Birds are singing, bees are humming, trees are whispering, while through all\n  Steals the silver tinkling, tinkling of the distant fountain fall.\n  Far away, the wild Sierras stretch their ridges dim and high,\n  Carving weird and warlike phantoms in the blue and dazzling sky;\n  Rising still in savage grandeur, till they reach the bounding main;\n  Mute protectors of their country, bulwarks of chivalrous Spain.\n  Who comes hither, slowly sauntering, pausing oft awhile to rest;\n  Arms across so calmly folded, head declining on his breast?\n  More than common spirit lurketh in the bright and clear blue eye;\n  More than common toil and travail in the brows' deep furrows lie.\n  Weight of years and weight of trouble somewhat bow the haughty form,\n  But the haughty heart within it still is beating quick and warm;\n  Iron heart that knew no bending, when the storm was fierce and loud,\n  Soared above the thunder's roaring, dared the lightning, braved the cloud.\n  Stalwart heart that still was foremost in the serried ranks of war;\n  Triumphed o'er the Gallic legions, foiled the Moslem's scimitar.\n  Hardy Germans; proud Burgundians; trusty Flemings, true as steel;\n  Mountaineers of wild Galicia, cavaliers of Old Castile;\n  Half the empire of the Old World; half the treasures of the New--\n  Mexico's gold-flowing rivers, silver mines of rich Peru;\n  Wheresoe'er the sun ariseth, throwing o'er the hills his beams;\n  Wheresoe'er his dying radiance lingers on the lakes and streams;\n  Far as human foot can wander, far as human eye can scan,\n  Bowed the nations, poured the treasures, marched the legions for one man.\n  Yet he standeth there serenely underneath the chestnut bough,\n  And the gentle air of summer playeth lightly on his brow.\n  Gone the sceptre of the monarch, gone the priceless pearl and gem;\n  Gone the purple robe of splendor, gone the regal diadem.\n  March of armies, fall of kingdoms fate of war he little heeds,\n  Kneeling on the chapel pavement with his missal and his beads,\n  Listening to the simple brethren, chanting loud their matin hymn,\n  Or the holy Ave Mary, wafted through the twilight dim.\n  He hath conned life's sternest lessons he hath learned them long and well,\n  And the deep experience knoweth which their silent teachings tell.\n  Not the wildest hold of empire can the mind's expansion fill;\n  Vain the grasp of worldly power, worldly riches vainer still.\n  High o'er all that earth can offer, heaven's allurements beckon on,\n  And the crown that never fadeth by the victor shall be won.\n\n------\n\n{672}\n\n\n  Translated from the French.\n\n  The Crucifix of Baden.\n\n  A Legend of the Middle Ages.\n\n\nCHAPTER VI.\n\nEight days passed since Johann's departure before the young man again stood\nat the sculptor's door. Alas! in that silent and gloomy house, the click of\nthe hammer striking the stone, the cutting of the chisel on the marble, the\ncheerful voices of the pupils, and the pure voice of Mina, singing her love\nlay in the morning or canticle at eve, were no longer heard. The great\nwindow of the atelier was opaque and black, and no spark of light appeared\nin the house save where the weak and pale light of a little lamp shone\nthrough the window of the young girl's room, at the top of the house, and\nseemingly shadowed by the angel's wings.\n\nJohann sprang from his horse, tapped lightly at the door, and, throwing\naside his travelling cloak, hastened to question the old servant.\n\n\"Where is your young lady?\"\n\n\"Above in her room. Her malady hath much increased since last we saw you.\"\n\n\"And Master Sebald?\"\n\n\"Is at her side. She speaks and weeps in her delirium, and the master\ndesires that we should not approach her.\"\n\n\"But I may enter,\" said Johann. \"Fear nothing, Martha, I will not disturb\nher--you well know that, when I departed, it was to bear a message for\nDemoiselle Mina.\"\n\nMartha allowed the young traveller to pass, and he ascended the stairs\nrapidly yet softly, and glided noiselessly into Mina's room, of which the\ndoor stood half open.\n\nBeneath the thick curtains of the bed, under a canopy of dark blue damask,\nthe white form of the sculptor's daughter was dimly outlined, indistinct\nand floating like a shadow, and scarcely perceptible, save where the yellow\nray of the silver lamp lit up two sparkling, ardent, agitated flames from\nbeneath her dark lashes. How dry and desolate, and even fearful, were those\nlate sweet glances, now glittering with the fires of fever! Tears would\nbring more gladness to her father's heart than that wild splendor. So\nthought Johann as he softly entered and hid behind a large arm-chair in his\neagerness to escape those burning glances.\n\nBy the side of the bed Master Sebald sat gloomy and silent in a high-backed\nebony chair. His grief-worn countenance and gray head rested upon a hand\nwhich seemed to Johann to have grown, even in the few days of his absence,\nmore yellow and thin. The other hand was stretched toward the bed, and held\nclasped that of Mina. The old man watched every movement, every look, every\nsigh of his daughter. A moan from time to time broke from her lips; then\nshe pushed back with her thin fingers the waves of golden hair which fell\nover her pale forehead, and began to speak in short, gasping tones:\n\n\"Wilt thou pardon me, my father?\" said she. \"Once thou hadst confidence in\nme and wert happy. Nothing was wanting to thee; neither the grace of God\nnor the respect of man; neither success nor genius. Ah! my father, when I\nreflect that thou mightest always have been so, hadst thou no daughter! Why\ncame I ever into this world, or why died I not in my cradle? Then thou\nwouldst have mourned me, but with different tears with sweet and tender\ntears--tears of hope and benediction; thou wouldst have placed me in my\nlittle coffin, and, when afterward thou wouldst think of me, thou wouldst\ncease to weep, saying: I am a happy father, whose family is in\nheaven--there have my pious wife and angel babe flown.'\"\n\n{673}\n\nHere sobs interrupted her voice. A heart-broken sigh from the father\nreplied.\n\nThe sick girl for a moment was silent, breathing painfully, and wiping away\nwith her hand the drops of sweat which stood upon her brow. Then with a\nstill more mournful voice, she continued:\n\n\"Instead of that I grew, I lived, and I loved in vain. Father! my tombstone\nmust bear the thorns of grief the black cross of penitence. It will be a\nsad sight--my last dwelling. Mockery will sound around it; the passer-by\nwill point it out scornfully, but, if thy malediction floats not over it,\nmy father--if thou wilt there shed a tear on the green turf--\"\n\n\"O my Mina! my only child, talk not of maledictions or tombs--I love thee.\nI tremble for thee, I pardon thee--and thou wilt live and yet be happy. Who\ncan say that Otho has proved false? Who knows that old Hans is not\nmistaken? Who knows that we may not see him once more, generous, true, and\nloving thee, my Mina?\"\n\n\"We will never see him more. He loves me no more, my father. If old Hans\nwere mistaken--if the lady of Horsheim were not to wed Otho, Johann would\nlong ere this have returned. Thinkest thou the good youth would delay to\nbring me glad tidings? No--he is generous, devoted, and tender. Why could I\nnot love him? I have been very weak, alas! but father, rememberest thou not\nhow tall and gracious was the count! How handsome he seemed with his red\nplume overhanging his black hair, and his fine form encased in his steel\ncuirass! And his voice that went so straight to the heart! his simple\ngrace! his gentle nobleness! Who would not have loved such a gentleman? And\nthou, my father, didst thou not first love him?'\n\n\"Yes, I loved him, Mina; and I would yet esteem him.\"\n\n\"Contemn him not, father; and, above all, seek not to be avenged on him!\"\ncried the girl, in a fit of sudden terror. \"Should a proud cavalier like\nhim espouse a poor maiden like me--one who is not even a lady? Thou hast\ngenius and glory, my father; but thou hast no escutcheon. I should have\nloved Johann; he had such respect for thee--such devotion for me; he would\nhave given thee a happy old age, and me a peaceful life; he loved me and\nwould have sacrificed himself for me--he, who could find heart to see me\nhappy in another's arms. Oh! when Johann returns, tell him that I was not\nungrateful, and that, if heaven is opened to me, I will there pray for\nhim.\"\n\nAgain her words were interrupted by a stifled sob; she turned, and her eyes\nfell upon the great arm chair. She cried out, with fixed gaze and trembling\nlips:\n\n\"Johann is here--and weeping! Why speaks he not?\"\n\nThen old Sebald turned and saw the young man.\n\n\"Come hither!\" he cried. \"Thou hast been at Horsheim; what hast thou seen?\nSee how pale--how burning--how pitifully sick she is. Speak, my son; say\nthat old Hans erred when he named the husband of the Countess Gertrude!\"\n\nJohann, erect and pale, for a moment did not reply; he made a few timid\nsteps toward the old sculptor, and whispered as softly as he could:\n\n\"O master! why ask me now? Why force me to tell my tidings in her\npresence?\"\n\nAnd seeing a gesture of Mina's, he ceased. As low as he had spoken, she had\nheard. She lifted her eyes, clasped her hands, and made an effort to speak.\n\n\"Thou seest, father, that I was right,\" she murmured. \"Thanks, Johann; thou\nhast proved thy courage and thy goodness, of heart, and I rejoice that I am\nyet able to bid thee farewell. But one last question--answer, if thou\nlovest me. When will Otho's marriage take place?\"\n\n{674}\n\n\"In ten days,\" sobbed Johann.\n\n\"'Tis very soon,\" replied Mina, shuddering. \"My heart will be scarcely\ncold, and a single green bud will not have appeared over my grave. But may\nthe earth be green, and the sky blue, and life sweet to him.\"\n\nSaying these words, she crossed her hands upon her breast, and, speaking no\nmore, remained thus for long hours, without even casting a look upon the\nweeping Johann or upon her heart-broken father.\n\nThe physician soon came, and after him the priest. The first had marvellous\nsecrets to cure the body; the latter had pious consolation and words of\npeace for the soul. But they sought in vain to cure the body or strengthen\nthe soul of Mina. Each day, each hour, each moment stole a spark of the\nwaning fire of life; her grief was too great for so frail a form to bear,\nand one evening at the end of July, ten days after Johann's return, she\nclosed her eyes forever, holding her father's hand in hers and the crucifix\nto her lips. Johann was at her feet and received her last look. She had\nnear her in dying the Supreme Consoler of heaven and her only two friends\non earth, and there was in her last moments a tenderness which the heart of\nthe youth never forgot.\n\n\n  Chapter VII.\n\nTwo days after, when the body of Mina had been deposited at sunset in the\ncemetery at Baden, Sebald and Johann, the master and pupil, found\nthemselves alone in the atelier. Strange! It was Johann, the younger, that\nseemed the most afflicted, most crushed. His eyes were swollen, his cheeks\npale, his step tottering, and his face covered with tears. Old Sebald\nseemed much less changed; a few furrows the more on his brow, a few more\nwhite hairs on his head, were the only visible tokens of his grief. His\nstep was as firm, his bearing as proud as before; but a strange, steady\nglare, glowing and piercing, showing little trace of weariness or tears,\nshone from his eyes, and it was this look that the master fixed upon his\npupil as they entered the atelier that made Johann shudder before its clear\nand threatening light.\n\n\"Johann,\" said the master, \"it is now my turn to ask thee a question.\nSawest thou Otho of Arneck when thou wert at the castle of the Countess\nGertrude?\"\n\n\"Ay, master,\" replied the young man, with flushed face.\n\n\"Spokest thou with him?\"\n\n\"Ay, truly.\"\n\n\"Didst say to him that I prayed his presence, or, at least, that he should\nexplain himself? That I was in deepest sorrow, and Mina sick unto death?\"\n\n\"Yea, truly, my master.\"\n\n\"And what response made he?\"\n\n\"That he, too, was grieved; but that his word was pledged, and that until\nhis marriage he might not leave the castle of the countess. The soft\nremembrances of youth, he added, mar not, among wise men, the projects of a\nriper age.\"\n\n\"'Tis well, Johann, and I thank thee,\" replied the sculptor. \"I now know\nwhat I wished to know, and resolution is taken.\"\n\nThen he rose from his arm-chair threw a gloomy glance around the wall of\nthe studio.\n\n\"I return hither no more,\" murmured. \"Here have I toiled thirty years with\nupright heart and pure hands. Nothing that I have here completed has been\nsullied or profaned. I feared and served God; I honored and I loved man. I\nthen had a right to give purity to my virgins, the light of faith to my\nmartyrs, the halo of love to my cherubims. But now all is lost--faith,\nrenown, and child. Holy images! I cannot touch ye with bruised heart and\nviolent hands; hating and cursing men, I may not mould the august form of\nthe God of love. Therefore, no more will I appear in this retreat; its\nwindows shall remain darkened, its door closed. I will carry with me only\nmy grief, my memories, and this,\" he cried, seizing a sculptor's chisel\nwith a short, polished, and keen blade, upon which he gazed with his\nstrange look, as he gripped it with feverish strength in his hand.\n\n{675}\n\n\"Speak not so. O my master! clasp not that steel so tightly,\" cried Johann.\n\"That will bring thee little of consolation or hope. Look for solace for\nthy sorrows to this,\" he said, holding an ivory crucifix before his\nmaster's eyes. \"It was pressed to Mina's dying lips; she hath bequeathed it\nto us. Recallest thou not, my master, her smile as she gazed upon it? 'Twas\nbecause beneath the shadow of the cross even death seems sweet. There is\nthe only refuge, and there will I find shelter. The world hath had but\nlittle of joy for me, and I but little of love for the world. The prior of\nthe Augustines hath promised me a cell, and I will be happy, there to pass\nmy life, praying or working beneath the poor robe of a monk, and preserving\nthe memory and crucifix of Mina.\"\n\n\"It is well, my son,\" replied Koerner. \"To each one his own succor and\nlight, his own strength and safety. If, thanks to the priest's purer cross,\nthou findest calm and resignation, may I not seek the encouragement and\nstrength of my sculptor's chisel? Who may say, that, without these walls, I\nam not destined to achieve some work that will immortalize my name and\nconsole my heart? Then, why not leave to a father's grief the hope of\nglory, of triumph, and--this little sculptor's tool?\" demanded the old man,\nwith flushed face and sparkling eyes.\n\n\"I wish thee triumph and glory, my master. But yet, if thou canst do so,\nremember, when thou art active, diligent, and famous, that thy old pupil\nJohann, who would not be an artist and became a monk, will never cease to\nbless thee and to think of thee in his prayers.\"\n\nSo saying, the youth, weeping, kissed old Sebald's hand and left the\ndwelling, carrying with him the crucifix, his last and only treasure. When\nhe had departed, Sebald Koerner, too, left the studio, after casting a last\nlook on the bas-reliefs, the balcony, the mouldings, and the statues. He\ndouble-locked the door and took away the key, and, issuing from his house,\nhe walked for a long time through the fields. Arriving at length at the\nside of a deep pool near the foot of the hills, he bent over the tranquil\nwaters and dropped the key therein.\n\nThe water plashed and the waves hastened in increasing rings from the spot,\nand then became even more clear and peaceful than before--stilling\nthemselves ere the key had touched the bottom. Sebald then again stood\nerect, with his icy glance and strange smile, yet grasping the chisel in\nhis hand, and then concealing it in his bosom as if it were a dagger.\n\n\n  Chapter VIII.\n\nOne morning the Baron Otho of Arneck and the young Countess Gertrude, now\nhis dear lady and noble wife, were partaking in their house in Baden of\ntheir morning collation of fruits, hydromel, and spiced cakes. How charming\nseemed their repast, since they enjoyed it together. The cakes were\nexquisite, the hydromel of the sweetest; the cups were of gold, the cloth\nof fine brocade; Gertrude beautiful and loving. What was needed to complete\nOtho's happiness?\n\nWhen the young baroness had clapped her hands to order away the breakfast\nservice, the servant who entered approached the knight, bearing on a silver\nplate a piece of parchment folded in the form of a letter.\n\n\"What have we here?\" asked the noble lady. \"Another invitation? Indeed,\nOtho, they become wearisome. We are allowed no rest, although happiest\ntogether.\"\n\n\"It is indeed an invitation, but not one for thee, my cherished one,\"\nreplied Otho, when he had cast his eyes over the missive.\n\n\"In good sooth! And who is it who dares so soon to attempt to separate thee\nfrom thy wife?\"\n\n{676}\n\n\"An unfortunate man, and as such thou must forgive him,\" replied Otho,\nsmiling.\n\n\"And what demands he?\"\n\n\"Thou shalt hear, sweet one.\"\n\nAnd the knight, unfolding the sheet of parchment, read these words aloud to\nthe baroness:\n\n\"An old friend--a once dear friend prays the Baron of Arneck to grant him a\nmoment's converse for the sake of their common affection and of his unhappy\nlot. The Baron Otho is happy; that is a reason why he should seek to pay\nhis debt of gratitude to heaven by aiding the unfortunate. Let him, then,\nnot refuse this prayer which a friend's voice addresses to him.\n\n\"For many reasons, which the writer will explain by word of mouth, the\nmeeting should be in the burial-ground of Baden; for the old friend of the\nBaron of Arneck can no longer have the honor of receiving him in his house,\nhereafter forever closed and accursed. The Baron of Arneck is expected\ntomorrow morning at six of the clock.\"\n\n\"How strange a letter! How strange a meeting-place!\" cried Gertrude,\nturning pale. \"Canst imagine, Otho, who hath addressed it thee?\"\n\n\"Some banished friend. Thou knowest, Gertrude, that at the accession of the\npresent margrave many nobles of Baden were exiled, and among them were some\nold friends of my father, and without doubt it is one of them who hath\nwritten this.\"\n\n\"But--but, Otho--why should he choose such a place of tryst? A place so\nsolemn, so fearful! where there are only the dead and their tombs?\"\n\n\"'Tis the time and place that should reassure thee, my cherished one. One\nharboring designs of evil would have appointed a forest, mayhap, or a\nhostel; but never a burial-place, where no Christian man would do aught of\nwrong, and, my sweet wife, nor my father nor I had ever friend among\ninfidels.\"\n\n\"Thou wilt go, then?\" said Gertrude.\n\n\"Of a surety.\"\n\n\"Alone?\"\n\n\"Even so, for, if it be a proscribed exile who seeks me, our varlets must\nnot know of his presence.\"\n\n\"But fearest thou no danger, Otho? When thou wert alone, thou mightest\nlaugh at prudence; but now, canst thou forget that I am here? that I love\nand tremble for thee?\"\n\n\"Fear not, my love. Even if this request should hide a snare--which I\ncredit not--remember that the guards of the cemetery would not give\nentrance to a party of armed men, and that against one I have my skill to\ndefend me and this,\" said he, drawing from his belt a pointed and\nkeen-edged dagger. \"But imagine not vain terrors, my Gertrude. He who hath\nwritten me hath mayhap for long years tasted naught of tenderness or joy,\nand our happiness should render us the more kind to the unfortunate.\"\n\nThe young wife felt proudly moved at these noble words of her husband, and\nthe happy pair began their preparations for the margrave's reception, and\nspoke no more of the strange meeting of the morrow.\n\nOtho, however, did not forget it; and scarcely had he perceived the first\nrosy tints of day when he arose and donned his pourpoint and cloak.\nGertrude yet slept, and, after kissing his wife's forehead and tenderly\nstroking her flaxen hair, he sallied gayly forth.\n\nHalf an hour later saw him in the burial ground; but, although he had\narrived before the hour appointed, saw that the unknown was already there.\n\nA beautiful August morning spread its freshness and virginal splendor over\nthe earth; turtle-doves cooed in the tall yew trees; and sparrows, pursuing\neach other among the lindens and lilac bushes, showered the dew drops which\nglittered upon the leaves in a rain of diamonds over the green turf;\ndaisies lifted their little white heads and rosy crowns above the\ngrass-grown graves; and the grim tombstones, and even the black crosses,\nseemed to cast aside their sombre look and to dress themselves almost gayly\nin the growing sunlight.\n\n{677}\n\n\"If Gertrude were here, she would cease to tremble,\" murmured Otho,\nadvancing. \"Who could fear in the midst of the melody yon tiny songsters\npour forth, or surrounded by this light, this perfumed air, and walking in\nso verdant a sod?\"\n\nThere was, however, a dark stain amid all this splendor. In an angle at the\nfoot of a lofty ash stood a man whose tall form and black attire were\nsharply outlined in the surrounding brightness.\n\n\"Yonder is my unknown,\" thought Otho, and with a few rapid strides he\napproached him.\n\nThe man stood motionless, his head bowed upon his breast, his eyes fixed\nupon an oblong space upon which the grass had not yet begun to grow.\n\n\"Thou art doubtless he who hath called me hither,\" said Otho. \"I am the\nBaron of Arneck.\"\n\nThe stranger quickly raised his head and threw back the hood of his mantle,\nexhibiting to the young knight's gaze thin locks of snow-white hair, and a\nface on which sorrow had traced more furrows than age.\n\n\"Master Koerner!\" cried Otho, joyfully stretching forth his hand. \"But why\nso much mystery and solemnity? You needed but to call me to your side,\ndearest master, if grief or calamity threatened, and, whatever might have\nconspired to keep me back, I had obeyed the summons; and, indeed, I have\nheard that you were afflicted, but I hope that the Demoiselle Mina hath\nfully recovered from her illness.\"\n\n\"She is healed, indeed,\" replied old Sebald again, lowering his eyes to the\nbare spot of earth.\n\n\"If I have not before presented myself at your house,\" continued Otho, who\nfelt it necessary to offer some explanation, but who could not without\nblushing attempt it, \"it was because I felt it well to silence by my\nabsence the slanders of envious tongues, and, believe me, my master, that\nsuch a resolution cost me dear. For you, excellent master, I hold deep\nrespect and warm friendship, and I honor and admire your daughter, who to\nme is a model of beauty, of wisdom, and of modesty. Her praises are ever\nupon my lips, and sweet memories of her in my heart.\"\n\n\"'Tis well--very well,\" murmured the old sculptor; \"but be careful, Sir\nKnight, you are treading upon her grave!\"\n\nAnd with trembling hand and flashing eyes, he pushed Otho, who unwittingly\nhad trod upon the turfless space, back, back, far from the grave.\n\n\"Can this be true?\" cried the knight, turning pale. \"Mina dead! sleeping\nhere! She so young, so beautiful, so tenderly loved! And you called me not,\nmaster, to accompany her to the tomb to weep with you!\"\n\n\"You are very generous, Sir Knight; but what I would demand of you is not\nyour tears.\"\n\n\"Need you, then, friends or aid? You know, Master Koerner, that since I\nhave known you I have been but too glad to place my influence, my relations\nat your service, and I would now gladly offer you the benefit of my\nfortune. Speak quickly, I pray you. Command of me what you need or desire.\"\n\n\"I will first relate to you a tale of truth, and then demand vengeance of\nyou,\" replied the old man, in calm tones but with glittering eyes. \"Sir\nKnight, you presented yourself at my dwelling with the fervor of an artist\nand the submission of a pupil. You sought, you said, a nobler and holier\ngoal than success at court or the triumphs of war; you wished with ardent\nheart and zealous hand to produce the sacred images of our Saviour, his\nvirgin Mother, and the saints. And I believed you, Sir Knight; for to me\nart was more glorious, more fruitful, more divine than aught else on earth,\nbecause in art I found my mission, my recompense, my safety, and my life.\nBut you deceived me; you, who pride yourself on your name of gentleman;\nand, while feigning to study my art, you were killing my daughter.\n{678}\nReply not; deny not my words,\" continued Sebald, fixing a lurid gaze upon\nOtho, whose words died on his lips. \"She loved you, and for your sake died.\nBut before condemning you, justice commands me to hear you. You yourself\nhave just said Mina was wise, beautiful, and pure; that you lauded her\nvirtues to the world: why, then, did you not wed her?\"\n\n\"Because--because--\" stammered Otho, blushing--\"because, Master Sebald,\nyour daughter was not noble. You well know, my dear master, that the\ncustoms of the nobility are sacred. Many a one of us is forced to silence\nthe voice of his heart, lest, as they say, a stain should be cast on his\nescutcheon. Why was Mina a burgess's daughter and not a countess? But you\nyourself understand, my old master, that I, whose ancestors were counted\namong the companions of Charlemagne--that I could not take for my wife the\ndaughter of a sculptor, without title, without crest or quarterings.\"\n\nOtho pronounced these words in a low voice, with drooping head and downcast\neyes. He dared not meet the glance of the sculptor, who remained a moment\nsilent, and then spoke:\n\n\"Otho of Arneck, you have crushed the father and slain the child. As you\nsay, the sculptor has neither title nor quarterings, but he has an arm for\nvengeance!\"\n\nAnd springing furiously forward, more rapid than thought in his movement,\nthe old man, his eyes gleaming, but his hand grasping firmly the glittering\nchisel, flung himself upon the baron, and before the latter could draw the\ndagger from his girdle, the steel disappeared in the folds of his velvet\ndoublet and buried itself in his breast. The hand that aimed it was firm,\nthe blow was sure; the chisel as of old failed not to perform its master's\nwill; and Otho of Arneck fell upon the bare space of ground--fell, never\nmore to rise, upon the very spot where Mina lay cold and dead.\n\n\"Thou dost well--thou art avenged,\" gasped the fallen man, fixing his\nglazing eyes upon Sebald. \"In thy place I had done likewise--but--in\nhonorable combat--for I--I am a knight and noble. But I truly loved Mina.\"\n\nHis head dropped back, his limbs relaxed, and he was silent. The clear red\nblood of youth and health flowed from the wound and stained the bare earth.\n\nSebald, with his arms folded upon his breast, gazed upon his work.\n\n\"Let his blood flow on,\" he murmured at length; \"let it moisten her coffin,\nas it should. And now I shall deliver myself to justice. My vengeance as a\nfather and my mission as a sculptor are fulfilled.\"\n\nHe turned away and walked with rapid steps from the cemetery, leaving his\nweapon still fixed in the baron's body.\n\n\n  Chapter IX.\n\nA few weeks after the occurrences detailed in the last chapter, on a dull,\ngray day of the autumn of 1435, a crowd of the burgesses of Baden assembled\nin the great hall of justice to listen to the judgment to be pronounced\nagainst Master Koerner, the sculptor. \"Who,\" said they, \"would have\nimagined a few months since that a man so peaceful and just to all, an\nartist so skilful, so fervent a Christian, would be dragged to that seat of\ninfamy?\" They would as soon have expected to hear the judges condemn them\nthemselves to death and to see themselves led by the grand-provost to the\ngibbet. Master Sebald a criminal! Master Sebald an assassin! Alas for poor\nhumanity, if that were all sixty years of virtue could bring forth!\n\nNevertheless, there he was, the artist criminal--the white-haired murderer\nstanding erect before the magistrates in their robes of ermine and\ncarnation, before the ivory image of Christ crucified, with its black\nvelvet background, which hung above their seats.\n{679}\nThere he stood while near him on a table lay the mute witnesses against\nhim: the velvet pourpoint, stiff with blood; the fine linen tunic, now\nreddish brown in its hue; the murderous chisel, with its once gleaming\nblade dark and rusty and covered with a crust of clotted blood.\n\nSeveral witnesses were called: the servant who received from Master Sebald\nthe treacherous letter, which he delivered to Count Otho; the keeper of the\nburial-ground, who testified to having seen the accused enter the field the\ndead on the morning of the twenty-second of August. But tears flowed\nfastest when the Countess Gertrude, the youthful widow of the baron, gave\nher deposition. While relating her mournful story, the noble lady swooned\nseveral times, and her beauty, her placid face, and long, closed lashes,\nand raving flaxen hair, unfastened and rolling in masses over her black\nrobe, moved the auditory that more than once the life of the assassin\nseemed in instant danger.\n\nBut the depositions of witnesses were almost useless. The most striking\nevidence of his crime was the chisel lying there, still covered with the\nvictim's blood. And when the president, after declaring to Master Sebald\nthe crime of which he stood accused, asked, pointing to the blood-stained\nweapon, \"Dost thou recognize thy chisel?\" the old sculptor replied:\n\n\"Yes: it is mine.\"\n\n\"And thou seest that with it was the life of the Baron of Arneck taken.\nCanst thou say by whose hand he came to his death?\"\n\n\"Yes--by mine,\" replied Master Sebald unhesitatingly.\n\n\"So thou hast already declared in delivering thyself up to the hands of\njustice,\" said the president. \"But that declaration, made in a moment of\ntrouble and grief, was insufficient. It needed a public avowal to confirm\nit. But one question more: Thou hadst doubtless motives for the commission\nof so barbarous an act?\"\n\n\"Assuredly,\" replied the sculptor. \"No man kills wantonly one who was for\nthree years his pupil and his friend.\"\n\n\"What cause, then, impelled thee?\"\n\nThe prisoner remained silent for a moment, bowed his head still lower,\nclasped his hands tight together, and bit his lips till the blood trickled\nfrom them; then he replied:\n\n\"No; my motives were too holy. I will not tell them.\"\n\n\"Reflect, accused,\" said the president. \"It is because thy motives were\ngrave that they should be revealed. Reflect; and say why such a crime\nsullies thy once pure hands.\"\n\n\"No,\" repeated Sebald, \"I am ready to die, but the history of my crime dies\nwith me.\"\n\nThen a young man dressed in the habit of an Augustine novice, who had\nobtained the favor of remaining by the side of the accused, rose, and in a\ntimid voice addressed the judges:\n\n\"Although, my lords, I know not fully Master Sebald's motives, I may,\nperhaps, suspect them. There are moments in the lives of the wisest and of\nthe most just when the heart may harden and the judgment err under the goad\nof some great grief. Remember, my lords, that Master Koerner has lost his\nonly child, and you, who knew the daughter, can conceive the grief of the\nfather.\"\n\n\"Johann! be silent!\" cried old Sebald, rising, trembling and furious. \"Let\nthe dead sleep in their graves. Their agony is past, and mine needs no\nincrease. I make no avowals--I desire no defence. The crime was mine--the\nvengeance was mine, and I seek but to die with my secret!\"\n\nThe old man fell back exhausted by this burst of indignation, and the young\nfriar, covering his face with his hands, sank upon his knees before his\nmaster upon the stone floor, while the president glanced around upon his\ncolleagues, as if to read their judgment in their faces.\n\n\"Before such a resolution,\" said he, \"further questions were useless.\"\n\nThen he called upon the prisoner to stand erect and listen to his sentence,\nwhich the clerk proceeded to read.\n\n{680}\n\n\"Master Sebald Koerner, sculptor and burgess of the good city of Baden,\nhaving been convicted of having, on the morning of August twenty-second\nlast past, treacherously wounded and killed the noble Otho Rayner, Baron of\nArneck, and esquire to his highness the margrave, is condemned to die by\nthe halter.\"\n\n\"Accused, hast aught to say?\" asked the president when the reading of the\ndoom was ended.\n\n\"Nothing,\" replied Master Sebald, bowing with folded arms before the\njudges.\n\nThe president covered his head with his black furred robe, and continued:\n\n\"Master! the justice of man hath pronounced thy doom, and will soon be\nsatisfied. With a common criminal our office would here end, and but a few\nwords of exhortation to repentance would accompany him to the executioner.\nBut, criminal as thou art, we cannot forget that for sixty years thou wast\nour neighbor and our friend, and that those hands now red with murder have\ncarved many a pure and holy image to strengthen and lift our souls toward\nGod.\n\n\"How canst thou, whose works have so long glorified our Lord, now refuse to\nrepent? Hast thou not read a thousand times the command, 'Thou shalt not\nkill'? Hast never reflected upon our Saviour's agony--his wounded hands,\nhis lance-pierced side, his crown of thorns, the blows his face received,\nhis shames, his griefs, avenged only by the words, 'Father, forgive them,\nfor they know not what they do'? Thou hast thought upon all this; thou hast\neven modelled with thy hands the bloody scenes of thy Redeemer's life; and\nyet thou couldst not learn to forgive--thou, who wast but a man!\"\n\nHere the president was for a moment silent, overcome by his emotion, and\nthe old sculptor, as if shaken in his fierce resolve and gloomy pride by\nthe words of his judge, slowly lifted his head and cast a troubled look\naround. \"In the bitterness of thy heart,\" continued the president, \"in the\nmadness of thy wrath, all this thou didst forget; and yet to recall it all\nto mind, thou neededst but to lift thine eyes. Gaze not on us, Master\nSebald; bear thy glances higher, and see above us the pallid face, the\nwounded form, the holy eyes of him who loved more than thou, who suffered\nmore than thou, and who only avenged himself upon his torturers by saving\nthem from death, albeit at the price of his own blameless life. Harken to\nme, betrayed friend! that Man-God had, too, a friend, and was betrayed by\nthe kiss of that friend; listen, unhappy father! that Father was sold,\nscourged, crucified by his children. And if this God, reviled, dishonored,\navenged not himself, was it not to set man an example of forgiveness? Thou\nhast not yet expiated thy crime, Master Koerner, and the hand of the\nexecutioner will soon deliver thee to a higher Judge. Christ will await\nthee at the gibbet, just and inflexible. Gaze on him ere thy death, poor\nsinner, with faith and love, for thy Judge is also thy Saviour.\"\n\nSo speaking, the president uncovered his head and pointed solemnly to the\nivory crucifix. The eyes of Master Koerner followed the uplifted hand and\nrested on the agonized face of Christ. Then their fixed and stony glare\ngrew soft; their dry and burning lustre grew moist; his lips quivered; he\nclasped his hands, and, after some moments of fierce struggling with\nhimself, the old artist murmured in a trembling voice:\n\n\"Christ! God of the wretched--God of fathers alas! since Mina's death never\nhave I turned mine eye to thee!\"\n\nHis head fell once more upon his breast and his voice was choked in a sob,\nwhile Johann at his side lifted his hands toward heaven in an ecstasy of\njoy and gratitude.\n\nThere was a murmur and a motion in the crowd; then all was silence again as\nthe voice of the president arose once more:\n\n{681}\n\n\"A ray of grace from on high hath illumined thee; let us pray that it may\nconduct thee through the gates of death to eternal light, I have a few\nwords more to address thee. The court, while punishing as it should the\ncrime of the murderer, forgets not the merits of the artist. It therefore\naccords thee, to lessen the bitterness of thy last moments, the favor thou\nmayst most desire. Reflect, Master Sebald, ere thou fixest thy choice. Any\ngrace thou mayst demand shall be accorded, any save life.\"\n\nA murmur of astonishment and joy ran through the crowd, which was hushed\nonly to hear the old sculptor's reply. Master Sebald remained long silent,\nbut at length rose and spoke:\n\n\"I would not ask life were I free to do so,\" he answered. \"My life hath\nalready been too long, and she whom I love awaits me beyond the grave. But\nyou have spoken of expiation, my lord, and it seems to me that even here\nbelow my death would not afford a complete one. My life, ended at the\ngibbet, may satisfy the justice of man; but what shall I do to appease the\nanger of my God? Dare I appear before him with no penitential act to plead\nfor my pardon; no work of reparation wherein sweat and tears I might have\nwashed my blood-stained hands? Repentance came while I gazed upon yon\ncrucifix; in carving another, pardon might perhaps descend upon me from\nheaven. If the court will for a few weeks prolong my life, as I now see\nChrist's image before me, so will I produce it in the stone!\" cried he with\nenthusiasm. \"I ask not to quit my prison to live in the midst of men. No!\nlet me be immured in a dungeon, let my door be sealed until I leave it to\ngo to my death. Let but a ray of sunlight enter, that I may see to model\nthe august countenance of my God, while I remain there with the thoughts of\neternity and the remembrance of my crime for my only companions.\"\n\n\"Master Koerner,\" replied the judge, \"thy request is that of a good\nChristian and a noble artist, and the court accords it with joy, in the\nhope that the work of thy last days may bring thee pardon and salvation.\nThou wilt be led back to thy dungeon, and, before its door closes upon\nthee, all thou mayst require for thy work will be brought thee.\"\n\nThe judges arose and retired. Johann, radiant with joy, and his grief\nalmost consoled, accompanied his old master to the prison, and then sought\nthe stone, the clay--all that the sculptor could need. Even the fatal\nchisel, cleansed of its stains, was brought to him bright and shining, like\nthe soul of the criminal which, stained by sin, would soon be cleansed by\ngrief and labor.\n\nThen the old sculptor passed his hand over his seamed brow and hollow\ncheeks and called for a mirror. The door was then built up with stone and\nmortar, and only an opening large enough for his food to be passed through\nwas left, and Master Sebald stood alone in the cell which he was only to\nleave to pass to the gibbet.\n\n\n  Chapter X.\n\nSolitude was the cradle of creation; solitude is the never-ceasing fountain\nwherein exhausted souls are refreshed. Not without an object did the\nprophets begin their mission in the desert. Who would leave after him an\nimmortal name must retire from the haunts of men, and in solitude examine\nhis soul ere he speaks to mankind from the rostrum, or with the pen, the\nchisel, or the pencil. When the busy hum of the world has faded away into\nsilence, when he hears no voice but that of his heart within, and nature\nwithout, and God above, he will then feel the flame which brings\nimmortality. The voice he hears will be that of truth; the hand which\nstretches toward him that of justice; and all the strength of the one and\nthe charms of the other will glow in his work.\n\nMaster Sebald's dungeon was the most real, the most complete of solitudes.\nThick walls of gray granite, upon which shone green and slimy traces of the\ndampness that filled the air, formed a circle around him without an angle,\na recess, an irregularity on which the weary eye might rest.\n{682}\nA plank and a truss of straw were his bed; a block of stone was his only\nseat; there was no door, for such was old Sebald's wish. Light alone--sweet\nlight--was not denied the captive, but flowed abundant and golden through a\nlarge opening in the vaulted roof. But by day only was the boon granted,\nand then it bore with it no sight of that world where men dwelt, no view of\nthe sunlit waters, the green fields, or the feathered children of the air.\nNothing of these could he enjoy; nothing but that flood of day flowing from\nthe open heaven upon the criminal's brow, like the gaze of Eternal Love,\never open to hearts that yearn for it; and nevertheless, when Master Sebald\nthus found himself immured in a living tomb, when nothing of earth remained\nto him save stone walls, his modelling clay, and his chisel, then\ninspiration of a greater power than it had ever before felt filled his\nsoul, and in that inspiration and in his work he would have found joyful\ncompanions; he would have been happy, were it not that two dark and\nvengeful guests found lodgment in his breast, sorrow and remorse.\n\nHis remorse was for his crime, his sorrow for his child. They wore deeper\nthe furrows in his brow; they made his hair whiter, his step more feeble\nand uncertain; they sunk his eyes deeper in their sockets. They tortured\nhim in his weary watchings; they gave form to his dreams and broke and\nalmost banished slumber; they stood before him when he worked or\nprayed--his former hate and his former love; his victim and his child. The\ngolden hair of his Mina glittered in wild waves before his eyes; he saw the\nmanly face of Otho pale and contracted with agony, while the gushing blood\npoured from his wound; he closed his eyes, but still their forms stood\nbefore him, both beckoning to the threshold of that world where eternity\nbegins.\n\nThe old master commenced his work, ever surrounded by these sad companions.\nEver hearing the last murmurs of Otho, the last sighs of Mina, he carved\nthe holy cross and the summit of Calvary; then the shameful scroll; then\nthe sacred form. Ever haunted by his visions of the dead, he knew better to\ngive to the divine Crucified the writhing of living agony joined to the\nbeginning rigidity of death; he remembered the last quivering of human\nstrength and the mysterious folds of the winding-sheet. It was only when he\ncame to carve the face of Christ that imagination and memory ceased to\nfurnish him a model. Mina's passionate grief and pious resignation; the\nmingled humiliation, repentance, grief, and rage of the murdered Otho could\ngive naught to be reproduced in the countenance of a God. He must seek his\nmodel elsewhere; and Master Sebald had not asked for his mirror in vain.\n\nStanding erect before his work, he began to chisel the face of Christ; and\nfor the first time since his prison walls closed upon him he gazed upon his\nown reflection. The long gaze upon his white head and his grief-worn\nfeatures satisfied him.\n\nHis own face was a book, a book of sorrows speaking most eloquently,\nwherein all bitterness, all failings, all regrets, and all terrors, the\ndreams of the artist, the humiliation of the master, the friend betrayed,\nthe sufferings, of the father, the anguish of the condemned, had inscribed\ntheir memories and left their foot-prints. The agony of Master Sebald was\nalready long, and had been cruel and stormy. Ah! the remembrances of Otho's\ntreachery were as the wounds in the hands and feet; the brand of dishonor\nupon his brow was as the crown of thorns; and the last wound, the stab of\nthe lance, was the loss of Mina. So, that after long contemplating his own\nfeatures, the old sculptor knelt humbly before the work he had begun.\n\n\"Pardon, O Christ!\" he said, \"if I, a weak mortal, an unworthy and sinful\nman, dare, in carving thy sacred lineaments, trace mine. But I design not,\nO Lord! to show thee happy and full of peace, or radiant and glorious.\n{683}\nI promised to present thee suffering, suffering even the death of the\ncross; I suffer that of the gibbet. A friend betrayed thee; a friend\nbetrayed me. Thou wast loaded with insult and ignominy; I too had good\ncause to blush before my judges. Thou weepest over the sins of men, thy\nchildren; I over my child's grave. And as, O Lord! thou wert man as well as\nGod, I may not offend thee in copying the anguish, the griefs, the\nsufferings that have left their print upon my brow. All these thou knowest,\nO Lord! but remorse thou couldst not know. That will I keep to myself, and\nin its stead I will place radiance, hope, and splendor of divinity. Ay,\nhope! for even on the cross didst thou hope and call upon thy Father!\"\n\nHere the old sculptor ceased, and bent before his work, while the shadows\nof despair darkened his brow. Then he cast a troubled look upon the statue,\na look in which anguish mingled with prayer, confidence with terror.\n\n\"And can I hope?\" he murmured. \"Mina is in heaven. Shall I again see her?\"\n\nBut no voice replied, and, sighing, he stood again erect. Then after a few\nmoments of silent meditation he seized his chisel, and, making the sign of\nthe cross, recommenced his work, and the stone seemed to breathe, to\nquiver, to palpitate as, one by one, the suffering lines came forth. Truly\nin Master Sebald's mirror were grief and unpitying and unending pain.\n\nAnd he worked in spite of the gnawings of hunger, the want of sleep, the\ncold of the winter. He had ever within him strength and fire--the strength\nof expiation, the fire of penitence. But as he worked, his form became more\nstooped, and his eye less sure; his blood flowed feebler through his veins,\nand his breath grew more quick and gasping. But he needed but mind and\nhand, and his mind was clear, and his hand carved bravely still. And what\ncared he for the failing of an exhausted body? If, day by day, his face\ngrew thinner, his eyes cavernous, his lips tighter, was not his model for\nall that the more real? Was it not a dying Christ he was carving?\n\nAt last his work was done. When the last blow of the chisel had been given,\nwhen the stone had received the final touch, when Christ hung there\nwounded, quivering, breathing, sublime, Master Sebald knelt before his work\nand bowed his forehead to the earth. The sculptor demanded his pay; the\ncriminal his pardon. He prayed fervently and long; and when he rose, he\nknew that his child called, and that the hour of his deliverance was nigh,\nand, walking to the narrow opening which formed his only means of\ncommunication with men, he called aloud to his jailer:\n\n\"My Christ is finished! My task is done! Unseal the door and lead me to the\nexecutioner.\"\n\nBut it was not the executioner that came, but the judge; and he, the first\nto enter the dungeon, when he lifted his eyes, fell upon his knees with\nclasped hands; for what he saw seemed no image of stone, but a living\nChrist, suffering and dying before him. Struck with astonishment and\nadmiration, he called his colleagues and sent for monseigneur the bishop,\nand his highness the margrave, that all might see the Christ of the\ncondemned. The dungeon of Master Sebald was too narrow for the multitude of\nvisitors who crowded before the holy image; they talked of carrying it to\none of the courts of the city, or to the Grand Place, that all the faithful\nmight mourn and be edified by so sacred a spectacle. But Master Sebald\nopposed this project and asked a further boon:\n\n\"Ah!\" cried he, \"if you think this work of my hands merits aught but favor,\nconsecrate it to a holy remembrance; place it in the cemetery where my\ndaughter reposes. Christ should be upon her tomb, to speak to her of hope,\nand on the tomb of him--of--_him_ too, to speak to him of\nforgiveness.\"\n\n{684}\n\nWe may add that the sculptor's request was quickly granted, for in those\nhappy days there were sheriffs who believed, and judges of tender hearts.\nThey were very backward, and very far behind our enlightened age in those\ndays, although gunpowder had just been invented. Besides, the councillors\nof the margrave held sacred things in respect, and did not regard\ncemeteries as mere charnel-houses.\n\nThey carried, then, with great pomp, Master Sebald's statue to the\ncemetery; and, for the first time since his imprisonment began, the old man\nsaw the crowd of men, the green leaves, the tomb of his daughter, and the\nwhite clouds of heaven.\n\nHe saw the blessing of the cross; he saw Mina's tomb consecrated; and then,\ntaking his chisel, he graved upon the pedestal, as a last farewell, the\ninscription which, as we have seen, yet remains, and asked the time\nappointed for his execution. But murmurs arose in the crowd which soon\nswelled to violent clamors. Could so repentant a man, so old and true an\nartist, be given over to the gibbet! The people surrounded the magistrates;\nthe magistrates turned to the councillors; the councillors turned to the\nmargrave; and after a short deliberation the president of the tribunal\ndeclared to Master Koerner that, in consideration of his genius, of his\npiety, and of his repentance, he should still live; pardon was granted him.\n\n\"Is life a boon?\" murmured the old artist, sadly bowing his head. \"But I\nawait the mercy of God. He is more generous than man.\"\n\nHe had not long to wait, for two days after, in the gray, early morning,\nthey found him cold and dead upon his daughter's grave, his head resting\nupon the base of the crucifix. His hopes were realized; God opened his\nprison-doors.\n\n......\n\nSuch is the legend of the sculptor and his work--a legend which offers a\nsimple and characteristic picture of the ages of confiding faith, when the\nChristian placed his hopes, the injured his vengeance, the criminal his\nrepentance, and the artist his genius, at the foot of the cross.\n\n------\n\n  Original.\n\n  The Indissolubility Of Christian Marriage.\n\n\n  Number Two.\n\n\nIt is evident that Jesus Christ intended to legislate and did legislate in\nregard to marriage. The commandment which he gave, requiring the marriage\ncontract to be respected as inviolable and indissoluble, is a law, has the\nforce of a law, and is obligatory, not only upon ecclesiastical, but also\nupon civil legislators and judges. There is no power upon earth, either in\nthe church or in the state, which has power to abrogate or change it. We do\nnot pretend that this law was promulgated to the Jewish people, or to pagan\nnations, directly and immediately. Our Lord legislated immediately only for\nthose who should become the subjects of his kingdom by baptism. For all\nothers, he legislated only mediately, by promulgating to all mankind the\nprecept to embrace his faith and be baptized into his church, and thus to\nbring themselves under the entire code of Christian law. The unbaptized are\nsubject to the natural law only in regard to marriage, as in everything\nelse; and their marriage is not a sacrament, but a merely natural contract.\n{685}\nWhat we maintain is, that the law regarding _Christian_ marriage has\nbeen established by the sovereign authority of Jesus Christ for all the\nbaptized, and that this law respects the very essence of marriage as a\ncontract, invalidating all pretended marriages which are not in accordance\nwith it. All ecclesiastical legislators are, therefore, bound to legislate\nin conformity with this law. They must treat all marriages sanctioned and\nratified by the law of Christ as valid and binding, and all others as null\nand void. All Christians must act in the same manner. And in Christian\nstates, as all law-givers and judges are bound to act according to their\nconscience, and in conformity with the divine law, and as the revealed law\nof Jesus Christ respecting marriages is the supreme rule of the Christian\nconscience, having the force of a divine law, they are bound to make it the\nrule of all their enactments and judgments.\n\nSome Protestant writers deny that our Lord intended to legislate respecting\nmatrimony, and affirm that he merely laid down a rule of morality. This is,\nhowever, an unmeaning statement. He could not give a moral precept\nrespecting matrimony without legislating. The essential morality of the\nquestion is determined by the law determining the conditions, motives, and\nobligations of the contract. Morality consists in conformity to this law,\nimmorality in violating it. Our Lord could not, therefore, command anything\nas required by morality, or forbid anything as immoral, in relation to the\nessentials of marriage, without reenacting an already existing law, or\npromulgating a new law, defining the conditions by which a marriage is\nrendered a valid or an invalid contract.\n\nThe very circumstances and terms of his utterance on the subject show that\nhe did legislate. Moses legislated on the subject, and permitted to men\ndivorce in certain cases, with the privilege of remarriage to both parties.\nOur Lord expressly revokes this permission, so far as his own disciples are\nconcerned, and declares that, according to the Christian law, whoever\ndivorces his wife and marries another, or whoever marries a divorced party,\nmust be held guilty of adultery. This is an act of legislation, for it is a\nlaw declaring null and void for the future certain marriages which, under\nthe Mosaic law, were valid. Now, there is no civil law which can make a\ncontract declared invalid by the divine law valid, binding, or lawful, or\nwhich can invalidate a contract made valid by the divine law. It is true\nthat our Lord did not enact any civil law, properly so called, with civil\npenalties annexed to it, for the Jewish people, or for any Gentile nation.\nBut he prescribed the standard according to which all legislators in\nChristian states are bound to make their civil laws.\n\nThe question now comes up, How are we to ascertain what the law of Jesus\nChrist is, and what is the law itself? We have discussed the last question\nin part, in our former number, in which we endeavored to show that the\ntexts of Scripture in which we are informed concerning the precept given by\nChrist concerning marriage, properly understood, sustain the Catholic\ndoctrine of the indissolubility of marriage. We have now to show how the\nCatholic doctrine and the law of the Catholic Church are established with\nan infallible certainty, and with a force absolutely obligatory on the\nconscience.\n\nIt is evident enough that the notion of legislators and judges attempting\nto discuss and decide upon the true meaning of texts of Scripture is\nabsurd. Such a proceeding would never lead to any uniformity of legislation\nif attempted, and it would never be attempted in any community where\nprinciples of sound jurisprudence prevailed. Who, then, are to decide upon\nthe meaning of these texts, if the ultimate appeal is to them? The\nProtestant clergy? They cannot agree among themselves.\n{686}\nEven in the earliest and best days of Puritanism in New England, when a\ncomparatively strict doctrine and legislation respecting marriage\nprevailed, there was a serious difference among the clergy respecting the\nlawful grounds of divorce. Moreover, the Protestant clergy do not claim the\nright of interpreting the Scripture. The laity have an equal right, and\neach individual has it for himself. Rationalists claim also the right of\nmaking reason the criterion of the truth of the doctrine of Scripture and\nthe teachings of Jesus Christ. It is therefore plain that it is a futile\nproceeding to attempt to make the text of Scripture a standard of\nlegislation or public sentiment in regard to marriage. The result which has\nactually been produced is an inevitable result, namely, that the prevalent\nopinion and sentiment in the community, based on their common sense, will\nregulate legislation in regard to marriage and divorce. This common sense\nis not an enlightened and elevated common sense, proceeding from sound,\nrational, and moral principles. It is a low, irrational sense, derived from\npassion, self-interest, expediency, and a perverted reason, which tends\ncontinually to degenerate more and more, and whose logical consequences may\nbe seen developing themselves every day under our own eyes.\n\nThe law established by Jesus Christ is not and cannot be based upon the\ntexts of the sacred historians who inform us of the fact that he did\npromulgate such a law. These texts are not the law, and the enacting force\ndoes not proceed from them. They may be cited in proof of the fact that the\nlaw was made, and in proof of what the law was. The law itself was verbally\nproclaimed by our Lord, and its force dates from and depends upon that\nverbal enactment. The historical account given by the evangelists added\nnothing to it, and the comments of the apostles upon it are mere allusions\nto it, or exhortations to keep it, which presuppose its existence. It was a\npart of the unwritten law of the church handed down by tradition, whose\nlegitimate expositors were the apostles and their successors. Our Lord must\nhave instructed the apostles fully on the subject, and they must have\ntransmitted full and explicit instructions on the same subject to the\nbishops and clergy to whom the government of the church was committed. As\noccasion required, the unwritten Christian common law was embodied in\ncanons by episcopal councils, and thus became statute law. The true method\nof fixing decisively the real scope and contents of the divine legislation\nof our Lord is, therefore, to investigate the legislation of the church\nfrom the earliest times.\n\nThe doctrine defined by the Council of Trent upon which the modern\ncanonical law of the Catholic Church is based, is too well known to need\nany statement. It is evident that this definition was no innovation, but\nmerely a solemn declaration of the doctrine universally received in the\nCatholic Church, levelled against the innovations of Protestants. The mere\nfact that the indissolubility of marriage has been recognised in the\nCatholic Church and enforced under the severest penalties, and that it has\nbeen also recognised and protected by the civil law of Europe, until\nProtestantism brought in a disastrous change, is sufficient to prove that\nthe church received her law from Jesus Christ or the apostles. So severe a\nlaw, one so inconvenient to individuals, one so contrary to the established\nlegislation of both Jews and Gentiles, could never have been established\nand enforced by any other than a divine authority, and in the origin of the\nChristian community. If a milder law had ever prevailed in the church, an\nattempt to establish a stricter one would have met a violent opposition.\nHistory would record the struggle, the pages of the fathers would bear\nwitness to the difference of opinion and the mutual discussion of the\nquestion by the opposing parties. Councils would have been called to decide\nit, and, if any change had been generally enforced in favor of a stricter\nlaw, either it would have been based on reasons supposed to justify or\nrequire the abrogation of an indulgence formerly granted, or, if not, the\nprevious existence of this indulgence would have been denounced as a\ncorruption, and these who maintained it would have been condemned.\n{687}\nThe quiet, undisturbed continuity of the tradition and practice of the\nchurch from the earliest ages proves that no serious and widespread\ndifference of doctrine ever arose, but that the modern Catholic doctrine of\nthe indissolubility of marriage held undisputed sway from the beginning.\nThe opponents of this doctrine cannot pretend to establish any clear\ntradition in their own favor. They can only endeavor to obscure the\nevidence of the tradition sanctioning the Catholic doctrine.\nNotwithstanding their efforts, the chain of evidence from St. Augustine\nback to Origen, Justin Martyr, and Hermas, including all the canons which\nstill remain, and which were enacted by ecclesiastical councils, is\nunbroken and conclusive, as may be seen by consulting those Catholic\nauthors who have written scientific treatises on the subject. The whole\ndiscussion is, however, of little practical value, except as showing the\nnecessity of the infallibility of the church in defining doctrine and her\nsupreme authority in judging moral questions, and as corroborating the\nproof that she possesses this infallible and supreme authority. The real\nquestion at issue is, whether marriage is a sacrament confided to the\nguardianship of the church, and regulated by a law of which the church is\nthe supreme judge, or whether it is a natural contract under the control of\nthe civil law. The Protestant world has taken the latter side of the\nalternative. Consequently, the case of marriage comes to this issue; what\ncivil laws respecting marriage and divorce are best calculated to promote\nhappiness, morality, social and civil prosperity and well-being?\nLegislatures and courts must decide the question, while churches,\nclergymen, moralists, writers, etc., can exercise no other influence than\nthat of argument and persuasion. These arguments must be drawn from reason\nand the natural law. They must bear upon the point that the strength and\nperpetuity of the marriage bond is useful and necessary for the\npreservation of society. The doctrine of Scripture and the authority of\nreligion can only be brought in to increase the motives and sanctions of\nthe natural law.\n\nIt is useless to hope that the doctrine of the indissolubility of marriage\nwill ever be adopted either in theory or practice as the result of\nreasoning on the principles of either the natural law or the moral code of\nChristianity, by those who reject the infallibility of the Catholic Church.\nIt is also useless to hope that the Protestant clergy and jurists will ever\nagree together as to the proper ground of divorce, and the proper\nsafeguards of marriage, much less that they will agree in adopting the\nopinions of the most rigorous school among them, as sustained by their able\nand learned advocate, President Woolsey, in The New-Englander. The only\nthing in the power of the Protestant clergy and their lay coadjutors is, to\ndiminish and retard the destructive tendency of the false principle they\nhave admitted into theology and legislation by their denial of the Catholic\ndoctrine regarding marriage. In this direction they may do something, and\nit is to be desired that they should exert themselves to the utmost to do\nall they can. The clergy may exert a certain moral and religious influence\nby acting according to some fixed principles and laws in regard to\nperforming the marriage ceremony and admitting or excluding persons from\ncommunion. Also by preaching and writing on the obligations of marriage,\nthe blessings which flow from unions which are hallowed by perfect and\nlifelong fidelity to conjugal and parental duties, and the evils which are\nthe consequence of infidelity and frequent separations. Jurists and\nstatesmen may reform the administration of law in the courts so as to\ndecrease the facility of obtaining divorce, and secure to all parties a\nthorough protection of all the rights guaranteed to them by the civil law.\n{688}\nPhysicians and others may do good by pointing out the physical and social\nevils which flow from the violation of those laws on which the\nmultiplication and healthy development of the race depend. So far as\nindividuals are induced to marry in accordance with the dictates of pure\naffection and enlightened prudence, to observe the moral laws of the\nmarried state, and to remain faithful to each other until death, and so far\nas divorces and re-marriages are rendered less numerous, so far good will\nbe done, and the well-being of society promoted. We desire most heartily\nthat the utmost possible success may attend these well-meant efforts.\nNevertheless, we cannot flatter our Protestant friends with any expression\nof our own conviction that this success will be anything more than placing\na breakwater in the way of the current that is sweeping away the Christian\ninstitution of marriage. The principles and institutions which make society\nChristian, the traditions which connect it with the past and give it\nChristian and moral vitality, have been received and retained from the\nCatholic Church. As these are gradually abandoned and lost, society\npossesses no power to recover and restore them. Christian societies outside\nthe church, and states composed of persons who are nominally Christian but\nout of Catholic communion, bear within them the principle of dissolution,\nwithout possessing any sufficient principle of recuperation. The Catholic\nChurch alone possesses a divine law given by revelation which she is\ncompetent to explain and authorised to enforce, and which is a principle of\nperpetual life, capable of resisting every tendency to disease and death,\nand of renewing every decayed national constitution, restoring every\ndegenerate people, and continually repeating the work wrought in the first\nformation of Christendom. Protestantism is a tubercular deposit in the\ncentre of the bosom of society. Its necessary result is spiritual, moral,\nintellectual, and finally, physical death. As in the case of a person\nsmitten with tuberculosis, there may be for a long time many portions of\nthe lungs unaffected, much health and strength in the organs and limbs of\nthe body, and an increase of cerebral excitement and activity, although the\nprinciple of death which will finally stop all vital activity is slowly and\nsurely gaining upon the principle of life; so with those portions of\nChristendom which are smitten with heresy. There is much health and vigor\nremaining as the effect of the original state of sound, integral, Catholic\nlife. Many individuals remain essentially sound in their belief and upright\nin their practice. There is even a flush on the surface of society, a\nhectic brilliancy in the eye of intellect, a fevered activity of thought\nand action, which is mistaken for genuine, healthful vigor and vitality.\nThe boastful, shallow organs of public sentiment, whose real doctrines are\ninfidel, but who are forced to wear a little smear of popular religion on\ntheir face, pretend, with an assurance equally sickening and ridiculous, to\nread lectures and give advice to the Vicar of Christ and the bishops of the\nCatholic Church on great moral and social questions. Their changes are rung\nwith monotonous and unmeaning repetition upon railroads, telegraphs, steam,\nnewspapers, heavy guns, and progress. The Catholic Church is denounced as\nthe great obstacle in the way of modern society, because she adheres to the\nsteadfast, unchanging affirmation of eternal principles of truth, law, and\njustice. Her complete spoliation is urged as the great means of hastening\nthe march of society toward its goal. It is vain to expect an argument\nwhich has any solidity, or even the pretence of an answer which is grave\nand serious, to the reasonings and expostulations of those who point out\nthe deadly symptoms which are concealed beneath this hectic activity and\nbetrayed by this boastful demeanor. An ill-bred sneer, an unmeaning\nplatitude, or a frivolous display of rhetoric is all that can be expected.\n{689}\nNevertheless, those who are able to think, and who have some real\nsolicitude for progress in truth, in sound morality, in Christian virtue,\nin solid well-being and happiness, on the part of society and their\nfellow-men, will not be able to shut their eyes to the evident symptoms\nwhich prove that a deadly disease, already far advanced, is feeding on the\nvitals of the social organism. These symptoms have been pointed out by\nProtestant clergymen and medical writers, and we refer to their startling\nstatements as evidence of the virulence and extent of the moral ulcer which\nis eating up the vitals of society and destroying the original, American\npopulation of the country. It is not the matter of a few divorces granted\nto married persons whose rights are judicially proved to have been violated\nin a flagrant manner, which is of such great importance. While the ancient\nlaws of the states were rigidly enforced, and the number of divorces\ngranted was small, the community received no grievous injury. The great\nevil which is so alarming, and is working such deplorable effects, consists\nin the great number of divorces granted, the facility with which they are\nobtained, and the flippant, shameless disregard of all judicial decorum by\nthe courts of law. Behind all this is another evil, the violation of the\nmorality of the conjugal state. The authors of Protestantism have opened\nthe door to all these disorders by their denial of the indissolubility and\nsacramental character of matrimony, and their concession of the right to\njudge and decide upon the whole subject of the marriage contract to the\ncivil power. The door which they have opened they cannot close. There is no\nprotection for the sacredness of marriage at all adequate to the\nnecessities of the case, except in a doctrine, a law, and a system of\npractical morality, promulgated and enforced by a church which has power\nover the conscience, and is acknowledged as possessing an authority\ndelegated by Jesus Christ. The utter weakness and helplessness of\nProtestantism, and the absolute necessity of a return to the Catholic\nChurch in order to save society and civilization, has been manifested in\nEngland and the United States in a more startling and sudden manner than\ncould have been anticipated twenty years ago by the most sagacious prophet\nof the future. We wait with interest and anxiety to see what will be done\nby those who believe that the secession of the sixteenth century was really\na reformation, and that the salvation of the human race is to be looked for\nfrom the principles of Luther and Calvin. At present, these principles\nappear to be tending to the abrogation of the institution of marriage in\nthe Christian sense of the word, and the introduction of a species of\npolygamy worse than that of Mormonism.\n\n------\n\n{690}\n\n\n    Original.\n\n    Mea Culpa.\n\n    By Richard Storrs Willis.\n\n\n    I.\n\n  All through my fault, my own most grievous fault!\n  This the chagrin and inward smart of sin.\n  Nor others' blame can my poor cause exalt--\n  Naught but myself t' accuse, without, within!\n    And thus to my God heavy-hearted I cry,\n    _Mea culpa, meet maxima culpa!_\n    And thus to the mother of Jesus I sigh,\n    _Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!_\n\n    II.\n\n  O God! the past, the wicked past forgive!\n  The spectre-sins that haunt my soul dispel.\n  Deeper than mirth, alas! they frowning live;\n  Beneath my smiles, in memory's caves they dwell!\n    And thus to Saint Michael, archangel, I plead,\n    _Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa:_\n    And thus to Saint John with regret I concede,\n    _Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!_\n\n    III.\n\n  _Ponder my love_--a Saviour's voice would fall,\n  When tempted sore, in youth's delirious hour.\n  _Ponder my love_--O kind and gracious call!\n  And yet from life I plucked each poison-flower!\n    And thus to Saint Peter and Paul I exclaim,\n    _Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa:_\n    And thus to all saints and you, brothers, proclaim,\n    _Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!_\n\n    IV.\n\n  Ah! well, dear Lord, here in my guilt I bow.\n  What else to do, where else to go, than home?\n  Joyless, distrest, a contrite suppliant now,\n  Heartsick of sin, homesick for thee, I come!\n    Ye saints and you, brothers, to Christ for me pray\n    _Peccavi, mea maxima culpa!_\n    Alas! my dear Jesus, 'tis all I can say,\n    _Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!_\n\n------\n\n{691}\n\n\n  From The Dublin University Magazine.\n\n  Solutions of Some Parisian Problems.\n\n  Cabs And Their Patron.\n\nThe admirers of French novels have made acquaintance with some of the\nFrench representatives of our own carboys and carmen in the French\nmetropolis. They are aware that their cabs or cabriolets are called\n_Fiacres_, and they are naturally desirous to know why they should be\ncalled by a name which by a little aspiration sounds unmistakably Irish.\nThis trifling question has set some archaeological antiquaries by the ears.\nThe following appears to be the genuine solution: Sanval, author of\n\"Recherches sur les Antiquit\u00e9s de Paris,\" (end of seventeenth century.)\nsaid that, about forty years previous, a certain Nicholas Sauvage, agent to\nthe proprietor of the Amiens coaches, and owner of a large house in the Rue\nSaint Martin, the front of which was adorned with the _enseigne_ of\nSaint Fiacre, kept from forty to fifty horses in his stables, and also cabs\nfor the convenience of the public at rather a dear figure. His\nestablishment became so noted that all coaches for hire came to be called\nFiacres.\n\nMenage, in his \"Origines de la Langue Fran\u00e7oise,\" 1684, gave a like\naccount, but described the effigies of St. Fiacre as adorning the front of\na house in Rue Saint Antoine.\n\nBoth writers appear to have been in error. A satiric Mazarinade dating\n1652, and bearing for title the \"Royal Supper of Pontoise,\" etc., has the\nfollowing lines descriptive of the embarrassment of the worshipful\nsupper-eaters when they wished to return home at a late hour to Paris:\n\n  \"C'\u00e9tait pour avoir des Carrosses,\n  Ou l'on attelle Chevaux rosses,\n  Dont les cuirs tout rappetass\u00e9s,\n  Vilains, crasseux, et mal pass\u00e9s,\n  Repr\u00e9sentoient le simulacre,\n  De l'ancienne Voiture \u00e0 Fiacre\n  Qui fut le premier du m\u00e9tier,\n  Qui louoit carosse au Quartier\n  De Monsieur de Saint Thomas \u00e0 Louvre.\"\n  [Footnote 241]\n\n    [Footnote 241:\n    It (the embarrassment) was to provide cabs\n    To which they yoke poor hack horses,\n    Whose leathers all shrunken,\n    Ugly, greasy, and badly dressed,\n    Represent the ghost\n    Of the old cab belonging to Fiacre,\n    Who was the first of the trade,\n    That hired out carriages at the Quarter\n    Of Monsieur St. Thomas of the Louvre.]\n\nFiacre may have prospered in his business, and unprincipled rivals have\ncarried out his idea, and adopted the effigies of the saint after whom the\npoor cabman was called. Thus Sanval may have seen the pictured saint\npresiding over the useful articles (originally let out at three sous the\ndrive) in Rue Saint Martin, and Menage may have seen a rival, Rue Saint\nAntoine. It is more likely that the plagiarists appropriated for their\nvehicles the name of the saint than that of the humble individual, the\ninventor of the system.\n\nSaint Fiachra was of that noble band of Irish missionaries who spread\nthemselves over the Continent soon after the island was converted. St.\nVirgil became patron of Saltzburg, St. Killian of Franconia, St. Gall of\nSwitzerland, St. Columbanus of the Vosges and of Bobbio in Italy. St.\nFiachra was gladly welcomed by the bishop of Meaux in the seventh century,\nand devoted his services to the care of an hospital. The cabriolet drivers\nand (if we remember aright) the market gardeners of Paris honor him as\ntheir patron.\n\n\n  Mysteries Of The Rue D'Arbre ?ec. [Illegible]\n\nNo visitor will fail to visit the church of St. Germain d'Auxerrois, the\nparish church, as it may be called, of the inmates of the Tuileries, and\nwithin a few stones' throw of that luxurious but not very comfortable\nresidence.\n{692}\nThe possession of the most finely furnished apartments will not give much\npleasure to the dweller who is uncertain whether he may not be ejected from\nthem to-morrow. The triple portal of the church dates from the middle of\nthe thirteenth century, and the low steeple from a much earlier period.\nOwing to the late demolitions, the exterior of the church can now be\nexamined with more convenience and pleasure than of yore, and many a\nsaunterer will be surprised to see, arranged along the frieze of a lateral\nchapel projecting into the Rue d'Arbre Sec, various portions of a carp,\nseparated from one another by roses, (architectural, to wit,) here a head,\nthere a body, and then (a rose intervening) a tail. As far as the\ninformation got from passers-by extends, he must remain in ignorance of the\ncause of the strange ornamentation, but he may learn it here at\nsecond-hand, our authority being the archaeologist M. Didron. An individual\ninhabitant of the adjoining street (perhaps a fish-monger) had got\npermission to add this chapel to the old edifice; and to connect his name\n(_Tron\u00e7on_, a piece cut away) with the building, he devised this\ningenious plan.\n\nAnother pious and equally ingenious dweller in the same street, who dealt\nin poultry, did so well in business that she built a new house at the\ncorner, and in front erected a pious monument. Her name being Anne, she got\na sculptor to execute a group for her, namely, St. Anne, mother of the\nBlessed Virgin, teaching her daughter to read. Having thus secured her name\nfrom oblivion, she got her occupation transmitted to after-times by having\nvarious fowl sculptured in bas-relief on the plinth. Alas! how are casual\nvisitors to know, when admiring the group, that it was executed at the\nexpense of Anne the poulterer of the street of the withered tree; and who\nis aware of the circumstance from which the street itself got its name in\nold times?\n\nIn days when pilgrimages were in fashion, a certain house of entertainment\nin that street was much in favor with the really devout, as well as the\nwanderers who had returned in life from the Holy Land. These had brought\nhome intelligence of a wonderful tree which had annually produced leaves\nand fruit in the vicinity of Hebron, from the days of Adam to that on which\nour Lord was crucified. [Footnote 242] On that day it withered, and,\naccording to the assertion of the pilgrims, would remain sapless till the\nHoly City would be in the possession of a Christian power. Such a legend\nwas calculated to make a deep impression on the customers of the auberge,\nfor which an open-air artist was soon called on to execute the effigies of\nthe famous dry tree for a sign. Afterward the inn communicated its name to\nthe street.\n\n    [Footnote 242: Near Hebron is an oak of great dimensions and of great\n    age; but the acorn from which it sprung was not planted for ages after\n    Abraham's time.]\n\n\n  Slang Banished From The Stage.\n\nSome objectionable things, which, when they assume troublesome proportions,\nare extinguished by public opinion amongst ourselves, are stifled by the\nstrong hand of power in France. In 1859, a warning was given to those\ntheatres in Paris which were suspected of a leaning to _Argot_,\n(slang,) that they should for the future accept no piece in which it\nprevailed. So the poor gamins, who enjoy a play from the _Paradis_ of\nthe theatre, could no more relish the phraseology of their peculiar world\nand their peculiar philosophy. The higher powers argued thus: \"Argot is the\nordinary communication between formats of all descriptions, whether they\nplot against the peace and well-being of society, or bewail their\nmisfortunes at the bagne; _ergo_, it is not a fit and proper dialect\nto be spoken before gentlemen and ladies, honest citizens and their wives\nand children; _ergo_, it must not be spoken.\" So the poor gamin of\nvicious propensities must be content in his hours of relaxation to learn\nthe language of that half of the world to which he does not belong.\n\n{693}\n\nYet many of his pet words are not of a low or disreputable origin. Such is\nthe word _Binette_, nowhere heard now except among the folk who live\nby their wits, and yet presenting a noble and sublime image in the days of\nthe Grand Monarque, in fact, no less an object than his flowing and\nmajestic peruke. Binette of the Rue des Petits Champs (street of the little\nfields) was his majesty's hair-dresser, and a great man would feel his\ndignity outraged if a hint was given that his wig was not\n_confectioned_ by the great Binette. Now from Caesar to the wisp that\nstops a bung-hole, the descent is not greater than between the Binette (the\nwig, not the man) of the seventeenth and that of the nineteenth century.\n\nIn thieves' Latin _ardent_ represents a candle. The thief has\naccurately preserved the vocabulary of the Hotel Rambouillet, the Holland\nHouse of the seventeenth century. One of the _Precieuses_ of that\ntemple of literary elegance, when directing the lackey to snuff the candle,\nwould thus express herself: \"_Inutile, ostez le superflu de cet\nardent!_\" [Footnote 243]\n\n    [Footnote 243: This anecdote reminds us of a tradition not forgotten\n    among the gyps of T.C.D. A very learned fellow, dismounting from his\n    steed some time during the dark ages, said to a little boy, \"Juvenile,\n    circumambulate the quadruped round the quadrangle, and I shall\n    recompense thee with a pecuniary remuneration.\"]\n\nThe gamin is not great on the subject of verbal roots: he uses the words,\nbut does not trouble himself about the quarter from whence they come. He is\nnot aware that his own name is the _galopin_ (tavern-boy) of the\nmiddle ages. When he says that such or such article of dress, or food, or\nwhat you will, is _chouette_, (nice,) he is merely retaining the\n_souef_ (doux) of the old French poetry. His friend is his\n_copin_, the _compaign_ (comrade) of old times; the boy he\ndespises is a _capon_, the name applied to the Jews in the days of\nPhilip the Fair. His _rigolo_ comes to him from the verb\n_rigoler_, (to amuse one's self,) so often used in _Maistre\nPathelin_, our Village Lawyer, a farce of the fifteenth century. An\numbrella is a _rifflard_ with him, though he is little aware that it\ngets that name from _Mons. Rifflard_, the \"Paul Pry\" of the _Petite\nVille_ of Picard.\n\nEdouard Fournier, in his Enigmes des Rues de Paris, relates this\ncharacteristic anecdote on the subject of slang. It is the antithesis of\nO'Connell's victory over the fish-woman.\n\n  \"A lady of the Halles (Fish Market) had one day a war of words with a\n  _meraicher_, (market gardener,) and, ye gods! such words as they\n  were! She told off one by one her relentless rosary of abuse. A\n  grave-looking man stood still, and attentively listened to the explosion\n  of the wonderful vocabulary.\n\n  \"'Not bad, not bad,' said he from time to time. At last came the famous\n  phrase, 'You're no better than a melon,' and it served for finale to the\n  torrent of invectives--for the bouquet to the fire-work of coarse words.\n\n  \"'Very well, indeed!' cried the grave man. 'And why very well?' said I.\n  'Because,' said he, 'this woman has just rendered homage to the\n  literature which I profess.' 'How?' 'She has nearly spoken Greek. Yes,\n  indeed, monsieur, the language of Homer. She has just honored this\n  bumpkin with the epithet [Footnote 244] which Thersites, in the second\n  book of the Iliad, line 235, applied to the Grecian kings in council.'\"\n\n    [Footnote 244: The word used by Thersites is [Greek text], plural of\n    [Greek text], soft or ripe, as applied to fruit, and figuratively to\n    inactive or effeminate persons.]\n\n\n  An Unhealthy Suburb.\n\nWith any one's experience of the worst parts of the existing cities of\nEurope, it would be hard for him to realize the condition of the Quartier\nMontmartre in former days. The terrible description in Victor Hugo's\nromance gives only one small phase of it. All the results of extreme\npoverty, vice, negligence, and thorough laziness united to make a scene of\nsqualor and wretchedness without parallel. There was no thought of removing\nnuisances, and at this day a section of some heaps of the old strata\npresents as curious a variety of substances as were ever discovered by the\ngreat Abbeville explorer himself. Some future professor, descended from Mr.\nChaillu's gorilla, finding various evidences of human workmanship so far\nbelow the ordinary platform of the human family in A.D. 2500. will set them\ndown as a deposit of the year 10,000 A.C.\n{694}\nMany a police-raid was effected on the inhabitants of the Cour des\nMiracles, of the Rue Temps-Perdu, of that of the _Vide Gousset_,\n(pickpocket,) of the Bout-du-Monde, of the Ville-Neuve; many hundreds\nseized and sent to the Salpetri\u00e8re (house of correction) or to La Nouvelle\nFrance, (Canada,) and yet the wretched little dens in the filthy,\nill-smelling lanes would not fail to get new tenants. \"Unfeeling nobles,\nbad government!\" say we. At last in the days of Louis XIII. it was\nannounced that any artisan choosing to settle in the quarter might exercise\nhis trade without let or hindrance, or paying duty or incurring expenses\nincidental to the carrying on of trades in other portions of the city.\nMakers of articles of household furniture chiefly availed themselves of the\nprivilege; a better class of inhabitants took possession, and the\natmosphere improved.\n\nThis (northern) quarter of the city has been, from the earliest times,\nincommoded by the number of streams arising among the northern and eastern\nhills adjoining the city, (Paris lying in a natural bowl-like cavity,) and\nendeavoring to find their way under houses and streets to the Seine. Many\nefforts have been made from time to time, to provide courses for these\ntroublesome rivulets in channels arched over or open to the day; yet so\nlate as 1855 some houses in the Faubourg Montmartre were filled to the\nground floor by subterranean inundations; the inhabitants wondering what\ncould bring water into their kitchens and cellars, and they so much above\nthe level of the Seine. At the present time, under the strong volition of\nthe emperor, an effective attempt is being made at the formation of a large\nsubterranean river and its feeders.\n\n\n  Begging A Thriving Business.\n\nMany visitors to the existing exhibition, while exploring and admiring the\nPlace de Carrousel and its surroundings, will scarcely dream of the space\nbetween the Tuileries, the Louvre, and the Palais Royal having been once\noccupied by an hospital for three hundred poor blind men. This at present\nmagnificent quarter was a poor place in the days of St. Louis, and there\nwere the straggling habitations built. Dust-heaps and filth of many kinds\ndistinguished the locality, and in this uninviting spot the three hundred\nblind endured life from the days of good Saint Louis.\n\nAt its first institution, the hospital was a mere night refuge--a retreat\nwhere the blind men were sure of a house over their heads and a sort of bed\nto sleep on after their _criailleries_ all day through the streets.\nThe old charities were seldom complete in themselves. The pious founders\ndid a certain portion of the good work, leaving to the public an\nopportunity of completing it. Philip the Fair added a dress stamped with\nthe fleur de lys, and the poor blind man thus equipped was on a level with\n_Edie Ochiltree_, and so privileged, he \"_tote jor ne finit de\nbraire,_\" (the whole day he ceased not his braying,) as an old writer\ncoarsely expressed himself.\n\nThere was a parallel to this institution in higher quarters, even in\nliterary regions. In the College of Navarre, placed under the highest\npatronage, the pupils went in the morning through the streets, stretching\nout the hand, and crying, \"Bread, bread for the poor scholars of Madame de\nNavarre!\"\n\nThe three hundred were well looked after, all things considered. They had a\npoor-box in every church of France. They were privileged not only to beg at\nthe doors, but even to exercise their quest in the church itself. A\ndifficulty arose from the circumstance of some churches affording to the\n\"King's Bedesmen\" a better harvest than others. All or most would naturally\ncrowd to fleece the richest and most charitable congregations, and dire\nconfusion would ensue.\n{695}\nBut there were heads equal to the emergency. Once a year an auction\nwas held; a good church was set up, bedesmen bid for its possession; it was\nknocked down to the best small batch of bidders, and the money they gave\nthen, or as they made it, put into a common fund. The least well off or\nleast speculative got the worst stands, but they received their share of\nthe money arising from the auction.\n\nThis exceptional state of things continued till within the second half of\nlast century, when the office of grand almoner became invested in the\nCardinal de Rohan. The wretched habitations of the three hundred, their\npoor church left to ruin, the dust-heaps and pools of evil odor with which\nthey were surrounded, so badly harmonized with the neighborhood of the\nPalais Royal, the Tuileries, and the Louvre, between which they lay, that\nit entered the speculative mind of the cardinal that it would be a\nprofitable business to remove the poor inmates to a more cleanly and\ncomfortable domicile, and sell the large plot of land on which the\nstraggling settlement reposed. A solvent company was found, the land\ndisposed of for six millions of livres, and the Hotel of the Black\nMusketeers, Rue de Charenton, was purchased for the blind men at somewhat\nless than half a million. This took place in 1779, and since then the\nchurches and the streets have been relieved from the annoyance of the\n_state_ beggars. They still occupy the Hotel Rue de Charenton, and the\ncurious traveller now passing down the magnificent Rue Rivoli, with palaces\non either hand, can scarcely persuade himself that the space round him was,\nless than a century since, a dedalus of dirty lanes and ill-kept, squalid\ndwellings.\n\n\n  The Morgue And Its Derivation.\n\n\"Whoe'er was at Paris must needs know the Gr\u00e8ve\" was said and sung three\nhalf-centuries ago. Whoever was or was not at Paris must have heard of the\nMorgue, where the bodies of unknown persons who have met with sudden deaths\nwere exposed for some days, to be recognised by their friends. Perhaps he\nis not aware of the cause of applying to the temporary abode of the quiet\ndead a name implying such a different idea. The dismal little building is\nnow not to be found in its old locality, Quai du March\u00e9 Neuf, south side of\nthe Cit\u00e9.\n\nIn the great as well as the little Chatelet (prison) of past days there was\na room called the little prison, where new-comers were brought \"to sit for\ntheir portraits,\" that is, undergo a rigorous inspection as to their\nfeatures by the lower officials of the place. Readers of Pickwick's\nincarceration will not require an elaborate description of the process.\nNow, such a sharp and supercilious scrutiny of the countenance is expressed\nby the word _Morgue_. The humorist, D'Assoucy, has left a description\nof the inspection he underwent on such an occasion, and the terror into\nwhich he was thrown by a long sharp knife, wielded by a short, broad, and\nfat officer, but which was only designed to cut away the ribbons that\nsecured his breeches, and the band of his hat, and thus remove all\navailable instruments of self destruction in the Grand Chatelet.\n\nWhen this apartment changed its destination, and became a place of exposure\nfor the dead, it continued to retain its name; and, on the destruction of\nthe building, the title went to the sinister-looking edifice built for the\nsame purpose. While the Chatelet remained, the sisters of the hospital\nconvent of St. Catherine, corner of the streets of St. Denis and of the\nLombards, bestowed the rites of sepulture on the poor remains not\nrecognized. The other specialty of the good sisters was the relief of poor\nwomen in destitute circumstances.\n\n{696}\n\nThe easily led populace of Paris were long under the impression that a\nvisit to the Morgue, and the consequent withdrawal of a corpse, would cost\nthe friends a hundred and one crowns. So the bereaved families were seldom\nin a hurry with their visit. In vain did the lieutenant of police in 1736\nendeavor to undeceive them.\n\nIn 1767, a gentleman, taking the packet boat from Fontainebleau to Paris,\nquitted the conveyance rather hurriedly, leaving a case behind him. After\nsome little delay it was opened, and much terrified were the assistants at\nfinding what appeared the body of a young man who had been strangled. A\ncommissary of police was called on, accompanied by a surgeon. A\nproc\u00e8s-verbal was drawn up by them, and the body sent to the Morgue to be\nidentified. Soon after, the negligent or guilty passenger arrived in a\nhurry at the office of the boat, and asked for the forgotten parcel. His\nrequest was followed by his seizure and presentation before the worthy\nmagistrate, who had so laudably done his duty. On being charged with the\nmurder, he burst into a fit of laughter, and covered the poor official with\nconfusion by announcing that the corpse of the strangled man was a mummy\nwhich he was just after bringing from Egypt, and had forgotten to carry\naway with the rest of his luggage. In order to get his property out of the\ndead-house, he was obliged to make application to the lieutenant of police,\nand this circumstance soon scattered the news far and near. A few nights\nafter, all Paris was breaking its sides in the theatre laughing at an\nuproarious farce by Saconnet, displaying in the richest colors the wisdom\nand skill of the police commissary and the surgeon. Repeated instances were\nmade by these gentlemen to the minister, M. de Sartines, to restrain the\nrepresentation. On the last time he observed: \"Toleration is a virtue which\nI love to practise to the utmost limits allowable.\" The piece had a run of\nforty nights.\n\n\n  A King And Minister Well Matched.\n\nAmong the many puzzles met in history and biography is the retaining of his\nplace by Louvois, prime minister to Louis XIV. Every student of history is\naware of the great self-esteem which dwelt within the monarch; and it would\nbe natural to suppose that, in order to retain his favor, officer or\nminister should diligently cultivate obsequiousness, and have no will or\nopinion but that of his master. It was not so, however, with this minister;\nand it is a historic fact that the king resolved on a great public\nundertaking on account of a difference he had with his minister in their\nguesses at the breadth of the window at which they were standing. Louis\nsaid it was such a breadth, Louvois guessed it was an inch or two more or\nless, and insisted on the exactness of his eye-calculation so persistently\nthat the king called for a ruler to decide the matter, and resolved on a\ntransaction which he knew would be distasteful to his opinionative\ncontradictor.\n\nIn Louis' reign, and under the superintendence of Louvois, was raised the\nnoble pile of the Invalides--a building which will be, or ought to be, at\nleast, visited by every one who takes interest in the well being of men who\nhave suffered in the defence or for the glory of their country. Mansard,\nthe architect, who has given his name to French attics (_Mansardes?_)\nwas much incommoded by the impatience of the minister, whose self\nappreciation would be content with nothing less than the carving of his\nbourgeois coat of arms in the neighborhood of the royal achievement\nwherever it was set up. He gained only mortification by the movement, as\nLouis had them all effaced. The great man was enraged at this instance of\ndisrespect, and was obliged to content himself with a posthumous revenge.\nHe would be buried at the Invalides, and, through the complaisance of the\ncur\u00e9, M. de Mauray, it was done. His body was laid in one of the vaults,\nbut, after all, was not allowed to remain there. The king's parasites gave\nhim information, and the corpse was removed.\n\n{697}\n\nLouvois, fearing that something of this kind would happen, was resolved to\nattach his memory to the Invalides by surer means. In one mansarde he got\nsculptured a barrel of powder in the act of explosion, signalizing the war\nhe had originated; in another, a plume of ostrich feathers; and, in two\nothers, an owl and a bat, all emblematic of his high dignity, his wisdom,\nand wakefulness. The masterpiece, however, was a wolf, the upper part only\nseen, surmounted by a tuft of palm-leaves, holding the _OEil de Boeuf_\nbetween his forepaws and looking intently into the court. Thus was a pun in\nmarble executed: _(le) Loup voit_ (the wolf is looking)--Louvois, both\nhaving the same sound, and the great man's name inseparably connected with\nthe Invalides.\n\n------\n\n  Original\n\n  Playing With Fire.\n\n\nThere was a fine specimen in Birmingham, the other day, of a style of\ntheological disputation which we hoped had gone out of vogue. A poor wretch\nnamed Murphy, a paid agent of the London Protestant Electoral Union, had\nbeen travelling for some months about the counties of Stafford and Warwick,\ncirculating obscene tracts upon the confessional, ranting about priests and\nnuns, retailing all the absurd and wicked stories against the Catholic\nreligion which have formed the stock in trade of a certain class of zealots\nand religious demagogues for the last three hundred years; and very\nnaturally his disgusting tirades had stirred up a dangerous sort of public\nfeeling. The lower classes of the Protestants were taught to look upon the\nCatholics as savage, wild beasts, given up to all manner of immoral\npractices, enemies to all human happiness, thirsting for blood, rapine, and\nrevolution, and wedded to the stake, the faggot, and the thumb-screw. The\nlower classes of the Catholics were compelled to bear the taunts and\ninsults which were certain to be provoked by this rage of popular\nprejudice, and moreover to listen to the grossest attacks upon what they\nheld in most affectionate reverence. Of course, sensible Protestants, as\nwell as educated Catholics, felt nothing but pity and contempt for the\nravings of such a man as Murphy; but unfortunately it is not educated and\nsensible people who make all the trouble in the world, nor were they\neducated and sensible people who formed the bulk of Mr. Murphy's audiences.\nWherever he went, he made a popular disturbance. Blows and brickbats\nfollowed in his train like dust behind rolling wheels. The magistrates in\none town confiscated his books on account of their indecency. At last he\ncame to Birmingham. The mayor and council refused him the use of a public\nhall, but his disciples built him an immense wooden tabernacle; and there,\nwhile an angry crowd raged and threatened about the doors, he began a five\nweeks' course of lectures on the atrocities of popery. What an instructive\ncontrast was then presented! In the streets Catholic priests were going\nabout among the mob, begging and commanding them to drop their menacing\nhands and withdraw peaceably to their homes. In the tabernacle this fiery\nranter was declaring that every Catholic priest was \"a murderer, a\ncannibal, a liar, and a pickpocket;\" that the papists were thirsting for\nhis blood, but durst not take it; that they might pelt him with stones, but\nGod would put forth his arm and prevent his being hurt; they might raise\ntheir bludgeons against him, but God would ward off the blows.\n{698}\nNeed anybody ask what was the result of all this? A riot broke out and\nraged for two days; and, as always happens in riots, the greater part of\nthe disorder and destruction was caused not by those who began the fray,\nbut by professional thieves and rowdies who seized the opportunity to\nplunder.\n\nNow, of course, we have no desire to apologize for the unwarrantable mode\ntaken by the Birmingham Catholics to silence this itinerant preacher.\nRioting is both a great blunder and a great crime. But who was the more to\nblame? Was it the pulpit mountebank who pelted his audience with well-nigh\nintolerable insults, or the uneducated laborers who resented them? Our Lord\ntells us, when we are smitten upon one cheek, to turn the other; but we all\nknow that the custom of human nature is to smite back. If you first stir up\nthe angry passions of a crowd of excitable Irishmen, and then dance into\nthe midst of them, and dare them to come on, it will not be surprising if\nyou dance out again with a bloody nose and a torn coat. If you shake your\nfist at a man, and assure him that he cannot hit you if he tries ever so\nhard, it is very probable that he will try; and if you are hurt, you will\nhave yourself to blame. It is not safe to go near gunpowder with a lighted\ncandle. All England seems to have thought as we do about the Birmingham\naffair, and Murphy has been unanimously awarded the responsibility for the\noutrage by the ministers in parliament, and by all the respectable\nnewspapers, even by such prejudiced journals as The Times.\n\nThere have been many religious riots in Great Britain and America, but the\nstory is nearly always the same. They have had them in Birmingham before;\nthey have had them in Belfast and Dublin. Lord George Gordon got up a\nfamous one in London, and Gavazzi was the cause of one in Montreal. The\nNative American movement in 1844 gave us two dreadful riots in\nPhiladelphia, and, but for the firmness and sagacity of Bishop Hughes,\nwould have provoked another in New-York. In the train of the Know-Nothing\nexcitement ten years later followed a long array of incendiary preachers,\nsome of whom were proved to have been expressly hired to provoke\ndisturbance; and what was the result? Churches were sacked, torn down,\nburned, or blown up with gunpowder in Manchester and Dorchester,\nNew-Hampshire, in Bath, Maine, and in Newark, New-Jersey. A church in\nWilliamsburg was barely saved from the flames by the opportune arrival of\nthe military. A street-preacher in New-York named Parsons was very nearly\nthe cause of a riot in December, 1853; but in this instance also Archbishop\nHughes succeeded in keeping the Catholics quiet. All over the country, in\nfact, rapine and incendiarism seemed rampant; but The New-York Tribune\njustly observed: \"It is worthy of remark that, while five or six Catholic\nchurches in this country have been destroyed or ruined by an excited\npopulace, not a single Protestant church can be pointed out which Catholics\nhave even thought of attacking.\"\n\nNo reasonable man will deny that the frantic sort of propagandism which\nstirred up all these acts of violence does more harm to its own cause than\nto that of its adversaries. No honest and rational Protestant wants to\ntrust his defence to a Murphy or a Parsons. The street ranters are\ndangerous allies and despicable enemies. But the trouble is that after the\nfools have made the disturbance there are always knaves ready to keep it\nalive. No sooner had the excited Catholics begun to throw stories at the\nBirmingham tabernacle than the scourings of the jails, the pestiferous\nbrood of the slums and alleys, began to sack the pawnbrokers' and jewellers\nshops. And then down came from London a member of Parliament--the\nnotorious Mr. Whalley, whose incessant attacks upon popery in the House of\nCommons are a standing matter of laughter; and he and Murphy made speeches\nside by side, one not much more sensible than the other.\n{699}\nWe shall, no doubt, see the Protestant Electoral Union, of which both these\ngentlemen are pillars and ornaments, trying to make political capital out\nof the affair. So, too, in the United States: there has always been a\npolitical organization at the back of the zealots who have stirred up\nreligious riots, and there have always been politicians to scramble for the\nfruits of bigotry, if not to plant the seed.\n\nIs there any reason why we may not have in New-York a repetition of the\noutrages of Birmingham or Philadelphia? Heaven be praised! we have not, so\nfar as we know, a Protestant Electoral Union; but we have Whalleys enough,\nand as for Murphies, the world is full of them. There is no need to build a\ntabernacle; with us they speak through the press. A lie shouted from a\nplatform is not more dangerous than a lie sent flying over the country in\nthe pages of a newspaper. If you want to produce a quick sensation with a\ngood bouncing calumny, the best way perhaps is to speak it out by word of\nmouth; but for permanent effect commend us to print. There is an American\njournal which has been acting the part of a Murphy for a long time past,\nand has lately been flying at popery with more rage than ever. In a recent\nnumber of Harper's Weekly there was a horrible story of the confessional in\nRome, which might rival the wildest romances of Mrs. Radcliffe. It showed\nus a sinner getting absolution before he could summon courage to confess\nhis sins, and a young girl murdered by monks and buried under the church\npavement; \"for in that wonderful but priest-ridden city,\" says the writer,\n\"the papal clergy act almost with impunity.\" And the other day, in the same\npaper, there was a picture of a Roman confessional, a row of penitents\nkneeling before it, while a priest leaned over the door and absolved them\nby tapping each one on the head with a rod. This wonderful device, as our\nCatholic readers will at once perceive, was borrowed from the symbolical\nwand of office borne by the penitentiaries at the Roman court; but Harper's\nWeekly puts the whole sacrament into the tap of the wand. \"This,\" says the\neditor, \"is a faithful representation of the manner in which sins are\nforgiven in the confessionals of St. Peter's at Rome.\" And then follows a\nlong article, in the true Murphy vein, about confession, and indulgences,\nand purgatory, and many other points of Catholic doctrine. The pope, we are\ntold, claims the power of damning souls to _hell_, and admitting whom\nhe pleases into heaven. The holiness which he rewards is not Christian\nholiness; the sins which he punishes with eternal fire are not the sins\nwhich Christ denounced. \"Sincere penitence as a ground of forgiveness has\nbeen practically laid aside, and simple confession has taken its place.\"\nIndulgences are mere merchandise, and money will at any time buy a soul out\nof purgatory, just as \"the performance of certain arbitrary ceremonies\nwhich have no more connection with vital Christianity than had the rites of\npagandom\" will open the gates of heaven. Then the writer, after assuring us\nthat the pope is afraid of America, passes on to the ridicule of relics,\nand of many pious practices, and winds up his article with a prediction\nthat the Christian world will sooner or later be freed from all these\nmummeries and superstitions, and all mankind be sensible and enlightened\nProtestants.\n\nNow, to what does all this tend? We dare say the writer of this tirade\nsupposed he was telling the truth, but what was his purpose in telling it?\nDid he expect to make converts by it? When we seek to be reconciled with an\nenemy, do we begin by insulting him? Will it dispose an adversary to listen\nto your arguments with a favoring ear if you open the discussion by\nspitting in his face, and calling him a fool, and reviling all that he\nholds in highest respect? Billingsgate is not gospel. When the Holy Ghost\ncame down upon the apostles on the day of Pentecost, those chosen preachers\nof divine truth did not straightway begin to blackguard the Jews.\n{700}\nWhen St. Paul preached at Antioch, he did not call the pagan pontiffs\n\"ragamuffins,\" as Mr. Murphy called the Catholic clergy, nor did he try to\nconvert the Jews by saying of their high priest what the Birmingham\nBoanerges said of the pope, that he was \"the greatest old rag and bone\ngrubber in the universe.\" And does the Journal of Civilization expect to\nconvert Catholics by caricaturing the pope, and telling scandalous stories\nabout the church, and burlesquing her doctrines? As we said before, we feel\nbound to presume that the writer believed all he said; but it was so easy\nfor him to know better. The doctrine which he ascribes to Catholics we so\nearnestly repudiate in all our books, in all our pulpits, and in all our\npractical life, that we have a good right to complain indignantly, and to\ncharge him with a carelessness hardly more pardonable than dishonesty.\n\nWe say this carelessness is a very grave offence, because such calumnies\nagainst religious bodies never have but one effect--exasperation, and\npossibly riot. There is just the same material for a riot in New-York that\nthere was in Birmingham. There are ignorant and hot-headed men, both\nProtestants and Catholics, who are ready enough to come to blows if you\nonce charge them full of religious ire, and then bring them in contact; and\nthere are thieves and street brigands enough in any large city to push on\nthe work of destruction when once it has been started. We know very well\nthat a hundred such stories and pictures would never make a riot by\nthemselves. We know very well that there are not a half dozen Catholics in\nNew-York who would be wicked and silly enough to resent such insults with\nviolence. What we complain of is, that vituperation and calumny can hardly\nfail to create a dangerous antagonism of feeling which, at any unforeseen\nprovocation may ripen into bloodshed. Once teach opposing classes of the\npeople to loathe each other, and how long will the public peace be safe?\nLet papers like Harper's Journal of Civilization (bless the mark!) keep on\nstirring up the bad old blood, reviving the dead old lies, reawakening\ndormant prejudices, and filling the two denominations with mutual hatred,\nand the least little spark may suddenly kindle the whole hateful mass into\na sweeping conflagration. Argue with us, if you will, and we will meet you\nin the calm, gentle, Christian spirit without which all controversy must be\nworse than useless. Tell us that we are wrong, if you think so, and we will\nshow you wherein we are right. Surely a Christian minister can discuss\nmooted questions of theology without flinging his Bible at his adversary's\nhead. Civilized gentlemen can talk over their differences without loading\neach other with vile epithets. There is only one way in which religious\ndisputation can be profitable or even tolerable; let us come to that way at\nonce; but, above all, no more lies; no more playing with fire.\n\n------\n\n{701}\n\n  Original.\n\n  Christianity And Its Conflicts. [Footnote 245]\n\n [Footnote 245:\n  Christianity and its Conflicts, Ancient and Modern.\n  By E. E. Marcy, A.M. New-York:\n  D. Appleton & Co., Broadway. 1867. Pp. 480.]\n\n\nThe title of this work indicates that its scope is very comprehensive, and\nthat its execution involves a great deal of practical labor and research.\nThe author says in his preface that he has aimed \"to display Christianity\nas it was established by Jesus, as it has been developed and perpetuated by\nthe apostles and their successors, and to correct the erroneous impressions\nwhich so generally exist respecting it, and also endeavored to exhibit a\ngeneral outline of the various conflicting elements which have been arrayed\nagainst the Christian system up to the present time.\"\n\nHe has been as good as his word, for he has given us an instructive and\nable sketch of the heathen philosophers and religions, and of the corrupt\nsocial conditions which opposed themselves to the introduction of\nChristianity; of the struggle for so many ages with the barbarism of\nEurope; and, finally, in what we consider by far the most vivid and\ninteresting portions of his work, he has laid bare the character, effects,\nand tendencies of what is called the Reformation, and the present condition\nof Christendom, religious, social, and political.\n\nTo judge his work correctly, we must bear in mind that the author is a\nlayman, the business of whose life has not been the study of theology. A\nman of liberal education, a physician, and of eminence in his profession,\nhis attention has been drawn to the consideration of the grand problems of\nman's destiny; he has studied and reflected upon them, realized their\nimportance, and given us the result, as he says, \"for the sole purpose of\nvindicating truth and the religion of Christ.\"\n\nThe testimony of an intelligent and cultivated layman on the subject of\nreligious truths has a peculiar value; for, although it may not be so\naccurate and full in a theological sense, it often presents the arguments\nin a more popular form, and with a personal conviction which impresses the\nminds of many with a peculiar force. The author evidently feels deeply on\nthe subjects on which he writes. A citizen of the world, he feels a deep\ninterest in both the temporal and spiritual well-being of his fellows. As\nhe contemplates either false principles or the evil conduct of individuals,\nthe sentiment of indignation rises within him, and he expresses himself\nfrequently in animated and glowing language, and with a sort of passionate\nenergy which will be considered, no doubt, by those who do not sympathize\nwith him, as a blemish. We wish he had toned down some of his expressions\nto avoid giving needless offence, and that appearance of exaggeration which\nto the minds of some might cast suspicion upon the solid merit of his\nconclusions. We regret particularly his political allusions. Without\nentering at all into the merits of party politics, we wish they had been\nkept out of this book altogether; or, if the author must pay off one\npolitical party, we wish he had executed an equal and impartial justice\nupon the other. There is enough of political selfishness, corruption, and\nbribery in either political party to excite the indignation of every honest\nman.\n{702}\nBut we must not exact too much of a layman who has his strong political\nviews, and who considers it timely and for the public good to give them a\ndecided expression. What would be unbecoming in one in holy orders may be\npermitted to a layman in the busy walks of life. We are not disposed to\nforgive so easily the way in which he has spoken of New England. This\nsection of the country contains all sorts of people and all sorts of\nopinions, good, bad, and indifferent. There may be more radicalism, more\nscepticism, and more fanaticism here than elsewhere. It is a question we\nthink it idle to enter upon. The same principles prevail and have prevailed\nin other sections of the country. It is wrong to single out New England or\nits inhabitants to be held up to the scorn, ridicule, or hatred of the rest\nof the country. It is quite too much the fashion nowadays to do so, and we\ncannot too strongly reprobate a practice which sets one section of the\ncountry at variance with another, perpetuates ill feeling and hatred, and\naggravates the very mischief it aims to remove. But we all know that those\nwho take warm interest in political questions are apt to have very decided\nopinions and to express them in a corresponding manner, and we can well\nafford to pass them by without allowing our equanimity to be too much\nruffled by them; and whatever may be the political opinion of any man, or\nhowever much he may differ from our author, he must, we think, give him\ncredit for his courage and pluck in the fearless manner he comes out with\nthem.\n\nBut let us come to the solid merits of the volume. The author shows us, in\nthe first chapter, the terrible corruption of morals and the false\nphilosophy prevailing at the time of the introduction of Christianity, and\nthe fearful struggle which it had with paganism. He deduces therefrom the\nnecessity of miracles and a proof of their truth. This is timely and\njudicious, when a silly criticism is striving to overturn all the ideas of\ncommon sense on this subject, and to destroy the historical testimony of\nthe truth of revelation. We hope this will be read and reflected upon by\nthose who have confused ideas on this subject.\n\nHe proceeds to give us an account of the doctrines taught by our Lord Jesus\nChrist, and holds up in relief the demand which he made on our unqualified\nsubmission and assent to all the truths which he taught and all his\nprecepts. This is faith, and the foundation of religion and salvation. To\nbelieve in Christ is to believe all that he taught and to do all he\ncommanded. As we are more fully aware what is the real meaning of the word\n\"faith,\" we can understand better the true character of the Christian\nreligion. We notice some inaccuracies of expression, and sometimes desire a\nmore profound insight into the matter, but find embodied a great deal of\nuseful information which may thus be brought within the reach of many who,\nif we may judge from the ignorance displayed in the religious publications\nof the day, have the most erroneous ideas on the subject.\n\nHe shows the identity of the church instituted by Christ and the Catholic\nChurch, tracing the history of the church from its foundation up to the\ntime of the Reformation, and discussing those doctrines which are held in\nthe Catholic Church, though rejected by those who have separated from her.\nThe picture he portrays of the condition of the world at the commencement\nof the Reformation is most opportune. Protestant writers have endeavored to\nforce the conviction on the minds of their readers that all or the greater\npart of the progress of civilization has taken place since that event.\nNothing can be more untrue. The author proves to us that a continual\nprogress had been in course for centuries in a healthy and steady\nadvancement; and when we connect this with the account which follows of the\neffects of this great historical event, in removing the restraints which\nheld man's pride and selfish passions within bounds; of the discord,\nviolence, and civil war which were the uniform result everywhere; we are\nfilled with regret that the harmonious development of the physical and\nspiritual life of the nations, under the auspices of the church, was ever\ninterfered with.\n{703}\nIt would have been a beautiful sight to have seen Europe, a commonwealth of\nnations, bound together by the tie of one religious faith and the same\nprinciples of morality, submitting their differences, without the necessity\nof immense standing armies and ruinous wars, to the mild arbitration of him\nwhom they all acknowledged to be the Vicar of Christ, and the guardian of\nChristian justice and morality. We must ask ourselves, not where we are\nnow, but what we would have attained had our efforts been combined, rather\nthan wasted in opposing one another.\n\nThe church fulfilled her duty up to this time, against the obstacles thrown\nin her way by the flood of barbarism which overflowed all Europe. She\nchristianized and civilized the people. She was constantly occupied in\nreforming abuses; and, if such existed at the time of the Reformation, we\nmust acknowledge that there was every disposition to reform them within the\nbody of the church herself, without the least need of throwing off her\nlegitimate authority. This book ought to clear up many misapprehensions\nonly too common in the public mind.\n\nWe then have an account of the doctrines of the reformers, drawn from their\nown writings, followed by interesting and graphic sketches of the personal\ncharacteristics of Luther, Calvin, and others. That of Luther is peculiarly\npiquant, and is authenticated completely by copious extracts from his own\nwritings and those of his friends and associates.\n\nWe hope the advocates of the Reformation, for the honor of their cause,\nwill keep the first reformers as much out of sight as possible, and cease\nto compare them to St. Paul and the apostles. Their doctrines are pretty\nwell exploded, and, when brought forward as distinct propositions, are\nreprobated by the universal sense of mankind. Unfortunately they still live\nin a covert and hidden way to work out their evil and bitter fruits, as the\nauthor fully shows in the subsequent parts of his work.\n\nThose who represent the reformers as saints, have a strange idea of\nsanctity or even common decency. Dr. Marcy, in view of their immoral\neccentricities, adopts the most charitable construction possible in the\ncase of Luther and some others. We will let him speak for himself:\n\n  \"From an amiable, chaste, temperate, and devout man, he (that is, Luther)\n  became violent, ferocious, intemperate, licentious, blasphemous, and\n  sanguinary. From a firm, unwavering, and happy believer in the truths of\n  the church, he became the victim of innumerable doubts, changes,\n  perplexities, and fierce torments. From a condition of mental\n  tranquillity and intellectual equilibrium, he leaped into a state of\n  maniacal excitement with a very great perversion of all his intellectual\n  powers and faculties. As an innovator he habitually saw spectres, men\n  with tails, horns, claws, features of animals, and was pursued and\n  tormented by these morbid fantasies. A volume of these abnormal\n  manifestations might be cited in support of our position, but we have\n  presented a sufficient number to enable the impartial reader to form a\n  just conclusion of Luther's sanity or insanity.\"\n\nAfter this account of the reformers and their opinions, we have a striking\naccount of the fruits of their doctrines in Europe and America up to this\npresent time. It deserves to be read and reread. He calls attention to a\nfact of which we are all too well cognizant, the miserable religious\ndiscussions introduced and ever on the increase since the Reformation.\n\"Until the innovating revolution of the sixteenth century, the faith of\nChristendom had been a unit; there were no divisions, no dissensions, no\nfalse teachers or false doctrines in the Christian household. Men, women,\nand children knew only one church, one faith, and one form of worship, and\nwere contented and happy in their religious convictions.\n{704}\nSo universal was this unity, so thoroughly grounded was this faith, and so\ngeneral was the practical observance of the duties of religion, that\nscepticism, the novelties of individuals, irreligion, and immorality were\ncomparatively rare. The Christian church had been made up of converts from\nnumerous nations and races, and there had been a continual struggle for\nmore than fifteen centuries between the church on the one hand and these\nelements of ignorance and evil on the other; the church had finally\ntriumphed, true Christian civilization had fairly gained the ascendency\nover barbarism, and a universal reign of Christian unity and concord was\nrapidly dawning over the whole world, when suddenly the innovations of\nGermany broke in upon this unity and harmony, arrested the onward progress\nof Christianity, and deluged the world with distracting novelties, creeds,\nand sects.\" Incessant wars and rapid deterioration of morals complete the\npicture, the main outlines of which we can verify from our own observation.\nIn this connection the author has, we are glad to see, taken up the\nfavorite argument and grand trump card of the opponents of the Catholic\nchurch, which is thus expressed: \"Contrast the condition of Protestant and\nCatholic countries, and see how much superior in wealth, intelligence, and\nprogress the former are to the latter.\" He shows that, when the facts are\nnot carefully manipulated and prepared for the purpose, there is no very\ngreat contrast after all. He says: \"Macaulay has contrasted the United\nStates and Mexico; Italy and Scotland; Spain and Holland; Prussia and\nIreland; candor should have induced this eminent writer to have made more\nequal and just comparisons, as France and England, Belgium and Holland,\nAustria and Prussia, Mexico, Peru, and Brazil with the Sandwich Islands and\nother recently converted nations.\"'\n\nMaking the comparison, not merely in regard to wealth and outward show, but\ntaking into account the statistics of crime, he shows that Catholic\ncountries are far in advance of their Protestant rivals in virtue and\nmorality.\n\nIt is perfectly astonishing how the current idea in Protestant society\ntends to deify materialism.\n\nWorldly prosperity and accumulation of wealth we unblushingly put forward\nas the conclusive test of the truth or falsity of religious faith. Our Lord\nsaid, \"Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust\ndoth corrupt, but lay up treasures in heaven;\" but a host of clerical and\nlay gentlemen and philosophers shout themselves hoarse with the cry; \"Your\nCatholics have not the religion of Christ, for you do not seek after money\nhalf hard enough. You are a deal too simple in your way of living; you\nought to multiply your cravings and desires more, and live a deal more\nartificially than you do.\" Listen to Lecky, one of the great modern lights;\nquoted by Dr. Marcy: \"An accumulation of capital is therefore the first\nstep of civilization, and this accumulation depends on the multiplication\nof wants. ... Hence the dreary, sterile torpor that characterized those\nages in which the ascetic principle has been supreme, while the\ncivilizations which have attained the highest perfection have been those of\nancient Greece and modern Europe, which were most opposed to it.\" Liebig,\nquoted in a work of Youmans recently published, gives us this queer\ndefinition: \"Man's superiority to the beast depends essentially in his\nfaculty of discovering inventions for the gratification of his wants, and\nit is the sum of them among a people which embraces the conception of their\n'civilization.'\" We feel much ashamed of our old-fashioned ignorance, but\nreally we used to think man's superiority over the beast consisted\nessentially in his possessing an immortal soul. Dr. J. W. Draper launches\nout in the following grandiloquent condemnation of the \"Roman Church:\"\n{705}\n\"How different the result had it abandoned the obsolete absurdities of\npatristicism\"--we suppose he means the teaching of the fathers of the\nchurch handed down to them from the apostles--\"and become imbued with the\nspirit of true philosophy--had it lifted itself to a comprehension of the\nawful magnificence of the heavens above and the glories of the earth\nbeneath, had it appreciated the immeasurable vastness of the universe, its\ninfinite multitude of worlds, its inconceivable past duration.\" Poor old\nchurch, why did you not abandon the consideration of the unseen world and\nthe inconceivable duration of eternity, and confine your attention to\nastronomy and geology? Why teach men that God takes an interest in them\npersonally and holds them accountable, when he has created so many worlds\nand rocks to take up their attention? This is philosophy with a vengeance,\nthe philosophy which is summed up by St. Paul in the short phrase. \"Let us\neat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die.\"\n\nGreece and Rome reached the acme of this material civilization before they\nfell. England at present seems to occupy their place. Kay, in his social\nhistory of the English people, exposes the misery and vice of the great\nmass the population, which, like the smothered fire of a volcano, may burst\nout and involve the land in a universal ruin and desolation.\n\nIt is well for us to take warning in time, for, in the headlong race after\nmoney and material enjoyment, we are getting civilized to such a degree\nthat we seem to be in danger of outrunning all the antiquated notions of\nhonor and honesty. Our late upheaval of society, the unsettled state of\nthings, the insecurity of property, the enormous prices of labor and\nliving, are beginning to make us realize that \"all is not gold that\nglitters,\" and we feel confident that many a one will accept Dr. Marcy's\nfearless _expos\u00e9_ of false civilization with thankfulness, and draw\nthe logical conclusions.\n\nIn this connection is shown also the reason why our own country displays so\nmuch greater advance in material prosperity than either Mexico or the\ncountries of South America; a reason, we are truly sorry to say,\nsubstantiated by overwhelming testimony. It is this: The native population\nof our own country, though a simple, innocent, warm-hearted people, who\nreceived us with open arms, were hunted down and destroyed like wild beasts\nin New England, Virginia, and elsewhere. In Mexico and South America they\nstill live and occupy the country. Here we have made a blank to be filled\nby a full-blown European civilization of the growth of centuries; there\nmillions of the original people have been reclaimed from barbarism, are\nliving, increasing in number, and steadily progressing toward the mark we\nhave attained. Dr. Marcy tells truth in eloquent but indignant forms when\nhe says: \"It is quite true that this Mexican Indian race is inferior by\nnature to the Anglo Saxon or the Frank. It is quite true that the children\nof those who were rude savages a few generations ago have not the\nintelligence, or the energy, or the enterprise of the shrewd, money-loving\nPuritan. It is quite true that the souls of these simple-minded children of\nMontezuma are not wholly absorbed in the love of gain and of worldly pride\nand ambition; but, nevertheless, they live, and can look upon the\nconsecrated graves of their fathers back to the days of Cortez; they\n_still live_, and can worship in spirit and truth the God who created\nthem and gave them their country; they _still live_, and can behold\ncities, towns, churches, schools, and cultivated fields, where their\nfathers only saw dense forests and savage wildernesses; they _still\nlive_, and bless the church and the priests who have been their\npreservers and benefactors.\"\n\nOur Lord Jesus Christ came to preach the gospel to the poor, and it is the\nglory of the Catholic Church that her great heart has always beat warmly\nand tenderly for the souls and bodies of the poor and down-trodden races of\nmankind.\n{706}\nHer history on this continent is a history of a long line of true\nimitations of Jesus Christ, and of the peaceful triumphs of his cross.\nWherever Protestantism prevailed, we have, as an unvarying result, the\nspeedy extermination by fire and sword of the aborigines. Even this is held\nup by some writers as conclusive of the superior claims of Protestantism.\nTheir argument, divested of all ambiguity, would sound thus: \"The red man\nwas in the way of our development, we shot him and cleared the track. What\nis the use of making a fuss about shooting Indians or other inferior races?\nIt is a great deal better to do that than to try to keep the poor devils to\nbe a burden to themselves and to us. We Protestants understand better than\nyou weak-minded and superstitious Catholics how to deal with such matters,\nand this proves that we, and not you, have the true Christianity.\" We speak\nthus strongly because we feel strongly the impudence with which such\nwriters attribute to Christianity itself the grossest violations of its\nvery first principles.\n\nLet us excuse our forefathers as much as we can, but, in the interest of\nthe religion of Christ, let us not call their crimes virtues. There was\nnothing in their religion powerful enough to enlighten their ignorance or\nto control their passions; they had no church to lay down the stern,\nundeviating principles of morality, and no confessional to apply them to\nthe individual conscience; and, therefore, as soon as an Indian stole a\nhorse or a cow, or plundered a hen-roost, his death and the extermination\nof his tribe was a necessary and immediate consequence. And for the want of\nthe same authoritative moral restraint, according to many Protestant\nwriters who have taken the alarm, we are now on the high road to\nexterminate ourselves.\n\nThe Rev. J. Todd, D.D., a Congregational divine, all honor to him for his\nconscientious candor, says, speaking of the disparity in the natural\nincrease of our foreign and native-born population, and of the immoral\ncauses of it: \"There is nothing in Protestantism that encourages or\nconnives at it, but there is a vast ignorance as to the guilt of the thing.\nBut in the Catholic Church human life is guarded at all stages by the\nconfessional, by stern denouncement, and by fearful excommunications.\"\n\nThe divine wisdom of the Founder of the sacrament of confession is most\nsignally vindicated in these few pithy words, which we leave to the\nreflection of the reader.\n\nIn the concluding portions of his work the author gives some most\ninteresting statistics of the growth and proportions of infidelity and\nscepticism in our country, of the results of Catholic and Protestant\nmissions among the heathens, and of the state of religion throughout the\nworld. These make his work more complete, and will be received gladly by\nmany who have not had their attention called to these facts before. We\nthink they add very much to the completeness of the work, and it was a\nhappy idea of the author to put them in. Dr. Marcy's book ought to do a\ngreat deal of good, and we do not doubt that it will. The number of\nunpalatable truths told in it, and the direct, incisive way in which they\nare told, have provoked and will provoke much unfavorable comment. Every\neffort will be made to discredit it. It will be called vituperative, false,\nand calumnious. Its truth--and Dr. Marcy has taken good care to back up all\nhis assertions with the best of evidence--is the best refutation of all\nsuch accusations. We find every day all sorts of false and calumnious\nstatements, circulated without a particle of proof, in the books, the\nperiodicals, and newspapers of the land, against the persons and the\ndoctrines we hold most dear. It is of little use to reply, the lie is\ncirculated and the reply is left unnoticed. Our opponents take all their\nrepresentations of our doctrines and practices, at second hand, from the\nwritings of our deadliest enemies, and never think it worth while to verify\ntheir statements by looking at the statements of our own councils and\nstandard writers.\n{707}\nThis treatment is absolutely unfair, and the most respectable are blind to\nits meanness, where we are concerned; but let the Catholic writer tell the\noutspoken truth and back it up by genuine testimony of their own writers\nand partisans, and the cry is at once raised of \"calumnious, incendiary,\nmalicious,\" etc. etc. It will be easier to raise a cry against this book\nthan to answer its statements. When Marshall published his history of\nChristian Missions, with its thousands of references to the most\nunsuspected Protestant witnesses, we looked for a reply which would be\nsomething more than merely throwing dust in the eyes of the public, but we\nhave looked in vain up to this time; its statements have never been\nanswered. So we feel sure it will be with this book. It may be called hard\nnames, but it will not be seriously answered. If it will be thoughtfully\nread, we shall feel content. It will then, at least, be answered, as we\nprefer to see all honest representations of the truth answered, by the\nremoval of prejudice, the correction of many false ideas which prevail\nconcerning our holy faith, and the consequent desire, which we pray may\narise in not a few sincere minds, to examine more fully into its character\nand the grounds of its claims to be the true religion of Jesus Christ.\n\n------\n\n  From Chambers's Journal.\n\n  Thermometers.\n\n\nAn ordinary thermometer consists, as everybody knows, of a glass tube,\nfixed to a scale. This tube contains a fine bore, and has a bulb blown at\none extremity. Some liquid, generally mercury or alcohol, is introduced\ninto the tube, the air is driven out, and the tube is sealed. The quantity\nof fluid, say mercury, admitted into the tube is so regulated that at\ncommon temperatures the bulb and a portion of the bore are filled. The\nremainder of the bore, which is empty, affords space for the mercury to\nrise. This arrangement renders very perceptible the alterations in the\nvolume of the mercury due to changes of temperature, a very slight increase\nor diminution of volume causing the mercury to rise or to fall appreciably\nin the fine bore. After sealing, the scale has to be adjusted to the tube,\nand the instrument is complete.\n\nThermometers of the most accurate make are called standard thermometers. In\ntheir manufacture, numerous precautions are necessary from the very outset.\nEven in so simple a matter as the choice of the tube of glass much care is\nrequisite. The bore has to be tested, in order to ensure that it is of\nuniform capacity throughout. It is found that tubes, as they come from the\nglass-house, contain a bore wider at one extremity than the other. The bore\nis, in fact, a portion of a very elongated cone. In a hundredweight of\ntubes, not more than half a dozen or so can be picked out in which the bore\nis perfectly true. The bore is tested in a very ingenious though simple\nmanner. A bulb is blown, and a very small quantity of mercury is admitted\ninto the tube about as much as will fill an inch and a half of the bore. By\nalternately cooling and heating the bulb, this delicate thread of mercury\nis driven from one end of the tube to the other, and during this process\nits length is carefully measured in all parts of the tube.\n{708}\nShould the length of the mercury alter in various situations, it is evident\nthat the capacity of the bore is not uniform throughout, and the tube must\nbe rejected. In blowing the bulb, an elastic ball, containing air, is used.\nThe ordinary method of blowing glass bulbs by means of the breath is found\nto cause the introduction of moisture into the tube.\n\nThe size of the bulb has next to be considered. A large bulb renders the\ninstrument slow in its indications of change, owing to the quantity of\nmercury that has to be acted on. On the other hand, if the bulb is too\nsmall, it will not contain sufficient mercury to register high\ntemperatures, unless the bore is exceedingly fine.\n\nThe shape of the bulb is of importance. Spherical bulbs are best adapted to\nresist the varying pressure of the atmosphere; while cylindrical bulbs\nexpose larger surfaces of mercury, and are therefore preferred for more\ndelicate instruments. Various plans have been suggested in order to obtain\nthermometers of extreme sensitiveness for delicate experiments. Some have\nbeen made with very small thin bulbs, to contain a very small quantity of\nmercury; but in these the indicating column is generally so fine, that it\ncan only be read by the aid of a powerful lens. Instruments have been\ncontrived with spiral or coiled tubular bulbs; but the thickness of glass\nrequired to keep these in shape nullifies the effect sought to be\nobtained--namely, instantaneous action. Messrs. Negretti & Zambra, the\nwell-known meteorological instrument-makers, have recently succeeded in\nconstructing a thermometer which combines sensitiveness and quickness of\naction, and which presents a good visible column. The bulb of this\nthermometer is of a gridiron form. The reservoir is made of glass, so thin\nthat it cannot be blown; it can only be formed by means of a spirit-lamp;\nyet its shape gives it such rigidity that its indications are not affected\nby altering its position or by standing it on its bulb. The reservoirs of\nthe most delicate of these instruments contain about nine inches of\nexcessively thin cylindrical glass, the outer diameter of which is not more\nthan the twentieth of an inch, and, owing to the large surface thus\npresented to the air, the indications are positively instantaneous. This\nform of thermometer was constructed expressly to meet the requirements of\nscientific balloon ascents, to enable the observer to take thermometric\nreadings at precise elevations. It was contemplated to procure a metallic\nthermometer; but, on the production of this perfect instrument, the idea\nwas abandoned.\n\nThe shape and size of the bulb having been determined, the workman next\nproceeds to fill the tube. This is effected by heating the bulb while the\nopen end of the tube is embedded in mercury. Upon allowing the bulb to\ncool, the atmospheric pressure drives some mercury into the tube. The\nprocess is continued until sufficient mercury has entered. The mercury used\nin filling should be quite pure, and should have been freed from moisture\nand air by recent boiling. It is again boiled in the tube after filling;\nand when the expulsion of air and moisture is deemed complete, and while\nthe mercury fills the tube, the artist dexterously removes it from the\nsource of heat, and at the same moment closes it with the flame of a\nblow-pipe. It sometimes happens that in spite of every care a little air\nstill remains in the tube. Its presence is detected by inverting the tube,\nwhen, if the mercury falls to the extremity (or nearly so) of the bore,\nsome air is present, which, of course, must be removed.\n\nThe thermometer, after being filled, has to be graduated. Common\nthermometers are fixed to a scale on which the degrees are marked; but the\ngraduation of standards is engraved on the stem itself, in order to insure\nthe greatest possible accuracy. The first steps in graduating are to\nascertain the exact freezing-point and the exact and to mark on the tube\nthe height of the mercury at these points.\n{709}\nThe freezing-point can be determined with comparative ease. Melting ice has\nalways the same temperature in all places and under all circumstances,\nprovided only that the water from which the ice is congealed is pure. The\nbulb and the lower portion of the tube are immersed in melting ice; the\nmercury descends; the point where it remains stationary  is the\nfreezing-point, and is marked on the tube.\n\nThe determination of the boiling-point is more difficult. The boiling-point\nvaries with the pressure of the atmosphere. The normal boiling temperature\nof water is fixed at a barometric pressure of 29.922 inches of mercury\nhaving the temperature of melting ice, in the latitude of 45, and at the\nlevel of the sea. Of course, these conditions rarely if ever co-exist; and\nconsequently the boiling-point has to be corrected for errors, and reduced\nfor latitude. Tables of vapor tension, as they are called, computed from\naccurate experiments, are used for this purpose. Regnault's tables, the\nmost recent, are considered the best.\n\nAn approximate boiling-point is first obtained by actual experiment. A\ncopper boiler is used, which has at its top an open cylinder two or three\ninches in diameter, and of sufficient length to allow a thermometer to be\nintroduced into it, without touching the water in the boiler. The cylinder\nis surrounded by a second one, fixed to the top of the boiler, but not\nentering it, the two being about an inch apart. The outer cylinder is\nintended to protect the inner one from contact with the cold external air.\nThe thermometer to be graduated is placed in the inner cylinder, and held\nthere by a thong of India-rubber. As the vapor of the boiling water rises\nfrom the boiler into the cylinder, it envelops the thermometer, and causes\nthe mercury to ascend. As the mercury rises, the tube is gradually lowered,\nso as to keep the top of the mercury just visible above the cylinder. When\nthe mercury becomes stationary, the position of the top of the column is\nmarked on the tube; and the boiling-point, subject to corrections for\nerrors, is obtained.\n\nThe freezing and boiling points being determined, the scale is applied by\ndividing the length between the two points into a certain number of equal\ndegrees. This operation is performed by a machine called a dividing-engine,\nwhich engraves degrees of any required width with extreme accuracy.\n\nThe scale used in the United Kingdom, in the British colonies, and in North\nAmerica, is that known as Fahrenheit's. Fahrenheit was a philosophical\ninstrument maker of Amsterdam. About the year 1724, he invented the scale\nwith which his name is associated. The freezing point of his scale is 32\ndegrees, the boiling-point 212 degrees, and the intermediate space is\ncomposed of 180 degrees. This peculiar division was thus derived. The\nlowest cold observed in Iceland was the zero of Fahrenheit. When the\nthermometer stood at zero, it was calculated to contain a volume of mercury\nrepresented by the figures 11,124. When plunged into melting snow, the\nmercury expanded to a volume represented by 11,156; hence the intermediate\nspace was divided into thirty-two equal portions or degrees, and thirty-two\nwas taken as the freezing-point of water. [Footnote 246] Similarly, at the\nboiling-point, the quick-silver expanded to 11,336. Fahrenheit's scale is\nconvenient in some respects. The meteorological observer is seldom troubled\nwith negative signs, the divisions of the scale are numerous, and tenths of\ndegrees give all the minuteness usually requisite.\n\n    [Footnote 246: Mr. Balfour Stewart has lately concluded a series of\n    experiments at the Kew Observatory, by which he has accurately\n    determined the freezing-point of mercury. The experiments, conducted\n    with great care, have shown that the freezing-point of mercury, like\n    that of water, is constant, and that it denotes a temperature of -37.93\n    F. The freezing-point of mercury will now be used as a third point in\n    graduating thermometers which are intended to register extreme\n    temperatures.]\n\n{710}\n\nIn 1742, Celsius, a Swede, proposed zero for the freezing-point, and 100\ndegrees for the boiling-point, all temperatures below freezing being\ndistinguished by the negative sign (-). This scale is known as the\nCentigrade. It is in use in France, Sweden, and in the south of Europe; it\nhas the advantage of decimal notation, with the disadvantage of the\nnegative sign.\n\nReaumur's scale is in use in Spain, Switzerland, and Germany. It differs\nfrom the Centigrade in this, that the freezing and boiling points are\nseparated by 80 degrees instead of 100 degrees.\n\nIt would not be difficult to construct a scale which should combine all the\nadvantages of Fahrenheit's and of the Centigrade. Freezing-point should be\nfixed at 100 degrees; and boiling-point should be fixed at as many hundred\ndivisions or degrees above 100 degrees as might be agreed on by practical\nmen as most convenient. The advantages of decimal notation would thus\nremain as in the Centigrade scale, and the minus sign would be got rid of.\n\nAnd now, having applied the scale, and having exercised every precaution,\ncan we congratulate ourselves on possessing a perfect instrument?\nDisheartening as it may appear, the standard instrument of to-day may not\nbe accurate to-morrow. It is more than probable that the freezing point\nwill become displaced. This curious phenomenon has never been\nsatisfactorily explained. Messrs. Negretti & Zambra, in their treatise on\nMeteorological Instruments, (a work which abounds with information of a\nmost interesting nature,) say, in reference to displacement of the freezing\npoint, that \"either the prolonged effect of the atmospheric pressure upon\nthe thin glass of the bulbs of thermometers, or the gradual restoration of\nthe equilibrium of the particles of the glass after having been greatly\ndisturbed by the operation of boiling the mercury, seems to be the cause of\nthe freezing-points of standard thermometers reading from a few tenths to a\ndegree higher in the course of some years.\" To obviate this small error, it\nis the practice of the makers in question \"to place the tubes aside for\nabout six months before fixing the freezing-point, in order to give time\nfor the glass to regain its former state of aggregation. The making of\naccurate thermometers is a task attended with many difficulties, the\nprincipal one being the liability of the zero or freezing-point varying\nconstantly; so much so, that a thermometer that is perfectly correct\nto-day, if immersed in boiling-water, will be no longer accurate; at least,\nit will take some time before it again settles into its normal state. Then,\nagain, if a thermometer is recently blown, filled, and graduated\nimmediately, or, at least, before some months have elapsed, though every\ncare may have been taken with the production of the instrument, it will\nrequire some correction; so that the instrument, however carefully made,\nshould from time to time be plunged into finely-pounded ice, in order to\nverify the freezing-point.\"\n\n------\n\n  From The Month.\n\n  The Tuscan Peasants And The Maremna.\n\n\nThe Maremna is, in summer, the word that drives the sleep from many an\nItalian woman's pillow as she thinks of the perils that her husband, her\nbrother, or her betrothed is encountering as he reaps the fertile harvest,\nand gains, at the risk of his life, the wages that will enable him and his\nto live through the winter. \"A me mi pare una Maremna amara\" is the burden\nof the song with which many a child is rocked to sleep. And with reason.\nThe Maremna is the Littorale or shores of the Tuscan Sea; and there the\ncoasts that bound the blue waters of the Mediterranean are lined by tangled\njungles and pestilential marshes, whence at each sunset arises the baleful\nfever, which, passing in scorn over the ruined cities that its pernicious\nbreath has depopulated, creeps along like the sleuth-hound until it finds\nthe hardy mountaineer returning from his day of labor, and smites him with\nthe wasting blight which saps his strength.\n{711}\nYet year after year do the sons of Italy descend with unwearied energy to\nthese valleys and deadly plains, to reap the crops that have grown uncared\nfor but luxuriantly, death and disease stalking behind them, and the fear\nof falling victims to the power of the evil air urging them to increased\nexertions, in order that they may earlier return and share their scanty\ngains with their wives and children. They march gayly, too, often singing\nalternately in their rough monotone the songs they have composed\nthemselves, cheerful in the consciousness that they are fulfilling a duty;\nand this although knowing that they have to fight a foe against whom\nneither courage nor energy nor strength can avail, but whose damp breath\nappears to draw the marrow from their bones and fill them with fever;\nsometimes sending them weak and emaciated, useless as workmen, to their\nnative homes; sometimes in a few hours laying their bodies low, to lie, far\nfrom family and friends, in unconsecrated ground.\n\nWhen the Italian peasants speak of the Maremna, they mean that district of\nItaly which runs along the shores of the Mediterranean from Monte Nebo and\nthe mountains south of Leghorn over the flat marshes of the Tuscan shores,\nand the desolate promontory of Monte Cervino, as far as the sunny shores of\nSorento and Amalfi. To the south of the Tuscan frontier the (to English\nears) more familiar name of Campagna is applied to the whole of that\nportion of the Maremna which lies within the ancient Agro Romano; still\nfurther to the south the word Maremna becomes identical with what are\ncalled the Pontine Marshes. The mountaineers of Modena, Parma, and Tuscany\ncall the country which they periodically visit, whether south or north,\nMaremna: the inhabitants frequently give it a local name. Undefined as are\nits boundaries, and almost unknown to geography as is its name, its\ncharacteristics are much the same throughout; everywhere we meet the same\nwide plains, tangled jungles, ruined cities, wooded hills, ever-recurring\nswamps and morasses; throughout the whole district the same terrible ague,\nthe same desolating fever, the fatal influence of the malaria, rage with\ndestructive effect. Although often characterized as a swamp or a marsh, yet\nthe Maremna by no means consists of plains like the fens; on the contrary,\nthere are several high mountains, which run down even into the sea: the\nland near the coast is, however, in general flat.\n\nPart of the Maremna is cultivated, and produces grain; the greater portion,\nhowever, is kept for pasture. As soon as the herbage begins to fail on the\nmountains of Tuscany, the peasants drive their flocks down to the pastures\nof the Maremna. There they remain six or seven months. The women and\nchildren are left at home, and the men and boys during this time bear all\nthe privations, hardships, and dangers. An Italian poet exclaims: \"Alas,\nhow often do they return home bowed down by fever! how often do they never\nreturn! for, where they sought to earn the sustenance of their families,\nthey meet with death.\" While some descend with their flocks and act as\nshepherds, the majority are there for the purpose of cutting wood, making\ncharcoal and potash; their last work is to reap the hay and corn, and then\nthose who are left alive return. Part of their wages has already been sent\nhome; the remainder they bring with them.\n\nHalfway between Leghorn and Pisa stands the old church of St. Pier d'Arena.\nIt is very large, and built as nearly as possible to resemble the form of a\nship. In old days the sea reached this point, and the name 'Arena' points\nto the strand on which the church was built. Tradition states it was here\nSt. Peter landed on his visit to Italy, and the church was built to\ncommemorate the event.\n\n{712}\n\nOne October, now many years ago, after a visit to this church, I met a\ntroop of shepherds and their flocks on their march to the Maremna. The\nprocession must have covered half a mile of ground. Never yet have I looked\non a troop of these sunburnt children of the south as they were wending\ntheir way to a land whence all would not return, without saluting them even\nas I would a forlorn hope advancing to attack the breach of a fortress.\nSoldiers of duty, \"Morituros vos saluto.\" And higher is the courage and\ndeeper is the love that impels these brave men, singing as they go, to\nencounter the fever and thirst and pestilential air of the Maremna, than\nthat which animates many even of those soldiers who fight for God and king\nand fatherland.\n\nTears rose to the eyes of my companion as they passed. The flocks and herds\nmarched first, all \"ruddled,\" that is, marked with red, to show to whom\nthey belonged. The procession was headed by the bell-wethers, with their\ncurved horns; in close attendance upon them are tall, handsome,\nwoolly-haired sheep-dogs, of a larger breed than ours, and with their necks\ndefended by a collar studded with nails, the projecting points of which\noften turn the scale in the case of an encounter with the wolves. Nor are\nthese the only robbers against which these vigilant watchers defend the\nsheep: if a human beast of prey, in shape of a thief, lies lurking in the\nditches that border the roadside, watching an opportunity for seizing a\nlamb, they detect him and compel him to show himself. At night, too, they\nmarch round the nets that enclose the little encampment, and give the weary\nguardians time to sleep. Before they go to sleep, the peasants light a\nfire, and make cheese and ricotti, (a sort of Devonshire cream,) with which\nthey repay the owner of the soil for leave to encamp on his grounds. As the\nmilk is far more plentiful on their return in May, a spirit of natural,\neven-handed justice makes them generally contrive, both going and\nreturning, to halt at the same stations. A necessary member of this company\nis the poet, or scribe, (_scrivano_.) To him is entrusted the task of\ncomposing, or else writing down and correcting, the \"Respects\" which each\nTuscan shepherd is bound to send to his sweetheart. Collections of these\nrustic poems have lately been made and published. They are full of pathos\nand tenderness; the heart of the young exile yearns not only for his\n_dama_, (sweetheart,) but for the beauties of the country he has left\nbehind him. Not his the harp to sing of festive banquets or goblets crowned\nwith flowers; he loves the streams of fresh water, the flowering grass, the\ncultivated terraces, the pure air of his mountain home. Nature herself, and\nsorrow, the nurses of beauty, have breathed on him a spirit of truth and\npoetry as distinct from the sickly sentimentality and vice so often found\nin modern verse, as is the wild rider of the Arabian desert from the puny\njockey who wins our handicaps. Strange, indeed, it would be if these poems,\nwritten in danger, absence, and exile, possessed not a fragrance all their\nown--one, however, that seems to escape not only in the most literal\ntranslation, but even when, under a slightly different form, they appear in\nthe works of their more highly educated countrymen.\n\nIndependently of the troops that march almost patriarchally with their\nflocks and herds, like Abraham and Jacob, peasants often go down in gangs\nof five or six to look for work; sometimes, though rarely, necessity\ncompels them to take with them their wives, and, if grown up, their\nchildren. In this case they almost invariably travel in one of the long,\nnarrow, covered cars of the country. The men trudge along in groups of five\nor six, with their best clothes in a bundle slung to a stick, and, if by\nany possible contrivance it can be managed, with a gun upon their shoulder;\nfor game of all kinds, roe, deer, wild boars, porcupines, woodcock, and\nsnipe abound.\n{713}\nI once saw these groups arriving, one after another, at a seaport town near\nthe Gulf of Genoa, until they reached the number of 500 or 600: these all\nsailed in a steamer to Corsica, to till the rich ground of that island. In\na fortnight the steamer returned, and freighted itself with an equally\nlarge cargo of laborers. Many go to Sardinia, a still more unhealthy\nisland: their chief occupation there is mostly to fell the forests which\nhave been bought by speculators. Some find work at the Grand Ducal\nIronworks at Follonica, and at the mines in the interior of the island of\nElba; others help to till the Maremna, the soil of which is so fertile\nthat, if it lies one year fallow, it requires but to have the seed thrown\nbroadcast over it in order to yield every alternate year, and without\nfurther tillage, a most magnificent crop. Others help to clear away the\nforest and the thicket, and prepare the ground for future years, and thus\naid in the great works for reclaiming this land of jungle and fever that\nhave been now carried on for so many years; others simply to make charcoal\nor potash, and to live by selling game at the neighboring towns. To sing\nthe songs of their native villages is their chief pleasure. In the daytime\none man will begin to sing at his work, and then another catches the\nrefrain, and begins in turn. At night, too, round the fire, (which is said\nto scare away the fever,) they sing songs and tell their old stories, and\nrepeat their legends of saints and miracles. Thus it happens that they\nreturn to their native villages, speaking the pure Tuscan language\nundefiled by the patois of Corsica or the miserable jargon of the other\nislands.\n\nThe fever often attacks them, and they have to return home with their work\nhalf done; often a father will have to send back his son, fearful that he\nmay die on the road, but conscious that, though he seems hardly able to\ncrawl, the lad's only chance of safety lies in his reaching the pure air of\nthe mountains before it is too late.\n\nIf all goes well, they arrive at home by the 24th of June, the feast of St.\nJohn. As they near their native place, the more active and eager members of\nthe different parties press on; and as soon as they are descried from the\nvillage, a group is formed to meet them and welcome them back; then, too,\ndo the wives learn what their husbands have earned and whether they have\nhad a good year.\n\nWe may fancy the inhabitants who have remained at home, assembling at the\nold tower that bars the entrance to the village, eagerly asking and hearing\nthe news of the winter. \"Old Giuseppe\" has had a good year; Peppe da\nCacciono has had a touch of the maremna, but he got better; Renzo of\nCognocco's dead, died of \"la perniciosa.\" \"Poor fellow! God rest his soul!\"\nis the reply. \"He had a bad attack last year; we never thought to see him\nagain.\" And then they will visit Renzo's family and condole with them.\n\nNot only do they bring back news to their own, but to all the villages that\nthey pass through. Before the eve of St. John you may often, as the Abb\u00e9\nTigri says, \"meet a group of five or six, burnt nearly black with the sun,\nin their worst dress, and wearied out by the long journey. _Ben\ntornati_, welcome back!\" you cry. \"Do you come from far? Poor fellows,\nhow tired you seem!\" \"It is nothing now, sir,\" they say, \"for we are going\nhome; but it was a hard time this spring.\" And, with that smile of singular\nbrightness which no poverty or suffering seems able to drive from their\nface, they pass by.\n\nThe maremna is more accessible now than when we last visited and travelled\nthrough it. The works that were originated and so sedulously carried on by\nthe former government have been continued by the present, and have\nfertilized and rendered comparatively healthy large portions of the country\nwhich were formerly desolate and pestilential: a railroad has been made,\nwhich familiarizes many a modern traveller with the country under its\npresent aspects, but tempts him to hurry by much that is interesting and\nwould have rewarded a longer sojourn.\n{714}\nWe may endeavor in some future number to describe the impression made upon\nus by this portion of Etruria, and to lead the reader\n\n  \"By lordly Volaterra,\n     Where scowls the far-famed hold\n   Piled by the hands of giants\n     For god-like kings of old;\n   By sea-girt Populonia,\n     Whose sentinels descry\n   Sardinia's snowy mountain-tops\n     Fringing the southern sky.\n\n  \"By the drear bank of Ufens,\n     Where flights of marsh-fowl play,\n   And buffaloes lie wallowing\n     Through the hot summer day;\n   By the gigantic watch-towers,\n     No work of earthly men,\n   Whence Cora's sentinels o'erlook\n     The never-ending fen,\n   To the Laurentian jungle,\n     The wild-hog's reedy home.\"\n\n------\n\n  Miscellany.\n\n\n_Pagan Irish Sepulchral Pillar-Stones_.--That standing stones were\nused during pagan times in Ireland as sepulchral monuments appears certain;\nfor we find in the description of the royal cemetery of Brugh-na-Boinne, as\ngiven in the Dinnsenchus contained in the Book of Ballymote, fol. 190,\ntranslated and published by the late Dr. Petrie, in his treatise on the\nRound Towers of Ireland, the following: \"The _pillar-stone_ of Buidi\nthe son of Muiredh, where his head is interred.\" We also find quoted by the\nsame eminent antiquary, from the Leabhar-na-h-hide, an account of the death\nof Fothadh in the battle of Ollarba, fought, according to the Four Masters,\nin A.D. 285, with a description of his grave, in which is recorded, \"And\nthere is a _pillar-stone_ at his carn; and an ogumis on the end of the\n_pillar-stone_ which is in the earth.\" The earliest sepulchral\nmonuments mentioned in the Annals of the Four Masters are _carns_,\n(large heaps of stones,) and _murs_ or _tuiams_, (mounds of\nearth,) now more generally known by the name \"barrow.\" However, that\npillar-stones may even then have been in use appears probable; for in the\nopening paragraph of those Annals there is, \"From Fintan is named Feart\nFintain\" (that is, Fintain's grave) \"over Loch Deirgdheire.\" The place is\nstill called by this name, and is situated on the northern slopes of the\nArra mountains, overlooking Lough Derg, county Tipperary. There is a\n_pillar-stone_ at the grave, from which the hill is called\nLaghtea.--G. Henry Kinahan, _in Athenoeum_.\n\n\n\n_The Monks' Model Farm in Algeria_.--The Mois Agricole contains an\ninteresting account of the Trappist Model Farm at Cheragas, in Algeria. In\n1843, Marshal Bugeaud granted the Trappists one thousand two hundred\nhectares of land, on which, two years afterward, three hundred thousand\nfrancs were expended by the order in buildings. The stock of animals on the\nfarm is now magnificent. The Trappist cows each yield sixteen quarts of\nmilk a day, in a country where the native cows do not yield more than\ngoats; and the sheep and pigs are equally fine. A large quantity of honey\nis also produced at Cheragas. There are in the establishment one hundred\nand eight monks, of whom twenty-two belong to the choir, and ten are\npriests. Twenty lay workmen are constantly employed at the convent, and\nevery poor or sick wayfarer is entitled to claim or receive aid or work\nthere. When the emperor visited the establishment, he discovered, to his\nsurprise that upward of a dozen of the monks had been soldiers of the\nimperial guard. They explained to him that, after the severe discipline and\nsimple fare of the French army, the Trappist rule, ascetic as it is, did\nnot appear harsh to them.\n\n------\n\n{715}\n\n\n    Original.\n\n    New Publications.\n\n\n  The Monks Of The West, from St. Benedict to St. Bernard.\n  By the Count de Montalembert, Member of the French Academy.\n  Authorized translation. Vols. I., II., III. William Blackwood & Sons,\n  Edinburgh and London, 1861, 1867. For sale by the Catholic Publication\n  Society, 126 Nassau street, New York.\n\nThese volumes bring down the history of monasticism to the year 633. The\nthird contains the history of monasticism in England, Ireland, and\nScotland, embracing a very full account of St. Columba and the institute of\nIona. It is very appropriately dedicated to the Earl of Demarara. The ill\nhealth of the author has delayed the completion of his great work. We\nunderstand, however, that two more volumes are published in France, and are\nnow being translated into English. The writings of Montalembert belong to\nthe highest class of French literature. The present work treats of a topic\nof the greatest importance and interest to all students and educated\npersons, but especially to all devout Catholics. English literature has\nresounded for three centuries with calumnies, denunciations, and senseless,\nignorant ravings against monastic orders. Of late, we begin to hear a\ndifferent story from the most enlightened portion of Protestant writers.\nThese writers are, however, careful to qualify what they say in praise of\nthe nunneries of former times by a somewhat wearisome and monotonous\nreiteration of the assurance that monastic institutions are worn out,\nobsolete, contrary to progress, and unfit for the present age. It is time,\ntherefore, for the Catholic voice to make itself heard on the subject. The\nillustrious and noble author is a believing and devout Catholic as well as\na learned historian and a most eloquent writer. His work is well\ntranslated, and published in a style suitable to its choice excellence. It\nshould find a place in the library of every clergyman, every religious\nhouse, seminary, and college, and on the table of every educated Catholic\nlayman. We would recommend it also to our Protestant friends, were we not\naware that most of them are afraid or ashamed to buy a Catholic book. Those\nof them at least who pretend to agree with the church of the first six\ncenturies ought not to be afraid of it, as it comes down no later than A.D.\n633.\n\n\n    The Trinity\n\n    Control Your Passions\n\n    Heroism In The Sick-room\n\n    Is The Sacrifice Of The Mass Of Human Or Of Divine Institution?\n\n    Why Did God Become Man?\n\n  Being Tracts   Nos. 20, 21, 22, 23, and 24 of the Catholic Publication\n  Society's Tracts. New York: The Catholic Publication Society, 126 Nassau\n  street.\n\nThe Catholic Publication Society continues to issue its useful and\ninstructive tracts. We give above the titles of those last published. Our\nreaders will find them to be in every respect equal to the former ones.\nThey will also be pleased to learn that the Society has obtained a House of\nPublication, established in a first-class locality, No. 126 Nassau street,\nNew York, where all its publications can be had, together with all Catholic\nbooks and pamphlets published either in this country or in England and\nIreland. The Society now everywhere meets with approval and encouragement.\nRev. Father Hecker lately visited the cities of Pittsburg, Cincinnati,\nWheeling, and Harrisburg, at which places he lectured in favor of the\nSociety. The Rt. Rev. Bishops and Rev. clergy gave him the most cordial\nreceptions, and very generous contributions were made for the object in\nPittsburg, Cincinnati, and Wheeling. Upon his return he lectured also at\nSt. Peter's church, Brooklyn, with the like success. Depots for the\nSociety's publications are now established at Mr. Quigley's in Pittsburg,\nand at Benziger Bros. in Cincinnati, at which all that is issued by the\nSociety can be procured for the same price as they are sold in New-York.\n\nFather Hecker also intends visiting Europe this summer, to form relations\nwith the publishing houses of Dublin, London, and Paris, and will accept\nthe invitation proffered him to assist at the great Catholic Congress which\nis to meet at Malines next September.\n\n{716}\n\nOur readers are already aware, from the article on Catholic Congresses in\nour last number, how much has been done by the Belgian Congresses for the\ndiffusion of cheap Catholic literature. We trust Father Hecker may be able\nto derive much useful information from what he will see and hear at\nMalines, and turn it to good account for the furtherance of our own efforts\nin the same direction. We are much gratified to see that the project of a\nCatholic Congress suggested by our article has been warmly applauded on all\nsides. Several of our journals, among which we notice the _Freeman's\nJournal_, the _Boston Pilot_, the _New York Tablet_, and the\n_Catholic Standard_ of Philadelphia, have noticeable editorial\narticles on the subject in its favor. It is important, in case a congress\nshould be convened in our own country, that some one should attend this one\nin Belgium, in order to obtain a knowledge of the plan and method of\norganizing and conducting these assemblies.\n\n\n  The First Age of Christianity and the Church.\n  By John Ignatius D\u00f6llinger, D.D.,\n  Professor of Ecclesiastical History\n  in the University of Munich, etc.\n  Translated by H. N. Oxenham, M.A. Oxford.\n  London: Allen & Co., 1860.\n  2 vols. 12mo. New York: The Catholic\n  Publication Society.\n\nThese two volumes are worthy of the perusal of every scholar. They form the\nintroductory portion of D\u00f6llinger's great work on Ecclesiastical History,\nnow in course of preparation, and are replete with the results of his vast\nlearning. At the same time, the reader of ordinary intelligence and\neducation need not be afraid of them. They are not dry or pedantic, but\nwritten in a style of natural simplicity and freshness which makes them\nattractive and entertaining as well as instructive. The translation, by an\nexcellent scholar and good writer, is extremely well done, and the\nmechanical execution is in the best London style. Even the Dublin Review\nhas condescended to praise this work, and therefore those who might suspect\nthat it contains any peculiar opinions of what is called the 'Germanizing'\nschool need not fear anything on that score. Dr. D\u00f6llinger is a sound,\northodox divine, and sincerely loyal to the holy see. The Roman theologians\nhave controverted some of his opinions very strongly, but they have never\ncalled in question his orthodoxy, and we have good reason to believe that\nthe Holy Father regards him with esteem and paternal affection as a true\nson of the church, who is doing her good service. The organs of that\ntheological school in Germany which Dr. D\u00f6llinger is supposed to sympathize\nwith the least always speak of him in the most respectful terms, even when\ncriticising some of his statements very unsparingly. Some of our Catholic\nfriends in England are not quite so charitable and moderate as the more\nthoroughly ripened theologians of Europe. They seem disposed to erect\ntheological doctrines never defined or imposed by the authority of the holy\nsee into a standard of orthodoxy, and to question the thorough loyalty of\nthose who do not fully agree with themselves. Odious terms, such as the\nnickname of 'mini-misers,' invented by that very dogmatical publication the\nDublin Review, are applied to them, and, in general, a quarrelsome kind of\ndomestic polemics seems getting quite the vogue among a portion of the\nCatholic writers of England. We agree with F. Perrone, the great Roman\ntheologian, that this is an evil much to be deprecated, and likely to do\nmischief. We do not sympathize with all that Dr. D\u00f6llinger has written, but\nwe feel bound to condemn the disparaging tone in which some of the writers\nalluded to are wont to speak of him, and of others like him, who venture to\nmake use of the liberty allowed by the church respecting questions not\nfinally decided by authority. Happily, the present work is one about which\nthere can be no difference of opinion. It is a thoroughly learned, and at\nthe same time a readable and plain history of the first foundation of\nChristianity by Christ and his apostles; and we feel sure that it will\ncontribute much to the edification of all who read it.\n\n\n  Poems. By Eliza Allen Starr. 12mo, pp.\n  224. Philadelphia: H. McGrath.\n\nMiss Starr is already favorably known to the readers of THE CATHOLIC WORLD\nby various poetical contributions to our pages. She writes with remarkable\ngrace and tenderness, with a very beautiful simplicity of style, and a\nreligious elevation of thought which ought to make her volume welcome in\nevery good Christian family.\n{717}\nThe poetic impulse with her is neither a morbid yearning to sing imaginary\nwoes, nor a mere fancy for the jingle of sweet words. Her verses express\ngenuine and healthy feeling, and their tone is most melodious when her harp\nis strung to sacred themes. There is at times a mild tinge of melancholy in\nthe book--a melancholy as of one who has suffered and struggled; but\nthrough it all shines the radiance of religious happiness, as though it\nwere not all imaginary which the author sings in the character of \"The\nSacristan\":\n\n  \"Within thine altar's shade,\n   Lord, I my nest have made,\n       No more to roam:\n   Thine own abiding-place\n   Is mine for future space,\n       My rest, my home.\n\n    ....\n\n  \"The earth, the air, the sea\n   Rejoice to serve with me,\n       With me to wait;\n   For prostrate nature sighs\n   To see her Lord disguise\n       His heavenly state.\"\n\nThe little poem entitled \"Espousals\" is also full of real, unaffected\npiety:\n\n  \"Haste to thy nuptials sweet\n     With glowing feet,\n   Thy inmost chamber fair,\n     O heart! prepare,\n   Therein, with joy, to bring\n     Thy spouse and king.\n\n  \"I see his coming light\n     Disperse my night!\n   O radiant orb of day!\n     Thou may'st delay\n   To quench thy feeble rays\n     In heaven's own blaze.\n\n  \"Lo! seraph tongues of flame\n     Announce that name\n   Whose echoed sweetness clings\n     Where'er it rings;\n   And thus informs with sound\n     Remotest bound.\n\n  \"O happy ears! attend,\n     And lowlier bend!\n   I feel his noiseless pace\n     Through heaven's blue space;\n   The stars but strew his floor,\n     And thus adore.\n\n  \"Celestial presence dear!\n     Thou Godhead near!\n   I yield my soul, my sense;\n     Omnipotence!\n   Behold, prepared, thy throne;\n     Oh! claim thine own!\"\n\nIn a different strain, but very pretty and delicate, is the following\n\"Song of Welcome\":\n\n  \"My lonely days grew lonelier,\n     The shadows spread apace,\n   When on me, like a morning sun,\n     Arose thy smiling face:\n   Sad tears, sad tears, my joyful cheeks,\n     Keep not of you a trace.\n\n  \"The summer skies which o'er me bend\n     In beauty so benign\n   Are not so blue as the happy eyes\n     Now beaming into mine!\n   Heart's love, heart's love, what sun could cheer\n     If thine should cease to shine!\"\n\nWe commend Miss Starr's little volume with all heartiness, and we rejoice\nthat American Catholic literature has received so welcome an addition to\nits scanty poetical stores. We ought not to omit a word of compliment to\nthe publisher for the liberal manner in which he has brought it out. The\nrich cream paper, the clear type, and the excellent binding are signs of a\nnew era in the Catholic book manufacture at which we all must rejoice.\n\n\n  First Historical Transformations of Christianity.\n  From the French of Athanase Coquerel the Younger,\n  by E. P. Evans, Ph.D. 12mo. Boston: W. V. Spencer, 1867.\n\nThis is a very weak and flippant production from the pen of a French\nrationalistic Protestant, who imagines that he is a philosopher of history.\nHe pretends to show us various forms which pure Christianity has been made\nto assume by the different apostles, doctors, or sects who in turn took\nupon themselves to be its expositors. Of course, as Monsieur Coquerel the\nYounger would think, they each and all made bad work of it, from St. Peter\ndown to the last publishing medium of spiritism. It is truly deplorable\nthat the pure Christianity which Monsieur Coquerel the Younger now sees in\nall its simplicity should have had the misfortune to be thus Judaized,\nHellenized, Paulized, Peterized, Joannized, Romanized, and diversely\n_ized_ by the Fathers of the church and heretics; and may we not also\nadd, Protestantized and Coquerelized?\n\n{718}\n\nLet us see what is the Christianity of Jesus according to Monsieur\nCoquerel's gospel: \"In short, the whole instruction of Jesus can be\nincluded in the following formula: the work to be accomplished is the reign\nof God in all consciences; the universal motive through which this reign is\nto be established, the essential fact of this reign, is love, of which the\ntwofold manifestation is pardon and new or eternal life; and these two\nmanifestations presuppose two facts, whose certainty has no need of proof--\nsin and immortality. Thus reducing all Christianity to a single formula, it\nmay be said that Jesus revealed to all sinners the eternal compassion of\nthe God of holiness, their Father.\" (P. 65.) This cant about pardon and the\nnew life in the mouth of one who rejects the divinity of Jesus Christ, who\nis unwilling to impose the belief in his miracles upon any sincere\nChristian, (_sic_,) and who thinks the doctrine of hell is rank\nnonsense, would need explanation, did we not gather from a previous\nsentence that Monsieur Coquerel the Younger is as shallow a theologian as\nhe is a philosopher. Speaking of our Lord, he says: \"He has such an\nabsolute certainty of the power of God, and of the efficacy of the good and\nthe true; such a full confidence in the perfectibility of guilty man; such\na high esteem for human nature, _wholly sinful_ as it is, that, in his\neyes, the elevation, the healing, the salvation, the enfranchisement of\nevery soul that is willing to return to God and love him are not an object\nof the slightest doubt.\" (P. 64.) Beside this we place one other quotation,\nwhich we think will suffice: \"Liberal Protestants are constantly asked\nwhere they would fix the boundary which separates Christians from those who\nare not Christians. _Each man has the right to solve this formidable\nproblem in the light of his own conscience!_\" (P. 75.) And this man\npretends to lecture the world for transforming Christianity to suit its own\nnotions! We would advise Monsieur Coquerel the Younger to review his logic.\n\n\n\n  Critical And Social Essays,\n  reprinted from the New York Nation.\n  12mo, pp. 230. New York: Leypoldt & Holt.\n\nIt is a good deal to say of a newspaper nowadays that it is possible to\ncollect from its columns in the course of two years a whole volume of\nessays passably well worth preserving. And many of the essays in this neat\nlittle book are much better than passable. Of course one does not look for\ndeep philosophy or strikingly original thought in the ephemeral papers\ndashed off for a week's entertainment, and sent flying over the country on\nthe wings of the periodical press. It is enough if the subject be\nattractive, the argument mainly just, the style fluent, and now and then\nstriking. The essays from _The Nation_ generally fulfil these\nconditions, and afford very agreeable recreation for odd intervals of\nleisure. The cold and almost cynical spirit of criticism, and the utter\nlack of enthusiasm and sympathy, which have done so much to deprive _The\nNation_ of that influence in public affairs to which its literary merit\nentitles it, appear in a more favorable light in the pages of a book than\nin the columns of a periodical. Book-readers have time to appreciate graces\nof style, and to roll sweet morsels of thought and phrase under their\ntongues; but the journalist in America must deal with a different public,\nand must serve them with coarser materials. His weapon must be not the\nscalpel or the lancet, but the axe and the bludgeon.\n\n\n  Fathers And Sons. A Novel.\n  By Ivan Sergheievitch Turgenef.\n  Translated from the Russian, with the approval\n  of the author, by Eugene Schuyler, Ph. D.\n  12mo, pp. 248. New-York: Leypoldt & Holt.\n\nThe object of this novel is to contrast the generation which is just\npassing away in Russia with the generation that is taking its place--the\nold lords of the soil, still half-bewildered by the inroads of civilization\nupon their semi-savage life, and the young party of progress, intoxicated\nwith the new ideas of emancipation, the new learning, the new habits, and\nthe new morality which is fast breaking up the old Tartar feudalism. We can\nwell believe the translator's assertion that a tempest was raised by the\nappearance of the book in Russia. The portraits are flattering to neither\ngeneration, and they are so life-like that it is impossible to doubt they\nare substantially accurate representations of both. As a work of fiction,\nFathers and Sons is particularly interesting to us. Artistically speaking,\nit is a very good novel indeed, and it is moreover almost the first glimpse\nwe have had of the fictitious literature of a country toward which\nAmericans are, whether rightly or wrongly, especially attracted. It gives\nus a better view of daily life in Russia than any book of travel or\nobservation with which we are acquainted--better not only because clearer,\nbut also because it is of necessity perfectly undistorted.\n{719}\nBut the picture is painful enough. For most of the characters in the story\nthe author evidently has no love; but even the best of them are singularly\nunamiable. And we close the volume with the reflection that, if there is no\nbetter life in Russia than the life he paints; if the men and women whom he\nbrings before us are fair types of the average culture and virtue of the\nempire; if the fathers have no intelligence, and the sons neither human\naffection nor religion, the future of Russia must be far different from\nwhat modern writers are fond of predicting. The morality of the story is\nbad, but its badness is so transparent that it can hurt nobody. There is an\noffensive tinge of sensualism in it, too, and this is less apparent, and\ntherefore more dangerous.\n\n\n\n  Barbarossa: A Historical Novel of the Seventh Century.\n  By Conrad Von Bolanden.\n  1 vol. 12mo, pp. 486. Philadelphia: Eugene Cuminiskey. 1867.\n\nThe historical novel is a difficult one to write. To strictly follow the\nbare facts of history will make the work dull to most readers of light\nliterature; and to allow the imagination full play in working out its\nscenes and representing them as if they had been actual occurrences will\noffend the student of history. The middle ages, however, are full of matter\nfor the historical novelist. We have too few gleaners in this prolific\nfield. We can remember only one attempt of the kind in the English language\nwithin the last decade of years. William Bernard McCabe, in his \"Bertha,\"\nhas done good service toward making known, in a popular manner, the designs\nof the Emperor Frederick to become universal emperor, or _Pontifex\nMaximus_, as he hoped to be one day called.\n\nThe present work is a translation from the German, and describes the\npolitical workings of Frederick's ambition; his conquests in Italy, and the\ncapture of Rome; his attempt to set up and install in that city his tool,\nthe antipope Pascal, in opposition to the lawful successor of St. Peter,\nAlexander III.; all these events are well told. The interest of the story\nis kept up by introducing two lovers--a knight, the follower of Frederick,\nand an Italian lady, who, of course, marry at the conclusion of the tale.\nThe character of Frederick's prime minister, Dassel, is well portrayed, and\nshows that, with all the emperor's strength of mind, he was, after all,\nonly the puppet of his wily minister.\n\nA little more elegance might have been observed by the translator,\nespecially in the first part of the story, where carelessness and\nincorrectness of expression occur several times. For instance, we are told\nin one sentence that \"Suddenly Otho of Wittelsbach advanced hurriedly,\"\nwhich sounds too much after the fashion of a _Ledger_ story. Again,\nnews is brought to Frederick of the surrender of Cinola to the Milanese,\nwhen the following dialogue occurs: \"What is the strength of the Milanese?\"\n\"About three hundred men.\" \"Have they burned the castle?\" \"_I am ignorant\nof that fact, sire._\"\n\nBut these are, after all, but slight defects, and do not mar the beauty of\nthe tale. We can heartily recommend the work to the readers of light\nliterature, as both instructive and entertaining, two things which are not\nalways combined in the historical novel.\n\n\n  Appleton's Annual Cyclopaedia for 1866.\n\nThis volume is an improvement on the preceding one, in one respect at\nleast, that is, in the summary which it gives of the progress of the\nphysical sciences. It contains, as usual, a condensed history of the year,\nand is ornamented with fine, spirited engravings of three very notorious\npublic characters: the King of Prussia, Bismarck, and Girabaldi. It is well\nworthy of a place in every library, and is, in fact, almost indispensable\nas a book of reference.\n\n\n\n  Notes On Doctrinal And Spiritual Subjects.\n  By the late Frederick W. Faber, D.D., of the Oratory.\n  Vol. II. London: Richardson & Son. New York:\n  The Catholic Publication Society.\n\nWith the character of Father Faber's writings most of our readers are well\nacquainted, and we have already given a special notice of them in a review\nof the first volume of this work. The present volume contains a large\nnumber of his hitherto unpublished writings, among which are sketches of\ndiscourses upon the notes of the church, treatises upon the sacrament,\ncontroversial lectures spiritual conferences, and various miscellaneous\npapers.\n{720}\nThey are of especial value to the younger members of our clergy, to whom we\ncommend them as furnishing ample matter for sermons, instructions, and\nlectures.\n\n\n  The Man With the Broken Ear.\n  Translated from the French of Edmond About,\n  by Henry Holt. 12mo, pp. 254. New York: Leypoldt & Holt.\n\nThe ingenuity and wit of this story cannot make amends for its grossness.\nThe novels of M. About's previously rendered into English were enough to\nshow that he cared nothing for the good opinion of Catholics, and in this\ngrotesque tale he has equally shown his disregard for the tastes of refined\npeople of every creed. Still, it is fair to say in his praise that the\ncontrasts of character which form the chief feature of the book are\nadmirably managed, and the dialogue sparkles with vivacity. Mr. Holt, who\nis both publisher and translator, has acquitted himself in his double\nfunction with noteworthy credit.\n\n\n  Cummiskey's Juvenile Library: Florie's Series.\n  12 vols. 16mo. Translated from the French.\n  E. Cummiskey, Publisher, 1037 Chestnut street, Philadelphia.\n\nThis is a very interesting series of children's stories. They are well\ntranslated and published in good style.\n\n\n  Stories On The Commandments\n\n  Caroline; Or, Self Conquest\n\n  The Seven Corporal Works Of Mercy and Matie's Troubles.\n\n  P. F. Cunningham, Philadelphia.\n\nThose three volumes are an addition to this publisher's well-selected list\nof tales for the young. Although they are published in the same style as\nThe Young Catholic Library, the stock and workmanship is much inferior.\n\nBooks for children's use should be published in a more durable form.\n\n\n  Beauties Of Faith; Or, Power Of Mary's Patronage.\n  Leaves from the Ave Maria. P. O'Shea, New York.\n\nThe first part of this volume is taken up with short stories illustrative\nof the power of Mary's patronage. The second part contains the beautiful\nstory of Cobina, by Mrs. Anna H. Dorsey. Altogether it forms a volume of\nvery interesting matter.\n\n\n  Coaina, The Rose Of The Algonquins.\n  By Mrs. Anna H. Dorsey. P. O'Shea, New York.\n\nSince writing the above, the story of Coaina comes on our table in another\nshape from the same publisher. This is a charming Indian tale. We cannot\nsee the wisdom of using it to swell the bulk of the volume of selections\nmentioned above, after having issued it as a separate volume. If those who\nhave facilities for publishing would give us translations or reprints of\nthe many excellent books of this kind published in France, Germany, and\nEngland, they would do us greater service.\n\n\n  Manual of the Lives of the Popes, Etc.\n  By J. C. Earle. Reprinted from the\n  English Edition. Baltimore: Murphy & Co.\n\nThis neatly printed little book is useful as a catalogue of the popes, and\na record of some of the principal facts in their reigns. It has no critical\nvalue in regard to disputed or doubtful questions, and pretends to none.\n\n\n  Books Received.\n\nFrom P. O'Shea, New York. The Science of Happiness;\nor, Beatitudes in Practice. By Madame Bourdon. 1 vol. 16mo. Price, $1.\n\nFrom D. Appleton & Co., New York. Appleton's\nHand-Book of American Travel. By E. Hall. 1 vol. 12mo, pp. 283.\n\nFrom Leypoldt & Holt, New York. Co-operative\nStores; their History, Organization, and Management.\nBased on the recent German work of Eugene Kichter. pp. 131. Price, 50\ncents.\n\nFrom P. O'Shea, New York. Rosa Immaculata; or,\nThe Tower of Ivory, or the House of Anna and Joachim.\nBy Mary Josephine. 1 vol. 12mo, pp. 250. Price, $2.\n\n------\n\n{721}\n\n\n    The Catholic World\n\n\n    Vol. V., NO. 29. September, 1867.\n\n\n\n  \"Rome or Reason.\" [Footnote 247]\n\n    [Footnote 247: The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century.\n    By Francis Parkman. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. 1867. 8vo, pp. 468.\n\n    The Professor at the Breakfast-Table; with the Story of Iris. By Oliver\n    Wendell Holmes. Boston; Ticknor & Fields. 1866. 12mo, pp. 410.\n\n    Rationalism and Catholicism. Inquirer, Cincinnati, May 26, 1867.]\n\n\nMr. Parkman understands and describes very well the Indian character--a\nvery simple character, and within the range of his comprehension. There is\nnothing deep or impenetrable in the Indian, and his ideas, habits, and\ncustoms are invariable. He is a child in simplicity, but he is cunning,\nfierce, treacherous, ferocious, more of a wild beast than a man--a true\nsavage, nothing more, nothing less. Mr. Parkman has lived with him, studied\nhis character and ways, and may, as to him, be trusted as a competent and\nfaithful guide, save when there is a question of superstition, in which the\nIndian abounds, or of religion, which he accepts with more docility and\nease than many learned and scientific white men.\n\nMr. Parkman may also be trusted for the purely material facts of the Jesuit\nmissions among the Indians in the seventeenth century, and he narrates them\nin a style of much artistic grace and beauty; but of the motives which\ngoverned the missionaries, of their faith and charity, as well as of their\nwhole interior spiritual life, he understands less than did the \"untutored\nIndian.\" His judgments, reflections, or speculations on the spiritual\nquestions involved are singularly crude, marked by a gross ignorance not at\nall creditable to a son of \"The Hub.\" He claims to be enlightened, to be a\nman of progress, and he has indeed advanced as far as Sadduceeism, which\nbelieves in neither angel nor spirit; but the savage retains more of the\nelements of Christian faith than he appears to have attained to. He is\nstruck, as every one must be, by the self-denial, the disinterestedness,\nthe patient toil, the unwearying kindness, superiority to danger or death,\nand heroic self-sacrifices and martyrdom of the missionaries; but he sees\nin them only the workings of a false faith, superstitious missions, and a\nfanatic zeal. The Jesuit who left behind all the delights and riches of\ncivilization, gave up all that men of the world hold most dear, braved all\nthe dangers of the forest, of the savage, performed fatiguing journeys,\nunderwent the inclemencies of the climate and the seasons, suffered hunger\nand thirst, in want of all things, submitted to captivity, tortures,\nmutilations, and death, was, in his judgment, a poor, deluded man; his\nfaith, which bore him up or bore him onward, was an illusion, and his\ncharity, which never failed or grew cold, was only an honest but mistaken\nzeal! Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles?\n\n{722}\n\nIt cannot be said that Mr. Parkman has overrated the marvellous labors and\nsacrifices of the Jesuits for the conversion of the North American Indians;\nbut he is mistaken in supposing that they stand out as anything singular or\nextraordinary in the general history of Catholic missions. They did well;\nthey were brave, indefatigable, self-denying, heroic, and cold must be the\nheart that can read their story without emotion; but their high qualities\nand virtues are due to their general character as Catholics, not to their\nspecial character as Jesuits. Non-Catholic writers are very apt to consider\nthat Jesuits are a peculiar sect, in some way distinguishable from the\nCatholic Church, and that their merits belong to them not as Catholic\npriests and missionaries, but as Jesuits. What Mr. Parkman admires in them\nis really admirable; but its glory is due to Catholic faith and charity,\nwhich the Jesuit has in common with all Catholics, and he has toiled no\nharder, braved no more dangers, suffered no greater hardships, or a more\ncruel and horrid death, or met them with a spirit no more heroic than have\nother Catholic missionaries among heretics and infidels, from the apostles\ndown to the last martyr in China, Anam, or Oceanica. It has been only by\nsuch suffering and such deeds as Mr. Parkman narrates, that the world has\nbeen converted to the Christian faith and retained in the Catholic Church.\nAt all times, since the descent of the Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost,\nhas the Catholic Church nursed in her bosom, and sent into the world to\npreach Christ and him crucified, men not at all inferior in faith and love,\nin patient endurance, and heroic self sacrifice to the Jesuit missionaries\namong the North American Indians. She has never wanted laborers,\nconfessors, martyrs; and a religion that never fails to create and inspire\nthem is not, and cannot be, a false religion, a delusion, a fanaticism. It\nis only in the Catholic Church you find or have ever found them. Let her\nhave the credit of them.\n\nThe Professor at the Breakfast Table has been for some time before the\npublic, and every body has read it. Its author has, we believe, a high\nreputation in the medical profession, and certainly has attained to\ndistinction as a poet and as a writer of prose fiction. He has wit and\npathos, a lively imagination, and a keen sense of the ludicrous. The snake\nportion of his Elsie Vonner is horrible, but several of the characters in\nthat remarkable book are admirably drawn--are real New England characters,\ndrawn as none but a New Englander could draw them, and perhaps, none but a\nNew Englander can fully appreciate. He is like many of the descendants of\nthe old Puritans, who, having lost all faith in the Calvinism of their\nancestors, still identify it with Christianity, and float in their feelings\nbetween the memory of it and a vague rationalism and sentimentalism which\nis simply no belief at all. He would like to be a Christian, to feel that\nhe has faith, something on which he can rest his whole weight without fear\nof its giving way under him, but he knows not where to look for it. He\nfinds many attractions in the Catholic Church, but, thinking that she holds\nwhat so offends him in the faith of his ancestors, he dares not trust her.\n\nThere is a large class of educated, thinking, and even serious-minded\nAmericans who turn away from the church and refuse to consider her claims,\nnot because she differs from the Protestantism in which they have been\nreared, but because she does not, in her spirit and teaching, differ enough\nfrom it. Those outside of the church, and who credit not the evangelical\ncant against her, identify her teaching with Jansenism, regard Jansenists\nas the better class of Catholics, and Jansenism is a form of Calvinism, and\nCalvinism is a system of pure supernaturalism, while the active American\nmind cannot consent that nature should count in the\nreligious life for nothing.\n{723}\nIt would, perhaps, relieve them a little if they knew that not only the\nJesuits condemned Jansenism, but the church herself condemns it, and\nJansenists are as much out of the pale of the church as are Calvinists or\nLutherans themselves. So-called orthodox Protestants were formerly in the\nhabit of charging Catholics with rationalism and Pelagianism, and even now\naccuse them of denying the doctrines of grace or salvation through the\nmerits and grace of Jesus Christ. This fact alone should suffice to teach\nsuch men as the Professor at the Breakfast-Table that the difference\nbetween Catholicity and Puritanism is much greater than they suppose.\n\nThe Professor, in defending himself against the change of want of respect\nfor Puritanism, says, pp. 154-155: \"I don't mind the exclamation of any old\nstager who drinks Madeira worth from two to six Bibles a bottle, and burns,\naccording to his own premises, a dozen souls a year in segars, with which\nhe muddles his brains. But as for the good and true and intelligent men we\nsee all around us, laborious, self-denying, hopeful, helpful--men who know\nthat the active mind of the age is tending more and more to the two poles,\nRome and Reason, the sovereign church or the free soul, authority or\npersonality, God in us or God in our masters, and that, though a man may by\naccident _stand_ half-way between these two points, he must\n_look_ one way or the other--I don't believe they would take offence\nat anything I have reported.\" From the connection in which this is said,\nand the purpose for which it is said, it is clear that the Professor holds\nthat the active mind of this century is tending either Romeward or\nReasonward, that the doctrines held by his Puritan ancestors and so-called\northodox Protestants can be sustained only by the authority of a sovereign\nchurch, and that we must accept such authority, or give up all dogmatic\nbelief, and allow the free, unrestricted use of reason.\n\nThe writer in the Cincinnati Inquirer seems to agree with him. A certain\nProtestant minister, an Anglican, we presume, had said in a sermon, that\n\"the church's greatest enemies are now Catholicism and rationalism.\" The\nwriter, in commenting on this proposition, says: \"Catholicism is the\ntheology of authority; rationalism, the theology of reason;\" and\n\"Protestantism is Catholicism with a dash of rationalism, or rationalism\nwith a dash of Catholicism.\" Both represent Catholicity and reason as\nstanding opposed each to the other, as two opposite poles, and each makes\nas does the age no account of the _via media_ church receiving the\nshots of both reason and authority, and discharging its double battery in\nreturn against each.\n\nNow, is it not time that thinking men, and authors who claim intelligence\nand mean to be just, should stop this contrasting of Rome or authority and\nreason? The cant has become threadbare, and men of reputation and taste\nshould lay it aside as no longer fit for use. It does not by any means\nstate the fact as it is, for there is not the least discrepancy between the\nchurch and reason, nor is there, in accepting and believing the revealed\nword of God on the authority of the church proposing it, the least\nsurrender of reason or nature. The Catholic has all of reason that belongs\nto human nature, and full opportunity to exercise it; and his soul is as\nfree as the soul can be, and he is, in fact, the only man that has really a\nfree soul. If God is in his masters, he is also in him. He has no less\ninternal light because he has external light, and no less internal freedom\nbecause he has external authority. The Professor is quite mistaken in\npresenting the church and reason as two opposite poles. Nay, his\nillustration is not happy, for the two poles, if we speak geographically,\nbelong to one and the same globe, and are equally essential to its form and\ncompleteness, and, if we speak magnetically, and mean positive and negative\npoles, they are only the two modes in which one and the same substance or\nforce operates, and certainly in Catholic faith both authority and reason\nare alike active, and mutually concur in producing one and the same result.\n\n{724}\n\nIt is only when we borrow our views of Catholicity from the theology of the\nReformation, or suppose that it is substantially the same, that the\nauthority of the church can be regarded as opposed to reason or repugnant\nto nature. He who has read the fathers has discovered in them no abdication\nof reason or want of intellectual freedom; and he who is familiar with the\nmediaeval doctors knows that no men can use reason more freely or push it\nfurther than they did. Melchior Cano, a theologian of the sixteenth\ncentury, in his Locis Theologicis, a work of great authority with\nCatholics, enumerates natural reason as one of the common-places of\ntheology, whence arguments may be drawn to prove what is or is not of\nfaith. A school of philosophers have latterly sprung up among Catholics,\ncalled traditionalists, who would seem to deny reason and to found science\non faith; but they have fallen under censure of the Holy See, and been\nrequired to recognize that reason precedes faith, and that faith comes as\nthe complement of science, not as preceding or superseding it. By far the\nlarger part of the errors condemned in the syllabus of errors attached to\nthe Encyclical of the Holy Father, dated at Rome, 8th of December, 1864,\nare errors that tend to destroy reason and society. The church has always\nbeen vigilant in vindicating natural reason and the natural law.\n\nBut the Reformation was a complete protest against reason and nature, and\nthe assertion of extreme and exclusive supernaturalism. In Luther's\nestimation reason was a stupid ass. The reformers all agreed in asserting\nthe total depravity of human nature, and in maintaining the complete moral\ninability of man. According to the reformed doctrines, man never actively\nconcurs with grace, but in faith and justification is wholly impotent and\npassive. Man can think only evil, and the works he does prior to\nregeneration, however honest or benevolent, are not simply imperfect, but\npositively sins. This was the reformed theology which the writer of this\narticle had in his boyhood and youth dinged into him till he well-nigh lost\nhis reason. The church has never tolerated any such theology, and they who\nplace her and reason in opposition are really, whether they know it or not,\ncharging her with the errors of Protestantism, which she has never ceased,\nin the most public, formal, and solemn manner, to condemn. There are, no\ndoubt, large numbers included under the general name of Protestants, who\nimagine that the Reformation was a great movement in behalf of intelligence\nagainst ignorance, of reason against authority, mental freedom against\nmental bondage, of rational religion against bigotry and superstition; but\nwhoever has studied the history of that great movement knows that it was no\nsuch thing--the furthest from it possible. It was a retrograde movement,\nand designed in its very essence to arrest the intellectual and theological\nprogress of the race. Its avowed purpose was the restoration of primitive\nChristianity, which, whatever plausible terms might be adopted, meant, and\ncould mean only, to set the race back some fifteen hundred years in its\nmarch through the ages, and to eliminate from Christendom all that\nChristianity for fifteen centuries had effected for civilization. The\nProtestant party, was by its own avowal, the party of the past, and, if\nthere are Protestants who are striving to be the party of the future, they\nsucceed only by leaving their Protestantism behind, or by transforming it.\n\nThe church has always been on the side of freedom and progress, and the\nnormal current of humanity has flowed and never ceased to flow from the\nfoot of the cross down through her communion; and whatever life-giving\nwater has flowed into Protestant cisterns, it has been from the\noverflowings of that current, always full.\n{725}\nYou who are outside of it, save in the application of the truths of science\nto the material arts, have effected no progress. You have worked hard, have\nbeen often on the point of some grand discovery, but only on the point of\nmaking it, and are as far from the goal as you were when Luther burnt the\npapal bull, or suffered the devil to convince him of the sin of saying\nprivate masses. You have always found your works after a little while\nneeding to be recast, and that your systems are giving way. You have been\nconstantly doing and undoing, and never succeeding. Save in the physical\nsciences and some achievements in the material world, you are far below\nwhat you were when you started. Of course, you do not believe it, because\nyou confound change with progress, and you count getting rid of your\npatrimony increasing it. It is idle to tell you this, for you have already\nfallen so low that you place the material above the spiritual, and the\nknowledge of the uses of of steam above the knowledge and love God.\n\nRome or reason, Rome or liberty, is not the true formula of the tendencies\nof the age; nor is it Catholicism or rationalism, but Catholicity or\nnaturalism. The extremes opposed to Catholicity are, on the one hand,\nexclusive supernaturalism, or a supernaturalism that condemns and excludes\nthe activity of nature, and, on the other, exclusive naturalism, or a\nnaturalism that denies and excludes all communion between God and man, save\nthrough natural laws, or laws impressed on nature by its Creator, and held\nto bind both him and it. Your evangelicals are exclusive supernaturalists,\nas were the great body of the Protestant reformers; Auguste Comte, J.\nStuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, Mr. Parkman, and the Professor are exclusive\nnaturalists, who deny the reality of all facts or phenomena not explicable\nby natural laws or natural causes. All the sciences, since Bacon, are\nconstructed on naturalistic principles, and theology, philosophy, or\nmetaphysics, which cannot be constructed without the recognition of the\nsupernatural, are rejected by our _savans_ as vain speculations or\nidle theories without any basis in reality. They belong to the age of\nignorance and superstition, and will never be recognized in an age of light\nand science. As the church clings to them, insists upon them, she is behind\nthe age, and they who adhere to her are to be tolerated and pitied as we\ntolerate and pity idiots and the insane, unless, indeed, they are clothed\nwith more or less power; then, indeed, we must make war on them and\nexterminate them.\n\nFew who have studied this age with any care will question the fidelity of\nthis picture. The active living mind of this age unquestionably tends\neither to this exclusive naturalism or to the Catholic Church, which is the\nsynthesis of the natural and the supernatural, of authority and freedom,\nreason and faith, science and revelation. Protestantism, which is exclusive\nsupernaturalism, it is becoming pretty well understood, cannot be\nsustained. It cannot be sustained by reason, for it rejects reason; it\ncannot be sustained by authority, for in rejecting the church it has cast\noff all authority, but that of the state, which has no competency in\nspirituals. It has supported its dogmas, as far as it has supported them at\nall, on Catholic tradition, the validity of which it denies. This cannot\nlast, for, where people are free to think and have the courage to reason\nwithout let or hinderance from the state, they will not long consent to\naffirm and deny tradition in one and the same breath. They will either fall\ninto the naturalistic ranks or be absorbed by the Catholic Church, and it\nis useless to trouble ourselves with them as Protestants.\n\nThe naturalists or rationalists, by far the most numerous, and in most\nProtestant or non-Catholic states already the governing body, are repelled\nfrom the church by their supposition that all the substantial difference\nbetween her and Jansenists or Calvinists is, that in the one case\nsuper-naturalism is taught and explained by a living authority, claiming a\ndivine commission, and in the other it is not taught at all, but collected\nby grammar and lexicon from a book said to have been written by divine\ninspiration.\n{726}\nThe Catholic theory is the more logical and more attractive of the two, but\nboth alike discard reason, and insist on the submission of the\nunderstanding to an external authority, and it matters little whether the\nauthority is that of the church or of a book written many ages ago. In\neither case the faith is proposed on authority, which assumes to command\nthe reason and to deprive the soul of her natural freedom. I am forbidden\nto think and follow my own convictions, and must, on pain of everlasting\nperdition, believe what others bid me, whether it accords with my own\nreason or not. This, we take it, is the view entertained by the worthy\nProfessor, and the writer of this many years ago preached it, and counted\nthe Professor himself among his hearers, if not among his disciples. Now,\nwe need not, after the explanation we have given, say that this view is\naltogether wrong. The Protestant asserts the supernatural in a sense that\nexcludes or supersedes nature, and, therefore, natural reason; the Catholic\nadopts as his maxim, _Gratia supponit naturam_, and asserts the\nsupernatural as the complement of the natural, or as healing,\nstrengthening, and elevating it to the plane of the supernatural, or a\ndestiny far superior to any possible natural beatitude. This is in the\noutset a very important difference, for, if grace supposes nature, the\nsupernatural the natural, the authority on which we are required to believe\nthe supernatural may aid, may strengthen, or illumine natural reason, but\ncannot supersede it or deprive it of any of its natural activity and\nfreedom. The supernatural adds to the natural, according to Catholic faith,\nbut takes nothing from it. The prejudice excited by Protestantism against\nthe supernatural cannot bear against it as asserted by Catholicity.\n\nBut we would remind our naturalistic friends that nature does not suffice\nfor itself. It is impossible by nature alone to explain the origin or\nexistence of nature. The ancients tried to do it, but they failed. Some\nattempted to do it by the fortuitous combination of eternally existing\natoms, others made the universe originate in fire, in water, in air or\nearth, as some moderns try to develop it from a primitive rock or gas, or\nsuppose it originally existed in a liquid or a gaseous state, whence it has\ngrown into its present form. But whence the primitive rock or the gas?\nwhence the fire, water, air, or earth? whence the original germ? Naturalism\nhas no answer. We have a natural tendency, strong in proportion to the\nstrength and activity of our reason, to seek the origin, the principles,\nthe causes of things, but this tendency nature can not satisfy, because\nnature has not her origin, principle, or cause in herself. For this reason\nMr. Herbert Spencer relegates origin and end, principles and causes, and\nwhatever pertains to them to the region of the unknowable, and maintains\nthat we can know only phenomena, and therefore that science consists simply\nin observing, collecting, and classifying phenomena, not in the explication\nof phenomena by reducing them to their principle and referring them to\ntheir cause or causes.\n\nWe can know phenomena, but not noumena, is asserted by the reigning\ndoctrine among physicists, which is as complete a denial of reason as can\nbe found in any of the reformers. It reduces our intelligence to a level\nwith that of the brutes that perish, for what distinguishes our\nintelligence from theirs is precisely reason, which is the faculty of\nattaining to principles or causes--first causes and final causes--both in\nthe intellectual and the moral order, while brutes have intelligence only\nof phenomena. Hence, philosophers, who define things _per genus et per\ndifferentiam_, define man a rational animal, or animal plus reason.\n{727}\nTo our physicists, like the Lyells and the Huxleys, or to such philosophers\nas Mr. Stuart Mill, who knows not whether he is Mr. Stuart Mill or somebody\nelse, whether he is something or nothing, this amounts to very little; for\nthey, the physicists, we mean, are specially engaged in collecting facts to\nprove that man is only a developed chimpanzee or gorilla, and that the\nhuman intelligence differs only in degree from the brutish. But, then, what\nright have they to complain that belief in the supernatural tends to\ndegrade human nature, to deprive reason of its dignity, and man of his\nglory? Moreover, this restriction of our power of knowing to simple\nphenomena, never satisfies reason, which would know not only phenomena, but\nnoumena, and not only noumena, but principles, causes, the principle of\nprinciples and the cause of causes, the origin and end of all things, that\nis, God, and God as he is in himself. You cannot, except by brutalizing men\nto the last degree, suppress this interior craving of reason to penetrate\nall mysteries, to explore all secrets, and to know all things, nor can you\nby reason alone appease it. Do you propose to suppress nature, extinguish\nreason, and call it promoting science, vindicating the dignity of man?\n\nReason can never be made to believe that all reality is confined to what\nMr. Herbert Spencer calls the knowable, and we the intelligible. There is\nnothing of which reason is better or more firmly persuaded than that there\nis more reality than she herself knows or can know. Reason asserts her own\nlimitations, and will never allow that she can know no more because there\nis nothing more to be known. The intelligible does not satisfy her, because\nin the intelligible alone she cannot find the explication of the\nintelligible, or, in other words, she cannot understand the intelligible\nwithout the superintelligible; for, though she cannot without divine\nrevelation grasp the superintelligible, she can know this much, that the\nsuperintelligible is, and that in it the intelligible has its root, its\norigin, cause, and explication. Here is a grave difficulty that every\nexclusive rationalist encounters, and which is and can be removed only by\nfaith. Nature, reason; science alone never suffices for itself, as all our\nsavans know, for where their knowledge ends they invent hypotheses. It is\nnot that reason is a false or deceptive light, but that it is limited, and\nwe have not the attribute of omniscience any more than we have that of\nomnipotence.\n\nSo is it with our craving for beatitude. Whether God could or could not\nhave so constituted man, without changing his nature as man, that he could\nrest in a natural beatitude, that is, in a finite good, we shall not\nattempt to decide; but this much we may safely assert, as the united\ntestimony of the sages and moralists of all ages and nations, and confirmed\nby every one's own experience, that nothing finite, and whatever is natural\nis finite, can satisfy man's innate desire for beatitude. \"Man,\" says Dr.\nChanning, \"thirsts for an unbounded good.\" The sum of all experience on the\nsubject is given us by the wise king of Israel, \"_Vanitas vanitatum, et\nomnia vanitas_--Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.\" The eye is not\nsatisfied with seeing, the ear with hearing, nor the heart with knowing. We\nturn away with loathing from the finite good as soon as possessed, and\nwhich the moment before possession we felt would, if we had it, make us\nhappy. The soul spurns it, and cries out from the depths of her agony for\nsomething that can fill up the void within her, and complete her happiness\nby completing her being. We need not multiply words, for the fact is old,\nand all the world knows it. Nature cannot satisfy nature, and the soul\nlooks, and must look beyond it, for her beatitude. So much is certain.\n\nHence it is that men in all ages and nations have never been able to\nsatisfy either their reason or their craving for happiness with nature\nalone, and have, in some form, recognized a supernatural order, or a\nreality of some sort above and beyond nature, whence comes nature herself.\n{728}\nNeither atheism, or the resolution of God into natural laws or forces, nor\npantheism, or the absorption of natural laws or forces into the Divine\nBeing itself, has ever been able to satisfy the man of a real philosophic\nor scientific genius, because either is sophistical and self-contradictory.\nEither is repugnant to the natural logic of the human understanding or the\ninherent laws of thought. Even such naturalists as Agassiz and our Dr.\nDraper find it necessary to recognize in some sense a Supreme Being or God,\nalthough, for the most part, like the old Epicureans, they leave him idle,\nwith little or nothing to do. But God, if he exists at all, must be\nsupernatural, and the author of nature. If God is supernatural and the\ncreator of nature, he must have created nature for himself, and then nature\nmust have its origin and end in him, and therefore in the supernatural.\nMan, then, has neither his origin nor end in the natural, and neither\nwithout the supernatural is explicable or knowable; without a knowledge of\nour origin and end, or an answer to the questions, whence came we? why are\nwe, and how? and whither go we? we can have no rule of life, cannot\ndetermine the positive or the relative value of any line of conduct, and\nmust commit ourselves to the mercy of the winds and waves of an unknown\nsea, without pilot, chart, rudder, or compass.\n\nNor is even this enough. Not only is the natural inexplicable without the\nsupernatural, but even the intelligible, too, is not intelligible without\nthe superintelligible, as we have already said. We know things, indeed, not\nmere phenomena, but we do not know the essences of things, and yet we know\nthat there is and can be nothing without its essence, and that the ground\nand root of what is intelligible in a thing is in its unknown and\nsuperintelligible essence. So in the universe throughout. God, as creator,\nas universal, eternal, necessary, immutable, and self-existent being, is\nintelligible to us, and the light by which all that is intelligible to us\nis intelligible; but we know that what is intelligible to us is not God in\nhis essence, and that what in him is intelligible to us has its source, its\nreality, so to speak, in this very superintelligible essence. Hence it\nfollows that to real science of anything we need to know the supernatural,\nand by faith, or analogical science, at least, the superintelligible. We\ncannot satisfy nature without the science and possession of the essences or\nsubstances of things, and therefore not without faith, \"for faith is the\nsubstance of things to be hoped for,\" the evidence of things not seen.\n_Fides est rerum substantia sperandarum, argumentum non apparentium_,\naccording to St. Paul, who, even they who deny his inspiration, must yet\nadmit was the profoundest philosopher that ever wrote. We think he was so\nbecause divinely inspired, but the fact that he was so no competent judge\ncan dispute. St. Augustine owes his immense superiority over Plato and\nAristotle chiefly to his assiduous study of the epistles of St. Paul, which\nthrow so strong a light not only on the whole volume of Scripture, but on\nthe whole order of creation, and the divine purpose in the creation and the\nredemption, regeneration, justification, and glorification of man through\nthe incarnation of the Word, and the cross and passion of our Lord Jesus\nChrist.\n\nBut as we can know even by faith the superintelligible, the unknowable of\nMr. Herbert Spencer, which even he dares not assert is unreal or\nnon-existent, only by divine or supernatural revelation, it follows, that\nwithout such revelation, no science satisfactory to natural reason herself\nis possible. There is, then, and can be no antagonism between revelation\nand science, faith and reason, or supernatural and natural. The two are but\nparts of one whole, each the complement of the other. This dialectic\nrelation of the two terms asserted by Catholic theology is denied by\nProtestant theology either to the exclusion of nature and reason, or to the\nexclusion of both the supernatural and the superintelligible, and hence the\ndualism which rends in twain the whole non-Catholic world, and presents\nrevelation and science, reason and faith, authority and liberty, natural\nand supernatural, church and state, heaven and earth, time and eternity,\nGod and man, as mutually hostile terms, forever irreconcilable.\n{729}\nThe non-Catholic world does not know or it forgets that the church presents\nthe middle term that unites and reconciles them, and that the Catholic\nfeels nothing of this interior struggle of two mutually destructive forces\nwhich rends the hearts and souls of the wisest of non-Catholics, not\nbecause he does not think or has abdicated reason, as the Professor\nimagines, but precisely because he does think, and thinks according to the\ntruth and reality of things. He has unquestionably his struggles between\nthe flesh and the spirit, between virtue and vice, between temptations to\nsin and inspirations to holiness, but presents in his life none of those\nfearful internal tragedies so frequently enacted among serious and earnest\nnon-Catholics, and which make up so large and so distressing a portion of\nthe higher and more truthful portion of non-Catholic literature.\nNon-Catholic poetry, when not a song to Venus or Bacchus, is either a\nfanciful description of external nature, scenes, and events, or a low wail\nor a loud lament over the internal tragedies caused by the struggle between\nfaith and reason, belief and doubt, hope and despair, or vainly to\npenetrate the mysteries of life and death, God and the universe. Catholic\npoetry, Catholic literature throughout, knows nothing of those tragedies,\nis peaceful and serene, and is therefore less interesting to those who are\nnot Catholics. We have (we speak personally) had some experience of those\ninterior struggles, and many a tragedy has been enacted in our own soul,\nbut it is with difficulty we can recall them; in the peace and serenity of\nCatholic faith and hope they have almost faded from the memory, and yet the\nperiod of our life since we became a Catholic has been with us the period\nof our freest and most active and energetic thought. If we have worn\nchains, we have not been conscious of them, and they certainly cannot have\nbeen very heavy, or have eaten very deeply into the flesh. The reason of it\nis that we find in Catholic faith and theology the two elements which in\nthe non-Catholic world are in perpetual war with each other, perfectly\nreconciled, and mutually harmonized.\n\nThe peace the Catholic finds is not the sort of peace that was said to\nreign in Warsaw. The Professor is greatly mistaken if he supposes it is\nobtained by the suppression of reason, or that reason is forgotten in the\nengrossing nature or artistic perfection of the external services of the\nchurch. The offices of the church are beautiful, grand, and, if you will,\nimposing, but they are all provocative of thought, meditation, reflection,\nfor they all symbolize the greatest of all mysteries--God dying for the\ncreature's sin, God become man, that man may become God. Take away this\ngreat mystery, and the offices of the church become meaningless,\npurposeless, powerless. Without faith in that mystery to which they all\nrefer, and which they at every instant recall, they would be no more\nimposing than the pomp and music of a military review or a concert in\nCentral Park. From first to last they challenge our faith, and, if there\nwere any discrepancy between our faith and reason, they would in a\nthoughtful mind bring it up in distinct consciousness, instead of\nsuppressing or making us forget it. A Lord John Russell could call the\nsublime services of the church \"mummery,\" and such do the mass of\nProtestants regard them. To the profane all things are profane, and the\noffices of the church are really edifying only to those who believe the\nmystery of the Incarnation. Unbelievers who are not scoffers may admire\ntheir poetry and the music which accompanies them, but would admire equal\npoetry and music in the theatre just as much, and perhaps even more.\n\n{730}\n\nNo; the peace of the Catholic is a real peace. Neither faith nor reason,\nrevelation nor science, authority nor liberty is suppressed; but all real\nantagonism between them is removed, and they are seen and felt to be but\ncongruous parts of one dialectic whole. Peace reigns because the mutually\nhostile parties are really reconciled, and made one. The Professor, no\ndoubt, will smile at our assertion, and set it down to our simplicity or\nenthusiasm, but we have this advantage of him, that we know both sides, and\ntaught or might have taught him more than thirty years ago the philosophy\nhe brings out so racily at the breakfast table.\n\nOur nature was constructed by the supernatural for the supernatural, and it\ncan no more live its normal life without a supernatural medium than it\ncould have sprung into existence without a cause above and independent of\nitself. Regeneration is, therefore, as necessary to enable it to attain its\ndestiny or beatitude as generation was to usher it into natural existence.\nHence it is that, when men cast off in their belief and affections the\nsupernatural, and live as natural men alone, they sink even below their\nnormal nature, and lose even their natural light and strength, live only a\nlife which the Scriptures call death, the death which Adam underwent in\nconsequence of his disobedience to the divine order. When men undertake by\ntheir simple natural reason to construct a system of philosophy, they\nconstruct systems which natural reason herself rejects. Reason disdains her\nown work, and hence pure rationalists never construct anything that will\nstand, and they build up systems only to be demolished by themselves or\nsuccessors. Of the systems in vogue in our youth not one is now standing,\nand we have seen them replaced by two or three new generations of systems\nthat have each in turn gone the way of all the earth; and, unless we\nspeedily follow them, we may be called to write the epitaphs of those now\nrevelling in the heyday of their young life. The thing is inevitable,\nbecause our nature was made to act in synthesis with the supernatural, and\nis only partially itself when compelled to operate by itself alone.\n\nThis fact that man's normal life demands the supernatural, and that his own\nreason, though not able to know the superintelligible, or to say what it\nis, yet assures him that there is a superintelligible, fits him by nature\nto receive the supernatural revelation of the superintelligible; for it\nonly supplies an indestructible and deeply felt want of his nature. His\nreason needs it and his nature craves it, and when receiving it relishes it\nas the hungry man does wholesome and appropriate food. As the natural and\nsupernatural, the intelligible and superintelligible, are not contradictory\nor mutually repellant orders, but parts of one complete and indissoluble\nwhole, only ordinary evidence is required to prove the fact of revelation;\nand as God is infinitely true, truth itself, his word, when we know that we\nhave it, is ample authority, the highest possible, and the best of all\nconceivable reasons, for believing the revelation. So faith in a\nsupernatural revelation, in whatever is proved to be the word of God, is,\nso far from being repugnant to reason or requiring an abdication of reason,\nthe highest and freest act of reason possible.\n\nThe Professor objects to believing on the authority of the church, but we\ndo not believe the revelation on the authority of the church; we take on\nher authority only the fact that it is divine revelation; the revelation\nitself we believe on the veracity of God. But, if we considered the church\nas a mere body, collection, or company of men, however wise, learned, or\nhonest we might regard them, we should not hold her authority sufficient\nfor believing that what she proposes as the revelation really is\nrevelation. Every man taken individually is fallible, and no possible\nnumber, union, or combination of fallibles can make an infallible, and only\nan infallible authority is competent to declare what God has or has not\nrevealed. The church is more than a collection, body, or company of\nindividuals, as the human race, what our liberals call humanity, is more\nthan an aggregation of individuals.\n{731}\nThere is, indeed, no humanity without individuals, but it is not itself\nindividual, or dependent on individuals for its existence. The positivists,\nwho would call no individual man divine, pretend that humanity is divine,\nand worship it as God. What the race is to individual men in the order of\ngeneration, that, in some sense, is the church to them in the order of\nregeneration. She lives not without them, but does not live by them. She is\nthe regenerated race, and bears to Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word, who\nwas with God and who is God, the relation, in the order of regeneration,\nthat the human race bears to Adam, its natural progenitor, and therefore\nshe lives a divine and human life, which she receives not from her members,\nbut imparts to them. Jesus Christ is the progenitor of regenerated\nhumanity, and this regenerated humanity is in the largest sense what we\ncall the church, in which sense it includes all the faithful, the laity as\nwell as their pastors and teachers.\n\nThe church, again, is the body of our Lord, in which dwelleth the Holy\nGhost. Individuals are to her what the particles which the body assimilates\nare to the body. There is no body without them, yet they are not,\nindividually or collectively, the body. The life of the body is not derived\nfrom them, for the body, by a vital process, assimilates them to itself,\nnot they the body to themselves. The body, when suffering from a fever or\nwhen deprived of food, assimilates them only feebly, and wastes away or\ngrows thin, and, when dead, assimilates them not at all, which shows that\nthe vital power which carries on the process of assimilation is in the\nbody, not in the particles, a fact far better known to the Professor than\nto us, and a fact, too, which may help remove the difficulties sciolists\nimagine in the way of the resurrection of the body.\n\nThe vital power or principle which gives life to the body and enables it to\ncarry on the process of assimilation and elimination, the church teaches,\nis the soul, for she has defined that the soul is the _form_ of the\nbody, _Anima est forma oorporis_. But this has nothing to do with our\npresent purpose. The vital principle, the life of the church, is our Lord\nJesus Christ himself. The Holy Ghost dwells in her as the soul in the body,\nanimates her, guides and directs her, and therefore is she one, holy and\nCatholic, as he is one, holy and Catholic, infallible by his perpetual\npresence and assistance as he is infallible. The Word incarnate explicates\nhis life in her as Adam explicates his life in the race. The infallibility\nis from the presence and assistance of the Holy Ghost, and is in her very\ninterior life. The Word is in her, a living Word, and the infallibility\nattaches to her, to this interior Word which she lives, but not to\nindividuals as such in her communion. The pope regarded as a man,\nirrespective of his office, is no more infallible than he is impeccable, or\nthan is any Christian believer.\n\nBut the church as a body has her organs, and as a visible body she has\nvisible organs, through which she teaches the truth she has received and\nexpresses the life she lives. These organs are the bishops or pastors in\ncommunion with their visible head, the successor in the See of Rome of\nBlessed Peter, the Prince of the Apostles. We call them organs of the\nchurch, inasmuch as the faith and love, the truth and life, they express is\nher life, which in turn is the life of him who said, \"Because I live ye\nshall live also,\" and, \"Behold, I am with you all days, even to the\nconsummation of the world!\" and who expressly declares himself \"the way,\nthe truth, and the life.\" The infallibility of the church comes from the\nindwelling Word and the assistance of the Holy Ghost; the infallibility of\nthe organs comes from the infallibility of the church.\n\n{732}\n\nNow, supposing the church to be what we represent her to be, we presume\neven the Professor will acknowledge her to be fully competent to teach\nwithout error the revelation supernaturally made and committed to her, for\nthe revelation committed to her is deposited externally with her bishops\nand pastors, and internally in her living and unfailing faith, in her very\nlife and interior consciousness. It is both a recorded and a present living\nrevelation, which she is living and explicating in her continuous activity,\nthe Word spoken from the beginning, and the Word speaking now. \"Say not,\"\nsays St. Paul, (Rom. x. 6-8,) \"in thy heart: Who shall ascend into heaven?\nthat is, to bring Christ down: or who shall descend into the deep? that is,\nto bring up Christ again from the dead. But what saith the Scripture? The\nword is near thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: this is the word of\nfaith, which we preach.\" This was addressed by St. Paul to Christian\nbelievers, \"to all that are at Rome, the beloved of God, called to be\nsaints,\" and shows that the Christian not only hears the word in his ears,\nbut has it in his mouth, in his heart, that is, in his very life, and he\nlives and breathes it. It is the very element of his soul, and he can have\nno higher certainty, not even in case of a mathematical demonstration, than\nhe has that his faith is true, and that it is the living God he believes.\nThe Professor, then, in regard to the faithful, has no ground for asserting\nas he does an antithesis between \"Rome and reason, the sovereign church and\nthe free soul, God in our masters and God in us;\" for Rome is the highest\nreason, the sovereign church is both external and internal, and God is both\nin us and in our teachers. We have not only the veracity of God as the\nground of our faith, but a divinely constituted and assisted medium of\nbringing us to it, and sustaining it in us.\n\nThe church undoubtedly teaches the faith or divine revelation which has\nbeen committed to her through her pastors and doctors. But the competency\nof these to teach follows from the fact that they can teach only in union\nwith the church; that she authorizes their teaching, and is ever present to\ncorrect them if they err, and that they are even externally commissioned by\nour Lord himself to teach what he has revealed. A mere external commission,\nwhich we know historically was given to the apostles and their successors,\nwould not of itself give the capacity to teach or ensure infallibility in\nteaching; but he who has all power in heaven and in earth, who is God as\nwell as man, and is himself \"the way, the truth, and the life,\" assuredly\nwould not, and could not, without belying his essential and immutable\nnature, issue a commission to teach and command all nations to hear and\nobey them as himself, without taking care that they should have the ability\nto teach his word and to teach it infallibly. That he does this is pledged\nin the very issue and in the words of the commission itself: \"All power is\ngiven to me in heaven and in earth. Go ye, therefore, and teach all\nnations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of\nthe Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have\ncommanded you; and, behold, _I am with you_ all days, even to the\nconsummation of the world.\" (St. Matt xxviii. 18-20.)\n\nThis external commission is all that needs to be proved by external\nevidence to the world outside of the church, and there is no more intrinsic\ndifficulty in proving it than there is in proving the commission of George\nWashington as general of the American army in the Revolution, of Lord\nRaglan as commander-in-chief to the day of his death of the British forces\nemployed in the Crimean war, or any other historical fact whatever. The\nunbroken existence of the church founded by the apostles from their day to\nours, and the uniform testimony she has universally and uninterruptedly\nborne to the fact, would suffice to prove it, even had we no other proofs\nor evidence. The church, without citing her in her supernatural character,\nand taking her simply as an historical witness, is all that is needed, for\nshe is a standing monument of the fact.\n{733}\nIn her corporate capacity she spans the whole distance of time from the\napostles, and at each intervening moment she has been a present witness of\nthe fact, testifying to what was present before her. The church as a\ncorporation, without any appeal to her mystic character, has not been\nsubject to any succession of time, has known no lapse of years, and is as\npresent today to the events of the apostolic times as she was when those\nevents occurred. She is at any moment we choose their contemporary, and, as\na contemporary witness to extraordinary facts, her testimony is as good for\nus as was that of the apostles themselves to their personal contemporaries.\nIndeed, it is literally and truly the same, for her corporate existence\nfrom the time of the apostles to ours, or her historical identity, is\nunquestionable.\n\nWe are not now citing the continuous existence of the church for anything\nbut the simple external fact of the external commission given by our Lord\nhimself to his apostles. To that fact, whatever you think of her, she is a\ncompetent witness, and, having constantly testified to it from that day to\nthis, her testimony is conclusive. Assume, then, the fact of the external\ncommission, to which we who are Catholics need no external testimony, since\nwe find the highest of all possible testimony in the internal life of the\nchurch, all the rest follows of itself. What the church believes, and\nteaches through her pastors and doctors, or what they in unison with her\nand her faith teach as the revelation of God committed to her, is his\nrevelation, and we believe it because we believe him. Then we believe she\nis what she professes to be, the living body of our Lord, who lives in her\nand is her life, and through whom the Holy Ghost carries on the work of\nregeneration and glorification of all souls that do not resist him, but by\nhis assistance co\u00f6perate with him.\n\nNow, where in all this, from the first to the last, find you any\ndiscrepancy between Rome and Reason, the sovereign church and the free\nsoul, between God in us and God in our masters? There is no discrepancy.\nThere is more in it than natural reason by her own light knows, but nothing\nagainst reason, or which reason does not feel that she needs for own full\nand normal development. There is in it more than there is in nature,\nbecause our destiny, our end, that is, our supreme good, like our origin,\nlies in the supernatural order, not the natural, for our nature can be\nsatisfied with no finite or created good, and it needs no argument to prove\nthat the natural is not capable of itself of attaining to the supernatural.\nTo assert the supernatural as the means of elevating nature to the plane of\na supernatural destiny and of enabling it to reach it, assuredly is not to\ndiscard or to depress nature.\n\nThe difficulties which exclusive rationalists and naturalists feel in the\ncase grow out of their supposition that Rome teaches that the intelligible\nand superintelligible are identical with the natural and supernatural, and\nthat the natural and supernatural are two separate worlds, each standing\nopposed to the other, or two contradictory plans or systems, with no real\nnexus or medium of reconciliation between them, that is, that Rome, saving\nher authority to teach and govern, teaches Protestantism. The intelligible\nand superintelligible are distinguishable only in relation to our limited\nintelligence, but in the real order are identical, one and the same, and\nwould be seen to be so by an intelligence capable of taking in all reality\nat one view. The natural and supernatural are distinguishable, but not\nseparable, any more than is the effect from the cause. They are simply\ndistinct parts of one complete system, or one dialectic whole, united as\nwell as distinguished by the creative act of God. They are expressed, in\nthe Christian or teleological order, by the terms generation and\nregeneration. Man is created by the supernatural, but the race is\nexplicated in the order of generation by natural laws; in the order of\nregeneration, by the election of grace. Generation is initial; regeneration\nis teleological, and completes generation, or places man on the plane of\nhis end, as generation places the individual on the plane of his natural\nexistence.\n\n{734}\n\nNow, it is clear that without generation there can be no regeneration, as\nwithout regeneration the end is not attainable. The two terms express two\nprocesses, or the two itineraries of creation--the procession of existences\nfrom God as First Cause by way of creation and their explication by natural\nlaws, and the return of existences by means of supernatural grace to God,\nwithout absorption in him, as their end or Final Cause. The natural order\nor generation, the order explicated by natural laws, proceeds from and is\nsustained by the supernatural, for God is supernatural, since he is the\nauthor of nature; the end, or the final cause, is supernatural, since it is\nin God; the medium of return, then, must be also supernatural, since the\nnatural is not and cannot be adequate to a supernatural end. Evidently,\nthen, there is and can be no opposition between the natural and\nsupernatural but the opposition between the cause and effect, the medium\nand the end, the part and the whole. The supernatural is necessary to\noriginate, sustain, and complete the natural. Hence, the difficulties\ncreated or suggested by Protestant theology have no place in relation to\nthe teachings of Rome. Protestantism escapes an eternal war only by\nsupposing either the natural or the supernatural; Rome escapes it by\nreconciling the two, or presenting in the real order the medium of their\nunion.\n\nWe may now dispose of the question of miracles and supernatural visions,\netc., which excite the disdain or contempt of Mr. Parkman and his class of\nthinkers or no-thinkers. Man exists from, by, and for the supernatural.\nChristianity is supernatural, and is the medium, and the necessary medium,\nby which man attains his end, or supreme good. It is teleological, and\nhence the whole teleological life of man is supernatural. The supernatural\nis that which God does immediately by himself; the natural is that which he\ndoes mediately through the action of second causes or so-called natural\nlaws, as generation, germination, growth, etc., which are in the secondary\norder explicable by natural or created causes. Now, as the supernatural is\nthe origin, medium, and end of man, and as Christianity or the teleological\norder unites dialectically--really unites, as God and man are really united\nin the Incarnation--the natural and supernatural, there is and can be no\n_\u00e0 priori_ difficulty or antecedent improbability that God, in\npreparing the introduction in time of the Christian order, and in carrying\nit on to the end for which he creates it, should intervene more or less\nfrequently by his direct and immediate action--action upon nature, if you\nwill, but without the agency of natural causes. The whole Christian order,\non its divine side, though included in the original plan or decree of\ncreation, is an intervention of this sort. Grace is the direct action of\nGod the Holy Ghost in regenerating the human soul, elevating it to the\nplane of its destiny, and enabling it to persevere to the end. The part\nassigned to natural agents is ministerial only, or signs through which\ngrace is signified. The direct and immediate action of God is normal in the\norder of Christianity, and, therefore, in no sense repugnant to the order\nof nature.\n\nWhat, then, is a miracle? It is not a violation or suspension of the laws\nof nature, but a specific effect in the visible order produced by the\ndirect and immediate action of God, for some purpose connected with the\nteleological order of creation, or the order of regeneration as\ndistinguished from the order of generation. That he should do so from time\nto time, as seems to him good, is only in analogy with the very order he\nsustains for the perfection or completion of creation. There are, then, no\n_\u00e0 priori_ objections to miracles. Hume's pretence that no testimony\ncan prove a miracle, for it is more probable that men will lie than it is\nthat nature will go out of her course, is of no weight, because nature does\nnot work a miracle, nor does it in a miracle go out of its course.\n{735}\nThe miracle is worked by God himself, and is in the teleological order of\nnature. Being wrought in the visible order, a miracle is as probable and as\nprovable as any other historical event. The only questions are, is the\nevent not explicable by natural causes? and are the proofs sufficient to\nprove it as an historical fact? No more evidence is needed to prove it than\nis required to prove any historical fact in the natural order itself. If a\nreal miracle, it is as easily proven as a natural event.\n\nNo doubt many things pass for miracles which are explicable by natural\ncauses, and many visions are taken to be supernatural which have nothing\nsupernatural about them. We do not hold ourselves bound by our Catholic\nfaith to believe all the marvellous occurrences recorded in the lives of\nthe saints, or treated as such in popular tradition, were really miracles,\nwrought by the direct and immediate action of the Almighty. We are bound to\nbelieve only according to the evidence in each particular case. Credulity\nis as little the characteristic of Catholics as is scepticism itself. We\nare in relation to alleged particular miracles as free to exercise our\nreason and judgment as we are in regard to any other class of alleged\nhistorical facts, and to sift and weigh the testimony in the case. That\nmiracles are possible, are not improbable, have never ceased in the church,\nand are daily wrought among the faithful, we fully believe; but, when it\ncomes to this or that particular fact or event alleged to be a miracle, we\nexercise to the full our critical judgment, and follow what seems to us the\nweight of evidence. The alleged appearance of our Lady to the young\nshepherds of La Salette is possible and not improbable, but before we can\nbe required to believe it we must have sufficient evidence of the fact.\n\nMr. Parkman in his quiet way smiles at the credulity of the good Jesuit\nfathers, who seem to believe the stories of Indian magic, witchcraft, or\nsorcery which they relate; but has he any evidence that there is no Satan,\nand that evil spirits are mere _entia rationis?_ Can he prove that\nmagic, witchcraft, sorcery, _diablerie_, in any or all its forms, is\nimpossible or even improbable? All the world from the earliest and in the\nmost enlightened ages have believed in what the Germans call the Night-side\nof Nature, and no man has any right to allege so universal a belief is\nunfounded, except on very strong and convincing reasons. Has he such\nreasons? Can he disprove the whole series of facts recorded? Can he deny\nthe facts alleged by our modern necromancers or spiritists, or prove not\nthat some of them are, but that all of them, are explicable without the\nsupposition of some superhuman agency? Doubtless there is much illusion,\ndelusion, cheatery, but is there not also much inexplicable without satanic\ninfluence? Can he say that there is no Satan, that there are no fallen\ncreatures superior to man in strength and intellect, who harass him, beset\nhim, possess him, or that tempt him, and perform lying wonders well fitted\nto deceive him, and to draw him away from the worship of the true God,\nthough, of course, unable to harm against the consent of his will? Their\ndeviltry is superhuman, but not by any means supernatural, and they who\nspeak of it as supernatural entirely mistake its character. As in the case\nof miracles, while we concede the general principle, when we come to\nparticular facts attributed to satanic agency, we use our critical\njudgment, and are, we confess, very slow to believe, and hard to be\nconvinced.\n\nWe think we have said enough to prove that it is time to leave off the cant\nabout the despotism of Rome, and to desist from placing the church in\ncontrast with the free soul. The two poles are rationalism and\nsupernaturalism; Catholicity combines both in their real synthesis, a\nsynthesis founded in the creative act of God which really connects creator\nand creature in one harmonious whole.\n{736}\nThey who do not perceive it are ignorant of the teachings of Rome, and are\nmere sciolists. They have taken only superficial views of both reason and\nreligion, and have far more reason to deplore their lack of light than to\nboast of their intelligence. There is infinitely more in this old church\nthan is dreamed of in their philosophy.\n\nYet nobody pretends that the church teaches the details of science, and\nleaves nothing for the human intellect to observe, to investigate, to\narrange, and classify. The church is Catholic, because she teaches in her\ndoctrine, whether known by natural reason or only by divine revelation, the\nuniversal ideal, or the Catholic principles of all the real and all the\nknowable; but she does not teach all the details of cosmology, history,\nchemistry, mechanics, geography, astronomy, geology, zoology, physiology,\npathology, philology, or anthropology. She teaches the ideal or general\nprinciples of all the sciences, and teaches them infallibly, and thus gives\nthe law to all scientific investigation, which _savans_ in their\ninductions and deductions are not at liberty to transgress. Our\nphilosophers and _savans_ are perfectly free to explore nature in all\npossible directions, but they are not free to invent hypotheses and\ntheories not reconcilable with the universal principles she teaches, or to\noppose their conjectures to the principles she asserts, because all such\nconjectures or theories are unscientific and false. The ethnologist is free\nto investigate the characteristics of the different races and families of\nmen, but not free to deny the unity of the human race itself, or the\ndescent of all men from one and the same primitive pair, who must have been\nimmediately created and instructed by God himself. But this is saying no\nmore than that the mathematician is not free to reject his axioms, or the\ngeometrician his definitions; and we may add that, if our scientific men\nwould take the principles the church teaches as their guide, they would\nfind themselves much more successful in their observation and\nclassification of natural phenomena, and save themselves from the ridicule\nwhich they now incur.\n\nIt follows from this that the sciences are not absolutely independent of\nthe supervision of the church, and that she goes not out of her province\nwhen she censures officially theories, hypotheses, and conjectures which\ncontradict the ideal truth committed to her charge. They by contradicting\nher principles are proved to be unsound and unscientific. But so long as\nthe scientific confine themselves to facts and real principles, and do not\nrun or attempt to run athwart the truth, they are perfectly free. The\nchurch interferes with them only when they impugn by their speculations the\nuniversal principles of things. The people, again, are free to adopt the\nform of government which they judge best, and civil governments are free to\npursue the policy they judge the wisest and most prudent, so long as they\ncontravene no principle or dictate of moral justice; and the individual is\nfree to choose the calling in life he prefers, and to pursue it without let\nor hinderance from the church, so long as he violates no divine precept or\nlaw of God.\n\nThere is no doubt some restraint here, for the church excludes neither\nauthority nor liberty. Liberty without authority is license, and as great\nan evil as authority without liberty, which is tyranny or despotism. The\nscientific, if truly scientific, study to know reality, the real and\nunmixed truth, which is alike independent of her and of them, and they can\nobtain it only by conforming to the immutable principles of things,\naccording to which God has created and governs the universe. The church\napproves and encourages free thought and free inquiry, but she certainly\ndoes not permit her children, under pretence of free thought, free inquiry,\nor of science, to subvert the very principles on which all science, even\nthought itself, depends, or to degrade human nature and abase the dignity\nof reason by theories that deprive man of his humanity and rank him with\nthe beasts that perish.\n{737}\nSuch liberty is repugnant to the very essence of science, and cannot be\nentertained for a moment by any one who is anything more than a developed\nchimpanzee or gorilla. It is license, not liberty, and introduces only\nintellectual anarchy.\n\nThere is, too, a moral order in the universe, and the good of the\nindividual and society can be secured only by conformity to it. No man, no\nnation, no society, no government has or can have the right to do wrong.\nThe rejection of the restraints of the great fundamental principles of\ntruth in science and the sciences, and of justice in the individual and in\nsociety, is the greatest of evils, and it is therefore that the church has\nit for her office to unite in an indissoluble synthesis both liberty and\nauthority. To make the fact that she unites authority with liberty, and\ntempers each with the other, a ground of reproach against her is no proof\nof wisdom. She allows man all the liberty God gives him, and to ask for\nmore is absurd.\n\nIn teaching the great principles of truth in all orders, and in judging of\ntheir explication and application, the church is infallible, but she is not\ninfallible in the details of science. She is infallible in teaching\nwhatever our Lord has commanded her, has revealed to her, and is realizing\nin her life, but not necessarily in matters not included in the faith. Her\ninfallibility does not imply the scientific infallibility of all Catholics.\nIt is no objection to her and no embarrassment to Catholics, that her\nchildren in the details of science have more or less erred. Others may be\nas well acquainted with these details as Catholics, and the scientific\nsuperiority of Catholics is in their knowledge of the great scientific\nprinciples, or what in science is ideal and catholic. Others may know the\nfacts of history as well, but none can so well know the ideas or principles\nwhich govern the historical development of the race, and the science or\nphilosophy of history. The same may be said of all the other sciences.\n\nTo fully develop and exhaust the great question we have touched upon in\nthis article would require a volume, indeed many volumes. We have aimed\nrather at giving the principles and method of their solution than at giving\nthe solution itself. We have left much for the reader to do for himself by\nhis own thought and study. It is as necessary that readers should think\nfreely and wisely as that authors should, for mind can speak only to mind.\nBut we trust that we have said enough to vindicate Rome from the charges\npreferred against her, and to prove that they who take pleasure in reviling\nher or her faithful children have little reason to boast of their\nintelligence or to claim to be the more advanced portion of the race.\n\n------\n\n{738}\n\n  Impressions of Spain.\n\n  By Lady Herbert.\n\n\nThe journey to Madrid was uneventful. One more day was spent in Cordova;\nonce more they visited that glorious mosque; one more day and night was\nspent in wearisome diligences and stifling wayside stations, and then they\nfound themselves again established in their old comfortable quarters at the\n\"Puerta del Sol.\"\n\nIt was a relief to think that the \"lions\" of the place had been more or\nless visited, and that all they had to do was to return to the places of\nprevious interest, and thoroughly enjoy them. The cold during their former\nvisit had precluded their making any expeditions in the neighborhood, which\nomission they now prepared to rectify. Spending the first few days in\nseeing their old friends, and obtaining letters of introduction from them,\nour travellers resolved that their first excursion should be to the\nEscurial.\n\n\n  The Escurial and Toledo.\n\nA railroad is now open from Madrid which passes by the palace; so at\nhalf-past six, one morning, they took their places in the train, which soon\ncarried them away from the cultivated environs of the city to a country\nwhich, for desolation, wildness, and grandeur, resembles the scenery at\nNicolosi in the ascent of Etna. In the midst of this rugged mass of rocks\nand scrubby oak-trees, the large gloomy Escurial rises up, under the\nshadow, as it were, of the snowy jagged peaks of the Sierra Guadarama,\nwhich forms its background. There is a picture of it, by Rubens, in the\ngallery at Longford Castle, near Salisbury, which gives the best possible\nidea of the complete isolation of the great building itself, and of the\nsavage character of the whole of the surrounding country.\n\nLeaving the train, our party went to present their letters to the\nprincipal, Padre G----, who very kindly showed them everything most worth\nseeing in the place. It is a gigantic pile of masonry, built by Philip II.\nas a thanksgiving for the success of the battle of St. Quentin, and in the\nshape of a grid-iron, being dedicated to St. Laurence, on the day of whose\nmartyrdom the vow was made. \"Celui qui faisait un si grand voeu doit avoir\neu grande peur!\" was the saying of the Duke of Braganza; and the gloomy,\ncold, gray character of the whole place is but the reflex of the king's\ntemperament. He employed the famous architect Herrera, whose genius was,\nhowever, much cramped by the king's insistence on the shape being\nmaintained. It was finished in 1584.\n\nThe Jeronimite monks have been scattered to the winds, and the convent has\nbeen turned into a college; they have about 250 students. The church is\nlarge and solemn, but bare and uninviting, dismal and sombre, like all the\nrest. The choir is up-stairs, with fine carved stalls, among which is that\nof Philip II., who always said office with the monks. The painted ceiling\nis by Luca Giordano. The choir-books are more than 200 in number, in virgin\ncalf, and of gigantic size; some of them are beautifully illuminated. At\nthe back, in a small gallery, with a window looking on the great piazza\nbelow, is the famous white marble Christ, the size of life, by Benvenuto\nCellini, given to Philip II. by the Grand Duke of Florence. On certain days\nit is exposed to the people from the window; but wonderful as may be its\nanatomy, the expression is both painful and commonplace. Beneath the church\nis the famous crypt containing the bodies of all the kings and queens of\nSpain since Charles V., arranged in niches round the octagonal chapel.\n{739}\nEach niche contains a black marble sarcophagus; the kings on the right, and\nthe queens on the left. Here mass is always said on All Souls' Day, and on\nthe anniversaries of their deaths. The present queen came once, and looked\nat the empty urn waiting for her, but did not repeat the experiment. \"I\nhave come once of my own freewill,\" she is supposed to have said, \"but the\nnext time I shall be brought here without it.\" It is a dismal\nresting-place; the damp, cold, slippery stairs by which you descend into it\nfrom the church seem to chill one's very blood, and the profound darkness,\nonly lit up here and there by the flicker of the guide's torch, with the\nreverberation caused by the closing of the heavy iron door, till the\nthoughts with visions of death, uncheered by hope, and of a prison rather\nthan a grave. Ascending with a feeling of positive relief to the church\nabove, Padre G---- took them into the sacristy, which is a beautiful long,\nlow room, with arabesque ceilings, and at the further end of which is a\nvery fine picture by Coello, representing the apotheosis of the \"Forma,\" or\nmiraculous wafer: the heads are all portraits, and admirably executed. At\nthe back is the little chapel or sanctuary where the \"Forma\" is kept and\nexhibited twice a year. Charles II. erected the gorgeous altar with the\nfollowing inscription:\n\n  En magni operis miraculum intra miraculum mundi,\n  coeli miraculum consecratum.\n\nThe legend states that at the battle of Gorcum, in 1525, the Zuinglian\nheretics scattered and trampled on the Sacred Host, _which bled_; and\nbeing gathered up and carefully preserved by the faithful, was afterward\ngiven by Rudolph II. to Philip II., which event is represented in a\nbas-relief. In this sacristy are also some vestments of which the\nembroidery is the most exquisite thing possible; the faces of the figures\nare like beautiful miniatures, so that it is difficult to believe they are\ndone in needlework. [Footnote 248]\n\n    [Footnote 248: In the Dominican convent of Stone, in Staffordshire, the\n    same exquisite work is now being reproduced; which proves that the art\n    is not, as is generally supposed, extinct.]\n\nBut the great treasures of this church are its relics, of which the\nquantity is enormous. They are arranged in gigantic cupboards or\n\"\u00e9tag\u00e8res,\" stretching from the floor to the ceiling, the doors of which\nare carefully concealed by the pictures which hang over them, above both\nthe high altar and the two side altars at the east end. There are more than\n7,000 relics, of which the most interesting are those of St. Laurence\nhimself, (his skull, his winding-sheet, the iron bars of his gridiron,\netc..) the head of St. Hermengilde, sent to the king from Seville, and the\narm and head of St. Agatha. The reliquaries are also very beautiful, some\nof them of very fine cinquecento work. These are down-stairs. Up-stairs is\na kind of secret chapel, where there are some things which were still more\ninteresting to our travellers. Here are four MS. books of St. Theresa's,\nall written by her own hand; her Life, written by command of her confessor.\nPadre B\u00e1nez, with a voucher of its authenticity from him at the end; her\nPath of Perfection; her Constitutions and Foundations; also her inkstand\nand pen. Her handwriting is more like a man's than a woman's, and is\nbeautifully clear and firm. There is also a veil worked in a kind of\ncrochet by St. Elizabeth of Hungary, and sent by her to St. Margaret; a\nbeautiful illuminated Greek missal, once belonging to St. Chrysostom; a pot\nfrom Cana in Galilee; a beautifully carved ivory diptych; the body of one\nof the Holy Innocents, sent from Bethlehem; some exquisite ivory and coral\nreliquaries, etc. From the church our party went up by a magnificent\nstaircase to the library, which though despoiled, like everything else\nduring the French invasion, still contains some invaluable books and MSS.\n{740}\nThere is an illuminated Apocalypse of the fourteenth century, most\nexquisitely painted on both sides; a very fine copy of the Koran; many\nother beautiful missals; and in a room down-stairs, not generally shown to\ntravellers, are some thousands of manuscripts, among which are a wonderful\nilluminated copy of the Miracles of the Virgin, in Portuguese and Gallego,\nof the eleventh century, most quaint and funny in design and execution;\nalso a very curious illuminated book of chess problems and other games,\nwritten by order of the king Alonso el Sabio. It is a library where one\nmight spend days and days with ever-increasing pleasure, if it were not for\nthe cold, which, to our travellers, fresh from the burning sun of Seville,\nseemed almost unendurable. The cloisters, refectory, and kitchens are all\non the most magnificent scale. In the wing set aside for the private\napartments of the royal family, but which they now rarely occupy, the thing\nmost worth looking at is the tapestry, made in Madrid, at the Barbara\nfactory, (now closed,) from drawings by Teniers and Goya. They are quite\nlike beautiful paintings, both in expression and color, though some of the\nsubjects and scenes are of questionable propriety. There is a suite of\nsmall rooms with beautiful inlaid doors and furniture; a few good pictures,\n(among a good deal of rubbish,) especially one of Bosch, known as that of\nThe Dog and the Fly; and a very interesting gallery or corridor, covered\nwith frescoes, representing the taking of Granada on the one side and the\nbattle of St. Quentin on the other, the victory of Lepanto occupying the\nspaces at the two ends. These frescoes are very valuable, both as portraits\nand as representing the costumes and arms of the period. They were said to\nbe facsimile copies of original drawings, done on cloths on the actual\nspots. That of St. Quentin was specially interesting to one of the party,\nwhose ancestor fought there, and in whose house in England (Wilton Abbey)\nis still shown the armor of Ann Con\u00e9table de Montmorency, of the Duc de\nMontpensier, of Admiral Coligni, and of other French prisoners taken by him\nin that memorable battle. Beyond this gallery is the little business-room\nor study of Philip II., with his chair, his gouty stool, his writing-table,\nhis well-worn letter book, and two old pictures, one of the Seven Deadly\nSins, the other an etching (of 1572) of the Virgin and Saints. Out of this\ntiny den is a kind of recess, with a window looking on the high altar in\nwhich he caused his couch to be laid when he was dying. The death-struggle\nwas prolonged for fifty-three days of almost continuous agony, during which\ntime he went on holding in his hand the crucifix which Charles V. had when\nhe expired, and which is still religiously preserved. The gardens in front\nof this magnificent palace are very quaint and pretty, the beds being cut\nin a succession of terraces overlooking the plains below, and bordered with\nlow box hedges cut in prim shapes, with straight gravel walks, beautiful\nfountains, and marble seats. But it is not difficult to understand why the\npoor queen prefers the sunny slopes of La Granja, or even the dulness of\nthe green avenues of Aranjuez, to this gloomy pile, where the snow hardly\never melts in the cold shade of those inner courts, and where all the\nassociations are of death in its most repulsive form. Above the Escurial,\nhalf-way up the mountain, is a rude seat of boulder stones, from whence it\nis said Philip II. used to watch the progress of the huge building.\n\nReturning to the railway station, our travellers walked down the hill and\nthrough a pleasantly wooded avenue to a little \"maisonnette\" of the\nInfanta, built for Charles IV. when heir-apparent, and containing some\nbeautiful ivories and Wedgwoods. The gardens are pretty and bright, but the\nwhole thing is too small to be anything but a child's toy. An accident on\nthe line, somewhere near Avila, detained our party for six mortal hours at\na wretched little wayside station, of which the authorities flatly refused\nto put on a short special train, although there were a large number of\npassengers, in addition to our travellers, waiting, like them, to return to\nMadrid.\n{741}\nBut the Spanish mind cannot take in the idea of any one being in a hurry.\n\"Ora!\" \"Ma\u00f1ana!\" (By and by! To-morrow!) are the despairing words which\nmeet one at every turn in this country. In this instance, neither horses\nnor carriages being procurable, by which the journey to Madrid (only twenty\nmiles) could have been accomplished with perfect facility by road, our\ntravellers had nothing left for it but to wait. Patience, and such sleep as\ncould be got on a hard bench, were their only resource until one in the\nmorning, when the night express fortunately came up, and, after some demur,\nagreed to take them back to Madrid.\n\nToo tired the following day to start early again for Toledo, as they had\nintended, our party took advantage of the kindness of the English minister\nto see the queen's private library, which is in one of the wings of the\nlarge but uninteresting modern palace. The librarian good-naturedly showed\nthem some of the rarest of his treasures: among them is a beautiful missal,\nbound in shagreen, with lovely enamel clasps and exquisite illuminations,\nwhich had belonged to Queen Isabella of Castile; her arms, Arragon on one\nside and Castile on the other, were worked into the illuminations on the\ncover. There was a still older missal illuminated in 1315, in which is\nfound the first mention of _St. Louis_ in the Kalendar. Here also are\nsome of the first books printed in type, and a very fine MS. Greek copy of\nAristotle.\n\nAfterward, they came to a distant room, where Dr.---- found what he had\nlong sought for in vain--a quantity of the MS. letters of Gondomar,\nminister from Spain to our King James I., giving an amusing and gossiping\naccount of people and things in England at that time. In this library is\nalso a very curious and interesting MS. life of Cardinal Wolsey.\n\nIn the evening, one of our party paid a visit to the Papal Nuncio,\nMonsignor B----, a very kind, clever, and agreeable man, living in a quaint\nold house, with a snug library, in which hangs a pretty oil painting of\nTyana, a picturesque country near Barcelona, of which he is archbishop.\nFrom him, and from the venerable Monsignor S----, bishop of Daulia, she\nobtained certain letters of introduction to prelates and convents, which\nwere invaluable in her future tour, and procured for her a kind and\ncourteous welcome wherever she went.\n\nThe following morning, after a five o'clock mass in the beautiful little\nchapel of the sisters of charity, our travellers started for Toledo by\nrail, passing by the Aranjuez, the \"Sans-Souci\" of the Spanish queen, where\nall the trees in Castile seem to be collected for her special benefit, and\nwhere the sight of the green avenues and fountains is a real refreshment\nafter the barren and arid features of the rest of the country.\n\nToledo is a most curious and beautiful old town, built on seven hills, like\nRome. The approach to it is by a picturesque bridge over the Tagus, which\nrushes through a rent in the granite mountains like a vigorous Scotch\nsalmon-river, and encircles the walls of the ancient city as with a girdle.\nPassing under a fine old Moorish horse-shoe arched gateway, a modern zigzag\nroad leads up the steep incline to the \"plaza,\" out of which diverge a\nmultitude of narrow tortuous streets, like what in Edinburgh are called\n\"wynds,\" as painful to walk upon as the streets of Jerusalem. However,\nafter a vain attempt to continue in the Noah's Ark of an omnibus which had\nbrought them up the steep hill from the station, and which grazed the walls\nof the houses on each side from its width, our travellers were compelled to\nbrave the slippery stones and proceed on foot. The little inn is as\nprimitive as all else in this quaint old town, where everything seems to\nhave stood still for the last five centuries. Leaving their cloaks in the\nonly available place dignified by the name of \"Sala,\" and swallowing with\ndifficulty some very nasty coffee, they started off at once for the\ncathedral, which stands in the heart of the city, surrounded by convents\nand colleges, and with the archiepiscopal palace on the right.\n{742}\nIt is a marvel of Gothic beauty and perfection. Originally a mosque, it was\nrebuilt by Ferdinand, and converted by him into a Christian church, being\nfinished in 1490. In no part of the world can anything be seen more unique,\nmore beautiful, or more effective than the white marble screen, with its\nrow of white angels with half-folded wings, guarding the sanctuary of the\nhigh altar, and standing out sharp and clear against the magnificent dark\nbackground formed by the arched naves and matchless painted glass, which,\nin depth and brilliancy of color and beauty of design, exceeds even that of\nSeville. \"Shall you ever forget the blue eyes of those rose-windows at\nToledo?\" exclaimed, months after, Dr.---- to one of the party, who was\ndwelling with him on the wonderful beauties of this matchless temple.\n[Footnote 249]\n\n    [Footnote 249: Incredible as it may seem, the guide-books state that\n    there are no less than 750 stained glass windows in this cathedral.]\n\nThe choir is exquisitely carved, both above and below; the stalls divided\nby red marble columns. Of the seventy stalls, half are carved by Vigarny\nand half by Berruguete: each figure of each saint is a study in itself. The\nhigh altar is a perfect marvel of workmanship, the \"reredos\" or \"retablo\"\nrepresenting the whole life and passion of our Lord. At the back is the\nwonderful marble \"trasparente,\" which Ford calls an \"abomination of the\nseventeenth century,\" but which, when the sun shines through it, is a\nmarvel for effect of color and delicacy of workmanship. The Moorish altar\nstill remains at which Ferdinand and Isabella heard mass after their\nconquest of the Saracens; and close to this altar is the spot pointed out\nby tradition as the one where the virgin appeared to St. Ildefonso and\nplaced the chasuble on his shoulders. It is veiled off, with this\ninscription on the pillar above:\n\n  Adorabimus in loco ubi steterunt pedes ejus.\n\nThe fine bas-relief representing the miracle was executed by Vigarny.\nFragments of Saracenic art peep out everywhere, especially in the Sala\nCapitular, or chapter-room, of which the doorway is an exquisite specimen\nof the finest Moorish work, and the ceiling likewise. In this chapter-room\nare two admirable portraits of Cardinal Ximenes and Cardinal Mendoza, said\nto have been taken from life. The monuments in the side chapels are very\nfine, especially one of St. Ildefonso, whose body had been carried by the\nthe Moors to Zamora, and was there discovered by a shepherd, and brought\nback again; of Cardinal Mendoza; of the Constable Alvaro de Luna; and of\nseveral Spanish kings. Here also rests the body of St. Leocadia, martyred\nin the persecution under Diocletian, and to whom three churches in Toledo\nare dedicated. During the wars with the Moors, her body was removed to\nItaly, and thence to Mons; but was brought back by Philip II. to her native\ncity, and is now in an urn in the sacristy. At the west end of the\ncathedral is a very curious chapel, where the Muzarabic ritual is still\nused. This appears to be to the Spaniards what the Ambrosian is to the\nMilanese, and was established by Cardinal Ximenes. The sacristy is a real\ntreasure-house, containing an exquisite tabernacle of gold brought by\nChristopher Columbus, incensories, chalices, crosses, and reliquaries, in\ngold and enamel, and \"cristal de roche,\" (some given by Louis of France,)\nand the missal of St. Louis, of which the illuminations are as fine as any\nin the Vatican. The robes, mantles, and ornaments of the Virgin are\nencrusted with pearls and jewels. Cardinal Mendoza removed one side of the\nmarble screen of the high altar to make room for his own monument. In\ncontrast to this, is another archbishop's tomb, near the altar of the\nmiraculous Virgin. They wanted to give him a fine carved sepulchre, and\nwere discussing it in his presence a short time before his death.\n{743}\nHe insisted on a simple slab, with the following words:\n\n  \"Hic jacet pulvis, cinis, nullus.\"\n\nClose to the b\u00e9niti\u00e8re at the south entrance, is a little marble slab\nattached to the pillar, and on it a little soft leather cushion, which had\nexcited the curiosity of one of our party on entering. On returning for\nvespers, she found laid on it a fine little baby, beautifully dressed, with\na medal round its neck, but quite dead! One of the canons explained to her\nthat when the parents were too poor to pay the expenses of their children's\nfunerals, they brought the little bodies in this way for interment by the\nchapter. The cloisters to the north of the cathedral are very lofty and\nfine, and decorated with frescoes; and the doors with their magnificent\nbronze bas-reliefs, in the style of the Florence baptistery, and gloriously\ncarved portals, are on a par with all the rest. The \"Puerta del Perdon,\"\nand the \"Puerta de los Leones,\" especially, are unique in their gorgeous\ndetails, and in the great beauty and life-like expression of the figures.\n\nThe chapter library is in good order, and contains some very fine editions\nof Greek and Latin works: a Bible belonging to St. Isidore; the works of\nSt. Gregory; a fine illuminated Bible given by St. Louis; a missal of\nCharles V.; a fine Talmud and Koran; and some very interesting MSS. In the\nante-room are some good pictures.\n\nThe palace of the archbishop is exactly opposite the west front of the\ncathedral. No one has played a more important part in the history of his\ncountry of late years than the present Archbishop of Toledo. High in the\nfavor and counsels of the queen, he at one time determined, for political\nreasons, to leave Spain and settle himself in Italy, but was recalled by\nthe voice of both queen and people, and remains, beloved and honored by\nall; and although upward of eighty years of age, and rather deaf, is still\na perfect lion of intellectual and physical strength. He received our\ntravellers most kindly, and in a fatherly manner invited them to breakfast,\nand afterward to be present at a private confirmation in the little chapel\nof his palace, at which ceremony they gladly assisted. He afterward sent\nhis secretary, a most clever and agreeable person, who spoke Italian with\nfluency, to show the ladies the convent of Sta. Teresa, situated in the\nlower part of the town. This convent was started, like all the rest of the\nsaint's foundations, amidst discouragements and difficulties of all kinds.\nThe house which had been promised her before her arrival was refused\nthrough the intrigues of a relative of the donor; then the vicar-general\nwithdrew his license; and St. Theresa began to fear that she would have to\nleave Toledo without accomplishing her object. Through the intervention of\na poor man, however, she at last heard of a tiny lodging where she and her\nsisters could be received. It was a very humble place, and there was but\none room in it which could be turned into a chapel; but that was duly\nprepared for mass, and dedicated to St. Joseph. Poor and meagre as the\nsanctuary was, it struck a little child who was passing by, by its bright\nand cared-for appearance, and she exclaimed: \"Blessed be God! how beautiful\nand clean it looks!\" St. Theresa said directly to her sisters: \"I account\nmyself well repaid for all the troubles which have attended this foundation\nby that little angel's one 'Glory to God.'\"\n\nAfterward, all difficulties were smoothed; a larger house was built; and\nthe poor Carmelites, from being despised and rejected by all, and in want\nof the commonest necessaries of life, were overwhelmed with supplies of all\nkinds, so that one of them, in sorrow, exclaimed to St. Theresa: \"What are\nwe to do, Mother? for now it seems that we are no longer poor!\"\n\n{744}\n\nIt was this very house which our travellers now visited, and a far cheerier\nand brighter one it is than that of Seville. It contains twenty-four\nsisters: among their treasures are the MS. copy of St. Theresa's Way of\nPerfection, corrected by the saint herself, and with a short preface\nwritten in her own hand; a quantity of her autograph letters; a long letter\nfrom Sister Ann of St. Bartholomew; St. Theresa's seal, of which the ladies\nwere given an impression; the habit she had worn in the house, etc., etc.\nBut the most curious thing was the picture, painted by desire of the saint,\nof the death of one of the community. We will tell the story in her own\nwords: \"One of our sisters fell dangerously ill, and I went to pray for her\nbefore the Blessed Sacrament, beseeching our Lord to give her a happy\ndeath. I then came back to her cell to stay with her, and on my entrance\ndistinctly saw a figure like the representations of our Lord, at the bed's\nhead, with His arms outspread as if protecting her, and he said to me: 'Be\nassured that in like manner I will protect all the nuns who shall die in\nthese monasteries, so that they shall not fear any temptation at the hour\nof death.' A short time after, I spoke to her, when she said to me:\n'Mother, what great things I am about to see!' and with these words she\nexpired, like an angel.\" St. Theresa had this subject represented in a\nfresco, which is still on the wall of the cell. Here also she completed the\nnarrative of her life, now in the Escurial, by command of Padre Iba\u00f1ez, and\nhere is her breviary, with the words (which we will give in English)\nwritten by herself on the fly-leaf:\n\n  \"Let nothing disturb thee;\n   Let nothing affright thee;\n   All passeth away;\n     God only shall stay.\n   Patience wins all.\n   Who hath God needeth nothing.\n     For God is his All.\"\n\nLeaving this interesting convent, our travellers proceeded to San Juan de\nlos Reyes, so called because built by Ferdinand and Isabella, and dedicated\nto St. John. It was a magnificent Gothic building; but the only thing in\nthe church spared by the French are two exquisite \"palcos\" or balconies\noverlooking the high altar, in the finest Gothic carving, from whence\nFerdinand and Isabella used to hear mass: their ciphers are beautifully\nwrought in stone underneath. Outside this church hang the chains which were\ntaken off the Christian prisoners when they were released from the Moors.\nAdjoining is the convent, now deserted, and the palace of Cardinal Ximenes,\nof which the staircase and one long low room alone remain. But the gem of\nthe whole are the cloisters. Never was anything half so beautiful or so\ndelicate as the Moorish tracery and exquisite patterns of grape-vine,\nthistle, and acanthus, carved round each quaint-shaped arch and window and\ndoor-way. Festoons of real passion flowers, in full bloom, hung over the\narches from the \"patio\" in the centre, in which a few fine cypresses and\npomegranates were also growing, the dark foliage standing out against the\nbright blue sky overhead, and beautifully contrasting with the delicate\nwhite marble tracery of this exquisite double cloister. It is a place where\nan artist might revel for a month.\n\nTheir guide then took them to see the synagogues, now converted into\nChristian churches, but originally mosques. Exquisite Saracenic carvings\nremain on the walls and roofs, with fine old Moorish capitals to the\npillars, of their favorite pine apple pattern, and beautiful colored\n\"azulejos\" (tiles) on the floors and seats. Several of the private houses\nwhich they afterward visited at Toledo might literally have been taken up\nat Damascus and set down in this quaint old Spanish town, so identical are\nthey in design, in decorations, and in general character. The nails on the\ndoors are specially quaint, mostly of the shape of big mushrooms, and the\nknockers are also wonderful. Could the fashion, once in vogue among \"fast\"\nmen in England, of wrenching such articles from the doors, be introduced\ninto Spain, what art treasures one could get! but scarcely anything of the\nsort is to be bought in Toledo.\n{745}\nAfter trying in vain to swallow some of the food prepared for them at the\n\"fonda,\" in which it was hard to say whether garlic or rancid oil most\npredominated, our travellers toiled again in the burning sun up the steep\nhill leading to the Alcazar, the ancient palace, now a ruin, but still\nretaining its fine old staircase and court-yard with very ancient Roman\npillars. From hence there is a beautiful view of the town, of the Tagus\nflowing round it, and of the picturesque one-arched bridge which spans the\nriver in the approach from Madrid, with the ruins of the older Roman bridge\nand forts below. The Tagus here rushes down a rapid with a fine fall,\nlooking like a salmon-leap, where there ought to be first-rate pools and\nbeautiful fishing; and then flows swiftly and silently along through a\ngrand gorge of rocks to the left. By the river-side was the Turkish\nwater-wheel, or \"sakeel,\" worked by mules. The whole thing was thoroughly\nEastern; and the red, barren, arid look of the rocks and of the whole\nsurrounding country reminded one more of Syria than of anything European.\nOur travellers were leaning over the parapet of the little terrace-garden,\nlooking on this glorious view, when a group of women who were sitting in\nthe sun near the palace-gates called to their guide, and asked if the lady\nof the party were an Englishwoman, \"as she walked so fast.\" The guide\nreplied in the affirmative. One of them answered, \"O! qu\u00e9 peccado! (what a\npity!) I liked her face, and _yet she is an infidel_.\" The guide\nindignantly pointed to a little crucifix which hung on a rosary by the\nlady's side, at which the speaker, springing from her seat, impulsively\nkissed both the cross and the lady. This is only a specimen of the faith of\nthese people, who cannot understand anything Christian that is not\nCatholic, and confound all Protestants with Jews or Moors.\n\nGoing down the hill, stopping only for a few moments at a curiosity shop\nwhere, however, nothing really old could be obtained--they came to the\nChurch of La Cruz, built on the site of the martyrdom of St. Leocadia. It\nis now turned into a military college; but the magnificent Gothic portal\nand facade remain. The streets are as narrow and dirty in this part of the\ntown as in the filthiest eastern city; but at every turn there is a\nbeautiful doorway, as at Cairo, through which you peep into a cool \"patio,\"\nwith its usual fountain and orange-trees; while a double cloister runs\nround the quadrangle, and generally a picturesque side staircase, with a\nbeautifully carved balustrade, leading up to the cloisters above, with\ntheir delicate tracery and varied arches. The beauty of the towers and\n\"campanile\" is also very striking. They are generally thoroughly Roman in\ntheir character, being built of that narrow brick (or rather tile) so\ncommon for the purpose in Italy, but with the horse-shoe arch: that of S.\nRomano is the most perfect. There is also a lovely little mosque, with a\nwell in the court-yard near the entrance, which has now been converted into\na church under the title of \"Sta. Cruz de la Luz,\" with a wonderful\nintersection of horse-shoe arches, like a miniature of the cathedral at\nCordova. Toledo certainly does not lack churches or convents; but those who\nserved and prayed in them, where are they? The terrible want of instruction\nfor the people, caused by the closing of all the male religious houses,\nwhich were the centre of all missionary work, is felt throughout Spain; but\nnowhere more than in this grand old town, which is absolutely _dead_.\nThe children are neglected, the poor without a friend, the widow and orphan\nare desolate, and all seek in vain for a helper or a guide.\n\nOn the opposite side of the Tagus, and not far from the railway station,\nare the ruins of a curious old chateau, to which a legend is attached, so\ncharacteristic of the tone of thought of the people that it is given\nverbatim here. [Footnote 250]\n\n    [Footnote 250: This legend has been translated by Fernan Caballero, in\n    her Fleurs des Champs.]\n\n{746}\n\n  \"The owner had been a bad and tyrannical man, hard and unjust to his\n  people, selfish in his vices as in his pleasures; the only redeeming\n  point about him was his great love for his wife, a pious, gentle, loving\n  woman, who spent her days and nights in deploring the orgies of her\n  husband, and praying for God's mercy on his crimes. One winter's night,\n  in the midst of a terrible tempest, a knocking was heard at the castle\n  door, and presently a servant came in and told his mistress that two\n  monks, half dead with cold and hunger, and drenched by the pitiless\n  storm, had lost their way, and were begging for a night's lodging in the\n  castle. The poor lady did not know what to do, for her husband hated the\n  monks, and swore that none should ever cross his threshold. 'The count\n  will know nothing about it, my lady,' said the old servant, who guessed\n  the reason of her hesitation; 'I will conceal them somewhere in the\n  stable, and they will depart at break of day.' The lady gave a joyful\n  assent to the servant's proposal, and the monks were admitted. Scarcely,\n  however, had they entered, when the sound of a huntsman's horn, the\n  tramping of horses, and the barking of dogs, announced the return of the\n  master. The sport had been good; and when he had changed his soiled and\n  dripping clothes, and found himself, with his pretty wife seated opposite\n  him, by a blazing fire, and with a well-covered table, his good humor\n  made him almost tender toward her. 'What is the matter?' he exclaimed,\n  when he saw her sad and downcast face. 'Were you frightened at the storm?\n  yet you see I am come home safe and sound.' She did not answer. 'Tell me\n  what vexes you; I insist upon it,' he continued; 'and it shall not be my\n  fault I do not brighten that little face I love so well!' Thus encouraged\n  the lady replied: 'I am sad, because, while we are enjoying every luxury\n  and comfort here, others whom I know, even under this very roof, are\n  perishing with cold and hunger.' 'But who are they?' exclaimed the count,\n  with some impatience. 'Two poor monks,' answered the lady bravely, 'who\n  came here for shelter, and have been put in the stable without food or\n  firing.' The count frowned. 'Monks! Have I not told you fifty times I\n  would never have those idle pestilent fellows in my house?' He rang the\n  bell. 'For God's sake do not turn them out [on] such a night as this!'\n  exclaimed the countess. 'Don't be afraid, I will keep my word,' replied\n  her husband; and so saying, he desired the servant to bring them directly\n  into the dining-room. They appeared; and the venerable, saint-like\n  appearance of the elder of the two priests checked the raillery on the\n  lips of the count. He made them sit down at his table; but the religious,\n  faithful to his mission, would not eat till he had spoken some of God's\n  words to his host. After supper, to his wife's joy and surprise, the\n  count conducted the monks himself to the rooms he had prepared for them,\n  which were the best in the house; but they refused to sleep on anything\n  but straw. The count then himself went and fetched a truss of hay, and\n  laid it on the floor. Then suddenly breaking silence, he exclaimed:\n  'Father, I would return as a prodigal son to my Father's house; but I\n  feel as if it were impossible that he should forgive sins like mine.'\n  'Were your sins as numberless as the grains of sand on the sea-shore,'\n  replied the missionary,' faithful repentance, through the blood of\n  Christ, would wash them out. Therefore it is that the hardened sinner\n  will have no excuse in the last day.' Seized with sudden compunction, the\n  count fell on his knees, and made a full confession of his whole life,\n  his tears falling on the straw he had brought. A few hours later the\n  missionary, in a dream, saw himself, as it were, carried before the\n  tribunal of the Great Judge. In the scales of eternal justice a soul was\n  to be weighed: it was that of the count. Satan, triumphant, placed in the\n  scales the countless sins of his past life: the good angels veiled their\n  faces in sorrow, and pity, and shame. Then came up his guardian angel,\n  that spirit so patient and so watchful, so beautiful and so good, who\n  brings tears to our eyes and repentance to our hearts, alms to our hands\n  and prayers to our lips.\n{747}\n  He brought but a few bits of straw, wet with tears, and placed them in\n  the opposite scale. Strange! _they weighed down all the rest_. The\n  soul was saved. The next morning, the monk, on waking, found the castle\n  in confusion and sorrow. He inquired the reason: its master had died in\n  the night.\"\n\n\n    Zaragoza And Segovia.\n\nThe following morning found our travellers again in Madrid, and one of them\naccompanied the sisters of charity to a beautiful f\u00e8te at San Juan de\nAlar\u00e7on, a convent of nuns. The rest of the day was spent in the museum;\nand at half-past eight in the evening they started again by train for\nZaragoza, which they reached at six in the morning. One of the great\nannoyances of Spanish travelling is, that the only good and quick trains go\nat night; and it is the same with the diligences. In very hot weather it\nmay be pleasant; but in winter and in rain it is a very wretched proceeding\nto spend half your night in an uncomfortable carriage, and the other half\nwaiting, perhaps for hours, at some miserable wayside station. After\nbreakfasting in a hotel where nothing was either eatable or drinkable, our\nparty started for the two cathedrals. The one called the \"Seu\" is a fine\ngloomy old Gothic building, with a magnificent \"retablo,\" in very fine\ncarving, over the high altar, and what the people call a \"media naranja\"\n(or half-orange) dome, which is rather like the clerestory lantern of\nBurgos. In the sacristy was a beautiful ostensorium, with an emerald and\npearl cross, a magnificent silver tabernacle of cinquecento work, another\nostensorium encrusted with diamonds, a nacre \"nef,\" and some fine heads of\nsaints, in silver, with enamel collars. But at the sister cathedral, where\nis the famous _Virgen del Pilar_, the treasury is quite priceless. The\nmost exquisite reliquaries in pearls, precious stones, and enamel;\nmagnificent necklaces; earrings with gigantic pearls; coronets of diamonds;\nlockets; pictures set in precious stones; everything which is most valuable\nand beautiful, has been lavished on this shrine. In the outside sacristy is\nalso an exquisite chalice, in gold and enamel, of the fifteenth century;\nand a very fine picture, said to be by Correggio, of the Ecce Homo. The\nshrine of the Miraculous Virgin is thronged with worshippers, day and\nnight; but no woman is allowed to penetrate beyond the railing, so that she\nis very imperfectly seen. It is a _black_ figure, which is always the\nfavorite way of representing the Blessed Virgin in Spain: the pillar is of\nthe purest alabaster. There is some fine \"azulejo\" work in the sacristy;\nbut the cathedral itself is ugly, and is being restored in a bad style. Our\nparty left it rather with relief, and wandered down to the fine old bridge\nover the Ebro, which is here a broad and rapid stream, and amused\nthemselves by watching the boats shooting through the piers--an operation\nof some danger, owing to the rapidity of the current. There is a beautiful\nleaning tower of old Moorish and Roman brickwork, in a side street, but\nwhich you are not allowed to ascend without a special order from the\nprefect. The Lonja, or Exchange, is also well worth seeing, from its\nbeautiful deep overhanging roof. This is, in fact, the characteristic of\nall the old houses in Zaragoza, which is a quaint old town formed of a\nsuccession of narrow tortuous streets, with curious old roofs, \"patios,\"\ncolumns, and staircases. After having some luncheon, which was more eatable\nthan the breakfast, our travellers took a drive outside the town, and had a\nbeautiful view of the lower spur of the Pyrenees on the one hand, and of\nthe towers, bridges, and minarets of the city on the other. Then they went\nto the public gardens, laid out by Pignatelli, the maker of the canal,\nwhich are the resort of all the people on f\u00eate-days: they were very gay,\nand full of beautiful flowers.\n{748}\nFrom thence they drove to the castle, or \"Aljaferia,\" where there is a very\ncurious moresque chapel still existing, though sadly in ruins. Above are\nthe rooms occupied by Ferdinand and Isabella, and the apartment where St.\nElizabeth of Portugal was born, with the font where she was baptized. The\nhall of the ambassadors is very handsome, with a glorious moresque roof,\nand a gallery round. The castle is now turned into a barrack; but the\nofficers, who, with true Spanish courtesy, had accompanied the priest who\nwas showing the rooms to our travellers, _had never seen them before\nthemselves_. How long they had been quartered there none of our party\nhad the courage to ask! But this is a specimen of the very little interest\nwhich appears to be taken by the Spaniards in the antiquities or art\ntreasures of their country. Not one of them was ever to be seen in the\nmatchless gallery of Madrid. Coming home, they visited San Pablo, a curious\nand beautiful subterranean church, into which you descend by a flight of\nsteps. A service was going on, and an eloquent sermon, so that it was\nimpossible to see the pictures well; but they appeared to be above the\naverage. This church has a glorious tower in old Roman brickwork. The\npalace of the Infanta has been converted into a school. It is the most\nperfect specimen of the Renaissance style of Gothic architecture, with\nbeautiful arches, columns, staircase, and fretted roof. Exhausted with\ntheir sight-seeing, our travellers went back to their inn; agreeably\nsurprised, however, at the vestiges of ancient beauty still left in\nZaragoza, after the frightful sieges and sacking to which the city has\ntwice been subjected.\n\nIn the evening, the Canon de V----, who had been their kind cicerone at the\ncathedral in the absence of the bishop, came to pay them a visit, and gave\nthem a very interesting account of the people, and a great deal of\ninformation about the convents and religious houses in the place,\nespecially that of the Ursulines, who have a very large educational\nestablishment in the town. He has lately written a very interesting account\nof the foundress of this order.\n\nThe return to Madrid was necessarily accomplished again by night; and jaded\nand tired as they were the following day, our party had not the courage for\nany fresh expedition. One only visit was paid, which will ever remain in\nthe memory of the lady who had the privilege. It was to Monsignor Claret,\nthe confessor of the queen and Archbishop of Cuba, a man as remarkable for\nhis great personal holiness and ascetic life as for the unjust accusations\nof which he is continually the object. On one occasion, these unfavorable\nreports having reached his ears, and being only anxious to retire into the\nobscurity which his humility makes him love so well, he went to Rome to\nimplore for a release from his present post; but it was refused him.\nReturning through France, he happened to travel with certain gentlemen,\nresidents in Madrid, but unknown to him, as he was to them, who began to\nspeak of all the evils, real or imaginary, which reigned in the Spanish\nCourt, the whole of which they unhesitatingly attributed to Monsignor\nClaret, very much in the spirit of the old ballad against Sir Robert Peel:\n\n  \"Who filled the butchers' shops with big blue flies?\"\n\nHe listened without a word, never attempting either excuse or\njustification, or betraying his identity. Struck with his saint-like manner\nand appearance, and likewise very much charmed with his conversation during\ntheir couple of days' journey together, the strangers begged, at parting,\nto know his name, expressing an earnest hope of an increased acquaintance\nat Madrid. He gave them his card with a smile! Let us hope they will be\nless hasty and more charitable in their judgments for the future. Monsignor\nClaret's room in Madrid is a fair type of himself. Simple even to severity\nin its fittings, with no furniture but his books, and some photographs of\nthe queen and her children, it contains one only priceless object, and that\nis a wooden crucifix, of the very finest Spanish workmanship, which\nattracted at once the attention of his visitor.\n{749}\n\"Yes, it is very beautiful,\" he replied, in answer to her words of\nadmiration; \"and I like it because it expresses so wonderfully _victory\nover suffering_. Crucifixes generally represent only the painful and\nhuman, not the triumphant and Divine view of the Redemption. Here, He is\ntruly Victor over death and hell.\"\n\nContrary to the generally received idea, he never meddles in politics, and\noccupies himself entirely in devotional and literary works. One of his\nbooks, Camino recto y seguro para llegar al Cielo, would rank with Thomas \u00e0\nKempis's Imitation in suggestive and practical devotion. He keeps a\nperpetual fast; and when compelled by his position to dine at the palace,\nstill keeps to his meagre fare of \"garbanzos,\" or the like. He has a great\ngift of preaching; and when he accompanies the queen in any of her royal\nprogresses, is generally met at each town when they arrive by earnest\npetitions to preach, which he does instantly, without rest or apparent\npreparation, sometimes delivering four or five sermons in one day. In\ntruth, he is always \"prepared,\" by a hidden life of perpetual prayer and\nrealization of the Unseen.\n\nAfter taking leave of him and the Nunzio, and of the many other kind\nfriends who had made their stay at Madrid so pleasant, our travellers\nstarted at eight o'clock in the evening for Villa Alba, where they were to\ntake the diligence for Segovia. The night was clear and beautiful, and the\nscenery through which they passed was finer than any they had seen in\nSpain. At dawn they came almost suddenly on this most quaint and\npicturesque of cities, standing on a rocky knoll more than 3,000 feet above\nthe sea, encircled by a rapid river, and with the most magnificent\naqueduct, built by Trajan to convoy the pure water of the river Frio from\nthe neighboring sierra to the town. This aqueduct commences with single\narches, which rise higher as the dip of the ground deepens, until they\nbecome double. The centre ones are 102 feet high, and the whole is built of\nmassive blocks of granite, without cement or mortar. A succession of\npicturesque towers and ancient walls remain to mark the boundaries of the\nold Roman city.\n\nThe diligence unceremoniously turned our travellers out into the street at\nthe bottom of the town, and left them to find their way as best they could\nto the little \"fonda\" in the square above. It was very clean and tidy, with\nthe box-beds opening out of the sitting-rooms, which are universal in the\nold-fashioned inns of Spain, and always remind one of a Highland bothie.\nThe daughter of the house showed off her white linen with great pride, and\nwas rather affronted because two of the party preferred going to church to\ntrying her sheets, stoutly declaring that \"no one was yet awake, and no\nmass could yet be obtained.\" However, on leaving her, and gently pushing\nopen one of the low side-doors of the cathedral close by, the ladies found\nthat the five o'clock services had begun at most of the altars, with a very\nfair sprinkling of peasants at each. The circular triple apse at the east\nend of this cathedral, from the warm color of the stone, and the beauty of\nits flying buttresses and Gothic pinnacles, is deservedly reckoned one of\nthe finest in Spain. The tower also is beautiful; and the view from the\ncupola over the city, the fertile valleys beneath, and the snow-tipped\nmountains beyond, is quite unrivalled. The interior has been a good deal\nspoiled by modern innovations, but still contains some glorious painted\nglass, a very fine \"retablo\" by Juni of the \"Deposition from the Cross,\"\nand some curious monuments, especially one of the Infanta Don Pedro, son of\nHenry II.. who was killed by being let fall from the window of the Alcazar\nby his nurse. The Gothic cloisters are also worth seeing. After service, as\nit was still very early, the two ladies wandered about this beautiful\nquaint old town, in which every house is a study for a painter, and found\nthemselves at last at the Alameda, a public promenade on the ramparts,\nshaded by fine acacias, and the approach to which, on the cathedral side,\nis through a beautiful Moorish horse-shoe arched gateway.\n{750}\nFrom thence some stone steps led them up to a most curious old Norman\nchurch, with an open cloister running round it, with beautiful circular\narches and dog-toothed mouldings; opposite is a kind of H\u00f4tel de Ville,\nwith a fine gateway, cloistered \"patio,\" and staircase carved \"\u00e0 jour.\" In\na narrow street, a little lower down, is the exquisite Gothic fa\u00e7ade of the\nCasa de Segovia, and turning to the left is another curious and beautiful\nchurch, La Vera Cruz, built by the Templars, and with a little chapel in it\non the exact model of that of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. The zigzag\nand billet dog-tooth mouldings round the windows and doorways are very\nfine. A little higher up is the Parral, a deserted convent, with a\nbeautiful church, richly carved portal and choir, fine monuments,\ncloisters, and gardens: the latter had such a reputation that they give\nrise to the saying, \"Las huertas del Parral, paraiso terrenal.\" Fairly\ntired out with sight-seeing before breakfast, the ladies climbed up again\nto the Plaza de la Constitucion, which was like the square of an old German\ntown, having endlessly varied and colored houses with high roofs; and were\nglad to find the rest of the party awake at last, and sitting round a table\nwith the invariably good chocolate and white bread of the country. The meal\nover, one of the ladies started off with a little boy as her guide, to\npresent her letters of introduction to the bishop, who lived in a\npicturesque old palace in the Plaza of San Esteban, the fine church\nopposite, with its beautiful tower, Saxon arches, and open cloister, being\ndedicated to that saint. He received his visitor with great good nature,\nand instantly countersigned the Nunzio's order for her to visit the\nCarmelite convent of Sta. Teresa, sending his vicar-general to accompany\nher. This house is the original one purchased for the saint, in 1574, by\nDona Ana de Ximenes, who was the first lady to receive the habit in\nSegovia. It is dedicated to St. Joseph, and the first mass was said in it\nby St. John of the Cross. The nuns maintain the reformed rule in all its\nausterity. They showed their visitor the saint's cell, now converted into\nan oratory, and also the room of St. John of the Cross, whose convent is in\nthe valley below, just outside the walls of the town. There his body\nrests--that body still uncorrupted, of one of whom it has been truly said\nthat he was a \"cherub in wisdom and a seraph in love.\" On the door of his\ncell is his favorite sentence:\n\n  Pati et contemni pro Te!\n\nThis convent is rich both in his letters and in those of St. Theresa. Here\nit was that the saint received the news of the death of her favorite\nbrother, Laurence de Cepeda. She was quietly at work during recreation when\nhe appeared to her; the saint, without uttering a word, put down her work\nand hastened to the choir to commend the departed spirit to our Lord. She\nhad no sooner knelt before the blessed sacrament than an expression of\nintense peace and joy came over her face. Her sisters asked her the reason,\nand she told them that our Lord had then revealed to her the assurance that\nher brother was in heaven. His sudden death occurred at the very moment\nwhen he had appeared to her in the recreation room. Over the door of her\noratory are the words, \"Seek the cross,\" \"Desire the cross;\" and a little\nfarther on, \"Let us teach more by works than by words.\" After spending two\nor three hours with the sisters, the English lady was compelled reluctantly\nto leave them and return to her party, who were waiting for her to go with\nthem to the Alcazar.\n\nThis palace, originally Moorish, was rebuilt by Henry IV. in the fifteenth\ncentury. It was the favorite residence of Isabella of Castile, and from\nthence, on the occasion of a revolution, she rode out alone, and \"by her\nsweetness of countenance more than by her majesty,\" as the old chronicle\nsays, \"won over the people to return to their allegiance.\"\n{751}\nOur King Charles I. lodged here also, and is recorded to have supped on\ncertain \"troutes of extraordinary greatness,\" doubtless from the beautiful\nstream below. At the time of the French invasion the Alcazar was turned\ninto a military college, and these wretched students, in a freak of boyish\nfolly, set fire to a portion of one of the rooms two years ago. The fire\nspread; and all that is now left of this matchless palace is a ruined\nshell, the fa\u00e7ade, the beautiful Moorish towers and battlements, one or two\nsculptured arabesque ceilings, and the portcullised gateway, each and all\ntestifying to its former greatness and splendor. Its position, perched on a\nsteep plateau forming the western extremity of the town, is quite\nmagnificent, and the views from the windows are glorious. Our travellers\nstaid a long time sitting under the shade of the orange-trees in the\nbattlemented court below, enjoying the glorious panorama at their feet, and\nwatching the setting sun as it lit up the tips of the snowy sierra which\nforms the background of this grand landscape; while the beautiful river\nEresma flowed swiftly round the old walls, its banks occupied at that\nmoment by groups of washerwomen in their bright picturesque dresses,\nsinging in parts the national songs of their country. In the valley below\nwere scattered homesteads and convents, and a group of cypresses marking\nthe spot where, according to the legend, Maria del Salto alighted. This\ngirl was a Jewess by birth, but secretly a Christian; and having thereby\nexcited the anger and suspicions of her family, was accused by them of\nadultery, and condemned, according to the barbarous practice of those\ntimes, to be thrown from the top of the Alcazar rock. By her faith she was\nmiraculously preserved from injury, and reached the ground in safety; a\nchurch was built on the spot, of which the \"retablo\" tells the tale.\n\nSegovia is famous for its flocks, and for the beauty of its wool: the water\nof the Eresma is supposed to be admirable for washing and shearing.\n\nOur travellers now began to think of pursuing their journey to Avila; but\nthat was not so easy. The diligence which had brought them flatly refused\nto convey them back till the following night, except at a price so\nexorbitant that it was impossible to give it. And here, as everywhere else\nin Spain, you have no redress. There are no carriages whatever for hire,\nexcept in the two or three large capitals, like Madrid and Seville; and\neven should carriages be found, there are no horses or mules to draw\nthem--or, at any rate, none that they choose to let out for the purpose.\nSuch as they are, they are always reserved for the diligence; and if the\nlatter should happen to be full, the unhappy passengers may wait for days\nat a wayside \"posada\" until their turn comes. Therefore, it is absolutely\nnecessary in Spain to write and make the contract for places beforehand:\nand to be hard-hearted when the time comes, as it almost invariably happens\nthat you leave behind certain luckless travellers who have not adopted a\nsimilar precaution; and the struggle for seats, and consequent overcrowding\nof the carriages, are renewed at every station. Making a virtue of\nnecessity, our travellers at last made up their minds to another miserable\ndiligence night out of bed--the fatigue of which must be felt to be\nthoroughly sympathized with--and spent the intervening hours of the evening\nin dining, and then going to a religious play, which they had seen\nadvertised in the morning, and which was a very curious exhibition of\npopular taste and religious feeling. The little theatre was really very\nclean and tidy, and there was nothing approaching to irreverence in the\nrepresentations given. A similar scene in a very different place recurred\nto the memory of one of the party, as having been witnessed by her in\nParis, some years ago, when on a certain occasion she accompanied a\nsomewhat stiff puritanical old lady to the opera.\n{752}\nA ballet was given as an entr'acte, in which the scenery was taken from the\nbook of Genesis, and Noah and his sons appeared just coming out of the Ark.\nThis was too much for the good lady: \"If Noah either dances or sings,\" she\nexclaimed, \"I'll leave the house!\" The poor Segovians, trained in a\ndifferent school, saw nothing incongruous in the representation of the\nshepherds, and the wise men, and the cave of Bethlehem: and only one\ncomical incident occurred, when, on a child in the pit setting up a squeal,\nthere was a universal cry of _Where's Herod?_ At ten o'clock they left\ntheir play, with its quiet and respectable little audience, and once more\nfound themselves tightly stowed in their diligence prison for the night.\nThe moon, however, was bright and beautiful, and enabled them to see the\nroyal hunting-box and woods, and the rest of the fine scenery through which\nthey passed, so that the journey was far less intolerable than usual, as is\noften the case when a thing has been much dreaded beforehand. At four\no'clock in the morning they were turned out, shivering with cold, at a\nwayside station, where they were to take the train to Avila; but were then\ntold, to their dismay, by a sleepy porter, that the six o'clock train had\nbeen taken off, and that there would be none till ten the next morning, so\nthat all hopes of arriving at Avila in time for church (and this was\nSunday) were at an end. The station had no waiting-room, only a kind of\ncorridor with two hard benches. Establishing the children on these for the\nmoment with plaids and shawls, one of the party went off to some cottages\nat a little distance off, and asked in one of them if there were no means\nof getting a bedroom and some chocolate? A very civil woman got up and\nvolunteered both; so the tired ones of the party were able to lie down for\na few hours' rest in two wonderfully clean little rooms, while their\nbreakfast was preparing. The question now arose for the others: \"Was there\nno church anywhere near?\" It was answered by the people of the place in the\nnegative. \"The station was new; the cottages had been run up for the\naccommodation of the porters and people engaged on the line; there was no\nvillage within a league or two.\" Determined, however, not to be baffled,\none of the party inquired of another man, who was sleepily driving his\nbullocks into a neighboring field, and he replied \"that over the mountains\nto the left there was a village and a cur\u00e9; but that it was a long way off,\nand that he only went on great \"festas.\" It was now quite light; the lady\nwas strong and well; and so she determined to make the attempt to find the\nchurch. Following the track pointed out to her by her informant, she came\nto a wild and beautiful mountain path, intersected by bright rushing\nstreams, crossed by stepping stones, the ground perfectly carpeted with\nwild narcissus and other spring flowers. Here and there she met a peasant\ntending his flocks of goats, and always the courteous greeting of \"Vaya\nUsted con Dios!\" or \"Dios guarde \u00e1 Usted!\" as heartily given as returned.\nAt last, on rounding a corner of the mountain, she came on a beautiful\nview, with the Escurial in the distance to the left; and to the right,\nembosomed, as it were, in a little nest among the hills, a picturesque\nvillage, with its church-tower and rushing stream and flowering\nfruit-trees, toward which the path evidently led. This sight gave her fresh\ncourage; for the night journey and long walk, undertaken fasting, had\nnearly spent her strength. Descending the hill rapidly, she reached the\nvillage green just as the clock was striking six, and found a group of\npeasants, both men and women, sitting on the steps of the picturesque stone\ncross in the centre, opposite the church, waiting for the cur\u00e9 to come out\nof his neat little house close by to say the first mass. The arrival of the\nlady caused some astonishment; but, with the inborn courtesy of the people,\none after the other rose and came forward, not only to greet her, but to\noffer her chocolate and bread.\n{753}\nShe explained that she had come for communion, and would go into the\nchurch. The old white-haired clerk ran into the house to hasten the cur\u00e9,\nand soon a kind and venerable old man made his appearance, and asked her if\nshe wished to see him first in the confessional. He could scarcely believe\nshe had been in Segovia only the night before! Finding that she was hurried\nto return and catch the train, he instantly gave her both mass and\ncommunion, and then sent his housekeeper to invite her to breakfast, as did\none after the other of the villagers. Escaping from their hospitality with\nsome difficulty, on the plea of the shortness of the time and the length of\nthe way back, the English lady accepted a little loaf, for which no sort of\npayment would be heard of, and walked with a light heart back to the\nstation, feeling how close is the religious tie which binds Catholics\ntogether as one family, and how beautiful is the hearty, simple hospitality\nof the Spanish people when untainted by contact with modern innovations and\nso-called progress. There was no occasion when this natural, high-bred\ncourtesy was not shown during the four months that our travellers spent in\nthis country; and those who, like the author of Over the Pyrenees into\nSpain, find fault on every occasion with the manners of the people, must\neither have been ignorant of their language and customs, or, having no\nsympathy with their faith, have wounded their susceptibilities, and to a\ncertain degree justified the rudeness of which they pretend to have been\nthe victims.\n\n------\n\n      Original.\n\n      Beams.\n\n  \"Why seest thou the mote in thy brother's eye,\n  but the beam that is in thine own eye\n  thou considerest not?\"\n\n\n    Disciple.\n\n  \"How's this! And hath my brother ne'er a beam\n   That may be plucked from out his eye?\n   And are my brother's beams all motes,\n     And none have beams but I?\"\n\n\n    Master.\n\n  \"E'en so, For beams enough there be, I trow;\n   And who will claim them, if not thou?\"\n\n\n    Disciple.\n\n  \"'Tis well! I'll claim mine own.\n  (Methinks it has of late much larger grown.)\"\n\n\n    Master.\n\n  \"Suffices it, if thou wilt claim but one.\n   Then shall thy brother, in thy sight, have none.\n   For beams do so prevent pride's selfish view\n   That, if thy brother's beam did weigh a ton,\n   It would appear the smallest mote to you.\"\n\n------\n\n{754}\n\n  Early Rising. [Footnote 251]\n\n    [Footnote 251: This article is translated from the Conferences\n    Destin\u00e9es aux Femmes du Monde, par Mgr. Landriot.]\n\n\n  \"De Nocte Surrexit.\"\n\nSleep was given man to sustain life, to invigorate his strength, and to\nserve him as the best and most useful of medicines; one single prescription\nperfectly accomplished sometimes sufficing for the cure of serious disease,\nor, at least, the amelioration of violent pain. Sleep is the salutary bath\nthat renovates life, the entire being growing younger under its influence;\nit is a station in the desert of this world; and often, after dull and\nwearying journeys, one comes to repose in this oasis prepared by divine\nProvidence, enabled the next day to pursue the route with renewed courage\nand activity. The time of sleep is not only useful to the body, but the\nsoul: it calms all agitation, spreads a balm over piercing grief, and\nhinders the precipitation of words and actions. Thus the ancients\ndesignated night the good counsellor; those even whom passion or bodily\ninfirmity keep awake are subservient to her designs, and, in the calm\nwhich, through shade, she diffuses everywhere, she recalls man to better\nsentiments. If he is Christian, she quickens within him the fibres of\nprayer; a single aspiration toward heaven sufficing sometimes to crush the\nbad or dangerous germs of thought, and prepare for the morrow a pure and\nuncloudy sky. In other times, there was so much calmness and placidity in\nthe sleep of the just, said St. Ambrose, that it was like an ecstasy in\nwhich, while the body reposed, the soul, to speak thus, was separated from\nits organs, and united itself to Christ: Somnus tranquillitatem menti\ninvehens, placiditatem animae ut tanquam soluto nexu corporis se ablevit,\net Christo adhaereat. [Footnote 252]\n\n    [Footnote 252: Ep. xvi. No. 4, p. 960.]\n\nAgain, sleep is an excellent preacher, because it recalls to us the image\nof death: the ancients named it the brother of death, and both are sons of\nnight. The daily arrival of sleep should make us say: \"The other brother\nwill come soon, and this time I will extend myself on my bed, never more to\nrise. Each visit of the night should be an invitation to prepare me for the\nlast and solemn departure.\"\n\nSleep is, then, excellent in itself; but how greatly it may be abused; and,\nif we do abuse it, it will produce effects exactly contrary to those I have\njust enumerated; that is to say, it will weaken the body, stupefy the\nideas, and that, far from refreshing and repairing life, it will prepare\nfor it a kind of living sepulchre in which to bury it.\n\nIt is not sufficient to determine the quantity of sleep, which should be\nwisely regulated, without according or refusing too much to nature. We must\nalso calculate the quality of sleep.\n\nNow, according to general observation, the sleep from the real night to the\nreal morning, that is to say, which is taken in the interval of nine and\nfive or six o'clock, is the best, the most salutary, and the most favorable\nto health. I do not say that it is absolutely necessary to sleep all the\ntime, I have indicated: this is merely the space designed to choose one's\nhours of sleep. Let us willingly admit all the exceptions necessitated by\ntransitory relations; but, as a general thesis, it is better to retire\nearly and rise early in the morning. It is the best, the most favorable\ntime for the nocturnal bath we call sleep; the body better refreshes\nitself, the repose is more conformable to the laws of nature; therefore is\nit sweeter, at once lighter and more profound, and has not the heaviness\nwhich indicates an abnormal condition.\n{755}\nSleep, prolonged too much in the morning because it has been retarded at\nnight, has serious inconveniences. It communicates to the general system a\nsickly languor which becomes the habitual condition of certain\ntemperaments. Life with them is a sort of perpetual convalescence, and\nnever do they enjoy the most precious gift of nature, a state of health,\ntruly and solidly established. See, on the contrary, these robust village\ngirls; at night at an early hour they demand of their beds the repose for\ntheir tired members; in the morning they rise with the crow of the cock. In\nwinter, the fire is lighted at dawn of day on the domestic hearth; the\nhouse-keeping is arranged, the order of the day disposed in advance, the\nbreakfast of the laborers is ready to be served, and the sun has not yet\nappeared above the horizon. During the summer, these same children of the\nvillage accompany the star of day in its matutinal march; their chests\ndilate, and they strengthen themselves in breathing the fresh and perfumed\nair shed with the rays of sun, and they seem to breathe life and health.\nLater these same girls marry, and, if they are not imprudent, they may for\nmany years continue an existence made up of fruitful labor, and ornamented\nsometimes with all the charms and freshness of a vigorous old age; for\ntheir regimen is an excellent medicine which gives them a commission of\nlong life.\n\nBut whence, on the contrary, comes that weakness of temperament so\nobservable in women of the world? It may be deduced from various causes,\nbut one of the principal is the mode of life too generally adopted,\nespecially in large cities. A part of the night is spent in _soir\u00e9es_,\nto finish only with longer _matin\u00e9es_; a portion of the day is given\nto sleep, and from this results a general debility of constitution, fatigue\nof the nervous system, a numbness of the organs, and in all an habitual and\ncontinual prostration. There may be exceptional temperaments that resist\nthese effects; but it is incontestable, in the eyes of an impartial\nobserver, that the loss of health, especially among women, is due in great\npart to the life of excess I here mention. \"Prolonged night watches,\" said\na learned man, \"necessarily bring on a fatigue which bears on the brain and\non the digestive and respiratory organs. And fatigue of this nature, far\nfrom favoring sleep, renders it incomplete and painful. From thence, in\ngreat measure, comes this valetudinary state which we meet with so\nhabitually among the women of our cities; balls and _soir\u00e9es_ ruin\ntheir health in advance, and it is often on youth even, but still oftener\nin ripe and old age, that the foolish and miserable dissipations of the\nworld leave their sad and fatal impress.\" [Footnote 253]\n\n    [Footnote 253: Le\u00e7ons de la Nature, nouvelle \u00e9dition, par M. Desdouits,\n    1. 3. 188e consid\u00e9r, t. iii. p. 125.]\n\nYou would, then, condemn _soir\u00e9es_? I pray you to remark that, if\nthere is something to condemn, it is not I who condemns them; these are\nfacts according to nature and the temperament of the human body. Is it not\ntrue that the health of many women of the world is weakened? No one can\ndeny this. Is it not also true that one of the principal causes is the\nworld's manner of organizing social relations? It is a fact of which\nscience every day gives undeniable proof. I am far from condemning\n_soir\u00e9es_; and perhaps you have not forgotten that, in our reunions, I\napplied myself some years ago to show you how religion was the friend of\nhonest pleasures and the demands of society; on condition that they should\nbe regulated by wisdom, and that the interests of both body and soul were\nfaithfully managed; for so greatly does Christianity respect our bodies\nthat we can sin in compromising one's health by serious imprudences. Merry\nconversations in the evening have all sorts of advantages. They divert the\nmind, refresh the body, bring hearts together, dissipate clouds, and bind\nmore closely the ties of family and friendships. In a certain degree,\npleasures are necessary to man.\n{756}\nI speak of innocent pleasures that virtue can admit, and those who\nentertain some doubt in this respect can consult the writings of the\ngreatest theologians of the church, and especially St. Thomas. This great\ndoctor has on this point a clearness and precision, and at the same time a\nreason and wisdom, at once full of reserve and condescension. The rule he\nestablishes is to use all pleasure with moderation, according to time,\nplace, and the circumstance of those with whom we live: _moderat\u00e8 pro\nloco, et tempore, et congruenti\u00e2 eorum quibus convivit, (temperatus.)_\n[Footnote 254]\n\n    [Footnote 254: See in particular L'Ethique et La Somme.]\n\n\"There are many people,\" said Fen\u00e9lon, \"who like to groan over everything,\nand weary themselves continually by encouraging a disgust for all rational\namusement. For me, I avow I could not accommodate myself to such rigidity.\nI like something more simple; and I believe that God himself likes it much\nbetter. When diversion is innocent in itself, and is entered into according\nto the rules of the state wherein Providence has placed us, then I believe\nall required of us is to take part in it, as in God's sight and with\nmoderation. Manners more rigid and more reserved, less complaisant and less\nopen, only serve to give a false idea of piety to worldly people, who are\nalready sufficiently prejudiced against it, and who believe God is only\nserved through a sombre and mortified life.\" [Footnote 255]\n\n    [Footnote 255: _Avis a une Personne de la Cour_. Manuel de Pi\u00e9t\u00e9.\n    Ed. Dupanloup. ]\n\nWe would wish, then, that Christian societies would adopt for their maxim\nthese beautiful words of St. Chrysostom: \"Christians have the sense for\ndelicate pleasures, but decency should preside over all.\" It is impossible\nto make more reasonable concessions to human nature, but is not religion\nauthorized, therefore, to show herself severe to all who exceed the bounds\nof wisdom, conformity, and virtue, and even for all who compromise the\ninterests of health or fortune? Would it not be possible, to return to our\nsubject, to combine in our reunions of family and society everything for\nthe general good and the vigorous health of actual generations? Allowing\nfor exceptional circumstances, where one may be obliged to be up later,\nwould it not be possible to make _soir\u00e9es_ shorter, rendering them, at\nthe same time, more agreeable and more frequent, more salutary and less\ncompromising to health? This is the problem I propose to solve; and is it\nnot a singular thing that here religion interposes to say to you, Think of\nthe interests of your bodies; you sin the same by seriously neglecting\nthem? \"Hoc esset peccatum\" said St. Thomas. This excess in the length of\n_soir\u00e9es_ comes to us from paganism. In the time of Seneca they\nexisted, and these are the terms which this philosopher used toward them:\n\"There are people who reverse the uses of day and night. Thus, nothing\nlooks more sad and broken-down than the appearance of such persons, who\nare, so to say, dedicated to the night; their color is that of sick people,\nthey are pale and languishing, carrying a dead flesh in a living body. And\nthis is not the only evil: their minds are surrounded by shadows\napparently, benumbed, and inhabiting the clouds. Is it possible not to\ndeplore an irregularity which banishes the light of day, and passes life in\ndarkness and shade?\" [Footnote 256]\n\n    [Footnote 256: Epist. 122.]\n\nSometimes I am asked, if religion were to command half the sacrifice that\nthe world demands if it ordered a part of every night spent in fatiguing\nboth body and soul, what would not be said against it? What anathemas, what\nbitter reproaches! But the world speaks, and no one says anything; we are\nenchanted, or, at least, appear so. St. Francis de Sales has given us, on\nthis subject, some reflections wherein the delicate point of a pleasant\nmalice is touched with superior reason, and I should reproach myself did I\nnot present them to you: \"We have seen gentlemen and ladies pass not only\none night, but several in succession at play--worldly people said nothing,\nfriends gave themselves no trouble concerning them; but let us give one\nhour to meditation, or rise a little earlier than usual to prepare for\ncommunion, these same friends would run for the doctor to cure us of\njaundice or hypochondria.\n{757}\nWe may occupy thirty nights in dancing, no one complains; but for the\nsingle watch of Christmas night every one coughs, and cries next day with\nthe stomach-ache.\"\n\nThe salutary regimen of retiring and rising early is very precious for the\nsoul, and the duties of life much better fulfilled. The soul is calmer at\nnight, calm as everything that is regular and not troubled and turned\ntopsy-turvy by the thousand preoccupations of a too worldly life. In the\nevening, before going to sleep, we can fix our attention on ourselves,\nanalyze the day, its thoughts, desires, and actions, praise, blame, or\ncorrect, and, as a skilful merchant, make an account of our losses and\ngains. Do not imagine such a practice is confined to narrow minds; it is\nthe usage of reason and sound philosophy, as are all other practices of an\nenlightened devotion. Pagans as well as Christians have given us a lesson\non this subject. Listen to Pythagoras: \"Never allow sleep to close thine\neyes before having examined every action of the day. In what have I failed?\nWhat have I done? What duty have I forgotten? Commence by the first of thy\nactions, run over the others; in fine, reproach thyself with what thou hast\ndone ill, and rejoice in what thou hast done well.\" \"What can be more\nbeautiful,\" said Seneca, \"than this habit of inquiring into a whole day?\nWhat sleep succeeds to such a review of one's actions! How calm, deep, and\nfree it is when the soul has received its share of praise or blame, and,\nsubmitting to its own control, its own censure, it secretly tries its own\nconduct! For me, I have taken this authority on myself, and every day I\ncite myself to appear before the tribunal of my conscience. So soon as the\nlight has gone, I scan my day entirely, weigh anew my acts and my words,\ndissemble nothing, and omit nothing.\" [Footnote 257] Adopt this habit,\neverything in you will gain by it--reason and piety; a sweet serenity will\nbe diffused around your soul, and you will sleep in angelic peace _somnus\nsanitatis in homine_. [Footnote 258] You have sometimes seen children\nsleep. What calm! What sweetness of expression! What kindness of feature!\nWhat living and silent rest! This will be the image of your sleep.\n\n    [Footnote 257: Da la Colere, 1. 3. c. 36.]\n\n    [Footnote 258: Ecclus. xxxi.]\n\nBut--and now we touch a delicate point--it is the result of life's\norganization that you ought to get up in the morning. I hear already a deep\nsigh of fear from your trembling couch. First, then, let us understand the\nvalue of the words, Get up in the morning. I do not exhort you to imitate a\nvery delicate lady, who said, during her sojourn at Vichy, \"I commence my\nday at four o'clock in the morning, in order that my body may not take off\ntoo much from my soul.\" [Footnote 259]\n\n    [Footnote 259: Lettres de Madame Swetchine. t. ii. p. 111.]\n\nI do not propose you this model, for I am very sure, if I opened a\nregister, I should find very few members for the confraternity of Madame\nSwetchine. Let us leave, then, the value of the expression slightly\nundecided. Get up in the morning; let it only be the earliest hour\npossible, and this, perhaps may be too late. Once, however, the hour of\nyour rising determined, hold to it, with a firmness proportioned to the\ndifficulty of the step, and let the unfortunate bed shut up again the\nmagnetic fluid whereby one is drawn to it, I do not say in spite of one's\nself, but with a sweetness of violence which nails one to the post. I avow\nwe are here in face of one of the most terrible of enemies, and this enemy\nthe pillow. When we want to leave it in the morning, it assumes the\nartificial language of the siren, and caresses us with tender precaution.\nIt seems to say: Why do you leave me? are you not better here? what a sweet\ntemperature! what inappreciable well-being! don't you see it is too soon?\ndo you not feel your limbs too tired, and as yet enjoying a very incomplete\nrepose?\n{758}\nTouch your forehead and you will see you begin to have headache; a few\nquarters of an hour more will dissipate it; to-morrow you will rise\nearlier! Then it's so cold out of bed: why brave the inclemency of the\nseasons? The day is long enough; you will have time enough for everything;\nin truth, do not be so severe with yourself. After such eloquent language\nthe dear pillow extends its two arms to entangle you, and soon the victory\nis consummated; true, it was easy, none are so happy as the vanquished; and\nbehold you fallen again and buried for several hours more.\n\nI speak very seriously in telling you that one of the most difficult\nenemies to vanquish is this pillow of the morning; and there is but one way\nto conquer it: it is a prompt and decisive blow, a military charge, a jump\nout of bed: charge the enemy by a vigorous sally, and the victory is yours.\nAn old Capuchin said that, after long years of a religious life, what cost\nhim most was to rise at four o'clock in the morning. It is true there is a\nsacrifice to make, a real sacrifice, incontestable; but here life is full\nof sacrifices, and each one is followed by a sentiment of true happiness,\nand each victory gives to man an astonishing power. When I see a person who\nhas the courage to get up in the morning, I have immediately a high opinion\nof his firmness of character, and I say to myself: This person, when\noccasion demands it, will know how to develop extraordinary energy; each\nmorning his nature is tempered again in the struggle against his pillow,\nand this combat is often more difficult, especially on account of its\ncontinuity, than that of the soldier on the field of battle. Besides, wait\nas long as you will, even if you sleep until mid-day, you will have to make\na sacrifice on leaving your bed. Sometimes the more you think of it, the\nsacrifice will be greater, and increased by the sad perspective of the\napproaching effort; so with one minute of decision, prompt and generous,\nall is over, and the enjoyment of the active day has commenced. Long\nwaiting in bed when one is awake makes serious detriment to the soul; the\nwhole being is softened, and plunged into a sort of reverie, more or less\nsensual, which may lead to the brink of certain abysses. Take care, the\nbutterfly flutters on its golden wings, then goes to burn itself in the\nlight which shines for it so treacherously; image of those aerial\npromenades where, by dint of approaching certain deceitful lights, one ends\nby damaging the wings of the soul, or, at least, rubbing off the velvet nap\nof a pure conscience. \"It is dangerous,\" said St. Ambrose, \"for the sun to\ncome and trouble with its indiscreet rays the dreams of a lazy mind in its\nbed.\" [Footnote 260]\n\n    [Footnote 260: In Ps. 118, s. 19, No. 22, t. ii. p. 1476.]\n\nThe Italian poet, speaking of morning, says: \"At the hour when one's mind\nis greatest stranger to the flesh, and less near terrestrial thoughts, then\nis it almost divine in its visions.\" [Footnote 261]\n\n    [Footnote 261: Dante, Purgat. c. 9, v. 16-19.]\n\nEach day, after a good night, we can renew our souls with the wonders of a\nbeautiful spring morning; all is fresh in mind and body, all interior\nfaculties are warmed; life experiences a sort of need of expansion; all\nthoughts, all desires seem to tremble with cheerfulness, as plants in a\ncelestial garden. If the sun of prayer arises on the horizon, all the germs\nof good awake, develop, and mount up in proportion as the divine heat\nbecomes more intense. \"The manna,\" said the prophet, \"disappearing at the\ndawn of day; was to show us, my God, that we must anticipate the rising of\nthe sun to receive thy most precious benedictions.\" [Footnote 262]\n\n    [Footnote 262: Sap. xvi. 28.]\n\nThere is something remarkable in our Lives of the Saints; morning prayer is\nalways specially mentioned: \"My God,\" said the prophet \"thou wilt favorably\nhear my prayer in the morning.\" [Footnote 263]\n\n    [Footnote 263: Ps. v. 4.]\n\n\"I will present myself before thee in the morning, and will see thy glory.\"\n[Footnote 264]\n\n    [Footnote 264: Ps. v. 5.]\n\n\"It is in the morning that my prayer will surprise thee.\" [Footnote 265]\n\n    [Footnote 265: Ps. xxxvii. 14.]\n\n\"In the morning thy mercy is shed on us abundantly.\" [Footnote 266]\n\n    [Footnote 266: Ps. lxxxix. 14.]\n\n\"Those who watch from the morning,\" said Wisdom, \"will find me.\"\n[Footnote 267]\n\n    [Footnote 267: Prov. viii. 17.]\n\n{759}\n\nOur Lord himself is called \"splendid star, star of the morning:\" \"_Ego\nStella splendida et matutina_.\" [Footnote 268]\n\n    [Footnote 268: Apoc. xxii. 16.]\n\nIn these continual repetitions I can only see a perfectly fixed and\nstationary thought: the natural relation established by divine Providence,\nand which she loves to preserve in a supernatural world. The morning is the\nhour when life recommences on earth; the hour when everything is reborn,\nsolitude favoring the first leap of life, which retakes its course where\nthe dew is deposited, and gives fresh nourishment to the plant. It is also\nthe most delightful hour for the collection of thought, for the effusion of\nthe dew of souls. The sky is charged with rain that night has condensed;\nthe manna is everywhere, but it soon disappears; and, whilst indolence\nloses its power of body and mind in the swaddling-clothes of sleep, the\nactive soul has laid in its provision of celestial nourishment, has\ndisposed its interior heaven for the entire day, has dissipated in advance\nthe shadows of the day, and established time's serenity until the next\nsleep. One of the most precious and the sweetest hours of life is the hour\nof morning prayer. I do not merely speak of vocal prayer; I wish to say the\nprayer of union with God, the silence and the repose of the soul in God; I\nwish to say this opening of the mouth of the soul which aspires to divine\nmilk, drinking in silence, light, and love, and hiding itself in the bosom\nof that mother _par excellence_ we call God, and that so few\nChristians understand. _Os meum aperui et attraxi spiritum_. [Footnote\n269] If you only realized the gift of God we call the love of morning:\n_Si scires donum Dei!_ [Footnote 270]\n\n    [Footnote 269: Ps. cxviii. 181.]\n\n    [Footnote 270: Joan. iv. 10.]\n\n.....\n\nThere is a freshness in it, a suavity and an energy, which come directly\nfrom God. Have you never been on the mountains in summer, at three o'clock\nin the morning, when the first rays of the sun appear? How limpidly they\nseem to come! They have not passed through other breasts; the purest\nessence of the planet of day is ours, and thus we seem to realize our union\nwith God while most men are asleep. On these divine mountains the soul has\nthe first-fruits of celestial favors; she is penetrated with light, love,\nand strength; a gentle intoxication for the day, which, far from weakening\nthe soul, gives firmness to our thoughts and actions, and sheds a perfume\nof joy on all our works. Were there no other reasons for rising in the\nmorning, I would say to you, Disengage yourself from your pillow, the Lord\ncomes to visit you with choice favors; but the least delay will be proof of\nyour indifference, and you will force him to go further to seek souls more\nworthy his benefits. There is no one who would refuse to rise early if each\nmorning a messenger were to tell him, A prince is come among you and waits\nfor you. Place your God in the place of your prince, and you will do well.\nIf you wish to accomplish some great work in your life, get up in the\nmorning. The morning hours are not so deranged, the calm of a sweet\nsolitude surrounds you, and you more readily expedite your affairs. You can\noccupy yourself with business or the regulation of your household, with\nyour reading, your intellectual work if you love study, and the result in\nsome years of these extra hours will be incalculable. By rising two hours\nearlier each day, you will have gained at the end of forty years,\ntwenty-nine thousand hours, that is more than seven years, and solely\ncounting the twelve working hours of the day. To increase one's life seven\nyears in forty is enormous, and what can be done during this continuous\ntime is almost incredible. Clement of Alexandria said, \"Wrest from sleep\nall of our lives we can.\"\n\nSleep is truly a thief who ravishes our greatest treasures; a thief, too,\nwe cannot entirely chase away, but we can run him off the ground and hinder\nhis encroachments on our actual life. \"We live but the half of our lives,\"\nsaid Pliny the elder; \"the other half is consumed in a state similar to\ndeath,.... and still we do not count the infancy which knows nothing, or\nthe old age of imbecility.\"\n{760}\nThen have the courage to take something each day from this brother of\ndeath, who thus divides our life in two, and for himself would reserve the\nbetter part; let us give to nature what is necessary, but make no\nconcession to indolence.\n\nThe most favorable time to commit this robbery is during the first hours of\nthe morning. \"The quality of time is different at this hour,\" said Madame\nSwetchine.\n\nOne hour of the morning is worth two at night, because the mind in its\nfreshness is naturally more collected, its strength is not yet dispersed,\nand it is not exhausted by the fatigue of the day. The morning hours\nresemble, in the agility of the mind and the rejuvenated forces of the\nsoul, the first hour of the courser just placed in the carriage. So the\nsame author we love to cite advised early rising, cost what it might, \"in\norder to reserve some hours of the morning for entire solitude.\" \"It is not\nonly,\" said one of her friends, \"to consecrate to God the first hours of\nthe day that she commenced it so early, but to have also considerable time\nto give to study.\" She said to me on that day, that the pleasure it gave\nher only increased with years. \"I am come to this,\" she said, \"when I\napproach my table to resume my labors, my heart beats with joy.\" [Footnote\n271]\n\n   [Footnote 271: Lettres, t. ii. p. 443.]\n\nShe avowed, besides, that, deprived of these her accustomed hours, all the\nrest of the day seemed pillaged. If you would not be pillaged, rise in the\nmorning; then you can do as you please, no one will come to disturb you,\nyou will consecrate the closest and best of your strength to the most\nserious and truest duties of your existence; and, when the hour of pillage\ncomes, that is, the hour when you must cut your life in little pieces, to\ndispense it in a thousand nothings more or less necessary, you will, at\nleast, have secured its better and most precious part. If you rise late,\nyour life will be a perpetual pillage, and whoever pleases will tear it in\nshreds from you.\n\nPlato--if you will not consider pagan morality severe--Plato said\nsomewhere: \"It is a shame for the mistress of a household to be awakened by\nher servants; she should awaken them.\" [Footnote 272]\n\n    [Footnote 272: Les Lois, 1-7, p. 808.]\n\nSuch words may seem an exaggeration; but, if such were here the case, would\nnot everything go better in the interior of the family? Woman, as we have\nsaid with the holy Scripture, is the sun of her household; but it should be\nthe sun which everywhere announces the awakening of nature. It mounts first\non the horizon, and soon everything rises in the universe, plants, animals,\nand men. The sun is never awakened by his satellites; he himself gives the\nsignal. Let the strong woman do the same. _Sicut sol oriens in altissimis\nDei, sic mulieris bonae species in ornamentum domus ejus._[Footnote 273]\n\n    [Footnote 273: Eccl. xxvi. 21.]\n\n------\n\n{761}\n\n\n    The Wandering Jew. [Footnote 274]\n\n    [Footnote 274:\n    Curious Myths of the Middle Ages.\n    By S. Baring Gould, M.A., London,\n    Oxford, and Cambridge, Rivingtons. 1866.]\n\n\nThere are certain popular fables which, in one shape or another, seem to\nhave wandered all over the world, and to have planted themselves, and\ngrown, and developed progeny in the folk-lore of nearly every nation. Of\nall these none has been more generally a favorite than the fiction of Time\nsparing in his flight some solitary human being, before whose eyes the\ncenturies unroll their mighty panorama; cities and nations rise, flourish,\nand decay; changes pass over the face of nature herself; seas dry up and\nrocks crumble to dust; while for one man only age brings no decay and life\nseems to have no termination. The early Christian legends are full of such\nstories. There are rumors of mysterious witnesses, hidden for ages from the\nworld's eyes, not dead but sleeping, who are to come forth in the last days\nof time, and bear testimony against Antichrist; and one of these was\nconjectured to be the apostle St. John, of whom our Lord said to St. Peter,\n\"If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?\" So there was a\nbelief that the beloved disciple still slept at Ephesus, awaiting the\nsummons, and the earth above his breast heaved as he breathed. Joseph of\nArimathea, according to another beautiful legend, was rewarded for the last\ntender offices which he performed for the dead Christ by perpetual life in\nthe blessed city of Sarras, where he drew divine nourishment from the holy\ngrail, that precious chalice which the Saviour used at the Last Supper, and\nwhich caught the blood that trickled from his side upon the cross. The\npoetical legend of the seven sleepers of Ephesus, who fled from the\npersecution of Decius to a cavern on Mount Celion, and slept there three\nhundred and sixty years, until God raised them up to confound a growing\nheresy against the immortality of the soul; and the still more beautiful\nstory of the monk of Hildesheim, who, doubting how with God a thousand\nyears could be as yesterday, listened to the melody of a bird in the\ngreenwood during three minutes, and found that in those minutes three\nhundred years had flown away, are familiar to all our readers. But pagan\nliterature also abounds in stories of miraculously long slumbers. The\nbeautiful shepherd Endymion was condemned by Jupiter to perpetual sleep in\na cavern of Mount Latmus; or, according to another form of the story, to a\nslumber of fifty years, at the end of which time he was to arise. The giant\nEnceladus was imprisoned under Mount Etna, and as often as he turned his\nweary body, the whole island of Sicily was shaken to its foundations. The\nepic poet Epimenides, while tending his sheep, retired one hot day into a\ncavern, and slept there fifty-seven years. This reminds one of the tale of\nRip Van Winkle. The Emperor Frederic Barbarossa, so an old German fable\nrelates, is waiting with six of his knights in the heart of a mountain in\nThuringia, for the time to release Germany from bondage and raise it to the\nfirst place among nations. When his great red beard has wound itself thrice\naround the stone table at which he sits, he will awake and rush forth to do\nhis appointed work. So, too, it was believed that Charlemagne survived in\nsome mountain recess, and would appear again at the fulfilment of the days\nof Antichrist to avenge the blood of the saints.\n{762}\nThe British King Arthur, the Portuguese Don Sebastian, Ogier the Dane, and\nthe three Tells of Switzerland were expected by the superstitious peasantry\nto reappear at some distant day and become the deliverers of their country;\nand there are even some remote parts of France where a popular belief\nsurvives that Napoleon Bonaparte is still living, and will put himself some\nday at the head of another victorious host. Who of us is not familiar with\nthat pretty fairy tale of the sleeping beauty?\n\n  \"Year after year unto her feet,\n     She lying on her couch alone,\n   Across the purple coverlet\n     The maiden's jet-black hair has grown.\n\n   ......\n\n  \"She sleeps: her breathings are not heard\n     In palace chambers far apart.\n   The fragrant tresses are not stirred\n     That lie upon her charmed heart.\n   She sleeps: on either hand upswells\n     The gold-fringed pillow lightly prest;\n   She sleeps, nor dreams, but ever dwells\n     A perfect form in perfect rest.\"\n\nAnd who of us in his childhood has not read with a delight which repeated\nperusals could not satiate of the coming of the fairy prince, who was\nfated, after a hundred years, to wake that sleeping palace into life, and\nbear away the happy princess far across the hills, \"in that new world which\nis the old\"?\n\n  \"And o'er the hills, and far away\n     Beyond their utmost purple rim,\n   Beyond the night, across the day,\n     Through all the world she followed him.\"\n\nThese many stories are only the protean forms of one favorite popular\nconception; the idea of one individual standing still, while the world\nsweeps by, and either blest or curst with a perpetual renewal of youth, or\nelse awaking out of a sleep of centuries to find creation wearing a new\nface and new generations acting out the great drama of history. The\ndifferent modifications of the story seem to derive their peculiar\ncharacter from the peculiarities of the time and country in which they\noriginate. The pagan tendency to personify all the phenomena of nature is\nexemplified in the myth of Enceladus, under which were represented the\nthroes of Mount Etna. The wild, warlike, and semi-pagan spirit of Germany,\nwhich peoples dark mountain recesses with mysterious forms, and fastens a\nlegend to each frowning crag and almost inaccessible fastness, finds apt\nexpression in the legend of the sleeping Barbarossa and his mailed\ncompanions. And how beautifully the piety of the monkish chroniclers has\nembellished the same fiction in the fables of the seven sleepers and the\nmonk of Hildesheim! In the former of these two stories, however, it is\nworthy of remark that an actual fact has been blended with the fiction. The\nseven sleepers are real historical personages, and their names are enrolled\nin the list of canonized saints. They were martyrs whom the Emperor Decius\ncaused to be walled up alive in a cave, where many generations afterward\ntheir relics were found; and this discovery of the relics has been\namplified into an actual resuscitation of the living men. The narrative in\nthis spurious form is given by Jacobus de Voragine in his Golden Legend,\nand was made the subject of a poem by Goethe. The German poet adds that\nthere was a dog with the seven Christians, and that immediately after their\nawakening, as soon as they had been seen by the king and people of Ephesus,\nthey disappeared for ever from the sight of man:\n\n  \"The most blessed angel Gabriel,\n   By the will of God Almighty,\n   Walling up the cave for ever,\n   Led them into paradise.\"\n\nThe most remarkable of all the varieties of this fiction is the legend of\nthe Wandering Jew. Like the story of St. John's sleep at Ephesus, it seems\nto be based upon a false interpretation of Scripture. \"There are some of\nthem standing here,\" said our Lord, \"who shall not taste death till they\nsee the Son of Man coming in his kingdom,\" (St. Matt. xvi. 28.) And it was\nthe old belief that this prophecy was being literally fulfilled in the\nperson of a Jew who was wandering over the face of the earth, and would\ncontinue to wander until the day of judgment.\n{763}\nThe earliest mention of this mythical person occurs in Matthew Paris's\nChronicle of English History, wherein he records that, in 1228, a certain\nArchbishop of Greater Armenia visited the abbey of St. Albans, on a\npilgrimage to the shrines of the saints in England; and in the course of\nconversation he was asked \"whether he had ever seen or heard any thing of\nJoseph, a man of whom there was much talk in the world, who, when our Lord\nsuffered, was present and spoke to him, and who is still alive in evidence\nof the Christian faith; in reply to which, a knight in his retinue, who was\nhis interpreter, replied, speaking in French, 'My lord well knows that man,\nand a little before he took his way to the western countries the said\nJoseph ate at the table of my lord the Archbishop of Armenia, and he has\noften seen and conversed with him.'\" The archbishop went on to relate that,\nwhen Jesus had been delivered up to the Jews and they were dragging him out\nto be crucified, \"Cartaphilus, a porter of the hall, in Pilate's service,\nas Jesus was going out of the door, impiously struck him on the back with\nhis hand, and said in mockery, 'Go quicker, Jesus, go quicker, why do you\nloiter?' And Jesus, looking back on him with a severe countenance, said to\nhim, 'I am going, and you shall wait till I return.' And according as our\nLord said this Cartaphilus is still awaiting his return. At the time of our\nLord's suffering he was thirty years old, and when he attains the age of a\nhundred years he always returns to the same age as he was when our Lord\nsuffered. After Christ's death, when the Catholic faith gained ground, this\nCartaphilus was baptized by Ananias, (who also baptized the apostle Paul,)\nand was called Joseph. He dwells in one or other divisions of Armenia, and\nin divers eastern countries, passing his time among the bishops and other\nprelates of the church; he is a man of holy conversation and religious; a\nman of few words, and very circumspect in his behavior; for he does not\nspeak at all unless when questioned by the bishops and religious; and then\nhe relates the events of olden times, and speaks of things which occurred\nat the suffering and resurrection of our Lord, and of the witnesses of the\nresurrection, namely, of those who rose with Christ, and went into the holy\ncity, and appeared unto men. He also tells of the creed of the apostles,\nand of their separation and preaching. And all this,\" added the archbishop,\n(though we should think the statement rather superfluous,) \"he relates\n_without smiling or levity of conversation_, as one who is well\npractised in sorrow and the fear of God, always looking forward with dread\nto the coming of Jesus Christ, lest at the last judgment he should find him\nin anger, whom, on his way to death, he had provoked to just vengeance.\"\nThere is something not easy to explain in this story. Matthew Paris was an\neye-witness of the events which he relates, so there can be little doubt\nthat the Armenian prelate or his interpreter did really tell some such\nwondrous tale as this to the monks of St. Albans. Was it a pure invention?\nOr did the interpreter, by a familiar species of embellishment, represent\nhis master as having seen the wandering Jew when he had only _heard_\nof him? Or had the archbishop been deceived by some impostor who had taken\nadvantage of the popularity of the legend to palm himself off upon the\ncredulous as its veritable hero? One thing at all events is clear from the\nnarrative of the monk of St. Albans; and that is, that the fable was by no\nmeans a new one in his time, though he is the earliest known writer who has\nhanded it down to us. The Jew, according to this narrative, refused all\ngifts that were offered him, being content with a little food and scanty\nraiment; but with all his humble piety he seems to have cherished an odd\nsort of pride; for it is related that \"numbers came to him from different\nparts of the world, enjoying his society and conversation, and to them,\n_if they are men of authority_, he explains all doubts on the matters\non which he is questioned.\"\n\n{764}\n\nAfter the Armenian had visited the shrine of \"St. Tumas de Kantorbire\" in\nEngland and \"Monsigour St. Jake,\" whereby we suppose is meant Santiago de\nCompostela in Spain, he went to Cologne to see the heads of the three\nkings, and there he is reported, in a rhyming chronicle by Philip Mouskes,\nafterward Bishop of Tournay, as repeating the story he had told at St.\nAlbans, but with very slight differences.\n\nThere is no further mention of the Wandering Jew in literature for more\nthan two hundred and fifty years; but, in 1505, he turns up to some purpose\nin Bohemia, where a poor weaver named Kokot was in great perplexity to find\na treasure that had been buried by his great-grandfather sixty years\nbefore. The Jew had been present when the treasure was hid away, and he now\nappeared opportunely to show the heir where to find it. He seemed at this\ntime to be about seventy years of age. About the same time we hear of him\nin the East, where there was a tradition that he appeared to the Arabian\nconqueror Fadhilah, and predicted the signs which were to precede the last\njudgment. But this mysterious visitor, who is called Zerib Bar Elia, seems\nto have been confounded in a curious way with the prophet Elijah. The most\ncircumstantial account of the undying one was given about the middle of the\nsixteenth century by Dr. Paul von Eitzen, afterward Bishop of Schleswig,\nwho seems to have been thoroughly deceived by one of the many impostors who\narose during that century and the next, claiming to have been survivors of\nthe rabble who followed Jesus to Calvary. Dr. Von Eitzen's story is that,\nbeing in church one Sunday in Hamburg, in the year 1547, \"he observed a\ntall man with his hair hanging over his shoulders, standing barefoot during\nthe sermon over against the pulpit, listening with deepest attention to the\ndiscourse, and whenever the name of Jesus was mentioned bowing himself\nprofoundly and humbly, with sighs and beating of the breast. He had no\nother clothing in the bitter cold of the winter, except a pair of hose\nwhich were in tatters about his feet, and a coat with a girdle which\nreached to his feet; and his general appearance was that of a man of fifty\nyears.\" The learned doctor was so much struck by the man's looks that after\nthe sermon he made inquiries about him. He found that he was a mystery to\neverybody. Many people, some of them of high degree and title, had seen him\nin England, Scotland, France, Italy, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, Poland,\nHungary, Russia, Persia, and other countries, and nobody knew what to make\nof him. So Dr. Von Eitzen sought him out and questioned him. \"Thereupon he\nreplied modestly that he was a Jew by birth, a native of Jerusalem, by name\nAhasuerus, by trade a shoemaker; he had been present at the crucifixion of\nChrist, and had lived ever since, travelling through various lands and\ncities, the which he substantiated by accounts he gave; he related also the\ncircumstances of Christ's transference from Pilate to Herod, and the final\ncrucifixion, together with other details not recorded in the evangelists\nand historians; he gave accounts of the changes of government in many\ncountries, especially of the East, through several centuries, and moreover\nhe detailed the labors and deaths of the holy apostles of Christ most\ncircumstantially.\" The stranger added that he had done his best with others\nto have Christ put to death, and that, when sentence had been pronounced,\nhe ran home and called his family together that they might look at the\ndeceiver of the people as he was carried to execution. When the Lord was\nled by to Calvary, he was standing at the door of his shop with his little\nchild on his arm. Spent with the weight of the cross which he was carrying,\nChrist tried to rest a little, but Ahasuerus, for the sake of obtaining\ncredit among the other Jews, and also out of zeal and rage, drove the Lord\nforward and bade him hasten. \"Jesus, obeying, looked at him and said, 'I\nshall stand and rest, but thou shalt go till the last day.'\n{765}\nAt these words the man set down the child, and, unable to remain where he\nwas, he followed Christ, and saw how cruelly he was crucified, how he\nsuffered, how he died. As soon as this had taken place, it came upon him\nsuddenly that he could no more return to Jerusalem, nor see again his wife\nand child, but must go forth into foreign lands, one after another, like a\nmournful pilgrim. Now, when, years after, he returned to Jerusalem, he\nfound it ruined and utterly razed, so that not one stone was left standing\non another; and he could not recognize former localities.\n\n.....\n\nDr. Paul von Eitzen, along with the rector of the school of Hamburg, who\nwas well read in history and a traveller, questioned him about events which\nhad taken place in the East since the death of Christ, and he was able to\ngive them much information on many ancient matters; so that it was\nimpossible not to be convinced of the truth of his story, and to see that\nwhat seems impossible with men is, after all, possible with God.\" It does\nnot seem to have required Dr. Von Eitzen's investigation to prove that what\nis impossible with man may be possible with God; but how any amount of\nquestioning could demonstrate the truth of the stranger's story we are at a\nloss to see. It apparently failed to strike the reverend doctor and his\nassociate that the Jew could have learned the history of the East as easily\nas they learned it themselves; and even if he made a good many blunders in\nhis narrative, it is by no means certain that his questioners were wise\nenough to detect them.\n\nThis impostor, for so we may safely call him, observed the traditional\nsilence, modesty, temperance, and poverty which the legend uniformly\nascribes to the Wandering Jew, never accepting a larger alms than two\nskillings, (about nine cents,) which he immediately gave to the poor; never\nlaughing; gladly listening to pious discourse; reverencing with sighs the\nutterance of the divine name; and waxing very indignant whenever he heard\nany one swear, especially by God's death or pains. He spoke the language of\nwhatever country he travelled in, and had no foreign accent; so at least\nthe account runs, but it does not appear how that fact was ascertained, nor\nis there mention of any competent linguist having examined his abilities in\nthat line. He never staid long in one place.\n\nTwenty-eight years afterward, that is, in 1575, two legates sent from\nSchleswig to the court of Spain declared on their return home that they had\nencountered the same mysterious person in Madrid, and conversed with him.\nIn appearance, manner of life, habits, and garb, he was just the same as he\nhad appeared in Hamburg. He spoke good Spanish. It is not said, however,\nthat these legates had themselves seen the man when Dr. Von Eitzen talked\nwith him twenty-eight years before, and the probability is, that they only\ninferred from the description left of that strange traveller that the\nwanderer in Madrid was the same person. In 1599, he is reported at Vienna;\nin 1601, at Lubeck; and about the same date at Revel in Livonia, and Cracow\nin Poland. He was also seen in Moscow, and in January, 1603, we find record\nagain of his appearance at Lubeck. The next year he was in Paris. Rudolph\nBotoreus, who records his visit to that city in his history, apologizes for\nmentioning what may seem a mere old wives' fable, but says the story was so\nwidely believed that he could not omit it. Bulenger, about the same date,\nalso mentions the report of the Jew's arrival in Paris, but confesses that\nhe neither saw him nor could hear anything authentic concerning him.\n\nThe frequency of the reappearance of this mythical character in different\nparts of Europe during the seventeenth century seems to indicate that the\nimposture was a profitable one. He assumes different names and tells his\nstory with several variations. In one work he is called Buttadaeus.\nElsewhere he is known as Isaac Laquedem.\n{766}\nIn some accounts it is said that he was born of the tribe of Napluali,\nseven or eight years before the birth of Christ. He ran away from his\nfather, who was either a carpenter or a shoemaker, to accompany the three\nwise men to Bethlehem; and his description on his return of the wonders he\nhad seen and the rich presents which the magi laid at the feet of the babe\nwhom they hailed King of the Jews, led to the massacre of the innocents. He\nwas, according to this version, a carpenter by trade, and made the cross\nupon which the Lord suffered. At the end of every hundred years he falls\ninto a fit or trance, from which he awakes with renewed youth, returning\nalways to the age at which he was when the Saviour was crucified. He has\ntempted death in every conceivable form; he has courted pestilence, thrown\nhimself into the thickest of battles, and called upon the sea to swallow\nhim; but a miraculous interposition of divine power preserves him through\neverything, and the curse still drives him on from land to land, and will\nallow him no rest until the crucified Son of Man shall come in his glory to\njudge the world. Penitent and devout, yet tortured with remorse, he sweeps\non perpetually round and round the world, and the sudden roar of a gale at\nnight is attributed by the vulgar to the passing of the everlasting Jew.\nThere is a Swiss story that he was seen one day standing on the Matterberg\ncontemplating the scene with mingled awe and wonder. Once before he stood\non that desolate spot, and then it was the site of a flourishing city. Once\nagain he will revisit it, and that will be on the eve of judgment.\n\nSo late as the beginning of the last century a man calling himself the\nWandering Jew made considerable noise in England, where many of the common\npeople were found ignorant enough to believe in him. Following the custom\nof some of his early predecessors, he preferred the conversation of persons\nof distinction, and spared no pains to thrust himself into aristocratic\ncompany. Some of the nobility, half in jest, half out of curiosity, were\nwont to talk with him, and pay him as they might a mountebank. He used to\nsay that he had been an officer of the sanhedrim, and that he had struck\nChrist as he was led away from Pilate's judgment seat. He remembered all\nthe apostles, in proof of which he used to give what purported to be a\ndescription of their appearance, dress, and peculiarities; he had been\nacquainted with the father of Mohammed, and had disputed with the prophet\nhimself about the crucifixion of Christ; he knew Saladin, Tamerlane, and\nBajazet; he was in Rome when Nero set it on fire, and he remembered\nminutely the history of the crusades. He spoke many languages, and even\nconversed with an English nobleman in Arabic. Oxford and Cambridge sent\nprofessors to discover whether he was an impostor. It does not appear that\nhe shrank from their examination, for it is pretty certain that he had been\na great traveller, and it is not at all improbable that he was well enough\nread in history to perplex his questioners. On matters of detail it was\neasy enough for him to impugn the accuracy of authorities which\ncontradicted him. Educated persons were not long in learning to laugh at\nhis assumptions, but the vulgar trusted him, and even believed in his power\nof healing the sick. We are not aware that the humbug was ever thoroughly\nexposed to the satisfaction of the people at large, and when he afterward\npassed over to Denmark and Sweden he left probably a plenty of dupes behind\nhim. The last recorded appearance of a person claiming to be the Wandering\nJew was in 1774 at Brussels.\n\nIt would be a curious and interesting study to trace, if we could, the\norigin of this myth, but it is a baffling inquiry. Its kinship with the\nstories of long slumbers, marvellous resuscitations, and miraculous\nprolongation of life is sufficiently apparent, yet it presents remarkable\ndifferences from all these, and it is noteworthy that, during the five\ncenturies and more in which we know that it flourished, it underwent no\nconsiderable modifications, such as popular legends in general are subject\nto.\n{767}\nWhen we first hear of it, it is already wide spread and as completely\ndeveloped as it was when it finally dropped out of popular belief. And, as\nour readers can see from the narratives we have quoted, there never was\neven plausible reason to believe that the story was true. None of the\ntestimony as to the Jew's appearances will bear the very slightest\nexamination. Either the stories are manifest fabrications, or the persons\nto whom they refer were merely ordinary vagabonds. No vagabond, however,\ncould have established such pretensions unless there had previously been\nsome legend in vogue to suggest them and to induce people to accept them.\nSome have imagined that Ahasuerus is a type of the whole Jewish race,\nwhich, since it rejected the Redeemer, has been driven forth to wander over\nthe face of the earth, yet is not to pass away until the end of time. This,\nhowever, can hardly be; for Ahasuerus becomes a devout Christian, and,\nmoreover, one of his principal characteristics is contempt of money. Others\nidentify him with the gypsies, who are said to have been cursed in a\nsimilar way because they refused shelter to the Virgin and child during the\nflight into Egypt; but this is only a local superstition which never\nobtained extensive acceptation. The more probable explanation is, that some\npious monk borrowed one of the old legends which we referred to at the\nbeginning of this article, and adding to it a conception taken from the\nwords of the Saviour, \"There are some of them standing here who shall not\ntaste death till they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom,\"\nconstructed an allegory which was afterward accepted for literal truth in a\nnot very critical age, and was kept alive by a succession of impostors.\n\n\n------\n\n{768}\n\n    Original.\n\n    \"Abide In Me.\"\n\n  \"I am the vine, you the branches.\"\n\n\n        \"I AM the Vine.\"\n  \"'Tis true, dear Lord, and yet the fruit,\n   And cool, green leaves that cast the grateful shade,\n         Are mine.\"\n  \"Fie, silly branch! Without a root\n   Deep hidden in the lowly earth,\n   Thy fruit or leaves would ne'er had birth.\n   How quickly would thy coronal of leaves,\n   Which now from men such flattery receives,\n   Lose all its glory in their sight, and fade\n         And die;\n   Thy fruit for tastelessness be spurned;\n   Thyself be cast into the fire and burned,\n         If I\n   Who am, of all thou hast, the source,\n   Did not with living sap the force\n         Supply.\"\n  \"Lord! pardon me my foolish pride;\n   Too much in my own strength I do confide.\n         Decree\n   That henceforth I shall bare and barren be,\n   If I give not all glory unto thee;\n         And chide\n   My wayward spirit when it turns aside,\n   And thinks to live and flourish, and yet not abide\n         In thee.\"\n\n\n------\n\n   Abridged from The Dublin University Magazine.\n\n   The Invasions Of Ireland By The Danes.\n\n\nA knowledge of history is considered an essential portion of the mental\nacquirements of every gentleman and lady, but it is for the most part a\ndisagreeable, and, in many respects, a slightly immoral study, if we apply\nthe same criterion to it which we do to its relative, romance. Moral\nlecturers on fiction instruct us that any novel or romance which centres\nits chief interest in wicked men or women, and devotes the greater portion\nof its pages to their proceedings, is an immoral, or, at least, an\nunedifying book. We need not waste pages or lines here in pointing out what\nsort of designs or deeds enter into the tissue of historical narrative, but\nas (the above reasoning notwithstanding) history is, and will continue to\nbe, a popular and engrossing study, it is of importance that we be\nacquainted with the true nature of past events.\n\n\n  Desiderata for a Good Irish History.\n\nWith regard to our own country we have not in this case been well favored.\nThose histories which have appeared in print rest for their authority on\nhitherto inedited MSS., many portions which are of a legendary and romantic\ncharacter. It is evident that it is only when all these MS. chronicles,\nthat are worth the trouble and expense, are published and compared with\neach other and with foreign contemporary history, we can arrive with any\ncertainty at the truth or probability of past events, the existence or\notherwise of some semi-mythic heroes, or truthful chronological\narrangement.\n\nFor the coming history of Ireland we are thankful that preparations have\nbeen making. We have had Keating's history badly translated for three\nhalf-centuries. He compiled it in the seventeenth century from MS.\ndocuments, some of which are unhappily not now in existence. Dr. O'Connor\nwas enabled, through the munificence of the Duke of Buckingham, to get into\nprint, accompanied by a Latin translation, the Annals of Tighernach, a monk\nof Clonmacnois, in the eleventh century, and a portion of the Annals of\nUlster, but these books are nearly as inaccessible as the original MSS.\n{769}\nThe Annals of the Four Masters, (the O'Clerys of Donegal Abbey, early part\nof the seventeenth century,) edited by the late Dr. O'Donovan, have been\nissued in a costly style by the firm of Hodges & Smith. For about a quarter\nof a century our Archaeological and Celtic Societies have been publishing,\nwith translations, papers of great value, and at last, though at the\neleventh hour, government has lent a hand in bringing before the public\nvaluable materials for the future historian of Ireland. These consist of a\nportion of the ancient Irish code: the Senchus Mhor, the Chronicum\nScotorum, edited by Mr. Hennessy, and the Wars of the Gael with the\nForeigners, [Footnote 275] (with translation,) edited by Rev. Dr. Todd.\nThis, we trust, is only an earnest of what government means to do. We hope\nto see in succession the Annals of Tighernach, of Lough C\u00e9, of Ulster,\n[Footnote 276] and others issued at the moderate price adopted.\n\n    [Footnote 275: The War of the Gaedhill with the Gaill; or The Invasions\n    of Ireland by the Danes and other Norsemen. The Original Irish Text,\n    edited with Translation and Introduction by James Henthorn Todd, D.D.,\n    A.B., M.R.I.A., F.S.A., Senior Fellow T.C.D. Published by the Authority\n    of the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury, under the\n    Direction of the Master of the Rolls. London: Longmans & Co.]\n\n    [Footnote 276: Tiernach O'Braoin, Abbot of Clonmacnois, died in 1088.\n    The Annals that bear his name are continued to the fourteenth century.\n    They exhibit great conscientiousness on the part of the writer, who\n    never gives way to Bardic enthusiasm. The other chief books are the\n    Annals of Inisfallen, probably begun by Maol Suthain O'Carroll,\n    secretary to Brian Borumha, the Annals of Boyle, the Annals of Ulster,\n    compiled by Charles Maguire, a learned ecclesiastic at the Isle of\n    Shanat, in Lough Erne. His death occurred in 1493. The Annals begin at\n    A.D. 441 and are continued to 1541. The Annals of Loch C\u00e9, compiled by\n    Brian MacDermot, relate events from the battle of Clontarf to 1590. The\n    Annals of Connacht include all that passed from 1224 to 1562. The\n    Annals of Clonmacnois were translated from the Gaelic into English in\n    1627, by Connia Mac Egan; the original is not extant.]\n\nThe deeply read and zealous editor of the work just quoted below would\nprefer to have been exercised on some of the others. We quote his own\nwords:\n\n  \"The editor cannot but regret that this tract, so full of the feelings of\n  clanship,... should have been selected as the first specimen of an Irish\n  chronicle, presented to the public under the sanction of the Master of\n  the Rolls. His own wish and recommendation to his Honor was, that the\n  purely historical chronicles, such as the Annals of Tighernach, the\n  Annals of Ulster, or the Annals of Loch C\u00e9, should have been first\n  undertaken. The two former compilations, it is true, had been already\n  printed [Footnote 277], although with bad translations and wretchedly\n  erroneous topography; and a rule which at that time existed prohibited\n  the Master of the Rolls from publishing any work which, even in part, had\n  been printed before. This rule has since been judiciously rescinded, and\n  it is hoped that his lordship will soon be induced to sanction a series\n  of the chronicles of Ireland, especially the two just alluded to, which,\n  it is not too much to say, are to the history of Ireland and of Scotland\n  what the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is to that of England. The Annals of Loch\n  C\u00e9 (pr. Kay) belong to a later period. They begin with the battle of\n  Clontarf, and continue the history, with some few gaps, to 1590.\"\n\n    [Footnote 277: The Annals of Ulster are given only to the year 1131.\n    The Dublin MS. extends to 1503. The Chronicum Scotorum is not here\n    mentioned, because it is already on the list of the Master of the\n    Rolls, edited by Mr. W. M. Hennessy.--_Note by Rev. Dr. Todd._]\n\nNothing can be more to the purpose or better worthy of attention than the\nsequel of this passage.\n\n  \"Until these and other sources of history are made accessible, it is vain\n  to expect any sober or trustworthy history of Ireland. The old romantic\n  notions of a golden age, so attractive to some minds, must continue to\n  prevail....\n\n  \"The authors of our popular histories were avowedly ignorant, with\n  scarcely an exception, of the ancient language of Ireland--the language\n  in which the real sources of Irish history are written. It was as if the\n  authors of the history of Rome had been all ignorant of Latin, and the\n  writers of our histories of Greece unable to read Greek. Even this would\n  not, however, fully represent the real state of the case as regards\n  Ireland. Livy and Tacitus, Herodotus and Thucydides, are printed books,\n  and good translations of them exist. But the authorities of Irish history\n  are still for the most part in manuscript, and unpublished, untranslated,\n  and scattered in the public libraries in Dublin, Oxford, and London, as\n  well as on the continent of Europe, Hence our popular histories leave us\n  completely in the dark, and often contain erroneous information. Wherever\n  the Irish names of places or persons are concerned they are at fault.\n  They are entirely silent on the genealogies, relationships, and laws of\n  the clans and their chieftains a subject so essential, to the right\n  understanding of Irish history.\"\n\n{770}\n\nThe most popular of our histories is that translated from the Irish of the\nlearned Dr. Geoffry Keating, by Dermod O'Connor, and first published,\nWestminster, 1726. It was but indifferently done. Dr. Todd gives a decided\npreference to that lately executed by O'Mahony, and published in America.\nDr. Todd gives his readers the pleasant information that two perfect copies\nof the original Irish, executed by John Torna O'Mulconry, a contemporary of\nDr. Keating, are preserved in the library of Trinity College, Dublin.\n\n\n  The Mss. Of Our Danish Chronicle.\n\nThe narrative in the work under notice embraces two centuries, ending with\nthe battle of Clontarf, A.D. 1014. Of the two hundred pages devoted to the\nsubject, the wars waged by Mahon of Thomond and his younger brother, Brian\nBorumha, occupy a hundred and fifty. The fact is accounted for by giving\nthe authorship to Mac Liag, Brian's chief bard, or some other devoted filea\nor seanachie of his house, who survived the great day at Clontarf. The\nlearned editor furnishes ample accounts of the MSS. used in the work, and\nwe proceed to make use of them for the information of our readers. A very\nsmall portion of it, to wit, one leaf, folio size, closely written on both\nsides in double columns, is preserved in the Book of Leinster. [Footnote\n278] The contents of this leaf are given in the appendix.\n\n    [Footnote 278: The Book of Leinster was written by Finn, Bishop of\n    Kildare, for Hugh MacGriffin, tutor of that antetype of Henry VIII.,\n    namely, Diarmuid MacMurroch It is a collection of narratives, tales,\n    genealogies, and poems; some of these last attributed to Fionn\n    MacCumball and his son Oisin. The death of its compiler in 1160 is\n    noticed in the Annals of the Four Masters, under the date A.D. 1160.]\n\nThe second MS., also defective, is preserved in the library of Trinity\nCollege. We copy Dr. Todd's reference to it:\n\n  \"This copy was found about the year 1840, by the late eminent scholar,\n  Mr. O'Curry, bound up in one of the Seabright MSS., formerly in the\n  possession of the celebrated antiquary, Edward Lluyd. There is nothing\n  except the appearance of the MS., and its handwriting, to fix its age,\n  but, judging from these criteria, we cannot be far wrong in supposing it\n  to have been written about the middle of the fourteenth century. It is\n  imperfect both at the beginning and at the end.... There are also some\n  intervening defects, arising from a loss of leaves.\"\n\nThe MS. in which the valuable fragment is preserved is marked H, 2, 17.\n\n  \"The third MS. is a paper copy preserved in the Burgundian library,\n  Brussels, which has the advantage of being perfect. It is in the\n  handwriting of the eminent Irish scholar, Friar Michael O'Clery, by whom\n  it was transcribed in the year 1635. This appears by the following note\n  at the end:\n\n    \"'Out of the Book of Cueonnacht O'Daly, the poor friar, Michael\n    O'Clery, wrote the copy from which this was written, in the convent of\n    the friars in Baile Tighe, Farannain, (Multifarnham,) in the month of\n    March of this year, 1628, and this (the present) copy was written by\n    the same friar in the convent of Dun-na-n Gail, (Donegal,) in the month\n    of November of this year, 1635.'\"\n\nThe learned friar copied or introduced into his history catalogues and\npoems not to be found in the Dublin MS., and there are passages in the last\nnot to be found in the Brussels copy. The chronicle now printed is, of\ncourse, the more copious, as it contains everything to be found in either.\n\nIt was not till some time after the discovery of the Dublin MS., by Mr.\nO'Curry, as recorded, that the existence of the Brussels copy became known.\nDr. Todd proceeded to that city in August, 1848, and copied all the\nportions not to be found in the one at home. Afterward, as he observes:\n\n  \"Through the influence of the Earl of Clarendon, then Lord Lieutenant of\n  Ireland, he obtained from the Belgian government a loan of this and some\n  other MSS., and in 1833 caused a complete copy of it to be made by Mr.\n  O'Curry, for the library of Trinity College, Dublin. These transcripts\n  have been carefully collated in forming the text of the present edition.\"\n\n\n  Who Wrote The Chronicle?\n\nThe authorship of the work is attributed to Muriertach Mac Liag, the chief\nbard of King Brian, but no sure conclusion can be come to on this point.\n{771}\nIt is certain, however, that it is the production of a zealous Dalcassian,\nand that it was composed soon after the battle of Clontarf. We copy the\ncurious circumstance which proves to certainty that the original compiler\nwas contemporary with the concluding event of the narrative:\n\n  \"It is stated in the account given of the battle of Clontarf, that the\n  full tide in Dublin Bay on the day of the battle, 23d April, 1014,\n  coincided with sunrise, and that the returning tide at evening aided\n  considerably in the defeat of the enemy.\n\n  \"It occurred to the editor, on considering this passage, that a criterion\n  might be derived from it to test the truth of the narrative, and of the\n  date assigned by the Irish to the battle of Clontarf. He, therefore,\n  proposed to the Rev. Samuel Haughton, M.D., Fellow of Trinity College,\n  and Professor of Geology in the University of Dublin, to solve for him\n  this problem: 'What was the hour of high-water at the shore of Clontarf\n  in Dublin Bay on the 23d April, 1014?' The editor did not make known to\n  Dr. Haughton the object he had in view in this question, and the\n  coincidence of the results obtained with the ancient narrative is\n  therefore the more valuable and curious.\"\n\nThe result of Dr. Haughton's calculations, communicated to the Royal Irish\nAcademy in May, 1861, was this:\n\n  \"The tide along the Clontarf shore, when not obstructed by embankments\n  and walls, could not have differed many minutes, on the 23d April, 1014,\n  from 5 hours 30 minutes A.M., the evening tide being full in at 5 hours\n  55 minutes P.M.\n\n  \"This proves that the author, if not himself an eye-witness, must have\n  derived his information from those who were. 'None others,' as Dr.\n  Haughton observes, 'could have invented the fact that the battle began at\n  sunrise, and that the tide was then full in.' The importance of the time\n  of tide became evident at the close of the day, when the returned tide\n  prevented the escape of the Danes from the Clontarf shore to the north\n  bank of the Liffey.\"\n\nIn the chronicle the author makes a distinction between races of the\ninvaders, namely, the dark-haired Danes and the fair-haired Norwegians. The\nword Lochlann (lake land) is applicable to Norway with its numerous fiords,\nto which the ancient Irish writers applied the name of lochs. The epithet\n_gormglasa_ (bluish green) was probably applied to the plate armor\nworn by some of them.\n\n\n  Style and Spirit of the Work.\n\nThe following passage will furnish a fair specimen of the style of the\nchronicle, besides exhibiting the misery of a country divided into small\nkingdoms when a ferocious band of foreigners chose to make a lodgment in\nit:\n\n  \"In a word, although there were an hundred hard-steeled iron heads on one\n  neck, and an hundred sharp, ready, cool, never-resting, brazen tongues in\n  each head, and an hundred garrulous, loud, unceasing voices from each\n  tongue, they could not recount, nor enumerate, nor tell what all the\n  Gaedhil suffered in common, both men and women, laity and clergy, old and\n  young, noble and ignoble, of hardship, and of injury, and oppression in\n  every house from these valiant, foreign, purely pagan people. Even though\n  great were this cruelty, and oppression, and tyranny--though numerous\n  were the oft-victorious clans of the many-familied Erinn--though numerous\n  their kings, and their royal chiefs, and their princes--though numerous\n  their heroes, and champions, and their brave soldiers, their chiefs of\n  valor and renown, and deeds of arms--yet not one of them was able to give\n  relief, or alleviation, or deliverance from that oppression and tyranny,\n  from the numbers, and the multitudes, and the cruelty, and the wrath of\n  the brutal, ferocious, furious, untamed, implacable hordes by whom that\n  oppression was inflicted, because of the excellence of their polished,\n  ample, treble, heavy, trusty, glittering corselets, and their hard,\n  strong, valiant swords, and their well-riveted long spears, and their\n  ready, brilliant arms of valor besides, and because of the greatness of\n  their achievements and of their deeds, their bravery and their valor,\n  their strength, and their venom, and their ferocity, and because of the\n  excess of their thirst and their hunger for the brave, fruitful, nobly\n  inhabited, full of cataracts, rivers, bays, pure, smooth-planed, sweet,\n  grassy land of Erinn.\"\n\nLittle can the mere English reader, who may look on much of this as mere\nbombast, feel the charm which such substantives and epithets as the\nfollowing had on the original hearers or readers of the work: \"Luireach,\nlainndearda, luchtmara, tredualach, trom, trebhraid, taitnemach,\" (Loricas,\npolished, ample, treble, etc.)\n\n{772}\n\n  Causes of the Invaders' Success.\n\nThe editor, alluding to the defeats suffered by the Irish forces on many\noccasions, finds no great difficulty in accounting for them, and this\nwithout the slightest reflection on their innate courage or skill in the\nuse of their arms:\n\n  \"The whole body of the clan were summoned to decide upon the question of\n  war or peace. Every petty chieftain of every minor tribe, if not every\n  individual clansman, had a voice not only in this primary question, but\n  also, when the war was declared, in the questions arising upon subsequent\n  military operations... The kings or chieftains were themselves chosen by\n  the clan, although the choice was limited to those who possessed a sort\n  of hereditary right, often complicated by a comparison of the personal\n  merits of the rival claimants.\n\n  \"The army was a rope of sand. It consisted of a number of minor clans,\n  each commanded by its own petty chieftain, receiving no pay, and bound by\n  no oath of allegiance to the king or chief commander. Each clan, no\n  doubt, adhered with unshaken fidelity to its own immediate chieftain, but\n  he on the smallest offence could dismiss his followers to their homes\n  even at the very eve of a decisive battle.... These facts must be borne\n  in mind if we would rightly understand the inherent weakness of warfare\n  in ancient Ireland.\"\n\nThus many of the faults we choose to impute to our ancestors and their\nsupposed natural propensities should be rather imputed to the circumstances\nin which they were placed than to themselves. A tribe could not reckon upon\na continuance of peace with neighbors or strangers for a single week. A\nchief enjoying the strength, and courage, and wisdom of manhood was\nessential to their well-being, almost to their existence. The heir-apparent\nof the chief for the time might be a child or an incompetent youth. In this\ncase it was but sound policy to elect during the chief's life his brother\nor other near relative to assume the command immediately on his decease.\nThis was done, the election being restricted to the Duine Uasals\n(gentlemen) of the tribe. The scrutiny might be distinguished on occasions\nby the usual disagreeables of an election, but it prevented the\ninconveniences of an interregnum.\n\n\n  The Danish Proceedings Before Brian's Time.\n\nThe mere Irish were never much benefited by the nominal capital of their\ncountry. The Norwegians, getting it into their possession in 836 or 838,\nbuilt a fortress there in 842, and the Danes, after a preliminary visit in\n851, returned for re\u00ebnforcements, and their king, Olaf the White, was\nrecognized as supreme chief of all the foreigners in Ireland in 856, and\nmade Dublin his headquarters.\n\nThere was a comparative rest from foreign invasions for about forty years,\nbut Ireland's troubles began to thicken in the early part of the tenth\ncentury. Crowds of foreigners assembled, and the brave King of Ireland,\nNial of the Black Knee, collected all the forces he could from Meath and\nthe North, and attacked their united strength at Kilmashogue in the\nmountains beyond Rathfarnham. But the foreigners much outnumbered the\nnatives, and the heroic king with twelve petty princes perished in the\nbattle.\n\nThe ferocious invaders did not confine their attentions to Dublin and the\nnorth; they ravaged the pleasant south country, and feelingly does the\nchronicler describe the hellish mischief they committed. Overcome by his\nsubjects, he sometimes even neglects his darling alliteration:\n\n  \"They rent her (Erinn's) shrines, and her reliquaries, and her books.\n  They demolished her beautiful, ornamented temples; for neither\n  veneration, nor honor, nor mercy for Termonn, [Footnote 279] nor\n  protection for church or for sanctuary, for God or for man, was felt by\n  this furious, ferocious, pagan, ruthless, wrathful people. In short,\n  until the sand of the sea, or the grass of the field, or the stars of\n  heaven be counted, it will not be easy to recount, or to enumerate, or to\n  relate what the Gaedhil, all without distinction, suffered from them. ...\n  Alas! many and frequent were the bright and brilliant eyes that were\n  suffused with tears, and dimmed with grief and despair at the separation\n  of son from father, and daughter from mother, and brother from brother,\n  and relatives from their race and from their tribe.\"\n\n    [Footnote 279: Church lands having the privilege of sanctuary.]\n\n\n{773}\n\nOne of the most terrible of these southern descents was that made by\nImar--son of Imar (Ivar) and his three sons Dubhceann, and Cu-Allaidh, and\nAralt, (Black Head,) and Wild Dog, (Wolf,) and Harold. These worthies took\npossession of Limerick, and high and haughty were their proceedings.\n\n  \"Such was the oppressiveness of the tribute and rent of the foreigners at\n  large and generally, that there was a king from them over every\n  territory, and a chief over every chieftainry, and an abbot over every\n  church, and a steward over every village, and a soldier in every house,\n  so that none of the men of Erinn had power to give the milk of his cow,\n  nor so much as the clutch of eggs of one hen, in succor or in kindness to\n  an aged man or to a friend, but was forced to preserve them for the\n  foreign steward, or bailiff, or soldier. And though there were but one\n  milk-giving cow in the house, she durst not be milked for an infant of\n  one night, nor for a sick person, but must be kept for the steward, or\n  bailiff, or soldier of the foreigners. And however long he might be from\n  the house, his share or his supply durst not be lessened. And although\n  there was in the house but one cow, it must be killed for the meal of one\n  night, if the means of a supply could not be otherwise procured.... And\n  an ounce of silver Findrunl was paid for every nose besides the royal\n  tribute every year. And he who had not the means of paying it, had\n  himself to go into slavery for it.\"\n\nThe alternative was the loss of the organ just mentioned.\n\n\n  Brian's Early Struggles.\n\nBut we have got to the tenth century, and the two youthful brothers\ndestined to give a disabling blow to Danish tyranny are learning the\nprofession of arms in their father's fortress in Thomond, (_Tuaith\nMuimhain_, North Munster.) These were Mathgamhain [Footnote 280] and\nBrian, sons of Cennedigh, (Kennedy,) chief of the tribe of Dal-Cais.\n\n    [Footnote 280: However the people of the tenth century pronounced this\n    word, modern scholars are content to sound it Mahoun.\n\n    An old Munster king, Oilliol Oiuim, appointed in his will that the\n    descendants of his two sons, Eogan and Cormac Oas, should sway the\n    sceptre of the south in alternate succession. A very unwise proceeding,\n    as future events proved.]\n\nThe first naming of these princes in the chronicle brings out an\nalliterative and patriotic glow on the pen of the enthusiastic chronicler.\n\n  \"There were then governing and ruling this tribe two stout, able, valiant\n  pillars, two fierce, lacerating, magnificent heroes; two gates of battle,\n  two poles of combat, two spreading trees of shelter, two spears of\n  victory and readiness, of hospitality and munificence, of heart and\n  strength, of friendship and liveliness, the most eminent of the west of\n  Europe, namely, Mathgamain and Brian, the two sons of Cennedigh, son of\n  Lorcan, son of Lachtna, son of Core,\" etc.\n\nTheir cousins, the Eoganacht, having the lion's share in the government of\nLeath Mogha, the following were the principal privileges of the\nDalcassians:\n\n  \"It is the privilege of the host of Lugaidh's race\n   To lead the battalions of the hosts of Mumhain,\n   And afterward to be in the rere\n   In coming from a hostile land.\n\n  \"It is not fealty that is required of them,\n   But to preserve the freedom of Caisel. [Footnote 281]\n   It is not rent, it is not tribute, as hath been heard;\n   It is not fostership nor fostership's fees.\n\n    [Footnote 281: The residence of the kings of the south assumed the\n    title of Caisiol, (_Cios_, tribute, _ail_, stone.)]\n\n  ......\n\n  \"And even when there is not a king\n   Out of you over Erinn of hosts,\n   Only that you would not infringe on right,\n   No human power could prevail over you.\"\n\nEarly in their lives the princes entered on a skirmishing warfare with the\nenemy; and when Mahon, weary of the resultless struggle, entered on a truce\nwith the enemy, Brian still continued to harass them, and as his zealous\nbiographer says, when he could not injure them on any day, he did it next\nnight, and every inactive night was followed by a destructive day. He and\nhis followers lived in temporary huts, and continued to kill daily and\nnightly their enemies \"by companies, by troops, by scores, by hundreds, and\n(in case of a bad day or night) by quaternions.\"\n\n  \"Great were the hardship and the ruin, the bad food and bad bedding,\n  which they inflicted on him in the wild huts of the desert, on the hard,\n  knotty, wet roots of his native country, whilst they killed his people,\n  and his trusty officers, and his comrades; sorrowful, wretched, unpitied,\n  weary, for historians say that the foreigners cut off his people, so that\n  he had at last but fifteen followers.\"\n\n{774}\n\nMahon, finding his brother in this wretched state, appointed a meeting, and\na conference was held, given in verse in the text, Mahon gently chiding\nBrian for exposing the lives of his brave followers to certain death; Brian\ndelicately hinting that such and such of their ancestors would not be so\npatient of the presence of the foe in Thomond as he (Mahon) chose to be:\n\n  \"_Mahon_. Alone art them, O Brian of Banba (Erinn)!\n   Thy warfare was not without valor;\n   Not numerous hast thou come to our house;\n   Where hast thou left thy followers?\n\n   .....\n\n  \"_Brian_. I have left them on Craig Liath, [Footnote 282]\n   In that breach where shields were cleft.\n   Birnn (Bi\u00f6rn)--it was difficult to cut off the man--\n   Fell there with his people.\n\n     [Footnote 282: Cariglea (Gray Rock) near Killaloe, seat of\n     _Aoibhin_, (_Aoine_, Venus?) the Bean Sighe of the\n     Dalcassian chiefs.]\n\n   .....\n\n  \"Our fight at the Fergus was not soft;\n   Weary of it were we on both sides;\n   Our fight in the combat was no weak combat,\n   Thirty with Elius fell.\n\n   .....\n\n  \"These are our adventures, O man!\n   O son of Cennedigh, the fair-skinned;\n   Often did we deliver ourselves with success,\n   From positions in which we despaired of escape.\n   Cennedigh for wealth would not have been,\n   Nor would Lorcan, the faithful, have been\n   So quiescent toward the foreigners,\n   As thou art, Mathgamhain!\"\n\nThe result of the conference was a general gathering of the native fighting\nmen to Cashel, and soon a general engagement took place between themselves\nand the foreigners at Sulcoit, in which these last sustained a terrible\ndefeat. The chronicler then relates with much zest the march to Limerick,\nits destruction, and the treatment of the conquered:\n\n  \"They carried off their jewels, and their best property, and their\n  saddles beautiful and foreign, their gold and their silver, their\n  beautiful woven cloth of all colors and of all kinds, their satins and\n  silken cloth, pleasing and variegated, both scarlet and green, and all\n  sorts of cloth, in like manner. They carried away their soft, youthful,\n  bright, matchless girls, their blooming, silk-clad young women, and their\n  active, large, and well-formed boys. The fort and the good town they\n  reduced to a cloud of smoke, and to red fire afterward. The whole of the\n  captives were collected on the hills of Saingel. Every one of them that\n  was fit for war was killed, and every one that was fit for a slave was\n  enslaved.\"\n\n\n  Family Quarrels.\n\nA remnant of the Danish forces maintained a position in Inis Cealtra,\n(Scattery Island,) under Ivar, and six years later this chief induced the\nchiefs of the O'Donovans and O'Molloys to aid him to destroy the power of\nMahon, now the acknowledged king of Munster, and even to take his life.\nThese princes were of the Eoganacht branch of the royal line of Cashel,\nand, therefore, not friendly disposed to the present Dalcassian monarch.\nThere are two differing narratives of the murder, with some poems\ninterpolated, and a guess only can be made at the truthful succession of\nincidents. The editor presents as probable a version of the facts as can be\ngot at among the confusion of the original accounts.\n\nMahon unfortunately accepted an invitation to O'Donovan's house at Bruree\non the river Maigue, probably to bring about a more friendly feeling\nbetween the two rival branches of the descendants of their common ancestor,\nOilliol Oluim.\n\nThe Bishop of Cork being active in the matter, and the Eoganacht chiefs\nhaving sworn neither to attempt his life nor blind him, he seems to have\nbeen quite unsuspicious. We next find him met by O'Molloy's people in a\npass between Kilmallock and Cork, and about to be put to death. One of the\naccounts says that he had the Book of the Gospels of Barri (belonging to\nthe cathedral of Cork) on his breast, but that, as soon as he saw his death\ndetermined on, he flung it the distance of a bow-shot away in order that it\nmight not be stained with his blood. A cleric witness of the base deed\ndenounced this curse on the O'Molloy, (Maelmuadh):\n\n{775}\n\n  \"It is Aedh (Hugh) that shall kill thee, a man from the border of Aifi,\n   On the north of the sun with the harshness of the wind.\n   The deed thou hast done shall be to thee a regret:\n   That for which thou hast done it thou shalt not enjoy.\n   Perpetual shall be its misfortune; thy posterity shall pass away,\n    Thy history shall be forgotten, thy tribe shall be in bondage;\n    The calf of a pet cow shall overthrow thee at one meeting;\n    Thou shall not conquer it, Aedhan shall slay thee.\"\n\n\"The north of the sun with the harshness of the wind\" implied the burial of\nthe treacherous chief on the north side of a hill, where the sun's rays\nwould not reach his grave.\n\nThe denunciation of the bishop noticed the erics payable for the murder of\nthe king, but so atrocious was the deed that Brian would not accept any\nrecompense but the life of the culprit.\n\nWe extract a portion of the elegy made by Mahon's blind bard on the\nmelancholy occasion:\n\n  \"Loud to-day the piercing wail of woe\n   Throughout the land of Ui Toirdhelbhaigh, (Torloch.)\n   It shall be and it is a wail not without cause,\n   For the loss of the hero Mathgamhain.\n\n  \"Mathgamhain, the gem of Magh Fail,\n   Son of Cennedigh, son of Lorcan;\n   The western world was full of his fame--\n   The fiery King of Boromha.\n\n   .....\n\n  \"The Dal Cais of the hundred churches remember\n   How we overran Gaeth Glenn,\n   When upon the illustrious Fergal's shield\n   Mathgamhain's meal was cooked.\n\n   .....\n\n  \"Although calves are not suffered to go to the cows\n   In lamentation for the noble Mathgamhain,\n   There was inflicted much evil in his day\n   By those who are in Port Arda.\"\n\nThe custom of the Gael in matters militant was to appoint the time and\nplace for battles--however enraged one party might be with the other. Brian\nsent mortal defiance to Molloy, threatening to besiege him in his own dun\nif he did not attend the notice. Murchad, Brian's eldest son, and the Osgur\nof his day, defied the caitiff chief to single combat. So the challenge was\naccepted and the battle took place, a large body of the Danes fighting\nunder the banner of Maelmuadh. This chief was slain either by the hand of\nMurchad, or put to death in cold blood by Aedhan in a lonely hut after the\nfight. In this latter case he lost his eyesight in the field of Bealach\nLeachta through the curse pronounced on him, and was subsequently killed in\nthe hut as mentioned.\n\nA few lines of the poetical invitation to battle sent by Brian are worth\nquotation:\n\n  \"Go, Cogaran the intelligent!\n   Unto Maelmuadh of the piercing blue eye,\n   To the sons of Bran of enduring prosperity,\n   And to the sons of the Ui Eachdach.\n\n   .....\n\n  \"Say unto the son of Bran that he fail not\n   After a full fortnight from to-morrow,\n   To come to Belach Lechta hither,\n   With the full muster of his army and his followers.\n\n   .....\n\n  \"Whenever the son of Bran son of Cian shall offer\n   The Cumhal (blood fine) of my brother unto myself,\n   I will not accept from him hostages or studs,\n   But only himself in atonement for his guilt.\n\n   .....\n\n  \"But if he do not come from the South\n   To Belach Lechta the evergreen,\n   Let him answer at his house\n   The Dal Cais [Footnote 283] and the son of Cennedigh.\n\n    [Footnote 283: This name imports the \"Tribe or Family of Cas.\"]\n\n  \"For him shall not be accepted from them\n   Gold, nor silver, nor land,\n   Nor hostages, nor cattle, O man:\n   Tell them this, and go!\"\n\n\n  The Fight At Dunlavin.\n\nThere now remained no obstacle to the placing of the crown of Leath Mogha,\n[Footnote 284] the southern portion of the island, on the head of the\nbrother and avenger of Mahon. He took hostages from the chiefs of Desmond,\n(_Deas_, South, _Muimhe_, Munster,) allowed sundry Danish groups\nof people to occupy places of trade, and finally, in the year 998, came to\na conference with Malachy II., King of Leath Cuinn or northern portion of\nErinn. We have no objection to Brian's triumphant procession up the\nShannon, but are not clear about the privilege assumed by his Dalcassians,\nof making hostile visitations to districts on each side as they went\nup-stream. However. Malachy had set them a bad example a short time before.\n\n    [Footnote 284: The boundary line of these portions connected the bays\n    of Dublin and Galway.]\n\n{776}\n\nThe natives and Danes of Leinster getting up an insurrection soon after\nthis treaty with Malachy, Brian proceeded toward Dublin to bring them to\ntheir duty. They met him at Glean-Mama (Glen of the Gap) near Dunlavin, but\nsustained signal defeats at that pass and other points where they afterward\nrallied. The curious in topographical details will find much to interest\nthem at pages cxliv., etc., of the introduction. The editor has made\nhimself well acquainted with the natural features of the neighborhood of\nDunlavin, having received some valuable information from Rev. Mr. Sherman,\nformerly Roman Catholic curate in the neighborhood. The site of the old\nfort is marked by an ancient cemetery, pagan tumuli, and fragments of stone\ncircles, called by the inhabitants, Pipers' Stones. We must here make use\nof one of Dr. Todd's many and valuable archaeological notes:\n\n  \"The Danes expected to reach Dunlavin, and perhaps to encamp there to\n  meet the forces of Meath (under Malachy) and Munster. But Brian met them\n  in the narrow defile of Glen Mama, thus cutting off their retreat. Here\n  there was no room for a regular engagement, and the flight must have been\n  immediate. The main body of the Danish army flew across the sloping land\n  through Kinsellastown, to the ford of Lemmonstown, where a stand seems to\n  have been made by them, and where it is said thousands fell in the\n  conflict. To this day their bones are turned up in the fields about the\n  ford, and some mounds on the banks of the stream are so filled up with\n  them that the people leave them untilled, as being sacred repositories of\n  the dead. The remnant of the defeated army fled to Holywood, about a mile\n  to the east of the ford, and thence to the ford of the Horse-pass on the\n  Liffey, about Poul a Phouca, (the Pooka's Hole,) where they were utterly\n  routed. At the close of the last century the wild lands of Upper Crihelpe\n  were reclaimed, and many relics of this retreat were brought to light,\n  chiefly in a line from _Tubber Glen_ (Well of the Glen) to\n  Lemmonstown ford. The workmen, coming on the pits where the bodies of the\n  slain lay buried, left them intact, closing them up again. In the defile\n  of Glen Mama, during the first week of May, 1864, one of these pits was\n  accidentally opened, bones were turned up, and also the fragments of a\n  Danish sword, (now in the possession of Dean Graves, Pres. R. I. A.) The\n  clay was found black and unctuous, as if thoroughly saturated with human\n  remains.\"\n\nIn the now nearly unknown cemetery of Crihelpe lie the remains of Harold\nthe Danish prince, by the side of a granite post, furnished with an\naperture for a wooden shaft, to convert it into a cross. It is called\n_Cruisloe_, (_Crois laech_, warrior's cross,) and serves as a\nrubbing-post for cattle.\n\nThis was considered one of the most important victories gained over the\nforeigners, both from the number of the slain and the spoils\nrecovered--\"Gold, silver, bronze, (_finndruine_,) precious stones,\ncarbuncle gems, buffalo horns, and beautiful goblets. Much also of various\nvestures of all colors was found there likewise;\" for, in the words of the\ntext,\n\n  \"Never was there a fortress, or a fastness, or a mound, or a church, or a\n  sacred place, or a sanctuary, when it was taken by that howling, furious,\n  loathsome crew, which was not plundered.... Neither was there in\n  concealment under ground in Erinn, nor in the various solitudes belonging\n  to Fians [Footnote 285] or to fairies, anything that was not discovered\n  by these foreign, wonderful Denmarkians through paganism and idol\n  worship.\"\n\n    [Footnote 285:  Here is evidence of the existence of legends of the\n    Fianna in the early part of the eleventh century.]\n\nThe tables were now completely turned on the foreigners. Instead of the\nstate of vassalage in which they had held the natives, we now find the\nfollowing state of things:\n\n  \"There was not a winnowing sheet from Benn Edair (Howth) to Tech Duinn\n  [Footnote 286] in Western Erinn that had not a foreigner in bondage on\n  it, nor was there a quern (hand-mill) without a foreign woman, so that no\n  son of a soldier or of an officer of the Gaedhil deigned to put his hand\n  to a flail or to any labor on earth. Nor did a woman deign to put her\n  hands to the grinding of a quern, or to knead a cake, or to wash her\n  clothes, but had a foreign man or a foreign woman to work for them.\"\n\n    [Footnote 286: _House of Donn:_ the locality of the shipwreck of\n    Donn, son of Milesius, in the south-west of Kerry. Donn was venerated\n    as a fairy chief after his decease, the same as Aenghus of the Brugh,\n    Mananan, Mac Lir, etc.]\n\n\n  Unedifying Doings at Kincora.\n\nAfter a sojourn from Great to Little Christmas (February 2d) in Dublin,\nBrian returned to Kincora, (_Ceann Coraidh_, head of the weir.)\n{777}\nMeantime Sitric, son of Anlaf, the defeated Danish prince, fled to the\ncourt of Aedh, at Aileach, (north east of Donegal,) and afterward to that\nof Achy, king of East Ulster, at Down-patrick, but neither king would\nafford him protection, such was the awe of Brian's power. So, like a brave\nand wise chief, he proceeded directly to the Court of his conqueror, and\nrequested peace and friendship. These were immediately granted, both from\nthe inherent nobility of Brian's disposition and his desire to have a\nfriendly and devoted governor for the distant city of Ath Cliath.\n\nTo strain the bonds that held his new ally to him still tighter, he gave\nhim his daughter in marriage. This might be prudent or the reverse, but to\ntake Sitric's mother Gormflaith (blue-_eyed_ noble lady) for his\nsecond wife showed little wisdom. This lady, sister to Maelmordha, King of\nLeinster, had for her first husband Olaf Cuaran, to whom she bore the\nPrince Sitric. Her next spouse was Malachy, King of Leath Cuinn, already\nmore than once mentioned. After presenting him with a son, Prince Connor,\nshe was repudiated, and, very little to Brian's domestic comfort, he was\nselected for her third experiment in matrimony. After sharing his royal bed\nand board for a season, she was repudiated the second time, and then\nprobably went to add to the discomfort of the fortress of her son in\nDublin, or her brother at Naas, or Dunlavin, or Dinn Righ, (Ballyknockan,\nnear Leighlin Bridge.)\n\n  \"The Njal Saga calls her Kormlada, and describes her as the fairest of\n  all women, and best gifted in everything that was not in her own power,\n  that is, in all physical and natural endowments, but she did all things\n  ill over which she had any power, that is, in her moral\n  conduct.\"--_Burnt Njal_, ii. 323.\n\nWe find at the period in question frequent marriage alliances between Irish\nand Danish families. In fact, when a foreign family or tribe had contrived\nto secure a footing in the country, and the first bitter dislike had blown\nover, the native chiefs began to look on them as they did each other, and\nin many cases a stronger feeling of friendship connected the foreign chief\nand his people to some neighboring native prince or flaith than prevailed\namong themselves. This was also the case afterward between natives and\nAnglo-Normans. Nothing could exceed the strength of ties that bound the\nindividuals of a tribe to each other and to their chief, and in most cases\nthe chiefs to the provincial kings, but enthusiasm for the cause of the\nArd-Righ or for the general weal of the island was an exceedingly scarce\ncommodity. The same indifferent spirit still exists.\n\nThe great chiefs proceedings for some time after these occurrences seem to\nhave been prompted as much by ambition at least as by a national spirit.\nStill he did not depart from the generally observed rule among Gaelic kings\nand chiefs, that is, sending warning to those on whom they intended to make\nwar, and appointing the time and place of battle. He gave Malachy plainly\nto understand that he should cede to him the dignity of Ard-Righ. The\nastonished sovereign claimed time to consult the princes of the North and\nhis own chiefs, but neither from the Kinel Conaill [Footnote 287] nor the\nKinel Eoghain could he get due encouragement, and he was obliged to\nacknowledge the humiliating fact to the southern chief.\n\n   [Footnote 287: In the original is given the poetical adjuration of Gilla\n   Comghaill O'Sleibhin to Hugh, king of Hy Conaill, to join Malachy in his\n   opposition to Brian. This King of Munster is treated in it as the King\n   of Saxon-land in aftertimes by a bard of the fifteenth or sixteenth\n   century. For a wonder the Ulster king did not yield to the power of\n   poesy on that occasion.]\n\nStill the latter was not disposed to take the brave prince at a\ndisadvantage, and gave him a twelvemonth to mature his plans. The interview\ntook place in Brian's camp, Malachy being accompanied by twelve score\nhorsemen, and, when the agreement was made, the southern king proceeded\nhomeward, first making a present of 240 horses to his future vassal. The\nMeath warriors would not deign to conduct each a led horse back to the\nroyal fort, and Malachy was unwilling to offend Brian by refusing them.\n[Footnote 288]\n\n    [Footnote 288: Petty chiefs or princes paying tribute to their\n    superiors received in turn gifts from the great men, in fact, were\n    obliged to receive them--a genuine Irish procedure. (See the Book of\n    Rights.)]\n\n{778}\n\nHe therefore begged of Murchad to accept them in token of his good-will,\nand the prince graciously assented. Malachy was not in a better condition\nat the year's end, and so the sovereignty of the island passed into Brian's\nhands without bloodshed. We have not space to treat in detail his after\n_visitations_ to the north, and his circuit of the kingdom to receive\nhostages and confirm his authority. When at Armagh, he gratified the\necclesiastical powers there by a donation of twenty ounces of gold, and by\ndirecting his secretary, the Abbot O' Carroll, to make this entry in their\nbook in the Latin language. The curious may still read the original at page\n16, BB, in the Book of Armagh, a collection begun in the eighth century:\n\n  \"St. Patrick, going up to heaven, commanded that all the fruit of his\n  labor, as well of baptisms as of causes and of alms, should be carried to\n  the apostolic city which is called _Scotice_ (in Gaelic) ARDD MACHA.\n  So I have found it in the book collections of the Scots, (the Gael.) I\n  have written, (this,) that is, (I,) Calvus Perennis (_Mael-Suthain_,\n  Bald for Ever) in the sight (under the eyes) of Brian, emperor of the\n  Scots; and what I have written he has determined for all the kings of\n  Maceriae, (Cashel or Munster.)\"\n\n\n  Compensations.\n\nIf there is extant a thorough believer in all the facts related by the\nbards, he had better refrain from questioning the editor on the subject of\nthe beautiful and innocent maiden of the gold ring and snow-white wand. The\nchronicler coming to this point in the history thus expressed himself:\n\n  \"After the banishment of the foreigners out of all Erinn, and after Erinn\n  was reduced to a state of peace, a lone woman came from Torach in the\n  North to Cliodhna [Footnote 289] (pr. Cleena) in the south of Erinn,\n  carrying a ring of gold on a horse-rod, and she was neither robbed nor\n  insulted. Whereupon the poet sang:\n\n    \"From Torach to pleasant Cliodhna\n     And carrying with her a ring of gold,\n     In the time of Brian of the bright side, fearless,\n     A lone woman made the circuit of Erinn.\"\n\n      [Footnote 289: Cleena was in the first rank of Munster fairies. Her\n      visits were much disliked by the people. _Tonn Cliodhna_\n      (Cleena's Wave) in one of the Kerry bays was the dread of the native\n      seamen.]\n\nIt cannot be denied that Brian was a usurper with respect to Leath Cuinn;\nbut how much better was it for the people of the whole land to be under the\nundivided sway of one wise, noble-minded, and energetic prince, assured of\npeace, and opportunities of carrying on the ordinary business of life\nundisturbed, and improving their condition, than to be merely enduring life\nfrom day to day, not knowing the moment they should be called on to go on a\nmarauding expedition or to defend their corn, their cattle, and their own\nlives from a marauding party. We quote a few of the peaceful exploits of\nthe best and greatest of our ancient princes:\n\n  \"By him were erected noble churches in Erinn and their sanctuaries. He\n  sent professors and masters to teach wisdom and knowledge, and to buy\n  books beyond the sea and the great ocean, because the writings and books\n  in every church, etc., had been burned, and thrown into the water by the\n  plunderers from the beginning. And Brian himself gave the price of books\n  to every one separately who went on this service.... By him were erected\n  the church of Cell D\u00e1lua, (Killaloe,) and the church of Inis Cealtra,\n  (Scattery Island,) and the bell-tower of Tuam Greine, [Footnote 290] etc.\n  etc. By him were made bridges and causeways and high roads. By him were\n  strengthened the duns and fortresses and islands.... and royal forts of\n  Mumhain. He built also the fortification of Caisel of the kings,.... and\n  Cean Coradh, and Borumha in like manner. He continued in this way\n  prosperously, peaceful, giving banquets, hospitable, just-judging;\n  wealthily, venerated, chastely, and with devotion, and with law, and with\n  rules among the clergy; with prowess and with valor, with renown among\n  the laity, and fruitful, powerful, firm, secure for fifteen years in the\n  chief sovereignty of Erinn, as Gilla Maduda (O'Cassidy, Abbot of\n  Ardbreccan) said:\n\n    'Brian the flame over Banbha of the variegated flowers,\n     Without gloom, without guile, without treachery,\n     Fifteen years in full prosperity.'\"\n\n      [Footnote 290: Fort of the Sun--Tomgreany in Clare--a copy of one of\n      the Danaan round towers. There is at present not a trace of it.]\n\n{779}\n\n  The Gathering of the Eagles.\n\nToward the festival of St. Patrick in the ensuing spring, all that had\nremained loyal to the reigning monarch were directing their course to the\nplain before Dublin. Sitric, and his mother Gormflaith, and Maelmordha\nbusied themselves collecting allies from all quarters. Sigurd, Earl of\nOrkney, came to the aid of his countrymen on the condition of getting the\nprivilege of being Gormflaith's fourth husband, the second and third still\nliving, and one being near eighty years of age. Brodar, about whose name\nand the locality of whose earldom there is some uncertainty, was also a\npostulant for her hand, and Sitric made no scruple of promising it,\nexpecting, as may be supposed, that one of the wooers, after doing good\nservice in the battle, might be very indifferent on the subject at its\nclose:\n\n  \"Brodar, according to the Njal Saga, had been a Christian man and a\n  mass-deacon by consecration, but he had thrown off his faith, and become\n  'God's dastard' and worshipped heathen fiends; and he was of all men most\n  skilled in sorcery. He had that coat of mail on which no steel would\n  bite. He was both tall and strong, and had such long locks that he tucked\n  them under his belt. His hair was black.\"\n\nThis fierce-looking renegade commanded the foreign Danes and auxiliaries in\nthe front of the battle, being supported by Earl Sigurd and other chiefs. A\nbattalion of the Dublin Danes had their position in the rear of these,\nsupported by the chieftains of ships. Maelmordha and his chiefs occupied\nthe rear, commanding the North-Leinster men and the forces of Hy\nCeansalach, [Footnote 291] (Wicklow and Wexford.)\n\n    [Footnote 291:  The first chief who bore this name had killed a druid,\n    accompanying the sacrilegious deed with a fiendish grin on his\n    features. \"That vile expression on your face,\" said the dying man,\n    \"shall give a name to your posterity while grass grows.\" _Ceann\n    salach_ is literally _dirty head_. Other great families have\n    not escaped nick-names. _Cameron_ is crooked nose;\n    _Cromwell_, crooked eye. (_Hy Kinsala_ is Kinsella's\n    country.)]\n\nDirectly opposed to Brodar's front battalions were the tried men of\nNorth-Munster, the Dalcassians under the command of the invincible\nMurchadh. The battalion behind this front array consisted of other Munster\ntroops commanded by the Prince of the Waterford Decies. The nobles of\nConnacht, with their brave tribesmen, occupied the rear of the Irish war\nforce.\n\nThe patriotic chronicler, having brought the combatants face to face on the\nfield which was to be the crown of his work, felt all his poetic rage arise\nagainst the foreigners, whom he abuses as heartily as Goldsmith's bailiff\ndid the French:\n\n  \"These were the chiefs, and outlaws, and Dannars of all the west of\n  Europe, having no reverence, veneration, respect, or mercy, for God or\n  for man, for church or for sanctuary, at the head of cruel, villainous,\n  ferocious, plundering, hard-hearted, wonderful Danmarkians, selling and\n  hiring themselves for gold, and silver, and other treasures as well. And\n  there was not one villain or robber of that two thousand, (the troops of\n  Brodor and his brother Anlaf,) who had not polished, strong,\n  triple-plated, glittering armor of refined iron, or of cool uncorroding\n  brass, encasing their sides and bodies from head to foot.\"\n\nIn the description of the arms and armor of the combatants we suspect our\nauthority of some inaccuracy. Avoiding the forest of epithets bristling all\nover the glowing description, we are told that the blue-green, hard-hearted\npagans used crimsoned, murderous, poisoned arrows anointed and browned in\nthe blood of dragons, and toads, and water-snakes, and otters, (the poor\notter! he did not deserve this,) and scorpions. They had barbarous quivers,\nyellow-shining bows, green, sharp, rough, dark spears, polished, pliable,\ntriple-plated corselets of refined iron and uncorroding brass. Their swords\nwere heavy, hard-striking, strong, and powerful.\n\n{780}\n\nTo the Gaelic warriors he allows glittering, _poisoned_, [Footnote\n292] well-riveted spears, with beautiful handles of white hazel; darts\nfurnished with silken strings, to be cast overhand; long, glossy, white\nshirts; comfortable (comfort in battle!) long vests; well-adjusted,\nmany-colored tunics over these; variegated, brazen-embossed shields, with\nbronze chains; crested, golden helms, set with precious stones, on the\nheads of chiefs and princes; glaring, broad, well-set Lochlann axes, to hew\nplate and mail. Every sword had about thirty glorious qualities attached to\nit. [Footnote 293]\n\n    [Footnote 292: Venomous and poisonous in the bardic lays were mere\n    epithets applied to weapons from their aptitude to inflict mortal\n    wounds.]\n\n    [Footnote 293: It is somewhat strange that the chronicler has not\n    afforded even the _luirech_ (the leathern jack with its iron or\n    bronze scales) to his heroes. These loricas are frequently mentioned in\n    the old lays.]\n\nThe inferiority of the Irish warriors in defensive arms gave little concern\nto their historian. Armed or unarmed, they were a match for the world.\n(This under certain conditions is our own belief.)\n\n  \"Woe to those who attacked them if they could have avoided attacking\n  them, for it was swimming against a stream, it was pummelling an oak with\n  fists, it was a hedge against the swelling of a spring tide, it was a\n  string upon sand or a sunbeam, it was the fist against a sunbeam to\n  attempt to give them battle or combat.\"\n\n\n  Day at Clontarf.\n\nThe battle began with a single combat, there being a previous challenge in\nthe case. Plait, the foreign warrior, came before his lines and shouted,\n\"Faras (_where is?_ an attempt at Danish) Donall?\" \"Here, thou\nreptile!\" said the Irish champion. The battle was sharp and short, the two\nwarriors falling on the sod at the same moment, their left hands clutching\neach other's hair, and their hearts transfixed by their swords.\n\nHeaven and earth are ransacked for sublime images to give an idea of the\ndread struggle that took place between the iron-covered and the defenceless\nwarriors on each side:\n\n  \"To nothing small (we quote our text) could be likened the firm, stern,\n  sudden, thunder motion, and the stout, valiant, haughty, billow roll of\n  these people on both sides. I could compare it only to the boundless,\n  variegated wonderful firmament that has cast a heavy, sparkling shower of\n  flaming stars over the surface of the earth, or to the startling,\n  fire-darting roar of the clouds and the heavenly orbs, confounded and\n  crashed by all the winds in their contention against each other.\"\n\nIt was a terrible spectacle without doubt--the din and clang of sword and\naxe on shields and helms, the cries of the combatants, and the lurid\nflashes from the polished surfaces of the arms, and the effect of all\nintensified by dying groans, and the sight of bodies writhing in agony as\nlife was about to quit them. It is not so easy to understand, taking\ndistance into account, how the following circumstance could occur:\n\n  \"It was attested by the foreigners and foreign women who were watching\n  from the battlements of Ath Cliath, that they used to see flashes of fire\n  from them in the air on all sides.\"\n\nMalachy's forces remained inactive during the main part of the fight at\nleast. Dr. Todd acquits him, however, of treachery to the national cause.\nWe quote some passages of a description of the fight imputed to him:\n\n  \"There was a field and a ditch between us and them, and the sharp wind of\n  the spring coming over them toward us. And it was not a longer time than\n  a cow could be milked that we continued there, when not one person of the\n  two hosts could recognize another.... We were covered, as well our heads\n  as our faces, and our clothes, with the drops of the gory blood, carried\n  by the force of the sharp, cold wind which passed over them to us.... Our\n  spears over our heads had become clogged and bound with long locks of\n  hair, which the wind forced upon us when cut away by well-aimed swords\n  and gleaming axes, so that it was half occupation to us to endeavor to\n  disentangle and cast them off.\"\n\nWere we a powerful, well-armed warrior standing by the side of Maelseachlin\n(Malachy) on that day, we would certainly have endeavored to find a better\noccupation for his hands. Hear this bit of Pecksniffism uttered by him:\n\n  \"It is one of the problems of Erinn whether the valor of those who\n  sustained that crushing assault was greater than ours who bore the sight\n  of it without running distracted before the winds, or fainting.\"\n\n{781}\n\nConaing, Brian's nephew, and Maelmordha, fell that day by each other's\nswords. The Connacht forces and the Danes of Dublin assailed each other so\nfuriously that only about a hundred of the Irish survived, while the Danes\nscarcely left a score. Murchadh's exploits, could we trust the chronicler\nand Malachy, could be rivalled only by those of Achilles of old. He went\nforward and backward through the enemies' ranks, mowing them down even as a\nperson might level rows of upright weeds. He got his mortal wound at last\nfrom the knife of a Dane whom he had struck to the earth. He survived,\nhowever, till he had received the consolations of religion.\n\nAbout sunset the foreigners, notwithstanding their superiority in armor,\nwere utterly defeated. Striving to escape by their ships, they were\nprevented by the presence of the full tide, and those who flew toward the\ncity were either intercepted by the same tide or by Maelseachluin's\n[Footnote 294] men. Dr. Todd inclines to this last theory. The heroic youth\nTorloch, son of Murchadh, pursuing the fugitive Danes into the sea, met his\ndeath at a weir.\n\n    [Footnote 294: This name implies the Tonsured, that is, devoted\n    disciple of Saint Sechnal, contemporary with St. Patrick, and patron of\n    Dunshaughlin.]\n\nThe aged monarch, while engaged at his prayers for the blessing of Heaven\non the arms of his people, was murdered just at the moment of victory by\nthe chief Brodar, who in a few minutes afterward was torn to pieces by the\ninfuriated soldiers crowding to the spot.\n\nThe power of the foreigners was certainly crushed in this great and\nmemorable combat, but disorder seized on the general weal of the island\nagain. South-Munster renewed its contentions with North-Munster, and even\nits own chiefs with each other. Donnchad, Brian's remaining son, though a\nbrave prince, had not the abilities of his father or elder brother. Malachy\nquietly resumed the sovereignty of the island, but found that the\nannoyances from turbulent petty kings and the still remaining foreigners\nwere not at an end.\n\nWe join our regret to that of the editor that one of the unromantic books\nof Annals--that of Tiernach, or Loch C\u00e9, or that of Ulster, has not\ninaugurated the publication of our ancient chronicles. Dr. Todd has done\nall that could be done by the most profound and enlightened scholar to\ndisentangle the true from the false through the narrative by shrewd\nguesses, by sound judgment in weighing the merits and probabilities of\nconflicting accounts, by comparing the romantic statements with those set\nforth in the genuine annals and the foreign authorities, whether Icelandic\nor Anglo-Saxon. Many events in our old archives, pronounced by shallow and\nsupercilious critics to have had no foundation, are found to possess the\nstamp of truth by the care taken by Dr. Todd and his fellow-archaeologists\nin comparing our own annals and those of the European nations with whom we\nhad formerly either friendly or hostile relations.\n\nBesides the anxious care bestowed on the comparison of the different MSS.\nand the translation, and the very useful commentary, the editor has\nfurnished in the appendix the fragment (with translation) in the Book of\nLeinster, the Chronology and Genealogy of the Kings of Ireland and of\nMunster during the Danish period, Maelseachluin's account of the fight of\nClontarf, in full from the Brussels MS., and the genealogy of the various\nScandinavian chiefs who were mixed with our concerns for two centuries. The\naccounts given in detail of the fortunes of Sitric and others of these\nchiefs are highly interesting. The present volume will be more generally\nread than any of the mere chronicles, into whose composition entered more\nconscience and judgment--on account of the many poetic and romantic\npassages scattered through it. Let us hope that it is not the last on which\nthe labors of the eminent scholar, its editor, will be employed, for we\ncannot conceive any literary task more ably and satisfactorily executed\nthan the production of the Wars of the Gaedhil and the Gaill.\n\n{782}\n\nThe Fatal Sisters, translated by Gray from the Norse, refer to the day at\nClontarf. We quote three of the verses:\n\n  \"Ere the ruddy sun be set\n     Pikes must shiver, javelins sing,\n   Blade with clattering buckler meet,\n     Hauberk crash, and helmet ring.\n\n   ......\n\n  \"Low the dauntless earl [Footnote 295] is laid,\n     Gored with many a gaping wound;\n   Fate demands a nobler head,\n     Soon a king [Footnote 296] shall bite the ground.\n\n      [Footnote 295: Earl Sigurd.]\n\n      [Footnote 296: Brian.]\n\n  \"Long his loss shall Erinn weep,\n     Ne'er again his likeness see;\n   Long her strains in sorrow steep,\n     Strains of immortality!\"\n\nThe appendix added by Dr. Todd to the work is exceedingly interesting and\nvaluable, containing among other matters a carefully arranged genealogical\nlist of the Irish princes and the foreign chiefs during the Danish wars,\nand an abstract of the fortunes of several of these kings. The accounts of\nthe battle of Clontarf differed so much in form in the two MSS., that is,\nthe Dublin and Brussels copies, that, instead of pointing out the various\nreadings in notes to the body of the narrative, the editor has removed the\naccount in the Brussels MSS., purported to have been given by Malachy, to\nthe end of the book. Passages are worth preservation as literary\ncuriosities. If Malachy felt any ill to Brian for wresting his independent\nsovereignty from him, there is not a trace of it discoverable in his\nnarrative. Thus he speaks of the noble heir-apparent, Murchadh, who\ndisdained to wear even a shield.\n\n\n    Malachy's Account of the Battle.\n\n  \"The royal warrior had with him two swords, that is, a sword in each\n  hand, for he was the last man in Erinn who was equally expert in the use\n  of the right hand and of the left... He would not retreat one foot before\n  the race of all mankind for any reason in the world, except this reason\n  alone, that he could not help dying of his wounds. He was the last man in\n  Erinn who was a match for a hundred. He was the last man who killed a\n  hundred in one day in Erinn. His step was the last step which true valor\n  took. Seven like Murchadh were equal to Mac Samhain,\" etc.\n\nThen the writer indulged in a heroic series in geometrical progression,\neach hero being worth seven such as the man who preceded him, and the\ngreatest of all being Hector of Troy. All native bards, school-masters, and\nschool boys, who have flourished since first the siege of Troy was heard of\nin Ireland, have fixed on Hector as the matchless model of heroism,\nchivalric faith, courtesy, and tenderness; most of them have borne a\ncordial hatred to the son of Peleus. Has the feeling originated from the\npseudo-work of Dares the Phrygian priest having arrived in the country\nbefore Homer's \"Tale of Troy Divine\"? The theory in the text would make\nHector many times superior to Hercules, the heroic terms in the sevenfold\nprogression being Murchadh, Mac Samhain, Lugha Lagha, Conall Cearnach,\nLugha Lamhfada, (_Long Hand_,) Hector! After the list comes this\nrather startling assertion: \"These were the degrees of championship since\nthe beginning of the world, and before Hector there was no illustrious\nchampionship.\"\n\n  \"Murchadh was the Hector of Erinn in valor, in championship, in\n  generosity, in munificence. He was the pleasant, intelligent, affable,\n  accomplished Samson of the Hebrews in his own career and in his time. He\n  was the second powerful Hercules, who destroyed and exterminated the\n  serpents and monsters of Erinn.... He was the gate of battle and the\n  sheltering tree, the crushing sledge-hammer of the enemies of his\n  fatherland and of his race during his career.\n\n  \"When this very valiant, very great, royal champion, and plundering,\n  brave, powerful hero saw the crushing and the repulse that the Danars and\n  pirates gave to the Dal Cais, it operated upon him like death or a\n  permanent blemish; and he was seized with boiling, terrible anger, and\n  his bird of valor and championship arose, and he made a brave, vigorous,\n  sudden rush at a battalion of the pirates, like a violent, impetuous,\n  furious ox that, is about being caught, or like a fierce, tearing, swift,\n  all-powerful lioness deprived of her cubs, or like the roll of a deluging\n  torrent, that shatters and smashes everything that resists it; and he\n  made a hero's breach and a soldier's field through the battalions of the\n  pirates. And the historians of the foreigners testified after him that\n  there fell fifty by his right, and fifty by his left hand in that onset.\n  Nor did he administer more than one blow to any of them; and neither\n  shield, nor corselet, nor helmet, resisted any of these blows, which\n  clave bodies and skulls alike. Thus three times he forced his way\n  backward through the battalions in that manner.\"\n\n{783}\n\nSitric, the Danish prince, married as before mentioned to a daughter of\nBrian, is described as looking at the fight from his Dublin watch-tower,\nwith his wife at his side. Seeing the mass of plumages and hair shorn off\nby the gleaming weapons, and flying over the heads in the wind, he\nexclaimed, \"Well do the foreigners reap the field, for many is the sheaf\nwhirled aloft over them.\" But in the evening he was obliged to endure the\nsight of his foreign friends and allies fleeing into the sea \"like a herd\nof cows in heat from sultry weather, or from gnats, or from flies. And they\nwere pursued quickly and lightly into the sea, where they were with great\nviolence drowned, so that they lay in heaps and in hundreds and in\nbattalions.\" Sitric's wife had not yet learned to feel strong sympathy with\nher husband's politics; and, if he had insisted on her presence in order to\nbe a spectator of the defeat of her countrymen, he was sadly disappointed:\n\n  \"Then it was that Brian's daughter, the wife of Amhlaibh's son, said: 'It\n  appears to me,' said she, 'that the foreigners have gained their\n  inheritance.' [Footnote 297] 'What is that, O girl?' said Amhlaibh's son.\n  'The foreigners are only going into the sea as is hereditary to them.' 'I\n  know not whether it is on them, but nevertheless they tarry not to be\n  milked.'\n\n    [Footnote 297: Sitric had used that expression at an early hour of the\n    fight, when he imagined the Danes were gaining on their enemy.]\n\n  \"The son of Amhlaibh was angered with her, and he gave her a blow which\n  knocked a tooth out of her head.\"\n\nMurcadh's death after a fatiguing day of fight has been already related.\nWhile the fierce struggle was going on, thus was the brave and devout old\nmonarch employed:\n\n  \"When the combatants met, his cushion was spread under him, and he opened\n  his psalter, and he began to recite his psalms and his prayers behind the\n  battle, and there was no one with him but Laideen, his own horseboy.\n  Brian said to his attendant, 'Watch thou the battle and the combatants\n  while I recite my psalms.' Brian then said fifty psalms, fifty prayers,\n  and fifty paters, and he asked the attendant how the battalions were\n  circumstanced. The attendant answered, 'I see them, and closely\n  confounded are they, and each of them has come within grasp of the other.\n  And not more loud to me would be the blows in Tomar's wood if seven\n  battalions were cutting it down, than are the resounding blows on the\n  heads, and bones, and skulls of them.' Brian asked how was the banner of\n  Murchadh. 'It stands,' said the attendant, 'and the banners of the Dal\n  Cais round it.'... His cushion was readjusted under Brian, and he said\n  fifty psalms, fifty prayers, and fifty paters, and he asked the attendant\n  how the battalions were. The attendant said, 'There lives not a man who\n  could distinguish one of them from the other, for the greater part of the\n  hosts on either side are fallen, and those that are alive are so\n  covered--their heads, and legs, and garments, and drops of crimson\n  blood--that the father could not recognize his own son there.' And again\n  he asked how was the banner of Murchadh. The attendant answered, 'It is\n  far from Murchadh, and has gone through the hosts westward, and it is\n  stooping and inclining. Brian said, 'Erinn declines on that account.\n  Nevertheless so long as the men of Erinn shall see that banner, its valor\n  and its courage shall be upon every man of them.' Brian's cushion was\n  readjusted, and he said fifty psalms, fifty prayers, and fifty paters,\n  and the fighting continued during all that time. Brian then cried out to\n  the attendant, how was the banner of Murchad, and how were the\n  battalions. The attendant answered, 'It appears to me like as if Tomar's\n  wood was being cut down, and set on fire, its underwood and its young\n  trees, and as if the seven battalions had been unceasingly destroying it\n  for a month, and its immense trees and its great oaks left standing.'\"\n\n\n\n  Later Exploits of Sitric of the Silky Beard.\n\nA year after the battle, Malachy assaulted Dublin, and burned all the\nbuildings outside the fortress, within which Sitric lay secure. In 1018,\nSitric blinded Bran or Braoin, his own first cousin, son of Maelmordha,\nthus incapacitating him to rule. The poor prince subsequently went abroad\nand died in a monastery at Cologne. This Bran was ancestor of the _Ua\nBrain_ or O'Byrn of Wicklow.\n{784}\nNext year he went on enlarging his bad ways by plundering Kells, slaying\nmany people in the very church, and carrying away spoils and prisoners. In\n1021, his Danes and himself got a signal defeat at Derne Mogorog,\n(Delgany,) by the son of Dunlaing, King of Leinster. In 1022, he was again\ndefeated by King Malachy in a land battle, and at sea by Niall, son of\nEochaidh, (_pr._ Achy or Uchy,) king of Hy Conaill. In 1027, he made\nan unsuccessful raid into Meath, and next year went on a pilgrimage to\nRome. Two years later he attended the funeral of his mother Gormflaith. His\npilgrimage had not quenched his thirst for forays, for in 1031 he plundered\nArdbraccan, and carried off much cattle. Next year he was victorious at the\nmouth of the Boyne over the men of Meath, Louth, and Monaghan. In 1035,\ntwenty-one years after the great fight, he abdicated in favor of his nephew\nEachmarcach, (Rich in Horses,) and went abroad, (where is not said.) His\ndeath as well as that of his daughter Fineen, a nun, is recorded in 1042,\nthe last seven years of life having probably been spent in religious\nretirement.\n\nIrish historians and archaeologists will find valuable assistance in the\nappendix, whenever they are occupied with the genealogies of the Irish or\nforeign kings and chiefs who flourished during the two centuries preceding\nthe day at Clontarf.\n\n------\n\n    From The Month.\n\n    Rhoda.\n\n    A Devonshire Eclogue.\n\n\n     \"I am declined\n  Into the vale of years; yet that's not much.\"_--Othello_.\n\n  It was the deep midsummer; the calm lake\n  Lay shining in the sun; the glittering ripples,\n  That scarce bare record of the wind's light wings,\n  Reached not the shore, where, shadowed by huge oaks,\n  The clear still water blended with the land\n  In undistinguished union. All was still,\n  Save where at little distance a bright spring\n  Leapt out from a fern-coroneted rock,\n  And ran with cheerful prattle its short course\n  (Making the silence deeper for its noise)\n  To quiet slumber in the quiet lake.\n\n      Down to the margin of the water, slow\n  Pacing along the shadow-dappled grass\n  Into the trees' green twilight, steadfastly\n  The while his eyes bent down upon the ground,\n  Sir Richard Conway came. No longer young;\n  A statesman of repute; in council wise;\n  Of bitter speech, but not unkindly heart;\n  Of stately presence still. He in his youth\n  Had wooed and wedded a fair girl; so fair,\n  So gentle, and so good that when she died\n  His heart and love died too, and in her grave\n  Lay down, and he came forth a stricken man.\n\n{785}\n\n      But this was long ago: his children grew;\n  He watched them, but they never saw his heart;\n  They dreamed not of the proud man's tenderness,\n  But went into the highway of the world,\n  And left him to his utter loneliness.\n  Years passed: sometimes his solitary heart\n  Sent out a cry of agony for love;\n  But no one heard--he sternly stifled it:\n  Treading his path with dignity, he lived\n  In pride and honor, and he lived alone.\n\n      He prayed for love, and in his autumn days\n  Love came upon him; but in such a sort\n  As, if a man had told him it would come,\n  He would have laughed in scorn. But so it is;\n  God gives us our desire, and sends withal\n  Sharp chastening as his wisdom sees most fit.\n\n      Rhoda, the fairest of a sisterhood\n  Who were all fair, lived hard by the great house,\n  Near to the lake; the daughter of a pair\n  Not rich, yet blessed with slender competence.\n  And sometimes in the park, or in the house,\n  Whereto chance errands brought her, she would meet\n  Sir Richard, who to such as her showed ever\n  A gracious kindness, and would give to her\n  A friendly greeting, sometimes with a word\n  Of question of her needs or her desires,\n  Followed by such slight interchange of talk\n  As might befit such meetings--nothing more.\n  Indeed he could not fail, as time wore on,\n  To note that with each year she lovelier grew:\n  A pale and delicate fairy, exquisite\n  As some rare picture, with pathetic eyes\n  Veiled underneath long lashes; their shy glance\n  Seemed to reveal a soul whose tender depths\n  Were unprofaned by any earthly thought.\n  Nor was it seeming only: she was good;\n  And fenced her beauty with simplicity,\n  Meek sense, and modest wisdom.\n\n{786}\n\n      This he saw--\n  He could not choose but see it; and he felt,\n  When she was near, as if some soothing strain\n  Breathed round him; and his secret soul was swayed\n  With unseen power, as sways the billowy corn\n  Swept by the warm caresses of the wind.\n  He knew what this portended. All in vain\n  The proud man struggled with his heart: he loved,\n  And knew that he loved, Rhoda; all in vain\n  He strove to turn away from her fair face;\n  He only gazed more tenderly: in vain\n  Strove to speak coldly when he met her; still\n  His deep voice trembled, as his heart beat fast,\n  And from his eyes looked out his yearning soul.\n  Of all this conflict Rhoda saw but little;\n  The less, belike, for conflict of her own:\n  Mysterious longings kindled by his voice;\n  Shy pleasure in his presence; constant thought\n  (Half reverence, half compassion, tender always)\n  Of this grave, courteous, noble, lonely man,\n  Who looked so great, so sorrowful, but still\n  With many a mute yet clearly speaking sign\n  Sued for her love with sad humility.\n  These things she never uttered to her heart;\n  And if her thoughts half spoke, unwaveringly\n  She put them by, and simply went her way.\n  But he could fight no longer; and to-day\n  He waited by the water, for he knew\n  Rhoda would pass that way, and he resolved\n  To tell her all his secret, and to learn\n  His future from her lips, whether they spoke\n  Hope or despair.\n\n      He had not waited long,\n  When through the park, along the trembling lake,\n  Into the oaks' soft shadows, Rhoda came;\n  So bright, so fresh, so beautiful, she seemed\n  To bring a golden light into the gloom.\n  Sir Richard trembled, and his breath came quick,\n  His pulse throbbed wildly, and his eyes grew dim;\n  Yet, mastered by his iron will, his words\n  Came calmly forth to greet her: at the sound,\n  Surprised to find him here, she started back,\n  Then murmuring something hurriedly, went on.\n  He gently staid her, saying in tenderest tones:\n  \"One moment, Rhoda--one--could you but know--\"\n  She looked into his face with wondering eyes,\n  Then bashfully withdrew them; for she knew\n  At once his secret from his pleading voice\n  And his dark eyes' ineffable tenderness.\n  \"I did not mean to startle you,\" he said;\n  \"Nay, do not tremble; could you see my soul,\n  The tempest there would make your own show calm.\n  Oh! stay--forgive me when the heart beats fast.\n  The tongue is slow--I love you! Fewest words\n  Are best for such confession. Can you love?\"\n\n{787}\n\n      But Rhoda could not answer. Naught was heard\n  Except the gurgling of the silver spring,\n  When thus in saddest accents he resumed:\n  \"Rhoda, you see in me a man sore smitten,\n  Whose youth and spring were buried long ago--\n  One who has had no summer in his heart,\n  Whose autumn days are lonely, and who prayed\n  (Till you relumed the sunshine of his life)\n  For the swift-closing winter of the grave.\n  Long have I kept my secret to myself--\n  From no mean shame, my girl; for well I know,\n  Were you my wife, mine were the gain, not yours;\n  But silver hairs blend ill with waving gold,\n  Nor would I bring a blight upon your life.\n  Why have I spoken? 'Twas a selfish thought\n  To share with you the burden of my gloom,\n  O'ershadowing your young years--an idle dream\n  That one so old and desolate as I\n  Could stir the heart of blessed youthfulness.\n  There--you have heard my secret. Pity me:\n  I know you will not mock me. So, farewell!\n  Go, Rhoda, with my blessing on your head!\n  I to my loveless life return alone,\n  Forlorn, but uncomplaining.\"\n\n      He turned to go,\n  But Rhoda, who had heard him to this word,\n  Could now endure no more; she caught his arm,\n  She gazed at him with fond eyes full of tears.\n  \"Oh! not alone!\" she said \"we go together;\n  If a poor girl like me--\" She said no more,\n  But turned and hid her face upon his heart.\n  He clasped her, looking thankfully to heaven,\n  Then stooped and kissed her: \"Rhoda, my own wife,\n  Bear with me for my love!\" The trees stood still,\n  Yielding no faintest whispering. They came forth\n  Out of the solemn grove into the sun;\n  The soft blue sky had not one film of cloud;\n  And as they walked in silence, they could hear\n  Far off the happy stockdove's brooding note.\n\n      And so Sir Richard won his lovely wife.\n  Once more the old house brightened; stately rooms\n  Rang with the unaccustomed sound of mirth:\n  And still as years went on, Sir Richard wore\n  Always an air of serious cheerfulness;\n  While baby voices gladdened all the place,\n  And Rhoda's lovely face was never sad.\n  Let the grim rock give forth a living stream,\n  And still boon nature crowns its ruggedness\n  With flowers and fairy grasses.\n\n{788}\n\n      Near the park\n  Towers up a tract of granite; the huge hills\n  Bear on their broad flanks right into the mists\n  Vast sweeps of purple heath and yellow furze.\n  It is the home of rivers, and the haunt\n  Of great cloud-armies, borne on ocean blasts\n  Far-stretching squadrons, with colossal stride\n  Marching from peak to peak, or lying down\n  Upon the granite beds that crown the heights.\n  Yet for the dwellers near them these bleak moors\n  Have some strange fascination; and I own\n  That, like a strong man's sweetness, to myself\n  Pent in the smoky city, worn with toil,\n  When the sun rends the veil, or flames unveiled\n  Over those wide waste uplands, or when mists\n  Fill the great vales like lakes, then break and roll\n  Slow lingering up the hills as living things,\n  Then do they stir and lift the soul; and then\n  Their colors, and their rainbows, and their clouds,\n  And their fierce winds, and desolate liberty,\n  Seem endless beauty and untold delight.\n\n      So was it with Sir Richard: from the park\n  And from the cares of state he often went\n  With Rhoda, to enjoy some happy hours\n  There face to face with nature--far away\n  From all the din and fume of human life,\n  From paltry cares and interests, that corrupt\n  Or keep the soul in chains. They may be seen\n  On a great hill, on cloudless summer days,\n  Or when the sun in autumn melts the clouds,\n  Gazing on that magnificent region, spread\n  In majesty below them: teeming plains\n  And wood-clothed gorges of the hills in front;\n  Behind them sea-like ridges of bare moor,\n  Some in brown shade, some white with blazing light;\n  Above, enormous rocks piled up in play\n  By giants; all around, authentic relics\n  Of those drear ages, when half-naked men\n  Roamed these dim regions, waging doubtful war\n  With wolves and bears; and on the horizon's verge\n  The pale blue waste of ocean. There they sit,\n  Sir Richard and his Rhoda, side by side\n  Their hearts aglow with love, their souls bowed down\n  In thankful adoration, scarce recalled\n  From musings deep and tender, by the shouts\n  Of two fair children playing at their feet.\n\nOctober, 1866.\n\n------\n\n{789}\n\n\n  Original.\n\n  Protestant Attacks Upon The Bible. [Footnote 298]\n\n    [Footnote 298: Liber Librorum: Its Structure, Limitations, and Purpose.\n    A Friendly Communication to a Reluctant Sceptic. New-York: C. Scribner\n    & Co. 1867.]\n\n\nThe work, the title of which we subjoin, though pretending on the surface\nto be an appeal, in favor of the Bible, is, in truth, one of the most\nserious attacks made upon it that has come under our notice; and would be,\nfor a Protestant, one of the most dangerous books he could read. With a\nCatholic its arguments would have no force whatever, being based upon the\nunphilosophical principle of private judgment on revealed truth. We should\nsay that, take it as a whole, it is a very clever attempt to found a purely\nsubjective religion, which might call itself Christianity with equal\nconsistency as do many so-called Christian denominations of our day, and\nwhich would consequently ignore all dogmatic authority and make use of the\nHoly Scriptures only as a means of edification.\n\nWe cannot see how a Protestant can escape the conclusions drawn by the\nauthor, unless he abandons his Protestantism for Catholic authority or for\nthe most irresponsible individuality; and, if the author has really been\nsincere in his professed desire to reassure the troubled mind of his\nreluctant sceptic, and inspire him with respect for the Bible as the\nrevealed word of God, we cannot but think he counts upon his sceptic's\npossessing very limited reasoning powers. His entire argument throughout is\nbased upon postulates which we are sure no sceptic and certainly no\nCatholic is prepared to grant. For it is assumed both that we are, or ought\nto be, Christians as a matter of course, independent of authoritative\nteaching, and that the inspiration of the Bible is to be taken for granted\nwithout extrinsic proof. Moreover, that each individual is possessed of a\nverifying faculty which enables him to appropriate of its contents just so\nmuch and in so far as God wishes it to be true to him.\n\nTo assert that a man can be or has become a Christian without having been\nso taught is simply absurd. That Christianity is, of all religious systems,\nthe most perfectly conformable to the reason and spiritual needs of\nmankind, fulfilling, perfecting, and completing human nature, is\nindisputable; but a man is not born a Christian any more than he is born a\nMohammedan or a Buddhist. What the author of this work seems contented to\ntake as Christianity will be found broad enough to suit any one who has a\nfancy to dignify the mutilated traditions to which he yet clings by that\ntitle; but we think very few will consent to accept their own convictions\nas sufficient proof of the divine truth of what they believe, or bow to the\nHoly Scriptures as the inspired word of God upon no other authority than a\nsense of its harmony in doctrine and morals with what they individually\nhold. The stream is not the cause of the fountain. That the stream of\nChristian truth, nay, that the stagnant puddles which are the result of an\nerratic overflow of its waters, are the cause of its fountain-head of\ncredibility is what this unphilosophical writer takes for granted on every\npage of his book. Of course it is both foolish and arrogant presumption in\nthe church to claim infallibility, but the most reasonable thing in the\nworld for each and every human being to claim this prerogative as a\nnatural-born characteristic. However, we do not wonder at this; it is but\nthe logical consequence, ridiculously absurd as is the conclusion, of the\nrejection of the principle of divine authority.\n{790}\nIt is the conclusion forced upon its adherents by Protestantism, and shows\nits fruits in the present wide-spread scepticism and infidelity in the\ncountries where it has been the dominant religion. Never did any system\nprepare more surely the weapon of its own destruction than that which\npromulgated to the world the principle of private judgment. The cry of\nrevolt is raised in the Protestant camp, and alarming its teachers--Rome or\nReason--by which is too plainly meant, \"Either a divinely constituted\nauthority, or the divine authority of the individual soul.\" A choice that\nleaves all the sects which have sprung from the Reformation out in the\ncold.\n\nUpon the unphilosophical basis for Christian faith which we have noted\nabove our author proceeds to establish the sufficient authenticity and\ninspiration of the Bible. We say, _sufficient_, because, as far as we\nare able to gather, he rates the entire credibility and value of the\nScriptures as the revealed word of God to man according to the intellectual\nand spiritual assent of the individual, assuming, as he does, that every\nman possesses a \"verifying faculty\" and a \"spiritual insight,\" through\nwhich his own belief and the Scriptures confirm one another and make him\nwise unto salvation.\n\nHe holds that the Bible is inspired only in what concerns doctrine and\nmorals, but is forced to make his reader the judge of what is doctrine and\nthe censor of morality, for his highest evidence either of inspiration or\nof the canonicity of the sacred books is, as he tells us on p. 136, \"the\ninterior witness of the Spirit to the truths embodied in the accepted\nbooks.\" And as he says on p. 85, \"It is 'the wise' only who 'understand.'\nThe peasant is, in this respect, often far above the philosopher.\nEverything depends on the moral condition of the recipient.\" We think it\nsufficient to add his own damaging conclusion: \"That this way of looking at\nthe matter makes the evidence for the truth of the Bible mainly subjective\ncannot be disputed; but nothing else in the present day appears to have\nmuch hold on men. It may, indeed, be seriously doubted whether it is now\npossible to bring forward any evidence, in favor of miracles, for instance,\nwhich could reasonably be expected to satisfy an unconcerned spectator, and\nstill less an opponent.\" (P. 86.)\n\nFor himself, therefore, the author rejects all miracles which he thinks\nwere needless and unworthy of the apparent end for which they were\nperformed, and advises his reluctant sceptic to follow his example.\nMoreover, as he does not find that his interior witness convicts him of the\ntruth of the Trinity or the divinity of Jesus Christ, or, as we suppose,\nfrom the tenor of his language, anything else that is a mystery, of course\nthe Scripture does not teach these doctrines either. No man can be blind to\nthe inevitable consequence of such a principle. The Bible could not have\nthe slightest extrinsic authority in either doctrine or morals, and is a\nproof that, without the divine authority, which both authenticates and\ninterprets it, it is practically worthless in teaching the one or enforcing\nthe other.\n\nThe following passage contains a most admirable refutation of the writer's\nown principle, which, however, he does not appear to see: \"Looked at in\nthis way\"--as discerned by spiritual insight--\"it is of no moment that\neither the uninstructed or the instructed man should be able to say\nregarding each separate passage of Scripture, _this_ is inspired,\n_this_ is not. How can he indeed? The revelation is not a thing\n_apart_ from daily life, but _through_ its various relations:\nhow, then, can any man undertake to separate in each particular the\nsupernatural element from the natural which it irradiates and explains? To\nregard anything of the kind as necessary either to confidence or\nedification is absurd; as absurd, in fact, as it is to maintain that we\n'require an exercise of judgment upon the written document before we can\nallow men to believe in their King and Saviour.'\n{791}\nEvery one knows that this is not the fact; that in all time the multitude\nnever have nor ever can enter upon any such inquiries; that the masses must\neither believe in Christ directly as an actual person related to them, and\nrecognized by them in their inmost souls, or they will not believe at all.\nThey listen to the announcement that Christ is their Redeemer, and they\nbelieve the good news _just in so far as it finds a response in their own\nspiritual necessities and consciousness_. Into evidences about documents\nthey cannot enter.\" (Pp. 81, 82.)\n\nThis is the most delightful instance of begging the question we have ever\nmet with. Pray, _who_ announces to the multitude, who cannot enter\ninto evidence about documents nor even read them, that Christ is their\nRedeemer? and who has any _right_ to announce that fact? Truly,\n\"whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved;\" but, \"how\nshall they call on him in whom they have not believed? Or how shall they\nbelieve him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a\npreacher? And how shall they preach _unless they be sent?_\" That it is\nthe end of preaching, and that saving faith is the belief of the \"good news\njust in so far as it finds a response in one's own spiritual necessities\nand self-consciousness,\" is mere twaddle, since our spiritual needs however\nkeenly appreciated, or self-consciousness, however exalted, can never\nsupply the objective truths of faith or rise above their own capacity to\nthe ability of verifying, without the aid of extrinsic authority, the\ntruths when proposed. Christianity, in so far as it is anything more than\nmere natural religion, is not of us, but to us. For if it were of us, what\nneed is there of a revelation? That the good news that Christ is my\nRedeemer can be in any manner affirmed to me by my own self-consciousness\nis impossible. It is an historical fact, it is true, that such a person as\nChrist lived, but it is not an historical fact, by any means, that he is my\nRedeemer. That is a divine fact, which the most minute history of humanity\nnever could demonstrate, for it is altogether out of the natural order, and\nwholly supernatural, and hence requiring a divine teaching authority both\nto promulgate it and enforce my belief. What this author, with many other\nmodern writers of the same class, needs is a good course of philosophy as\ntaught in our Catholic schools. It would save us a good deal of time and\npaper in exposing their illogical reasonings.\n\nWe do not deny that the holy writings find a response in the heart and mind\nof the Christian which no other book that was ever penned could awaken. We\nknow that it is full of strength and consolation, of instruction and\nrighteousness, and of help in the perfecting of his character; but this is\nthe case precisely because he is a Christian by virtue of the same\nauthority which declares the inspiration of its contents. That authority\nfor every one who can rationally call himself a Christian is the authority\nof the Catholic Church. From this there is no escape. All Protestants\ninasmuch as they are Christian are so in obedience to the voice of whatever\nCatholic tradition is yet left to influence them. It announces that\nChristianity is true and that the Bible is inspired. This tradition of\ntheirs finds its sanction in the Catholic Church, and would be utterly\nworthless if she had no existence.\n\nAgain, it is impossible to controvert the fact that the Bible, as a\nChristian revelation, depends for its authenticity and canonicity upon the\nsanction of the church. To say that it does not is to claim inspiration for\nevery individual in order to decide upon what is and what is not inspired.\nIf I reject the authority of the church, how shall I be content with the\nBible as it is, as she has compiled it? Perhaps I might differ with her as\nto her decision about the non-inspiration of the rejected gospels and\nepistles; and if to my thinking some of the books which it now contains are\nnot inspired, nay more, if I reject the whole of them as such, what power\non earth is there to call me to account?\n{792}\nNo wonder Luther had the presumption to call the epistle of St. James an\n\"epistle of straw,\" or that Dr. Colenso has no respect for the Pentateuch.\nWe are constrained to believe that the principles assumed by this writer\nare far more pernicious, and would do more to undermine the traditional\nauthority which the Bible has among Protestants and reluctant sceptics,\nthan the weak and flippant arguments of the notorious apostle of the Zulus.\n\nWe read the chapter on the Interpretation of Scripture with no little\ncuriosity, knowing that this would present a test question to the author's\nsystem of inspiration. Suppose that two men, two Christians if you will,\nnot only differed about the inspiration of a certain passage, but also\nabout the interpretation of it. Can the conclusion of both, contradictory\nas they are, be the \"witness of the Spirit\"? As we expected, this chapter\nis the weakest in the book. Let us give the author's argument: \"But while\ndivine revelation can have but one true meaning, nothing can be more\ncertain than that, being a message from the Heavenly Father to his erring\nand sinful creatures, it must have a power of adaptation to each and all of\nthem in particular which, from the very nature of the case, forbids any\nexhaustive or authoritative interpretation of its contents.\" We confess we\nare not able to put this in plain English. Let us analyze it, however, and\nsee what propositions it contains: 1st. Any given inspired revelation can\nhave but one true meaning. 2d. This inspired revelation is given as a\nmessage of truth to the human race by the God of truth. 3d. This inspired\nrevelation is necessarily of such a character that it can be made to mean\nanything according to the power of discernment in the individual; and\nhence, 4th. No one can even be sure which interpretation is the true one.\nIf these absurd propositions are not contained in the quotation we have\ngiven, we humbly acknowledge that we have learned the English language in\nvain. We knew that the author must break down on this subject, and he has\nmost thoroughly. How one can escape the necessity of an authoritative power\nof interpretation of the Scripture it is impossible for us to divine. How\n_can_ two contradictory interpretations be true? How _can_ any\nman in his senses believe that the Spirit of God witnesses to two\npropositions, one of which gives the lie to the other? But, deny an\nauthoritative power of interpretation to which all men must bow, how can I\never know that my interpretation is true and that my brother's is false? To\nattempt a compromise, such as the author suggests, that each interpretation\nis true for each man, is too absurd to demand a moment's consideration.\nTruth is truth not because I see it, but as it is, whether I see it or not,\nand the man who rejects it when it is presented to his intelligence is\neither a knave or a fool. Two and two are four whether I agree to it or\nnot, and no possible interpretation of the process of addition can change\nits truth; nor is there any loophole except that of insanity which would\never allow me to be excused for asserting that the product of twice two was\nfive and not four.\n\nIt is certainly amusing to see this author refuting himself, as he\nfrequently does. To confide the right interpretation of Scripture to an\norganized authority is to vest the final decision as to what the book says\nin man. So he argues. Yet he tells us in the same breath that each\nindividual man is his own lawful interpreter. Does the author think that we\nare simple enough to believe, with all the jarring, clashing sects which\nhave sprung out of this individual interpretation of the Bible before our\neyes a principle, too, which furnishes the sceptic with the means of\nwresting its words to his own destruction--that, if each man interpret it\nfor himself, the final decision in each particular case is any less human\nthan the unanimous decision which a body, such as the Catholic Church is,\ngives without variation for nineteen centuries?\n{793}\nThis gratuitous assumption about the \"interior witness of the Spirit\" is\ncant, not argument; for where does the individual find any assurance that\neach and every man will be so assisted? Experience proves directly the\ncontrary. But, says our author, all these quarrels about the truths taught\nby the Bible are not due to the Bible itself, but to the sectarian\ndivisions of Christianity, who each and all impose their own interpretation\non their members. This will not do. As long as the principle of\nauthoritative interpretation was upheld, as it is alone in the Catholic\nChurch, there was no quarrelling about the doctrines or morals inculcated\nby the Holy Scriptures. The interpretation was but one. It was only when\nthe author's pet principle came into vogue, which was the apple of discord\nborne by the tree of the Reformation, that men began to quarrel and dispute\nabout what the Bible taught. The wily sceptic with the Bible placed in his\nhands, accompanied by a pious assurance that he will be guided in its\ninterpretation by the interior witness of the Spirit, will only laugh in\nhis sleeve at your simplicity. He will find in it just what pleases him,\nand who has the right to accuse him of not following the witness of the\nSpirit? Who finds insuperable difficulties in the sacred record? Who has\ndiscovered, as they imagine, contradictory passages in it? Who come to the\nconclusion that there is one God of the patriarchs, another God of the\nJews, and a third of the Christian? Not the Catholic Church or her doctors,\nbut the Protestant sects with their Colensos, their Essayists and\nReviewers, and flippant commentators. The Catholic Church finds no\ndifficulties or contradictions in the text of Scripture in any portion that\nrelates to doctrine or morals. Her interpretation is uniform and harmonious\nfrom the first page of Genesis to the last words of the Apocalypse.\nDifficulties there are, but they are only historical and of minor moment,\nwhich affect in no way the unity of the sacred writings as the revealed\nword of God. All attempts which have been made of late by Protestants to\ndiscredit the inspiration of the Bible on the ground that these historical\ndifficulties are of such a nature as to render the record untrustworthy,\nhave signally failed. The most that has been proved, even by the most\ncaptious critics, is, that in the recital of certain events the text is\nobscure, and leaves many things untold and unexplained.\n\nThe tone of the writer when speaking of the Catholic Church is, on the\nwhole, pretty fair, but it seems impossible for a Protestant to write on\nreligious subjects without either committing some egregious blunder when we\nare concerned, or inserting some piece of calumny or of wilful\nmisrepresentation. We note an instance of this in the letter which forms an\nintroduction to the body of the work. Referring to the hope expressed by\nthe reluctant sceptic that \"one day we shall have forms of public devotion\nsufficiently aesthetic to gratify the religious sentiment, without\ninvolving dogmas that lead only to dispute,\" he adds: \"You will perhaps be\nsurprised if I tell you that I think this very possible. But, believe me,\nit will only be when Christendom, so long apostate, has, in retribution for\nher abominations, became absolutely atheistic. That a tendency of this kind\nmanifests itself, from time to time, in Rome, especially among the Jesuits,\nhas been noticed by devout Catholics, and is regarded by them with grief\nand anxiety.\" (P. 45.)\n\nThis is the style of lying (for what he says of the Jesuits is, we hardly\nneed say, wholly untrue) that disgraces the religious writings of our\nopponents almost without exception. What does it mean? Simply this: \"I\nfear, my dear, reluctant sceptic, that you are hungering after ritualism,\nwhich the Catholic Church possesses in beautiful harmony with all her\ndogmas.\n{794}\nBut don't look that way, or examine her claims upon your mind or religious\nsentiment, for the Catholic Church herself is becoming atheistic, as is\nshown by the atheistical tendencies of the Jesuits in Rome, and\n(_aside_--to make the lie more plausible I will say) this tendency has\nbeen noticed by devout Catholics, and is regarded by them with grief and\nanxiety.\" We can do nothing but cry shame upon such wretched and base\nsubterfuges to withdraw the attention of sincere minds from an honest\nexamination of the Catholic faith.\n\nWe blush for their unscrupulous and persistent system of misrepresentation,\nwhich quietly ignores alike our indignant denials and appeals to be heard;\nbut we do not fear for the final result. All blows aimed at the Rock of\nTruth will only recoil with deadly force upon the aggressor. Her beauty\nwill come out untarnished after every attempt at defilement; her purity and\nsanctity no defamation can long obscure; her divine truth is proof against\nthe machinations and deceit of the father of lies and his children. Not in\nvain has the inspired prophet said of her: \"No weapon that is formed\nagainst thee shall prosper, and every tongue that resisteth thee in\njudgment thou shall condemn.\" She is the divinely appointed exponent of\nGod's word to man, whether written or not. \"He that heareth you, heareth\nme,\" and her exposition has been uniform, harmonious, and consistent\nthroughout; while the sects, left to their own fanciful interpretation of\nthe only word which they have acknowledged as authoritative, present a\nlamentable picture of dissension and disbelief--\"As children tossed to and\nfro, and carried about by every wind of doctrine.\"\n\n------\n\n  From the French of Augustin Chevalier.\n\n  Decimated.\n\n  I.\n\nIt was seven in the evening when we arose from the table, where the\nconversation had for an hour or more run on the civil war which had just\ndesolated Germany. General Bourdelaine, a tall, wiry specimen of the\n_ancien officier_, whom no one would imagine to be verging upon his\neighty-fourth year, and who very probably will in the year one thousand\neight hundred and eighty-eight celebrate the eighty-second anniversary of\nhis leaving the military school in 1806, invited us for coffee into the\nstudy where ordinarily none but his most intimate friends are admitted; for\nthe general, although on the retired list since 1845, has not yet begun to\nseek the repose of inactivity, and I have seen in that study of his an\nentire series of strategical plans (afterward published by the minister of\nwar) of the principal battles of Napoleon in Champagne against the allied\nforces.\n\nThe study is large, although it seems small, so filled is every piece of\nfurniture, shelf, and hook with coins, arms, plans, papers, portraits,\nbusts, statuettes in marble and in bronze, books, globes, and drawing\ninstruments, and all these not in absolute disorder, but in an apparent\nconfusion which the general finds very convenient, inasmuch as everything\nis within reach.\n\n{795}\n\nIt was not the first time I had been there. For the first time, however, on\nthis particular evening, my eyes fell upon a plain boxwood frame hung on\nthe wall opposite the chimney-piece, in a recess formed by two large\nbook-cases. A brilliant point in the centre, which reflected the light of\nthe lamp, attracted my attention. It was the enamel of a cross of the\nLegion of Honor, to which was attached, under the glass, a large band of\ncrape which stretched to the four corners of the frame. On the left of the\nframe, on the outside, hung a huge silver watch, and on the right the\ngolden acorn of a sword-knot.\n\nThe daughter of the general entered at this moment, followed by a servant\nbearing coffee and all the accessories upon a tray. There were now five of\nus in the room: the general, his daughter and his son-in law, a government\nclerk, and myself. Each one began in silence to discuss the smoking coffee;\nwhen the general, whose glance had unconsciously taken the same direction\nas mine, suddenly exclaimed:\n\n\"What a horrible thing war is! I did not enter the service until the time\nhad come when men no longer went forth to meet the enemy through\npatriotism, but moved merely by the desire of winning rank or fortune, or\nby the love of glory and honor. I was present at some frightful butcheries\nand routs still more frightful; I have seen nearly all the miracles of the\nemperor's genius, and I bore my part in the reverses fickle fortune\ninflicted upon him. Well, after all, what did it amount to? The fortune of\nwar is one of the chances of the trade. You conquer or are conquered, kill\nor are killed. The ranks close up, and then--room for the bravest or most\nfavored, the most skilful or the luckiest! But to be forced to fire upon\nyour own men; to be compelled to decimate pitilessly your own brave\ncompanions; to kill in cold blood excellent soldiers, whose only crime was\na single day's mutiny, but whose example might risk the discipline and\nsafety of the entire army; to kill, I say, men whom the very intoxication\nof victory led to believe that their fault would go unpunished; men we\nsorely needed; this, this is most fearful and saddest of all; this it is\nthat still makes my old heart bleed more than fifty years after it\nhappened; and when my thoughts revert to it, even though conscience remain\ntranquil, something very like remorse pursues me.\"\n\n\"It seems, then, general,\" I said, \"that yonder cross and crape recall\ncruel memories.\"\n\nHe put down his cup without replying, filled a small glass with cognac and\nswallowed it at one gulp.\n\n\"Have you finished the notes I wished you to make from Jomini and\nVandoncourt?\"\n\n\"Yes, _mon g\u00e9n\u00e9ral_.\"\n\n\"Very good; give them me. And now service for service. I will confide to\nyou an episode in my military life of which you may make what use you think\nproper. I authorize you to do so.\"\n\nAnd General Bourdelaine thereupon related what follows.\n\n\n  II.\n\nMy rank in the service dates from October, 1805. Jena and Austerlitz won me\nmy epaulettes of _sous-lieutenant_. In 1807 I made the Polish\ncampaign, and in 1808 the Spanish. The following year I was recalled to\nGermany, and saw Ratisbon and Wagram. Napoleon after the battle halted in\nfront of my regiment to learn the names of those who had distinguished\nthemselves.\n\n\"All did,\" cried the colonel; \"but, if your majesty will permit me, I would\nespecially recommend the Lieutenant Bourdelaine to your favor.\"\n\nThe emperor looked at me.\n\n\"You come from Saint-Cyr?\"\n\n\"Yes, sire.\"\n\n\"How many campaigns?\"\n\n\"Three.\"\n\n\"And still a lieutenant.\"\n\n\"I have had no chance to rise before this.\"\n\n\"Which do you prefer, the cross or promotion?\"\n\n\"Promotion, sire.\"\n\n{796}\n\nMy reply was not that of a courtier. But he loved the young men of his\nschools, and those, above all, who, like me, had not awaited the end of\ntheir course before becoming officers.\n\n\"Ah! you prefer promotion.\"\n\n\"Sire, they say that things are not going well in Spain since your majesty\nleft there. Send me thither; give me a company, and I will win death or the\ncross.\"\n\n\"Very well.\"\n\nI received the company I sought, not, however, in a French, but in an\nItalian regiment. I was ordered to Arragon in November, 1810, and made part\nof the army commanded by Suchet. My colonel, San-Polo, received me warmly.\n\n\"You will find more than one of your countrymen in my regiment,\" said he;\n\"and you had better have them give an account of your men. I warn you that\nthey are very devils. You must be vigilant and firm; just but inflexible;\nif not, you will find yourself exposed to strange surprises, and I be put\nto the necessity of punishing you.\"\n\nThe colonel was no false prophet. Those Italians are terrible soldiers.\nRash, useful principally for an assault or _coup-de main_, never\nflinching under fire, but, once out of it, quarrelsome, intractable and\ngiven to pillaging, ours, I confess, more than once seemed to sack and\ndestroy for the mere pleasure of doing so. I can yet see the comical though\nmoving scene which took place in Burgos, where my battalion, in 1808,\nboiled their pots with all the mandolines and guitars they could find in\nthe city, notwithstanding the despair of the inhabitants, who hastened to\nbring them coals and wood. But the soup, seasoned with jokes and bursts of\nlaughter, seemed to them the better for it.\n\nBefore I return to my story, a few words on the situation of the army of\nArragon.\n\nGeneral Suchet had taken one after another the towns of Mequinenza; on the\nsouthern confines of the province of Huesca; Lareda, in Lower Catalonia, to\nthe north-west of Mequinenza; and Tortosa, south of Lerida, at the\nextremity of the province of Tarragona. He thus commanded part of the\nrivers Ebro, the Segre, and the Cinca; and, moreover, the capture of those\ncities had enabled him to collect a complete park of siege artillery at\nTortosa. Unfortunately, the commandant of Figuera having allowed himself to\nbe surprised in Upper Catalonia, our forces there were compelled to fall\nback toward Girona, and the Spanish General Campoverde, beaten before\nFigueras by Baraguay d'Hilliers, had profited by our mishap, not only to\nrally his troops, but also to annoy our magazines and communications.\nTherefore, although he had received orders from the emperor, on the 10th of\nMarch, to invest Tarragona, whose capture, completing our occupation of the\nprincipality of Catalonia, would have opened the road to Valentia to us,\nGeneral Suchet did not yet dare attempt an enterprise of such importance.\nThe task of keeping the two districts of Mora and Alcuniz in subjection--\nthe first in Lower Catalonia, to the north of Tortosa, and the second in\nArragon to the north-west of Mequinenza, and in the province of Ternel--\nparalyzed his forces. His artillery, too, had been retarded. In short,\ninstead of an effective force of over forty thousand men, which the\njunction of the army of Arragon with that of Catalonia should have formed,\nhe had not more than thirty battalions at his service.\n\nYou are not a soldier, and you do not understand how even the lowest\nofficer racks his head over the probabilities of some approaching\nexpedition, and with what feverish impatience the men in the ranks await\nthe signal of departure. Headquarters were established at Lareda, and\nmagazines already were placed at Reus, Monblanch, and Alcobar, to the north\nand west of Tarragona; but it was reported that an English fleet under\nAdmiral Adams was preparing to re-provision the last-named city, and to\ninterrupt our communications by transporting to our rear the troops of\nCampoverde and Sarsfield by the mouths of the Ebro. Our park of siege\nartillery remained motionless at Tortosa, and as yet Suchet had not begun\nto move.\n\n{797}\n\nI was at Mora, where my battalion was to remain, if the jokers about camp\nwere to be believed; an absurd rumor, for wherever a vigorous blow was to\nbe struck the Italians never failed to come in for their share. I had\nformed a close friendship with Lieutenant Polidoro, a reckless individual,\nbut one of the best-hearted fellows in the service. He was from Milan, and\nhad commenced life as a choir-boy. A _reverendissimo_, almost unknown\nto him, was in the habit of sending him from time to time fifty\n_scudi_ by way of pocket-money. The day he received this little\nremittance was a gala-day for the whole battalion. Wine flowed through the\ncamp. Not a man was forgotten. The next day he was without a _sou_,\nbut he had had his fun, and drunk many times to the health of Monsignor\nCapellini, as he called his friend.\n\nHis father was unknown to him, and often would he cry, twirling his shako\non his sword, when asked why he did not assume the paternal cognomen:\n\n\"Why should I recognize an old fellow who shows so little pride in having a\ngrenadier of my height for a son?\"\n\nThe gayety of Polidoro, the friendship of his comrades for him, the\nattachment of his men, whose enthusiasm was excited by his bravery and\nliberality, inspired me, at last, with the most unlimited confidence in\nhim; and, well satisfied with never having to inflict the slightest\npunishment, thanks to the excellent reports he always brought me of the\ncompany, I placed matters of mere discipline entirely in his hands.\n\nSuddenly, one fine morning, at roll-call, not one of my men, with the\nexception of the Sous-Lieutenant Brocard--a Frenchman like myself--appeared\non the parade-ground. He, sad and crest-fallen, informed me that our\ncompany had filed away during the night toward Batea, to the north of\nCasserras, on the Arragon frontier. At the same time he handed me a letter\naddressed to me by Polidoro. Judge of my astonishment when I cast my eye\nupon its contents:\n\n  \"Captain: It is certainly an ill proceeding on my part to leave Mora,\n  with your whole company, without first informing you of our intention.\n  Life in Mora is not very lively, and our men were growing shockingly\n  tired of it. I am responsible for their health, and found myself forced\n  to adopt violent measures to preserve it. We are going a league from here\n  to Batea, where they say good wine abounds. It is even reported that\n  there is a guerilla roving through the mountains, and that he has been\n  joined by some disbanded soldiers of Sarsfield and Campoverde. What a\n  chance for fun! We will thus be enabled to indulge in a little diversion\n  while waiting for the march on Tarragona. I do not ask you to put\n  yourself at the head of our expedition. I suppose, even, that, if you\n  were ordered to bring us back, your honor would only permit you to speak\n  to us through the throats of muskets. Be good enough, however, to advise\n  our brave colonel of our departure, and tell him that, whatever may\n  happen, we are all devoted to him, for life and for death, and that each\n  one of us (I was always remarkable for foresight) has ten rounds of\n  cartridge at his service. If we are let alone, be assured that the entire\n  company, including your humble servant, will be en route for Lareda at\n  the first roll of the drum.\n      \"Your faithful friend,\n          \"The Lieutenant Polidoro.\"\n\nThis letter filled me with consternation. I felt that I had been guilty of\nweakness and negligence. I was not only puzzled; I suspected perfidy,\ntreason. I did not yet understand the singular forms which insubordination\noften takes among Italian troops. The Russian soldier is little more than a\nsavage; the German, when he quarrels with his officers in the field,\nbecomes gross and brutal; the Frenchman pushes familiarity to insolence;\nthe Spaniard heroically disbands, placing every reverse to the account of\nthe ignorance or cowardice of his officers, and then sets about making head\nindividually against the enemy in some defile of his mountains; the\nEnglishman shows himself, in war as in everything else, a close calculator,\nweighing the _pros_ and _cons_ long together, and, above all\nothers, complains of the insufficiency or bad quality of his provisions, as\nwitness the mutiny of the fleet in the reign of George III., when it became\nnecessary to hang an admiral, and which was only suppressed by the coolness\nof Pitt.\n{798}\nBut, when the Italian mutinies, he does it with incredible niceness, and,\nunless he has some vengeance to execute, (which he will carry out with\nuncommon ferocity,) he remains an artist to the last.\n\n\"_Corbleu!_\" cried I to Brocard. \"We are in a pretty box; exposed,\ntoo, to the ridicule of our comrades. And I thought this Polidoro my\nfriend!\"\n\n\"And he is your friend, captain; doubt it not,\" replied Brocard; \"only you\nhave not yet formed a true idea of the audacious recklessness and\nimpulsiveness of these Italians. All this would be but a pleasantry,\nwithout evil results, if the necessity of maintaining discipline at the\noutset of a new campaign did not give the affair importance; and what makes\nit worse is, that they say the colonel since his return an hour ago has\nbeen making preparations to repel an attack from Campoverde. He is furious\nagainst you, and wishes to have a private interview with you.\"\n\nShame and anger almost choked me. I was beside myself with rage, and, if at\nthat moment a man had but given me a look of ridicule, I would have run him\nthrough the body.\n\n\"I come to receive your orders, colonel,\" said I, as I entered San-Polo's\nquarters. \"I confess that I deserve no consideration. You told me what I\nhad to expect. Punish me. I ask of you but one favor--that you would permit\nme to go alone to those mutineers and bring them back.\"\n\n\"What I hear is then true, sir,\" replied San-Polo, whose appearance of\nconcentrated anger boded me no good. But, having given me this thrust, he\nadded, softening a little:\n\n\"Listen to me, Bourdelaine, notwithstanding your fault in allowing Polidoro\nto gain such a hold upon the company, you are nevertheless an officer whom\nI esteem both for head and heart, and I heard a very flattering account of\nyou before you joined the regiment. I am sincerely sorry for you, and that\nrogue of a Polidoro has so bewitched the men that after all you are not so\ninexcusable.\"\n\n\"Thanks, my colonel.\"\n\n\"But,\" continued San-Polo, \"we must lay aside such considerations in camp.\nYou had the want of tact to prefer a grade, when the emperor offered you\nwith his own hand the Cross of the Legion. That was in his eyes a fault\nwhich, be assured, he will not soon forget, and I am sure that you would\nhave received both if you had chosen the cross.\"\n\nI bowed my head, but did not reply.\n\n\"Your conduct after that, if you wished to rise, should have been\nirreproachable, so that your mistake, which seemed to the emperor a piece\nof youthful stupidity, might have changed its guise and shone forth as the\ngenerous impulse of a soul born to command.\n\n\"I speak not now, captain, as your superior officer, but as your friend.\nSpeak privately to Lieutenant Brocard. Present yourself to these mutineers,\nand let a bloody example recall them to duty. I have full power from the\ncommanding general to manage my Italians as I think proper. You will\ndecimate your company.\"\n\nI started, horror-stricken.\n\n\"You have your orders, sir. Now, no delay or pity. Remember that prompt and\nvigorous action is necessary not only to reestablish your reputation, but\nto replace upon those men the yoke of discipline, so rashly broken. Under\nour present _r\u00e9gime_ little is said and less written about army\naffairs, and the news of the insubordination of a handful of Italians in an\nobscure corner of the peninsula will scarcely reach the emperor's ears. I\nwill see that it is kept out of the bulletins. It is too small a matter for\nheadquarters to be troubled about, and in ten days all will be the same as\nif nothing of the kind ever happened. Well! you have heard me; what more do\nyou desire?\" asked San-Polo, astonished at my immobility and silence.\n\n{799}\n\n\"Pardon, _mon colonel!_\" I replied, with many misgivings. \"How can we\ndecimate men of whom we have such immediate need before the enemy?\" And I\nshowed him Polidoro's letter.\n\nHe read it through rapidly, and shrugged his shoulders; but, when he came\nto the part where the lieutenant, while protesting his own devotion and\nthat of his men for their colonel, boasted nevertheless of his foresight in\nfurnishing each man with ten rounds of ammunition, San-Polo cried out, a\npassing smile lighting up his face for a moment:\n\n\"Poor fellow! it is a pity, for he has the stuff soldiers are made of in\nhim. Unshrinking under fire, fascinating and raising the spirits of all\naround him by his good humor, always ready, full of resources, yet\nridiculing glory and fortune. God grant that this trick do not cost him too\ndear. What is the effective force of the company?\"\n\n\"Ninety-nine men in all, with the officers and drummer.\"\n\n\"Very well; then it is reduced to ninety-six, since you and Brocard are not\nin the affair, and the drummer, who is but a boy, does not count. This\nletter will not modify my instructions. You will draw by lot four men and a\ncorporal for the firing party, and one man to dig the grave; ninety will\nremain--nine to be shot; it is enough. As to Polidoro, if his stars should\nfavor him, you will put him under arrest for two weeks. I will attend to\nhim hereafter if necessary.\"\n\nI turned with a heavy heart to leave the tent.\n\n\"Ah! one word more,\" said the colonel: \"In case any chance should put you\non the track of the guerilla who has been seen between Casserras and Batea,\ndrag out the execution to the greatest possible length, without, however,\nletting it seem that you do so. I love those good-for-nothings after all,\nand would to God that a brush with the enemy may deliver them from their\nscrape, for they would fight as they always do, and we would have a good\nexcuse for indulgence. Be easy, even if you find yourself surrounded by the\nSpaniards, and open fire on them boldly, for I have taken my measures, and\nhelp will be at hand. _Au revoir_, captain, and fortune favor you!\"\n\nBrocard and I immediately set out for Batea. It was yet early morning, and\nthe road was almost deserted. We could not perceive in the direction of\nCasserras a single trace that might remind us of the recent passage of a\nbody of armed men. It seemed scarcely probable that the guerillas would\ndare return toward Batea, which was at furthest a league to the north-west.\n\nOn the road I confided to my comrade the cruel mission with which we were\ncharged, and as I had never seen a military execution, and had never\nexpected to see so horrible a one as this, the slaying of every tenth man\nin my own company, the conversation ran on the best mode of conducting the\nbusiness in which we were engaged so as to gain time, as the colonel had\nrecommended.\n\n\"Oh!\" said Brocard, \"I was 'decimated' my self once. It was in Portugal,\nunder Junot, for a trick our battalion played the commandant--a lion under\nfire, but an ill-natured dog. We gave him a free bath in the Tagus. I was\nthen only a corporal. They commenced by surrounding and disarming the\nmutineers; then, if any officers were found in the number, their names were\nproclaimed aloud, or they were degraded. Then the ranks were broken, and we\nwere aligned in single file, each man taking his place according to chance.\nA sergeant, drawn by lot and blindfolded, then approached the line, and,\nstarting from the first man he chanced to touch, without including him,\ncounted off ten, twenty, thirty, until he reached the end of the line, when\nhe continued in the other direction, commencing again with the man he first\ntouched, and if that poor fellow happened to be the tenth, or twentieth, or\nthirtieth, psit! his doom was clear.\"\n\n\"Great heavens!\" thought I, \"how terribly cool he takes it!\"\n\n{800}\n\n\"While the counting went on,\" continued my imperturbable\n_sous-officier_, \"a roll of the drum accompanied each tenth man as he\nstepped out; he was led to the edge of the trench dug for his grave; a\nsufficient amount of lead lodged in his head or breast, and his affair was\nended. You see that much time is not lost, and the business even becomes\namusing sometimes; for every man's pride is up, and he chats, jokes,\nlaughs, appoints a _rendezvous_ under ground a year, a month, or\nperhaps only a day off; and all the while the regimental band regales you\nwith the merriest symphonies, the most alluring marches!\"\n\n\"You would not make a mockery of death!\" cried I, interrupting him.\n\n\"Mockery!\" he returned. \"Diable! we won't have much chance to do so here.\nWe haven't yet even disarmed our friends, captain. San-Polo evidently\nhonors us both with his particular esteem, to send us two alone to decimate\nmore than eighty jokers, each of whom carries ten rounds of ammunition to\nanswer our polite proposition with.\"\n\n\"Nevertheless, the enterprise amuses you a little, does it not?\"\n\n\"Humph! whether a man leaves his skin here or elsewhere, what matters it?\nalthough it is disagreeable to be sent out of the world by your old\ncomrades, your friends at the bivouac, fellows whose elbows you are\naccustomed to feel in the ranks. But, after all, those fellows haven't\ntreated us right; that is a consolation.\"\n\n\"But the other proceeding the colonel mentioned,\" said I--\"the drawing\n--you have not explained that.\"\n\n\"Ah! I can only teach you what I know myself; though I was something more\nthan a mere amateur scholar. I have heard that they sometimes mix up the\nnames in a helmet or shako, and shoot the man that owns every tenth name\nthat comes out. But, _ma foi!_ that way is shorter than the other,\nbut, if it suits you better, you may use it. H st!\" [sic]\n\nHe stopped short in the middle of the road and brought the musket he had\nbrought with him from Mora to his shoulder, as a bullet whistled by our\nears, and a thread of white smoke rose from a ravine some little distance\noff; a moment after, a tall, wild-looking man, enveloped in a long cloak,\nand wearing a countryman's shoes and a red woollen cap, sprang toward the\nmountain side, where in the twinkling of an eye he disappeared.\n\n\"Don't fire!\" I cried, as Brocard was about to pull trigger; \"you will give\nthose wretches the alarm. Wait until they attack us at Batea. That fellow\nwill simplify our business, and the colonel will be delighted. Forward--\ngallop! Remember the mission we have to fulfil.\"\n\nTen minutes later we were in Batea. The company had stacked their arms\nabout a hundred paces from the mountain, and had spread themselves through\nthe village. The drummer alone, a boy of fifteen, stood guard over the\narms, under the protection of some old _grognards_, who,\ncooler-blooded than their comrades, walked leisurely about, smoking their\npipes.\n\nI rode straight to the drummer, and, without dismounting, said:\n\n\"Beat the recall, Zanetto, I am in haste.\"\n\nThe smokers at this order approached us, and stared at us with an abashed\nair. The most insolent of them gave the military salute, through force of\nhabit, apparently. But they seemed thoughtful, twisted their mustaches\nwithout speaking, and continued to smoke.\n\nZanetto, uneasy as the others, rose, hooked on his drum, and replied by a\nprolonged roll, which did not cease until the whole company stood behind\ntheir stacks.\n\n\"What is all this noise about? Are you a fool, drummer?\" cried Polidoro,\ncoming up last of all, at a run, from the further end of the village, and\ncarrying a bottle in one hand and a glass in the other.\n\n{801}\n\nThe sight of two horsemen redoubled his speed, and when he reached us, he\ncould scarcely gasp, in his astonishment and want of breath:\n\n\"You, Bourdelaine! You here! Glad to see you, _caro mio_. Welcome! We\nscarcely expected so agreeable a surprise. What can we do for you, captain?\nWill you try a glass of rum?\"\n\nI spurred my horse toward Polidoro, and, with a sudden blow breaking the\nglass and bottle he held, said briefly and sternly:\n\n\"Your sword, lieutenant!\"\n\nPolidoro turned pale, and, recoiling a couple of paces, said in a husky\nvoice:\n\n\"My sword! Was it to demand my sword that you came from Mora, you and your\ncountryman Brocard?\"\n\n\"We come to decimate you. The colonel has ordered it.\"\n\nAnd I dismounted, placing myself in their power, to prove to the mutineers\nthe fixedness of my resolve to carry out my orders or die in the attempt.\n\nThe idea seemed, however, to excite their mirth.\n\n\"Decimate us!\" cried one.\n\n\"Beautiful!\" laughed another.\n\nAnd cries of \"Prodigious!\" \"What a farce!\" \"Whom will he do it with?\" \"He\nhasn't even a corporal's guard!\" rang on every side. The men left the\nstack's of arms and began to gather round us with menacing looks and\ngestures. Brocard threw himself among the most furious, but his words\navailed nothing to restrain them. The situation was becoming critical.\n\nSuddenly a thought struck me. I signed to Zanetto to beat his drum, so that\nits continued roll might drown their voices, and the more desperate be thus\nprevented from urging on those who hesitated.\n\nAnything which brings the habits of discipline to the minds of old soldiers\nacts with wonderful power. Before the roll of the drum ceased, every man\nhad regained his place; the tumult was ended and quiet reigned.\n\n\"We are come to decimate you,\" I continued, coldly and sternly as before,\n\"and we are alone. Do you ask why? Because the colonel wishes the execution\nto be secret; he would not have the company dishonored before their\ncomrades--dishonored for having turned their backs when all was ready to\nmarch upon the enemy.\"\n\n\"But we did not do so!\" cried one of the men.\n\n\"Silence! The captain is right,\" replied several.\n\n\"Then Polidoro deceived us; he told us the captain would protect us,\" said\na young soldier.\n\nTheir tone had already changed. It was no longer hostile.\n\n\"I!\" cried Polidoro. \"Did I ever say aught to make you doubt the captain's\nhonor?\"\n\n\"No! no!\" cried voice after voice. \"It is our fault. Let us suffer the\npenalty! Decimate us, captain!\" cried several, \"and let us have it over as\nsoon as may be. We are ready.\"\n\n\"Lieutenant,\" I continued, advancing to Polidoro, \"I demand your sword.\"\n\nHe moved his hand to the buckle of his belt as if to take it off, but the\nstruggle was too great for his proud heart; his youthful blood was in arms,\nand, carried away by passion, he shouted hoarsely:\n\n\"Then come and take it!\"\n\nAnd drawing it from its sheath, he threw himself on guard.\n\n\"Bravo, lieutenant! Let him come and take it!\" cried a voice at his side.\n\n\"Who spoke then?\" I asked, feigning ignorance of the man.\n\n\"I!\" cried an old soldier; one of the _grognards_ of the company.\n\n\"Very well, Matteo; I will attend to you presently.\"\n\nThere was no time for consideration; I at once fell on guard myself.\nPolidoro awaited my attack with his blade low, after the manner of the\nItalians, but at my first lunge, breaking down his parade before we had\neven crossed swords, whether it was that remorse for his act prevented his\nexerting his usual skill or through unlucky mischance on his part, I\ndisarmed him, catching his guard on the point of my sword and forcing his\nweapon from his hand.\n\n{802}\n\n\"_Maleditto!_\" he exclaimed angrily, blushing with shame and wrath,\nand turning to Zanetto, who could not forbear laughing at his mishap, with\na blow of his heavy boot, he crushed the drum to pieces, and, tearing off\nhis epaulettes, mingled with the ranks.\n\n\"Lieutenant, I have not degraded you,\" I said softly. \"It is even possible\nthat, if chance favors you, I may restore your sword.\"\n\nThis indulgence shown to Polidoro, whose guilt was aggravated by an attack\non his superior officer, made a greater impression than severity could. The\nfascination he exercised over the men, their belief in him, his prestige\nwere considerably lessened. I felt that I was master of the troop.\n\n\"As for you,\" I said to Matteo, \"as a punishment for your insolence, you\nmust dig the trench.\"\n\n\"I, my captain?\"\n\n\"You.\"\n\n\"Shoot me first, captain, I implore you,\" sobbed Matteo, pale with shame\nand despair.\n\nHe was one of the oldest and best soldiers in the company; his mustache\nalmost white, and his face seamed with scars. He thought himself degraded\nbefore his comrades, and did not see that my aim was to save him.\n\n\"Not so,\" I replied. \"Go find a pickaxe and spade in the village and\nquickly!\"\n\n\"You are very hard on me, captain.\"\n\n\"Obey: no more words!\"\n\nAll this while the _sous-lieutenant_ Brocard, who guessed my purpose,\nwas writing the names of the company upon slips of paper, which he threw\ninto a shako.\n\n\"But that is not the way it is done.\" cried Polidoro, in a bantering tone.\n\"Permit me to instruct you.\"\n\n\"Silence in the ranks!\" I cried.\n\n\"But we will never get through at this rate, captain.\"\n\n\"I am not responsible to you, sir. It is the order of the colonel. Now,\ncome hither,\" said I to the drummer, \"and draw four names for the firing\nparty.\"\n\n\"Am I not included, captain,\" returned Zanetto, drawing himself up proudly\nto his full height.\n\n\"Boy, you do not count,\" said Brocard.\n\n\"It seems to me that I counted before the enemy,\" replied the boy.\n\n\"Be still, child!\" cried Polidoro. \"The drummer's duty is to follow the\ncompany.\"\n\n\"That is true,\" said an old _grognard_. \"Come, Zanetto, stick your\nhand into the bag, but don't draw my name.\"\n\nBut it was the old man's name that he drew.\n\n\"The grenadier Sampierri!\"\n\n\"I never had any luck,\" growled Sampierri, stamping angrily upon the\nground.\n\nHe took up his musket.\n\n\"The grenadiers Nicolo, Mordini, Ruspone!\" continued Brocard.\n\nMatteo, while this was going on, had returned from the village, and was\nsilently digging a trench to our left, about two hundred paces from the\nmountain, where the earth was soft and offered but little resistance.\n\n\"Ha! Matteo! there are ninety of us,\" cried Corporal Campana; \"nine men to\nmount guard underground today. Make it wide enough, my old friend.\"\n\n\"A corporal is wanted to command the firing party,\" said Brocard, \"and I\nhave mixed up all the names again in the shako.\"\n\n\"Well, let it be Campana,\" I replied.\n\n\"Me, _mon capitaine?_ What have I done more than my comrades? Why\nchoose me?\"\n\n\"What have you done? Have you not three chevrons? Are you not the oldest\ncorporal? You should have set the example of subordination. Go!\"\n\n\"So be it, then,\" said the corporal gloomily. \"Come attention, firing\nparty!\"\n\nHe marched to the trench at the head of his four grenadiers.\n\n{803}\n\n\"Attention!\" cried I. \"Draw the names; the tenth--\"\n\n\"Enough!\" said Zanetto; \"let him beware. The business is becoming less\namusing, captain.\"\n\nHe drew nine slips successively, which Brocard did not read, so that the\nsuspense continued to the end. The tenth he held up.\n\n\"The Sergeant Gasparini!\"\n\n\"Good! This is the day of the grognards,\" said Gasparini, making the\nmilitary salute. \"May I embrace Zanetto, _mon capitaine?_\"\n\n\"Do as you will,\" I said; \"I would rather be a hundred feet underground\nthan here.\"\n\n\"Thanks, captain. We all see how this business grieves you. Thanks!\"\n\nHe bent over the drummer, and the tears, spite of his proud endeavors to\nrestrain them, dropped on his gray mustache.\n\n\"Here; take this for thy trouble, my boy,\" he said, giving the drummer his\nsilver watch.\n\nHe dashed the tears from his eyes shamefacedly, and with a steady step\nmarched to the edge of the trench.\n\n\"Ready!\" cried Corporal Campana.\n\n\"Aim! Fire!\" cried Gasparini.\n\nA flash and report followed, and the old sergeant fell dead on his face in\nthe trench, where Matteo pushed him with his foot to the place where he was\nto rest.\n\nZanetto continued, drawing from eleven to nineteen. Brocard, still without\nreading them, tore them up one after another. Twenty reached, he took the\nslip, lifted it above his head, and sobbed, rather than spoke, in his\nendeavors to conceal his emotion:\n\n\"The Sergeant-Major Gambetta!\"\n\nIt was the best instructed under-officer perhaps in the regiment; calm,\nwell knowing his duties, laborious--so useful, in fact, in the humble post\nhe held that his superiors through pure selfishness had never proposed him\nfor promotion. He was forty years of age at least, had received the cross\nas far back as 1805, and with the money of his pension relieved many a\nlittle want of his comrades.\n\n\"Ah! poor Gasparini!\" he cried with a sort of mournful merriment; \"if today\nis the day of the old growlers, it is also the day of sergeants. What is\nthe matter, _mon capitaine?_\" said he as he passed me. \"You seem to be\nin trouble.\"\n\nHe was not far wrong. I was in despair. My eyes were fixed upon the\nmountain as if they would pierce through it, and at every changing shadow,\nevery breath of wind which sighed among the trees, my heart bounded\npainfully with the hope that the long wished for guerilla was about making\nhis appearance on the heights.\n\n\"Adieu, Zanetto! take my cross, I have no watch. Show yourself some day\nworthy to wear it. May it be long ere we meet again, captain. God guard\nyou!\"\n\nHe crossed himself devoutly, and walked to the trench, his hands in his\npockets, bent one knee to the earth, and gave the word \"Fire!\"\n\nWe heard a report; Gambetta, his head shattered by the bullets, rolled like\na lump of lead into the trench.\n\n\"Will those beggarly Spaniards never appear?\" said I to Brocard aside. \"I\nhave had more than enough of this.\"\n\n\"Hush!\" replied Brocard. \"You do not know them yet as well as I, who have\nbeen in the peninsula since 1807. I have just discovered the whole band in\nthe declivity yonder before us. They are climbing along above, so as to\nattack us in front and on both flanks at once. I have counted three hundred\nmuskets and carbines. We will have hot enough work in a few minutes.\"\n\n\"God grant it! Continue, but more slowly, so that we need not kill any\nmore.\"\n\nSlowly, however, as he proceeded to tear up the names drawn, slowly as the\ndrawing went on, number thirty at length came forth. He lifted it up to\nread the name, but remained for an instant silent.\n\n\"Who? who?\" resounded on all sides.\n\n{804}\n\n\"To the devil with it! Let whom it concerns read it,\" cried Brocard,\nflinging it upon the ground.\n\n\"I will wager it is I,\" said Polidoro, springing forward to pick it up.\n\"Yes, it is indeed. The Lieutenant Polidoro!\"\n\n\"Did you not make a mistake, Zanetto?\" asked I. \"I think it is only\ntwenty-nine.\"\n\n\"Yes, yes, captain, it is only twenty-nine,\" cried a soldier. \"Don't, for\nheaven's sake, decimate an officer.\"\n\n\"_Corpo di Bacco_, do you take me for a fool?\" shouted Polidoro. \"I\ncounted them, and it is thirty. Come, come! Every one in his turn. No\njoking! Your hand, Bourdelaine. You forgive me?\"\n\nHe had scarcely spoken when a signal shot was heard on the mountain, and\nfollowing upon it two fierce blazes of fire crashed on our right and left\nand concealed our assailants in their thick smoke.\n\nIt was indeed the guerilla band the colonel had spoken of, which, augmented\nby some of Campoverde's men, whom the English had disembarked at the mouth\nof the Ebro, had filed toward the mountain, going from Cacia, below\nTortosa, as far as Casserras, intending from that point to surprise us at\nMora. Learning that a company was at Batea, they halted on their way in the\nhope of capturing us.\n\nAt the crash of the discharge, Polidoro sprang forward like a lion. The\nsmell of battle seemed to intoxicate him. His eyes flashed fire, and his\nface glowed with ardor. His was a true warrior-soul.\n\n\"Captain,\" said he, \"it is through my fault that the company is brought\ninto this danger; let it be mine to extricate it. Give me twenty men. I\nknow the country round, and this morning I discovered a little by-path\nopening on a level space, from which we can turn the enemy's right. You\nattack him in front; let Brocard see to his left, and in less than a\nquarter of an hour all that rabble will be cut to pieces or dispersed. If I\nremain alive, I will return and place myself at your disposal.\"\n\n\"If you return alive,\" I replied, \"the colonel will decide upon your case.\nSan-Polo foresaw this attack and ordered me not to push the execution\nfurther. Here is your sword, Polidoro, but be not rash; the colonel will\nnot deprive himself, for any whim, of an officer with such a future as\nyours before him.\"\n\n\"I have no future, Bourdelaine,\" he returned gloomily. \"I do not deceive\nmyself with false hopes. Preferment is closed against me. I will die at\nleast with honor, and bear with me the regret of my chief.\"\n\nCorporal Campana had returned with his four grenadiers during this\ncolloquy, and Matteo walked slowly in the rear.\n\n\"Five men for the advance, and fifteen more for the lieutenant,\" I cried to\nBrocard.\n\n\"All right, captain! You hold the centre and I the right, deployed as\nskirmishers is that it?\" asked Brocard.\n\n\"Right!\"\n\n\"And I?\" said Matteo, confounded as Polidoro, advancing at a run to the\nmountain, gained some distance up its declivity without being perceived by\nthe enemy. \"Am I good for nothing, captain, but to bury my comrades?\"\n\n\"Thou old graybeard! March at the head of the column,\" I replied, \"since\ninstead of awaiting us in their stronghold those fools have been silly\nenough to come down to surround us. Thou seest I did not do ill to reserve\nyou for a better chance.\"\n\n\"Much obliged!\" he returned. \"Then we are going to cool their hot blood,\ncaptain?\"\n\nThe guerilla chief, not having perceived our movement, and there only being\nfifty men at most before him, pressed confidently forward, never doubting\nthat he could easily compel us to lay down our arms. We waited until part\nof his men had reached the foot of the mountain, and then we fell upon them\nin a solid column, while Brocard, his men deployed as skirmishers, attacked\nand drove back their left, and Polidoro, having gained his position, forced\ntheir right to retreat, shooting down all who had not rejoined the main\nbody.\n{805}\nSuddenly I heard the drums beat the charge behind me. It was a company, led\nby San-Polo himself, which had taken the Batea road, and so cut off the\nadvance-guard of the guerillas thrown forward toward Mora.\n\nThe Spaniard is brave, obstinate, and sober; inured to privations and\nfatigues. He will fight long and well behind a rock or a wall, but in the\nopen field he generally lacks steadiness, and is easily discouraged if he\nmeets an unforeseen resistance in an attack. He will disband to meet his\nfellows at some other point and plan some new surprise--the only species of\nwarfare which he conducts well. This, indeed, is the result of that\nprovincial spirit of independence, of that character of individuality,\nwhich so deeply penetrates the masses and forms the distinguishing\ncharacteristic of the nation.\n\nThe panic soon became general, and the village was filled with wounded and\ndead.\n\nThose who fled from the fire of one party of our men were received upon the\nbayonets of another, finding no outlet through which to make their escape;\nabout a hundred of the guerillas, however, succeeding in forcing their way\ntoward Casserras, scattering as they went, and giving us a few parting\nshots. All the rest were taken. San-Polo forced his way to us, pitilessly\nshooting down all who refused to yield. He soon joined us, and cast his\neyes toward the open trench.\n\n\"Aha!\" he cried, darting a look of intelligence to me; \"you are cautious,\ncaptain. You would not have the enemy know the number of your killed. How\nmany?\" asked he in a low tone.\n\n\"Two, _mon colonel_; the lot unfortunately fell upon Sergeants\nGasparini and Gambetta.\"\n\nSan-Polo could not restrain a gesture of vexation.\n\n\"And Polidoro?\"\n\n\"_Ma foi_, my colonel; he escaped well; we were going to shoot him\nwhen the skirmish commenced. He is now upon the mountain, where I can vouch\nhe gave us some famous help.\"\n\n\"He is here,\" said Brocard, \"and in a sad condition. Here are his men\nbringing him upon their muskets.\"\n\nWhen he reached us, Polidoro raised his head, not without great pain, and\nlifting his still bantering glance to the face of San-Polo, who stood grave\nand motionless, he cried with an attempt at his old gayety:\n\n\"Hit, colonel, hit! I am sorry, my colonel, that you can no longer break or\neven put me under arrest.\"\n\n\"I will have chance enough to do both yet,\" replied San-Polo, with an\naffected roughness which betrayed his anxiety to encourage the wounded\nsoldier.\n\n\"O colonel! my account is closed this time,\" returned Polidoro. \"Six\nbullets through the body, and two of them at least through my lungs. 'Tis\nenough for one, _mon colonel_.\"\n\nThen some long-banished remembrances seemed to return, and a sad smile\nplayed over his features.\n\n\"_Sancta Maria, mater Dei_.\" he continued, in a tone still tinged with\na sort of sorrowful gayety, \"_ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora\nmortis nostrae. Amen_.\"\n\nSan-Polo threw himself from his horse, and pressed a flask of brandy to the\nlips of the wounded lieutenant, holding him up in his arms for a moment to\nhelp him to swallow a few drops.\n\n\"How kind you are to me!\" murmured the dying man, in a scarcely audible\nvoice; \"you seem to think that, in spite of my follies, I was not so bad an\nofficer after all. Keep, I pray you, my colonel, my sword in remembrance of\nme; only unfasten the sword-knot and give it to Bourdelaine. Ah! I wish you\nwould give Zanetto fifteen francs for--the drum--I broke.\"\n\nA cough interrupted him, and a bloody froth appeared upon his lips. His\nfeatures were pinched with pain; he gasped; his eyes grew glassy, and,\nafter a few slight convulsions, all that remained of Polidoro fell back in\nthe colonel's arms.\n\n{806}\n\nSan-Polo took the lieutenant's sword, pulled the knot off, and hastily\nhanded it to me; then springing into the saddle he rode off at full gallop,\nwithout speaking a word or even turning his head.\n\n\"Quick, Brocard! Mount and accompany the colonel,\" I said. \"You know how\ndangerous those guerillas are even in a rout. I shall not need you until we\nreturn to Mora.\"\n\n\n  III.\n\n\"And now that I have ended,\" said the general after a pause, \"let us talk,\nif you please, about the rain and the weather. It is strange,\" he\ncontinued, pressing his hand to his brow, \"how all these memories return,\nat the time when, thank God, our days of joy and trouble are nearly past.\"\n\n\"Yours?\" the government clerk hastened to reply. \"You are good for twenty\nyears yet.\"\n\nThere are some honest people who always speak thus to old men.\n\n\"Good! very good!\" growled the general, bending over the table to pour out\nanother wine-glass of cognac. \"In twenty years I will be no more thought of\nthan if I had never lived. To the devil with wars and those who make them.\"\n\nWhile his daughter and son-in-law were lifting their voices in protest\nagainst such an idea, I discreetly took up the lamp, and approached the\nframe to examine it more closely.\n\n\"These, very probably,\" I said, half to myself, \"are the watch of the\ngrenadier Gasparini, the cross of the sergeant-major Gambetta, and\nsword-knot of Lieutenant Polidoro.\"\n\n\"Yes, yes,\" replied the general, without looking toward them; \"I bought the\nwatch and the cross from the drummer Zanetto. Poor child! The first bullet\nsent him to his account in the assault on Fort Olivo, the 29th of May,\nbefore Tarragona. For goodness' sake, let it alone.\"\n\nI saw that my curiosity made him impatient, so I returned the lamp and took\nup my hat to retire.\n\n\"You are leaving us very soon, my friend,\" said the general.\n\n\"You know, general, that I must be home by half-past nine.\"\n\n\"Right. Duty before all. I hope you don't intend to put all I have said\nupon paper.\"\n\n\"You have authorized me to do so, general.\"\n\n\"So be it, then; but upon one condition.\"\n\n\"Name it.\"\n\n\"That you will add nothing of your own to it, as most of you men of letters\ndo; and that you will not pervert my words.\"\n\n\"I will try not to do so.\"\n\n------\n\n{807}\n\n  From The Month.\n\n  Scenes From a Missionary Journey in South America.\n\n\n  I. Lisbon, St. Vincent, Pernambuco, Bahia.\n\n\nToward evening of the 12th of March we doubled Cape Finisterre, the\nnorth-western extremity of Spain, and saw in the misty offing a very large\nfour masted iron screw steamer, homeward bound, and said to be from\nAustralia. We had but once seen the Spanish coast looming through the fog\nseveral leagues off; but at sunrise on the 14th we forgot all the miseries\nof the previous four days, as the sea was quite smooth, the weather\nadmirable, and a scene of unequalled beauty unrolled itself before our\neager gaze. We were entering the Tagus: on our left, at the river's mouth,\nstood the castle of St. Julian, apparently not a very ancient or remarkable\nstructure. We had passed in the night, also on the left, the far-famed\nwood-crowned hills and picturesque glens of Cintra, so beautifully sung by\nLord Byron in Childe Harold. Further on jutted into the stream the\nyellow-walled old Moorish fortalice of Belem, so often depicted, and so\nworthy of it. Its many lights and shadows, as the sunlight plays on its\nrichly sculptured front, give it a strangely quaint and old-world\nappearance. Its garrison, a mere company or so, appeared to enjoy a\nsinecure; for I beheld a single sentinel lazily pacing up and down a narrow\nlanding-place. Others were fishing with a rod and line, and a few more\nwashing in the stream their seemingly unique shirts, for they wore no other\nclothing that I could see, save a pair of white canvas trowsers. This scene\nI saw repeated a few weeks later in the Brazilian island of Sancta\nCatharina, where a squad of black soldiers were washing their shirts and\ntrowsers in the waters of a small mountain stream. From the castle of Belem\nthe view eastward up the river is one of the most beautiful that can be\nimagined, and seems at first fully to justify the pride of the Portuguese\nlines:\n\n  \"Quem n\u00e2o tem visto Lisboa,\n   N\u00e2o tem visto cousa boa.\"\n\nThat is, he has not seen a beautiful sight who has not seen Lisbon. The\nriver, considerably narrowed at its extreme mouth, widens here very much,\nand displays on its broad surface a forest of masts. On the left hand the\ncity rises from the water's edge up an amphitheatre of seven hills, house\nupon house, church upon church, filling up an irregular semicircle of\nconsiderable extent, and having for a frame the surrounding green heights,\nwhose tender spring verdure, here and there enlivened by the blooming\nJudas-tree, [Footnote 299] agreeably contrasts with the dazzling whiteness\nof most of the edifices. To the westward of the city sits the imposing mass\nof the modern and yet unfinished royal palace of Ajuda; and beneath it,\nnear the waterside, an old convent and church, whose gray weather-beaten\nwalls seem to bid defiance to the mushroom structure above. This palace of\nAjuda will probably never be finished. The finances of that puny kingdom\nare not, I imagine, in the most prosperous condition; and it would appear\nthat modern royalty is as little at ease in residences fashioned upon the\ngrandeur and magnificence of ancient days, as a beggar would be if he\nsuddenly became the owner and tenant of a nobleman's seat.\n\n   [Footnote 299: A tree with pendulous bunches of pink flowers. It is\n   probably so called from its blooming about Passion-tide. Some say that\n   it was on a tree of this species that Judas hanged himself.]\n\n{808}\n\nOn the southern side of the Tagus are to be seen scattered here and there\npleasantly enough among the green hills various white-walled\n_quintas_, or country farm-houses and villas. There is also, facing\nLisbon, a small town of three or four thousand inhabitants. A little lower\ndown toward the sea, on the same side, is the new Lazaretto, or building\nfor quarantine--a certainly not very inviting abode, all white and yellow,\nwithout a particle of verdure or a square inch of shade about it. The\nharbor or bay, four or five miles wide, contains ships of almost every\nnation; but chiefly British, for Portugal is now little better than a\ncolony or dependency of England. The Magdalena had no sooner cast anchor\nthan two of the respected clergy of the English college--the college _dos\nInglesinhos_, (of the dear English,) as the people call them--came on\nboard to welcome me. I accompanied them ashore, and visited the college,\nsituated on one of the highest spots of the city. On my way through the\ncustom-house I saw a piece of impertinence committed by one of the\nunderlings in the absence of his principal, which too well indicated the\nlittle respect which is now paid to the holy see in that once so Catholic\nkingdom. A secretary of the Brazilian nunciature, on his way to Rio, had\nlanded with a small bag containing despatches sent by Cardinal Antonelli to\nthe nuncio at Lisbon. Ambassadors' papers are privileged everywhere;\nnevertheless, in spite of the secretary's remonstrances and mine, the said\nunderling broke open one of the sealed packets, and would doubtless have\nproceeded further had not Padre Pedro, of the English college, at that\nmoment arrived, and threatened the insolent _douanier_ with the loss\nof his place. I don't know if the nuncio took any notice of the affair; but\nwhere could such a proceeding have taken place save in Lisbon, or perhaps\nin Florence?\n\nFacing the harbor, in the Pra\u00e7a do Commercio, is a handsome bronze statue\nof one of the former kings of Portugal, whose proud and commanding attitude\nhalf recalled the times when Portugal was mistress of the seas, and her\nadventurous navigators pioneered the way through unknown oceans to\ndiscoveries of stupendous magnitude.\n\nThe English fathers, the Revs. ----, showed me more than ordinary\npoliteness: one of them accompanied me to present sundry letters of\nintroduction I had brought with me to some notable personages of the\ncapital. I was very cordially received everywhere, and could have wished\nthat all the Portuguese resembled these worthy representatives of former\nnational greatness. The Marqueza de F----, among others, appeared to me the\nmodel of a hidalgo's wife, full of grace and dignity, yet of amenity and\npractical good sense. I was particularly struck with her fervid piety,\nworthy of better times. At the house of the Marquess de L----, brother to\nthe Portuguese minister in London, I met the newly consecrated Bishop of\nOporto, who, to an ardent zeal and piety, joined the precious experience of\nthirty years' apostolate in China as a Lazarist missionary. He has since\nmade his voice heard to some purpose in the upper house of the Lisbon\nparliament, strenuously resisting and combating the antichristian measures\nof the Loui\u00e9 ministry.\n\nSome of the churches, of course, I visited, as far at least as the\nshortness of time allowed. They bore for the most part traces of the\nmagnificence and gorgeous piety of other days; but were generally ill kept,\nand but too empty of worshippers. The chapter mass was being chanted when I\nentered the Primatial church; there were very few people assisting; near\nthe door stood some poor women with dead babes laid on benches; they did\nnot seem to be noticed by any one.\n\nIf the exterior aspect of Lisbon is truly magnificent, a nearer view of\nthat capital takes away all illusion. I afterward found this to be the case\nalso with many of the Brazilian cities.\n{809}\nNature has done wonders for most of these towns, but man seems to have made\nit his especial purpose to sully and disfigure everything. If we except\nsome really very fine buildings and noble historic monuments, all in Lisbon\nis squalid, neglected, and ruinous. Most of the streets, rebuilt so lately\nas eighty years ago, after the great earthquake, are narrow, tortuous,\nill-paved, and more than ordinarily dirty and fetid. The same may be said\nof the houses, even of palaces of great noblemen, in which, in spite of\nimposing architectural splendor, and traces of former sumptuousness, the\nolfactory sense is frequently annoyed by indescribable odors of stables or\nworse things. Sanitary commissions would assuredly be driven mad if at work\nin that city for any time. The noisy bustle of a great capital always\ngives, more or less, an appearance of energetic life to its indwellers; but\nafter London, Paris, or even Madrid, Lisbon appears dead. It is the torpid\nmetropolis of a degenerate people.\n\nOn the 21st at sunrise we cast anchor in the fine bay of St. Vincent, one\nof the Cape de Verde Islands, and a coaling station for steamers. It is a\nvolcanic rock of frightful sterility, but possesses a wide, deep, and\nsecure harbor of considerable resort for ships navigating on the African\ncoast. Everything is brought thither from the neighboring island of Sant'\nAntonio--water, oranges, bananas, yams, sugar-canes, and other\nproductions--for the place yields absolutely nothing, save a little\nbrackish water in a couple of wells. Its sole inhabitants are a few score\nof starving-looking negroes, a few lean pigs, fowls, and goats. I saw,\nsoaring high among the mountains, a kind of vulture with a large yellow\nbeak, but wondered where that bird and its possible fellows would find\nanything to eat, unless it came across from the neighboring islands. For\nthere is no sign whatever of vegetation or of wild animal life on this\nspot, where it is said never to rain. The soil is reddish, and perpetually\ncalcined by the intolerable fierceness of an almost equatorial sun. He\nought not to complain of heat in Europe who has once visited St. Vincent.\nOne of my voyaging companions, the secretary of nunciature at Rio, the Rev.\nMonsignore ----, who had come directly from Rome, was sighing and groaning\nunder the oppression of that fiery clime. The good man had, by some\nmischance, left his baggage behind, and had no other clothing to wear but a\nlong black coat of a coarse and thick texture that would have done him fair\nservice amidst the snows of Canada--but here in St. Vincent! He must have\nhad a vivid anticipation of purgatory, I am sure; his distress was very\ncomical, and he could not relieve it by lighter clothing until we reached\nBahia. Far more at their ease were the dozen or two of little blacks,\nperfectly naked, who played on the smooth sandy shore, jumping and tumbling\nin and out of the waves, just like our own children in the new-mown hay at\nhome in the summer-time.\n\nThere may be at St. Vincent four or five score of so-called houses of most\nwretched appearance, a set of stone-built barracks tenanted by a company or\nso of Portuguese soldiers, and a small fort on a hillock, overlooking and\ncommanding the bay. Three or four sickly-looking palm-trees, brought from\nPortugal, endeavor to grow in front of the government house. A small church\nhas recently been built, and is served by a black priest, who managed to\nraise the funds for its erection by begging on board every ship which came\ninto the harbor. To the right on entering the harbor is a mountain of\nsomewhat fantastic form. American imagination has found in its outline some\nresemblance to Washington's profile, and it has in consequence been called\n\"Washington's Head.\" Right in the middle of the entrance of the bay, and\ndarkly outlined against the frowning cliffs of Sant' Antonio, is a tall\nconical rock of remarkable appearance. It is a capital landmark, being seen\nseaward at a very great distance.\n{810}\nWhen we entered the harbor, we found at anchor, among other vessels, a\nlarge Federal steam-frigate, which had been there four months watching the\narrival of the famous Alabama. Within the spacious bay disported two\nwhales, mother and cub, which were pursued for several hours, but in vain,\nby the native fishermen.\n\nWe most gladly bade farewell to the desolate isle of St. Vincent, and\nfairly sailed away for the New World, yet distant from us six or seven\nhundred leagues. The heat now began to be terrific, especially at night in\nthe narrow cabins; but it was moderated most days by a gentle breeze, which\nmade lolling on deck in the evenings truly luxurious. About a day's sail\nfrom St. Vincent I first noticed shoals of flying-fish, though I believe\nthey are to be found in a much more northerly latitude, and in another\nvoyage I saw some off the isle of Palma. They rise from the sea, chiefly in\nthe early morning and when the surface is freshly rippled, in flocks of ten\nto sixty or more, and fly close to the surface, often tipping the crest of\nthe wavelets, and skim along with great velocity for the space of five or\nsix hundred yards, when they plunge again into the deep, raising a speck of\nfoam. These small fish, which are said to be of excellent flavor, are about\nthe size of herrings, and of silvery-gray color. I once or twice saw some\nmuch larger and almost white on the coast of Brazil, between Bahia and Rio\nde Janeiro. They are said to be constantly pursued by the bonita, a large\nfish of the dolphin species, whose hungry maw they try to escape by rising\nout of the water. But although their flight is exceedingly rapid, their\nrelentless enemy cuts its way through the subjacent waves with equal\nswiftness, and is ready for the tiny victims as they drop exhausted into\nthe sea. There appear to be prodigious numbers of them all over the ocean;\nand nearer the coast of Africa the sea is sometimes covered for miles and\nmiles with their spawn lying on the smooth surface like the duck-weed of\nour ponds. In this latitude, and for many days, I also noticed swimming\nalong in the smooth transparent waters the gay-looking dorado, a large fish\nvividly reflecting the sun's rays from its scaly back, all over green and\ngold. Sharks I was anxious to see, but none appeared throughout the voyage;\nscared away, I should imagine, by the noise and turmoil of the\npaddle-wheels.\n\nWe had fallen into the region of the trade-winds, which blew steadily from\nthe north-east, wafting us rapidly over the middle Atlantic; we were eight\ndays reaching Pernambuco. I was surprised to meet with so few ships on the\nway, yet we must have crossed the high road of a great multitude of vessels\noutward or homeward bound. This apparent scarcity of ships gave me a vivid\nidea of the immensity of the ocean, on whose pathless surface so many sail\nwander, lost like imperceptible specks of dust on the plain. In this great\nsolitude, life on board ship is monotonous enough, and by its wearisomeness\nalmost justifies the snarling saying of Dr. Johnson: \"Sir, I would rather\nbe in jail than on board of a ship, where you have the confinement of a\nprison together with the chance of being drowned.\" Want of space, even in\nthe largest vessels, the impossibility of applying one's self to serious\noccupation, to study, or to prayer, for want of quiet solitude, and also on\naccount of the rolling of the ship, which greatly fatigues the head--all\nthis makes one sigh for the end of the voyage, and find a lively interest\nin the most trifling occurrences--the passing of a distant sail, the\nflight of a bird, and so forth. It is especially in the evenings--and they\nare long ones in the tropics--that time appears heavy, unless one be\ninclined to enter into all the frivolous and noisy amusements set on foot\nto beguile weariness. The passengers dance, play games, improvise concerts,\nand especially eat and drink enormously, and almost all day long. How\nwearisome former sea-voyages must have been, which lasted many months,\nsometimes even several years! It is related, for example, in Captain Cook's\nvoyages that some of his crew once lost their wits for joy on seeing the\nland they had not beheld for eighteen months.\n\n{811}\n\nA few degrees before we crossed the line, the sky became overcast with\nheavy dark clouds, which French sailors call \"_le pot du noir_\" and\nour English tars \"the doldrums;\" the barometer ceased to indicate any\natmospheric changes. It was on the 26th, in the evening, we passed the\nequator, and for more than forty hours we had violent squalls and\noccasional tremendous downpourings, which made us all uncomfortable: for\nstaying on deck was out of the question, and the heat below was very\noppressive. Flocks of a species of large wild goose, which came flying\nround the ship, announced the proximity of the land; and on the 28th toward\ndusk we passed off the rocky and picturesque island of Fernando de Noro\u00f1ha.\nIt was at too great a distance to distinguish anything, but it is said to\ncontain features of great natural beauty. This island is now used as a\nplace of transportation for the convicts of Brazil. These were formerly\ndetained in the southern island of Sancta Catharina; but that spot afforded\nthe prisoners too many facilities of escape, being so near the mainland,\nand within easy reach of the foreign state of the Banda Oriental. I could\ncollect but meagre notions concerning the number and the lot of the unhappy\nconvicts, mostly all blacks, who have only exchanged one kind of slavery\nand labor for another. In most cases, when the crime committed has not been\nof the most heinous nature, the convict after a year or two's confinement\nis drafted into the army or navy. I have heard officers of both services\nbitterly complain of this system. The island of Noro\u00f1ha is mountainous, and\ndifficult of access.\n\nAt last, on Sunday, March the 29th, at sunrise, we touched the New World,\nand the Magdalena cast anchor in Pernambuco roads, about three miles from\nthe land, for the harbor, whose entrance is narrow besides, is inaccessible\nto ships of large tonnage. The fishermen of this place boldly navigate in\nthose roads, and sometimes many leagues into the offing, on strange-looking\nand perilous rafts made of a few crossed bamboo-sticks, somewhat resembling\nthe catamarans used at Madras. It is inconceivable how those daring sailors\nare not devoured by the sharks off those flimsy machines, which the least\nwave upsets. It does not much concern them when this happens, for they all\nswim like fishes, and the tiny craft is soon put to rights again. There is,\nhowever, a tradition in the port that once upon a time a man was snatched\noff his dancing catamaran by a monstrous shark, which devoured him before\nthe eyes of his affrighted companions. Pernambuco is a place of great\ntrade, the third city in the Brazils for population and the importance of\nits productions: it is one of the great sugar-markets of the world. It\npossesses some good churches and public buildings, and a school of law, the\nfirst in the empire, where Pombalist and Jansenistic traditions have\nobtained much less adhesion than at Sao Paolo or Bahia. A thesis was\nmaintained there with great applause a short time ago, which astonished all\nthe lawyers of Brazil, namely, that the pope needed not a general council\nto decide infallibly any doctrine of faith; his _ipse dixit_ was\nsufficient; and all true Catholics ought at once to bow interiorly and\nexteriorly to it as to the word of Christ himself. This was probably the\nfirst time this had been so boldly proclaimed in South America since the\nbanishment of the Society of Jesus.\n\nThe town is cut up by a number of lagoons, crossed over by bridges like at\nVenice; and its first aspect from the sea reminds one very much of Hamburg.\nThere is, of course, the difference of a glowing sky and large tropical\nvegetation. The land lies low, and the presumption is that it must be\nunhealthy; but it is not so, I believe, owing to the regular sea-breezes,\nwhich greatly cool the air and dissipate the vapors. The heat cannot but be\nintense at times on a spot only six or seven degrees south of the line.\n\n{812}\n\nIt is not always easy to land at Pernambuco, for the entrance of the harbor\ndoes not give more than fifteen or sixteen feet of water in the best tides;\nand there lies across it, and for hundreds of miles up and down and\nparallel with the coast, a dangerous low coral-reef, against which the\nmighty Atlantic waves dash with fury. This reef, which in many places\nbarely rises above the surface, would prove an excellent defence against\ninvasion; but it was not apparently thought sufficient in former times, for\nthere stands on the beach to the north of the town a square bastioned fort,\nbuilt by the Dutch under Maurice of Nassau when they occupied the country\nat the beginning of the seventeenth century. To the north of this again, on\na bold rocky hill, is situated the ancient city of Olinda, so called from\nthe exclamations of the first Portuguese discoverers when this enchanting\nland broke upon their sight: \"O linda terra! lindos outeiros!\" \"O beautiful\ncountry, charming hills!\" It was formerly a bishop's see and the capital of\nthe country. It contains several churches and convents, as well as old\nresidences of governors and magnates, of a rather massive and imposing\narchitecture. The surrounding country is one vast forest of palm,\ncocoa-nut, and other trees of the torrid zone. There are many flourishing\nsugar and coffee plantations, surrounded by nopal and banana groves, and a\nmultitude of superb creepers, amidst whose luxuriant growth and glowing\nflowers rise the white-walled houses of the owners. As we rode along, we\npurchased some pine-apples and mangoes of immense size and exquisite\nflavor. When we returned on board, numbers of Pernambuco boatmen surrounded\nthe ship with loads of oranges and bananas for sale, as well as tame\nparrots and monkeys; but none of them, with the fear of the sharks before\ntheir eyes, would imitate the blacks, whom we had seen at St. Vincent\ndiving into the sea, nine or ten fathom deep, to pick up small pieces of\nmoney which the passengers would throw in, to witness their astonishing\npower of swimming.\n\nFrom Pernambuco to Bahia we had thirty-six hours' passage. We were not\nnearer the land than ten or twelve leagues, the Royal Mail Company\nforbidding their commanders of ships to hug the coast any closer. On the\n30th of March, about noon, we met the fine steamer La Navarre, of the\nFrench Messageries Company, on its way to Bordeaux. It was crammed full of\npassengers, among whom I saw several Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul. These\nvenerable religious women serve various hospitals in the Brazils--at Bahia,\nRio de Janeiro, and other places. They are everywhere, I need not say,\nworthy of their holy founder and of their country. They have not escaped,\nhowever, in this New World the calumnies and persecutions which they have\nhad to endure in some parts of Europe, and notably in Portugal and\nPiedmont. Almost the first Brazilian journal I saw contained an infamous\ndiatribe against them; but they would very likely themselves prefer\ncontumely to honor, as assimilating them more perfectly to their Divine\nLord, the Man of Sorrows.\n\nAt a very early hour on the 31st we doubled the point which juts out on the\nright of the harbor of Bahia, and the ship fired a gun to announce our\narrival. No description can convey a true idea of the beauty of this\ncelebrated bay--Bahia de todos os Sanctos, that is, \"All Saints' Bay.\"\nCovered to the water's edge with a glowing and gigantic vegetation, the\nhills which rise above the roadstead are dotted with pretty-looking villas,\nthe residences of the city merchants. It was the commencement of what is\nhere called winter; yet I saw everywhere a superabundance of flowers,\nespecially of roses. Trees with strange forms, fruits yet more strange, a\nteeming population, two thirds of which at least was composed of negroes,\nthe odd cries and barbarous howlings of these blacks as they hawked their\nwares or carried, to the number of ten or twelve together, huge burdens\nswung on the middle of long poles--everything was of a sort to interest a\nstranger.\n{813}\nCarriages there were none, or very few at least; for the city, being built\non the steep slope of an abrupt cliff, has no level surface anywhere in its\nstreets, most of which resemble very much the queer uphill lanes leading to\nFourvi\u00e8res in the city of Lyons. The intense heat of the atmosphere made me\ngive up the design I had entertained of visiting the town entirely on foot.\nI hired a kind of bath-chair, of which there are long stands about, and two\nstout negroes conveyed me successively to the various churches and the\npublic garden of the city. These chairs are very ingeniously contrived to\nexclude the sun and admit the air, as well as to preserve absolute privacy\nwithin them. They swing on a long pole fore and aft, which the blacks carry\non their shoulder; but this pole is shaped like an elongated S, to secure\nthe sitter's equilibrium, which would be unpleasantly disturbed by the\nsee-saw tread of the bearers. Notwithstanding the little exercise I took,\nan abundant perspiration ran from every pore. It was therefore with\nexquisite pleasure that I came to a house where for a few _vintems_ (\nfew pence) I could exchange my stewing state for the coolness of a\nshower-bath. I had previously been told to use the necessary precaution--\nthat is, to rub a small quantity of caixa\u00e7a, or rum, over my body before\ncoming in contact with the water.\n\nThe trade of Bahia appears considerable, and is entirely carried on in the\nlower town, which stretches along the water-side on the north for more than\na league, nearly to the western-most point of the outer bay, crowned by a\ncelebrated sanctuary dedicated to Nossa Se\u00f1hora do Bom-Fim--Our Lady of the\nHappy Death. On the eastern promontory of the harbor, on the summit of a\nbold hill looking upon the Atlantic, is the oldest religious building,\nperhaps, in all South America. It is the now ruinous church built by an\nIndian princess, the first of her race who embraced the faith of Christ.\nThe beach below was often hallowed by the footsteps of the venerable Father\nAnchieta, the apostle of Brazil, who would bare his breast to the\nsea-breeze to cool the ardor which consumed him for the salvation of souls,\nand write with a stick on the sand of the shore the beautiful Latin verses\nhe daily composed in honor of the Blessed Mother of God. The blacks still\ncross themselves at the mention of Padre Anchieta's name, and the country\nstill abounds with traces and monuments of his zeal and wonderful sanctity.\nThe numerous churches of Bahia are generally very richly decorated, but not\ncleanly kept. I saw some large black rats running across the altar of one\nof them, most profusely adorned with gilt carving. It was a church\ndedicated to St. Benedict the Moor, a negro saint from Africa, a monk of\nthe Franciscan order, who lived and died in Sicily, and it is exclusively\nused by the blacks. A negro priest was loitering about its precincts, and\nwhen I told him of the boldness of the aforesaid rats, \"We cannot help it,\nSe\u00f1or Padre-mestre.\" he answered; \"their numbers are so great we cannot\ndestroy them.\" The churches have no seats; the men stand round by the side\nwalls, and the women _squat_ down on the middle wooden floor.\nSometimes, and when the floor is of stone, the ladies are accompanied to\nchurch by a female slave carrying a small square carpet, which she lays\ndown for her mistress to sit upon. I saw again here in the cathedral what I\nhad already seen in Lisbon: on a wooden bench near the holy-water vessel\nclose to the door lay several dead babies, shrouded up with the exception\nof the face, and covered with fresh flowers. The mothers were waiting hard\nby until a priest should come to recite the funeral prayers. I had at first\nmistaken these little corpses for waxen _exvotos_. Thus adorned, death\nhad nothing sad or repulsive about it, especially when I thought that\nthese, were the remains of little angels--_anji\u00f1hos_ they call them\nin Brazil--who had flown to heaven with the purity of their baptismal\ninnocence.\n\n{814}\n\nThe negroes of Bahia are numerous, and the finest in the Brazils. I admire\ntheir robust frames, and the seeming indifference with which they carried\nalmost Titanic loads beneath such a burning sun. The landing-place is a\nperfect Babel; these blacks are so loquacious, and they, moreover, seem to\nthink it adds to their importance to shout as loud as their rough, powerful\nthroats will let them. I have never heard a negro speak to another in a\nquiet, subdued way. Why should they, indeed? They never attain the sober\nsense of manhood; they are a mere set of noisy, overgrown children. We had\nhad as a fellow-passenger by the Magdalena, as far as Bahia, a Mr. B----, a\nlittle, old Scotchman, long settled in the province of Minasgeraes, who\ntook no small pride in exhibiting a snow-white beard almost a yard in\nlength, and a plentiful crop of hair of the same venerable hue. A sprightly\nEnglish youth, who was one of the first to land, spread the report among\nthe blacks that we had on board the famous \"Wandering Jew.\" Our ship was\nsoon surrounded by a multitude of boats crammed full of woolly heads, and,\nwhen the luckless Scotchman landed, he was, to his dismay, escorted\neverywhere by a long procession of shouting and screaming blackies. We\nthought he paid rather dear for his eccentricity.\n\nThe market, which was near the landing-place, was abundantly supplied with\neatables of every kind; poultry, kids, lambs, sucking-pigs, all alive, and\nbleating, squeaking, clucking their best; a great variety of fish and\nfruits; oranges of huge size, called there _seleitas_; water-melons,\nwith the red, cool pulp; mangoes, bananas, jacas, a sort of large pumpkins\nwhich grow on tall trees, goiavas, and many more species whose mostly\nIndian names I cannot recollect. With the exception of oranges, limes, and\npine-apples, which are superexcellent, the fruits of Brazil do not at first\nplease a European palate. Those of Europe--owing, I suppose, to careful and\nscientific cultivation--attain a more delicate flavor, if they do not equal\nthe fruits of America in size and color. The same may be said of the\nflowers, which, with greater size and magnificence of color and form, lack,\nfor the most part, the exquisite perfume which our humblest flowers exhale.\n\n------\n\n  Translated.\n\n  Sayings of the Fathers of the Desert.\n\n\nSome brothers came to Abbot Antony, and said: \"We wish to hear a maxim from\nyou by which we may save ourselves.\"\n\nThe father said: \"You hear the Scriptures, that is enough for you.\"\n\n\"But we wish to hear something from you, father.\"\n\n\"You hear,\" replied Abbot Antony, \"Our Lord saying: 'If any man strike you\non the left cheek, turn even the other to him.'\"\n\nSaid they, \"We are not able to do this.\"\n\n\"If you are not able to turn the other cheek, at least bear the one blow\npatiently.\"\n\n\"We cannot do that,\" said they.\n\n\"If you are not strong enough for that, then do not wish to strike more\nthan you are struck.\"\n\n\"Oh!\" said they, \"we cannot even do that.\"\n\nThen the father said to his novice: \"Get ready some pap for these brothers,\nfor they are very weak.\" Then, turning to them, he said: \"If you are not\nable to do even this much, what can I do for you? All that you need is\nprayer.\"\n\n------\n\n{815}\n\n\n  The Two Lovers of Flavia Domitilla.\n\n  By Clonfert.\n\n\n  Chapter IV.\n\n  The Feast of Blood.\n\n\nAbout the year ninety-two of the Christian era, Domitian visited the\ntheatre of the Dacian war. Not daring to show himself to the rebel army, he\nplundered the towns and cities which were left unprotected. Fire and fury\nsurrounded his march; and desolation left its smoking trail behind him.\nCarrying with him the wealth of the pillaged villages, he returned to Rome.\nThe tact and bravery of Julian, who directed the war against the Dacians,\nin a few months brought that warlike race to terms. Officially informed of\ntheir surrender, Domitian, who had never appeared on the battle-field,\ndecreed himself a triumph such as in by-gone ages were awarded only to the\nconquerors of great nations. He pompously ordered the temple of Janus to be\nclosed for the third time, we believe, in his reign. Its gates were left\nopen in time of war. Its closing was a sign that universal peace prevailed\nover the vast area of the Roman empire.\n\nThe temple of Janus was closed. But the peace its silent sanctuary\nrepresented was like the calm of the sea before being lashed into fury by\nthe flapping wings of the tempest. The surface of the social system,\nundisturbed by the rebellion of warring tribes or by the clash of arms, was\noutwardly quiet and even. But the quiet and the evenness were those of the\nstagnant ocean described by the poet as being overhead covered with smiling\nripples and silver sunshine, but underneath filled with filth and\ncorruption and the nameless things bred thereof. Taking the point of view\nchosen by a great saint, we may well exclaim: \"What a spectacle presented\nitself to the eye of the all-seeing Creator as he gazed downward over that\nvast empire! What corruption of truth and justice, of morality and religion\nfilled society and corroded its vitals in all its parts! Rotten and rotting\nsystems of philosophy and the monstrous principles and practices born\nthereof swarmed and spread on every side. It was only natural that the\nwhole corrupted mass would swell and boil with fury as the little yeast of\nChristian truth destined to impregnate and cure it was being infused.\"\n\nThe temple of Janus was closed. But the man who directed the destinies of\nthe empire was ill at ease. The legions in Gaul and Asia were clamoring for\nincreased pay. He had already, in order to secure their fidelity, raised it\nfrom three to four aurei, (about $5.25.) The gigantic and shapeless temples\nand other structures he erected, together with the enormous outlay on\npublic games and festivals, were a continual drain on the treasury. To\nprocure money he had appointed officials of his own choosing to\nsuperintend, increase, and collect the taxes in the provinces and in the\ncity of Rome; creatures like Arthus, who ground the people with iron heel\nuntil they bruised out the last cent from their pockets. Arthus was one of\nthe principal of these tax-imposers and tax-gatherers in the city:\nambitious of rising higher and higher in the imperial favor, and of\nout-distancing his fellow-financiers in the neighboring districts, he spent\nall his time and attention which were not engaged in building up and\npulling down parts of the labyrinthine temple, of which we have in the last\nchapter spoken, in devising plans for raising money.\n{816}\nAfter bath and dinner he was to be seen each day for hours with his hand\nupon his head concocting schemes as to the best and most expeditious way of\nputting his hand in the pockets of the poor, plundered plebeians. The\nclient who came to propitiate the great man by a money-offer was received\nwith courteous words and slippery smiles. But if it were a wretched wife\npleading for a husband and family, whose last obolus was given already, she\nwas received with insult and turned, if not kicked, from the door, carrying\nwith her the fear of the unrelenting tyrant hanging like midnight upon her\nsoul!\n\nThe Jews in these as in our own times had more than an ordinary repute for,\nand possessed more than an ordinary share of, the money-bags. Arthus had\nsuggested a tax to be levied on them for the right of residence in Rome.\nThis proved a mine of supply during many years for the emperor. Another\nsuggestion of Arthus had been an edict of persecution against the\nChristians, which would at once enable the cunning official to seize on and\nconfiscate all their property. The exhausted condition of the treasury,\ntogether with what we are about relating, combined in bringing forth the\nedict.\n\nAt an early hour of the day, in the morning of which we have seen Aurelian\nat the Christian meeting, he sought the imperial palace. He had not changed\nhis dress of the day before, and he betrayed by his hurried step and\nrestless eye the deep excitement of his feelings.\n\nWhen admitted into the emperor's presence, he described what he had\nwitnessed in the catacombs. The number and the rank in society of those\npresent at the Christian assemblage were painted in colors heightened by\nhis imagination and fears. The words of consecration which he had heard\nwere instanced as undeniable proof of the truth of the rumors circulated\nabout the murder of infants and participation of human blood and flesh by\nthe Christians, The marriage of Flavia and Vitus, as Aurelian believed, was\ndepicted, as well as the part which Theodore, Priscilla, and Clement took\nin solemnizing it. The emperor seemed wholly overwhelmed. By nature and\nhabit of a very nervous temperament, he was overcome with vague terrors on\ndiscovering himself surrounded in his very palace and family by traitors.\nVitus and Priscilla! the two most trusted inmates of his household, the\nmost punctual in the discharge of their duties, and the most faithful, as\nhe thought, to his own person! They to be infected with this Christian\npoison, and principal sharers in these bloody orgies! After them it was\neasy to belive that many more of his servants and friends were followers\nand supporters of Christ. Perhaps at that very moment the plots planned in\nthose sacred meetings were at work against his life and crown! Might it not\nbe a clever manoeuvre to have thus entrapped and drugged Flavia in order\nthat, through her popularity and that of her uncle, the Roman people would\nwillingly see the sceptre wrested from his hand and placed in that of the\nChristian whom she would espouse? Such were the reflections of Domitian in\nlistening to Aurelian's narrative. His full, red face grew fuller and\nredder; his eyebrows lowered and drew the small eyes deeper under; and his\nvoice, always husky and rough, sounded more huskily and roughly as it fell\nin short syllables on the ear:\n\n\"By the gods--who guard the Roman capitol and state--Aurelian--we must burn\nout this nest of insects--crawling in the earth--and seeking to sting us\nin our very palace--\" He paused for breath, which came and went in\nasthmatic style, between groups of three or four words. Striking a gong, he\nordered one of the courtiers to send for Arthus. But that obsequious\nfunctionary was already in attendance at the palace and soon appeared. With\na peculiar, twitching motion of the hands, and feet, and head, and with\ndress swaying in unison with the nervous motion of his body, Arthus\napproached and knelt before Domitian.\n\n{817}\n\n\"Arthus!\" said the latter, \"before the vesper hour--let the edict already\ndrafted against the Christians--be posted in the plain of Mars and let\ncopies of it be sent to the Asiatic, Gallic, and African cities!\" Then\naddressing Aurelian, \"We shall ourselves--send a guard for the\nladies--Theodora and Flavia--as well as for Clement and the others--you\nmentioned, and have them with Vitus and Priscilla--examined and punished\nin our own presence.\"\n\nOn the evening of the 25th of December, the tablets on which the edict was\ngraven were placed in the Campius Martins. Then there arose through the\ncity sounds of commotion and woe, such as might arise if it were besieged\nby a hostile army, or if the Gauls were once again calling for the\nsurrender of its keys. There was a hurrying to and fro of citizens in fear\nor in fury, of soldiers and civic officials, of informers, accusers, and\naccused, many of whom were before night dragged from their peaceful hearths\nand families to the public tribunals. Many Christians were also put to\ndeath. Through the darkness, as it fell like a pall on that scene of\nexcitement and suffering, the yelling of the mob was heard for many miles\nas they surged through the streets and assailed the houses of the\nsuspected. The thirst for plunder and for blood, the awful rumors afloat,\nand believed, of the Christian assemblies, and the thousand petty motives\nof jealousy, envy, and hatred by which wicked men are often influenced\nagainst their honest, virtuous neighbors, gave energy to the infuriate\npassions of the populace. Throughout the night and the following days they\ndid not rest from their unhallowed work. Women and children as well as men\nwere seized and carried before the prefect or into the chamber of tortures,\nwhere the brute-crowd shouted and cheered as they saw the martyrs writhing\non the rack or on the gridiron! However, in these crowds were many of the\nfaithful, who watched the death-scene, treasured each word that passed\nbetween the judge and the condemned, and carried away either a sponge\nsoaked in, or a vial filled with, their blood, or some other relics. These\ntrustworthy witnesses wrote down the history of the martyrdom on\nparchment-rolls, which they gave to the secretaries appointed to revise and\ntake care of them. Thus the first Christian Acts of Martyrs were compiled\nand preserved.\n\nAs soon as the edict was posted, troops on horseback and in vehicles were\nseen hastening through the streets and gates, and directing their courses\nalong the Appian, Flaminian, and other roads leading to the north, south,\neast, and west. They carried copies of the edict for the magistrates of the\ncities on their routes, to be set up in the forums and market-places. Some\ntravelled without stopping, save only for rest or refreshment at the\nmilitary _stationes_, or halting-places along the roads at intervals\nof twenty or thirty miles. The _pagi_, or outlying smaller villages\nbuilt about central forts or places of defence, were seldom visited by\nthese couriers; because the _pagani_, or inhabitants of these country\nvillages, were the last to embrace Christianity, and comparatively few of\nthem had been at this early period converted. Quickly and steadily did\nthese messengers of persecution speed on, until the seaports or the\nmountains were reached. Counting the places at which they rested for the\nnight, from ancient itineraries of the great highways north and south and\nwest, we may compute that in ten days the edict was promulgated at\nMarseilles, in fifteen at Corinth, in nineteen in Algiers, and in\ntwenty-four in Ephesus and the remote cities of Asia Minor. Quickly and\nsteadily these messengers of woe sped from Rome to the four quarters of the\nempire; and, as they passed, confusion, agony, and bloodshed were left\nbehind them. Like a stone dropped into calm waters, the bloody edict fell\nupon the empire in an interval of peace.\n{818}\nThe circle of consternation and persecution, like the commotion caused by\nthe stone falling into the tranquil waters, became wider and wider as the\nimperial couriers travelled on, until it surged to the far boundaries of\nthe empire. But, although the servants of the temporal sovereign were thus\nfleet and active, the messengers of the Lord of hosts were not slow or\nidle. Ignotus, the Jewish beggar of the Appian Way, was the first to bring\nword to Pope Clement and the missionaries assembled in the catacombs. The\npope had already made his arrangements; the city had been divided into\nfourteen districts corresponding with its partition under the first\nemperors; and priests, deacons, laymen, and even women were appointed to\nwatch over the several parts, to find admission, if possible, to the\nimprisoned confessors and administer the sacraments and other consolations\nof religion, to note down carefully what took place at their trials and at\ntheir execution, and to obtain their bodies, and, if not, whatever relics\nthey could, in order to their decent preservation in the subterranean\nvaults. Others, principally those who were lame or otherwise maimed, or\ncould easily assume the role of mendicants, were appointed to act as\nmessengers between the city and the catacombs. The more zealous who sighed\nfor martyrdom were restrained and ordered to prepare the niches for the\nbodies of the martyred. The anxieties of the holy pope and missionaries\nwere not for the preservation of their own lives, but for the perseverance\nof the faithful and the conversion of the unbelievers. Prayers for this\ndouble purpose were appointed to be constantly offered in the collects of\nthe mass and at other times. Oh! how those unselfish, heroic men yearned\nfor the time when the cross of Jesus would be emblazoned on the capitol as\na sign that the countless nations and tribes subject to the Roman sway\nbowed their stubborn necks to the mild yoke it symbolized. Health, wealth,\nlife were nothing in their esteem compared with this glorious result.\nClement, in his care of Rome, did not forget the other churches. To the\npriest Andronicus, who was setting out for his post at Ephesus, he\nentrusted a letter to the people of Corinth with regard to practices and\nschisms, which, despite the efforts and letters of St. Paul, still cropped\nup amongst them. Ignotus, the beggarman of the Appian and Latin Crossway,\nhad meantime turned his face toward Ostia, and long before the moon had\ncrossed the meridian he had warned many Christian communities to prepare\nfor the combat. The messengers of Domitian rested for the night; but\nIgnotus never stopped day or night until he reached the mines outside\nOstia, where many Christians were employed. Before the official\nannouncement of the persecution reached the sea, the docks and vessels were\nwatched by anxious believers, clad in many guises of concealment. Many\navailed themselves of the earliest craft to cross to Illyricum, Macedonia,\nGreece, and Asia Minor. In the same way the Christian dwellers beyond the\nAlps and Pyrenees had due warning before the edict arrived. One herald,\nlike Ignotus, was in every place through which he passed, a centre from\nwhich other messengers, like radii, branched out. Thus zeal and charity\ngave wings to the humble followers of Christ, with which the wealth and\npower of imperial Rome were not able to arm its servants. Thus, too,\nChristendom was prepared, as well as it could be, before the vultures\npounced upon its entrails. That preparation consisted to a great extent in\nsecreting the rolls of the sacred Scriptures and the consecrated vessels,\nso that the persecutors might not seize on or desecrate them.\n\nAfter leaving the Christian assemblage, Sisinnius with his two companions\nreturned to Aurelian's villa, and retired to take a few hours' rest. When\nhe awoke, he was told that Aurelian had driven to Rome.\n{819}\nReturning alone, he mused, as he passed through the fields between the\nLatin and Appian roads, on the events of the previous evening, and\ndetermined to say nothing, until he saw how things went on, to his wife or\nFlavia about what he had witnessed. He found both in the family parlor.\nThere was nothing in their appearance to betray their vigils of the night\nbefore, no sign of weariness or excitement. Flavia wore on her head the\nwhite veil, and on her finger the ring, with which Clement had invested\nher. A spirit of peace, joy, and happiness indescribable beamed, like a\nlight through a lamp, through her face and whole being. Theodora seemed\nalso happy. As the husband opened the door of the room, he saw her on her\nknees, and heard his own name mentioned in earnest tones by her as she\nsupplicated God for his conversion and salvation. Standing for a moment in\nthe half-open door-way, he gazed with a feeling of veneration on his young\nwife and her companion, as the rays of the sun slanting through a window\nfell upon their earnest faces and surrounded their kneeling figures with a\nbalmy radiance. Silently and instinctively he joined them in spirit, asking\nfor full light to know and believe the truth.\n\nNeither Sisinnius nor the inmates of his house had heard anything about the\npersecution until twilight, when they were visited by a troop of the\nimperial guard, led by Arthus. With his usual hurried gait and style, that\nfunctionary explained how he had been commissioned by the emperor to escort\nTheodora and Flavia to Domitian's palace. Sisinnius expressed his surprise\nthat it was deemed fitting or necessary to send a guard for noble ladies,\nwhen an invitation or a message would have sufficed.\n\n\"Excuse me, noble Sisinnius, if I arouse your fears or pain your feelings.\nYou are not aware, perhaps, that an edict against the Christians has been\nthis afternoon promulgated from the capital and on the plain of Mars. The\ntwo noble dames have been accused of belonging to the Christian conspiracy,\nand having been present early this morning at their secret meeting!\"\n\nThis was said by Arthus in a tone of malicious insolence, which Sisinnius\nat another time would have subdued with contempt. But the tidings fell like\na lightning-stroke upon him, paralyzed his self possession, and filled him\nwith vague fears for his wife and her young friend.\n\n\"Please to rest,\" he said to Arthus, \"for a few minutes in the atrium while\nthe ladies get ready to accompany you.\" Then re-entering the parlor, he\ncautiously broke to them the news. But it had no effect on them as it had\non him. They glanced smilingly at each other, and exclaimed, \"Thanks to\nGod,\" and announced their readiness to depart. Sisinnius urged Flavia to\nchange her dress; but she declined.\n\n\"But this dress,\" he urged, \"will witness against you and be your\ncondemnation.\"\n\n\"Then I shall retain it. It is my bridal dress: is it fitting for the bride\nto leave it aside when going to meet her spouse?\"\n\nAddressing himself to Theodora, he found her of the same mind as Flavia.\n\n\"Alas! my poor wife!\" he exclaimed, embracing her, \"you too are resolved to\ndie! Our lives have hitherto flowed along purely and musically as two\nstreams which unite their currents and go laughing through the summer\nmeadows. But we have reached the edge of a precipice, and may be separated\nfor ever by death. I know the tiger-nature of Domitian. But I must gird\nmyself to propitiate him. Oh! tell me that you will renounce this Christian\nsect! otherwise I have little hope.\"\n\n\"You know not, dear Sisinnius, what, you ask. Death shall not separate\nthose who share in the future resurrection to a glorious immortality. Would\nyou wish your wife to lose her hopes thereof in order to avoid a little\ntemporal punishment? O my husband! I should die happily if I knew that you,\ntoo, had acknowledged the one true God and the Saviour of mankind who died\nto save us from sin and shame. I shall pray with my last breath, with my\nblood, that God may reveal himself to you.\n{820}\nThen we would be again united in the world beyond the grave, never, never\nto be separated! For there is One above\"--she looked and pointed upward,\nand Sisinnius imagined that there was something more than mortal about\nher--\"there is One above who shall hereafter command the elements and force\nthem to deliver up the portions of these mortal bodies that will have\npassed into their possession. Fire and water, earth and air, shall obey his\norder; and the ashes from the urn and the mould in the coffin, and the\ngaseous vapors in which our burned or corrupting flesh may evaporate will\nbe restored; the bones shall stand up joint over joint in the tombs, and\nthe flesh and nerves and sinews shall reclothe them, and the souls shall\nenter the arisen tenements of our bodies, and ascend like Jesus,\ntriumphant, after having despised the sting of temporal death and achieved\nvictory over the grave, to enjoy the unending, ineffable bliss prepared for\nthose especially who by their blood confess him before men. Dear Sisinnius,\nif you be true to your own nature, if you do not stubbornly prevent the\nlight from sinking into your mind and heart, I feel a presentiment that you\nshall know him, and shall then appreciate the littleness of earthly\nsufferings and death when endured for his love! Gladly do I proceed to\nresign the life of my body in order to secure that of my soul, particularly\nwhen it is given for him who for me, and for you, too, my husband,\npermitted himself to be nailed on a cross. With my very blood I shall\nbeseech him to show you how great joy there is in suffering for his name,\nhis person, and his cause. Dearest Lord Jesus!\" she fervently prayed,\nsinking on her knees, \"grant your unworthy servant this grace, and\nstrengthen us in the hour of trial and combat to win the martyrs' fadeless\npalm!\"\n\nSisinnius was affected to tears as he saw such proof of sincere devotion to\nhimself, and at the same time to the religion of Christ. He thought that it\ncould not be the religion it was described to be, when it could thus win\nand fill with happiness spirits so pure, so high, so unconscious of\nwickedness as those of Theodora and Flavia Domitilla.\n\nArthus was impatient. Impatient also was the Emperor Domitian. He was\nwaiting in a large chamber of his palace, where, on an ivory altar, edged\nwith gold, were placed two statues, one of Jupiter and the other of\nhimself. A smoking censer swung in front of the altar, sustained on silver\nchains attached by a pulley to the ceiling. Soldiers with drawn swords\nstood in files along the sides of the room, while nearer to the altar were\nstalwart men, naked to the waist, and holding instruments of torture in\ntheir hands. These were Domitian's favorite gladiators, to utter a word\nagainst any of whom was certain death. Round their arms the veins and\nmuscles swelled like twisted cords. The emperor was seated on a rich\nthrone, the steps of which he at intervals descended and nervously paced\nthe room. Terror sat on many faces as they saw his sunken eyes and knit\nbrows. Terror, too, was in his own heart as he conjured up before his\nimagination the wide-spread and the hidden nature of the Christian\nconspiracy against his throne. Such he assumed it to be. Hence he had now\nsurrounded himself with the gladiators, to whose fidelity and prowess he\nentrusted his safety against the dagger or the poisoned cup. Aurelian had\nbeen commissioned to lead a body of soldiers to the Appian Way, and to\narrest Pope Clement and those with him. But he had returned without finding\nany trace of them, to the great chagrin of himself and the emperor. Those\npresent heard the latter grinding his teeth like small wheels in machinery,\nand muttering broken curses with livid lips.\n\nWhen Sisinnius and his party arrived, they were confronted by Vitus and\nPriscilla.\n\n{821}\n\n\"Flavia Domitilla and Vitus,\" said the emperor, \"stand forth! Is it true,\nVitus, that, despite our known will, you have espoused our ward and cousin\nin the Christian assembly? Can it be that you, so favored, so honored by\nus, have become a traitor to our throne and person?\"\n\n\"My sovereign lord!\" said Vitus, stepping boldly into the centre of the\nhall and making obeisance to the emperor, \"I am not a traitor. On the\ncontrary, I am bound by every motive of loyalty and religion to serve you\nin all things lawful. I appeal to your own experience of me in the past, if\nI have not hitherto acted as became a Roman and an officer of the\nhousehold. Neither, most exalted emperor, is it true that the Lady Flavia\nand I have plighted troth. My troth and faith are plighted to one higher\nand more beautiful than she is; to one who can never know speck, or stain,\nor wrinkle, who has been washed to a spotless whiteness in the blood of the\nLamb!\" As he said this he turned toward Flavia, as if deprecating a seeming\nwant of courtesy.\n\nAt this moment, Aurelian, excited and travel-stained, entered, accompanied\nby the troop of the guard he had led to arrest Pope Clement. The only\nprisoners he brought back were Damian, the missionary from Britain, and\nLucius, one of his own slaves. He had met these two wandering among the\ntombs, but got no trace of others.\n\nDomitian, motioning Aurelian to a place near Vitus and Flavia, asked the\nlatter:\n\n\"Is this true, Flavia Domitilla, which Vitus says?\"\n\n\"It is, my lord!\" she answered, in a low, tremulous voice.\n\n\"What sayest thou, Senator Aurelian? I trust you have not, through\njealousy, led us to offer indignity to gentle ladies of rank! If so, by our\ncrown, the high favor in which you have stood shall not save you from due\natonement.\"\n\nAurelian was confused and confounded by this address, the cause of which he\ndid not well comprehend. One circumstance, however, worked in his favor:\nFlavia's white veil. The emperor, remarking it, asked:\n\n\"What mean these flowing robes of white? They seem more a festive costume\nthan an evening dress.\"\n\nShe answered not. But Aurelian, having recovered his presence of mind,\nsaid:\n\n\"Was I not right, O mighty potentate? This is the bridal garment she wore\nlast night when she was married to Vitus, after being drugged with a cup of\nhuman blood! See! the influence of that drug is upon her yet.\"\n\n\"Answer me, Flavia Domitilla, truly. Have you been in the secret meeting of\nthe Christians last night?\"\n\n\"I have,\" she replied, with firm voice and unflinching eye.\n\n\"Have you withdrawn the faith you gave Aurelian by our desire, and bestowed\nit on another?\"\n\n\"I have.\"\n\n\"To whom? to Vitus?\"\n\n\"No! but to One more beautiful, more lovable, more glorious than Vitus, or\nthan any earthly being; to One whose wisdom outdistances the accumulated\nlore of sages and philosophers; to One whose years are not counted by the\nsands on the ocean's shores, by the grass blades clothing the earth, or the\nwater-drops in the encircling seas; yet whose youth is greener, fresher,\nsofter, and more lovely than the eye of man has rested on or the fancy of\npoet has pictured; to One whose sceptre rules the nations of the earth and\nall things therein, the islands of the deep and all things thereon, whose\nmessengers guide the stars in their courses, whose beauty and majesty are\nfaintly mirrored in the universe, and whose love for me is so great that he\nleft all these aside and became a servant in order that he might suffer and\ndie for me, and thus free me from the clutches of a tyrant! Yes, O emperor!\nI have plighted my faith, and hope, and love, my body and my soul, my\npresent and my future, to my God and my Redeemer, Jesus Christ! He is my\nglorious spouse, and I am his accepted bride.\n{822}\nBehold the garments in which I have been betrothed to him!\" As she spoke\nher face became animated, her voice grew strong and eloquent, her eye\nflashed with courage, her whole bearing gave proof of a soul raised by the\nexcitement of unusual happiness to heroic daring. She stood before the\ncruel tyrant, with hand uplifted to heaven, and the white Ionic veil waving\nround her face like a shifting glory; and might, in the eyes of the heathen\nsoldiers, have passed for the goddess Juno, as described by Virgil, or for\nIris freshly descended from Olympus. But Domitian was not moved by her\nyouth, her eloquence, or her beauty, but bounded from his throne as if\nstung by a serpent when he heard her thus mention the Saviour's name.\n\n\"What! In my presence--to my face--declaring yourself the bride of my worst\nenemy. By the manes of Vespasian and Titus! If you do not offer sacrifice\nto Jupiter and to my divinity, and renounce all connection with this\nCrucified Jew, your head, with all its attractions, shall not long remain\nupon those rounded shoulders!\" He waved his sceptre and directed the\nsoldiers to bring her toward the altar. But she would not raise her hand\ntoward the incense.\n\n\"Never! never!\" she exclaimed, \"by word or act, shall I deny the Lord of\nlords, the God of gods, and acknowledge by the supreme worship of sacrifice\na demon that has usurped his place, or a creature to be a god because he\nsits on an earthly throne. You may force my hand, but you cannot force my\nwill!\"\n\nDomitian was frantic: \"Away with her! away with her! Her family have always\ncrossed my path. Let not her head,\" he turned to the gladiators, \"remain an\ninstant on her body, that her tongue may no longer insult me!\"\n\nA smile rippled over the face of the virgin confessor.\n\n\"See! she smiles, she mocks me! Off with it! off with it! Craven cowards!\ndo you hesitate before a mere woman? Give me that executioner's sword and I\nshall make short work of it. By heavens she is smiling still and calling on\nJesus. Where is he now, God of gods, as you name him? Why does he not come\nforward at his beloved's bidding to resist the power and stay the arm of\nDomitian?\"\n\nAurelian interposed nervously:\n\n\"Most powerful monarch and irresistible deity! she is smiling in joy under\nthe infatuating belief that, when her head is severed from her body, she\nshall be out of your power, freed wholly from my claims upon her, and\nreceived into the kingdom which Jesus promises to all who die for him. Do\nnot allow him to triumph over you, do not gratify her desire of martyrdom;\nbut entrust her to me, that I may make her my own; and then both you and I\nshall have triumphed over those who have driven her into this madness.\"\n\n\"Be it so! Ha, ha! I believe you have taken the right view. See the tears\nglisten in her eyes, and her joy is changed to sadness. But take her hence,\nnever to enter my presence, lest her words excite me to gratify her insane\nlongings. Who are those that drugged her?\"\n\n\"Behold them!\" said Aurelian, pointing to Vitus, Priscilla, Theodora, and\nDamian. \"There were others, too, who took a leading part in the ceremony,\nbut we have not been yet able to arrest them.\"\n\n\"Vitus! come forward and offer sacrifice to the gods!\"\n\n\"I cannot, O mighty emperor! Because there is but one God to whom the honor\nof sacrifice may be paid, and that is Jesus Christ, true God and true Man.\"\n\n\"Are you, my ladies,\" the emperor turned to Priscilla and Theodora, \"of a\nlike disposition?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" was the low but firm answer.\n\n\"Executioners, advance and do your duty by these recusants!\"\n\nSisinnius fell upon his knees before the emperor and pleaded hard for his\nwife's life, pleaded his own long services and fidelity to the imperial\nfamily, pleaded her youth and innocence.\n\n{823}\n\nDomitian at length relaxed.\n\n\"I shall spare her life as I have spared that of Flavia Domitilla, until\nsuch time as will show whether she will return to a better sense or not;\nbut both must be under the surveillance of a guard, whom I shall appoint.\nAs to those others,\" he said pointing to Priscilla and Damian, \"the\ntraitors of my household, I shall make an example of them.\" He gave orders\nin a voice which was not to be disobeyed for the execution of Priscilla and\nVitus, Damian and Lucius, (strangers in whom no one seemed interested;) and\nthe command was obeyed.\n\nAs Domitian saw the heads severed from the shoulders, he gloated over the\nscene with the savage cruelty peculiar to him. Theodora and Flavia covered\ntheir faces and prayed for the victory of the martyrs, managing to saturate\npieces of cloth in the blood.\n\n------\n\n    Original.\n\n\n    The Wasted Vigil\n\n  Alas! what dire mischance is wrought?\n  A Friend was here who gently sought\n  An entrance to my humble cot,\n  Whilst I--O sorrow!--heeded not.\n  In meekest guise he came and went,\n  And I, on trifles vain intent,\n  The joyful greeting still forbore\n  While he was knocking at my door.\n\n  For me he left a regal throne,\n  And came in silence, and alone;\n  No shining guard his steps attend:\n  O earth! hadst ever such a friend?\n  And yet I did not rise to meet\n  Those wearied, patient, wounded feet,\n  Nor did I shield that kingly head\n  On which the chill night-dews were shed.\n\n  Oh! did I wake, or did I sleep,\n  That midnight vigil not to keep?\n  I knew, and yet I heeded not;\n  Methought I heard, and then forgot\n  That he had warned of swift surprise,\n  And only termed the _watchers_ \"wise.\"\n\n  Dear Bridegroom of my soul! return!\n  Bereft of every joy, I mourn:\n  Return! my house, at last, is swept,\n  And where thy feet have stood, I wept.\n  Beloved Guest! I call--I wait;\n  Hope whispers, \"It is not too late.\"\n  Be then that hope no more deferred,\n  Speak to my soul the pardoning word,\n  Then will I list in rapture sweet,\n  And dwell for ever at thy feet!\n\n      Marie.\n      Beaver, Pa.\n\n----\n\n{824}\n\n    From Chambers's Journal.\n\n    Old Paris.\n\n\nAs with men, so with cities. Whenever one of the latter becomes famous, and\nthe eyes of the world are fixed upon it, we desire to know more of it than\nwhat is presented on the surface. A thousand little details, trifling,\nperhaps, in themselves, share in the interest attaching to the whole to\nwhich they belong. And as the most interesting biographies of great men are\nthose which not merely make us acquainted with the prominent features of\ntheir lives--with the great exploits which they achieved--but also follow\nthem into their solitude or home-life, so the most attractive chronicles of\nstates and cities are those which enter into the seemingly unimportant\nminutiae, neglected by the general historian and the compiler of the\nguide-book.\n\nLutetia (_civitas_) Parisiorum is first mentioned in Caesar's\nCommentaries. Lutetia has had various derivations assigned to it, but most\nprobably it is the Latinized form of _Loutouhezi_, the Celtic for \"a\ncity in the midst of waters,\" it having been built on an island in the\nSeine. In the fourth century it received the name of the people whose chief\ncity it was. During the middle ages it was supposed that Francus, a son of\nHector, founded Paris, and also Troyes in Champagne, giving to the former\nthe name of his uncle. In all likelihood, it comes from the Celtic\n_par_ or _bar_, a frontier.\n\nChristianity, according to Gregory of Tours, was first preached to the\nParisians by St. Dionysius, or Denis, in the year 250; and the first synod\nheld in Paris took place in 360, which seems to prove that the Christian\nmissionaries had already made numerous converts there. Paganism, however,\nwas not wholly uprooted until the episcopate of St. Marcellus, who died in\n436, and who, according to a legend, is said to have hurled into the Seine\na frightful dragon which desolated the city, and which, perhaps, was the\nemblem of heathenism.\n\nJulian the Apostate had a great liking for Paris, and spent five winters\nthere. He praises its inhabitants for their intelligence and good conduct,\nand the surrounding vineyards for their excellent produce. An edifice,\nimproperly called the Thermes de Julien, still exists in the Rue de la\nHarpe, which perpetuates his memory, and possibly served as his residence.\nIn his time, the Montagne Ste. Genevi\u00e8ve was a sort of Campus Martius; the\ngardens of the Luxembourg were occupied by a Roman camp, and Roman villas\nlined both sides of the Seine.\n\nThe Merovingians made Paris their capital, and Clovis constantly resided\nthere. His sons, while dividing his states, judged the possession of Paris\nof so great importance that they shared it among themselves, and agreed\nthat none of them should enter it without the consent of the others. Under\nthis dynasty, several of the Parisian churches were founded. Childebert\nbuilt the church of St. Vincent, afterward St. Germain des Pr\u00e9s, the\nvaulting of each window in which was supported by costly pillars of marble.\nPaintings, decorated with gold, covered the ceiling and the walls. The\nroof, composed of plates of gilded bronze, when struck by the rays of the\nsun, dazzled the eyes of beholders with its brilliancy.\n\nUnder Louis VI. and Louis VII. Paris became celebrated for its schools. The\nbest known were the Cathedral School, the school of St. Germain des Pr\u00e9s,\nand that of Ste. Genevi\u00e8ve. At the first mentioned, Guillaume de Champeaux\ntaught theology, and counted among his pupils the well-known Ab\u00e9lard, at\nthe end of the eleventh and beginning of the twelfth century.\n{825}\nIn 1118 Ab\u00e9lard opened on the Montague Ste. Genevi\u00e8ve his famous school,\nwhich soon eclipsed all the others, and at which no less than ten thousand\nscholars attended.\n\nPhilip Augustus, judging that Paris was not sufficiently protected by its\nwalls, caused a tower to be built outside them, on the site of a\n_Louveterie_, or wolf-hunting establishment, from which it received\nthe name of the Louvre. It served at once for a royal residence, a\nfortress, and a state-prison, and was completed, according to the original\nplan, in 1204. It was under this monarch that the streets of Paris were\nfirst paved. One day, while standing at a window of his palace in the city,\nthe mud or filth in the street, shaken by some vehicles which were passing,\nexhaled an unbearable stench, which invaded the royal nostrils. It was then\nthat Philip conceived the project of paving the streets. The work was done\nat the expense of the town, the pavement consisting of rough flagstones,\nabout three feet and a half square, and six inches in thickness.\n\nIt was in this reign, in 1182, that the legate of the holy see consecrated\nthe cathedral of Notre Dame, begun in 1163 by Maurice de Sully, Bishop of\nParis. This immense edifice, however, was not finished till the reign of\nCharles VII. in the fifteenth century. The original flooring of Philip\nAugustus was lately found at eight or nine feet below the surface; and the\nthirteen steps which in his time, it is said, led to the entrance have\ndisappeared. It was under Philip that the municipality of Paris received\nits first developments, and assumed a regular form. Besides the provost,\nwho, as officer of the king, presided over the courts of justice, there was\nthe syndic, nominated by the community of merchants, whose duty it was to\nprotect the commercial interests of the town. He was afterward called the\nprovost of the merchants, and was assisted by _echevins_, who formed\nhis council. Under Philip, this officer acquired many new rights. The\npolice, the streets, the care of public edifices, the administration of the\nlands belonging to the town, passed from the provost of Paris to this\nfunctionary.\n\nPhilip was also the patron of learning. He instituted schools in the Rue du\nFouarre. _Fouarre_, or _foare_, from which is derived the\nexisting _fourrage_, (forage,) is an old French word signifying straw.\nThe scholars in those simple ages sat upon bundles of straw during the\nlectures, and as this custom naturally resulted in the frequent appearance\nof that material in the neighborhood of the schools, the street received\nits title from it. During the middle ages, no traffic was permitted in this\nstreet, in order to obviate any disturbance to the students.\n\nPhilip the Fair founded the parliament of Paris. It held its sessions in\nthe king's palace, (Palais de Justice,) which, in the middle of the\nfifteenth century, was entirely abandoned to it. In this palace was the\nvast hall which served for receiving the homage of vassals, giving audience\nto ambassadors, public festivities, and other occasions of national\ninterest, at one of the extremities of which was an enormous marble table,\nround which sovereigns alone were permitted to sit; and upon which, at\ncertain times of the year, the society of _clercs de la basoche_\n(lawyers' clerks) gave dramatic entertainments of a farcical character.\n\nIn the fourteenth century, as now, Paris was celebrated as the seat of\nfashion in dress, though those dazzling _magasins de nouveaut\u00e9s_ which\nwe now admire there did not then exist. Wearing apparel, as well as other\nmerchandise, was generally sold by criers in the streets. \"They do not\ncease to bray from morning till night,\" writes Guillaume de Villeneuve.\nVenders of all classes swelled the discordant concert. To cry goods for\nsale was the daily special occupation; among others, of the three hundred\nblind men supported by the king, St. Louis. These unfortunates, it seems,\nwere in the habit of performing their duties without guidance, and the\nconsequence was that they frequently came in collision, and gave each other\nsevere contusions.\n\n{826}\n\nThe first stone of the famous Bastille was laid by the provost of Paris, in\nthe reign of Charles V., 1369. That formidable edifice was built for the\npurpose of protecting the king, who had seen his authority braved by the\nParisians while residing in his palace in the city, which on that account\nhe quitted. He frequently dwelt in the Louvre, of which the Bastille was a\npendant, and of which M. Vitet gives the following picturesque description\nas it was in the fourteenth century:\n\n  \"The king caused to be raised outside the moats a number of buildings,\n  useful and ornamental, of a middling height, forming what were then\n  called _basses-cours_, and united to the chateau by gardens of\n  considerable extent. One cannot imagine all the various objects that were\n  heaped together in these dependencies and gardens. Besides lodgings for\n  the officers of the crown, there were a menagerie of lions and panthers,\n  bird-rooms, aviaries for the king's parrots, fish-ponds, basins,\n  labyrinths, tunnels, trellises, leafy pavilions--the favorite decoration!\n  of gardens in the middle ages. These parterres, cut in symmetrical\n  compartments, and thrown in the midst of buildings varying in form and\n  elevation; that chaos of towers and turrets--the former rising heavily\n  from the moats, the latter as if suspended from the walls; that pell-mell\n  of pointed roofs, here covered with lead, there with varnished tiles,\n  some crested with heavy vanes, some with tufts of various colors--all\n  this has no resemblance to a modern palace; but that disorder, these\n  contrasts, which seem to us only barbarously picturesque, appealed quite\n  differently to the imagination in those days, and were not without their\n  grandeur and majesty. These were the bright days of the feudal Louvre,\n  when it was living, peopled, and well cared for.\"\n\nThe space of ground which, until lately, formed the March\u00e9 des Innocents,\nwas, in the middle ages, the principal cemetery of Paris. It was surrounded\nby a sort of vaulted gallery, which was reserved for the corpses of\ndistinguished persons and for dress-makers' shops. Here, in the year 1424,\nthe English, who were then masters of Paris, gave a grand fete of rejoicing\nfor the battle of Verneuil, and indulged in a frightful \"dance of the dead\"\nover the level tombstones. In the middle of the cemetery rose an obelisk,\nsurmounted by a lamp, which alone feebly illumined at night the field of\nthe dead, and animated its solitude. But at sunrise all was\nchanged--daylight brought back with it noise, luxury, and pleasure.\n\nVictor Hugo, in the chapter of his romance, Notre Dame de Paris, entitled\n_Paris \u00e0 vol d'oiseau_, (book iii. chapter ii.,) gives a vivid\ndescription of the town as it was in the fifteenth century. Paris,\naccording to him, was at that time divided into three distinct parts--the\ncity, the university, and the town. The city, occupying the island, was the\noldest and smallest, and was the mother of the other two. \"It stood between\nthese,\" he says, \"like a little, old woman between two tall, handsome\ndaughters.\" The university was on the left bank of the Seine, stretching\nbetween points which at present correspond with the Halles aux Vins and La\nMonnaie. The town, the largest of the three divisions, was on the right\nside of the river. Each of the divisions formed a town, depending for its\ncompleteness upon the others. The city had churches; the town, palaces; the\nuniversity, colleges.\n\nIn 1539, Francis I., having given permission to the Emperor Charles V. to\ntraverse France, entertained the idea of receiving him at the Louvre, which\nunderwent, on that account, a general restoration, according to the style\nof the renaissance; but as soon as the emperor departed, Francis,\nperceiving that the new works were merely of a temporary character,\nresolved to build a new palace on the same site as the former one, and\nconfided its erection to Pierre Lescot.\n{827}\nThe building, begun in 1541, was continued till the death of Henry II. It\nis the finest portion of the Louvre; the south-west angle. When Catherine\nde M\u00e9dicis came into power, she dismissed Lescot, engaged an Italian\narchitect, and caused that wing to be built which advances toward the\nriver.\n\nIn 1564, tired of the Louvre, Catherine bought a piece of ground called the\n_Salboni\u00e8re_, covered with pottery-works, the _Tuileries Saint\nHonor\u00e9_, and commenced the palace which received its name from the\nfabrics which had occupied its site. For six years, the new edifice\nsteadily progressed; but Catherine, having learned from her astrologer,\nRuggieri, that it was her fate to die under the ruins of a house near St.\nGermain, suddenly gave up the works of the Tuileries, because it was in the\nparish of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, and built the H\u00f4tel de Soissons, on the\nsite of the present corn-market.\n\nThe famous Pont-Neuf was begun in 1578, Henry III. laying the first stone.\n\nThe Place Royale was completed in 1612. Here Cardinal Richelieu soon\nafterward built a palace, which he called the Palais Cardinal, but which,\nin a spirit of regal munificence, he presented to his king, Louis XIII.\nThenceforth it became the Palais Royal. Numerous hotels of the\n_noblesse_ sprang up in the same quarter, and with them first appeared\nthere the warehouses for _bijouterie_ and other fancy goods, for which\nthe Palais Royal is at present so celebrated. A writer of that time\nseverely blames the merchants of these shops for permitting their wives to\nflirt with customers--\"all to induce them to buy a fashionable collar, a\nchild's purse, a drachm or two of perfume for the perruques or a boy's\nwooden sword.\" Speaking of perruques, we must not omit to mention that they\nreached their full development at the time of Louis Quatorze. Their most\ncelebrated maker was a M. Binet, from whom they sometimes were called\n_binettes_. They weighed several pounds, sometimes cost a thousand\ncrowns, and rose five or six inches above the brow. The word _binette_\nstill exists in the language of the Paris _gamin_, designating a\nperson with a droll countenance.\n\nThe last insurrection at Paris before the revolution was that called the\n_Fronde_, (sling.) This revolt received its name in a singular manner.\nIn the moat of the town, near Saint Roch, the little boys of the quarter\nused to fight with slings. When the constable appeared, they all took to\ntheir heels. In the disputes of the parliament, a young counsellor,\nBauchaumont, observed the modesty and docility of the members in the\npresence of the king, and their turbulence in his absence. \"They are quiet\njust now,\" said he, \"but, when he is gone, they will sling (_on\nfrondera_) with a will.\" The word remained. The Fronde soon gained the\nwhole town, which eagerly took the side of the insurgents, as the first\ncause of the troubles was a new tax on houses built outside the walls.\nAfterward, when the rebellion was quelled, the Parisians paid dearly for\ntheir share in it. Their privileges were abolished, a royal garrison took\nthe place of their civic guards, and magistrates dependent on the crown,\nthat of the municipal authorities.\n\nDeprived of its independence, it became the sole glory of Paris to be the\nstage on which the splendors of the court of Louis XIV. were revealed. In\n1662, that king gave an idea of what his reign would cost by the famous\n_f\u00e8te du carrousel_, which has left its name to the vast _place_\nbetween the Louvre and the Tuileries. It cost 1,200,000 francs. Gold and\nsilver were employed in so great profusion on the trappings of the horses,\nthat the material of which they were made could not be distinguished from\nthe embroidery with which it was covered. The king and the princes shone\nwith the prodigious quantity of diamonds with which their arms and the\nharness of their horses were covered.\n{828}\nAbout the same time the Tuileries and the Louvre were completed, and a\ngarden was designed for the former by Le N\u00f4tre. The former garden of the\nTuileries, like other ancient French gardens, comprised a strange medley;\namong other objects, it contained a pretty little abode, beside the quay,\nand mysteriously concealed by a thick grove, which Louis XIII. had given to\nhis valet-de-chambre, Renard, who had furnished it with rare and costly\narticles, and had made it a secret rendezvous for young seigneurs, and the\nscene of luxurious _petits soupers_.\n\nIt was in 1669 that Soliman Aga, the Turkish ambassador at the French\ncourt, introduced the use of coffee into Paris. The first caf\u00e9 was opened\nat the _foire_ St. Germain, which was then one of the most frequented\nand fashionable places of resort in the town, and the suppression of which,\ntoward the end of the eighteenth century, went far to destroy the industry\nand commerce of the left bank of the river, to the profit of the right. An\nArmenian named Pascal afterward established a _caf\u00e9_, which was much\nin vogue, called the Manouri, upon the Quai de l'Ecole; and, in 1689, a\nSicilian, Procopio, opened the Caf\u00e9 Procope in the present Rue de\nl'Ancienne Com\u00e9die, which was for long the favorite place of reunion for\nthe _savans_ and _beaux-esprits_ of the period.\n\nBut the caf\u00e9 reminds us that we are leaving Paris in old times for the\nParis of the present, and that we are close upon that blood-written page,\nthe revolution, which divides the chronicles of the former from those of\nthe latter. These notes must not be brought to a conclusion without the\nacknowledgment that from M. Malte-Brun's laborious compilation, La France\nIllustr\u00e9e, they derive whatever archaeological interest they possess.\n\n------\n\n  Original.\n\n  The Churches of Ireland--Ancient and Modern.\n\n\nStudents of Irish topography are sometimes at a loss to account for so many\nnames of places in that island bearing the prefix \"Kil.\" The explanation of\nthis seeming want of inventive nomenclature is that the word Kil is an\nabbreviation or corruption of the vernacular _Cill_, a church; thus,\nKilkenny means the church of St. Canice, or Kenny; Kilmore, the great\nchurch, _more_ meaning, in the Irish, great or large; Kildare, church\nof the oak, from _daire_, oak. In the early ages of Christianity the\nchurch or abbey was to the people of Ireland what the feudal castle or\nwalled town was to the inhabitants of the continent of Europe, at once a\nrallying point in case of danger, and a common centre where learning,\ntrade, and the mechanical arts found teachers and patrons.\n\nThe Irish, before and long after their conversion, were essentially an\nagricultural people, caring little for large towns; and, though insular,\nseem to have neglected foreign commerce, except such as flowed from their\nperiodical incursions in Britain and Gaul, or which necessarily arose out\nof their emigration from the north of Ireland to Scotland. Hence we find\nthat, while most of the inland cities and towns bear the name of some\nfavorite saint or church, the seaports generally owe their origin and name\nto the Danes and Anglo-Normans.\n\n{829}\n\nThe first Catholic churches erected in Ireland, of which we have any\nauthentic account, were three in number, built in the present counties of\nWicklow and Wexford, by Palladius, A.D. 430. It seems that this missionary\nlanded on the Wexford coast in that year, accompanied by four priests, but,\nhaving met with opposition from the Druids and persecution from the local\nchiefs, he returned the following year to Britain, leaving, however, behind\nhim some converts under the care of two of his assistants. We are told by\nthe annalists that, before his departure, he deposited in the church of\nCellfine, some relics of Sts. Peter and Paul and other saints, the sacred\nbooks, and his own writing-tablets, all of which were preserved with great\nveneration for many years afterward.\n\nBut the great church planter in Ireland was Patrick, the son of Potitus,\nwho commenced his task of a nation's conversion, with all the advantages of\na personal knowledge of the people and their language, a matured judgment,\nprofound learning, piety chastened by exile and long-suffering, and an\nunconquerable faith. His first convert after landing, in 432, was a chief\nnamed Dicho, who in proof of his sincerity built, at his own expense, a\nchurch near Lecale, in Down, which was called _Sabhall Padruic_,\n(Patrick's Barn.) Thence the saint proceeded to Tara, in Meath, where, as\nit is well known, he appeared before the monarch Leogaire, and, though his\npreaching made no impression on the heart of that stern pagan, he baptized\nmany of the Druids, poets, and courtiers. By St. Patrick's direction two\nchurches were built in the neighborhood, one at Drumcondrah, and the other\nat Drumshallon, near the present town of Drogheda. Having thus stormed the\nenemy's citadel, he advanced confidently to capture the outworks. He passed\nwestward through Connaught to the sea; thence returning to Ulster, he spent\nsome time in Down, Antrim, Ardmagh, and other northern counties; he next\nvisited the different parts of Leinster, and finally entered the populous\nprovince of Munster, then a separate kingdom, and planted the standard of\nthe cross in the royal city of Cashel. He remained about seven years in\nMunster, when, his mission having been successfully completed, he retraced\nhis steps to his favorite place in Down, in 452. Three years afterward he\nfounded the metropolitan see of Armagh, erected a cathedral on land given\nhim for that purpose by Daire, and thus laid the foundation of the primacy\nof Ireland, and the city of that name. \"Suitable edifices were annexed to\nthe cathedral for the accommodation of the clergy, and adjacent to it were\nseveral religious retreats, in which members of both sexes, forsaking the\nworld, made a sacrifice of all to the Great Author of their existence.\"\n[Footnote 300]\n\n    [Footnote 300: Ecclesiastical History of Ireland, Brenan.]\n\nThe extraordinary success of this great missionary is without a parallel in\nthe history of the church. In the course of twenty years a whole people,\nrulers and princes, men and women, were won over to Christianity, without\nthe shedding of a drop of human blood, or even any serious opposition. Sees\nwere founded in all parts of the island, churches and monasteries built,\nbishops consecrated and priests ordained, and, in fact, the moral and\nsocial condition of the entire population revolutionized. Nor was this a\ntriumph over weak-minded or stolid barbarians, for we find that from his\nneophytes St. Patrick chose his bishops and priests almost exclusively--men\nwhose genius and ability became in the service of the church second only to\nhis own. It might also be supposed that impressions so suddenly produced\nwould be transitory, did we not know how irradicably fixed in the Irish\nheart is the faith he taught and the doctrine he expounded.\n\nThe sees of Ardagh, Clogher, Emly, and Elphin were founded during the\nlife-time of St. Patrick, and fifteen others of lesser note before the\nclose of the century.\n{830}\nThe cathedral of Kildare, second only in extent and magnificence to that of\nArmagh, was built about the year 490, and belonged jointly to the diocesan\nand the nunnery of St. Brigid. It is described as having been divided by a\npartition beyond the sanctuary; the bishop and clergy entering the church\nby a door on the north, and the abbess and her community by a door on the\nsouth side. In all the sees thus founded, cathedrals, churches,\nmonasteries, schools, and nunneries were erected. History records the\nbuilding of twenty-one monasteries and schools of great celebrity in the\nfifth century, besides many others of minor reputation. The schools of Emly\nat one time contained six hundred scholars; those of Louth are said to have\neducated one hundred bishops and three hundred priests, while the great\ninstitution of Mungret contained within its walls six churches, and,\nbesides its scholars, fifteen hundred religious, equally divided into\nlearned preachers, psalmists, and persons devoted to contemplation and\nworks of charity. At this time, also, St. Brigid founded several nunneries,\nthe most celebrated of which was that of Kildare.\n\nThe following century saw seventeen more sees founded and cathedrals built,\nincluding those of Dromore, Ossory, Tuam, Clonfert, and Down; while, to\nmeet the growing demand for Christian education, four principal colleges\nwere erected in different parts of the kingdom--Clonard in Meath, Clonfert\nin Galway, Clonmacnois in Kings county, and Bangor in Down. The number of\nstudents educated in the last mentioned was at one time not less than three\nthousand. Forty-four new monasteries and abbeys are named in the annals of\nthe sixth century, besides many others forgotten in history. Even the place\nwhereon stood the famous monastery of Inniscathy, established at the mouth\nof the Shannon at this period, is now only marked by a small portion of the\nruins of its round tower, while that of Glendaloch, perhaps from its\nromantic surroundings, is somewhat better preserved. Speaking of the ruins\nof the latter as seen some years since, the learned author of the\nEcclesiastical History of Ireland says:\n\n  \"The venerable ruins of Glendaloch, even at this day, present an awful\n  and an interesting picture to the mind of the curious and contemplative\n  stranger. Among these must be noticed the church of the Trinity, standing\n  on a rising ground north of the abbey. The seven churches, which in\n  former days were the pride and glory of Glendaloch, and for which it will\n  be celebrated even when the vestiges now remaining are no more. The\n  Cathedral church, with its curious doors, jambs and lintels, and its\n  round tower, one hundred and ten feet high, rising up in its ancient\n  grandeur amidst the prostrate ruins which surround it. Our Lady's church,\n  the most westward of the seven, and nearly opposite the cathedral, is in\n  ruins; but these very ruins speak volumes, and the scattered monuments,\n  crosses, and inscriptions refresh the memory, and fill the mind with new\n  and painful thoughts. St. Kevin's kitchen, so called, and undoubtedly one\n  of the seven churches, is entire; together with its architraves, fretted\n  arches, and round belfry, forty-five feet high. The finger of time alone\n  and of human neglect seem to have wrought the work of desolation in this\n  part of the building. The Rhefeart, or the Sepulchre of Kings, is\n  rendered famous for having seven kings interred within its walls. The Ivy\n  church stands to the westward, with its unroofed walls overgrown with\n  ivy. The Priory of St. Saviour is a complete ruin. Tampull-na-Skellig, in\n  the recess of the mountain, was formerly called the Temple of the Desert,\n  and whither the austere fathers of the abbey were wont to retire on\n  vigils and days of particular mortification. The celebrated bed of St.\n  Kevin, on the south side of the lough, and hanging perpendicularly at a\n  frightful height over the surface of the waters, is another object in\n  which the mind of the antiquary would be much gratified; and on the same\n  side of the mountain are to be seen the remains of a small stone\n  building, called St. Kevin's cell.\"\n\nThe next two centuries added Ferns, Cork, Killaloe, and eleven other sees,\nwith their cathedrals and churches, and fifty-five principal schools,\nmonasteries, and abbeys. During the ninth and tenth centuries we find only\ntwo sees created, and no mention of additional monasteries or schools. This\nmay be accounted for by the continual incursions of the Northmen, a swarm\nof barbarians whose native element seems to have been the ocean and whose\nonly end and object were bloodshed and rapine.\n{831}\nFrom 807 until the decisive battle of Clontarf in 1012, they perpetrated an\nuninterrupted series of raids on Ireland, and even sometimes held the\nlarger portion of the country in subjection. Landing from their ships at\nremote and undefended points on the coast, they marched stealthily into the\ninterior, marking their paths with the blood of the defenceless\ninhabitants, sparing neither age, sex, nor condition in their fury, and\nbearing off or destroying every species of property. Churches were given to\nthe flames, the relics of the saints stolen or scattered to the winds,\nmonks, nuns, and students put to the sword without mercy or remorse. In one\nof those incursions Bangor was plundered and nine hundred monks\nslaughtered. Armagh was sacked and its cathedral destroyed. Cork, Ferns,\nand Taghmon shared the same fate, while the city of Kildare, its cathedral\nand nunnery were razed, and their inhabitants massacred or carried into\nslavery. Clonmacnois was thirteen times plundered, and scarcely a religious\nhouse on the island but received at least one visit from the sacrilegious\ninvaders.\n\nAfter a long and brilliant career an eclipse seemed to have fallen on the\nchurch in Ireland, her monasteries were in ruins, her priesthood\nslaughtered, and her schools deserted. But the genius of one great man was\nput forth to save the people. Brian, surnamed Boroimhe, King of Munster,\nand monarch of Ireland, after repeated victories drove the Danes out of his\nkingdom, and, finally, by his last great battle, destroyed their power for\never in Ireland. The remnant of the once dreaded enemy, embracing the faith\nof their conquerors, were permitted, upon paying tribute, to settle along\nthe coast for the purpose of foreign traffic. This great king during his\nlong reign did much to reinstate the church in possession of her property,\nand to repair the damages of two centuries of organized plunder, and his\nsuccessors continued to follow his example. Even the converted Danes\nimbibed the prevailing spirit of restitution. The see of Dublin was\nestablished in 1040, and its cathedral, consecrated to the Holy Trinity,\n(now Christ's church,) was built by Bishop Donatus. The see of Waterford\nwas founded in 1096, and its splendid cathedral, also under the invocation\nof the Holy Trinity, erected by Malchus, its first bishop; and the\ncelebrated priory of Selsker, in Wexford, was established by the new\nconverts some few years afterward. The see of Ardfert was founded in the\nmiddle of the eleventh century, and that of Derry about one hundred years\nsubsequently.\n\nIt is reasonable to infer that most of the early Irish ecclesiastical\nstructures of any magnitude were of wood, with perhaps a stone tower or\nstronghold to serve as a depository for sacred vessels, libraries, etc.,\nand for defence in case of actual attack. Dr. Petrie, in his great book on\nRound Towers, produces convincing proofs that these curious specimens of\narchitecture, some seventy of which still remain more or less well\npreserved, were intended for these purposes. Ireland at the time of Saint\nPatrick was densely wooded, oak being predominant, and where so many\nextensive buildings had to be erected in so limited a time no more\nconvenient and suitable, though certainly very destructible, material could\nbe used. This, as well as the ravages of time and foreign invasion, will\nexplain the fact that so many of the sites of our primitive edifices are\nrecognized only by local tradition. The art of building in stone was indeed\nknown in the country before the introduction of Christianity, but it was\nnot generally applied to church purposes till about the beginning of the\ntwelfth century.\n\nWhen Cormac McCulinan was appointed to the see of Cashel, it is recorded\nthat he built a cathedral in that city in the latter part of the ninth\ncentury, which, according to the annals of the priory of the Island of all\nSaints, was not long after rebuilt and consecrated with great ceremony.\n{832}\nWhether the beautiful ruin now called Cormac's chapel owes its origin to\nthe warrior bishop or to a successor of the same name is a mooted question\namong antiquarians, as the records of the succession in this diocese are\nvery imperfect. However, it must have been erected at an early age, for we\nfind that in 1170 Donald O'Brian, King of North Munster, built the\ncathedral of St. Patrick in his royal city of Cashel, and the former church\nof Cormac was converted into a chapter-house, on the south side of the\nchoir. Bishop O'Heden in 1420 repaired and beautified St. Patrick's and\nerected a hall for the vicars choral. In the same year that Donal O'Brian\nbuilt St. Patrick's he also caused to be constructed the beautiful\ncathedral of St. Mary's in Limerick, endowing it liberally, and it existed\nin great splendor until the Reformation, when it shared the general fate of\nall such noble institutions.\n\nThe cathedral of St. Patrick, in Down, was rebuilt on the site of the old\none by St. Malachy in 1138, and forty years afterward was enlarged by one\nof his successors and a namesake. About this time it was dedicated to St.\nPatrick, having been formerly consecrated to the Most Holy Trinity, a\nfavorite name, it would appear, for cathedrals in the early centuries of\nChristianity.\n\nSt. Mary's, at Tuam, was built in 1152, by O'Connor, King of Ireland, and\nBishop O'Hoisin, the first archbishop of that see; in 1260 it was enlarged\nand a new choir added. Finally, it was given over by Henry VIII. to an\napostate named Bodkin.\n\nSt. Columba's, in Derry, was built in 1164, by King Maurice MacLaughlin. It\nalso had to succumb to the reformers who settled in Ulster, and the present\nProtestant cathedral of that town was built on its ruins, by the \"London\nCompany,\" in 1633.\n\nThe majestic cathedral of Kilkenny, dedicated to St. Canice, was commenced\nin 1178, by Bishop Felix O'Dullany, and was finished by Bishop St. Leger in\n1286. Some years later it was altered and beautified by Bishop Ledred, and\nat the time of the Reformation was considered one of the most beautifully\nsituated buildings in Europe.\n\nThe cathedral of the Holy Trinity, in Waterford, was built about the\nbeginning of the eleventh century. Its subsequent fate is thus related by a\nrecent Protestant writer:  [Footnote 301]\n\n    [Footnote 301: Ireland and her Churches, by James Godkin.]\n\n  \"The old cathedral, or rather the oldest part of the first cathedral of\n  Waterford, was built in 1096, by the Ostmen, on their' conversion from\n  paganism; and about two centuries later it was endowed by King John, a\n  dean and chapter having been appointed under the sanction of Innocent\n  III. Endowments of various kinds had accumulated from age to age, till\n  the Reformation, when the old altars were thrown down and the ornaments\n  defaced. During the rebellions and wars that followed, its most costly\n  treasures were carried away, with the brass ornaments of the tombs, the\n  great standing pelican which supported the Bible, the immense\n  candlesticks, six or seven feet high, the great brazen font, which was\n  ascended by three stairs made of solid brass, and various gold and\n  silver-gilt vessels. In 1773 the dean and chapter pronounced the old\n  building so much decayed as to be unsafe for public worship, and\n  unfortunately resolved that the whole pile should be taken down and\n  replaced by a new edifice.\"\n\nIt will be seen that some of those lasting monuments of Irish skill and\npiety were raised subsequent to the English invasion, but the advent of the\nNorman soldiers was destined soon to dry up the springs of public\nmunificence, if not to exterminate the old race, and obliterate the faith\nof St. Patrick. The Anglo-Norman of the twelfth century, though professing\nChristianity, was at heart as much a pagan as the race from which he\nsprung. He was brave, cunning, cruel, and rapacious. His greediness could\nnot withstand any inducement to plunder, even though sacrilege had to be\nadded to robbery; and he generally had courage and skill enough to carry\nout his intentions. He was neither an Englishman nor a Frenchman, but a\ncompound of elements common to the worst classes of both races,\nsuper-induced on the genuine, old northern barbarism. He was, in fact, the\nprototype of the modern filibuster, and, though given to fighting,\npreferred the spoils to the glory of warfare.\n{833}\nLike most of his class in every age and country, he substituted\nsuperstition for religion, and became only generous of his goods when death\nthreatened to snatch them from his grasp. When reduced to Protestantism by\nact of parliament, it is unnecessary to say that even the check of remorse,\nweak as it was, was removed, and the spoliation of gifts given to God and\nhis poor sat as lightly on his conscience as his coronet or crown sat on\nhis head. Consequently, from the landing of Strongbow and his friends until\nthe Reformation, the wars which ensued against the natives were\noccasionally diversified by the plunder of a rich abbey, or the burning of\na church, while now and then we read of an institution being founded by\nsome repentant lord of the Pale, from which all \"mere Irish\" were excluded.\n\nThere were, indeed, a few men who came into Ireland in the track of its\ninvaders, who were men of true piety. Among these may be classed John\nCornin, archbishop of Dublin. It was he who, in 1190, built St. Patrick's\ncollegiate church in that city, and repaired and beautified Holy Trinity;\nSt. Lawrence O'Toole having, eighteen years before, added to its original\ndimensions by building a choir, belfry, and three chapels. Those two noble\nbuildings are still in use by the Protestants of Dublin, and but little\nchanged since their Catholic days. St. Patrick's has been renovated and\nimproved through the liberality of a public-spirited merchant. Though ever\ndear to the Catholic hearts of Dublin for its old memories; its fame, since\nit has fallen into the possession of its present occupants, rests only in\nits association with the name of the gifted and eccentric Swift, whose\nflashes of wit and sly sarcasms were wont to arouse his drowsy\ncongregation.\n\nNotwithstanding the impoverished condition of the people, and the\ninsecurity of life and property, during the wars of the twelfth,\nthirteenth, fourteenth, and early part of the fifteenth centuries, we find\nthe following religious houses established throughout the country: Priories\nof the Canons Regular of St. Augustin, 20; abbeys of the Cistercian order,\n29; convents of the Dominican order, 23; of the Franciscan order, 56; of\nthe Augustan order, 21; of the Carmelite order, 24; commanderies of Knights\nTemplar, 11. This latter order was suppressed about the middle of the\nfourteenth century, and its property given to the Hospitallers.\n\nBut a new era now commenced in the history of the church. To the bitterness\nof national hate were to be added bloody persecution and wholesale\nconfiscation. Henry VIII. had commenced his quarrel with the pope, and,\nwith the vain intention of revenging himself on his holiness, he turned\nreformer, initiated a state religion, and unanimously elected himself head\nof the same. But Henry Tudor had method in his madness, and knew well that\nthe best way to convert his Anglo-Irish subjects was by appealing to their\nold passion for plunder. Accordingly, his lord deputy, St. Ledger, in 1536,\nsummoned, what was in that age called a parliament, and this assembly,\nrepresenting nobody but the hirelings about the deputy, with one fell swoop\nconfiscated three hundred and seventy monasteries and abbeys, whose yearly\nvalue amounted to \u00a332,000, while their movables amounted to more than three\ntimes that amount. A year or two later all religious houses were suppressed\nand their property turned over to the king.\n\nThat this atrocious spoliation of the patrimony of the church and the\nproperty of the poor had not even the pretext of being perpetrated to\nreplenish the treasury of an impoverished, state may be inferred from the\nwords of Ware, who, in his life of this new Defender of the Faith, says:\n\"Henry soon after disposed of the possessions of the religious orders to\nhis nobles, courtiers, and others, reserving to himself certain revenue or\nannual rents.\"\n{834}\nThis exhibition of royal magnificence at once convinced the aforesaid\n\"nobles and courtiers\" that Henry was the veritable Head of the Church, not\nonly in England, but in Ireland also, and they hastened to accept his gifts\nand his new religion with equal alacrity. The cathedrals and churches had\nnow to be disposed of. That portion of the laity described as nobles and\ncourtiers was well provided for, and the clergy had to be satisfied; a new\nreligion, Henry wisely thought, would not look well without churches and a\nhierarchy. Pliant tools of the school of Cranmer and Cromwell were sent\nover from England, who shielded by the military power of the deputy, and\naided by a few apostates of native growth, were fraudulently inducted into\nIrish sees. While Brown, who had become archbishop of Dublin, was burning\nin the public streets the sacred image of our crucified Redeemer, taken\nfrom the abbey of Ballibogan, and the crosier of St. Patrick, rifled from\nHoly Trinity; the lord deputy was \"gutting\" the old cathedral of Down,\nviolating the graves of Ireland's three greatest saints, and destroying\ntheir sacred relics. As these acts did not bring enlightenment to the minds\nof the benighted Catholics, a more general system of devastation was\nadopted. All the churches were seized and their sacred vessels and\nornaments appropriated as legitimate spoils, by the \"reformed clergy,\"\nwhile such of the buildings as were not required for the preachers of the\nnew evangel were converted into barracks or stables. The people, though\ndecimated and dispirited by long and disastrous wars, were too much\nattached to the ancient faith not to resist those iniquitous proceedings;\nbut fire, sword, famine, and pestilence pursued them everywhere, martyred\ntheir priests, and laid their homes and their fields desolate.\n\nWhat Henry commenced, his son, and worthy daughter Elizabeth, followed up;\nCromwell's troopers nearly left the country a desert; and the vacillating\nand treacherous Stuarts added, if possible, to its already degraded\ncondition. So abject was the state of the population in the time of William\nof Orange, that his penal laws, and those of the house of Hanover\nsubsequently enacted, though in themselves most atrocious, were\ncomparatively harmless, so well had the scythe of persecution been wielded\nby their predecessors. Even as late as the middle of the last century, the\nCatholics, still the bulk of the population, were sunk in the most pitiful\nmisery and prostration; their priests churchless and outcasts before the\nlaws, their monks and nuns banished or fled the country; or, if any\nremained of the once splendid institutions of piety and charity, they were\nto be found secreted in the purlieus of the larger towns, stealthily\nattending the sick and consoling, if unable to relieve, the wants of the\npoor. \"No places of public worship were permitted,\" says the author of the\nHistory of Dublin, \"and the clergyman moved his altar-books and everything\nnecessary for the celebration of his religious rites from house to house\namong such of his flock as were enabled in this way to support an itinerant\ndomestic chaplain; while for the poorer part some waste house or stable in\na remote or retired situation was selected, and here the service was\nsilently and secretly performed, unobserved by the public eye.\" Indeed, in\nmany counties the people suffered worse; children were unbaptized, men and\nwomen unmarried, the dying deprived of the last consolations of religion,\nand the poor and infirm left to the cold charity of an unfeeling and\nhostile minority. The force of persecution could go no further. The\nexperiment of conversion by force had been tried with a vengeance, and had\nsignally failed. It was evident that utter extermination or reaction must\nfollow.\n\nFortunately for the honor of humanity it was the latter. God was with his\npeople in their afflictions and hearkened to their prayers. Slowly the\nlight of toleration broke upon the darkened minds of the dominant\nProtestant party, and, though but the merest glimmer at first, gradually\nand steadily gained in intensity.\n{835}\nOne hundred and twenty years ago the first chapel tolerated by law was\npublicly opened in Dublin; the more atrocious of the penal laws fell into\ndisuse; chapels, poor indeed, and monasteries, feeble in their very sense\nof insecurity, commenced to raise their humble heads. Protestant gentlemen\nof liberal views found a voice in the Irish and English parliaments.\nMaynooth and Carlow colleges were established; a great and fearless\nCatholic, O'Connell, arrayed his coreligionists in solid phalanx in defence\nof their rights; and, finally, the British government, abashed at the scorn\nof Christendom, and yielding to fears of internal revolution, consented to\nemancipation. Of the many causes which led to this tardy act of justice the\nmoral effect of religious freedom in the United States and the conduct of\nour Catholic immigrants during the revolution were not among the least\neffective.\n\nTurning from the past with all its varied trials and defeats, it is\npleasant to dwell on the condition of Catholic Ireland of to-day, with its\nchurches, monasteries, colleges, and schools innumerable. Of the city of\nDublin, where the Reformation made its first attacks, and where, at the\nbeginning of the century, there were but a few poor chapels and \"friaries,\"\nwe find the following picture drawn by one who, though not a Catholic nor\nof Catholic sympathies, is too clear-minded to shut his eyes to the actual\ncondition of affairs around him. He says: [Footnote 302]\n\n    [Footnote 302: Ireland and Her Churches. By James Godkin. This very\n    able book has just been published in England, and, though written by a\n    Protestant and a devoted believer in the opinions of that sect, is full\n    of very valuable information regarding the present condition of the\n    Catholics of Ireland.]\n\n  \"There are now thirty-two churches and\n  chapels in Dublin and its vicinity. In the diocese the total number of\n  secular clergy is 287, and of regulars, 125; total, priests, 412. The\n  number of nuns is 1150. Besides the Catholic university, with its ample\n  staff of professors, there are in the diocese six colleges, seven\n  superior schools for boys, fourteen superior schools for ladies, twelve\n  monastic primary schools, forty convent schools, and 200 lay schools,\n  without including those which are under the National Board of Education.\n  The Christian Brothers have 7000 pupils under their instruction, while\n  the schools connected with the convents in the diocese contain 15,000.\n  Besides Maynooth, which is amply endowed by the state, and contains 500\n  or 600 students, all designed for the priesthood, there is the college of\n  All Hallows, at Drumcondra, in which 250 young men are being trained for\n  the foreign mission. The Roman Catholic charities of the city are varied\n  and numerous. There are magnificent hospitals, one of which especially--\n  the Mater Misericordiae--has been not inappropriately called 'The Palace\n  of the Sick Poor'--numerous orphanages, several widows' houses, and other\n  refuges for virtuous women; ragged and industrial schools, night asylums,\n  penitentiaries, reformatories, institutions for the blind and deaf and\n  dumb; institutions for relieving the poor at their own houses, and\n  Christian doctrine fraternities almost innumerable. All these wonderful\n  organizations of religion and charity are supported wholly on the\n  voluntary principle, and they have nearly all sprung into existence\n  within half a century.\"\n\nMiss Fannie Taylor, an English lady, in a recent work entitled Irish Homes\nand Irish Hearts, admirably describes, from personal and minute\nexamination, the efficiency, success, and untiring devotion of the numerous\norders of holy women, whose houses everywhere are to be found in and around\nthe capital. Every conceivable want, every ill that flesh is heir to, finds\nat their busy and gentle hands an alleviation and a soothing remedy. The\ndaughters of the rich are taught their duties to themselves and to society;\nthe children of the poor are gratuitously trained in all the necessary arts\nof life; the orphan has a refuge; the sick are visited and comforted; even\nthe outcast woman, the loathing of the worldly of her own sex, is taken by\nthe hand and gently led back to the path of virtue. Hospitals; asylums for\nthe blind, the deaf and dumb, have been built by them, generally out of\ntheir own slender means; and even the raving maniac and drivelling idiot\nfind a shelter and a home. Wherever death, sickness, poverty, ignorance,\ncrime, or affliction is, there also is to be found the \"sister,\" consoling,\nhelping, teaching, admonishing, always gentle, patient, and cheerful.\n{836}\n\"I would speak,\" said the writer, in her introductory chapter, \"of that\nmarvellous net of religious institutions spread over the land, and of those\ndeeds of charity which in reality form a powerful element in Irish life.\"\nWords as truthful as they are applicable.\n\nFollowing Mr. Godkin in what he calls his \"Inspection of Bishoprics,\"\n(Protestant of course,) we come to the diocese of Ferns, embracing the\ncounty of Wexford. \"Here, then,\" says the inspector, \"is a population that\nseems naturally fitted in a preeminent degree for the reception of\nProtestantism;\" but he found himself mistaken. In the very cradle of\nCatholicity in Ireland he could not find even one out of every ten who even\nprofessed to be Protestants. He is equally surprised at the respect and\nveneration in which our blessed mother was held in this diocese of\n\"industrious, self-reliant, and independent\" men, and acknowledges his\nastonishment gracefully enough:\n\n  \"I had plenty of proofs of this in the town of Wexford, where there are\n  two splendid new churches, with grand towers, built almost exactly alike,\n  in cathedral style; erected also at the same time, and chiefly through\n  the exertions of the same priest. One of them is called the church of the\n  Immaculate Conception, and the other the church of the Assumption; both,\n  therefore, specially dedicated to the Virgin Mary. There could be no\n  mistake about this in the mind of any one visiting these splendid places\n  of worship, which are fitted up admirably with seats to the very doors,\n  finished in the most approved style, and with a degree of taste that\n  would do honor to the best cathedrals in England. Behind the high altar\n  there is a very large window of stained glass, and a similar one of\n  smaller dimensions at each side. To the right is Mary's chapel, with an\n  altar brilliant and gorgeous in the extreme. There is a beautiful statue\n  of the Virgin and Child, before which three lamps were burning during the\n  day, and in the evening eight or nine dozen of candles are lighted, while\n  ten or twelve vases are filled with a variety of flowers, kept constantly\n  fresh, and producing the most brilliant and dazzling effects for the\n  worshippers, who are nearly all attracted to this favorite altar, the\n  beauty and splendor of which throw the altar of Christ completely in the\n  shade. Generally, indeed, the Saviour appears only agonized on the cross,\n  his hands fastened with nails, and the blood flowing from his pierced\n  side, or else lying dead and ghastly in the sepulchre. It is only the\n  Virgin that appears arrayed in beauty, crowned with majesty, and\n  encircled with glory. Her altar in the Wexford church of the Assumption\n  is decorated in the same style as the Immaculate Conception, but not with\n  so much elaboration. Great local sacrifices must have been made for the\n  erection and furnishing of these two churches, with their magnificent\n  towers and spires, but much of the money came from Great Britain and the\n  colonies; and to a question which I put on the subject to my guide, I\n  received for answer that it came 'from all parts of the habitable world.'\n\n  \"But, beautiful as those two new churches are, they are surpassed in\n  internal decorations by the Franciscan church of this town. This is a\n  perfect gem in its way so elegantly painted and ornamented, and so nicely\n  kept, so bright and cheering in its aspect, and evincing such regard to\n  comfort in all its arrangements, that we can easily conceive it to be a\n  very popular and fashionable place of worship. It is not cruciform, but\n  built in the shape of an L. To the left of the principal altar, at the\n  junction of the two portions, stands in impressive prominence the altar\n  of the Virgin Mary, which is covered by an elevated canopy, resting upon\n  white and blue pillars with golden capitals. Upon the altar stands a\n  beautiful marble statue of the Virgin. Three lamps burn constantly before\n  it. One hundred candles are lighted round it in the evening with half a\n  dozen gas-burners. Floral ornaments are in the greatest profusion and\n  variety. There are four large stands on the altar floor, two others\n  higher up on the pedestal, and a number of small vases with bouquets\n  ranged on the altar. The friary attached to the church presents a picture\n  of order, neatness, and cleanliness which seemed to be a reflection of\n  the characteristics of the 'English baronies,' showing how national\n  idiosyncrasies and social circumstances affect religion. In fact, a\n  community of Quakers could not keep their establishment in better order\n  than these Franciscans keep their friary. I observed a great contrast in\n  this respect in the Roman Catholic establishments of Waterford and\n  Thurles. Wexford, indeed, is quite a model town in the Roman Catholic\n  Church. There are three other places of worship besides those already\n  mentioned--the college chapel and the nunnery chapels, and certainly\n  there are no people in the world, perhaps, not excepting the Romans\n  themselves, more abundantly supplied with masses. There is a mass for\n  workingmen at five o'clock in the morning, there are masses daily during\n  the week at later hours, and no less than six or seven on Sundays in each\n  of the principal chapels, or churches as they are now generally called.\n  The college is a large building, and in connection with it is the\n  residence of the bishop, Dr. Furlong.\"\n\n{837}\n\nWhat has here been remarked of Dublin and Ferns may be said with equal\njustice of other parts of Ireland. Kildare and Leighlin has its splendid\ncathedral, the corner-stone of which was laid in Carlow in 1828, by the\ncelebrated Dr. Doyle. Cork has its fine churches, schools, and monasteries.\nOf the cathedral of the diocese of Kerry, Miss Taylor says:\n\n  \"The great ornament of Killarney is the cathedral, the only one I have\n  seen in Ireland worthy of the name. It is one of Pugin's happiest\n  conceptions. The tower is not yet built, and this of course greatly\n  detracts from the beauty of the exterior; but within, the great height of\n  the roof, the noble pillars, the sense of space and grandeur, made one\n  think of some of the beautiful cathedrals of old of our own and foreign\n  lands.\"\n\nIn the archdiocese of Tuam, where some years since the Most Rev. Dr. Kelly,\nthe predecessor of the present patriotic prelate, said that out of one\nhundred and twenty-one places of worship one hundred and six \"were thatched\ncabins,\" there are now three hundred and eighty-seven churches, three\nhundred and eighty-two clergymen, and fifty-four religious houses.\n\nArmagh has again risen from the ashes of the past, and again a beautiful\nmetropolitan cathedral appears on the spot hallowed by St. Patrick. The\ncorner-stone of this beautiful building was laid by the Most Rev. Dr.\nCrolly, primate, on the 17th of March, 1840. The increase of churches in\nthis diocese from 1800 to 1864 has been ninety-three; convents and schools,\ntwenty-four.\n\nSuch is the outward visible sign of the progress of the church in Ireland\nfor the last hundred years. What though the wind sighs mournfully through\nthe broken arches of many a church and cloister, made sacred by the saintly\nmen who prayed and taught fourteen centuries ago; though the fern and the\nivy grow up and cement a thousand crumbling ruins, which in their\ndesolation attest at the same time man's passion and his impotence; let\nthem be as silent teachers of the past and of its glorious memories and\nbitter persecution. But the people of Ireland have the present, they are\nworking not only for themselves, but for the future; and they, too, will be\nknown to after generations by the monuments they are now building as their\nforefathers built; by their churches, convents, and colleges, which shall\nexist, even though in ruins, in the grateful memories of coming ages.\n\n------\n\n{838}\n\n  From The Dublin Review.\n\n  John Tetzel. [Footnote 303]\n\n    [Footnote 303: Tetzel und Luther, oder Lebensgeschichte und\n    Rechtfertigung des Ablasspredigers und Inquisitors, Dr. Johann Tetzel,\n    aus dem Predigerorden. Von Valentin Gr\u00f6ne, Doctor der Theologie. Soest\n    und Olpe. Verlag der Nasse'schen Buchhandlung. 1853. (pp. 237.)]\n\nOf all Luther's contemporary opponents none experienced so much of his\nfoul-mouthed vituperation as the Dominican preacher of indulgences, John\nTetzel--a vituperation which Protestant writers, down to the present day,\nhave not ceased, with unmitigated virulence, to heap upon his memory.\n\nNor have Catholic writers done much to defend Tetzel's calumniated\nreputation. On the contrary, they have in general allowed themselves to be\ndeluded by Protestant prejudice, and so to have abstained from referring,\nin his behalf, to original sources of information. This unworthy course\nthey have pursued as though they viewed Tetzel in the light of a personage\nnot worth quarrelling about, whom, without detriment to the church, they\nmight safely abandon to the enemy, nay, whom it might perhaps be as well\nthus to abandon. They were fully aware that it was not for preaching Pope\nLeo's indulgence that Luther really attacked Tetzel. The indulgence was but\nthe pretext seized by Luther for openly broaching the heretical opinions\nwhich, ever since the year 1515, he had secretly formed. Neither did Luther\nowe his success to the alleged abuses of the papal indulgence. He owed his\nsuccess to the wide-spread moral corruption of his times. Had Leo X.\nproclaimed no indulgence at all, Luther's calamitous Reformation could\nhardly have been prevented.\n\nThree Protestant biographies of John Tetzel have been written in Germany.\nThe earliest, written by Godfried Hecht in Latin, appeared in 1707. About\nthe same time a Life of Tetzel, in German, was published by Jacob Vogel.\nThe third, a compilation of both, is by Friedrich Hoffmann, and appeared at\nLeipsic in 1844. They are all three, more or less, just such _ex\nparte_ productions as might be expected, full of obloquy founded on\ngarbled quotations and falsified facts. The most virulent is Hoffmann's\nbook, the least so Hecht's. In copiousness of original research, Vogel far\nsurpasses Hecht and Hoffmann. As a counterpoise to these biographies the\nCatholic party produced nothing till the year 1817. An anonymous work then\nappeared at Frankfort-on-the-Main, entitled Vertraute Briefe zweier\nKatholiken \u00fcber den Ablass Streit Dr. Martin Luthers wider Dr. Johann\nTetzel. This work is supposed to have been written by a Jesuit, and,\nalthough it contains many strong points in vindication of Tetzel's injured\ncharacter, it would not seem to have had this object so much in view as the\ndefence of the doctrine of indulgences against the attacks made on it by\nreason of the year 1817 being the tercentenary year of the Reformation, and\ncelebrated as such throughout Protestant Germany. What Audin in his Life of\nLuther says in favor of Tetzel proceeds more from feeling than historical\nresearch, and is consequently of inferior importance. Under these\ncircumstances it is gratifying to meet with such a book in defence of\nTetzel as Dr. Valentine Gr\u00f6ne has produced, in which, while he exhibits the\nvilified Dominican as an able, pious, and devoted champion of the holy see,\nin a manner that establishes, his title in future to that character on a\nsolid basis, he also contributes to the history of Luther and the\nReformation a most interesting fund of knowledge and reflection.\n\n{839}\n\nThe true date of Tetzel's birth appears to be unknown. It is conjectured to\nhave fallen a little later than the middle of the fifteenth century. He was\na native of Leipsic, where his father was a citizen and goldsmith. Dr.\nGr\u00f6ne has much to say about the etymology of his family name. But this we\nmay pass over as superfluous. Of Tetzel's boyhood and youth nothing is\nrecorded until the year 1482. It was the year of his matriculation as a\nstudent of the Leipsic university. He is now said to have shown superior\nabilities and great application. For the art of rhetoric he soon evinced a\nstrong predilection. Not content with attending the lectures of Conrad\nKimpina on the theory of declamation, he sought to gain a practical\nknowledge of it by assiduously frequenting the sermons of the Dominicans.\nThis led to his forming an attachment to the order of which, in 1490, he\nbecame a member. Two years before, he had received his bachelor's degree,\nbeing the sixth on a list of fifty candidates.\n\nIn the seclusion of the Dominican convent of St. Paul's, at Leipsic, Tetzel\nrenounced the study of humanities in order to devote himself all the more\nzealously to the writings of the fathers and doctors of the church.\n\nThis course he adopted as the surest means of qualifying himself to become\na preaching friar in the true spirit of St. Dominic. \"The goldsmith's son,\"\nsays Jacob Vogel, \"possessed every requisite to form a public speaker, a\nclear understanding, a good memory, an eloquent tongue, an animated\ndelivery, a manly and sonorous voice, the charm of which was enhanced by a\ntall and slender figure.\"\n\nHis first essays as a preacher were confined to the church of his convent.\nTheir effect was such that his prior, Martin Adam, soon gave him permission\nto preach beyond the convent walls, at the different places belonging to\nits jurisdiction. In Tetzel's day it was still customary not to confer holy\norders until, according to ancient canonical rule, the candidate had\nreached the age of thirty years. This age Tetzel attained before the close\nof the century. He was then ordained priest by Philo von Trotha, Bishop of\nMerseburg. About the same time Pope Alexander VI. proclaimed the great\njubilee. It was the eighth proclamation since the first by Boniface VIII.\nTetzel received from his superiors the appointment to preach the jubilee\nindulgence. He preached it at Leipsic, Zwickau, N\u00fcremberg, Magdeburg,\nG\u00f6rlitz, Halle, and other towns. So well did he perform his duty, that he\nestablished his fame as one of the most powerful popular preachers that had\never appeared in Germany. \"By reason of his extraordinary eloquence,\" says\nGodfried Hecht, \"he acquired great authority over the people, and rose\nhigher and higher in renown.\" Dr. Gr\u00f6ne adverts to various contemporary\nattestations of Tetzel's surprising success with the masses. It was\nascribed to his resounding voice, his richly metaphorical language, and\nlogical clearness.\n\nIn 1504, Pope Julius II. proclaimed an indulgence in favor of the Teutonic\nKnights in Prussia, whom the Russians and Tartars had reduced to great\nstraits. On this occasion Tetzel was again chosen to preach, along with\nChristian Baumhauer, of N\u00fcremberg. He preached the indulgence in Prussia,\nBrandenburg, and Silesia. At the same time the Dominican priory of Glogau,\nbecoming vacant, was offered to him. He was little more than thirty years\nold. \"What stronger proof,\" says Dr. Gr\u00f6ne, \"could be given him of the high\nveneration in which he was held by his order?\" But he did not accept the\ndignity. In the early part of 1507 he returned to Leipsic. On his way he\npreached for the Teutonic Knights at Dresden. So great was the desire to\nhear him that the largest church in the city was found too small for the\ncongregation.\n{840}\nDuke George of Saxony caused him, in consequence, to preach from a window\nof his palace. The same zealous duke, on Tetzel's arrival at Leipsic,\nreceived him outside the gates at the head of the clergy, the civic\nauthorities, and dignitaries of the university, and conducted him in solemn\nprocession to St. Paul's convent. Here Tetzel again retired, a simple\nfriar, to the seclusion of his cell. In 1510, he was employed to preach an\nindulgence of a peculiar sort, granted in aid of building a bridge, with a\nchapel on it, over the Elbe at Torgau. The Saxon princes, being themselves\nshort of funds, and finding the people unwilling to contribute the money\nfor nothing, had obtained in 1491 from Innocent VIII. the indulgence in\nquestion, by which all the faithful in Saxony who should give the twentieth\npart of a gold florin toward the bridge and chapel at Torgau were permitted\nto eat butter and drink milk in lent, on the rogation days, and the vigils\nof feasts, for a term of twenty years. In 1510, Pope Julius II. renewed\nthis indulgence for another twenty years. Such indulgences were not\nunfrequent in the middle ages. In 1310. Pope John XXII., as Dr. Gr\u00f6ne tells\nus, granted an indulgence of forty days toward the erection of the bridge\nat Dresden. When Julius II. died in 1513, the great aspiration of his\nsuccessor, Leo X., was to complete the magnificent temple of Christendom,\nSt. Peter's basilica, begun by Julius in 1506. But Leo found that the wars\nwaged by his high-minded predecessor in defence of St. Peter's patrimony,\nand the independence of Italy, had exhausted the papal treasury. Julius\nhaving raised the funds for laying the foundations of St. Peter's by means\nof an indulgence, Leo resolved to do the like toward the expenses of\nfinishing the work. The bull which he accordingly issued, granting a\nplenary indulgence to all Christendom, reached Germany in 1515. The\ncommission to preach it was given to the Franciscans. For Saxony and the\nnorth of Germany this commission was divided between the guardian of the\nFranciscans of Mentz and Albert of Brandenburg, the newly installed\narchbishop of the city. But the guardian of the Franciscans declining to\nact, the entire commission passed into the hands of the archbishop. It was\nmerely as a special favor that he had been included in the commission at\nall. His grace, in fact, had been obliged to contract a heavy debt with the\nFuggers of Augsburg, the Rothschilds of the day, in order to pay the fees\non his pallium, which, for an archbishop of Mentz, amounted to no less a\nsum than thirty thousand gold florins. As it was not customary for the\narchbishops to pay this sum out of their privy purse, it had to be levied\non the faithful of the diocese. But this had been done twice within the\nlast ten years for the immediate predecessors of Albert of Brandenburg,\nnamely, Archbishops Berthold and James Uriel. To raise the sum a third time\nunder such circumstances seemed impossible without assistance. Wherefore,\nin order to afford relief to his flock, Archbishop Albert had obtained\nleave from Rome to appropriate a portion of the proceeds of the papal\nindulgence in his province toward the payment of his debt. This fact\nsuffices, in Dr. Gr\u00f6ne's opinion, to clear the archbishop from the reproach\nof avarice cast at him by Protestant writers, who have also not failed to\nimpute all sorts of unworthy motives to him for making choice of the\nDominican, John Tetzel, as his chief sub-commissioner, or quaestor, in\npreaching the indulgence. But, says Dr. Gr\u00f6ne, is not the archbishop's\nchoice of Tetzel tantamount to a refutation of the calumnies heaped upon\nhim as one of the vilest, not only of friars, but of men? Archbishop Albert\nproceeded with the greatest caution, and issued very clear and exact\ninstructions, both on the nature of the indulgence, and the manner in which\nit should be preached. Had Tetzel really been the notoriously bad monk\nProtestant writers say he was, how could the archbishop, with the knowledge\nof such a fact, have ventured to choose him at all?\n{841}\nHow could Tetzel be expected to preach with any effect, if, as is asserted,\nhe was a disgrace to his order, a man who did not scruple openly to\nperpetrate the worst excesses? But Archbishop Albert of Mentz had, as we\nhave seen, very particular reasons of his own for promoting as much as\npossible the success of Pope Leo's indulgence, and, accordingly, he made\nchoice of Tetzel as his chief quaestor, not because he thought a coarse,\nsordid monk of infamous reputation the likeliest person he knew of to stir\nup the religious fervor of the people, but because he judged this might\nbest be done by one who, while eminent alike for piety and for zeal in the\ncause of the church and the holy see, enjoyed the renown of being one of\nthe most eloquent preachers then living in Germany. What motive could be\nmore natural, more just, more obvious than this?\n\nTetzel entered on his duties as preacher of the papal indulgence for the\nArchbishop of Mentz with his accustomed zeal and ability. What he had to\nannounce in virtue of the Instructio Summaria of the archbishop was\nsubstantially this: That all persons who repented of, and confessed,\nfasting, their sins, who received holy communion, said certain prayers in\nseven different churches, or before as many altars, and contributed\naccording to their means a donation toward St. Peter's basilica, should\nobtain full remission of the temporal punishment due to their sins, once\nfor their lives, and then as often as they should be in danger of death;\nthat this indulgence might be applied by way of intercession to the souls\nin purgatory, while bedridden people were to be able to obtain it by\ndevoutly confessing and communicating in their chambers before a sacred\nimage or picture.\n\nIn the entire document, says Dr. Gr\u00f6ne, there does not occur a thought\nwhich the church at the present day would hesitate to subscribe. The\nInstructio Summaria further declares, that those who cannot afford a\npecuniary donation are not, therefore, to be denied the grace of the\nindulgence, which seeks not less the salvation of the faithful than the\nadvantage of the basilica. \"Let such as have no money,\" it says, \"replace\ntheir donations by prayer and fasting, for the kingdom of heaven must not\nstand more open to the rich than the poor.\" What a refutation have we here\nof the slanderous clamor against Pope Leo's indulgence as an alleged\ntraffic in sin! With respect to the conduct of Tetzel himself and his\nsubordinates, they are admonished to lead an exemplary life, to avoid\ntaverns, and to abstain from unnecessary expense. That cases of levity\nnevertheless took place, Dr. Gr\u00f6ne admits, but he strenuously denies that\nTetzel gave cause for animadversion. Finally, the Instructio Summaria\ndirected that all indulgences of a particular or local kind should be\ndeclared, in virtue of the pope's bull, as suspended for eight years in\nfavor of the one now granted by his holiness; a declaration which did not\nfail to excite a bitter spirit of opposition and jealousy, especially among\nthe religious orders and confraternities, of which Tetzel had to bear the\nbrunt.\n\nIn the church of All Saints, at Wittenberg, there was a costly shrine of\nrelics resented by the reigning elector Frederic, afterward surnamed the\nWise. At his request Pope Leo X., so recently as 1516, had attached to this\nshrine an indulgence for the yearly festival of All Saints. The offerings\nwhich this indulgence would produce Frederic designed to apply for the\nbenefit of the university which he had founded. Hence, he regarded the\npapal indulgence for St. Peter's at Rome as a grievance, and, but for an\nimperial mandate requiring all the German princes to throw no impediment in\nits way, he would have forbidden its being preached in his territories.\n\n{842}\n\nFrederic, moreover, had a grudge against Rome on the following grounds: The\nholy see had, in compliance with his request, consented to confer on his\nnatural son the coadjutorship to a benefice _in commendam_. But the\ncommendator himself dying when the diploma conferring the coadjutorship had\njust been completed, a new diploma conferring the vacant commendatory had\nto be prepared instead, entailing on Frederic, who was of a very\nparsimonious disposition, the vexatious necessity of having to pay the fees\ntwice over. This he ruminated upon in his sullen way, and set it down in\nhis mind as a conclusive proof of that grasping, overreaching spirit which\nthe enemies of the church in that age accused her of in such exaggerated\nterms. Frederic the Wise was also involved in a dispute with the archbishop\nof Mentz respecting certain territorial rights at Erfurth.\n\nThe Augustinian hermits of Wittenberg sympathized with their munificent\npatron the elector. He permitted them to make use of the funds accruing\nfrom the local indulgence of All Saints toward the expenses of a new\nconvent and church which they had in course of erection. But the temporary\nsuspension of the latter indulgence in favor of the one preached by John\nTetzel for Pope Leo X. and Archbishop Albert inconvenienced and annoyed\nthem all the more, as their buildings were on the point of completion.\nNeither was their ill-will toward Tetzel the less that, in his character as\na Dominican, he was their ardent opponent in the scholastic and theological\ndisputes of the day; and, besides being a preacher of such talent and\ninfluence, was a dignitary of the court of Inquisition at Cologne, where,\nof course, the Dominicans presided.\n\nIn spite of all obstacles, Tetzel preached the indulgence with signal\nsuccess at Leipsic, Magdeburg, Halberstadt, Berlin, and other places. At\nlength, about the end of October. 1517, he arrived at Y\u00fcterbock, near\nWittenberg, just at the time for gaining the special indulgence of All\nSaints. In vain the Augustinians secretly did what they could to prevent\nthe people from flocking to hear him. The very students of the new\nWittenberg university, expressly founded as it was as a rival to that of\nLeipsic, deserted the lecture-halls in such numbers that the professors\nwere filled with alarm and indignation. In particular, Dr. Martin Luther\nwas exasperated to find himself so completely eclipsed by the proximity of\nTetzel, against whom he fruitlessly inveighed in the temporary church of\nthe Augustinian hermits. Even his own penitents, regardless of his\nadmonitions and refusals of absolution, forsook his confessional to obtain\nthe indulgence proclaimed at Y\u00fcterbock. All at once they seemed to forget\nthe maxims he had taken so much pains to instil into their minds respecting\ndivine grace and good works! Long had he waited for an opportunity to\nbroach his new doctrine openly, and he and his disciples resolved that now\nor never was the time to do so.\n\nAccordingly, on the 31st of October Luther posted up his famous ninety-five\ntheses at the door of All Saints' church in Wittenberg, and challenged all\nthe world to dispute with him on the doctrine they maintained. Ostensibly\nthey were levelled against the alleged abuses of the papal indulgence. But\nattacks on the doctrine itself, as well as on the authority of the pope,\nwere insidiously intermingled with them.\n\n  \"Not the affair of the indulgence, not Tetzel, not the corruption and\n  ignorance of the clergy, not the decay of discipline,\" says Dr. Gr\u00f6ne,\n  \"but the circumstance that Luther, previous to the posting up of his\n  theses, was a heretic, and found support in the Elector Frederic--this it\n  was that gave rise to the great schism in the church.\"\n\nDr. Gr\u00f6ne substantiates his assertion by authenticated facts, and a\ncritical examination of Luther's ninety-five theses, which, says he,\n\n  \"Were the point of transition from secret to open from timid to\n  obstinate, heresy. They were the seed which, sown in the soil, contains,\n  not only virtually, but really, all that, as germ and plant, it has a\n  right to contain. They were the result, the production of Luther's mental\n  life, corroded, as it was, by error and learned self-conceit; they were\n  as intimately united with it as the stem is with the root, therefore they\n  could only be abandoned in case the author himself transformed his entire\n  interior life. Hence, too, is to be derived the obstinacy with which\n  Luther clung to them, with which he would still have clung to them, even\n  if they had not earned him general applause; hence the circumstance that,\n  in defending them, he involved himself deeper and deeper in heresy.\"\n\n{843}\n\nBy means of the press Luther's theses were soon spread all over Germany.\nTetzel, seeing the riotous applause they met with from the enemies of the\nchurch generally, and from his own enemies in particular, suspended his\npreaching; and, with the concurrence of the archbishop of Mentz, repaired\nfor advice to his former preceptor, Dr. Conrad Wimpina, at that time rector\nof the university of Frankfort-on-the-Oder. Wimpina advised him to answer\nLuther's challenge with a series of antitheses. Tetzel did so, and\npublished against Luther's ninety-five theses a hundred and six antitheses.\nThey obtained for him the degree of doctor of divinity. In the clearest\nmanner they set forth the true Catholic doctrine of the absolute necessity\nof repentance, confession, and satisfaction for the pardon of sin,\naffirming that, though an indulgence exempts the sinner from the\nvindicatory penalties of the church, it leaves him just as much bound as\never to submit to her medicinal and preservative ones; that it does not\nderogate from the merits of Christ, since its whole efficacy is due to the\natoning passion of Christ; as also that the pope has power only by means of\nsuffrage to apply the benefits of an indulgence to the souls in purgatory.\nMoreover, to say the pope cannot absolve the least venial sin is erroneous;\nand equally so to deny that all vicars of Christ have the same power as\nPeter had: rather to assert that Peter, in the matter of indulgences, had\nmore power than they, is both heretical and blasphemous. One of the many\nslanders on Tetzel is, that he was not the author of the antitheses that he\npublished, but that Dr. Wimpina wrote them for him. Luther himself flung\nthis taunt in his face, and so gave it the prestige among his party of an\nundoubted fact. Dr. Gr\u00f6ne enters fully into the case, and terminates his\ninquiry with \"venturing to believe that, by his vindication, he has\nannihilated every substantial ground for doubting that Tetzel was the real\nauthor of the antitheses in question.\" They did not, of course, silence\nLuther, who replied to them with a popular compendium in German of his\nninety-five theses in twenty articles. Tetzel rejoined with twenty others,\nalso in German. In the nineteenth he declares of Luther's doctrine, in the\ntone of a prophet, that, in consequence of it, \"many people will contemn\nthe authority and power of his holiness the pope and the Roman see, will\nintermit the works of sacramental satisfaction, will no longer believe\ntheir pastors and teachers, but will explain, every one for himself, the\nsacred Scriptures according to private fancy and whim, and believe just\nwhat every one chooses, to the great detriment of souls throughout\nChristendom.\"\n\nAt a time when all the most learned men in Germany regarded the matter as\nnothing but a scholastic dispute, when many even in Rome deemed it a mere\nmonkish quarrel, Tetzel, by thus pointing out in such clear and concise\nterms what Luther's principles really involved, what fatal results they\nwould produce, evinced, in Dr. Gr\u00f6ne's opinion, a more than ordinary\npenetration of mind.\n\nLuther's fundamental thought in attacking indulgences was this: That\nindulgences are not of faith, because not taught in the Bible, not taught\nby Christ and his apostles; they emanate, he said, only from the pope. Now,\nif this thought was an erroneous one, if the pope in questions of faith and\nmorals is infallible, if he alone possesses the right to decide the true\nsense and meaning of Scripture, every Catholic is bound on all such\nquestions to submit to him; and Luther, if he persisted in maintaining his\ndoctrine, passed sentence on himself as an apostate and a heretic, cut\nhimself off from all__ escape, and had no other choice left than that\nof either being punished as a heretic, or making a recantation.\n{844}\nHence, in order to drive him from the field, it was requisite to prove\nthat, besides the truths explicitly declared in holy writ, there are other\ntruths in the church which we are equally bound to believe; and that they\ncomprise all those doctrines relating to faith which are defined as such by\nthe holy see. By setting up those propositions the dispute would be raised\nto one of principle, and Luther would be compelled to speak out on the\npope's authority in matters of faith and practice.\n\nThese considerations spurred Tetzel on to issue against Luther's fifty\ntheses on the power of the pope; for, indeed, it had not eluded his\nobservation that much the greater part of the applause received by Luther\nwas owing far more to his insidious attacks on the authority of the holy\nsee than to his reprobation of the indulgence. Tetzel's fifty theses,\npublished about the end of April, 1518, maintained, therefore, that the\nhighest power having been received by the pope exclusively from God, cannot\nbe extended or limited, either by any man or by the whole world, but only\nby God alone. That in his power of jurisdiction the pope stands above all\nother bishops separate or united. That, although, as a private man, the\npope may hold, on a point of faith, a wrong opinion, yet, when he\npronounces judgment on it _ex cathedr\u00e2_, he is infallible. That\nindulgences cannot be granted by the rest of the prelates, whether\ncollectively or singly, but only by the \"Bridegroom of the whole church,\"\nnamely, the pope. That what is true and of faith about indulgences, only\nthe pope can decide. That the church has many Catholic truths, which are\nneither expressly declared in the canon of Scripture, nor explicitly stated\nby the holy fathers. That all doctrines relating to faith, and defined as\nsuch by the apostolic see, are to be reckoned among Catholic truths,\nwhether or not they are contained in the Bible. As a warning for the\nelector of Saxony, Tetzel declares that all those who patronize heretics,\nand use their power to prevent them from being put upon their trial before\nthe lawful judge, incur excommunication.\n\nThese fifty theses of Tetzel's were strictly in the spirit of the\nscholastic theology in vogue, a spirit which the experience of such\ncouncils as those of Basle, Constance, and Florence had contributed not a\nlittle to evoke.\n\nLuther at once perceived what a stumbling-block Tetzel had thrown in his\nway. He did not attempt to dispute the fifty theses. Had he done so he must\nhave plainly acknowledged himself a heretic. As matters stood this would\nhave been premature, would have spoiled all, would have ruined him and his\ncause. Tetzel had not designated Luther personally as a heretic. But Luther\nchose to assume that he had done so, and forthwith let loose a storm\nagainst him of such brutal and malignant invective as Luther alone was\ncapable of. Adopting the tone of an injured man, a man shamefully\nmisunderstood, he filled Germany with hypocritical asseverations of his\northodoxy and his devotion to the see of Peter. All his party, all Tetzel's\nopponents, followed in his wake. The heathen-minded humanists, in\nparticular, singled out Tetzel as the butt of their ribald satire, holding\nhim up to scorn and execration as the very impersonation of every\nimaginable monastic abuse and scandal. The persecuted man found little or\nno shelter from the tempest. The friends of religion and the church were\nintimidated, confounded, paralyzed; apathy, indecision, cowardice,\ndelusion, prevailed among the guardians of the faith, prevailed among the\nGerman bishops. Rome herself was slow and lenient in her measures. Although\nshe cited Luther to come and answer for himself to her, she consented, in\nthe persons of Cajetan and Miltiz, to go to him. Cajetan, all patience and\ncondescension, allowed himself to be trifled with and duped. Miltiz\ntruckled to Luther, reviled Tetzel, betrayed his trust.\n{845}\nIn vain did Hermann Rab, provincial of the Saxon Dominicans, address a\ntouching letter in Tetzel's defence to Miltiz. It is dated at Leipsic,\nJanuary 3d, 1519, and is quoted in full by Dr. Gr\u00f6ne:\n\n  \"Truly I should not know where to find a man (observes Hermann Rab in\n  this letter) who has done and suffered, who still suffers so much for the\n  honor of the apostolic see, as our venerable father, Magister John\n  Tetzel. If his holiness only knew it, I doubt not but that he would\n  distinguish him in a worthy manner. With what lies and slanders beyond\n  number he is overwhelmed, all the street-corners, where they resound in\n  your ears, attest. I only wish your excellence had heard the sermon he\n  preached on the feast of our Lord's circumcision, for then you would not\n  have failed to convince yourself what his sentiments are, and always have\n  been, toward the holy see.\"\n\nMiltiz commanded Tetzel to retire to his cell at Leipsic. He obeyed. His\ncareer was now terminated. He never ascended the pulpit again. The fatigues\nand excitement he had undergone; the persecution he had suffered; his\ndeserted and forlorn condition; above all, the course of events, so ominous\nfor the church and the papacy, to which he clung with all his soul; these\nthings preyed upon his mind and body to such a degree that his health gave\nway, and he died in a state of profound melancholy in the month of August\nof the above-mentioned year. He is supposed to have been about sixty years\nold:\n\n  \"Tetzel could not have set up a better monument to his own character\n  (writes Dr. Gr\u00f6ne) than he did in the grief and affliction which hastened\n  his end. The ruin of the church, the wild infidelity, and unspeakable\n  disorders which the triumph of Luther must needs entail on Germany--this\n  was the worm that gnawed his vital thread. It broke his heart to be\n  forced to see how the sincere champions of the old church truths were\n  left alone, were slandered, despised, and misunderstood by their own\n  party, while the mockers and revilers of the immutable doctrine won\n  applause on all sides.\"\n\nIn a chapter devoted to a refutation of the infamous calumnies and profane\nanecdotes recorded of Tetzel, it is shown by Dr. Gr\u00f6ne that they were\nmostly borrowed from the Decameron of Boccaccio and a congenial German\nproduction, styled Der Pfaffe Amis. For example: Tetzel, being anxious to\nimpart extraordinary interest to the indulgence he had to preach, once told\nthe people he would show them a feather which the devil, in combating with\nthe archangel Michael, had plucked from the archangel's wing. But a couple\nof godless wags, entering his chamber during his absence, stole the feather\nout of the box in which it was kept, and put some coals from the fireplace\nin its stead. Tetzel, ignorant of the theft, mounts the pulpit, box in\nhand, and declaims with great fervor on the wonderful qualities of his\nheavenly feather. Then opening the box, finds it full of coals. Nothing\nabashed, he cries out, \"What wonder if, among so many relic-boxes as I\npossess, I have taken the wrong one?\" And forthwith he extols the\nmiraculous power of the very coals on which St. Lawrence was broiled.\n\nAnother merry tale of the sort is the following: \"Tetzel,\" they, say, \"once\ndesired to lodge with the sacristan at Zwickau. But the sacristan excused\nhimself as being too poor to entertain so renowned a guest. 'We'll see that\nyou have money enough,' said Tetzel, 'only look what saint it is in the\ncalendar to-morrow.' The sacristan found the name of Juvenalis. 'A very\nunlucky name, he regretted to say, because it was so little known.' 'But\nwe'll make it known,' replied Tetzel. 'Ring the bells to-morrow as if for a\nfestival, and let high mass be sung.' The sacristan obeyed, and the people\nthrong the church. After the gospel Tetzel ascends the pulpit, and speaks:\n'Good people, to-day I have something to tell you which, if I were to\nwithhold it, would be the very ruin of your salvation. Hitherto, you know,\nwe have always invoked such and such saints, but now they have grown old,\nand are tired of hearing and helping us. To-day you commemorate Juvenalis,\nand although until now he has been unknown, let us none the less honor him\nwith all our hearts.\n{846}\nFor as he is a new saint, he will be all the more indefatigable in praying\nfor us. Juvenalis, my friends, was a holy martyr, whose blood was\ninnocently shed. Now, if you would also participate in his innocence before\nGod, let each of you put an offering on the altar during mass. And do you,\nye great and rich ones, precede the rest with your good example.'\"\n\nAgain, in 1512, Tetzel, after having preached at Zwickau, had got all his\nmoney packed up, and was about to depart. But the parish priest, with his\nchaplain and clerk, came running to him, bitterly complaining that, while\nhe had provided so splendidly for himself, they had not got as much by the\nindulgence as would pay for one jolly day. \"Truly I am very sorry,\" answers\nTetzel, \"but why did you not tell me sooner? However, ring the bells again\nto-morrow; there may still, perhaps, be something left for you.\" No sooner\nsaid than done. The people all came flocking to church, and Tetzel,\nascending the pulpit, begins: \"Dearly beloved, true I had intended to\ndepart this very day, but last night I heard in your church-yard a poor\nsoul moaning and weeping miserably, and imploring some one to come to her\nrelief, and deliver her out of purgatory. This caused me to remain here to\nday, to have mass said and offerings made for this poor soul. Now, whoever\namong us should neglect to make an offering would thereby prove that he has\nno compassion on the poor soul, or else that he must either be a fornicator\nor an adulterer, whose conscience tells him he is not worthy to take part\nin this good work. And that you may know what an urgent case it is, I\nmyself will be the first to present my offering.\"\n\nOf course all the people hasten to follow so edifying an example, they even\nborrow money from one another, for no one wishes to be thought a fornicator\nor an adulterer.\n\nIn citing such absurd stories as the above, along with many others of a\nstill more profane description, Dr. Gr\u00f6ne shows that, in several instances,\nthey were the same as were employed to slander the character of Bernardin\nSamson, the Franciscan preacher of Pope Leo's indulgence in Switzerland. He\nalso cites two contemporary documents, one of them signed by the\nauthorities of the town of Halle, the other by John Pels, prior of the\nDominican convent of Nevenwerk, denying in emphatic terms that Tetzel, in\nhis sermons, ever blasphemed the Blessed Virgin in the shocking way he was\naccused of doing. In fine, had he really been the monster of depravity, the\nshameless drunkard, swindler, liar, blasphemer, and adulterer his enemies\nmake of him, it is but too obvious that, instead of opposing, he would have\njoined Luther, whose earliest and most ardent disciples were principally\ndegenerate monks, in love with the Lutheran doctrine of the futility of\ngood works--monks, in a word, corresponding in every respect to the\nProtestant descriptions, but opposite in character as day and night to the\ntrue nature of John Tetzel.\n\n------\n\n{847}\n\n  From Once a Week.\n\n  The Bride of Eberstein.\n\n  A Legend of Baden.\n\n\nFour hours distant from the city of Baden, near the market village of\nMalsch, on a bold, projecting wood-crowned eminence in the Black Forest,\nstood the Castle of Waldenfels. It is now a heap of ruins, and scarcely can\nthe traveller discover the spot which was formerly the residence of an\nopulent and powerful family.\n\nIn the thirteenth century, Sir Beringer, last of his race, inhabited the\ncastle of Waldenfels. His lately departed consort had bequeathed him an\nonly daughter, Rosowina by name. In bygone years Sir Beringer had ofttimes\nfelt distressed that he would leave no male heir to propagate the name and\ncelebrity of his ancient stock; and, in this feeling, he had adopted\nHeinrich von Gertingen, an orphan boy, the son of an early friend and\ncompanion in arms, and the representative of an ancient but impoverished\nhouse, to whom he purposed to bequeath his inheritance and his name. Not\nlong, however, after this event, his daughter was born. And as Rosowina,\nafter her mothers early death, advanced in the blossom of youth, she became\nthe pride and happiness of her father's age, and never caused him sorrow,\nsave in the reflection that some day she would leave the paternal for the\nconjugal hearth. All now that troubled him was his adopted son. The growing\nboy, while manifesting a becoming taste for knightly accomplishments, and\nobtaining success in their display, nourished in his breast the germ of\nfiery passions, which, while they caused distress and anxiety to the Lord\nof Waldenfels, impressed his daughter with terror and revolted feeling. At\nlength, when Rosowina had attained her sixteenth year, she became to\nHeinrich the object of a wild and desperate devotion. He repressed the\nsentiment awhile, but at length yielded himself its slave. He persecuted\nRosowina with his ill-timed and terrible addresses; and one day, having\nfound her alone in the castle garden, he cast himself at her feet, and\nswore by all that was holy and dear that his life was in her hand, and that\nwithout her he must become the victim of an agonizing despair. Rosowina's\nterror and confusion were boundless; she had never experienced the smallest\nfeeling of affection for the youth, but rather regarded him with aversion\nand alarm. She knew not at the moment how to act or what to say. At that\ninstant her father appeared. The confusion of both sufficiently discovered\nwhat had occurred: in a burning rage Sir Beringer commanded the unhappy\nyouth instantly to quit the castle for ever. With one wild glance at\nRosowina, Heinrich obeyed; and muttering, \"The misery thou hast brought\nupon my life come upon thine own!\" rushed despairingly away. Next morning\nhis body was found in the Murg, his countenance hideously distorted, and\ntoo well expressing the despair with which he had left the world. Efforts\nwere made, so far as possible, to conceal the horrid truth from Rosowina,\nbut in vain; time, however, softened the features of the ghastly memory.\nShe had now completed her seventeenth year, and was already celebrated as\nthe beauty of the surrounding country. And not only was her beauty the\nsubject of universal praise; her maidenly modesty, her goodness of heart,\nher prudent, thoughtful, intelligent cast of mind, were the theme of\ncommendation with all who had enjoyed the privilege of her society.\n\n{848}\n\nA few hours' distance from the Castle of Waldenfels, in the pleasant valley\nthrough which rush the clear waters of the Alb, stood the monastery of\nHerrenalb. The Holy Virgin was patroness of the foundation, and the day on\nwhich the church celebrates the festival of her nativity was annually\nobserved as the grand holiday of the convent, when the monks, to do honor\nto this occasion, exhibited all the splendor and magnificence which\nChristian bounty had placed at their disposal, and spared no expense to\nentertain their guests in the most hospitable and sumptuous manner. And now\nSir Beringer of Waldenfels had promised his Rosowina to ride over to\nHerrenalb with her the next St. Mary's day. He was ever a man of his word;\nhow should he now be otherwise, when that word assured a pleasure to the\ndarling of his heart?\n\nBright and genial rose the autumnal morning when Sir Beringer and Rosowina,\nwith a small retinue, rode over the hills to Herrenalb. The knight and his\ndaughter were courteously and hospitably received by the abbot and his\nmonks. The presence of the noble heiress of Waldenfels excited much\ninterest and observation in the minster church; but the maiden herself\nappeared unconscious of the fact. Seldom, however, as she found herself\ndisturbed by worldly thoughts in her devotions in the castle chapel at\nWaldenfels, the splendor of the monastic church and services, and the\ninnumerable hosts of worshippers, were to her so new, that she felt\ntempted, from time to time, to give a momentary glance around her. On one\noccasion her gaze encountered a pair of eyes which seemed to rest on the\nattraction of her countenance with an earnest yet respectful expression,\nand, inexperienced as she was, she was at no loss to comprehend its\nmeaning. The gazer was a stately youth, who was leaning against a pillar.\nHis strong-built and well-proportioned frame, his noble and expressive\ncountenance, and even his rich and tasteful apparel, were well adapted to\nfix the attention of a youthful maiden of seventeen, while his whole\ndemeanor convinced her how deeply he was smitten with the power of her\ncharms.\n\nThe service over, the worshippers dispersed, and the sumptuous abbey opened\nits hospitable gates to all who could advance any claim to entertainment. A\nsister of Rosowina's mother was a nun in the cloister of Frauenalb, and\nRosowina was permitted occasionally to visit her, and had here enjoyed the\nopportunity of making the acquaintance of several noble young ladies of the\nneighborhood. She met some of them on this occasion, whom she accompanied\ninto the spacious garden of the convent. Among these was the young Countess\nAgnes of Eberstein, with whom as she was sauntering through an avenue of\numbrageous beeches, suddenly there stood before her the abbot of the\nconvent and the young man who had attracted her attention in the church,\nwho, side by side, had emerged from a side-way path into the main walk.\nRosowina trembled in joyful alarm as she recognized her admirer: her first\nthought was to return or retreat, but, without a manifest discourtesy, this\nwas now impossible. Neither was the Countess Agnes at all willing to\nescape, but rather forced forward the reluctant Rosowina, welcoming at the\nsame time the youthful stranger as her beloved brother, the Count Otto of\nEberstein. After mutual salutations, Agnes introduced Rosowina to her\nbrother, who was delighted to recognize in the object of his admiration the\nfriend of his sister. He made advances toward a conversation, but the\nabbot, whose heart was less sensible to beauty, would not, even for a few\nshort minutes, postpone the subject of their discussion. At the banquet,\nhowever, which followed, it was easy for the Count of Eberstein, from his\nhigh connection with the monastery, to choose his place, and he placed\nhimself opposite Sir Beringer and his daughter.\n{849}\nThe knights had met occasionally before, and a nearer acquaintance was soon\nmade. To an engaging person Sir Otto united the attractions of polished\nmanners, of knowledge extensive for that period, acquired by residence in\nmost of the courts of Europe, and of a lively conversational talent, which\nrendered him everywhere a welcome addition to society. With so many claims\non her regard, it was little wonderful that Rosowina should accept with\npleasure the homage of the count, and encourage in his breast the most\ndelightful of hopes.\n\nAbout that time the Counts of Eberstein had built a new castle above the\nbeautiful valley of the Murg, not far from the family residence of their\nancestors. The splendor of Neueberstein was the subject of universal\nconversation, and all who had the opportunity of seeing the new palace were\neager to embrace the privilege. An invitation from Count Otto to the Knight\nof Waldenfels and his daughter was only natural, and was no less naturally\naccepted with especial welcome.\n\nWarm and mild shone the bright autumn sun on the lovely valley of the Murg,\nas Sir Beringer and his daughter rode on beside the crystal stream; nor\ncould Rosowina suppress the thought how she might ere long ascend the steep\nwinding pathway to the castle no longer its visitor, but its mistress. Sir\nOtto met his guests at the castle-gate, and, with eyes beaming with joy,\nmore especially as he saw the joy was mutual, lifted Rosowina from her\npalfrey. After brief rest and refreshment, the inspection of the castle\nbegan. Halls and chambers were duly examined, and at last the party\nascended the rampart of the loftiest tower, whence an enchanting prospect\nmet the eye. Far below them the Murg rolled its restless waters, now\nflowing peaceful between banks of lively green, now toilsomely forcing its\npassage between wild masses of rock. On either side the dusky hills towered\nabove the scene; and here and there now glimmered out of the shadow of the\nforest a solitary mountain village, now a mass of mighty cliffs; and as the\neye descended the rapid mountain stream, it rested on the blooming plain of\nthe Rhine, where, in the violet tints of distance, arose the awful barrier\nof the Vosges. Lost in the magnificent spectacle stood Rosowina, unable to\nsatiate her eye on the glorious picture, and unaware that Otto was close\nbeside her, contemplating with secret pleasure the beautiful spectatress.\nAt length the involuntary exclamation escaped her, \"A paradise indeed!\"\n\nThen found she herself softly clasped in a gentle arm, and her hand\naffectionately pressed, while a well-known voice uttered softly, \"And would\nnot Rosowina make this place 'a paradise indeed,' were she to share it with\nme!\"\n\nUnable now to suppress her feelings, Rosowina replied by a glance more\nexpressive than any words. She returned that evening with her father to\nWaldenfels the happy affianced bride of Count Otto of Eberstein.\n\nOn a bright spring morning, symbolizing well the feelings of the lovers,\nthe marriage solemnity was held at the Castle of Neueberstein, with all the\npomp and state of the period, which few understood better than Otto to\ndisplay. From towers and battlements innumerable banners, with the\nEberstein colors and blazonry, floated gallantly in the morning breeze, and\nthe portal, adorned with wreaths and arras, cast wide its hospitable gates.\nToward noon appeared, in the midst of a glittering pageant, the bride,\nmagnificently arrayed, but brighter in her incomparable beauty; and all\npraised the choice of Otto, and agreed that he could have selected no\nworthier object to grace his halls. Rosowina, however, felt unaccountably\ndistressed. It was not the confusion of maiden modesty it was not the\nembarrassment of the bride that troubled the serenity of her heart. She\nknew not herself what it was; but it weighed upon her mind like the\nforeboding of a threatening misfortune.\n{850}\nAn image, moreover, arose to her thought which long had seemed to have\nvanished from her memory, even that of the unhappy Heinrich von Gertingen.\nShe endeavored to repress her anxiety, and succeeded so well that the happy\nbride-groom saw not the cloud of sorrow that shaded the fair brow of his\nbride. But when the priest had spoken the words of blessing, the last spark\nof gloomy foreboding was extinct, and with untroubled tenderness she\nreturned her bridegroom's nuptial kiss, reproaching him smilingly, and yet\nseriously, for exclaiming, as he did, with solemn appeals, that all the\njoys of paradise and all the bliss of heaven were poor and insipid\npleasures in comparison of the happiness which he enjoyed in calling her\nhis own.\n\nThe nuptial banquet followed. It was served with profuse splendor; but when\nthe joy was at its height, and the castle resounded with jubilant voices,\nand the dance was about to begin, a page announced a stranger knight, who\nwished to speak to the bridegroom; and forthwith a figure walked into the\nhall. The stranger's armor and mantle were black, and he wore his visor\ndown. He proceeded with stately advance to the place where the newly wedded\npair were seated at the table, made a low reverence, and spoke with a\nhollow and solemn tone:\n\n\"I come, honored Count of Eberstein, on the part of my master, the powerful\nmonarch of Rachenland,  [Footnote 304] to whose court the celebrity of this\noccasion and of your bride has come, to assure you of the interest which he\ntakes in your person, and his gratification in the event of this day.\"\n\n    [Footnote 304: _Anglic\u00e8_, \"The Land of Vengeance.\"]\n\nHis speech was interrupted by a page, who, kneeling, presented him with a\ngoblet of wine. But the stranger waved aside the honor, and requested, as\nthe highest favor that could be shown him, that he might lead the first\ndance with the bride. None of the company had heard of Rachenland; but the\nknowledge of distant countries was not then extensive, and the\nrepresentative of a mighty prince could not be refused the usual courtesy.\nRosowina, however, at the first appearance of the stranger knight, had\nexperienced an unaccountable shuddering, which amounted almost to terror,\nas, leading her forth to the dance, he chilled her whole frame with the\nfreezing touch which, even through his gauntlet, seemed to pierce her very\nheart. She was forced to summon all her strength to support herself during\nthe dance, and was painfully impatient for its conclusion. At length the\ndesired moment arrived, and her partner conducted her back to her seat,\nbowing courteously, and thanking her. But at that instant she felt even\nmore acutely the icy coldness of his hand, while his glowing, penetrating\neye, through his visor, seemed to burn for a moment into her very soul. As\nhe turned to leave, a convulsive pang rent her heart, and, with a shriek,\nshe sank lifeless on the floor. Instant and universal was the alarm; all\nrushed to the scene of the calamity; and in the confusion of the moment the\nstranger knight vanished.\n\nInexpressible was the grief of all. In the bloom of beauty and rich fulness\nof youth lay the bride, cold and inanimate, a stark and senseless corpse.\nEvery conceivable appliance was tried to recall departed life; but departed\nit had for ever, and all attempts were vain; and when it was ascertained\nbeyond a doubt that not the smallest hope remained, the guests in silence\nleft the house of mourning, and the inhabitants of the castle were left\nalone with their sorrow.\n\nThree days had now passed away. The corpse of Rosowina rested in the vault\nof the castle chapel, and the mourners, after paying the last honors to the\ndead, had again departed. Otto, left alone at Eberstein, refused all human\nconsolation. The first stupefaction of sorrow had now given place to a\nclamorous and boundless despair.\n{851}\nHe cursed the day of his nativity, and in his wild desperation cried aloud\nthat he would readily sacrifice the salvation of his soul, and renounce his\nclaim on eternal happiness, were it only granted him to spend the rest of\nlife at Rosowina's side.\n\nBefore the door of the vault in which the young countess slept the wakeless\nsleep, Gisbrecht kept watch and ward. Gisbrecht was an old man-at-arms of\nthe house of Eberstein, which he had served faithfully for more than forty\nyears. He was a warrior from his youth, and had stood loyally at the side\nof his master, and of his master's father and grandfather, in many a bloody\nconflict; fear, except the fear of God, which he diligently cultivated, was\na stranger to his soul. With slow and measured tread he paced up and down\nat his station, meditating the sudden death of the young and beautiful\ncountess, and thence passing in thought to the instability and nothingness\nof all human things. Often had his glance fallen on the entrance to the\nvault; but now--what was that? Scarcely did he trust his eyes; yet it was\nso. The gate opened, and a white-robed figure came forth from the depths of\nthe sepulchre. For a while, Gisbrecht stood motionless, with bated breath,\nbut fearless, while the apparition approached him. But when he gazed nearer\non the pale, ashy countenance, and recognized beyond a doubt the features\nof Rosowina, the horrors of the spirit-world came upon him; and, impelled\nby an unutterable terror, he rushed up the steps, and along the corridor\nwhich led to his lord's chamber, unheeding the call of the white figure,\nwhich followed close upon his track.\n\nCount Otto, in his despair, was turning himself from side to side upon his\nbed, when he heard a heavy knock upon the door; and, as he rose and opened\nit, there stood old Gisbrecht, pale, trembling, with distorted features,\nand scarcely able to stammer out from his trembling lips:\n\n\"O my lord count! the Lady of Waldenfels--\"\n\n\"Art mad, Gisbrecht!\" cried the count, astonished at the manner and words\nof the old man.\n\n\"Pardon me, lord count,\" continued Gisbrecht, stammering; \"I meant to say\nthe young departed countess--\"'\n\n\"O Rosowina!\" exclaimed the count, with an involuntary sigh.\n\n\"Here she is--thy Rosowina!\" cried a pallid female form, which, with these\nwords, precipitated herself into the count's embrace.\n\nThe count knew not what to think. He was overpowered with astonishment. Was\nit a dream? was it an apparition? or was it Rosowina indeed? Yes, it was\nindeed she. It was her silver voice. Her heart beat, her lips breathed, the\nmild and angelic features were there. It was Rosowina indeed, whom, wrapt\nin the cerements of the grave, he held in his embrace.\n\nOn the morrow, the wondrous tale was everywhere told in the castle and the\nneighborhood. The Countess Rosowina had not died; she had only been in a\ntrance. The sacristan, fortunately, had not fastened the door of the vault,\nand the countess, on awakening, had been enabled by the light of the\nsepulchral lamp to extricate herself from the coffin, and to follow the\naffrightened sentinel to his master's chamber.\n\nAnd now at Castle Eberstein once more all was liveliness and joy. But\nboundless as had been the despair of the count at his loss, he did not feel\nhappy in his new good fortune. It seemed as though a secret unknown\nsomething intervened between him and his youthful bride. He found no more\nin her eye that deep expression of soul that so oft had awakened his heart\nto transports of joy; the gaze was dead and cold. The warm kiss imprinted\non her chilly lips met never a return. Even her character was opposite to\nall he had expected. As a bride, loving and gentle, trustful and devoted,\nopen and sincere, now was she sullen, testy, and silent. Every hour seemed\nthese peculiarities to unfold themselves more; every day they become mere\nunendurable.\n{852}\nOften was his kiss rejected, sometimes with bitter mockery; if he left her\nawhile through annoyance, she reproached him, and filled the castle with\ncomplaints of his neglect and aversion; when business called him abroad,\nshe tortured him with the most frightful jealousy. Even in her manners and\ninclinations the Countess of Eberstein was an actual contrast to the\nheiress of Waldenfels; all in her was low, ignoble, and mean; one habit was\nchiefly remarkable in her, always to cross her husband, to distress and\nannoy him, to embitter all his joys, to darken all his pleasures. And soon\nit became the common saying of the neighborhood: \"The Count of Eberstein\nthought he had been courting an angel, but he had brought home a dragon\nfrom an opposite world.\"\n\nWith inexhaustible patience, with imperturbable equanimity, Count Otto\nendured these annoyances. No complaint, no reproach, ever passed his lips.\nHe had loved Rosowina too faithfully, too entirely, to let the conduct of\nher whom he now called his wife so soon extinguish the passion of his\nheart. But these disappointed hopes, this perpetual struggle between love\nand despised self-esteem, and this concealment of the sharpest pangs of his\nsoul, gnawed at the very germ of life, and destroyed it at its core. A slow\nfever seized him, and he was now visibly decaying, and approaching the\ngrave. One morning he was found unexpectedly in the death-struggle. He\nasked for the chaplain of the castle, in order to make his dying\nconfession; but the holy man only arrived in time to witness his last most\nagonizing groans. At the same moment a frightful crash shook the\nfoundations of the castle, the doors of the burial-vault sprang open, and\nsome of the domestics saw the spectral form of Rosowina sweep into it, and\nvanish in the darkness.\n\nThe deserted castle of Neueberstein sank in ruins, uninhabited for many\ncenturies; the popular belief being that Otto and Rosowina continued to\nappear in its haunted apartments, and to set forth thereby the solemn\nlesson, that _he makes the most foolish and wicked of bargains, who gains\neven the whole world, if he lose his own soul._\n\n------\n\n  From The Lamp.\n\n  The Miner.\n\n  From The German of Novalis.\n\n\nIn a room of a clean inn sat a group of men, partly travellers, partly\npersons that had entered to drink a glass of beer, who conversed with each\nother on various subjects. The attention of the company was particularly\ndirected to an old man in strange attire who was seated at a table, and\nanswered in a friendly manner all the questions which were put to him.\n\n\"He came from foreign parts,\" he said; and was a native of Bohemia. From\nearly youth he had had a vehement longing to know what was hidden within\nthe mountains whence the water gushed up into the springs, and where we\nfound the gold, silver, and precious stones, which have attractions so\nirresistible for man. In the church of the neighboring monastery he had\noften gazed upon the solid brilliancy of the images and reliquaries, and\nwished that they could speak and tell him of their mysterious origin.\n{853}\nHe had heard sometimes that they came from far distant lands; but he had\nasked himself why these treasures and gems should not be found in his own\ndistrict. Not without a purpose were the mountainous regions so vast, and\npreserved so securely; so it seemed to him, as sometimes on the hills he\nfound bright and glittering stones. He had often clambered into clefts and\ncaverns, and beheld with unspeakable pleasure those primeval halls and\nvaults. At length he once met a traveller who advised him to become a\nminer, by which means he might gratify his curiosity. He had told him that\nthere were miners in Bohemia; and that, if he followed the downward course\nof the river, he would after ten or twelve days' journey arrive at Eula;\nthere he had only to speak, and he might at once become a miner. He had not\nsought for further information; but the next day had set out on his\njourney.\n\n\"After a fatiguing walk of several days,\" he continued, \"I arrived at Eula.\nI cannot express the joy I felt when from the summit of a hill I saw large\npiles of stones, overgrown with shrubs, and upon which stood little wooden\nhuts; and when in the valley below I saw clouds of smoke rolling over the\nwood, a distant noise increased the eagerness of my expectation. With\nwonderful curiosity, and full of silent devotion, I stood upon one of the\nstone mounds before the black abyss, which, from the interior of the hut,\nled down straight into the mountain. Then I hastened down the valley, where\nI met some darkly-clad men with lamps, who, as I rightly supposed, were\nminers. With bashful anxiety I mentioned my design to them; they listened\nto me with kindness, and bade me go to the melting house and inquire for\nthe surveyor, who would at once inform me whether or not my offer would be\naccepted. They thought that my wish would be fulfilled, and told me the\nusual words of salutation, '_Gl\u00fcck auf!_' with which I should accost\nthe surveyor. Full of joyful expectation, I left them, and could never\ncease repeating to myself the novel salutation, so full of significance.\n\n\"I found a venerable old man, who, when I told him my history, and had\ninformed him of my eager desire to learn his curious and mysterious art,\npromised in a very friendly manner to grant my request. I seemed to please\nhim; and he kept me in his house. With impatience I waited for the hour\nwhen I should descend into the mine, and see myself clothed in the costume\nwhich had so great a charm in my eyes. That evening he brought me a suit of\nminer's clothes, and taught me the use of several instruments, which he\nkept locked up in a room.\n\n\"In the evening several miners came to him; and although for the most part\ntheir language and the subjects of their conversation were unintelligible\nand novel to me, I endeavored not to miss a single word of what was said.\nThe little, however, which I fancied I understood increased my curiosity,\nand suggested strange dreams to me during the night.\n\n\"I awoke betimes, and was soon with my new host, around whom the miners\ngradually assembled to receive his orders. A room in his house was fitted\nup as a chapel. A monk appeared, who said mass, and afterward recited a\nsolemn prayer, in which he besought the Almighty to take the miners into\nhis holy keeping, to support them in their perilous toil, to shield them\nfrom the assaults and malice of evil spirits, and richly to bless their\nlabors.\n\n\"Never before had I prayed with so much fervor, or felt in so lively a\nmanner the high significance of the divine office. My future companions\nseemed to me, as it were, subterranean heroes who had to surmount a\nthousand dangers, but whose lot was enviable from the wonderful knowledge\nthey possessed, and who, through their solemn and silent acquaintance with\nthe primeval caverns of nature, were in her dark and marvellous chambers\nendued with heavenly gifts and blissfully raised above all the annoyances\nof the world.\n\n{854}\n\n\"At the close of the service the surveyor gave me a lamp and a small wooden\ncrucifix, and went with me to the shaft, as we call the steep entrance to\nthe subterranean abode. He showed me the manner of descent, and instructed\nme in the names of the numerous objects and their divisions. Holding a\nrope, which was attached by a knot to a side-post, with one hand, and a\nlighted lamp with the other, he began to descend. I followed his example;\nand, proceeding at a somewhat rapid pace, we soon arrived at a considerable\ndepth.\n\n\"A feeling of deep solemnity pervaded my mind, and the light which moved\nbefore me seemed, as it were, a fortunate star which guided me to the\nsecret treasuries of nature. We reached below a labyrinth of paths; and my\nfriendly master was never wearied answering all my questions, and\ninstructing me in his art.\n\n\"The murmur of the water, the distance from earth's inhabited surface, the\ndarkness and intricacy of our route, and the sound from afar of the miners\nat work, filled me with extraordinary pleasure, and I felt with joy that I\nwas now in full possession of that which it had ever been my earnest desire\nto possess. It is impossible to explain and describe the full satisfaction\nof an inborn desire--that wonderful pleasure one finds in things which have\nsome secret connection with one's inmost being, and in occupations to which\none is called, and for which from his cradle his nature is adapted. Perhaps\nto most people these might appear obscure, vulgar, or repulsive, but to me\nthey seemed as necessary as air or food.\n\n\"My aged master was much pleased with my genuine satisfaction, and\npredicted that my zeal and attention would insure success. With what\nrapture did I see for the first time in my life, now more than\nfive-and-forty years ago, the king of metals lying in delicate leaves in\nthe clefts of the rock! It seemed to me as though he were here kept in\nclose imprisonment, and shone with pleasure upon the miner who with so much\ndanger and labor had cloven his way to him through strong walls to bring\nhim to the light of day, so that he might be honored in royal crowns and\nvessels and holy reliquaries, and might lead and govern the world in valued\nand well earned coin.\n\n\"Thenceforth I remained at Eula, and rose by degrees to the grade of\n_hewer_--who alone among the miners carries on the work on the rock\nitself from carrying out the loose metal in baskets, to which work I had\nbeen at first appointed.\n\n\"On the day when I became a hewer my aged master laid his hand on his\ndaughter's head and on mine, and blessed us as bride and bridegroom. On the\nsame day before sunrise I had cut open a rich vein. The duke gave me a gold\nchain with his likeness on a large medal, and promised me my step-father's\nsituation. What happiness was mine when on our wedding-day I hung it round\nthe neck of my bride, and all eyes were fixed upon her! Our old father\nlived to see several grandchildren, and at length passed in peace from the\ndark mine of this world to await the great day of general retribution.\"\n\nHere the old miner paused awhile and wiped away some tears from his eyes.\n\n\"Oh!\" he at last exclaimed, God's blessing must needs rest upon the miner's\nlabors; for there is no craft which makes its workers more fortunate and\nmore noble-minded, which tends more to excite faith in God's wisdom and\nprovidence, and which preserves purer innocence and youthfulness of heart\nthan that of the miner. Poor is he born into the world, and poor he leaves\nit. It is his high joy to discover where the potent minerals are to be\nfound, and to bring them to light; but their dazzling brilliancy has no\ninfluence over his heart.\n{855}\nFree from all perilous covetousness, his pleasure is rather derived from\ntheir wonderful formation, the singularity of their origin and their\n_habitats_, than from their possession, though it promises all things.\nThey have no greater charm for him than if they were common wares; and he\nwould rather seek for them through toil and danger in the deep fastnesses\nof the earth, than strive for them on its surface by illusive and\nfraudulent arts. That toil keeps his heart fresh and his mind courageous;\nhe enjoys his scanty pay with genuine thankfulness, and ascends every day\nfrom the dark scenes of his calling with renewed pleasure in life. He alone\nknows the real charm of light and repose, the beneficent influence of the\nfresh air and the prospects which meet his eye. With what zest and\nthankfulness does he eat his daily bread, and with what friendly feelings\ndoes he associate with his fellows and taste the pleasures of familiar\nconversation! In his solitude he thinks with hearty good-will of his\ncompanions and his family, and feels ever renewed in his mind the mutual\nneedfulness and relationship of men. His calling teaches him unwearied\npatience, and never permits him to waste his attention on unprofitable\nthoughts. He has to deal with wonderfully hard and inflexible power, which\ncan only be overcome by obstinate labor and constant vigilance.\n\n\"But what a splendid plant he finds growing and blooming in these dreadful\ndepths! It is real trust in his heavenly Father, whose hand and providence\nare daily made visible to him by unmistakable signs. How often have I sat\ndown in my place of work and contemplated by the light of my lamp my rude\ncrucifix with the truest devotion! There for the first time did I rightly\ncomprehend the holy significance of that mysterious symbol; there has my\nheart felt its noblest impulses, which have been of continual use to me.\n\n\"Truly he must have been a godlike man who first taught the miner's craft,\nand hid in the bosom of the rocks that solemn emblem of human life. Here\nthe vein discloses itself wide and unworked but valueless. There the rocks\nconfine it within a narrow obscure cleft; but there it is found of the\nnoblest proportions. Other veins running into it debase it, until it is\njoined by one of a similar nature, which finally enhances its value. Often\nit breaks before the miner in a thousand fragments; but he is not\ndiscouraged. He pursues his work quietly, and presently sees his\nperseverance rewarded as it stretches itself before him in increased\ndimensions. Sometimes an illusive fragment leads him astray, but, soon\nperceiving his mistake, he vigorously breaks through it till he finds the\nvein leading to the true ore. How well acquainted is the miner with all the\nhumors of chance! but how thoroughly does he understand that zeal and\nperseverance are the only real means to manage them and to take from them\ntheir obstinately defended treasures!\"\n\n------\n\n{856}\n\n    Miscellany.\n\n_Photographs of Churches in France._--This year's issue of\ntranscripts from ancient Gothic buildings and portions of buildings by the\nArchitectural Photographic Association is unusually interesting, not only\non account of the beauty and clearness of the sun-pictures of which it\nconsists, but of the subjects that have been chosen for the camera. These\ncontain no renaissance examples or specimens of sixteenth century craft in\nimposing semi-barbarous fronts on noble Gothic churches of earlier date, as\nin the works at Belloy, Luzarches, and Verteuil. These changes had\nremarkable interest of their own, and were acceptable to the student who\ncared to see how great was the debt of the remodelling architect to his\nmiddle age forerunner. The studies now before us range from St. Georges de\nBoscherville, founded in 1050 by Ralph de Tancarville, chamberlain to\nWilliam the Conqueror, to the very beautiful and interesting west front of\nthe church at Civray, which, like its greater neighbor, Notre Dame de\nGrande, at Poitiers, also represented here, dates from the first half of\nthe twelfth century, through the curious rather than important early church\nof St. Ours, at Loches, at the door of which stands a Roman altar that\nappears to have been used as a font; the superb portals of Notre Dame, at\nChartres, of which we have five admirable photographs; St. Julien, at Le\nMans; the interior of the church of St. Pierre, at Lisieux, the west front\nof the same, with its unequal but beautiful towers; and the church of St.\nRiquier, near Abbeville, which may be said to have been discovered by Dr.\nWhewell, and is a splendid Flamboyant work, with certain elements of\ndecoration that assimilate it with those of perpendicular. Of this church\nwe should very much enjoy a good interior view, on account of its value in\nillustrating the happy union of early French Gothic with much later\nFlamboyant. To these must be added a view of the very fine Flamboyant west\nfront of St. Wulfram, at Abbeville, an admirable example of its kind, and\nthe west front of the cathedral of St. Gatien, at Tours, a work which was\nbegun in 1440, and brought to perfection in 1500, under Robert de\nLenoncour, then archbishop. We can only find one fault in this series, that\nis, the excessive number of doorways it contains. A doorway, or series of\nportals, is one of the happiest fields for architectural art; but there is\na disproportion in this respect here, where, out of twenty-two examples, we\nhave but one interior view, that of St. Pierre, at Lisieux, and three\ngeneral views, two of which comprise portals.\n\nSt. Georges de Boscherville is one of the best known examples of the early\nNorman churches, and remarkable for the extreme simplicity of its exterior,\nits fine proportions, beautiful central tower, and high octagonal spire.\nInteriorly, the building is much richer than without, and comparatively\nlight in style; the west front is among the most highly ornamented examples\nof its kind and date in Normandy, and comprises a round-headed arch with\nfive concentric roll-mouldings, with as many shafts in the side of the\nentrance, and is decorated with beaked heads, frets, cables, and chevrons\nto an unusual degree, and capital in design. The apse of this church, which\nis shown in the view before us, is very curious. The western turrets are\nworks of the thirteenth century.\n\nNotre Dame, at Poitiers, is too well known to the artist and antiquary to\nneed commendation or description here; the design is a noble one, and\nhappily illustrates the Romanesque of Poitou. It has been remarked that the\nwindow, which resembles that at Civray in position, has been converted from\nthe original round form to a tall shape, and that this was done to admit\nthe introduction of painted glass. We believe this is a mistake, and the\nwindow retains its pristine form. The window at Civray was certainly never\ncircular. The canopied niches of fifteenth century work, at the sides of\nthis window, which once disfigured the fa\u00e7ade, have been removed by late\nrestorers of the edifice, obviously to the improvement of the design. We do\nnot see in the two views of the church of St. Ours, at Loches, enough to\ndemand a double illustration: one better selected view than either of those\nwhich appear here would be enough.\n{857}\nA general prospect of the church would have been valuable as an\nillustration of its four tourelles, with their roofs of stone, after the\nmanner of those in the west front of Notre Dame, at Poitiers. Doubtless the\nlow porch of the church at Loches, which is not shown in the photograph,\nprevented the selection of a more powerful effect of light and shade, and\ninterfered with the choice of points of view. Mr. Petit has carefully\nanalyzed this church in his Architectural Studies of France. We have also a\nview of the details of the doorway exterior representing the carvings of\nwhat may be called the imperfect capitals of the jambs. The glorious\nporches of Chartres, especially that magnificent one on the south side, are\nadmirably represented in five photographs. These give the south doorway,\nnorth doorway, details of the north doorway, doorways of the west front;\nthe last represents the long-robed statues of the royal saints and other\nfeatures of the Porte Royale, (so called, probably because Henry the Fourth\nentered by it to his coronation,) after they left the restorer's hands, and\nis a fine, clear photograph.--_Athenaeum_.\n\n\n_Newspaper Zo\u00f6logy_.--The Pall Mall Gazette has published the\nfollowing interesting note: \"The Courier de Saigon reports some\nextraordinary items of natural history from the land of the Anamites. There\nis a certain fish, called Ca-ong in the language of the country, which has\ndistinguished itself to that degree that the king has bestowed upon it the\nproud title of 'Nam hai dui bnong gnan,' which, as everybody knows, means\n'Great General of the South Sea.' It appears that this laudable fish is in\nthe habit of quietly paddling round the ships near the coast until somebody\ntumbles overboard. He then seizes him instantly, and, instead of eating\nhim, gently carries him in his mouth to the shore. At Wung-tau, near St.\nJames's Cape, they keep a skeleton of this extraordinary philanthropist. It\nis about thirty-five feet long, possesses front teeth like an elephant,\nvery large eyes, a black skin very smooth, a tail like a lobster, and two\nwings on the back.\"\n\n\n_Mechanics of Flight_.--An extremely interesting paper on this subject\nwas read by Mr. Wenham to the Aeronautical Society. The subject is too\ndifficult and complex to be explained briefly, and therefore we will only\nsay that Mr. Wenham has brought into the explanation of flight the effect\nof the forward motion in retarding descent. Imagine a parallelogram 10 ft.\nlong by 2 ft. broad, weighing 20 lbs. Such a body would descend in still\nair at the limiting rate of 1320 ft. per minute, the resistance of the air\nput in motion by the plane balancing at that velocity the effect of\ngravity. If now a force be applied horizontally so as to carry the plane\nwith its long side forward at a speed of thirty miles per hour, then the\nmotion of the plane being both downward and forward, a great volume of air\nwill pass under the front margin of the plane, and will be carried downward\nbefore leaving the hinder margin. The weight of air thus put in motion will\nbe enormous, and the descending velocity of the plane proportionately\nreduced. Mr. Wenham calculates that the velocity of descent would in these\ncircumstances be reduced to one fifteenth of the passive rate of descent,\nor would not exceed 83 ft. per minute. Each particle of air would then be\nmoved downward eight tenths of an inch by the passage of the plane, and\nconversely, if this inclination were given to the plane, it would move\nforward without descending. Mr. Wenham finds that few birds can raise\nthemselves vertically in the air, the exertion in that case being\nexcessive. The eagle can only lift itself from the ground by running with\noutstretched wings till its velocity having become sufficient, it glides\ninto the air as if sliding on a frictionless plane.--_Popular Science\nReview_.\n\n\n_A New Volcano in the South Seas_.--From a letter forwarded by the\nEnglish consul at Navigators' Islands, we learn that a volcano has just\nbroken out at Manua, about two miles from the islands of Oloscqa. It was\npreceded by a violent shock of earthquake, which commenced on the 5th of\nSeptember, and on the 12th dense thick smoke rose out of the sea. Lava was\nthrown up, discoloring the water for many miles round, and destroying large\nquantities of fish. Wherever the ashes fell on the adjacent island, they\ndestroyed all vegetation. Up to the middle of November dense smoke was\nstill being thrown up. It is said that the smoke rose higher than the\nneighboring island, which is over 2000 feet high. The consul has been\nunable to ascertain whether there is any bank thrown up in the water.\n\n{858}\n\n_A Chemical Method for effectually Cleaning Glass_ is given in a\nrecently published work on one of the processes of photography. It is\nsimple, reliable, and completely efficient, and will, we doubt not, be\nfound very useful by our readers. It is as follows: Dilute the ordinary\nhydrofluoric acid sold in gutta-percha bottles, with four or five parts of\nwater, drop it on a cotton rubber, (not on the glass,) and rub well over,\nafterward washing till the acid is removed. The action is the same as that\nof sulphuric acid when used for cleaning copper; a little of the glass is\ndissolved off, and a fresh surface exposed. The solution of the acid in\nwater does not leave a dead surface on the glass, as the vapor would; if a\nstrong solution is left on long enough to produce a visible depression, the\npart affected will be quite bright. This method is recommended in some\ncases for cleaning photographic plates.\n\n\n\n_Nature of the Earth eaten by the People of Borneo_.--The Chemical\nNews gives us the composition of the clay which is eaten so extensively by\nthe natives of Borneo. It states that some years ago the manager of the\nOrange-Nassau colliery, near Zandjermasin, in the island of Borneo, found\nthat many of his work-people (natives) consumed large quantities of a kind\nof clay; a sample of this material was forwarded to Batavia for analysis,\nand the following is the result in 100 parts:\n\n  Pitcoal resin, (organic matter volatile\n  at red heat,)----15.4\n\n  Pure carbon,----14.9\n\n  Silica,----38.3\n\n  Alumina,----27.7\n\n  Iron pyrites,----3.7\n\n  Total,----100.0\n\n\n_Photography at the Paris Exhibition_.--On the whole, the art-science\nof photography plays its part well at the great French International\nExhibition, and in the collective displays of various nations we find its\nnumerous and diverse applications, improvements, and modifications fairly\nrepresented. The Austrian collection is a very attractive one, and contains\nsome of the very best specimens of photo-lithography yet produced; its\nspecimens of portraiture from life-size downward are of a very excellent\ncharacter, and, like those of France, Prussia, and Russia, are decidedly\nsuperior to the English. In the Darmstadt contributions are some\ninteresting specimens by Dr. Reissiz, exhibited to illustrate his theory of\nphotogenic action. In the Prussian department a large portrait lens\nattracts attention; it is fourteen inches in diameter, and covers a square\nof thirty inches. The French department contains some interesting specimens\nof photographic-engraving process, of enamelled photographs, and of\nenlargements from microscopical photographs, amongst which is one of a flea\nenlarged to the size of a small pig. Amongst the novelties and applications\nof photography to decorative art are photographs of a singular character,\nillustrative of a new process called \"Chrysoplasty.\" They represent\ngoldsmiths' work, ancient armor, draperies embroidered with gold and\nsilver, bronze statuary, philosophic instruments, etc., and are apparently\nin the same metals as the originals. This process is a secret one, but the\ninventor, Mr. Boeringer, is prepared to produce such photographs from any\nnegatives which may be sent him for that purpose. He is at present making a\nlarge collection of specimens from antique curiosities and works of art in\nmetal dispersed in the public and private museums of various nations, and\nwith this end in view appeals to the owners and guardians of such\ncollections, and those who have negatives of the required description, to\nrender him assistance. In photographic portraiture, by universal consent,\nthe French stand prominently foremost, so much so that, as The Times says,\n\"amongst those articles which are specially called _articles de\nParis_, a good photographic portrait is now to be placed.\" In the\nEnglish department we miss most of our foremost photographers, amongst them\nMr. O. G. Reglandes, Mr. T. R. Williams, and but too many others. Mr.\nMayall, M. Claudet, Lock and Whitfield, Ross, and other of our chief\nportraitists exhibit largely, but all show but weak and mean when\ncontrasted with their rival portraitists as represented in the French\ncollection. As landscapists English photographers, like English painters,\ncarry off the palm. Why landscapes by English operators so far surpass\nothers we cannot explain, but no one with any artistic taste or judgment\nwould hesitate to attribute the superiority of the French portraits purely\nand simply to a more refined taste and greater knowledge of pictorial\nscience in their producers.\n{859}\nThe English photographs display little merit beyond such as belongs\nexclusively to the skilful management of good tools, while the French\nphotographers are evidently, as a rule, artists studying such things as\nlighting, posing and arranging, exposing and developing with considerable\nartistic knowledge and preconceived design, the former with a view to\nputting a picture before the lens, and the latter with a view to its\nfaithful reproduction in the operating room. Two of the great secrets of\ntheir greater success will, we believe, be found to reside in the much\nlonger exposures they give their plates in the camera, and in the use of a\ndeveloper not so rapid in its action as to escape control during\ndevelopment. The great cry in England has been for short exposures and\npowerful developers, things which war against the subtle delicacies of\ngradations from light to dark, and from darks into reflected lights, which\nconstitute one of the most special and striking peculiarities of the best\nFrench portraits. Refer back to past volumes of the English photographic\njournals, and this craving for extraordinary rapidity coupled with frequent\nmention of the extraordinary long exposures given on the continent, where\nthe light is more powerful and the atmosphere more pure, will be found. You\nwill also perceive that, while articles tending directly and indirectly to\ngive mechanical manipulation and good tools all the credit of increased\nsuccess crowd their pages to a wearying degree of sameness and repetition,\npapers of a truly art-educational character are extremely rare, in\nconsequence, we have been informed, of the little real appreciation they\nmeet with from English photographic students. Hence probably the inartistic\nand tasteless character displayed by their photographs when contrasted with\nthose of our more artistic and tasteful neighbors.--_Popular Science\nReview._\n\n------\n\n  Original.\n\n  New Publications.\n\n\n  Melpomene Divina; or, Poems' on Christian Themes.\n  By Christopher Laoinedon Pindar.\n  Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1867.\n\nThis is an elegant little volume, but not a volume of elegant poetry. We\nfeel unwilling to speak adversely of the effusions of a youthful author,\n(we suppose his youth from several poems given as \"youthful efforts\" as\nlate as the year 1861,) but the truth must be honestly told, if told at\nall, both for young and old; and the truth is, that this book contains many\neasy rhymes, but very little poetic thought. The verses, too often faulty\nin rhythm, abound with sentences that can hardly be called good English,\nas, for instance, (p. 90:)\n\n  \"He gazed and gazed, and deeper still\n     The soft attachment grew,\n   And nearer to the charmful maid\n     His loving soul him drew.\"\n\nAnd again, (p. 172;)\n\n  \"Only pray I thee, whom first saint\n     In America God chose,\n   Grant that countless maids may rival\n     In my land thee, heavenly Rose!\"\n\nIn a little translation entitled The Fisher's Wife we find a verse which\nwill illustrate the desire we now express that the writer had husbanded his\npoetical ability, and allowed it to find expression in a lesser number of\npoems more carefully worded. He might then have given us a volume of some\nmerit. We quote:\n\n  \"'O horror and woe! now breaks my poor heart!\n     Out must I to gain relief!'\n   She cries, and rushes from out the house,\n     The mother in fear and grief.\n\n  \"And silently drifts a corse to the shore\n     Strewn with trees and sedge and tan;\n   There lies he all naked on the black sand:\n     'O merciful God! my man!'\"\n\n{860}\n\nWith so many evidences of the author's acquaintance with the classic poets\nupon these pages, we are surprised to meet with such words as \"bluey,\"\n\"bleaky,\" \"browny,\" and the like; together with elisions, as \"'T\" for \"it,\"\nto begin a line; \"need'd\" for \"needed;\" and such unwarrantable extensions\nas giving three syllables to words like \"Christian,\" \"solely,\" etc. We feel\nso much pleased, however, with his modest introduction to the volume that\nwe will allow him to speak here for himself: \"That the book is very\nimperfect, I am fully convinced of; that it be but taken by another as a\nspur to elicit a more perfect one in illustration of a similar theme, is my\nearnest desire. The many and almost unceasing demands of a higher order\nhave allowed me to bestow only a few 'tempora subseciva' on a work to which\nI would have gladly devoted day and night. As such it can hardly be\nanything else than deficient in many respects. Yet if I be the cause of\ngiving to but one person the pleasure of a moment in perusing these pages,\nand still more, if one be thence inspired to send a whisper of love to the\nsaintly beings carolled in them, I shall consider myself happy, and my\nlabors more than sufficiently repaid.\"\n\n----\n\n  The Two Roads,\n  Gabriel,\n  Martha,\n  Bread Of Forgiveness,\n  Flowers From Heaven,\n  Fragments Of Correspondence.\n  P. O. Shea, Publisher, New York.\n\nThis is a series of beautiful stories, from the French, on the beatitudes.\nThey are well translated, and published in good style.\n\n----\n\n  Science Of Happiness; or, The Beatitudes in Practice.\n  By Mader Bourdon.\n  P. O. Shea, New York.\n\nThis volume contains the stories mentioned above bound together, so as to\nmake another book.\n\n----\n\n  Studies In The Gospels.\n  By Richard Chenevix Trench, D.D.\n  New-York: Charles Scribner & Co.\n\nThe author of this volume is well known from his valuable philological\nworks. This volume of Studies is composed of sixteen chapters of expository\nnotes on different parables and events recorded in the gospels. He has made\nfree use of the standard commentaries, both Catholic and Protestant. We\ncannot attach any critical value to the work, as we observe that, where\nMaldonatus and the fathers go against the system to which he is committed,\nhe passes over what they have said, and gives us instead the opinion of\nCalvin or his own. The volume contains, however, many suggestive thoughts,\nclothed in pure, good English. The typographical appearance of the volume\nis remarkably good.\n\n\n----\n\n  Mr. P. F. Cunningham, Philadelphia, has in press, and will soon publish,\n  The new Life of St. Aloysius Gonzaga, edited by Edward Healy Thompson,\n  and which has just appeared in London. It will make a volume of about\n  four hundred pages.\n\n\n  Messrs. Benziger Bros., New York and Cincinnati, are about to publish\n  Rome and the Popes: translated from the German of Dr. Karl Brandes, by\n  Rev. W. T. Wiseman, Professor of Church History in Seton Hall Seminary.","title":"The Catholic World, Vol. 05, April 1867 to September 1867","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":568100}